War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (best ebook reader for chromebook .TXT) 📗

charming... You are very kind... Countess Apráksina...” was heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.

“Márya Dmítrievna?” came her voice from there.

“Herself,” came the answer in a rough voice, and Márya Dmítrievna entered the room.

All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very oldest rose. Márya Dmítrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout, holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if rolling them up. Márya Dmítrievna always spoke in Russian.

“Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her children,” she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all others. “Well, you old sinner,” she went on, turning to the count who was kissing her hand, “you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up,” and she pointed to the girls. “You must look for husbands for them whether you like it or not....”

“Well,” said she, “how’s my Cossack?” (Márya Dmítrievna always called Natásha a Cossack) and she stroked the child’s arm as she came up fearless and gay to kiss her hand. “I know she’s a scamp of a girl, but I like her.”

She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natásha, who beamed with the pleasure of her saint’s-day fete, turned away at once and addressed herself to Pierre.

“Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit,” said she, assuming a soft high tone of voice. “Come here, my friend...” and she ominously tucked up her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a childlike way through his spectacles.

“Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it’s my evident duty.” She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to follow, for this was clearly only a prelude.

“A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame, sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war.”

She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly keep from laughing.

“Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?” said Márya Dmítrievna.

The count went in first with Márya Dmítrievna, the countess followed on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them because Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna Mikháylovna with Shinshín. Berg gave his arm to Véra. The smiling Julie Karágina went in with Nicholas. After them other couples followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the guests settled down in their places. Then the strains of the count’s household band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of the table sat the countess with Márya Dmítrievna on her right and Anna Mikháylovna on her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At the other end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and Shinshín and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the long table on one side sat the grown-up young people: Véra beside Berg, and Pierre beside Borís; and on the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit vases, the count kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors’ glasses, not neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies’ end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the men’s end the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so much that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with tender smiles was saying to Véra that love is not an earthly but a heavenly feeling. Borís was telling his new friend Pierre who the guests were and exchanging glances with Natásha, who was sitting opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in a napkin, from behind the next man’s shoulders and whispered: “Dry Madeira”... “Hungarian”... or “Rhine wine” as the case might be. Of the four crystal glasses engraved with the count’s monogram that stood before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank with enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests. Natásha, who sat opposite, was looking at Borís as girls of thirteen look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny lively little girl’s look made him inclined to laugh without knowing why.

Nicholas sat at some distance from Sónya, beside Julie Karágina, to whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sónya wore a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to remember all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was mortified because no one would understand that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.