War and Peace

hat evening the Rostóvs went to the Opera, for which Márya
Dmítrievna had taken a box.

Natásha did not want to go, but could not refuse Márya Dmítrievna’s
kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she came ready
dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and looking in the large
mirror there saw that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more
sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.

“O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those searching
inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me, and then I
would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes—how I see those
eyes!” thought Natásha. “And what do his father and sister matter
to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with
his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not think of
him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for the present.
I can’t bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!” and she
turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry. “And how
can Sónya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so long and so
patiently?” thought she, looking at Sónya, who also came in quite
ready, with a fan in her hand. “No, she’s altogether different. I
can’t!”

Natásha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words of
love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her
father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flickering on
the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in love, and forgot
where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into the line of
carriages, the Rostóvs’ carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels
squeaking over the snow. Natásha and Sónya, holding up their dresses,
jumped out quickly. The count got out helped by the footmen, and,
passing among men and women who were entering and the program sellers,
they all three went along the corridor to the first row of boxes.
Through the closed doors the music was already audible.

“Natásha, your hair!...” whispered Sónya.

An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before
their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of feminine envy
at Natásha. The curtain had not yet risen and the overture was being
played. Natásha, smoothing her gown, went in with Sónya and sat down,
scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. A sensation she had not
experienced for a long time—that of hundreds of eyes looking at
her bare arms and neck—suddenly affected her both agreeably and
disagreeably and called up a whole crowd of memories, desires and
emotions associated with that feeling.

The two remarkably pretty girls, Natásha and Sónya, with Count Rostóv
who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general
attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natásha’s engagement
to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostóvs had lived in the country
ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancée who was making
one of the best matches in Russia.

Natásha’s looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the country,
and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly pretty.
She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and beauty,
combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her black eyes
looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her delicate arm, bare
to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the box, while, evidently
unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in time to the music,
crumpling her program. “Look, there’s Alénina,” said Sónya,
“with her mother, isn’t it?”

“Dear me, Michael Kirílovich has grown still stouter!” remarked the
count.

“Look at our Anna Mikháylovna—what a headdress she has on!”

“The Karágins, Julie—and Borís with them. One can see at once that
they’re engaged....”

“Drubetskóy has proposed?”

“Oh yes, I heard it today,” said Shinshín, coming into the
Rostóvs’ box.

Natásha looked in the direction in which her father’s eyes were
turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on her
face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck—which Natásha
knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning
over with an ear to Julie’s mouth, was Borís’ handsome smoothly
brushed head. He looked at the Rostóvs from under his brows and said
something, smiling, to his betrothed.

“They are talking about us, about me and him!” thought Natásha.
“And he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn’t trouble
themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of
them.”

Behind them sat Anna Mikháylovna wearing a green headdress and with a
happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their box was
pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natásha knew
so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly remembered all
that had been so humiliating in her morning’s visit.

“What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,
better not think of it—not till he comes back!” she told herself,
and began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in
the stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against
the orchestra rail, stood Dólokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair
brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,
well aware that he was attracting everyone’s attention, yet as much at
ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow’s
most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.

The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sónya and pointed to her
former adorer.

“Do you recognize him?” said he. “And where has he sprung from?”
he asked, turning to Shinshín. “Didn’t he vanish somewhere?”

“He did,” replied Shinshín. “He was in the Caucasus and ran
away from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling
prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah’s brother. Now all the
Moscow ladies are mad about him! It’s ‘Dólokhov the Persian’ that
does it! We never hear a word but Dólokhov is mentioned. They swear
by him, they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet.
Dólokhov and Anatole Kurágin have turned all our ladies’ heads.”

A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string of
large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress
and took a long time settling into her place.

Natásha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls
and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls.
While Natásha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time the lady
looked round and, meeting the count’s eyes, nodded to him and smiled.
She was the Countess Bezúkhova, Pierre’s wife, and the count, who
knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.

“Have you been here long, Countess?” he inquired. “I’ll call,
I’ll call to kiss your hand. I’m here on business and have brought
my girls with me. They say Semënova acts marvelously. Count Pierre
never used to forget us. Is he here?”

“Yes, he meant to look in,” answered Hélène, and glanced
attentively at Natásha.

Count Rostóv resumed his seat.

“Handsome, isn’t she?” he whispered to Natásha.

“Wonderful!” answered Natásha. “She’s a woman one could easily
fall in love with.”

Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the conductor
tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in the stalls,
and the curtain rose.

As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and
all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and all the
women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole attention with
eager curiosity to the stage. Natásha too began to look at it.