And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his back!" "What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted the count, dying with laughter.

"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?" Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.

"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the visitor.

" And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so well educated and clever.

This is all that his foreign education has done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in spite of his money.