In the group nearest the bride were her two sisters: Dolly, and the eldest, the calm beauty Princess Lvov, who had come from abroad.
‘Why is Marie wearing purple, almost like black, for a wedding?’ said Mme Korsunsky.
‘With her complexion it’s the only salvation ...’ Mme Drubetskoy replied. ‘I wonder why they’re having the wedding in the evening. Like merchants ...’
‘It’s more beautiful. I, too, was married in the evening,’ Mme Korsunsky answered with a sigh, recalling how nice she had looked that day, how comically in love her husband had been, and how different everything was now.
‘They say if anyone’s been a best man more than ten times, he’ll never marry. I wanted this to be my tenth time, to insure myself, but the job was taken,’ Count Sinyavin said to the pretty princess Charsky, who had designs on him.
Princess Charsky answered him only with a smile. She was looking at Kitty, thinking of how and when she would be standing in Kitty’s place with Count Sinyavin, and how she would remind him then of his present joke.
Shcherbatsky told the old lady-in-waiting, Mme Nikolaev, that he intended to put the crown on Kitty’s chignon so that she would be happy.14
‘She oughtn’t to be wearing a chignon,’ answered Mme Nikolaev, who had decided long ago that if the old widower she was trying to catch married her, the wedding would be the simplest. ‘I don’t like all this
Sergei Ivanovich was talking with Darya Dmitrievna, jokingly assuring her that the custom of going away after the wedding was spreading because newlyweds are always a little ashamed.
‘Your brother can be proud. She’s wonderfully sweet. I suppose you’re envious?’
‘I’ve already been through that, Darya Dmitrievna,’ he replied, and his face unexpectedly assumed a sad and serious expression.
Stepan Arkadyich was telling his sister-in-law his quip about separations.
‘The coronet wants straightening,’ she said, not listening to him.
‘It’s too bad she looks so poorly,’ Countess Nordston said to Natalie. ‘And all the same he’s not worth her little finger. Isn’t it so?’
‘No, I like him very much. Not just because he’s my future
‘It seems you were expecting this?’
‘Almost. She’s always loved him.’
‘Well, let’s see who steps on the rug first. I advised Kitty.’
‘It makes no difference,’ Natalie replied, ‘we’re all obedient wives, it runs in the family.’
‘And I purposely stepped on it first, before Vassily. And you, Dolly?’
Dolly was standing next to them, heard them, but did not answer. She was moved. There were tears in her eyes, and she would have been unable to answer without weeping. She rejoiced over Kitty and Levin; going back in thought to her own wedding, she glanced at the beaming Stepan Arkadyich, forgetting all the present and recalling only her first innocent love. She remembered not only herself, but all women, her close friends and acquaintances; she remembered them at that uniquely solemn time for them, when they, just like Kitty, stood under the crown with love, hope and fear in their hearts, renouncing the past and entering into the mysterious future. Among all these brides who came to her mind, she also remembered her dear Anna, the details of whose presumed divorce she had heard recently. She, too, had stood pure in her orange blossom and veil. And now what? ‘Terribly strange,’ she murmured.
Not only did sisters, friends and relations follow all the details of the sacred ritual; women spectators, complete strangers, watched with breathless excitement, afraid to miss a single movement or facial expression of the bride and bridegroom, and irritably ignored or often did not hear the talk of the indifferent men, who made jocular and irrelevant observations.
‘Why is she all in tears? Or is she marrying against her will?’
‘Why against her will if he’s such a fine fellow? A prince, isn’t he?’
‘Is that her sister in white satin? Well, listen to how the deacon’s going to roar: “And the wife see that she reverence her husband.” ’15
‘The Chudovsky choir?’
‘The Synodal.’
‘I asked the footman. He says he’s taking her to his estate at once. He’s awfully rich, they say. That’s why they’ve married her to him.’
‘No, they’re a fine couple.’
‘And you, Marya Vlasyevna, you argued that crinolines are now worn loose. Look at that one in puce - an ambassador’s wife, they say - how hers is tucked up ... Like this, and again like this.’
‘What a sweetie the bride is, done up like a ewe-lamb! Say what you like, one feels pity for a sister.’
Such was the talk in the crowd of women spectators who had managed to slip through the doors of the church.
VI
