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- Author: graf Leo Tolstoy
Book online «War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (nice books to read .txt) 📖». Author graf Leo Tolstoy
Natásha blushed and laughed.
“Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised at?”
In the midst of the third Ă©cossaise there was a clatter of chairs being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Márya DmĂtrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First came Márya DmĂtrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Márya DmĂtrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last figure of the Ă©cossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing the first violin:
“Semën! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?”
This was the count’s favorite dance, which he had danced in his youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)
“Look at Papa!” shouted Natásha to the whole company, and quite forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her laughter.
And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout partner, Márya DmĂtrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more, prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs—the men on one side and the women on the other—who with beaming faces had come to see their master making merry.
“Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!” loudly remarked the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the countess), and only her stern but handsome face really joined in the dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count’s plump figure, in Márya DmĂtrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more and more into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Márya DmĂtrievna produced no less impression by slight exertions—the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp her foot—which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment’s attention to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were watching the count and Márya DmĂtrievna. Natásha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them to “look at Papa!” though as it was they never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round Márya DmĂtrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led by Natásha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
“That’s how we used to dance in our time, ma chère,” said the count.
“That was a Daniel Cooper!” exclaimed Márya DmĂtrievna, tucking up her sleeves and puffing heavily.
While in the Rostóvs’ ballroom the sixth anglaise was being danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezúkhov had a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man, preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important order for an expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the count’s health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to the celebrated grandee of Catherine’s court, Count Bezúkhov.
The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their bows and trying to escape as quickly as possible from the glances fixed on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince VasĂli, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days, escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times in low tones.
When the Military Governor had gone, Prince VasĂli sat down all alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the other, leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his hand. After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the eldest princess.
Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying man’s room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy at his door, which creaked slightly when opened.
“The limits of human life ... are fixed and may not be o’erpassed,” said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was listening naïvely to his words.
“I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?” asked the lady, adding the priest’s clerical title, as if she had no opinion of her own on the subject.
“Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament,” replied the priest, passing his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his bald head.
“Who was that? The Military Governor himself?” was being asked at the other side of the room. “How young-looking he is!”
“Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction.”
“I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times.”
The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes red from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a table.
“Beautiful,” said the doctor in answer to a remark about the weather. “The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow one feels as if one were
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