BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10
16. CHAPTER XVI
(continued)
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.
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