War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой

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long and putting their wallets and purses back into their pockets, came out through the doors into the hall. At the front came Marya Dmitrievna and the count, both with cheerful faces. The count offered his curved arm to Marya Dmitrievna in a gesture of facetious politeness, almost balletically. He drew himself erect and his face was illuminated by an extraordinary smile of rakish cunning, and as soon as they had finished dancing the final figure of the écossaise, he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up into the gallery, to the first violin.

      “Semyon! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?”

      This was the count’s favourite dance, danced by him in his youth (strictly speaking, the Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise).

      “Look at papa,” cried Natasha so loudly that everyone could hear, bending her curly head down to her knees and setting the entire hall ringing with her peals of laughter. And indeed, everyone who was there in the hall gazed with a smile of joy at the jolly little old man beside his stately lady, Marya Dmitrievna, who was taller than he, as he curved his arms and shook them in time, straightened his shoulders, turned out his feet, tapping them lightly and, with the smile spreading further and further across his round face, prepared his audience for what was to come. As soon as the jolly, challenging strains of the Daniel Cooper began to ring out like a merry vagabond song, all the doors of the hall were suddenly crammed full, by male faces on one side and, on the other, by the smiling female faces of all the servants who had come out to look at their master making merry.

      “Our old father! What an eagle he is!” said a nanny from one door. The count danced well and he knew it, but his lady did not know how to dance at all and had no wish to dance well. Her massive body was held rigidly upright with her powerful arms lowered (she had handed her reticule to the countess) and only her severe but beautiful face danced. Everything that was expressed in the whole of the count’s rotund figure Mariya Dmitrievna expressed only in the ever brighter and wider smile on her face and her twitching nose. But while the count, working himself up more and more, captivated his audience with the sudden surprise of his nimble arabesques and the light capering of his soft legs, Marya Dmitrievna, by taking the very slightest pains in moving her shoulders or curving her arms, in turning and stamping her feet, produced no less an impression for her efforts, which were appreciated by everyone in view of her corpulence and customary severity. The dance grew more and more lively. The other dancers were unable to attract the slightest attention to themselves, and gave up trying. All eyes were riveted on the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha tugged at the sleeves and dresses of everyone around her, who in any case already had their eyes fixed on the dancers, and demanded that they watch her dear papa. In the pauses in the dance the count struggled to catch his breath, waving his hand to the musicians and shouting for them to play faster. Quicker and quicker, ever more jauntily, the count twirled this way and that, hurtling around Marya Dmitrievna, now on his tiptoes, now on his heels and finally, having swung his lady back to her place, he took the final bow, drawing his supple leg back behind him, lowering his perspiring head with its smiling face and stretching out his curved right arm in a broad sweep amid thunderous applause and laughter, especially from Natasha. Both dancers stopped, struggling to catch their breath and wiping their faces with fine lawn handkerchiefs.

       DANCING THE DANIEL COOPER Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866

      “That’s how they used to dance in our time, ma chère,” said the count.

      “Hurrah for Daniel Cooper!” puffed Marya Dmitrievna, breathing out long and hard.

      XXVIII

      While at the Rostovs’ house they were dancing the sixth anglaise to weary musicians playing out of tune and the weary footmen and chefs were preparing supper, discussing among themselves how the masters were able to keep on eating – they had only just finished their tea and now it was supper time again – at this very hour, Count Bezukhov suffered his sixth stroke, and with the doctors declaring there was no hope of recovery, the sick man was given mute confession and communion, and preparations began to be made for extreme unction, filling the house with the bustle and anxious anticipation usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates, concealing themselves from the carriages that were arriving, a throng of undertakers waited in anticipation of a rich commission for the count’s funeral. The commander-in-chief of Moscow, who had repeatedly sent his adjutants to enquire after the count’s condition, came himself that evening to take his leave of one of the representatives of the age of Catherine the Great. The count was said to be seeking someone with his eyes, asking for them. A mounted servant was sent for both Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna.

      The magnificent reception room was full. Everyone rose respectfully when the commander-in-chief, who had spent about half an hour alone with the sick man, emerged, barely responding to their bows and trying to walk as quickly as possible past the glances trained on him by the doctors, clergymen and relatives. Prince Vasily, grown thinner and paler over the last few days, walked beside him, and everyone watched the commander-in-chief shake his hand and repeat something quietly to him several times.

      Having seen the commander-in-chief out, Prince Vasily sat down on his own on a chair in the hall and crossed one leg high over the other, leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his eyes with his hand. Everyone could see he was suffering and no one approached. After sitting in this way for some time he stood up and, walking with unusual haste, glancing around with eyes that seemed either angry or frightened, went down the long corridor to the rear of the house to see the eldest princess.

      The people in the dimly lit room talked between themselves in a faltering whisper, falling silent and glancing round with eyes full of questioning anticipation at the door leading to the dying man’s chambers every time it gave out a faint creak as someone came out or went in.

      “Man’s span,” said an old man, a clergyman, to a lady who had sat beside him and was listening to him naïvely. “Even as thy span is fixed, thou shalt not exceed it.”

      “I wonder, isn’t it too late to administer extreme unction?” asked the woman, adding an ecclesiastical title, as if she had no opinion of her own on this account.

      “It is a great mystery, madame,” replied the clergyman, running his hands over his bald patch, over which several strands of greying hair had been carefully combed.

      “Who’s that? Was that the commander-in-chief himself?” someone asked at the other end of the room. “How young he looks …”

      “And he’s over sixty! Did they say the count can’t recognise anyone? They wanted to administer extreme unction.”

      “I knew of one man who had extreme unction seven times.”

      The second princess simply came out of the sick man’s room with tearful eyes and sat beside Lorrain, the famous young French doctor, who was sitting in a graceful pose next to a portrait of Catherine the Great, leaning his elbows on the table.

      “Excellent,” said the doctor, replying to a question about the weather today, “excellent weather, but then, my princess, Moscow is so like the countryside.”

      “Yes indeed, is it not?” said the princess, sighing. “Well, can he have something to drink?”

      Lorrain pondered the question.

      “Has he taken his medicine?”

      “Yes.”

      The doctor glanced at his Bréquet watch.

      “Take a glass of boiled water and add a pinch” (with his slim fingers he showed her what a pinch meant) “of cream of tartar.”

      “It has nefer happent,” said a German doctor to an adjutant, “that anyvone has surfifed a third stroke.”

      “And how full of life he was!”

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