the orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair
brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,
well aware that he was attracting everyone’s attention, yet as much at
ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow’s
most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.
The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her
former adorer.
"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?"
he asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn’t he vanish somewhere?"
"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran
away from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling
prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah’s brother. Now all the
Moscow ladies are mad about him! It’s ‘Dolokhov the Persian’ that
does it! We never hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear
by him, they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet.
Dolokhov and Anatole Kuragin have turned all our ladies’ heads."
A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string of
large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress
and took a long time settling into her place.
Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls
and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls.
While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time the lady
looked round and, meeting the count’s eyes, nodded to him and smiled.
She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre’s wife, and the count, who
knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.
"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I’ll call,
I’ll call to kiss your hand. I’m here on business and have brought
my girls with me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre
never used to forget us. Is he here?"
"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced
attentively at Natasha.
Count Rostov resumed his seat.
"Handsome, isn’t she?" he whispered to Natasha.
"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She’s a woman one could easily
fall in love with."
Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the conductor
tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in the stalls,
and the curtain rose.
As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and
all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and all the
women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole attention with
eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look at it.
CHAPTER IX
The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides was
some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a cloth
stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls in red
bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk dress sat
apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of green cardboard
was glued. They all sang something. When they had finished their song
the girl in white went up to the prompter’s box and a man with tight
silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding a plume and a dagger,
went up to her and began singing, waving his arms about.
First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, then they
both paused while the orchestra played and the man fingered the hand
of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to start singing with
her. They sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping
and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage - who represented
lovers - began smiling, spreading out their arms, and bowing.
After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, all this
seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow the opera
nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted cardboard and the
queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strangely in
that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to represent, but
it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed
for the actors and then amused at them. She looked at the faces of the
audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she
herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was happening
on the stage, and expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned.
"I suppose it has to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking
round in turn at the rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at
the seminude women in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box,
who - apparently quite unclothed - sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not
taking her eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded
the whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little
by little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she
was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought, the
strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through her
mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box and
singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to touch with
her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then to lean over to
Helene and tickle her.
At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, a door
leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs’ box creaked,
and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There’s Kuragin!"
whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the newcomer,
and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an exceptionally
handsome adjutant approaching their box with a self-assured yet
courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom she had seen
and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was now in an
adjutant’s uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. He moved with
a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous had he not been
so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn such an expression
of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though the performance was
proceeding, he walked deliberately down the carpeted gangway, his sword
and spurs slightly jingling and his handsome perfumed head held high.
Having looked at Natasha he approached his sister, laid his well gloved
hand on the edge of her box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a
question, with a motion toward Natasha.
"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did
not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of his
lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and sat down
beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and offhand way
that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He winked at him gaily,
smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra screen.
"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And
how handsome they both are!"
Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some intrigue
of Kuragin’s in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just
because he had said she was "charmante."
The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about, going
out and coming in.
Boris came to the Rostovs’ box, received their congratulations very
simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile conveyed to
Natasha and Sonya his fiancee’s invitation to her wedding, and
went away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and
congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom
she had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,
everything seemed simple and natural.
The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and
Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.
Helene’s box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another
in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.
During the whole of that entr’acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov
in front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs’ box.
Natasha knew he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure.
She even turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought
was its most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act
Pierre appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since
their arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since
Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing
anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at and
indicating the Rostovs’ box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew animated
and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box. When he
got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to her for a long
time. While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a man’s voice in
Countess Bezukhova’s box and something told her it was Kuragin. She
turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed straight into her
eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that it seemed strange to be
so near him, to look at him like that, to be so sure he admired her, and
not to be acquainted with him.
In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there was a
round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were raised over
the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep notes while many
people appeared from right and left wearing black cloaks and holding
things like daggers in their hands. They began waving their arms. Then
some other people ran in and began dragging away the maiden who had been
in white and was now in light blue. They did not drag her away at once,
but sang with her for a long time and then at last dragged her off, and
behind the scenes something metallic was struck three times and
everyone knelt down and sang a prayer. All these things were repeatedly
interrupted by the enthusiastic shouts of the audience.
During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she saw
Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair,
staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her and
it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.
When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the
Rostovs’ box - her whole bosom completely exposed - beckoned the old
count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had
entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.
"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she.
"The whole town is singing their praises and I don’t even know
them!"
Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so pleased
by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with pleasure.
"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it
you’re not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"
Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a fascinating
woman. She could say what she did not think - especially what was
flattering - quite simply and naturally.
"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I am
not staying here long this time - nor are you - I will try to amuse
them. I have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get
to know you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely
smile. "I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you
heard he is getting married? And also from my husband’s friend
Bolkonski, Prince Andrew Bolkonski," she went on with special
emphasis, implying that she knew of his relation to Natasha. To get
better acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come
into her box for the rest of the performance, and Natasha moved over to
it.
The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles
were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the
walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a queen. The
king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang something badly
and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had been first in white
and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and stood beside the
throne with her hair down. She sang something mournfully, addressing the
queen, but the king waved his arm severely, and men and women with bare
legs came in from both sides and began dancing all together. Then the
violins played very shrilly and merrily and one of the women with thick
bare legs and thin arms, separating from the others, went behind the
wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the middle of the stage, and
began jumping and striking one foot rapidly against the other. In the
stalls everyone clapped and shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men
went into a corner of the stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra
struck up more loudly, and this man with bare legs jumped very high and
waved his feet about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty
thousand rubles a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes,
and galleries began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the
man stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men
and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the
sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm
came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the
orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number away,
and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise and
clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone began
shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought this
strange. She looked about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.
"Isn’t Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.
"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.
CHAPTER X
During the entr’acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene’s box,
the door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
against anyone.
"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes
shifting uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.
Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young officer
and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome
at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he
had long wished to have this happiness - ever since the Naryshkins’
ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing
her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with women than among
men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha was strangely and
agreeably struck by the fact that there was nothing formidable in this
man about whom there was so much talk, but that on the contrary his
smile was most naïve, cheerful, and good-natured.
Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.
"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as an
old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume tournament;
you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet at
the Karagins’! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said he.
While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face,
her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was
enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel
constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt that
he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his eye
so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking into his
eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier of
modesty she had always felt between herself and other men. She did not
know how it was that within five minutes she had come to feel herself
terribly near to this man. When she turned away she feared he might
seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They
spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that they were closer to
one another than she had ever been to any man. Natasha kept turning to
Helene and to her father, as if asking what it all meant, but Helene
was engaged in conversation with a general and did not answer her
look, and her father’s eyes said nothing but what they always said:
"Having a good time? Well, I’m glad of it!"
During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole’s
prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to break
the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and
blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she was doing
something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.
"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant
ce sont les jolies femmes, * isn’t that so? But now I like it very
much indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You’ll come
to the costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his
hand to her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the
prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as a
pledge!"
* Are the pretty women.
Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an improper
intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if she had
not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she felt that
he was there, behind, so close behind her.
"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she
asked herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the
good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just
as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt with
horror that no barrier lay between him and her.
The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. Natasha
went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive to the
world she found herself in. All that was going on before her now seemed
quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous thoughts of her
betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country did not once
recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote past.
In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his arm
about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he disappeared
down below. That was the only part of the fourth act that Natasha saw.
She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kuragin whom
she could not help watching. As they were leaving the theater Anatole
came up to them, called their carriage, and helped them in. As he was
putting Natasha in he pressed her arm above the elbow. Agitated and
flushed she turned round. He was looking at her with glittering eyes,
smiling tenderly.
Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think over
what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she
was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera, she
gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.
"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?"
She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to
realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to understand
what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure,
and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater where the
bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped about to the
music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the nearly
naked Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried
"bravo!" - there in the presence of that Helene it had all seemed
clear and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible.
"What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this gnawing
of conscience I am feeling now?" she thought.
Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all
she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple views
would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such
a confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by
herself.
"Am I spoiled for Andrew’s love or not?" she asked herself, and
with soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did
happen to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn’t lead him on
at all. Nobody will know and I shall never see him again," she told
herself. "So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is
nothing to repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why ‘still?’
O God, why isn’t he here?" Natasha quieted herself for a moment,
but again some instinct told her that though all this was true, and
though nothing had happened, yet the former purity of her love for
Prince Andrew had perished. And again in imagination she went over her
whole conversation with Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and
tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.
CHAPTER XI
Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent him
away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand rubles
a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more, which his
creditors demanded from his father.
His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for the
last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as adjutant to
the commander in chief - a post his father had procured for him - and
would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to him
Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.
Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre’s
house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him
after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and gave
him money under the guise of loans.
As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had
turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that
he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French
actresses - with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to
be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at Danilov’s
or other Moscow revelers’, drank whole nights through, outvying
everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the best society.
There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, and he flirted
with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run after the unmarried
girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most of them plain.
There was a special reason for this, as he had got married two years
before - a fact known only to his most intimate friends. At that time
while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish landowner of small means had
forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole had very soon abandoned his
wife and, for a payment which he agreed to send to his father-in-law,
had arranged to be free to pass himself off as a bachelor.
Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with
others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that it was
impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had
never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of considering
how his actions might affect others or what the consequences of this or
that action of his might be. He was convinced that, as a duck is so made
that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he must spend
thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent position in
society. He believed this so firmly that others, looking at him, were
persuaded of it too and did not refuse him either a leading place
in society or money, which he borrowed from anyone and everyone and
evidently would not repay.
He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning. He was
not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still less could
he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed his father by
spoiling his own career, and he laughed at distinctions of all kinds. He
was not mean, and did not refuse anyone who asked of him. All he cared
about was gaiety and women, and as according to his ideas there
was nothing dishonorable in these tastes, and he was incapable of
considering what the gratification of his tastes entailed for others,
he honestly considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues
and bad people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.
Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence
similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of
forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all
will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."
Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and
his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling, and
dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin and
made use of him for his own ends.
Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and
audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin’s name, position, and
connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, made
use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting the other
feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole, the very
process of dominating another’s will was in itself a pleasure, a
habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov.
Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after
the opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the
attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his
intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was incapable
of considering what might come of such love-making, as he never had any
notion of the outcome of any of his actions.
"She’s first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied
Dolokhov.
"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole.
"Eh?"
"You’d better wait till she’s married...."
"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,"
pursued Anatole.
"You have been caught once already by a ‘little girl,’" said
Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin’s marriage. "Take care!"
"Well, that can’t happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a
good-humored laugh.
CHAPTER XII
The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came to see
them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something which they
concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking about the
old prince and planning something, and this disquieted and offended her.
She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice that day sent a
manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he had come. He had
not arrived. She suffered more now than during her first days in Moscow.
To her impatience and pining for him were now added the unpleasant
recollection of her interview with Princess Mary and the old prince,
and a fear and anxiety of which she did not understand the cause. She
continually fancied that either he would never come or that something
would happen to her before he came. She could no longer think of him by
herself calmly and continuously as she had done before. As soon as she
began to think of him, the recollection of the old prince, of Princess
Mary, of the theater, and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The
question again presented itself whether she was not guilty, whether she
had not already broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found
herself recalling to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and
every shade in the play of expression on the face of the man who had
been able to arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying
feeling. To the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was
far less tranquil and happy than before.
On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at her
parish church - the Church of the Assumption built over the graves of
victims of the plague.
"I don’t like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently
priding herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same
everywhere. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service
decently and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is
there in giving concerts in the choir? I don’t like it, it’s just
self-indulgence!"
Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her whole
house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church. At
her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had vodka
and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was the
holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna’s broad, stern face,
which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.
After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room
where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a servant
announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna rose with
a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid calls, and
announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas Bolkonski to have
an explanation with him about Natasha.
After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited on
the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having shut
herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied herself trying
on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice without sleeves and
only tacked together, and was turning her head to see in the glass how
the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room the animated sounds
of her father’s voice and another’s - a woman’s - that made her
flush. It was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off the bodice
before the door opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a purple
velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with
good-humored amiable smiles.
"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha.
"Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said
she to Count Rostov who had followed her in. "How can you live in
Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won’t let you off! Mademoiselle George
will recite at my house tonight and there’ll be some people, and if
you don’t bring your lovely girls - who are prettier than Mademoiselle
George - I won’t know you! My husband is away in Tver or I would send
him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must! Between eight and
nine."
She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the
looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely. She
did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually praising
Natasha’s beauty. She looked at Natasha’s dresses and praised
them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze,"
which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one like
it.
"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.
A smile of pleasure never left Natasha’s face. She felt happy and as
if she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess Bezukhova
who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and important and was
now so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt almost in love with
this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind. Helene for her part was
sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to give her a good time.
Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha together, and she was
calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The idea of throwing her
brother and Natasha together amused her.
Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha
for drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her own
way heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs she
called her protegee aside.
"My brother dined with me yesterday - we nearly died of laughter - he
ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly, quite
madly, in love with you, my dear."
Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You
must certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a
reason to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your
fiance would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to
death."
"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre - that good
Pierre - have talked and laughed about this. So it’s all right." And
again, under Helene’s influence, what had seemed terrible now seemed
simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind, and
evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought
Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.
Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having
evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince’s. She was still too
agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly. In
answer to the count’s inquiries she replied that things were all
right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of Countess
Bezukhova’s visit and the invitation for that evening, Marya
Dmitrievna remarked:
"I don’t care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don’t
advise you to; however, if you’ve promised - go. It will divert your
thoughts," she added, addressing Natasha.
CHAPTER XIII
Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova’s. There were
a good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count
Rostov was displeased to see that the company consisted almost entirely
of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct. Mademoiselle
George was standing in a corner of the drawing room surrounded by young
men. There were several Frenchmen present, among them Metivier who from
the time Helene reached Moscow had been an intimate in her house. The
count decided not to sit down to cards or let his girls out of his sight
and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle George’s performance was over.
Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.
Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and followed
her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same feeling she had
had at the opera - gratified vanity at his admiration of her and fear at
the absence of a moral barrier between them.
Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of her
beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George went
out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people began
arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a chair for
Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count, who never
lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down behind her.
Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red shawl
draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for her, and
assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was audible.
Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience and
began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for her
son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,
lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
sounds, rolling her eyes.
"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.
Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor
understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt herself
again completely borne away into this strange senseless world - so
remote from her old world - a world in which it was impossible to know
what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat Anatole,
and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened sense of
expectancy.
After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.
"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had also
risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.
"I don’t think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following
Natasha. He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him. "You
are enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never ceased..."
"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his
daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything
stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
eyes.
After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and Countess
Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.
The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil her
improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked Natasha for
a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her
she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the ecossaise, which
she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be
by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha lifted her frightened
eyes to him, but there was such confident tenderness in his affectionate
look and smile that she could not, whilst looking at him, say what she
had to say. She lowered her eyes.
"Don’t say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,"
she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.
Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
"Don’t speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell
you I am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
enchanting?... It’s our turn to begin."
Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and the
Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to remain.
Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt his eyes
upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her father to let
her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that Helene had
followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother’s love, and that she
again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene had disappeared
leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said in a tender
voice:
"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never see
you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he
brought his face close to hers.
His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she saw
nothing but them.
"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being
painfully pressed. "Natalie?"
"I don’t understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.
Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she felt
herself released, and Helene’s footsteps and the rustle of her dress
were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then, red
and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved
toward the door.
"One word, just one, for God’s sake!" cried Anatole.
She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to her what
had happened and to which she could find no answer.
"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not
knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.
Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went
away without staying for supper.
After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was tormented
by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or Prince Andrew.
She loved Prince Andrew - she remembered distinctly how deeply she loved
him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. "Else how
could all this have happened?" thought she. "If, after that, I could
return his smile when saying good-by, if I was able to let it come to
that, it means that I loved him from the first. It means that he is
kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not help loving him. What am I to
do if I love him and the other one too?" she asked herself, unable to
find an answer to these terrible questions.
CHAPTER XIV
Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began
to move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna
appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking
uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept
every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual.
After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat down in
her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.
"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is
my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince
Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to
begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had
to say!"
"Well, and he?" asked the count.
"He? He’s crazy... he did not want to listen. But what’s the use
of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya
Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back
home to Otradnoe... and wait there."
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.
"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your
betrothed comes here now - there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but
alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to
you."
Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better to
visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding,
against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.
"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took
her," said the old count.
"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But if he
won’t - that’s his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for
something in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there
is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I’ll send after you.
Though I don’t like letting you go, it is the best way. So go, with
God’s blessing!"
Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed it to
Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.
"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She’s
afraid you might think that she does not like you."
"But she doesn’t like me," said Natasha.
"Don’t talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.
"I shan’t believe anyone, I know she doesn’t like me," replied
Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold
and angry resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her more
intently and to frown.
"Don’t answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is
true! Write an answer!"
Natasha did not reply and went to her own room to read Princess
Mary’s letter.
Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding that
had occurred between them. Whatever her father’s feelings might be,
she begged Natasha to believe that she could not help loving her as
the one chosen by her brother, for whose happiness she was ready to
sacrifice everything.
"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is
ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be
forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes his
son happy." Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time when
she could see her again.
After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table
to answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and
mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all that
had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has happened, and
now all is changed," she thought as she sat with the letter she had
begun before her. "Must I break off with him? Must I really? That’s
awful..." and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to
Sonya and began sorting patterns with her.
After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess
Mary’s letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought.
"Can it be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all
that went before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its
former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She
vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew’s wife, and the scenes of
happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and
at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of
yesterday’s interview with Anatole.
"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in
complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I
have to choose, and I can’t be happy without either of them. Only,"
she thought, "to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide
it from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is
spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew’s
love, in which I have lived so long?"
"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
air. "A man told me to give you this - " and she handed Natasha a
letter.
"Only, for Christ’s sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha,
without thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter
from Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only
that it was a letter from him - from the man she loved. Yes, she loved
him, or else how could that have happened which had happened? And how
could she have a love letter from him in her hand?
With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter which
Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she found in it
an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.
"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you
or to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he
went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him - for
this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her - but that if
she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power could
hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her away and
carry her off to the ends of the earth.
"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for the
twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of
it.
That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs’ and
proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache,
remained at home.
CHAPTER XV
On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha’s room, and
to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open on
the table, beside her lay Anatole’s letter. Sonya picked it up and
read it.
As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in her
face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find it. Her
face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep herself
from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat
down in an armchair and burst into tears.
"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she have
left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go to
such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that’s plain! What will
Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is
the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can’t be
that she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who
it was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a
thing!"
Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning her
face.
"Natasha!" she said, just audibly.
Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.
"Ah, you’re back?"
And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment of
awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya’s look of
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
"Sonya, you’ve read that letter?" she demanded.
"Yes," answered Sonya softly.
Natasha smiled rapturously.
"No, Sonya, I can’t any longer!" she said. "I can’t hide it
from you any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he
writes... Sonya..."
Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.
"And Bolkonski?" she asked.
"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha.
"You don’t know what love is...."
"But, Natasha, can that be all over?"
Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not grasp
the question.
"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.
"Oh, you don’t understand anything! Don’t talk nonsense, just
listen!" said Natasha, with momentary vexation.
"But I can’t believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don’t
understand. How is it you have loved a man for a whole year and
suddenly... Why, you have only seen him three times! Natasha, I don’t
believe you, you’re joking! In three days to forget everything and
so..."
"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I’ve loved him a
hundred years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You
can’t understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha
embraced and kissed her.
"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it
too, but it’s only now that I feel such love. It’s not the same as
before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his slave,
and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave! Whatever he orders
I shall do. You don’t understand that. What can I do? What can I do,
Sonya?" cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened expression.
"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can’t leave
it like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so
far?" she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.
"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can’t
you understand? I love him!"
"Then I won’t let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,
bursting into tears.
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