Serezha and the hall-porter

The day before his birthday Serezha comes in rosy from a walk and hangs on the hall-porter Kapitonich's shoulder-strap for news: the bandaged official who had called seven times, saying he and his children were face to face with death, has been received and nearly jumped for joy. Something has come from the Countess, not quite so big, not a book, just a fine thing — Serezha decides it is a railway train. He reports that his father has the Order of Alexander Nevsky and asks what is higher, and higher still, until Vasily Lukich runs out of orders; then he imagines his father receiving them all, and himself receiving each new one as it is invented. The grammar lesson on attributes of Manner of Action defeats him — he cannot see how 'suddenly' can be one — and he is sorry only for having saddened his teacher, who tells him birthdays signify nothing to reasonable beings and that it is a day like any other on which we must work. Serezha hears from the tone that the man does not believe it, and wonders why nobody loves him.

Tolstoy hands a whole chapter to an eight-year-old's day and never once mentions the mother whose letter was refused in the chapter before. Serezha detects insincerity by tone, as he did with Vronsky in Part Two, and the faculty is the same one the adults have lost. The hall-porter's chin, seen only by someone who looks up, is how the household is actually known.