Natasha looked in the mirrors but couldn’t make out her own reflection among all the others. Everybody blurred together in one glittering procession. At the entrance to the first room the steady hum of conversation, footsteps and greetings deafened Natasha; the light and the glare dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had been standing by the door for the last half-hour saying exactly the same thing, ‘So pleased to see you,’ to every new arrival, welcomed the Rostovs and Madame Peronsky with the same greeting. The two young girls in their white dresses, with identical roses in their black hair, made identical curtseys, but the hostess’s eyes lingered instinctively on the slender figure of Natasha. She looked at her and gave her a special smile that went beyond her duty as a hostess. Looking at her, she was perhaps reminded of the golden days of her girlhood, now gone for ever, and her own first ball. The host too gave Natasha a close scrutiny, and asked the count which one of the girls was his daughter.
‘Charming girl!’ he said, kissing his fingertips.
The ballroom was full of guests crowding round the doorway where the Tsar was expected. The countess worked her way to the front of the crowd. Natasha could hear people asking who she was, and sense their eyes on her. She knew she was making a good impression on those who noticed her, and this helped to calm her nerves.
‘There are plenty of people like us, and some of them are worse off,’ she thought.
Madame Peronsky was pointing out to the countess the most distinguished persons at the ball.
‘That’s the Dutch ambassador, look, that grey-haired man over there,’ Madame Peronsky was saying, indicating a little old gentleman with a mane of silvery grey curls, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he was saying. ‘And look who’s here, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhov,’ she said, pointing to Hélène, who had just come in.
‘Isn’t she gorgeous! She’s the equal of Marya Antonovna. Look at all the men fussing round her, young and old. She’s so pretty, and clever too . . . They say Prince So-and-so is wild about her. But look at these two – they’re not pretty, but they’ve got even more followers.’
She pointed to two ladies crossing the room, a mother with her very plain daughter.
‘Worth millions as a bride,’ said Madame Peronsky. ‘And here come the suitors . . . That’s Countess Bezukhov’s brother, Anatole Kuragin,’ she said, pointing to a handsome horse guards officer, who raised his head and looked somewhere over the ladies’ heads as he went by. ‘Handsome, isn’t he? They say he’s going to marry that heiress. But your cousin, Drubetskoy, he’s dancing round her too. She’s worth millions, so they say. Oh, that’s no less a person than the French ambassador,’ she said when the countess saw Caulaincourt and asked who he was. ‘Look at him strutting like a king. But they’re so nice, you know, the French are so very nice. No nicer people in society. Oh, look, she’s here! Yes, she’s still the prettiest, our Marya Antonovna! What a simple outfit! Exquisite!’
‘And that fat fellow with the glasses on, he’s the great freemason,’ said Madame Peronsky, indicating Bezukhov. ‘Stand him alongside his wife and you’ll see what a clown he is!’
Stout as ever, Pierre was waddling through the crowd, nodding to right and to left, with the easy sweetness of a man in a market crowd. He was squeezing through the throng evidently in search of a particular person.
Natasha was delighted to see the familiar face of the man described by Madame Peronsky as a clown, and she knew he was searching the crowd for them, and especially her. Pierre had promised to be there at the ball and find some partners for her. But on his way over Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, dark-haired man of medium height in a white uniform, who was standing by a window talking to a tall man with stars and a ribbon across his chest.
Natasha instantly recognized the splendid young man in white; it was Andrey Bolkonsky, looking altogether younger, happier and more handsome than before.
‘There’s someone else we know, Bolkonsky, over there, Mamma,’ said Natasha, pointing him out. ‘You remember, he stayed the night with us at Otradnoye.’
‘Oh, do you know him?’ said Madame Peronsky. ‘I can’t abide him. He’s top dog at the moment. And so conceited – you wouldn’t believe it! Takes after his father. And he’s hobnobbing with Speransky, making all sorts of plans. And look how he treats the ladies! That lady over there was talking to him, and he just turned his back on her,’ she said, pointing across. ‘I’d give him a piece of my mind if he treated me like that.’
CHAPTER 16
