Bilibin: sounds like the name of a troll, but this is prince Adrei's "elegantly witty" friend, a high-ranking Russian diplomat who is in Brunn, with the Austrian court: "a man of about thirty-five, a bachelor, of the same society as Prince Andrei." What impresses me here is that, having shown us Petersburg and Moscow society, war, and so on, Tolstoy renders yet another world-- a world entirely opaque to most people-- that of the diplomatic corps.
What a ride!
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