“Look at papa,” Natasha shouted to the whole ballroom (completely forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up), bending her curly head to her knees and dissolving into her ringing laughter for the whole ballroom to hear.
Indeed, all who were in the ballroom looked with smiles of joy at the merry old man, who, beside his stately partner, Marya Dmitrievna, who was taller than he, rounded his arms, shook them in time to the music, squared his shoulders, flexed his legs, stamped slightly, and, the smile widening more and more on his round face, prepared the spectators for what was to come. As soon as the merry, provocative sounds of “Daniel Cooper,” resembling a rollicking trepak,39 rang out, all the doors of the ballroom suddenly filled with the smiling faces of the servants—the men on one side, the women on the other—who came to watch their master’s merrymaking.
“Look at the old dear! An eagle!” the nanny said loudly from one door.
The count danced well and knew it, but his partner could not and would not dance well at all. Her enormous body stood straight, her powerful arms hung down (she had given her reticule to the countess); only her stern but handsome face danced. What was expressed in the whole round figure of the count, in Marya Dmitrievna was expressed in her ever more smiling face and ever more thrust-up nose. On the other hand, if the count, who got himself going more and more, fascinated his spectators by his unexpectedly deft capers and the light leaps of his supple legs, Marya Dmitrievna, by the slightest exertion in moving her shoulders or rounding her arms while turning or stamping, produced no less of an impression by its merit, which everyone appreciated in view of her corpulence and perpetual severity. The dance became more and more lively. The other couples could not draw attention to themselves for a minute and did not even try to. All were taken up with the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha pulled everyone present by the sleeve or the dress, demanding that they look at papa, though even without that they never took their eyes off the dancers. The count, during the pauses in the dance, panted heavily, waved and shouted to the musicians to play faster. More and more quickly, more and more dashingly the count deployed himself, now on tiptoe, now on his heels, racing around Marya Dmitrievna, and finally, returning his partner to her seat, he performed the last step, raising his supple leg behind him, bending down his sweating head with its smiling face, and waving his rounded right arm amidst the thunder of applause and laughter, especially from Natasha. The two dancers stopped, breathing heavily and wiping their faces with cambric handkerchiefs.
“That’s how people danced in our time, ma chère,” said the count.
“Ah, what a Daniel Cooper!” said Marya Dmitrievna, letting out a long, deep breath and pushing up her sleeves.
XVIII
Just as the sixth anglaise was being danced in the Rostovs’ ballroom to the sounds of the weary, out-of-tune musicians and the weary servants and cooks were preparing supper, Count Bezukhov had his sixth stroke. The doctors declared that there was no hope of recovery; the sick man was given a blank confession40 and communion; preparations for extreme unction were made, and the house was filled with the bustle and anxiety of expectation usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond the gate, avoiding the carriages that drove up, undertakers crowded in anticipation of a rich order for the count’s funeral. The commander in chief of Moscow, who had constantly been sending adjutants to ask after the count’s health, came in person that evening to take leave of Catherine’s celebrated courtier, Count Bezukhov.
The magnificent reception room was filled. Everyone rose deferentially when the commander in chief, having spent about half an hour alone with the sick man, came out, responding slightly to the bows and trying to go quickly past the looks that doctors, clergymen, and relations directed at him. Prince Vassily, grown thin and pale during those days, accompanied the commander in chief and quietly repeated something to him several times.
Having seen the commander in chief off, Prince Vassily sat by himself on a chair in the hall, his legs crossed high up, his elbow resting on his knee, his hand over his eyes. Having sat like that for some time, he got up and, with unhabitually hurried steps, looking around with frightened eyes, went down the long corridor to the rear half of the house, to the eldest princess.
Those who were in the dimly lit room talked together in broken whispers, and fell silent each time, turning with eyes full of inquiry and expectation to the door which led to the dying man’s room and which made a faint noise whenever someone went in or came out.
“A limit has been set,” said a little old man, a clerical person, to a lady who sat down beside him and listened to him naïvely, “a limit has been set to human life, which cannot be overstepped.”
“I wonder if it’s not too late to give extreme unction?” the lady asked, adding his clerical title, as if she had no opinion on the subject.
“It is a great sacrament, my dear,” the clerical person replied, passing his hand over his bald head, which had several strands of half-gray hair combed over it.
“Who was that? The commander in chief himself?” someone asked at the other end of the room. “What a youthful man!…”
“He’s in his sixties! Well, so they say the count no longer recognizes anyone? Do they mean to give him extreme unction?”
“I knew a man who received extreme unction seven times.”
The second princess came out of the sick man’s room with tearful eyes and sat down next to Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a table.
“Très beau,” the doctor said in reply to a question about the weather, “très beau, princesse, et puis, à Moscou on se croit à la campagne.”*116
“N’est-ce-pas?”†117 said the princess, sighing. “So he’s allowed to drink?”
Lorrain pondered.
“Has he taken his medicine?”
“Yes.”
The doctor looked at his Breguet.41
“Take a glass of boiled water and put in une pincée” (with his slender fingers he showed what une pincée meant) “de cremortartari…”‡118
“Dere hass been no occasion,” a German doctor said to an adjutant, “dat one remains alife after a second shtroke.”
“And he was such a fresh man!” said the adjutant. “And to whom will all that wealth go?” he added in a whisper.
“Dere vill be no lack of seekers,” the German said, smiling.
Everyone looked at the door again: it creaked, and the second princess, having prepared the drink prescribed by Lorrain, carried it to the sick man. The German doctor went over to Lorrain.
“He may still last until tomorrow morning?” the German asked in poorly pronounced French.
Lorrain, compressing his lips, wagged his finger sternly and negatively in front of his nose.
“Tonight, no later,” he said softly, with a decent smile of self-satisfaction at being able to clearly understand and explain the patient’s condition, and walked away.
Meanwhile, Prince Vassily had opened the door to the princess’s room.
The room was in semi-darkness, only two icon lamps burned before the icons, and there was a good smell of incense and flowers. The whole room was filled with small furniture: little chiffoniers, cupboards, tables. Behind a screen the white covers of a high featherbed could be seen. A little dog barked.
“Ah, it’s you, mon cousin?”
She got up and straightened her hair, which was always, even now, so extraordinarily smooth that it seemed varnished and of one piece with her head.