with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This class of guests and members sat in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual groups. A minority of those present were casual guests—chiefly young men, among whom were Denísov, Rostóv, and Dólokhov—who was now again an officer in the Semënov regiment. The faces of these young people, especially those who were military men, bore that expression of condescending respect for their elders which seems to say to the older generation, “We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the same remember that the future belongs to us.”
Nesvítski was there as an old member of the club. Pierre, who at his wife’s command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles, went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he treated them with absentminded contempt.
By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his wealth and connections he belonged to the groups of old and honored guests, and so he went from one group to another.
Some of the most important old men were the center of groups which even strangers approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known men. The largest circles formed round Count Rostopchín, Valúev, and Narýshkin.
Rostopchín was describing how the Russians had been overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force their way through them with bayonets.
Valúev was confidentially telling that Uvárov had been sent from Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was