“No; why should you disturb the old fellow?” said the countess. “Besides you wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If you must go, let it be to the Melyukovs’.”

Madame Melyukov was a widow with a family of children of various ages, and a number of tutors and governesses living in her house, four versts from the Rostovs’.

“That’s a good idea, my love,” the old count assented, beginning to be aroused. “Only let me dress up and I’ll go with you. I’ll make Pashette open her eyes.”

But the countess would not agree to the count’s going; for several days he had had a bad leg. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if Luisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies might go to Madame Melyukov’s. Sonya, usually so shy and reticent, was more urgent than any in persuading Luisa Ivanovna not to refuse.

Sonya’s disguise was the best of all. Her moustaches and eyebrows were extraordinarily becoming to her. Every one told her she looked very pretty, and she was in a mood of eager energy unlike her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be sealed, and in her masculine attire she seemed quite another person. Luisa Ivanovna consented to go; and half an hour later four sledges with bells drove up to the steps, their runners crunching, with a clanging sound, over the frozen snow.

Natasha was foremost in setting the tone of holiday gaiety; and that gaiety, reflected from one to another, grew wilder and wilder, and reached its climax when they all went out into the frost, and talking, and calling to one another, laughing and shouting, got into the sledges.

Two of the sledges were the common household sledges; the third was the old count’s, with a trotting horse from Orlov’s famous stud; the fourth, Nikolay’s own, with his own short, shaggy, raven horse in the shafts. Nikolay, in his old lady’s crinoline and a hussar’s cloak belted over it, stood up in the middle of the sledge picking up the reins. It was so light that he could see the metal discs of the harness shining in the moonlight, and the eyes of the horses looking round in alarm at the noise made by the party under the portico of the approach.

Sonya, Natasha, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nikolay’s sledge. In the count’s sledge were Dimmler with his wife and Petya; the other mummers were seated in the other two sledges.

“You go ahead, Zahar!” shouted Nikolay to his father’s coachman, so as to have a chance of overtaking him on the road.

The count’s sledge with Dimmler and the others of his party started forward, its runners creaking as though they were frozen to the snow, and the deep-toned bell clanging. The trace-horses pressed close to the shafts and sticking in the snow kicked it up, hard and glittering as sugar.

Nikolay followed the first sledge: behind him he heard the noise and crunch of the other two. At first they drove at a slow trot along the narrow road. As they drove by the garden, the shadows of the leafless trees often lay right across the road and hid the bright moonlight. But as soon as they were out of their grounds, the snowy plain, glittering like a diamond with bluish lights in it, lay stretched out on all sides, all motionless and bathed in moonlight. Now and again a hole gave the first sledge a jolt; the next was jolted in just the same way, and the next, and the sledges followed one another, rudely breaking the iron-bound stillness.

“A hare’s track, a lot of tracks!” Natasha’s voice rang out in the frost-bound air.

“How light it is, Nikolenka,” said the voice of Sonya.