" Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the room and at the people in it.

Round a long table covered with black sat some twelve men in garments like those he had already seen.

Some of them Pierre had met in Petersburg society.

In the President's chair sat a young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from his neck.

On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at Anna Pavlovna's two years before.