第196页 / 共3800页

"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite

forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent

her curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her

laughter.

And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure

at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and

stout partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time,

straightened his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently

with his foot, and, by a smile that broadened his round face more

and more, prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon

as the provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat

resembling those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all

the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic

serfs-the men on one side and the women on the other-who with

beaming faces had come to see their master making merry.