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ANNA PAVLOVNA'S DRAWING-ROOM gradually began to fill. The people of the
highest distinction in Petersburg were there, people very different in ages and
characters, but alike in the set in which they moved. The daughter of Prince
Vassily, the beauty, Ellen, came to fetch her father and go with him to the
ambassador's fête. She was wearing a ball-dress with an imperial badge on it.
The young Princess Bolkonsky was there, celebrated as the most seductive woman
in Petersburg. She had been married the previous winter, and was not now going
out into the great world on account of her interesting condition, but was still
to be seen at small parties. Prince Ippolit, the son of Prince Vassily, came too
with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbé Morio was there too, and many
others.
“Have you not yet seen, or not been introduced to ma tante?” Anna
Pavlovna said to her guests as they arrived, and very seriously she led them up
to a little old lady wearing tall bows, who had sailed in out of the next room
as soon as the guests began to arrive. Anna Pavlovna mentioned their names,
deliberately turning her eyes from the guest to ma tante, and then
withdrew. All the guests performed the ceremony of greeting the aunt, who was
unknown, uninteresting and unnecessary to every one. Anna Pavlovna with
mournful, solemn sympathy, followed these greetings, silently approving them.
Ma tante said to each person the same words about his health, her own
health, and the health of her majesty, who was, thank God, better to-day. Every
one, though from politeness showing no undue haste, moved away from the old lady
with a sense of relief at a tiresome duty accomplished, and did not approach her
again all the evening. The young Princess Bolkonsky had come with her work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, faintly darkened with
down, was very short over her teeth, but was all the more charming when it was
lifted, and still more charming when it was at times drawn down to meet the
lower lip. As is always the case with perfectly charming women, her defect — the
shortness of the lip and the half-opened mouth — seemed her peculiar, her
characteristic beauty. Every one took delight in watching the pretty creature
full of life and gaiety, so soon to be a mother, and so lightly bearing her
burden. Old men and bored, depressed young men gazing at her felt as though they
were becoming like her, by being with her and talking a little while to her. Any
man who spoke to her, and at every word saw her bright little smile and shining
white teeth, gleaming continually, imagined that he was being particularly
successful this evening. And this each thought in turn.
The little princess, moving with a slight swing, walked with rapid little
steps round the table with her work-bag in her hand, and gaily arranging the
folds of her gown, sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar; it seemed as
though everything she did was a festival for herself and all around her.
“I have brought my work,” she said, displaying her reticule, and addressing
the company generally. “Mind, Annette, don't play me a nasty trick,” she turned
to the lady of the house; “you wrote to me that it was quite a little gathering.
See how I am got up.”
And she flung her arms open to show her elegant grey dress, trimmed with lace
and girt a little below the bosom with a broad sash.
“Never mind, Lise, you will always be prettier than any one else,” answered
Anna Pavlovna.
“You know my husband is deserting me,” she went on in just the same voice,
addressing a general; “he is going to get himself killed. Tell me what this
nasty war is for,” she said to Prince Vassily, and without waiting for an answer
she turned to Prince Vassily's daughter, the beautiful Ellen.
“How delightful this little princess is!” said Prince Vassily in an undertone
to Anna Pavlovna.
Soon after the little princess, there walked in a massively built, stout
young man in spectacles, with a cropped head, light breeches in the mode of the
day, with a high lace ruffle and a ginger-coloured coat. This stout young man
was the illegitimate son of a celebrated dandy of the days of Catherine, Count
Bezuhov, who was now dying at Moscow. He had not yet entered any branch of the
service; he had only just returned from abroad, where he had been educated, and
this was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with a nod
reserved for persons of the very lowest hierarchy in her drawing-room. But, in
spite of this greeting, Anna Pavlovna's countenance showed signs on seeing
Pierre of uneasiness and alarm, such as is shown at the sight of something too
big and out of place. Though Pierre certainly was somewhat bigger than any of
the other men in the room, this expression could only have reference to the
clever, though shy, observant and natural look that distinguished him from every
one else in the drawing-room.
“It is very kind of you, M. Pierre, to have come to see a poor invalid,” Anna
Pavlovna said to him, exchanging anxious glances with her aunt, to whom she was
conducting him.
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued searching for
something with his eyes. He smiled gleefully and delightedly, bowing to the
little princess as though she were an intimate friend, and went up to the aunt.
Anna Pavlovna's alarm was not without grounds, for Pierre walked away from the
aunt without waiting to the end of her remarks about her majesty's health. Anna
Pavlovna stopped him in dismay with the words: “You don't know Abbé Morio? He's
a very interesting man,” she said.
“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it's very
interesting, but hardly possible …”
“You think so?” said Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and to get away
again to her duties as hostess, but Pierre committed the opposite incivility.
Just now he had walked off without listening to the lady who was addressing him;
now he detained by his talk a lady who wanted to get away from him. With head
bent and legs planted wide apart, he began explaining to Anna Pavlovna why he
considered the abbé's scheme chimerical.
“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pavlovna, smiling.
And getting rid of this unmannerly young man she returned to her duties,
keeping her eyes and ears open, ready to fly to the assistance at any point
where the conversation was flagging. Just as the foreman of a spinning-mill
settles the work-people in their places, walks up and down the works, and noting
any stoppage or unusual creaking or too loud a whir in the spindles, goes up
hurriedly, slackens the machinery and sets it going properly, so Anna Pavlovna,
walking about her drawing-room, went up to any circle that was pausing or too
loud in conversation and by a single word or change of position set the
conversational machine going again in its regular, decorous way. But in the
midst of these cares a special anxiety on Pierre's account could still be
discerned in her. She kept an anxious watch on him as he went up to listen to
what was being said near Mortemart, and walked away to another group where the
abbé was talking. Pierre had been educated abroad, and this party at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first at which he had been present in Russia. He knew all the
intellectual lights of Petersburg gathered together here, and his eyes strayed
about like a child's in a toy-shop. He was afraid at every moment of missing
some intellectual conversation which he might have heard. Gazing at the
self-confident and refined expressions of the personages assembled here, he was
continually expecting something exceptionally clever. At last he moved up to
Abbé Morio. The conversation seemed interesting, and he stood still waiting for
an opportunity of expressing his own ideas, as young people are fond of
doing.
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