Berg got up, and cautiously embracing his wife so as not to crush the lace bertha, for which he had paid a round sum, he kissed her just on her lips.
‘There’s only one thing: we mustn’t have children too soon,’ he said, by i connection of ideas of which he was himself unconscious.
‘Yes,’ answered Vera, ‘I don’t at all desire that. We must live for society.’
‘Princess Yusupov was wearing one just like that,’ said Berg, pointing A'ith a happy and good-humoured smile to the bertha.
At that moment they were informed that Count Bezuhov had arrived. Both the young couple exchanged glances of self-satisfaction, each men- ally claiming the credit of this visit.
‘See what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,’ thought Berg. ‘See what comes of behaving properly! ’
‘But, please, when I am entertaining guests,’ said Vera, ‘don’t you in- errupt me, because I know with what to entertain each of them, and vhat to say in the company of different people.’
Berg, too, smiled.
‘Oh, but sometimes men must have their masculine conversation,’ he said.
Pierre was shown into the little drawing-room, in which it was impossible to sit down without disturbing the symmetry, tidiness, and order; and consequently it was quite comprehensible, and not strange, that Berg should magnanimously offer to disturb the symmetry of the armchair or of the sofa for an honoured guest, and apparently finding himself in miserable indecision in the matter, should leave his guest to solve the question of selection. Pierre destroyed the symmetry, moved out a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera promptly began their soiree, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain their guest.
Vera, deciding in her own mind that Pierre ought to be entertained with conversation about the French Embassy, promptly embarked upon that subject. Berg, deciding that masculine conversation was what was 1 required, interrupted his wife’s remarks by reference to the question of war with Austria, and made an unconscious jump from that general subject to personal considerations upon the proposal made him to take part in the Austrian campaign, and the reasons which had led him to decline it. Although the conversation was extremely disconnected, and Vera resented the intervention of the masculine element, both the young people felt with satisfaction that although only one guest was present, the soiree had begun very well, and that their soiree was as like every other soiree as two drops of water,—with the same conversation and tea and lighted candles.
The next to arrive was Boris, an old comrade of Berg’s. There was a certain shade of patronage and condescension in his manner to Berg and Vera. After Boris came the colonel and his lady, then the general himself, then the Rostovs, and the soiree now began to be exactly, incontestably,; like all other soirees. Berg and Vera could hardly repress their smiles of 1 glee at the sight of all this movement in their drawing-room, at the sound of the disconnected chatter, and the rustle of skirts and of curtsies. Everything was precisely as everybody always has it; especially so was the general, who admired their rooms, clapped Berg on the shoulder, and with paternal authority insisted on arranging the table for boston. The general sat by Count Ilya Andreivitch, as the guest next in precedence to himself. The elderly guests were together, the younger people together, the hostess at the tea-table, on which there were cakes in the silver cake- basket exactly like the cakes at the Panins’ soiree. Everything was precisely like what everybody else had.
XXI
Pierre, as one of the most honoured guests, was obliged to sit down to boston with the old count, the general, and the colonel. As he sat at the boston-table he happened to be directly facing Natasha, and he was
WAR AND PEACE 439
struck by the curious change that had come over her since the day of the ball. Natasha was silent, and not only was she not so pretty as she had been at the ball, she would have been positively plain but for the look of gentle indifference to everything in her face.
‘What is wrong with her?’ Pierre wondered, glancing at her. She was sitting by her sister at the tea-table; she gave reluctant answers to Boris at her side and did not look at him. After playing all of one suit and taking five tricks to his partner’s satisfaction, Pierre, having caught the sound of greetings and the steps of some one entering while he took his tricks, glanced at her again.
‘Why, what has happened to her?’ he said to himself in still greater wonder.
