War and Peace
At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced
with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the
Rostóvs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they
were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the
distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The Emperor
looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had yet begun
dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went up to Countess
Bezúkhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly raised her hand and
laid it on his shoulder without looking at him. The aide-de-camp, an
adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly round her waist, with
confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of
the circle, then at the corner of the room he caught Hélène’s
left hand and turned her, the only sound audible, apart from the
ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of the spurs on his
rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his partner’s velvet
dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled round. Natásha
gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not she who was
dancing that first turn of the waltz.
Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing
stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in the
front row of the circle not far from the Rostóvs. Baron Firhoff was
talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State to be
held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with Speránski
and participating in the work of the legislative commission, could give
reliable information about that sitting, concerning which various rumors
were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was saying, he was
gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men intending to dance who
had not yet gathered courage to enter the circle.
Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor’s
presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to
dance.
Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
“You always dance. I have a protégée, the young Rostóva, here. Ask
her,” he said.
“Where is she?” asked Bolkónski. “Excuse me!” he added, turning
to the baron, “we will finish this conversation elsewhere—at a ball
one must dance.” He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated.
The despairing, dejected expression of Natásha’s face caught his eye.
He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her début,
remembered her conversation at the window, and with an expression of
pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostóva.
“Allow me to introduce you to my daughter,” said the countess, with
heightened color.
“I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess
remembers me,” said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite
belying Perónskaya’s remarks about his rudeness, and approaching
Natásha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed
his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
Natásha’s face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly
brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.
“I have long been waiting for you,” that frightened happy little
girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as
she raised her hand to Prince Andrew’s shoulder. They were the second
couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers of
his day and Natásha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their white
satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly, and independently
of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic happiness. Her slender
bare arms and neck were not beautiful—compared to Hélène’s her
shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But Hélène seemed, as
it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had
scanned her person, while Natásha was like a girl exposed for the first
time, who would have felt very much ashamed had she not been assured
that this was absolutely necessary.
Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as
possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed
to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he disliked,
caused by the Emperor’s presence, he danced, and had chosen Natásha
because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she was the first
pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he embraced that
slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close to him and smiling
so near him than the wine of her charm rose to his head, and he
felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after leaving her he stood
breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.
CHAPTER XVII
After Prince Andrew, Borís came up to ask Natásha for a dance, and
then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young
men, so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous partners
to Sónya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She noticed and
saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did she fail to
notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the French ambassador,
and how particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or that Prince
So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and that Hélène
had great success and was honored by the special attention of So-and-so,
but she did not even see the Emperor, and only noticed that he had gone
because the ball became livelier after his departure. For one of the
merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew was again her partner. He
reminded her of their first encounter in the Otrádnoe avenue, and how
she had been unable to sleep that moonlight night, and told her how he
had involuntarily overheard her. Natásha blushed at that recollection
and tried to excuse herself, as if there had been something to be
ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had overheard.
Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting
someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And such was
Natásha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her
mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special care and
tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest and most
unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the middle of the
cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natásha, still out of
breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer chose her. She was
tired and panting and evidently thought of declining, but immediately
put her hand gaily on the man’s shoulder, smiling at Prince Andrew.
“I’d be glad to sit beside you and rest: I’m tired; but you see
how they keep asking me, and I’m glad of it, I’m happy and I love
everybody, and you and I understand it all,” and much, much more was
said in her smile. When her partner left her Natásha ran across the
room to choose two ladies for the figure.
“If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she will be
my wife,” said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own surprise, as
he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.
“What rubbish sometimes enters one’s head!” thought Prince Andrew,
“but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original,
that she won’t be dancing here a month before she will be married....
Such as she are rare here,” he thought, as Natásha, readjusting a
rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself beside him.
When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up to
the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and asked
his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natásha did not answer
at once but only looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: “How
can you ask such a question?”
“I have never enjoyed myself so much before!” she said, and Prince
Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her
father and instantly dropped again. Natásha was happier than she had
ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one becomes
completely kind and good and does not believe in the possibility of
evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.
At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the position
his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and absent-minded. A
deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing by a window he stared
over his spectacles seeing no one.
On her way to supper Natásha passed him.
Pierre’s gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of him.
She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of her own
happiness.
“How delightful it is, Count!” said she. “Isn’t it?”
Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.
“Yes, I am very glad,” he said.
“How can people be dissatisfied with anything?” thought Natásha.
“Especially such a capital fellow as Bezúkhov!” In Natásha’s
eyes all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid
people, loving one another; none of them capable of injuring
another—and so they ought all to be happy.
CHAPTER XVIII
Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not dwell
on it long. “Yes, it was a very brilliant ball,” and then... “Yes,
that little Rostóva is very charming. There’s something fresh,
original, un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her.” That
was all he thought about yesterday’s ball, and after his morning tea
he set to work.
But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for work
and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work, as he
often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.
The visitor was Bítski, who served on various committees, frequented
all the societies in Petersburg, and was a passionate devotee of the new
ideas and of Speránski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger—one of
those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to
the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest
partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into Prince
Andrew’s room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking. He
had just heard particulars of that morning’s sitting of the Council
of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically. The
Emperor’s speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such as
only constitutional monarchs deliver. “The Sovereign plainly said
that the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the
government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor
said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts
published,” recounted Bítski, emphasizing certain words and opening
his eyes significantly.
“Ah, yes! Today’s events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our
history,” he concluded.
Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the Council of
State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which he had attached
such importance, and was surprised that this event, now that it had
taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite insignificant. He
listened with quiet irony to Bítski’s enthusiastic account of it. A
very simple thought occurred to him: “What does it matter to me or to
Bítski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the Council? Can all that
make me any happier or better?”
And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest Prince
Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to dine that
evening at Speránski’s, “with only a few friends,” as the host
had said when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the intimate
home circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested Prince
Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speránski in his domestic
surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.