War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [365]
Natasha felt so softened and tenderhearted at that moment that it was not enough for her to love and know that she was loved: she had to embrace the beloved man now, at once, and speak and hear from him the words of love which so filled her heart. While she was riding in the carriage, sitting beside her father, and looking pensively at the lights of the street lamps flashing in the frozen window, she felt herself still more in love and more sad, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Falling in with the line of carriages, its wheels squeaking slowly over the snow, the Rostovs’ carriage drove up to the theater. Natasha and Sonya quickly jumped out, holding up their skirts; the count got out, supported by the footmen, and the three walked among the entering ladies and gentlemen and the program sellers to the aisle leading to the box seats. Sounds of music were already coming from behind the closed doors.
“Natalie, vos cheveux,”*373 Sonya whispered. An usher deferentially and hastily slipped sideways before the ladies and opened the door to the box. The sounds of music became more vivid; through the door shone the brightly lit rows of boxes, with the bare shoulders and arms of ladies, and the noisy parterre brilliant with uniforms. The lady who was entering the next box looked Natasha over with envious feminine eyes. The curtain had not yet gone up, and the overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing her dress, walked in together with Sonya and sat down, looking over the lit-up rows of boxes opposite. For a long time she had not experienced that feeling, both pleasant and unpleasant, of hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and neck, which suddenly seized her now, calling up a whole swarm of memories, desires, and emotions corresponding to that feeling.
The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, along with Count Ilya Andreich, who had not appeared in Moscow for a long time, attracted general attention. Besides, everyone knew vaguely of Natasha’s betrothal to Prince Andrei, knew that since then the Rostovs had been living in the country, and looked with curiosity at the fiancée of one of the best matches in Russia.
Natasha had grown prettier in the country, as everybody told her, and that evening, owing to her agitated state, she was especially pretty. She struck people by her fullness of life and beauty, combined with her indifference to everything around her. Her black eyes gazed at the crowd without seeking anyone, her slender arm, bared above the elbow, rested on the velvet rail, her hand opening and closing, obviously unconsciously, in time with the overture, crumpling the program.
“Look, there’s Miss Alenin,” said Sonya, “with her mother, I think.”
“Good heavens! Mikhail Kirilych has grown still fatter!” said the old count.
“Look! What a toque Anna Mikhailovna’s wearing!”
“The Karagins, Julie and Boris with them. You can see at once they’re engaged.”
“Drubetskoy’s made a proposal! Yes, indeed, I found out today,” said Shinshin, coming into the Rostovs’ box.
Natasha followed the direction of her father’s gaze and saw Julie, who, with pearls on her fat, red neck (which Natasha knew was daubed with powder), was sitting with a happy look next to her mother. Behind them Boris’s head could be seen, handsome, smoothly combed, smiling, its ear inclined to Julie’s mouth. He looked at the Rostovs from under his eyebrows and, smiling, said something to his fiancée.
“They’re talking about us, about me and him!” Natasha thought. “And he must be calming his fiancée’s jealousy of me. They needn’t worry! If only they knew how little I care about them all!”
Behind them, in a green toque, with a happy, festive face, given over to the will of God, sat Anna Mikhailovna. In their box hung that atmosphere of an engaged couple which Natasha knew and loved so well. She turned away, and suddenly all that had been humiliating in her morning visit recalled itself to her.
“What right has he not to want to receive me into his family? Ah, better not to think about it, not