War and Peace
The scantily clad Hélène smiled at everyone in the same way, and
Natásha gave Borís a similar smile.
Hélène’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 Kurágin stood with Dólokhov
in front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostóvs’ box.
Natásha 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 Rostóvs had not seen him since
their arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since
Natásha 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 Rostóvs’ box. On seeing Natásha 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, Natásha heard a man’s voice in
Countess Bezúkhova’s box and something told her it was Kurágin. 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 Natásha looked toward the stalls she saw
Anatole Kurágin 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 Bezúkhova rose, turned to the
Rostóvs’ 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!”
Natásha 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 Hélène. “How is it
you’re not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?”
Countess Bezúkhova 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 Natásha with her stereotyped and lovely
smile. “I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskóy. Have you
heard he is getting married? And also from my husband’s friend
Bolkónski, Prince Andrew Bolkónski,” she went on with special
emphasis, implying that she knew of his relation to Natásha. To get
better acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come
into her box for the rest of the performance, and Natásha 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!” Natásha no longer thought this
strange. She looked about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.
“Isn’t Duport delightful?” Hélène asked her.
“Oh, yes,” replied Natásha.
CHAPTER X
During the entr’acte a whiff of cold air came into Hélène’s box,
the door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
against anyone.
“Let me introduce my brother to you,” said Hélène, her eyes
shifting uneasily from Natásha to Anatole.
Natásha 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 Narýshkins’
ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing
her. Kurágin was much more sensible and simple with women than among
men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natásha 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.
Kurágin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
previous performance Semënova 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 Karágins’! 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. Natásha 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. Natásha kept turning to
Hélène and to her father, as if asking what it all meant, but Hélène
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, Natásha, 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.
Natásha 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. Natásha
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 Natásha saw.
She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kurágin 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 Natásha 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 Natásha 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