turbable assurance. If a man of no self-confidence is dumb at first making acquaintance, and betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of this dumbness and an anxiety to find something to say, the effect will be bad. But Anatole was dumb and swung his leg, as he watched the princess’s hair with a radiant face. It was clear that he could be silent with the same serenity for a very long while. ‘If anybody feels silence awkward, let him talk, but I don’t care about it,’ his demeanour seemed to say. Moreover, in his manner to women, Anatole had that air, which does more than anything else to excite curiosity, awe, and even love in women, the air of supercilious consciousness of his own superiority. His manner seemed to say to them: ‘I know you, I know, but why trouble my head about you? You’d be pleased enough, of course!’ Possibly he did ndt think this on meeting women (it is probable, indeed, that he did not, for he thought very little at any time), but that was the effect of his air and his manner. Princess Marya felt it, and as though to show him she did not even venture to think of inviting his attention, she turned to his father. The conversation was general and animated, thanks to the voice and the little downy lip, that flew up and down over the white teeth of the little princess. She met Prince Vassily in that playful tone so often adopted by chatty and lively persons, the point of which consists in the assumption that there exists a sort of long-established series of jokes and amusing, partly private, humorous reminiscences between the persons so addressed and oneself, even when no such reminiscences are really shared, as indeed was the case with Prince Vassily and the little princess. Prince Vassily readily fell in with this tone; the little princess embellished their supposed common reminiscences with all sorts of droll incidents that had never occurred, and drew Anatole too into them, though she had scarcely known him. Mademoiselle Bourienne too succeeded in taking a part in them, and even Princess Marya felt with pleasure that she was being made to share in their gaiety.
‘Well, anyway, we shall take advantage of you to the utmost now we have got you, dear prince,’ said the little princess, in French, of course, to Prince Vassily. ‘Here it is not as it used to be at our evenings at Annette’s., where you always ran away. Do you remember our dear Annette?’
‘Ah yes, but then you mustn’t talk to me about politics, like Annette!'
‘And our little tea-table?’
‘Oh yes! ’
‘Why is it you never used to be at Annette’s?’ the little princess asked of Anatole. ‘Ah, I know, I know,’ she said, winking; ‘your brother, Ippolit, has told me tales of your doings. Oh!’ She shook her finger at him. ‘I know about your exploits in Paris too!’
‘But he, Ippolit, didn’t tell you, did he?’ said Prince Vassily (addressing his son and taking the little princess by the arm, as though she would have run away and he were just in time to catch her); ‘he didn’t tell you how he, Ippolit himself, was breaking his heart over our sweet princess, and how she turned him out of doors.’
‘Oh! she is the pearl of women, princess,’ he said, addressing Princess
204 WAR AND PEACE
Marya. Mademoiselle Bourienne on her side, at the mention of Paris, did not let her chance slip for taking a share in the common stock of recollections.
She ventured to inquire if it were long since Anatole was in Paris, and how he had liked that city. Anatole very readily answered the Frenchwoman, and smiling and staring at her, he talked to her about her native country. At first sight of the pretty Mademoiselle, Anatole had decided that even here at Bleak Hills he should not be dull. ‘Not half bad-looking,’ he thought, scrutinising her, ‘she’s not half bad-looking, that companion! I hope she’ll bring her along when we’re married,’ he mused; ‘she is a nice little thing.’
