Dentist surgeon Pierre Fauchard against caries. Modern crystal globe in section

The grateful patient, amazed by the new technology, did everything to ensure that Fauchard’s book, the world’s first textbook for dentists, was published. The manuscript was already ready by that time, but it contained so many new ideas that the king’s permission was required for its publication.

Sick teeth of an elderly surgeon

By 1724, the elderly surgeon Tartanson was already a retired head of the workshop and was on a well-deserved rest. On November 12, he felt a sharp pain, and it seemed as if all the incisors and canines of the lower jaw were hurting. In those days, the only way to get rid of pain was extraction of teeth, and the removal was carried out by barbers and traveling specialists, referred to only as charlatans.

Tartanson knew that usually one tooth hurts, the roots of which are affected by caries. Charlatans don’t know how to find it and tear out everything until they get to the patient. Fortunately, in 1719 a dentist appeared in Paris, rumored to be able not only to pull teeth, but also to preserve them. It was Fauchard. He lived and worked in the Latin Quarter opposite the famous Café Prokop. Tartanson rushed there, just in case, grabbing a young assistant, the already eminent surgeon Larreira.

Fauchard seated the patient in a chair with armrests. This is a new word in medical technology: previously, people suffering from teeth were placed on the floor so that there was nowhere to fall when the forceps were used. Considering Tartason's advanced age, his teeth were in good condition. At first glance, it seemed to Fauchard that the problem was only with the canine on the right, outwardly the most worn. Having gone through all the teeth with a probe, he was convinced that this was so.

Pierre Fauchard (1679-1761) and the dental instruments he invented - illustrations for the second edition of the book “The Dentist Surgeon”, 1746.

Top left: filling materials. At the top is a lead sinker, which was used to hit the handle of the filling pusher, at the bottom are gold wires and lead plates rolled into a spiral, attached to the teeth from the inside (smaller in size) and from the outside.

Top right: filling tools. Three pluggers of different shapes are used, according to Fauchard, “to insert, press and tuck” the filling. Two silver plates of different shapes, with holes, for straightening teeth.

Bottom left: Fauchard's portrait. Engraving by Scotin from a portrait by Lebel, painted in 1720.

Bottom right: instruments for opening the patient's mouth. On the left is a mouth dilator-elevator, on the right is a mouth dilator-dilator, in the middle is a gag with grooves for air and a cord for extraction.

Then a conversation began with the patient about caries. It is generally difficult to treat doctors, especially surgeons. Especially the elderly. They must decide everything themselves, because they know everything. What the patient did not know in this case was that Fauchard desperately needed to save his problematic canine.

Life's work

Treatment of caries became a matter of life for Fauchard. He had a manuscript ready for a treatise on dental treatment, half of which was about caries - a disease that became widespread during the Enlightenment. To publish a treatise means to gain fame, rich patients, students and a young wife, so seriously was scientific literature taken then. Permission to print and sell medical books was issued in the name of the king. And to obtain such permission, written reviews from specialists are needed. In this case, representatives of two unfriendly workshops - therapists and surgeons. Fauchard with his ideas found himself between them.

He became a dentist by chance. Born on January 2, 1679 into a poor family. Lost my mother early. At the age of 14, in order to escape from home, he joined the navy. Just then, King Louis XIV of France, as usual, was at war with the whole world, not counting money. A year earlier, he thought to install his king in England, concentrated an invasion army on the English Channel, but the Anglo-Dutch squadron at the Battle of Barfleur left the king without a fleet. Now they were building new ships and recruiting young people. Fauchard entered the naval hospital as an assistant surgeon. For him, this was a chance to learn for free a profession to which he had always felt a calling. Relatives mourned Pierre, as the naval surgeons and their students went straight into battle.

Rich bride

However, the smart guy caught the eye of the fleet's chief surgeon, Alexander Potlera. And he left him in the hospital to nurse experienced sailors who escaped death in battle because scurvy put them to bed. This is how Fauchard first encountered dental diseases and became interested in them. Three years later, in 1696, he independently performed a complex operation involving straightening crooked incisors using a screw pelican.

When the king finally ran out of money, the war ended. With all his skills, young Fauchard could not be an independent practicing surgeon without money for a patent and a circle of solvent patients. He obtained both at the age of 20 by marrying the widow of a surgeon, who was 17 years older than him.

A bow drill that the founder of modern dental technology, Pierre Fauchard (1679-1761), used to attach the dentures he developed. Illustration from his book The Dentist Surgeon, or a Treatise on the Teeth, 1728.
Designations:
A - bow cord reel
B - handle
C - drill
D - onion
E - bow cord.

Wormy tooth

Until 1716, he worked in the city of Angers, and made it the birthplace of caries treatment. For some reason, this disease affected wealthy people, whom dentists willingly used. Severely affected teeth were removed, and on less affected teeth the corroded part was ground down with a needle file.

In 1710, a 14-year-old girl was brought to Fauchard, whose lower incisors were ground down to the pulp by a dentist. In desperation, she asked to have these prominent teeth pulled out so that there would be no more pain. Fauchard felt sorry for her. He removed the nerves, cleaned the canals and filled them with gold wires. There is reason to think that he had already mastered this operation.

But if teeth were filled in ancient China, then Fauchard went the furthest in establishing the causes of caries. Previously, it was believed that the teeth were eaten by some kind of worms, so small that they were not visible to the eye. Since Leeuwenhoek studied dental stone under a microscope and saw bacteria there, this opinion has become stronger. Fauchard bought the most powerful microscope and did not find any worms in the carious teeth. “That doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” he wrote. But it's not just them. Fauchard noticed that the victims of caries were people with a sweet tooth. “Whoever loves sweets rarely has beautiful teeth, and even teeth of average quality. That’s why it’s important to rinse your mouth with warm water after eating candy to dissolve anything that might be stuck between your teeth and gums.”

Chisel in the hands of a dentist

Therapists liked all these studies, and Fauchard hoped to collect feedback from them. And now the head of another clan was sitting in his chair. They managed to convince the old man that a purulent abscess had developed at the root of the tooth, and a canal needed to be opened so that the pus could come out. The sick Tartanson could observe the actions of the dentist - his young assistant Larreir was holding a mirror in his hands. Professional interest overpowered the pain, and Fauchard got down to business.

He placed a triangular chisel on the tip of the tooth and, turning it left and right, made a hole. Then he took a tool that he called a “flayer’s knife,” that is, a long awl, like a seamstress, which was used to cut pigs. Expanded and deepened the course. When the awl reached the abscess, pus and blood gushed out of the hole. The pain immediately stopped, as Fauchard had predicted.

Fauchard's Three Wives

Old Tartanson obtained half a dozen comments on the manuscript, and added on his own that the art of surgery lacked the ability to treat teeth, but now that is a thing of the past. In 1728, the first edition of Fauchard’s book “The Dentist Surgeon, or a treatise on teeth” was published. It sold out instantly. There were additional prints, and in 1746 a new edition, with a portrait of the author.

Fauchard received everything he dreamed of - fame, patients, students and money. He bought a castle outside the city - Chateau Grandmenil, located so that the king himself could stop by there on his way from Paris to Versailles. A year after the publication of the treatise, Fauchard’s old wife died, and at the age of 50 he married the 17-year-old daughter of a prominent lawyer Pierre-Jean Duchmin.

The only thing missing was a male heir. In 1737, a boy was born who was named Jean-Baptiste. His mother soon died, so the beginning of Jean-Baptiste's biography resembled the story of the elder Fauchard. To my father's chagrin, that's where the similarities ended. The boy was absolutely not in the mood for surgery; he could not raise a hand against a person.

In a heroic attempt to father a dentist, Fauchard married again, at age 78, to an 18-year-old girl the same age as his son. We do not know any scandalous details of the misalliance, but there were no children in this marriage. The third wife wanted to live, albeit with the old man, but in the castle, so Jean-Baptiste was left to his own devices in the town house of the Fauchards.

Fathers and Sons

His father raised him with letters. I tried to guide him, but it seemed to young Fauchard that, according to his father, he was doing everything wrong: learning to play the violin the wrong way, attending law lectures at the university wrong, working as a lawyer, spending all his free time in the theater. And Jean-Baptiste began to do everything in defiance of his father, showing that they were separated, after all, by 60 years.

The dentist Fauchard shaved his head and wore a powdered wig; his lawyer son wore his own long hair in a ponytail.

The father married women of a different age for convenience - the son married someone of the same age for love.

The father raised his son with instructions - the son confided with his children over a bottle.

The father curried favor with the ministers - the son publicly cursed the judicial reform of Minister Mopu and emigrated.

The father despised actors - the son gave up law and became an actor.

The father was always serious - his son was most successful in funny characters.

The father wanted to perpetuate the Fauchard surname - the son took the stage name Grandmenil (in honor of his castle) and under it went down in history as the best comedian of the Comedie Française theater.

And needless to say, during the Revolution he was the most radical in the entire troupe!

Mikhail Shifrin

Crystal Globe

Pierre Bezukhov from the novel “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy sees a crystal globe in a dream:

“This globe was a living, oscillating ball, without dimensions. The entire surface of the ball consisted of drops tightly compressed together. And these drops all moved, moved and then merged from several into one, then from one they were divided into many. Each drop sought to spread out, to capture the greatest space, but others, striving for the same thing, compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, sometimes merged with it... There is God in the middle, and each drop strives to expand in order to reflect him in the greatest possible size. And it grows, and shrinks, and is destroyed on the surface, goes into the depths and floats up again.”

Pierre Bezukhov

The desire of the drops for global fusion, their readiness to accommodate the whole world is love and compassion for each other. Love as a complete understanding of all living things passed from Platon Karataev to Pierre, and from Pierre it should spread to all people. It became one of the countless centers of the world, that is, it became the world.

That’s why Pierre laughs at the soldier guarding him with a rifle at the door of the barn: “He wants to lock me, my endless soul...” This is what followed the vision of the crystal globe.

The novel's epigraph about the need for the unity of all good people is not at all so banal. It is no coincidence that the word “conjugate,” heard by Pierre in his second “prophetic” dream, is combined with the word “harness.” It is necessary to harness - it is necessary to couple. Everything that is conjugated is the world; centers - drops that do not strive to connect - this is a state of war, hostility. Hostility and alienation among people. It is enough to remember with what sarcasm Pechorin looked at the stars to understand what the feeling opposite to “conjugation” is.

Pierre Bezukhov. Museum named after K.A.Fedina, Saratov

Probably not without the influence of cosmology Tolstoy built later Vladimir Soloviev its metaphysics, where the Newtonian force of attraction received the name “love”, and the force of repulsion began to be called “enmity”.

War and peace, conjugation and disintegration, attraction and repulsion - these are two forces, or rather, two states of one cosmic force, periodically overwhelming the souls of heroes Tolstoy. From the state of universal love (falling in love with Natasha and the entire universe, all-forgiving and all-containing cosmic love at the hour of Bolkonsky’s death) to the same general enmity and alienation (his break with Natasha, hatred and call to shoot prisoners before the Battle of Borodino). Such transitions are not typical for Pierre; he, like Natasha, is universal by nature. Rage against Anatole or Helen, the imaginary murder of Napoleon are superficial, without touching the depth of the spirit. Pierre's kindness is the natural state of his soul.

Pierre, Prince Andrei and Natasha Rostova at the ball

Pierre “saw” the crystal globe from the outside, that is, he went beyond the visible, visible space during his lifetime. The Copernican revolution happened to him. Before Copernicus, people were in the center of the world, but here the universe turned inside out, the center became the periphery - many worlds around the “center of the sun.” It is precisely this kind of Copernican revolution that he speaks of Tolstoy at the end of the novel:

“Since Copernicus’s law was discovered and proven, the mere recognition that it is not the sun that moves, but the earth, has destroyed the entire cosmography of the ancients...

Just as for astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the movements of the earth was to renounce the immediate feeling of the immobility of the earth and the same feeling of the immobility of the planets, so for history the difficulty of recognizing the subordination of the individual to the laws of space, time and causes is to renounce the immediate feeling of independence personality."

In a duel with Dolokhov

The relation of one to infinity is Bolkonsky's relation to the world at the moment of death. He saw everyone and could not love one. The relation of one to one is something else. This is Pierre Bezukhov. For Bolkonsky, the world fell apart into an infinite number of people, each of whom was ultimately uninteresting to Andrei. Pierre saw the whole world in Natasha, Andrei, Platon Karataev and even in the dog shot by a soldier. Everything that happened to the world happened to him. Andrei sees countless soldiers - “fodder for the guns.” He is full of sympathy, compassion for them, but it is not his. Pierre sees only Plato, but the whole world is in him, and it is his.

The feeling of the convergence of two sides of a diverging angle into a single point is very well conveyed in “Confession” Tolstoy, where he very accurately conveys the discomfort of weightlessness in his sleepy flight, feeling somehow very uncomfortable in the infinite space of the universe, suspended on some kind of support, until a feeling of the center appeared, from where these supports come. Pierre saw this center, which permeates everything, in a crystal globe, so that, waking up from sleep, he could feel it in the depths of his soul, as if returning from a transcendental height.

So Tolstoy explained his dream in “Confession”, also after waking up and also moving this center from the interstellar heights to the depths of the heart. The center of the universe is reflected in every crystal drop, in every soul. This crystal reflection is love.

War is someone else's, peace is ours. Pierre's Crystal Globe is preceded in the novel Tolstoy the globe-ball with which Napoleon's heir plays in the portrait. A world of war with thousands of accidents, truly reminiscent of a game of billbok. Globe - ball and globe - crystal ball - two images of the world. The image of a blind man and a sighted man, gutta-percha darkness and crystal light. A world obedient to the capricious will of one, and a world of unmerged but united wills.

Pierre goes to see the war

The artistic persuasiveness and integrity of such a space does not require proof. The crystal globe lives, acts, exists as a kind of living crystal, a hologram that has absorbed the structure of the novel and the cosmos Lev Tolstoy.

“Light cobwebs are the reins of the Mother of God,” which connect people in prophetic dream Nikolenki, the son of Andrei Bolkonsky, will eventually unite in a single “center” of a crystal globe, somewhere out there, in space. Will become a strong support for Tolstoy in his cosmic hover over the abyss (a dream from “Confession”). The tension of the “cosmic reins” - the feeling of love - is both the direction of movement and the movement itself. Tolstoy I loved such simple comparisons as an experienced horseman, a horseman, and a peasant following a plow. You wrote everything correctly, he will tell Repin about his painting “Tolstoy on the Plowed Field,” but they forgot to put the reins in their hands.

At the Battle of Borodino between the Russian army and Napoleon

In Pierre’s crystal globe, the drops and the center are correlated in exactly this way, in Tyutchev’s way: “Everything is in me, and I am in everything.”

In the later period, the individual personality was sacrificed to the “single” world. One can and should doubt the correctness of such a simplification of the world. Pierre's globe seemed to become cloudy and stopped glowing. Why are drops needed if everything is in the center? And where can the center be reflected if those crystal drops are not there?

With Natasha Rostova

The cosmos of the novel “War and Peace” is as unique and majestic a structure as the cosmos of the “Divine Comedy” Dante and "Faust" Goethe. “Without the cosmology of the crystal globe there is no novel,” asserts TO. Kedrov-Chelishchev. This is something like a crystal casket in which Koshchei’s death is hidden. Here everything is in everything - the great principle of a synergetic double helix, diverging from the center and at the same time converging towards it.

Pierre the reader

If Tolstoy depicted dreams as a transformation of external impressions (for example, the dream of Pierre Bezukhov, who perceives the words of the servant waking him up “it’s time to harness” in a dream as a solution to the philosophical problem - “to harness”), then Dostoevsky believed that in dreams people’s forgotten experiences emerge into spheres controlled by consciousness, and therefore through their dreams a person knows himself better. The heroes' dreams reveal their inner essence - the one that their waking mind does not want to notice.

Lev Tolstoy

Modern crystal globe in section

Remember this at the right time

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This smile was reflected on Pierre’s face at the same instant.

What can we say about me? - said Pierre, spreading his mouth into a carefree, cheerful smile. - What am I? Je suis un batard [I am an illegitimate son!] - And he suddenly blushed crimson. It was clear that he made a great effort to say this. - Sans nom, sans fortune... [No name, no fortune...] And well, that's right... - But he didn't say that's right. - I’m free for now, and I feel good. I just don’t know what to start. I wanted to seriously consult with you.

Prince Andrei looked at him with kind eyes. But his glance, friendly and affectionate, still expressed the consciousness of his superiority.

You are dear to me, especially because you are the only living person among our entire world. You feel good. Choose what you want; it does not matter. You will be good everywhere, but one thing: stop going to these Kuragins and leading this life. So it doesn’t suit you: all these carousings, and hussarism, and everything...

Que voulez-vous, mon cher,” said Pierre, shrugging his shoulders, “les femmes, mon cher, les femmes!” [What do you want, my dear, women, my dear, women!]

“I don’t understand,” Andrey answered. - Les femmes comme il faut, [Decent women] is another matter; but les femmes Kuragin, les femmes et le vin, [Kuragin’s women, women and wine,] I don’t understand!

Pierre lived with Prince Vasily Kuragin and took part in the wild life of his son Anatole, the same one who was going to be married to Prince Andrei’s sister for correction.

You know what,” Pierre said, as if an unexpectedly happy thought had come to him, “seriously, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” With this life I can neither decide nor think about anything. My head hurts, I have no money. Today he called me, I won’t go.

Give me your word of honor that you won't go?

Honestly!

It was already two o'clock in the morning when Pierre left his friend. It was a June night, a St. Petersburg night, a gloomless night. Pierre got into the cab with the intention of going home. But the closer he got, the more he felt it was impossible to fall asleep that night, which seemed more like evening or morning. It was visible in the distance through the empty streets. Dear Pierre remembered that that evening the usual gambling society was supposed to gather at Anatole Kuragin's place, after which there would usually be a drinking party, ending with one of Pierre's favorite amusements.

“It would be nice to go to Kuragin,” he thought.

But he immediately remembered his word of honor given to Prince Andrei not to visit Kuragin. But immediately, as happens with people called spineless, he so passionately wanted to once again experience this dissolute life so familiar to him that he decided to go. And immediately the thought occurred to him that this word meant nothing, because even before Prince Andrei, he also gave Prince Anatoly the word to be with him; Finally, he thought that all these honest words were such conventional things that had no definite meaning, especially if you realized that maybe tomorrow he would either die or something so extraordinary would happen to him that there would be no more honest or dishonest. This kind of reasoning, destroying all his decisions and assumptions, often came to Pierre. He went to Kuragin.

Arriving at the porch of a large house near the Horse Guards barracks where Anatole lived, he climbed onto the illuminated porch, onto the stairs, and entered the open door. There was no one in the hall; there were empty bottles, raincoats, and galoshes lying around; there was a smell of wine, and distant talking and shouting could be heard.

The game and dinner were already over, but the guests had not yet left. Pierre took off his cloak and entered the first room, where the remains of dinner were standing and one footman, thinking that no one was seeing him, was secretly finishing off unfinished glasses. From the third room you could hear fuss, laughter, screams of familiar voices and the roar of a bear.

About eight young people crowded anxiously around the open window. The three were busy with a young bear, which one was dragging on a chain, frightening the other with it.

I'll give Stevens a hundred! - one shouted.

Be careful not to support! - shouted another.

I'm for Dolokhov! - shouted the third. - Take them apart, Kuragin.

Well, leave Mishka, there's a bet here.

“One spirit, otherwise it’s lost,” shouted the fourth.

Yakov, give me a bottle, Yakov! - shouted the owner himself, a tall handsome man standing in the middle of the crowd wearing only a thin shirt open at the middle of his chest. - Stop, gentlemen. Here he is Petrusha, dear friend,” he turned to Pierre.

Another voice of a short man with clear blue eyes, which was especially striking among all these drunken voices with its sober expression, shouted from the window: “Come here - settle the bet!” It was Dolokhov, a Semyonov officer, a famous gambler and brigand who lived with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking around him cheerfully.

I don't understand anything. What's the matter?

Wait, he's not drunk. Give me the bottle,” said Anatole and, taking a glass from the table, approached Pierre.

First of all, drink.

Pierre began drinking glass after glass, looking from under his brows at the drunken guests who were again crowded at the window, and listening to their conversation. Anatole poured him wine and told him that Dolokhov was betting with the Englishman Stevens, a sailor who was here, that he, Dolokhov, would drink a bottle of rum while sitting on the third floor window with his legs hanging out.

Well, drink it all! - said Anatole, handing the last glass to Pierre, - otherwise I won’t let you in!

No, I don’t want to,” Pierre said, pushing Anatole away and went to the window.

Dolokhov held the Englishman’s hand and clearly, distinctly spelled out the terms of the bet, addressing mainly Anatole and Pierre.

Dolokhov was a man of average height, with curly hair and light blue eyes. He was about twenty-five years old. He did not wear a mustache, like all infantry officers, and his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was completely visible. The lines of this mouth were remarkably delicately curved. In the middle, the upper lip energetically dropped onto the strong lower lip like a sharp wedge, and something like two smiles constantly formed in the corners, one on each side; and all together, and especially in combination with a firm, insolent, intelligent gaze, it created such an impression that it was impossible not to notice this face. Dolokhov was a poor man, without any connections. And despite the fact that Anatole lived in tens of thousands, Dolokhov lived with him and managed to position himself in such a way that Anatole and everyone who knew them respected Dolokhov more than Anatole. Dolokhov played all the games and almost always won. No matter how much he drank, he never lost his clarity of mind. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov at that time were celebrities in the world of rakes and revelers in St. Petersburg.

A bottle of rum was brought; the frame that did not allow anyone to sit on the outer slope of the window was broken out by two footmen, apparently in a hurry and timid from the advice and shouts of the surrounding gentlemen.

Anatole walked up to the window with his victorious look. He wanted to break something. He pushed the lackeys away and pulled the frame, but the frame did not give up. He broke the glass.

Come on, strong man,” he turned to Pierre.

Pierre took hold of the crossbars, pulled, and with a crash the oak frame turned out.

“Get out, otherwise they’ll think I’m holding on,” Dolokhov said.

The Englishman is bragging... huh?... good?... - said Anatole.

“Okay,” said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who, taking a bottle of rum in his hands, was approaching the window from which the light of the sky and the morning and evening dawns merging on it could be seen.

Dolokhov, with a bottle of rum in his hand, jumped up onto the window. "Listen!"

he shouted, standing on the windowsill and turning into the room. Everyone fell silent.

I bet (he spoke French so that an Englishman could understand him, and did not speak the language very well). I bet you fifty imperials, would you like a hundred? - he added, turning to the Englishman.

No, fifty,” said the Englishman.

Okay, for fifty imperials - that I will drink the entire bottle of rum without taking it from my mouth, I will drink it while sitting outside the window, right here (he bent down and showed the sloping ledge of the wall outside the window) and without holding on to anything... So?...

“Very good,” said the Englishman.

Anatole turned to the Englishman and, taking him by the button of his tailcoat and looking down at him (the Englishman was short), began repeating to him the terms of the bet in English.

Wait! - Dolokhov shouted, knocking on the window with a bottle to attract attention. - Wait, Kuragin; listen. If anyone does the same, then I pay one hundred imperials. Do you understand?

The Englishman nodded his head, not giving any indication as to whether he intended to accept this new bet or not. Anatole did not let go of the Englishman and, despite the fact that he nodded, indicating that he understood everything, Anatole translated Dolokhov’s words to him in English. A young thin boy, a life hussar, who had lost that evening, climbed onto the window, leaned out and looked down.

Uh!.. uh!.. uh!..” he said, looking out the window at the stone sidewalk.

Attention! - Dolokhov shouted and pulled the officer from the window, who, entangled in his spurs, awkwardly jumped into the room.

Having placed the bottle on the windowsill so that it would be convenient to get it, Dolokhov carefully and quietly climbed out the window. Dropping his legs and leaning both hands on the edges of the window, he measured himself, sat down, lowered his hands, moved to the right, to the left and took out a bottle. Anatole brought two candles and put them on the windowsill, although it was already quite light. Dolokhov's back in a white shirt and his curly head were illuminated from both sides. Everyone crowded around the window. The Englishman stood in front. Pierre smiled and said nothing. One of those present, older than the others, with a frightened and angry face, suddenly moved forward and wanted to grab Dolokhov by the shirt.

Gentlemen, this is nonsense; he will be killed to death,” said this more prudent man.

Anatole stopped him:

Don't touch it, you'll scare him and he'll kill himself. Eh?... What then?... Eh?...

Dolokhov turned around, straightening himself and again spreading his arms.

“If anyone else bothers me,” he said, rarely letting words slip through his clenched and thin lips, “I’ll bring him down here now.” Well!..

Saying "well"! he turned again, let go of his hands, took the bottle and raised it to his mouth, threw his head back and threw his free hand up for leverage. One of the footmen, who began to pick up the glass, stopped in a bent position, not taking his eyes off the window and Dolokhov’s back. Anatole stood straight, eyes open. The Englishman, his lips thrust forward, looked from the side. The one who stopped him ran to the corner of the room and lay down on the sofa facing the wall. Pierre covered his face, and a weak smile, forgotten, remained on his face, although it now expressed horror and fear. Everyone was silent. Pierre took his hands away from his eyes: Dolokhov was still sitting in the same position, only his head was bent back, so that the curly hair of the back of his head touched the collar of his shirt, and the hand with the bottle rose higher and higher, shuddering and making an effort. The bottle was apparently emptied and at the same time rose, bending its head. “What’s taking so long?” thought Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had passed. Suddenly Dolokhov made a backward movement with his back, and his hand trembled nervously; this shudder was enough to move the entire body sitting on the sloping slope. He shifted all over, and his hand and head trembled even more, making an effort. One hand rose to grab the window sill, but dropped again. Pierre closed his eyes again and told himself that he would never open them. Suddenly he felt that everything around him was moving. He looked: Dolokhov was standing on the windowsill, his face was pale and cheerful.

Georges St-Pierre had his last fight in November 2013, successfully defending the strongest belt in the welterweight division for the ninth time. In August 17th, he signed a contract to fight against UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping. Sportbox.ru decided to refresh the memory of MMA fans about the person of Saint-Pierre and tell us why everyone’s attention will be focused on the Canadian in the near future.

What is it known for?

How did he leave?

This cannot be called a complete retirement from professional sports. St-Pierre said he took an indefinite break, but does not know if he will return. He beat Johny Hendricks in a very close fight. Johnny and his team were very angry about this decision, and the MMA public was divided in opinion in the same way as the judges' scores were divided after that fight.

Everyone insisted on a rematch, and the head of the UFC said with confidence that this would happen immediately. But Saint-Pierre had his own plans. He left, leaving the belt vacant.

32 years old is not so critical (it won’t let you lie). Most likely, the Canadian felt that he needed a break. And this thought was sparked in him by Johny Hendricks, who was really extremely close to taking the belt. You have to give Georges his due, because you don’t often meet a champion who understands when to take a break or just simply walk away.

Hard comeback

An epic that lasted for almost a year. Conversations regarding Saint-Pierre's return to action began in the fall of 2016. The Canadian apparently missed (either good money or sports), and the UFC lost its main PPV stars in the person of Jon Jones and.

St-Pierre rejected the UFC's initial offers. At some moments he even angered White, forcing him to throw out very loud phrases, like, “St. Pierre will never return, I know for sure, because I’ve been in this sport since I was 19 years old and I can distinguish a person who has a desire to fight from a person who doesn't have it."

A well-known boxing coach (also present in Saint-Pierre's training camps) made his contribution by getting the Canadian an acceptable contract, according to which he would even be able to choose his first two opponents himself.

First in line is . And who, if not him?

On November 4, as part of the UFC 217 tournament, St-Pierre will try, after a four-year break, to knock the crown off the head of Michael Bisping, who does not mince words.

Just a few weeks ago, Dana White stated that Georges would fight the winner of the pair, Demian Maia. That stray thought left Mr. White's head after Woodley made his third-most boring defense of his career.

The most suitable option for returning was chosen for Saint-Pierre. It’s hard to imagine the Canadian anywhere other than a title fight. Interest in this event will also be fueled by Bisping, who knows how to use trash talk no worse than any McGregor or.

Conor can already calculate his potential earnings

If McGregor doesn’t finally get sick with boxing fees after the fight with Floyd Mayweather, then we will still see him in the UFC. The fight with St. Pierre is an excellent opportunity for the Irishman to once again put on a show, earn a lot of money and again escape from defending the belt in his weight class.

The fights involving McGregor and St-Pierre brought good sums to the UFC based on pay-per-view sales. There’s no need to even talk about tickets, hype, etc. Imagine if you arrange all this in Canada, where, for example, St-Pierre - Shields (UFC 129) attracted more than 55 thousand spectators, and tickets were sold for $12 million (2nd highest in the UFC after McGregor).

Definitely, such a confrontation will be the most profitable in the history of mixed martial arts. There is no doubt that each side wants this. But we’ll see whether everything goes according to the desired scenario, probably in 2018.