‘Now he’s very much altered,’ said Anna Mihalovna. ‘Well, I was just saying,’ she went on, ‘the direct heir to all the property is Prince Vassily through his wife, but the father is very fond of Pierre, has taken trouble over his education, and he has written to the Emperor ... so that no one can tell, if he dies (he’s so ill that it’s expected any moment, and Lor- rain has come from Petersburg), whom that immense property will come to, Pierre or Prince Vassily. Forty thousand serfs and millions of money. I know this for a fact, for Prince Vassily himself told me so. And indeed Kirill Vladimirovitch happens to be a third cousin of mine on my mother’s side, and he’s Boris’s godfather too,’ she added, apparently attaching no importance to this circumstance.
‘Prince Vassily arrived in Moscow yesterday. He’s coming on some inspection business, so I was told,’ said the visitor.
‘Yes, between ourselves,’ said the princess, ‘that’s a pretext; he has come simply to see Prince Kirill Vladimirovitch, hearing he was in such a serious state.’
‘But, really, via chere, that was a capital piece of fun,’ said the count; and seeing that the elder visitor did not hear him, he turned to the young ladies. ‘A funny figure the police officer must have looked; I can just fancy him.’
And showing how the police officer waved his arms about, he went off again into his rich bass laugh, his sides shaking with mirth, as people do
laugh who always eat and, still more, drink well. ‘Then do, please, come to dinner with us,’ he said.
VIII
A silence followed. The countess looked at her guest, smiling affably, but still not disguising the fact that she would not take it at all amiss now if the guest were to get up and go. The daughter was already fingering at the folds of her gown and looking interrogatively at her mother, when suddenly they heard in the next room several girls and boys running to the door, and the grating sound of a chair knocked over and a girl of thirteen ran in, hiding something in her short muslin petticoat, and stopped short in the middle of the room. She had evidently bounded so far by mistake, unable to stop in her flight. At the same instant there appeared in the doorway a student with a crimson band on his collar, a young officer in the Guards, a girl of fifteen and a fat, rosy-cheeked boy in a child’s smock.
The prince jumped up, and swaying from side to side, held his arms out wide round the little girl.
‘Ah, here she is! ’ he cried, laughing. ‘Our little darling on her fete day! ’
‘My dear, there is a time for everything,’ said the countess, affecting- severity. ‘You’re always spoiling her, Elk,’ she added to her husband.
‘Bonjour, ma chere, je vous jelicit said the visitor. ‘Quelle delicieuse enjantl’ she added, turning to her mother.
The dark-eyed little girl, plain, but full of life, with her wide mouth, her childish bare shoulders, which shrugged and panted in her bodice from her rapid motion, her black hair brushed back, her slender bare arms and little legs in lace-edged long drawers and open slippers, was at that charming stage when the girl is no longer a child, while the child is not yet a young girl. Wriggling away from her father, she ran up to her mother, and taking no notice whatever of her severe remarks, she hid her flushed face in her mother’s lace kerchief and broke into laughter. As she laughed she uttered some incoherent phrases about the doll, which was poking out from her petticoat.
‘Do you see? . . . My doll . . . Mimi . . . you see . . .’ And Natasha could say no more, it all seemed to her so funny. She sank on her mother’s lap, and went off into such a loud peal of laughter that every one, even the prim visitor, could not help laughing too.
‘Come, run along, run along with your monstrosity!’ said her mother, pushing her daughter off with a pretence of anger. ‘This is my younger girl,’ she said to the visitor. Natasha, pulling her face away from her mother’s lace kerchief for a minute, peeped down at her through tears of laughter, and hid her face again.
The visitor, forced to admire this domestic scene, thought it suitable to take some part in it.
‘Tell me, my dear,’ she said, addressing Natasha, ‘how did you come by your Mimi? Your daughter, I suppose?’
Natasha did not like the tone of condescension to childish things with which the visitor had spoken to her. She made no answer, but stared solemnly at her.
