《War And Peace》　Book8 　CHAPTER IX
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

THE STAGE consisted of a boarded floor in the middle, with painted cardboard
representing trees at the sides, and linen stretched over the boards at the
back. In the middle of the stage there were sitting maidens in red bodices and
white skirts. An excessively stout woman in a white silk dress was sitting apart
on a low bench with green cardboard fixed on the back of it. They were all
singing something. When they had finished their song, the woman in white moved
towards the prompter's box, and a man, with his stout legs encased in silk
tights, with a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing and waving
his arms.

The man in the tights sang alone, then she sang alone. The both paused, while
the music played, and the man fumbled with the hand of the woman in white,
obviously waiting for the bar at which he was to begin singing with her. They
sang a duet, and every one in the theatre began clapping and shouting, while the
man and woman on the stage, supposed to represent lovers, began bowing with
smiles and gesticulations.

After the country, and in her serious mood, Natasha felt it all grotesque and
extraordinary. She could not follow the opera; she could not even listen to the
music: she saw nothing but painted cardboard and strangely dressed-up men and
women, talking, singing, and moving strangely about in the bright light. She
knew what it all was meant to represent; but it was all so grotesquely false and
unnatural that she felt alternately ashamed and amused at the actors. She looked
about her at the faces of the spectators, seeking in them signs of the same
irony and bewilderment that she was feeling herself. But all the faces were
watching what was passing on the stage, and expressed nothing but an affected-so
Natasha thought-rapture. "I suppose it is meant to be like this!" thought
Natasha. She looked alternately at the rows of pomaded masculine heads in the
stalls, and at the naked women in the boxes, especially at her next neighbour
Ellen, who, quite undressed, sat gazing intently, with a quiet and serene smile.
at the stage, and basking in the bright light that flooded the theatre, and the
warm air, heated by the crowd. Natasha began gradually to pass into a state of
intoxication she had not experienced for a long while. She lost all sense of
what she was and where she was and what was going on before her eyes. She gazed
and dreamed, and the strangest ideas flashed unexpectedly and disconnectedly
into her mind. At one moment the idea occurred to her to leap over the
footlights and sing that air the actress was singing; then she felt inclined to
hook her fan into an old gentleman sitting near her, or to bend over to Ellen
and tickle her.

At a moment when there was a lull on the stage before the beginning of a
song, the door opening to the stalls creaked on the side nearest the Rostovs'
box, and there was the sound of a man's footsteps. "Here he is, Kuragin!"
whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezuhov turned smiling to the new-comer. Natasha
looked in the direction of the Countess Bezuhov's eyes, and saw an exceedingly
handsome adjutant coming towards their box with a confident, but yet courteous,
bearing. It was Anatole Kuragin, whom she had seen long before, and noticed at
the Petersburg ball. He was now wearing an adjutant's uniform, with one
epaulette and a shoulder knot. He walked with a jaunty strut, which would have
been ridiculous if he had not been so handsome, and if his good-looking face had
not expressed such simple-hearted satisfaction and good spirits. Although the
performance was going on he walked lightly, without haste, along the carpeted
corridor, holding his scented, handsome head high, and accompanied by a slight
clank of spurs and sword. Glancing at Natasha, he went up to his sister, laid
his hand in a close-fitting glove on the edge of her box, nodded his head at
her, and, bending down, asked her a question, with a motion towards
Natasha.

"Very, very charming!" he said, obviously speaking of Natasha. She did not
exactly hear the words, but divined them from the movement of his lips. Then he
went on to the front row and sat down beside Dolohov, giving a friendly and
careless nudge with his elbow to the man whom other people treated with such
punctilio. With a merry wink, he smiled at him, and leaned with his foot against
the footlights.

"How like the brother is to his sister!" said the count. "And how handsome
they both are!"

Shinshin began telling the count in an undertone some story of an intrigue of
Kuragin's in Moscow, to which Natasha listened, simply because he had said of
her "very charming."

The first act was over; every one stood up in the stalls, changed places, and
began going out and coming in.

Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations very simply,
and lifting his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile, gave Natasha and Sonya his
fiancée's message, begging them to come to her wedding, and went away. Natasha,
with a gay and coquettish smile, talked to him and congratulated him on his
approaching marriage-the very Boris she had once been in love with. In the
condition of emotional intoxication in which she found herself everything seemed
simple and natural.

Ellen sat in her nakedness close by her, and smiled on all alike, and just
such a smile Natasha bestowed on Boris.

Ellen's box was filled and surrounded on the side of the stalls by the most
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed vying with one another in their
desire to show every one that they knew her.

All throughout that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolohov in front of the
footlights staring at the Rostovs' box. Natasha knew he was talking about her,
and that afforded her satisfaction. She even turned so that he could see her
profile from what she believed to be the most becoming angle. Before the
beginning of the second act she observed in the stalls the figure of Pierre,
whom the Rostovs had not seen since their arrival. His face looked sad, and he
had grown stouter since Natasha had seen him last. He walked up to the front
rows, not noticing any one. Anatole went up to him, and began saying something
to him, with a look and a gesture towards the Rostovs' box. Pierre looked
pleased at seeing Natasha, and walked hurriedly along the rows of stalls towards
their box. Leaning on his elbow, he talked smiling to Natasha for a long while.
While she was talking to Pierre, Natasha heard a man's voice speaking in
Countess Bezuhov's box, and something told her it was Kuragin. She looked round
and met his eyes. He looked her straight in the eyes, almost smiling, with a
look of such warmth and admiration that it seemed strange to be so near him, to
look at him like that, to be so certain that he admired her, and not to be
acquainted with him.

In the second act there was scenery representing monuments, and a hold in the
drop at the back that represented the moon, and shades were put over the
footlights, and trumpets and bassoons began playing, and a number of people came
in on the right and on the left wearing black cloaks. These people began waving
their arms, and in their hands they had something of the nature of a dagger.
Then some more people ran in and began dragging away the woman who had been in
white but who was now in a blue dress. They did not drag her away at once; they
spent a long while singing with her; but finally they did drag her away, and
behind the scenes they struck something metallic three times, and then all knelt
down and began singing a prayer. All these performances were interrupted several
times by the enthusiastic shouts of the spectators.

During that act, every time Natasha glanced towards the stalls, she saw
Anatole Kuragin, with one arm flung across the back of his chair, staring at
her. It pleased her to see that he was so captivated by her, and it never
entered her head that there could be anything amiss in it.

When the second act was over, Countess Bezuhov got up, turned towards the
Rostovs' box (the whole of her bosom was completely exposed), with her gloved
little finger beckoned the old count to her, and taking no notice of the men who
were thronging about her box, began with an amiable smile talking to him.

"Oh, do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," she said. "All the
town is singing their praises, and I don't know them."

Natasha got up and curtseyed to the magnificent countess. Natasha was so
delighted at the praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with
pleasure.

"I quite want to become a Moscow resident myself," said Ellen. "What a shame
of you to bury such pearls in the country!"

Countess Bezuhov had some right to her reputation of being a fascinating
woman. She could say what she did not think, especially what was flattering,
with perfect simplicity and naturalness.

"No, dear count, you must let me help to entertain your daughters, though I'm
not here now for very long, nor you either. But I'll do my best to amuse them. I
have heard a great deal about you in Petersburg, and wanted to know you," she
said to Natasha, with her unvarying beautiful smile. "I have heard of you, too,
from my page, Drubetskoy-you have heard he is to be married-and from my
husband's friend, Bolkonsky, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky," she said, with peculiar
emphasis, by which she meant to signify that she knew in what relation he stood
to Natasha. She asked that one of the young ladies might be allowed to sit
through the rest of the performance in her box that they might become better
acquainted, and Natasha moved into it.

In the third act the scene was a palace in which a great many candles were
burning, and pictures were hanging on the walls, representing knights with
beards. In the middle stood a man and a woman; probably meant for a king and a
queen. The king waved his right hand, and, obviously nervous, sang something
very badly, and sat down on a crimsonthrone. The actress, who had been in white
at first and then in blue, was now in nothing but a smock, and had let her hair
down. She was standing near the throne, singing something very mournful,
addressed to the queen. But the king waved his hand sternly, and from the sides
there came in men and women with bare legs who began dancing all together. Then
the violins played very shrilly and merrily: one of the actresses, with thick,
bare legs and thin arms, leaving the rest, went to the side to set straight her
bodice, then walked into the middle of the stage and began skipping into the air
and kicking one leg very rapidly with the other. Every one in the stalls clapped
their hands and roared "bravo!" Then one man stood alone at one corner of the
stage. The cymbals and trumpets struck up more loudly in the orchestra, and this
man began leaping very high in the air and rapidly waving his legs. (This was
Duport, who earned sixty thousand a year by this accomplishment.) Every one in
the boxes and in the stalls began clapping and shouting with all their might,
and the man stood still and began smiling and bowing in all directions. Then
other men and women with bare legs danced; then again the king shouted something
to music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm came on, chromatic
scales and chords with the diminishing sevenths could be heard in the orchestra,
and they all ran off, dragging one of the performers again behind the scenes,
and the curtain dropped. Again a fearful uproar of applause arose among the
spectators, and all began screaming with rapturous faces:

"Duport! Duport! Duport!"

Natasha did not now feel this strange. She looked about her with pleasure,
smiling joyfully.

"Isn't Duport admirable?" said Ellen, turning to her.

"Oh yes," answered Natasha.