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Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward
and then back, and between the two rows, which separated, the
Emperor entered to the sounds of music that had immediately struck
up. Behind him walked his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly,
bowing to right and left as if anxious to get the first moments
of the reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue
at that time on account of the words that had been set to it,
beginning: "Alexander, Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish
quite..." The Emperor passed on to the drawing room, the
crowd made a rush for the doors, and several persons with excited
faces hurried there and back again. Then the crowd hastily retired
from the drawing-room door, at which the Emperor reappeared talking
to the hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down
on the ladies, asking them to move aside. Some ladies, with faces
betraying complete forgetfulness of all the rules of decorum,
pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets. The men began
to choose partners and take their places for the polonaise.
Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the
drawing room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time
to the music. The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina;
then came ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya
diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners
and were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for
the polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother
and Sonya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall,
not having been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms
hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly,
and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight
before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery.
She was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great
people whom Peronskaya was pointing out- she had but one thought:
"Is it possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among
the first to dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men
will notice me? They do not even seem to see me, or if they do
they look as if they were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after,
so it's not worth looking at her!' No, it's impossible,"
she thought. "They must know how I long to dance, how splendidly
I dance, and how they would enjoy dancing with me."
The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable
time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's
ears. She wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was
at the other end of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were
standing by themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that
crowd of strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted
by anyone. Prince Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not
recognizing them. The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to
a partner on his arm and looked at Natasha as one looks at a wall.
Boris passed them twice and each time turned away. Berg and his
wife, who were not dancing, came up to them.
This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha- as if
there were nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the
ball. She did not listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her
something about her own green dress.
At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had
danced with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp
ran up to the Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though
as it was they were already close to the wall, and from the gallery
resounded the distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains
of a waltz. The Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute
passed but no one had yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the
Master of Ceremonies, went up to Countess Bezukhova and asked
her to dance. She smilingly raised her hand and laid it on his
shoulder without looking at him. The aide-de-camp, an adept in
his art, grasping his partner firmly round her waist, with confident
deliberation started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of
the circle, then at the corner of the room he caught Helene's
left hand and turned her, the only sound audible, apart from the
ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of the spurs on
his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his partner's
velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled round.
Natasha gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not
she who was dancing that first turn of the waltz.
Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel,
wearing stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and
bright in the front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs.
Baron Firhoff was talking to him about the first sitting of the
Council of State to be held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely
connected with Speranski and participating in the work of the
legislative commission, could give reliable information about
that sitting, concerning which various rumors were current. But
not listening to what Firhoff was saying, he was gazing now at
the sovereign and now at the men intending to dance who had not
yet gathered courage to enter the circle.
Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's
presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked
to dance.
Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova,
here. Ask her," he said.
"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!"
he added, turning to the baron, "we will finish this conversation
elsewhere- at a ball one must dance." He stepped forward
in the direction Pierre indicated. The despairing, dejected expression
of Natasha's face caught his eye. He recognized her, guessed her
feelings, saw that it was her debut, remembered her conversation
at the window, and with an expression of pleasure on his face
approached Countess Rostova.
"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said
the countess, with heightened color.
"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if
the countess remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low
and courteous bow quite belying Peronskaya's remarks about his
rudeness, and approaching Natasha he held out his arm to grasp
her waist before he had completed his invitation. He asked her
to waltz. That tremulous expression on Natasha's face, prepared
either for despair or rapture, suddenly brightened into a happy,
grateful, childlike smile.
"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened
happy little girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the
threatened tears, as she raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder.
They were the second couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew
was one of the best dancers of his day and Natasha danced exquisitely.
Her little feet in their white satin dancing shoes did their work
swiftly, lightly, and independently of herself, while her face
beamed with ecstatic happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck
were not beautiful- compared to Helene's her shoulders looked
thin and her bosom undeveloped. But Helene seemed, as it were,
hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had
scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl exposed for
the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed had she
not been assured that this was absolutely necessary.
Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly
as possible from the political and clever talk which everyone
addressed to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint
he disliked, caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and
had chosen Natasha because Pierre pointed her out to him and because
she was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely
had he embraced that slender supple figure and felt her stirring
so close to him and smiling so near him than the wine of her charm
rose to his head, and he felt himself revived and rejuvenated
when after leaving her he stood breathing deeply and watching
the other dancers.
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