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THERE was a sudden stir, the crowd began talking, rushed forward, then moved
apart again, and down the space left open through it, the Tsar walked to the
strains of the band, which struck up at once. Behind him walked the host and
hostess. The Tsar walked in rapidly, bowing to right and to left, as though
trying to hurry over the first moments of greeting. The musicians played the
polonaise in vogue at the time on account of the words set to it. The words
began: “Alexander, Elisaveta, our hearts ye ravish quite.” The Tsar went into
the drawing-room, the crowd made a dash for the door; several persons ran
hurriedly to the door and back with excited faces. The crowd made another rush
back, away from the drawing-room door at which the Tsar appeared in conversation
with the hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies
and begged them to move aside. Several, with faces that betrayed a total
oblivion of all the rules of decorum, squeezed forward, to the destruction of
their dresses. The men began approaching the ladies, and couples were formed for
the polonaise.
There was a general movement of retreat, and the Tsar, smiling, came out of
the drawing-room door, leading out the lady of the house, and not keeping time
to the music. He was followed by the host with Marya Antonovna Narishkin; then
came ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whose names Madame Peronsky
never tired of reciting. More than half the ladies had partners, and were taking
part, or preparing to take part, in the polonaise.
Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and Sonya in that
minority of the ladies who were crowded back against the wall, and not invited
to dance the polonaise. She stood, her thin arms hanging at her sides, and her
scarcely outlined bosom heaving regularly. She held her breath, and gazed before
her with shining, frightened eyes, with an expression of equal readiness for the
utmost bliss or the utmost misery. She took no interest in the Tsar, nor in all
the great people Madame Peronsky was pointing out; her mind was filled by one
thought: “Is it possible no one will come up to me? Is it possible that I shall
not dance among the foremost? Is it possible I shall not be noticed by all these
men, who now don't even seem to see me, but if they look at me, look with an
expression as though they would say: ‘Ah! that's not she, so it's no use
looking'?” “No, it cannot be!” she thought. “They must know how I long to dance,
how well I dance, and how they would enjoy dancing with me.”
The strains of the polonaise, which had already lasted some time, were
beginning to sound like a melancholy reminiscence in the ears of Natasha. She
wanted to cry. Madame Peronsky had left them. The count was at the other end of
the ballroom, the countess, Sonya, and she stood in that crowd of strangers as
lonely as in a forest, of no interest, of no use to any one. Prince Andrey with
a lady passed close by them, obviously not recognising them. The handsome
Anatole said something smiling to the lady on his arm, and he glanced at
Natasha's face as one looks at a wall. Boris passed by them, twice, and each
time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing, came towards
them.
This family meeting here, in a ballroom, seemed a humiliating thing to
Natasha, as though there were nowhere else for family talk but here at a ball.
She did not listen, and did not look at Vera, who said something to her about
her own green dress.
At last the Tsar stood still beside the last of his partners (he had danced
with three), the music ceased. An anxious-looking adjutant ran up to the
Rostovs, begging them to move a little further back, though they were already
close to the wall, and from the orchestra came the circumspect, precise,
seductively, stately rhythm of the waltz. The Tsar glanced with a smile down the
ballroom. A moment passed; no one had yet begun. An adjutant, who was a steward,
went up to Countess Bezuhov and asked her to dance. Smiling, she raised her hand
and laid it on the adjutant's shoulder without looking at him. The
adjutant-steward, a master of his art, grasped his partner firmly, and with
confident deliberation and smoothness broke with her into the first gallop round
the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the ballroom caught his partner's
left hand, turned her; and through the quickening strains of the music nothing
could be heard but the regular jingle of the spurs on the adjutant's rapid,
practised feet, and at every third beat the swish of his partner's flying velvet
skirt as she whirled round.
Natasha looked at them, and was ready to cry that it was not she dancing that
first round of the waltz.
Prince Andrey, in his white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing stockings
and dancing-shoes, stood looking eager and lively, in the front of the ring not
far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff was talking to him of the proposed first
sitting of the State Council to be held next day. From his intimacy with
Speransky, and the part he was taking in the labours of the legislative
commission, Prince Andrey was in a position to give authoritative information in
regard to that sitting, about which the most diverse rumours were current. But
he did not hear what Firhoff was saying to him, and looked from the Tsar to the
gentlemen preparing to dance, who had not yet stepped out into the ring.
Prince Andrey was watching these gentlemen, who were timid in the presence of
the Tsar, and the ladies, who were dying to be asked to dance.
Pierre went up to Prince Andrey and took him by the arm.
“You always dance. Here is my protégée, the younger Rostov girl, ask her,” he
said.
“Where?” asked Bolkonsky. “I beg your pardon,” he said, turning to the baron,
“we will finish this conversation in another place, but at a ball one must
dance.” He went forward in the direction indicated by Pierre. Natasha's
despairing, tremulous face broke upon Prince Andrey. He recognised her, guessed
her feelings, saw that it was her debut, remembered what she had said at the
window, and with an expression of pleasure on his face he approached Countess
Rostov.
“Permit me to introduce you to my daughter,” said the countess,
reddening.
“I have the pleasure of her acquaintance already, if the countess remembers
me,” said Prince Andrey, with a low and courteous bow, which seemed a direct
contradiction to Madame Peronsky's remarks about his rudeness. He went up to
Natasha, and raised his hand to put it round her waist before he had fully
uttered the invitation to dance. He proposed a waltz to her. The tremulous
expression of Natasha's face, ready for despair or for ecstasy, brightened at
once into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.
“I have been a long while waiting for you,” that alarmed and happy young girl
seemed to say to him in the smile that peeped out through the starting tears as
she raised her hand to Prince Andrey's shoulder. They were the second couple
that walked forward into the ring.
Prince Andrey was one of the best dancers of his day. Natasha danced
exquisitely. Her little feet in their satin dancing-shoes performed their task
lightly and independently of her, and her face beamed with a rapture of
happiness.
Her bare neck and arms were thin, and not beautiful compared with Ellen's
shoulders. Her shoulders were thin, her bosom undefined, her arms were slender.
But Ellen was, as it were, covered with the hard varnish of those thousands of
eyes that had scanned her person, while Natasha seemed like a young girl
stripped for the first time, who would have been greatly ashamed if she had not
been assured by every one that it must be so.
Prince Andrey loved dancing. He was anxious to escape as quickly as he could
from the political and intellectual conversations into which every one tried to
draw him, and anxious too to break through that burdensome barrier of constraint
arising from the presence of the Tsar; so he made haste to dance, and chose
Natasha for a partner because Pierre pointed her out to him, and because she was
the first pretty girl who caught his eyes. But he had no sooner put his arm
round that slender, supple waist, and felt her stirring so close to him, and
smiling so close to him, than the intoxication of her beauty flew to his head.
He felt full of life and youth again as, drawing a deep breath, he brought her
to a standstill and began to watch the other couples.
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