AT THE BEGINNING of the winter Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky and his daughter moved to Moscow. His past, his intellect and originality, and still more the falling off at about that time of the popular enthusiasm for the rule of the Tsar Alexander and the anti-French and patriotic sentiments then prevailing at Moscow, all contributed to make Prince Nikolay Andreitch at once an object of peculiar veneration and the centre of the Moscow opposition to the government.
The prince had greatly aged during that year. He had begun to show unmistakable signs of failing powers, sudden attacks of drowsiness, and forgetfulness of events nearest in time, and exact memory of remote incidents, and a childlike vanity in playing the part of leader of the Moscow opposition. But in spite of that, when the old man came into the drawing-room in the evenings to tea, in his wig and fur coat, and on being incited to do so by some one, began uttering abrupt observations on the past, or still more abrupt and harsh criticisms on the present—he aroused the same feeling of esteem and reverence in all his guests. For visitors, that old-fashioned house, with its huge mirrors, pre-revolutionary furniture, and powdered lackeys, and the stern and shrewd old man, himself a relic of a past age, with the gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman, both so reverently devoted to him, made a stately and agreeable spectacle. But those visitors did not reflect that, apart from the couple of hours during which they saw the household, there were twenty-two hours of the day and night during which the secret, private life of the house went on its accustomed way.