In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen⁠—one behind each chair⁠—stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andréy was looking at a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes Bolkónski, opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown⁠—an alleged descendant of Rúrik and ancestor of the Bolkónskis. Prince Andréy, looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.

“How thoroughly like him that is!” he said to Princess Márya, who had come up to him.