IX
The stage consisted of a boarded floor in the middle, with painted cardboard representing trees at the sides, and linen stretched over the boards at the back. In the middle of the stage there were sitting maidens in red bodices and white skirts. An excessively stout woman in a white silk dress was sitting apart on a low bench with green cardboard fixed on the back of it. They were all singing something. When they had finished their song, the woman in white moved towards the prompter’s box, and a man, wjth his stout legs encased in silk tights, with a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing and waving his arms.
The man in the tights sang alone, then she sang alone. Then botl paused, while the music played, and the man fumbled with the hand of the woman in white, obviously' waiting for the bar at which he was tc begin singing with her. They sang a duet, and every one in the theatre began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage supposed to represent lovers, began bowing with smiles and gesticulations.
After the country, and in her serious mood, Natasha felt it all gro tesque and extraordinary. She could not follow the opera; she coule not even listen to the music: she saw nothing but painted cardboard anc strangely dressed-up men and women, talking, singing, and moving strangely about in the bright light. She knew what it all was meant t( represent; but it was all so grotesquely false and unnatural that she fel alternately ashamed and amused at the actors. She looked about heij at the faces of the spectators, seeking in them signs of the same iron] and bewilderment that she was feeling herself. But all the faces wen watching what was passing on the stage, and expressed nothing but ai affected—so Natasha thought—rapture. ‘I suppose it is meant to b< like this!’ thought Natasha. She looked alternately at the rows o pomaded masculine heads in the stalls, and at the naked women in thi boxes, especially at her next neighbour Ellen, who, quite undressed, sa gazing intently, with a quiet and serene smile, at the stage, and baskinj in the bright light that flooded the theatre, and the warm air, heated b] the crowd. Natasha began gradually to pass into a state of intoxicatioi she had not experienced for a long while. She lost all sense of what sh> was and where she was and what was going on before her eyes. She gazei and dreamed, and the strangest ideas flashed unexpectedly and discon nectedly into her mind. At one moment the idea occurred to her to lea] over the footlights and sing that air the actress was singing; then she fel j inclined to hook her fan into an old gentleman sitting near her, or tc bend over to Ellen and tickle her.
At a moment when there was a lull on the stage before the beginnin; of a song, the door opening to the stalls creaked on the side nearest th Rostovs’ box, and there was the sound of a man’s footsteps. ‘Here he if;
vuragin!’ whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezuhov turned smiling to he new-comer. Natasha looked in the direction of the Countess Bezuhov’s :yes, and saw an exceedingly handsome adjutant coming towards their )ox with a confident, but yet courteous, bearing. It was Anatole Kuragin, vhom she had seen long before, and noticed at the Petersburg ball. He vas now wearing an adjutant’s uniform, with one epaulette and a shoulder mot. He walked with a jaunty strut, which would have been ridiculous f he had not been so handsome, and if his good-looking face had not ■xpressed such simple-hearted satisfaction and good spirits. Although he performance was going on he walked lightly, without haste, along he carpeted corridor, holding his scented, handsome head high, and xcompanied by a slight clank of spurs and sword. Glancing at Natasha, le went up to his sister, laid his hand in a close-fitting glove on the edge if her box, nodded his head at her, and, bending down, asked her a [uestion, with a motion towards Natasha/
‘Very, very charming!’ he said, obviously speaking of Natasha. She lid not exactly hear the words, but divined them from the movement if his lips. Then he went on to the front row and sat down beside Dolo- iov, giving a friendly and careless nudge with his elbow to the man diom other people treated with such punctilio. With a merry wink, he miled at him, and leaned with his foot against the footlights.
‘How like the brother is to his sister!’ said the count. ‘And how hand- ome they both are!’
Shinshin began telling the count in an undertone some story of an itrigue of Kuragin’s in Moscow, to which Natasha listened, simply ecause he had said of her ‘very charming.’
The first act was over; every one stood up in the stalls, changed places, nd began going out and coming in.
