Yes indeed, of the essence... from the mouth of the Tsar!" came the sobbing voice of Count Rostov from the back. He hadn't heard a word, but in his own way he seemed to understand.

It was awkward for her to admit even secretly to herself that she had fallen in love with a man who would possibly never love her in return, but she consoled herself with the thought that no one would ever know, and she would bear no blame for this love, as long as it remained unspoken, even if it was her first and last love, and it went on for a lifetime.

But Nikolay was brimming with such innocent good humour that now and then even the husband fell prey to his exuberance. Towards the end of the evening, however, as the wife's face grew redder and livelier, the husband's grew steadily paler and sadder. It was as if they had been issued with a limited amount of vivacity between them, and as the wife's share of it rose, the husband's dwindled away.

Я нигде так не скучал по деревне, русской деревне, с лаптями и мужиками, как прожив с матушкой зиму в Ницце. Ницца сама по себе скучна, вы знаете. Да и Неаполь, Сорренто хороши только на короткое время. И именно там особенно живо вспоминается Россия, и именно деревня.

I felt a wish never to leave that room - a wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never change.

But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

I united myself with my forefathers: the father, mother, and grandparents I loved. They and all my predecessors believed and lived, and they produced me.

All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.

In the legal respect, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries, the other half of Moscow burned down.