colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were
something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't
marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince Andrew.

"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should
consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have
everything before you, everything. And you..."

He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he
thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.

"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his
friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the
highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which
might be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always
astonished at Prince Andrew's calm manner of treating everybody, his
extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything,
knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all
at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck
by Andrew's lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he
himself was particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a
defect but as a sign of strength.

Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life,
praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary
to wheels that they may run smoothly.

"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's the use of
talking about me? Let us talk about you," he added after a silence,
smiling at his reassuring thoughts.