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 crimson throne. 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.


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