Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests
began to take their leave.

Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with
huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a
drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say
something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he
was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his
own, the general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the
plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his
absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it
was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression.
Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that
expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to
see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my
dear Monsieur Pierre."

When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again
everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions
are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am."
And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.

Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders
to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty,
pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.