The Tsarevitch did his best not to hear; yet stray words would reach him like authoritative commands.
“The sale of mead and oil in churches must be finally forbidden, the burning of tapers before icons placed outside the churches must be stopped. Chapels must be closed up; no new relics to be announced. Mendicants to be taken into custody and relentlessly beaten with rods; no miracles to be invented.”
The wind rattled at the window shutters; a draught passed through the room, and the candles flickered. A countless host of enemies seemed to be besieging and breaking into the house; and in the words of Theodosius, Alexis felt the same inimical force.
It was the attack of a storm from the west.
The walls of the dancing-room were hung with woven tapestry and pier glasses; chandeliers with wax candles supplied the light. Musicians with deafening wind instruments were placed on a small platform. The ceiling, with its allegorical representation of “A journey to the Isle of Love,” was so low that the naked Cupids with their fat calves and legs were almost brushed by the wigs of the dancers.
The ladies in the intervals between the dances sat as if dumb; they seemed dull and stupefied; in dancing, they hopped round like wax figures; they answered all questions in monosyllables, and were quite scared by compliments. Daughters seemed tied to their mother’s skirts; while the mother’s faces clearly expressed: we would rather our daughters were drowned than here.
William Mons was repeating a compliment, culled from a German book of savoir-faire, to that same Nastenka, who was in love with a naval officer and had been crying over a tender missive at the Venus Festival in the Summer Garden.
“Through repeatedly meeting you, fair angel, such a desire to know you better has arisen within me, that, unable to conceal it any longer, I am compelled to lay it deferentially before you. I heartily wish that you, my lady, might have found in me a person whose habits and agreeable conversation could satisfy you; a person whose behaviour and conversation might not displease you; but since nature has given me no advantages, deign to accept instead my devoted faithfulness and service!”
Nastenka was not listening. The buzz of monotonously sounding words had made her sleepy; later on, she complained to her aunt, that though her partner seemed to speak Russian, yet with the best intention she could not make out a single word.
The Secretary to the French Ambassador, George Proskóurov, son of a Moscow clerk, who had lived for some time in Paris, and had become there a “Monsieur George,” a perfect “petit maître” and “galant homme,” was singing to the ladies a modern ditty about the coiffeur Frison, and the street-girl, Dodun: