In the third act the scene was a palace in which a great many candles were burning, and pictures were hanging on the walls, representing knights with beards. In the middle stood a man and a woman, probably meant for a king and a queen. The king waved his right hand, and, obviously nervous, sang something very badly, and sat down on a crimson throne. The actress, who had been in white at first and then in blue, was now in nothing but a smock, and had let her hair down. She was standing near the throne, singing something very mournful, addressed to the queen. But the king waved his hand sternly, and from the sides there came in men and women with bare legs who began dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily: one of the actresses, with thick, bare legs and thin arms, leaving the rest, went to the side to set straight her bodice, then walked into the middle of the stage and began skipping into the air and kicking one leg very rapidly with the other. Every one in the stalls clapped their hands and roared ‘bravo!’ Then one man stood alone at one corner of the stage. The cymbals and trumpets struck up more loudly in the orchestra, and this man began leaping very high in the air and rapidly waving his legs. (This was Duport, who earned sixty thousand a year by this accomplishment.) Every one in the boxes and in the stalls began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the man stood still and began smiling and bowing in all directions. Then other men and women with bare legs danced; then again the king shouted something to music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm came on, chromatic scales and chords with the diminishing sevenths fcould be heard in the orchestra, and they all ran off, dragging one of ;he performers again behind the scenes, and the curtain dropped. Again ii fearful uproar of applause arose among the spectators, and all began (screaming with rapturous faces:
‘Duport! Duport! Duport!’
Natasha did not now feel this strange. She looked about her with Measure, smiling joyfully.
‘Isn’t Duport admirable?’ said Ellen, turning to her.
‘Oh yes,’ answered Natasha.
X
n the entr’acte there was a current of chill air in Ellen’s box, the door |vas opened, and Anatole walked in, bending and trying not to brush gainst any one.
‘Allow me to introduce my brother,’ said Ellen, her eyes shifting uneasily from Natasha to Anatole. Natasha turned her pretty little head n towards the handsome adjutant and smiled over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome on a closer view as he was from a distance, sat jt down beside her, and said he had long wished to have this pleasure, f ever since the Narishkins’ ball, at which he had had the pleasure he had not forgotten of seeing her. Kuragin was far more sensible and straight-1 forward with women than he was in men’s society. He talked boldly and simply, and Natasha was strangely and agreeably impressed by finding nothing so formidable in this man, of whom such stories were told, but, on the contrary, seeing on his face the most innocent, merry, and simple-hearted smile.
Kuragin asked her what she thought of the performance, and told her that at the last performance Semyonovna had fallen down while she was acting.
‘And do you know, countess,’ said he, suddenly addressing her as though she were an old friend, ‘we are getting up a costume ball; you ought to take part in it; it will be great fun. They are all assembling at the Karagins’. Please, do come, really now, eh?’ he said. As he said this he never took his smiling eyes off the face, the neck, the bare arms of Natasha. Natasha knew beyond all doubt that he was fascinated by her. That pleased her, yet she felt for some reason constrained and oppressed in his presence. When she was not looking at him she felt that he was looking at her shoulders, and she could not help trying to catch his eyes that he might rather look in her face. But as she looked into his eyes, she felt with horror that, between him and her, there was not that barrier of modest reserve she had always been conscious of between herself and other men. In five minutes she felt—she did not know how—that she had come fearfully close to this man. When she turned away, she felt afraid he might take her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They talked of the simplest things, and she felt that they were close as she had never been with any man. Natasha looked round at Ellen and at her father, as though to ask them what was the meaning of it. But Ellen was absorbed in talking to a general and did not respond to her glance, and her father’s eyes said nothing to her but what they always said: ‘Enjoying yourself? Well, I’m glad then.’
