And their heavy breathing and hurried tread seemed to show that the weight they carried was too heavy for them.

The sick man was so surrounded by the doctors, the princesses and the servants, that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with the grey mane, which he had never lost sight of for one instant during the ceremony, even though he had been watching other people too. Pierre guessed from the cautious movements of the people about the chair that they were lifting the dying man up and moving him.

“Hold on to my arm; you’ll drop him so,” he heard the frightened whisper of one of the servants. “Lower down … another one here,” said voices. And their heavy breathing and hurried tread seemed to show that the weight they carried was too heavy for them.

As they passed him—Anna Mihalovna among them—the young man caught a glimpse over people’s backs and necks of the great muscular open chest, the grey, curly, leonine head, and the massive shoulders of the sick man, which were pushed up, as he was supported under the armpits. His head, with its extraordinarily broad brow and cheek-bones, its beautiful sensual mouth, and haughty, cold eyes, was not disfigured by the proximity of death. It was just the same as Pierre had seen it three months before, when his father had been sending him off to Petersburg. But the head swayed helplessly with the jerky steps of the bearers, and the cold, apathetic eyes did not know on what to rest.