Prince Kornakov, on the other hand, made his way quite calmly through the first room, bowing to the gentlemen and ladies he knew, entered the great ballroom and joined the little circle of the elect, just as if he had been walking into his own room and with the same foreknowledge of what to expect as a civil servant who arrives at his Department and makes for his familiar corner and his own particular chair. He knows each one of them so well, and they him, that he is able to have some striking, interesting or amusing remark ready for each person, and on a subject which will appeal to them. In almost every case he offers a promising opening gambit, some little witticism, a few generalized recollections.
Even his observations of men and women – the sole interest for a man like the Prince who takes no direct part in the ball as a card-player or a dancer – even these cannot afford him anything new or arresting. If he goes up to the groups of chatterers in the reception rooms, they are all composed of the same people and the frame of their conversation is always the same. Here is Madame D., a lady with a reputation for being a Moscow beauty, and indeed her dress, her face, her shoulders are all lovely beyond reproach; but there is something tediously impassive in her look and her continual smile, and her beauty produces in him a reaction of irritation. Deep down he finds D. the most intolerable woman in the world yet he still pursues her, simply because she is the first lady of Moscow society. Next to her, as always, is a group of hangers-on: young M., who is said to be a thoroughly bad character – but on the other hand he is exceptionally witty and agreeable; also with her is the Petersburg dandy F., dedicated to looking down disdainfully on Moscow society, with the result that no one can stand him … And here is the delightful Moscow aristocrat Annette Z., who, goodness knows why, has been failing to marry for such a long time; and consequently, somewhere here too is her last hope, a baron with a monocle and appallingly bad French who has been intending for a whole year past to marry her, but naturally will not get round to doing so. Here is the small, swarthy adjutant with a large nose who is convinced that the essence of civility in this modern age is to spout obscenities, and who is now splitting his sides as he relates something to the elderly but emancipated maiden lady G. Here is the stout old lady R., whose behaviour has been unseemly for so long that it has ceased to be original and has become simply disgusting; yet around her there still revolve an officer of hussars and a young student who imagine, poor things, that this will elevate them in the eyes of society. And if Prince Kornakov goes over to the card tables he will find the same tables in the same place they have occupied these five years or more, with the same people sitting at them. Even their particular ways of shuffling the cards, dealing, taking tricks and exchanging little jokes about gambling have all long since become familiar to him. Here is the old general who invariably loses heavily, however angry he gets and however much he shouts for the whole room to hear, but in particular the dried-up little man who sits opposite him in silence, hunched over the table and granting him an occasional sullen look from under his eyebrows. Here too is a young man who hopes to prove, by the fact of playing cards, that he has been doing this kind of thing for years. And here are the three high-born old ladies who have won two copecks each from their unlucky fellow-player, and the poor man is about to give up all the money he has in his pocket to pay them.
