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| CHAPTER III |
| ANNA PAVLOVNA’S soirée was in full swing. The spindles kept up their regular hum on all sides without pause. Except the aunt, beside whom was sitting no one but an elderly lady with a thin, careworn face, who seemed rather out of her element in this brilliant society, the company was broken up into three groups. In one of these, the more masculine, the centre was the abbé; in the other, the group of young people, the chief attractions were the beautiful Princess Ellen, Prince Vassily’s daughter, and the little Princess Bolkonsky, with her rosy prettiness, too plump for her years. In the third group were Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna. The vicomte was a pretty young gentleman with soft features and manners, who obviously regarded himself as a celebrity, but with good breeding modestly allowed the company the benefit of his society. Anna Pavlovna unmistakably regarded him as the chief entertainment she was giving her guests. As a clever maître d’hôtel serves as something superlatively good the piece of beef which no one would have cared to eat seeing it in the dirty kitchen, Anna Pavlovna that evening served up to her guests — first, the vicomte and then the abbé, as something superlatively subtle. In Mortemart’s group the talk turned at once on the execution of the duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said that the duc d’Enghien had been lost by his own magnanimity and that there were special reasons for Bonaparte’s bitterness against him. “Ah, come! Tell us about that, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna gleefully, feeling that the phrase had a peculiarly Louis Quinze note about it: “Contez-nous cela, vicomte.” The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his readiness to obey. Anna Pavlovna made a circle round the vicomte and invited every one to hear his story. “The vicomte was personally acquainted with his highness,” Anna Pavlovna whispered to one. “The vicomte tells a story perfectly,” she said to another. “How one sees the man of quality,” she said to a third, and the vicomte was presented to the company in the most elegant and advantageous light, like the roast-beef on the hot dish garnished with green parsley. The vicomte was about to begin his narrative, and he smiled subtly. “Come over here, chère Hélène,” said Anna Pavlovna to the young beauty who was sitting a little way off, the centre of another group. Princess Ellen smiled. She got up with the same unchanging smile of the acknowledged beauty with which she had entered the drawing-room. Her white ball-dress adorned with ivy and moss rustled lightly; her white shoulders, glossy hair, and diamonds glittered, as she passed between the men who moved apart to make way for her. Not looking directly at any one, but smiling at every one, as it were courteously allowing to all the right to admire the beauty of her figure, her full shoulders, her bosom and back, which were extremely exposed in the mode of the day, she moved up to Anna Pavlovna, seeming to bring with her the brilliance of the ballroom. Ellen was so lovely that she was not merely free from the slightest shade of coquetry, she seemed on the contrary ashamed of the too evident, too violent and all-conquering influence of her beauty. She seemed to wish but to be unable to soften the effect of her beauty. “What a beautiful woman!” every one said on seeing her. As though struck by something extraordinary, the vicomte shrugged his shoulders and dropped his eyes, when she seated herself near him and dazzled him too with the same unchanging smile. “Madame, I doubt my abilities before such an audience,” he said, bowing with a smile. The princess leaned her plump, bare arm on the table and did not find it necessary to say anything. She waited, smiling. During the vicomte’s story she sat upright, looking from time to time at her beautiful, plump arm, which lay with its line changed by pressure on the table, then at her still lovelier bosom, on which she set straight her diamond necklace. Several times she settled the folds of her gown and when the narrative made a sensation upon the audience, she glanced at Anna Pavlovna and at once assumed the expression she saw on the maid-of-honour’s face, then she relapsed again into her unvarying smile. After Ellen the little princess too moved away from the tea-table. “Wait for me, I will take my work,” she said. “Come, what are you thinking of?” she said to Prince Ippolit. “Bring me my reticule.” The little princess, smiling and talking to every one, at once effected a change of position, and settling down again, gaily smoothed out her skirts. “Now I’m comfortable,” she said, and begging the vicomte to begin, she took up her work. Prince Ippolit brought her reticule, moved to her side, and bending close over her chair, sat beside her. Le charmant Hippolyte struck every one as extraordinarily like this sister, and, still more, as being, in spite of the likeness, strikingly ugly. His features were like his sister’s, but in her, everything was radiant with joyous life, with the complacent, never-failing smile of youth and life and an extraordinary antique beauty of figure. The brother’s face on the contrary was clouded over by imbecility and invariably wore a look of aggressive fretfulness, while he was thin and feebly built. His eyes, his nose, his mouth — everything was, as it were, puckered up in one vacant, bored grimace, while his arms and legs always fell into the most grotesque attitudes. “It is not a ghost story,” he said, sitting down by the princess and hurriedly fixing his eyeglass in his eye, as though without that instrument he could not begin to speak. “Why, no, my dear fellow,” said the astonished vicomte, with a shrug. “Because I detest ghost stories,” said Prince Ippolit in a tone which showed that he uttered the words before he was aware of their meaning. From the self-confidence with which he spoke no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green frock coat, breeches of the colour of the cuisse de nymphe effrayée, as he called it, stockings and slippers. The vicomte very charmingly related the anecdote then current, that the duc d’Enghien had secretly visited Paris for the sake of an interview with the actress, Mlle. Georges, and that there he met Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the favours of the celebrated actress, and that, meeting the duc, Napoleon had fallen into one of the fits to which he was subject and had been completely in the duc’s power, how the duc had not taken advantage of it, and Bonaparte had in the sequel avenged his magnanimity by the duc’s death. The story was very charming and interesting, especially at the point when the rivals suddenly recognise each other, and the ladies seemed to be greatly excited by it. “Charmant!” said Anna Pavlovna, looking inquiringly at the little princess. “Charming!” whispered the little princess, sticking her needle into her work as an indication that the interest and charm of the story prevented her working. The vicomte appreciated this silent homage, and smiling gratefully, resumed his narrative. But meanwhile Anna Pavlovna, still keeping a watch on the dreadful young man, noticed that he was talking too loudly and too warmly with the abbé and hurried to the spot of danger. Pierre had in fact succeeded in getting into a political conversation with the abbé on the balance of power, and the abbé, evidently interested by the simple-hearted fervour of the young man, was unfolding to him his cherished idea. Both were listening and talking too eagerly and naturally, and Anna Pavlovna did not like it. “The means? — the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people,” said the abbé. “One powerful state like Russia — with the prestige of barbarism — need only take a disinterested stand at the head of the alliance that aims at securing the balance of power in Europe, and it would save the world!” “How are you going to get such a balance of power?” Pierre was beginning; but at that moment Anna Pavlovna came up, and glancing severely at Pierre, asked the Italian how he was supporting the climate. The Italian’s face changed instantly and assumed the look of offensive, affected sweetness, which was evidently its habitual expression in conversation with women. “I am so enchanted by the wit and culture of the society — especially of the ladies — in which I have had the happiness to be received, that I have not yet had time to think of the climate,” he said. Not letting the abbé and Pierre slip out of her grasp, Anna Pavlovna, for greater convenience in watching them, made them join the bigger group. At that moment another guest walked into the drawing-room. This was the young Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, the husband of the little princess. Prince Bolkonsky was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with clear, clean-cut features. Everything in his appearance, from his weary, bored expression to his slow, measured step, formed the most striking contrast to his lively little wife. Obviously all the people in the drawing-room were familiar figures to him, and more than that, he was unmistakably so sick of them that even to look at them and to listen to them was a weariness to him. Of all the wearisome faces the face of his pretty wife seemed to bore him most. With a grimace that distorted his handsome face he turned away from her. He kissed Anna Pavlovna’s hand, and with half-closed eyelids scanned the whole company. “You are enlisting for the war, prince?” said Anna Pavlovna. “General Kutuzov has been kind enough to have me as an aide-de-camp,” said Bolkonsky. “And Lise, your wife? —” “She is going into the country.” “Isn’t it too bad of you to rob us of your charming wife?” “André,” said his wife, addressing her husband in exactly the same coquettish tone in which she spoke to outsiders, “the vicomte has just told us such a story about Mlle. Georges and Bonaparte!” Prince Andrey scowled and turned away. Pierre, who had kept his eyes joyfully and affectionately fixed on him ever since he came in, went up to him and took hold of his arm. Prince Andrey, without looking round, twisted his face into a grimace of annoyance at any one’s touching him, but seeing Pierre’s smiling face, he gave him a smile that was unexpectedly sweet and pleasant. “Why, you! … And in such society too,” he said to Pierre. “I knew you would be here,” answered Pierre. “I’m coming to supper with you,” he added in an undertone, not to interrupt the vicomte who was still talking. “Can I?” “Oh no, impossible,” said Prince Andrey, laughing, with a squeeze of his hand giving Pierre to understand that there was no need to ask. He would have said something more, but at that instant Prince Vassily and his daughter got up and the two young men rose to make way for them. “Pardon me, my dear vicomte,” said Prince Vassily in French, gently pulling him down by his sleeve to prevent him from getting up from his seat. “This luckless fête at the ambassador’s deprives me of a pleasure and interrupts you. I am very sorry to leave your enchanting party,” he said to Anna Pavlovna. His daughter, Princess Ellen, lightly holding the folds of her gown, passed between the chairs, and the smile glowed more brightly than ever on her handsome face. Pierre looked with rapturous, almost frightened eyes at this beautiful creature as she passed them. “Very lovely!” said Prince Andrey. “Very,” said Pierre. As he came up to them, Prince Vassily took Pierre by the arm, and addressing Anna Pavlovna: “Get this bear into shape for me,” he said. “Here he has been staying with me for a month, and this is the first time I have seen him in society. Nothing’s so necessary for a young man as the society of clever women.” |