Excerpt from War and Peace, Vol. 2 Pierre was under his tutelage at Moscow, and Prince Vasili procured for him an appointment as gentleman in-waiting, which at that time conferred the same rank as Councillor of State, and he insisted on the young man accompanying him to Petersburg and taking up his residence in his own mansion. Without making any exertion, and at the same time taking it absolutely for granted that he was on the right track, Prince Vasili was doing all in his power to marry Pierre to his daughter. If Prince Vasili had formulated his plans beforehand, he could not have been so natural in his conversation, so simple and unaffected in his relations with all men, not only those above him, but those who stood below him. There was something that ever attracted him to men richer or more powerful than himself, and he was endowed with the rare art of seizing exactly the right moment for profiting by people. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.