Volume 1: Book 5 - Chapter 10

Characters Present:

Count Pierre Bezukhov

Bezukhov's chief steward

Location:

Pierre's various estates

Of the 500,000 rubles per year that Pierre's estates earn, all but 100,000 gets spent on upkeep and so on.  Pierre is unable to manage his own accounts, so takes a false interest while his chief steward does the job.

Pierre, in his new piousness, also wants to release the serfs from serfdom and each estate goes about building schools and alms houses to satisfy him before he arrives.  What he doesn't know is that he is only shown the happiest, richest of the villagers when he visits, and the rest of the families are forced into further poverty by having to build the schools and so on. Worse, the serfs have lost the help of the children, who have now been forced into schools.