but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society--I mean good French society--will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion."

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic