But Pierre was still under the influence of that ecstatic mood which the arrival had evoked in him.
“Look there—don’t mix up Serézha’s things! You have thrown his snowshoes down in the drawing-room.” And he himself picked them up and with great care, as though the whole future order of the quarters depended upon it, leaned them against the doorpost and tried to make them stand there. But the snowshoes did not stick to it, and, the moment Pierre walked away from them, fell with a racket across the door. Natálya Nikoláevna frowned and shuddered, but, seeing the cause of the fall, she said:
“Sónya, darling, pick them up!”
“Pick them up, darling,” repeated the husband, “and I will go to the landlord, or else you will never get done. I must talk things over with him.”
“You had better send for him, Pierre. Why should you trouble yourself?”
Pierre assented.
“Sónya, bring him here, what do you call him? M. Cavalier, if you please. Tell him that we want to speak about everything.”
“Chevalier, papa,” said Sónya, ready to go out.
Natálya Nikoláevna, who was giving her commands in a soft voice, and was softly stepping from room to room, now with a box, now with a pipe, now with a pillow, imperceptibly finding places for a mountain of baggage, in passing Sónya, had time to whisper to her:
“Do not go yourself, but send a man!”
While a man went to call the landlord, Pierre used his leisure, under the pretext of aiding his consort, in crushing a garment of hers and in