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Natsha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her reflection from the others. All was blended into one brilliant procession. On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices, footsteps, and greetings deafened Natsha, and the light and glitter dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had already been standing at the door for half an hour repeating the same words to the various arrivals, “Charm de vous voir,” * greeted the Rostvs and Pernskaya in the same manner.
* “Delighted to see you.”
The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess’ eye involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natsha. She looked at her and gave her alone a special smile in addition to her usual smile as hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden, irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The host also followed Natsha with his eyes and asked the count which was his daughter.
“Charming!” said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.
In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front rows of that crowd. Natsha heard and felt that several people were asking about her and looking at her. She realized that those noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.
“There are some like ourselves and some worse,” she thought.
Pernskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important people at the ball.
“That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man,” she said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray curly hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he said.
“Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezkhova,” said Pernskaya, indicating Hlne who had just entered. “How lovely! She is quite equal to Mrya Antnovna. See how the men, young and old, pay court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince —— is quite mad about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even more run after.”
She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very plain daughter.
“She is a splendid match, a millionairess,” said Pernskaya. “And look, here come her suitors.”
“That is Bezkhova’s brother, Anatole Kurgin,” she said, indicating a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies. “He’s handsome, isn’t he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl. But your cousin, Drubetsky, is also very attentive to her. They say she has millions. Oh yes, that’s the French ambassador himself!” she replied to the countess’ inquiry about Caulaincourt. “Looks as if he were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming. No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still the most beautiful of them all, our Mrya Antnovna! And how simply she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the universal Freemason,” she went on, indicating Pierre. “Put him beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!”
Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the crowd and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly as if he were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through, evidently looking for someone.
Natsha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, “the buffoon,” as Pernskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for them, and for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and introduce partners to her.
But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natsha at once recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it was Bolknski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger, happier, and better-looking.
“There’s someone else we know—Bolknski, do you see, Mamma?” said Natsha, pointing out Prince Andrew. “You remember, he stayed a night with us at Otrdnoe.”
“Oh, you know him?” said Pernskaya. “I can’t bear him. Il fait prsent la pluie et le beau temps. * He’s too proud for anything. Takes after his father. And he’s hand in glove with Spernski, writing some project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There’s one talking to him and he has turned away,” she said, pointing at him. “I’d give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies.”
* “He is all the rage just now.”
Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and then back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor entered to the sounds of music that had immediately struck up. Behind him walked his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing to right and left as if anxious to get the first moments of the reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at that time on account of the words that had been set to it, beginning: “Alexander, Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite...” The Emperor passed on to the drawing room, the crowd made a rush for the doors, and several persons with excited faces hurried there and back again. Then the crowd hastily retired from the drawing room door, at which the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside. Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets. The men began to choose partners and take their places for the polonaise.
Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the music. The host followed with Mrya Antnovna Narshkina; then came ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Pernskaya diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners and were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the polonaise. Natsha felt that she would be left with her mother and Snya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not having been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly, and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people whom Pernskaya was pointing out—she had but one thought: “Is it possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me? They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they were saying, ‘Ah, she’s not the one I’m after, so it’s not worth looking at her!’ No, it’s impossible,” she thought. “They must know how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would enjoy dancing with me.”
