To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an estimate showing that despite these losses his income would not be diminished but would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife’s debts which he was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild his Moscow house and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had cost him eighty thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.

“Yes, of course that’s true,” said Pierre with a cheerful smile. “I don’t need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much richer.”