“Please come and visit us⁠ ⁠… you know my brave boy⁠ ⁠… been together out there⁠ ⁠… both playing the hero⁠ ⁠… Ah, Vasíli Ignátovich⁠ ⁠… How d’ye do, old fellow?” he said, turning to an old man who was passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a general stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a frightened face: “He’s arrived!”

Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and⁠—like rye shaken together in a shovel⁠—the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing room by the door of the ballroom.

Bagratión appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or sword, which, in accord with the club custom, he had given up to the hall porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip over his shoulder, as when Rostóv had seen him on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign Orders, and the Star of St.