Her waist, perhaps a little too slender, is rather high. You knew how delicately lovely her waist would have been if she had cared to lace it in, for the velvet gown moulded the form in a way that is only possible when there is direct contact with the flesh beneath. The thought that that form could emerge from its sheath like a cold, pure lily sent the blood surging to one's brain.
Among all those faces, on which wine had already begun to leave its purple traces, that pale statue, half unrobed, was miraculously white and pure. Her lips were rouged, her eyes darkened, and, to tell the truth, her nails were unnaturally pink. But you felt she made light of these adventitious aids on which others rely for beauty. You could imagine her smiling at resorting to them. She only uses them to show that she can just as well dispense with them.
The smile which hovered on her pale face was set, artificial. A slave to etiquette, she wore the appropriate official mien. Any one who watched her closely could the better observe an occasional emotion, dead at birth, which for a brief moment disturbed the grave, self-imposed mask. I knew that such an emotion must focus as many impulses as the colours in a prism. I felt that if I ever came to know Her Highness better, I should perhaps succeed in analysing them; but in the meantime that glimpse revealed two elements with unfailing certainty—irony and ennui.
Was this gentle, listless creature, indeed, the Amazon of the morning? I preferred her then. The bare, white shoulder hurt me, and I wanted a heavy ermine cloak to throw over it. There were a dozen around her. Oh! I knew that she was their sovereign, and that their glances, in her presence, were little more than mechanical. But if they had not thought themselves observed what reserve would they have shown?
And who, in Heaven's name, is that little red Hussar, lurking down there behind the flowers and casting covetous glances at that fair shoulder?... Hence, clown! Go back to your tame, fat German women, with their bulging arms and diabolo figures. She is not of your race. She is not for you, lout! I hate you, yet I envy you. I envy your scarlet tunic, your yellow facings, your gold tinsel, your lieutenant's rank in the 7th Hussars, which, when all else fails, is a bond between you and your soul-stirring Colonel. I could then approach her and proffer, as you do now, my compliments on the display of the morning.
With her face almost buried in the bouquet of irises she held to her nostrils, she thanked, in a low voice, the officers who congratulated her.
"Oh, no! You exaggerate. Taras-Bulba deserves all the praise. I'm always amazed at the way you keep up with him on your chargers. Compared with him the animals here are like brewers' horses."
Was I wrong, or could she really if she had wished have spoken German with less of a foreign accent?
Behind a screen of plants on the left the band of the 182nd struck up a waltz. The ball began.
"We are keeping out the dancers, gentlemen. Go and find your partners. They will be getting angry with me. Please take me to my place, Count," she said, taking General von Eichhorn's arm.