“No, that will not do,” he continued. “You will not have a straight passage to the drawing-room. What do you think, Natásha?”

“Calm yourself, Pierre, everything will come out all right,” Natásha said, from another room, where peasants were bringing in things.

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!”