Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/123

Rh "Quelle charmante enfant!" Sónichka smiled, blushed, and looked so sweet, that I, too, blushed, looking at her.

"I hope you will not be lonely at my house, dear girl," said grandmother, raising her face by the chin. "I ask you to have a good time and dance as much as possible. Here are already one lady and two gentlemen" she added, speaking to Madame Valákhin, and touching my hand.

This way of connecting me with herself was so pleasing that it made me blush once more.

As I felt that my bashfulness was increasing, and hearing the rumble of an approaching carriage, I thought it necessary to withdraw. In the antechamber I found Princess Kornákov with a son and an incredible number of daughters. Her daughters had all the same looks, they all resembled the princess, and they were all homely, so that not one of them arrested the attention. After doffing their cloaks and boas, they suddenly began to speak in thin voices, fluttered about, and laughed at something, no doubt because there were so many of them. Etienne was a boy of about fifteen years of age, tall, flabby, with a washed-out face, sunken, blue-ringed eyes, and enormous arms and legs for his age. He was awkward, and his voice was uneven and harsh, but he seemed to be satisfied with himself, and was just the kind of boy I had expected of one who was whipped with switches.

We stood quite a while facing and examining each other, without saying a word. Then we moved up to each other and, it seems, were about to kiss, but having taken another look at one another, somehow changed our minds. When the dresses of all his sisters had rustled by us, I asked him, in order to start a conversation, whether they had not been crowded in the carriage.

"I do not know," he answered, carelessly. "You know, I never travel in the carriage, because, the moment I seat myself in it, I get a sick headache, and mamma knows that. When we go out for the evening, I always take my