and easy manner improper and in
bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to astonish them all by
something unusual, something they would have to accept as the regular
thing in the capital though new to them in the provinces.

All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and
pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials.
With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other men's
wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's side and
treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, as if,
without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and the lady
would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem to share that
conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostov. But the
latter's good-natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even he
involuntarily yielded to Nicholas' good humor. Toward the end of the
evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and animated, the
husband's became more and more melancholy and solemn, as though there
were but a given amount of animation between them and as the wife's
share increased the husband's diminished.

CHAPTER V

Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending closely
over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments with a
smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the position of his
legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor of perfume, and
admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines of his legs in
their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the blonde lady that he
wished to run away with a certain lady here in Voronezh.

"Which lady?"

"A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes" (Nicholas looked at his
partner) "are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure" (he glanced
at her shoulders) "like Diana's...."

The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking
about.

"Ah, Nikita Ivanych!" cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if wishing
Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to tell him of his intention
to elope with a blonde lady.

The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor's good-natured
wife came up with a look of disapproval.

"Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas," said she, pronouncing the
name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna Ignatyevna was a very
important person. "Come, Nicholas! You know you let me call you so?"

"Oh, ye