We make acquaintance with more than a hundred different persons, and each of them is so well depicted, each has his or her own _human_ physiognomy so well determined, that each one appears with his or her own individuality, distinct amongst the scores of actors in the same great drama. It is not so easy to forget even the least important of these figures, be it one of the ministers of Alexander I. or any one of the ordinances of the calvary officers. Nay, every anonymous soldier of various rank--the infantryman, the hussar, or the artilleryman--has his own physiognomy; even the different chargers of Róstoff, or of Denísoff, stand out with individual features. When you think of the variety of human characters which pass under your eyes on these pages, you have the real sensation of a vast crowd--of historical events that you seem to have lived through--of a whole nation roused by a calamity; while the impression you retain of human beings whom you have loved in _War and Peace_, or for whom you have suffered when misfortune befell them, or when they themselves have wronged others (as for instance, the old countess Róstoff and Sónitchka)--the impression left by these persons, when they emerge in your memory from the crowd, gives to that crowd the same illusion of reality which little details give to the personality of a hero. The great difficulty in an historical novel lies not so much in the representation of secondary figures as in painting the great historical personalities--the chief actors of the historical drama--so as to make of them real, living beings. But this is exactly where Tolstóy has succeeded most wonderfully. His Bagratión, his Alexander I., his Napoléon, and his Kutúzoff are living men, so realistically represented that one _sees_ them and is tempted to seize the brush and paint them, or to imitate their movements and ways of talking.