War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [373]
Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to make them festive. Her house was always all scrubbed and cleaned on Saturday; she and her servants did no work, everybody got dressed up festively, and everybody went to the liturgy. Courses were added to the mistress’s dinner, and the servants were given vodka and a roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the whole house was the festivity so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna’s broad, stern face, which on that day acquired a permanent expression of solemnity.
When they had finished coffee after the liturgy, in the drawing room, where the dustcovers had been removed, it was announced to Marya Dmitrievna that the carriage was ready, and she, with a stern look, dressed in the fancy shawl in which she went visiting, stood up and declared that she was going to see Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, to have a talk with him concerning Natasha.
After Marya Dmitrievna’s departure, a dressmaker came to the Rostovs’ from Madame Chalmet, and Natasha, shutting the door to the room next to the drawing room, very pleased to be diverted, began trying on the new dresses. As she was putting on a tacked together and still sleeveless bodice, turning her head to see in the mirror how the back fitted, she heard animated voices from the drawing room, one her father’s and the other a woman’s voice which made her blush. It was the voice of Hélène. Before Natasha had time to take off the bodice she was trying on, the door opened and Countess Bezukhov walked in, beaming with a good-natured and affectionate smile, in a dark purple velvet dress with a high collar.
“Ah, ma délicieuse!”*379 she said to the blushing Natasha. “Charmante! No, this will never do, my dear count,” she said to Ilya Andreich, who came in after her. “To live in Moscow and not go anywhere! No, I won’t let you be! Tonight at my house Mlle George will recite and there’ll be some guests; and if you don’t bring your beauties, who are better than Mlle George, then I don’t want to know you. My husband isn’t here, he’s gone to Tver, otherwise I’d send him to fetch you. Do come without fail, after eight.” She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew, and who curtsied to her deferentially, and sat down in an armchair near the mirror, picturesquely spreading the folds of her velvet dress. She kept babbling away gaily and good-naturedly, ceaselessly admiring Natasha’s beauty. She examined her dresses and praised them, boasted of her own new dress en gaze metallique,†380 which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to order one like it.
“Though everything becomes you, my lovely one,” she said.
The smile of pleasure never left Natasha’s face. She felt herself happy and blossoming under the praises of this nice Countess Bezukhov, who had formerly seemed to her such an unapproachable and important lady, and who was now so kind to her. Natasha became cheerful, and she felt almost in love with this woman who was so beautiful and so good-natured. Hélène, for her part, sincerely admired Natasha and wished to entertain her. Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha together, and she had come to the Rostovs’ for that. The thought of bringing her brother together with Natasha amused her.
Despite the fact that she had formerly been vexed with Natasha, in Petersburg, for having won Boris away from her, she did not think of that now, and in her own way wholeheartedly wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs’, she called her protégée aside.
“Yesterday my brother dined with me—we died of laughter—he eats nothing and sighs after you, my lovely. Il est fou, mais fou amoureux de vous, ma chère.”*381
Natasha flushed crimson, hearing these words.
“How she blushes, how she blushes, ma délicieuse!” said Hélène. “Be sure to come. Si vous aimez quelqu’un, ma délicieuse, ce n’est pas une raison pour se cloîtrer. Si même vous êtes promise, je suis sûr que votre promis aurais