War And Peace: Book 8 - CHAPTER VIII

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THAT EVENING the Rostovs went to the opera, for which Marya Dmitryevna had

obtained them a box.

Natasha had no wish to go, but it was impossible to refuse after Marya

Dmitryevna's kindness, especially as it had been arranged expressly for her.

When she was dressed and waiting for her father in the big hall, she looked at

herself in the big looking-glass, and saw that she was looking pretty, very

pretty. She felt even sadder, but it was a sweet and tender sadness.

“My God, if he were only here, I wouldn't have any stupid shyness of

something as I used to, but in quite a new way, simply, I would embrace him,

press close to him, force him to look at me with those scrutinising, inquisitive

eyes, with which he used so often to look at me, and then I would make him

laugh, as he used to laugh then; and his eyes—how I see those eyes!” thought

Natasha. “And what does it matter to me about his father and sister; I love no

one but him, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with his smile, manly, and

yet childlike.… No, better not think of him, not think, forget, utterly forget

him for the time. I can't bear this suspense; I shall sob in a minute,” and she

turned away from the looking-glass, making an effort not to weep. “And how can

Sonya love Nikolenka so quietly, so calmly, and wait so long and so patiently!”

she wondered, looking at Sonya, who came in, dressed for the theatre with a fan

in her hand. “No, she's utterly different. I can't.”

Natasha at that moment felt so softened and moved that to love and know that

she was loved was not enough for her: she wanted now, now at once to embrace the

man she loved, and to speak and hear from him the words of love, of which her

heart was full. When she was in the carriage sitting beside her father and

pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flitting by the frozen window,

she felt even sadder and more in love, and forgot with whom and where she was

going. The Rostovs' carriage fell into the line of carriages, and drove up to

the theatre, its wheels crunching slowly over the snow. Natasha and Sonya

skipped hurriedly out holding up their dresses; the count stepped out supported

by the footmen, and all three walked to the corridor for the boxes in the stream

of ladies and gentlemen going in and people selling programmes. They could hear

the music already through the closed doors.

“Natasha, your hair …” whispered Sonya. The box-opener deferentially and

hurriedly slipped before the ladies and opened the door of the box. The music

became more distinctly audible at the door, and they saw the brightly lighted

rows of boxes, with the bare arms and shoulders of the ladies, and the stalls

below, noisy, and gay with uniforms. A lady entering the next box looked round

at Natasha with an envious, feminine glance. The curtain had not yet risen and

they were playing the overture. Natasha smoothing down her skirt went in with

Sonya and sat down looking round at the brightly lighted tiers of boxes facing

them. The sensation she had not experienced for a long while—that hundreds of

eyes were looking at her bare arms and neck—suddenly came upon her both

pleasantly and unpleasantly, calling up a whole swarm of memories, desires, and

emotions connected with that sensation.

The two strikingly pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count Ilya

Andreitch, who had not been seen for a long while in Moscow, attracted general

attention. Moreover, every one had heard vaguely of Natasha's engagement to

Prince Andrey, knew that the Rostovs had been living in the country ever since,

and looked with curiosity at the girl who was to make one of the best matches in

Russia.

Natasha had, so every one told her, grown prettier in the country; and that

evening, owing to her excited condition, she was particularly pretty. She made a

striking impression of fulness of life and beauty, together with indifference to

everything around her. Her black eyes gazed at the crowd, seeking out no one,

while her slender arm, bare to above the elbow, leaned on the velvet edge of the

box, and her hand, holding the programme, clasped and unclasped in time to the

music with obvious unconsciousness.

“Look, there's Alenina,” said Sonya, “with her mother, isn't it?”

“Heavens, Mihail Kirillitch is really stouter than ever,” said the old

count.

“Look! our Anna Mihalovna in such a cap!”

“The Karagins, Julie, and Boris with them. One can see at once they are

engaged.”

“Drubetskoy has made his offer! To be sure, I heard so to-day,” said

Shinshin, coming into the Rostovs' box.

Natasha looked in the direction her father was looking in and saw Julie with

diamonds on her thick, red neck (Natasha knew it was powdered), sitting with a

blissful face beside her mother.

Behind them could be seen the handsome, well-brushed head of Boris, with a

smile inclining his ear towards Julie's mouth. He looked from under his brows at

the Rostovs, and said something, smiling, to his betrothed.

“They are talking about us, about me and himself!” thought Natasha. “And he

is, most likely, soothing his fiancée's jealousy of me; they needn't worry

themselves! If only they knew how little they matter to me, any one of

them.”

Behind the engaged couple sat Anna Mihalovna in a green cap, with a face

happy, in honour of the festive occasion, and devoutly resigned to the will of

God. Their box was full of that atmosphere of an engaged couple—which Natasha

knew so well and liked so much. She turned away; and suddenly all that had been

humiliating in her morning visit came back to her mind.

“What right has he not to want to receive me into his family? Ah, better not

think about it, not think till he comes back!” she said to herself, and began to

look about at the faces, known and unknown, in the stalls.

In the front of the stalls, in the very centre, leaning back against the rail

stood Dolohov, in a Persian dress, with his huge shock of curly hair combed

upwards. He stood in the most conspicuous place in the theatre, well aware that

he was attracting the attention of the whole audience, and as much at his ease

as though he had been alone in his room. The most brilliant young men in Moscow

were all thronging about him, and he was obviously the leading figure among

them.

Count Ilya Andreitch, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya, pointing out her

former admirer.

“Did you recognise him?” he asked. “And where has he dropped from?” said he,

turning to Shinshin. “I thought he had disappeared somewhere?”

“He did disappear,” answered Shinshin. “He was in the Caucasus, and he ran

away from there, and they say he has been acting as minister to some reigning

prince in Persia, and there killed the Shah's brother. Well, all the Moscow

ladies are wild about him! ‘Dolohov the Persian,' that's what does it! Nowadays

there's nothing can be done without Dolohov; they do homage to him, invite you

to meet him, as if he were a sturgeon,” said Shinshin. “Dolohov and Anatole

Kuragin have taken all the ladies' hearts by storm.”

A tall, handsome woman with a mass of hair and very naked, plump, white arms

and shoulders, and a double row of big pearls round her throat, walked into the

next box, and was a long while settling into her place and rustling her thick

silk gown.

Natasha unconsciously examined that neck and the shoulders, the pearls, the

coiffure of this lady, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls.

While Natasha was scrutinising her a second time, the lady looked round, and

meeting the eyes of Count Ilya Andreitch, she nodded and smiled to him. It was

the Countess Bezuhov, Pierre's wife. The count, who knew every one in society,

bent over and entered into conversation with her.

“Have you been here long?” he began. “I'm coming; I'm coming to kiss your

hand. I have come to town on business and brought my girls with me. They say

Semyonovna's acting is superb,” the count went on. “Count Pyotr Kirillovitch

never forgot us. Is he here?”

“Yes, he meant to come,” said Ellen, looking intently at Natasha.

Count Ilya Andreitch sat down again in his place.

“Handsome, isn't she?” he whispered to Natasha.

“Exquisite!” said Natasha. “One might well fall in love with her!”

At that moment they heard the last chords of the overture, and the tapping of

the conductor's stick. Late comers hurried to their seats in the stalls, and the

curtain rose.

As soon as the curtain rose, a hush fell on the boxes and stalls, and all the

men, old and young, in their frock coats or uniforms, all the women with

precious stones on their bare flesh concentrated all their attention with eager

curiosity on the stage. Natasha too began to look at it.

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