Kornakov approaches the tables with the intention of acquiring some winnings; some of the players fail to notice him, some shake his hand without looking round, a few invite him to join them for a while … Should he go into the rooms where the dancing is in progress? There he can see five or six students whirling round, a couple of newly arrived Guards officers, and the eternal striplings, young in years but already veterans of the Moscow parquet – Negichev, Gubkov, Tamarin; and two or three ageing Moscow lions who have already given up dancing in favour of paying compliments, but who are now either summoning up the courage to ask a lady to dance, or asking her with the sort of expression that seems to say ‘Look, what a gay dog I am.’
Also in the circle of gentlemen one can see as ever those unknown and unmoving figures in dress coats who simply stand and look; heaven alone knows what has made them come – only occasionally is there a movement among them as some bold spirit emerges, walks modestly or perhaps too boldly across the empty space in the centre and invites a lady – possibly the only one he knows – to dance, executes a few turns of the waltz with her, though she is clearly finding it an unpleasant experience, and returns to hide again behind the wall of standing gentlemen. Usually in Moscow society the men fall into two categories – the inexperienced youngsters who gaze at the social whirl with excessive seriousness; and the social lions well past their prime who look on, or appear to look on, with an exaggerated degree of disdain.
Some pathetic fellows, not knowing anyone, who have been invited only through the machinations of the hostess’s female relatives, sit around the walls of the ballroom, mortified with anger that despite their elegant turn-out which has cost them as much as a month’s earnings, no lady is willing to dance with them.—So the tale goes on, and the fact is that Prince Kornakov finds it all too drearily familiar. Although during his time in society many old people have departed and many young ones have entered the social arena, the attitudes, conversations and activities of these people have remained exactly the same. The physical arrangements of the ball, down to the buffet, the supper, the music, the furnishing of the rooms, are all so familiar to the Prince that he sometimes feels an unbearable repugnance at being faced with the same old thing for the twentieth time. Prince Kornakov was one of those wealthy middle-aged bachelors for whom social life has become the most inevitable and tedious of obligations: inevitable, because having in his early youth effortlessly achieved a leading place in this society, his self-esteem has never permitted him to try out his talents in any other, unknown path of life, or even to admit the possibility that some other mode of life might exist; tedious, because he was too intelligent not to have perceived long ago all the emptiness of the social relations of people who are not bound together by any common interest or noble feeling, but who assume that the purpose of life can be found in the artificial maintenance of these same endless social relations. His soul was constantly filled with unconscious sadness for a past squandered to no purpose and a future which promised nothing, but his ennui did not find expression in anguish or repentance, but in irritability and social gossip – sometimes trenchant, sometimes vacuous, but always intelligent and distinguished by its originality. He took so little part in the doings of society, regarding it with such indifference, as if
IV
‘
‘No, that is enough, I am already tired,’ replied his charming cousin with a smile, disengaging his hand from her shoulder.
Seriozha was obliged to stop, and to stop right by the doorway where Prince Kornakov was leaning casually with his customary expression of self-satisfied composure, saying something to the charming little Countess Schöfing.
‘Here he is in person,’ he said with a glance in Seriozha’s direction. ‘Do come and join us,’ he added, at the same time bowing respectfully to the pretty cousin. ‘The Countess would like you to be presented to her.’
‘I have wanted for a very long time to have this honour,’ said Seriozha with every appearance of youthful confusion, and bowed.
‘But there was really no need to wait until now to say so,’ replied the Countess, looking at him with an ingenuous smile.
