ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 6

      PRINCESS BETSY went home without waiting for the end of the last act. She had scarcely time to go to her dressing-room, put powder on her long pale face and rub it off again, smarten herself up, and order tea to be served in the big drawing-room, before one carriage after another began to arrive at the door of her immense house on the Great Morskaya. The visitors passed beneath the broad portico, and the massive hall porter, who in the mornings read a newspaper behind the glass panes of the front door for the edification of passers-by, now noiselessly opened this enormous door to admit them.

      Almost at one and the same time the hostess, her hair rearranged and her face freshened up, entered at one door and the visitors at another of the large, dark-walled drawing-room, with its thick carpets and brightly-lit table, shining in the candle-light with white table-cloth, silver samovar and translucent china.

      The hostess sat down beside the samovar and took off her gloves. The chairs being moved by the aid of unobtrusive footmen, the company settled down, separating into two circles: one with the hostess round the samovar, the other, at the opposite end of the room, round the wife of an ambassador, a beautiful woman with black sharply-outlined eyebrows, in a black velvet dress. The conversation in both circles, as always happens at first, hesitated for a few minutes, was interrupted by greetings, recognitions, and offers of tea, and seemed to be seeking something to settle on.

      ‘She is wonderfully good as an actress; one sees that she has studied Kaulbach,’ remarked an attaché in the circle round the ambassador’s wife. ‘Did you notice how she fell …’

      ‘Oh, please don’t let us talk about Nilsson! It’s impossible to say anything new about her,’ said a stout, red-faced, fair-haired lady who wore an old silk dress and had no eyebrows and no chignon: This was the Princess Myagkaya, notorious for her simplicity and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed l’enfant terrible. The Princess Myagkaya was seated midway between the two circles, listening and taking part in the conversation of both. ‘This very same sentence about Kaulbach has been repeated to me by three different people to-day, as if by arrangement. That sentence, I don’t know why, seemed to please them very much.’ The conversation was broken by this remark, and it became necessary to find another topic.

      ‘Tell us something amusing but not malicious,’ said the ambassador’s wife, a great adept at that kind of elegant conversation which the English call ‘small-talk,’ turning to the attaché, who was also at a loss what subject to start.

      ‘People say that is very difficult, and that only what is malicious is amusing,’ he began with a smile. ‘But I will try, if you will give me a theme. The theme is everything. Once one has a theme, it is easy to embroider on it. I often think that the famous talkers of the last century would find it difficult to talk cleverly nowadays. We are all so tired of the clever things …’

      ‘That was said long ago,’ interrupted the ambassador’s wife, laughingly.

      The conversation had begun very prettily, but just because it was too pretty it languished again. They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource — slander.

      ‘Don’t you think there is something Louis Quinze about Tushkevich?’ said the attaché, glancing at a handsome, fair-haired young man who stood by the tea-table.

      ‘Oh yes! He matches the drawing-room; that is why he comes here so often!’

      This conversation did not flag, since it hinted at what could not be spoken of in this room, namely, at the relations existing between Tushkevich and their hostess.

      Around the hostess and the samovar, the conversation, after flickering for some time in the same way between the three inevitable themes: the latest public news, the theatre, and criticism of one’s neighbour, also caught on when it got to the last of these themes — slander.

      ‘Have you heard? That that Maltyshcheva woman also — not the daughter but the mother — is having a diable rose [shocking pink] costume made for herself?’

      ‘You don’t mean to say so! How delicious!’

      ‘I wonder that she, with her common sense — for she is not stupid — does not see how ridiculous she makes herself.’

      Every one had something disparaging to say about the unfortunate Maltyshcheva, and the conversation began crackling merrily like a kindling bonfire.

      The Princess Betsy’s husband, a fat, good-natured man, an enthusiastic collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, entered the drawing-room before going to his club. Stepping silently on the thick carpet, he approached the Princess Myagkaya.

      ‘How did you like Nilsson?’ he inquired.

      ‘Oh, how can you steal on one like that? How you frightened me!’ said she in reply. ‘Please don’t talk to me about the opera — you know nothing of music. I had better descend to your level and talk about your majolica and engravings. Come now, tell me about the treasures you have picked up lately at the rag fair!’

      ‘Shall I show you? But you don’t understand them.’

      ‘Yes, let me see them. I have learnt from those — what is their name? — the bankers… . They have some splendid engravings. They showed them to us.’

      ‘What? Have you been to the Schuzburgs?’ asked the hostess from her place by the samovar.

      ‘I have, ma chère. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and I was told that the sauce alone at that dinner cost a thousand roubles,’ said the Princess Myagkaya loudly, feeling that everybody was listening. ‘And a very nasty sauce it was too, something green! We had to invite them, and I gave them a sauce that cost eighty-five kopeks and satisfied every one. I can’t afford thousand-rouble sauces.’

      ‘She is unique!’ said the hostess.

      ‘Wonderful!’ said some one else.

      The effect produced by the Princess Myagkaya’s words was always the same; and the secret of that effect lay in the fact that although she often — as at that moment — spoke not quite to the point, her words were simple and had a meaning. In the Society in which she lived words of that kind produced the effect of a most witty joke. The Princess Myagkaya did not understand why her words had such an effect, but was aware that they did and availed herself of it.

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