“Yes,” replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to him. “They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Márya Abrámovna invited me to her house and kept telling me what had happened, or ought to have happened, to me. Stepán Stepánych also instructed me how I ought to tell of my experiences. In general I have noticed that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I am an interesting man now); people invite me out and tell me all about myself.”

Natásha smiled and was on the point of speaking.

“We have been told,” Princess Márya interrupted her, “that you lost two millions in Moscow. Is that true?”

“But I am three times as rich as before,” returned Pierre.

Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his wife’s debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that he had become three times as rich as before.