rms, and bowing.

After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, all this
seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow the opera
nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted cardboard and the
queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strangely in
that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to represent, but
it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed
for the actors and then amused at them. She looked at the faces of the
audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she
herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was happening
on the stage, and expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I
suppose it has to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in
turn at the rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the
seminude women in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box,
who--apparently quite unclothed--sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not
taking her eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded
the whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little
by little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she
was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought, the
strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through her
mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box and
singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to touch with
her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then to lean over to
Helene and tickle her.

At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, a door
leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box creaked, and
the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's Kuragin!" whispered
Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the newcomer, and
Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an exceptionally
handsome adjutant approaching their box with a self-assured yet
courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom she had seen and
noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was now in an adjutant's
uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. He moved with a restrained
swagger which would have been ridiculous had he not been so good-looking
and had his handsome face not worn such an expression of good-humored
complacency and gaiety. Thoug