at was
flattering--quite simply and naturally.

"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I am not
staying here long this time--nor are you--I will try to amuse them. I
have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get to know
you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely smile. "I had
heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard he is getting
married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski, Prince Andrew
Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis, implying that she knew of
his relation to Natasha. To get better acquainted she asked that one
of the young ladies should come into her box for the rest of the
performance, and Natasha moved over to it.

The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles
were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the
walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a queen. The
king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang something badly
and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had been first in white
and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and stood beside the
throne with her hair down. She sang something mournfully, addressing the
queen, but the king waved his arm severely, and men and women with bare
legs came in from both sides and began dancing all together. Then the
violins played very shrilly and merrily and one of the women with thick
bare legs and thin arms, separating from the others, went behind the
wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the middle of the stage, and
began jumping and striking one foot rapidly against the other. In the
stalls everyone clapped and shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went
into a corner of the stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra
struck up more loudly, and this man with bare legs jumped very high and
waved his feet about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty
thousand rubles a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes,
and galleries began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the
man stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men
and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the
sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm
came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the
orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number away,
and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise an