??? ??? ?? (Gast)
| | How vexed and grieved I was that I could not read it to them before from the manuscript, which was in the printer's hands! Natasha positively cried with vexation, she quarrelled and reproached me with letting other people read it before she had. . . . But now at last we were sitting round the table. The old man assumed a particularly serious and critical expression. He wanted to judge it very, very strictly "to make sure for himself." Anna Andreyevna, too, looked particularly solemn; I almost believe she had put on a new cap for the reading. She had long noticed that I looked with boundless love at her precious Natasha; that I was breathless and my eyes were dim when I addressed her, and that Natasha, too, looked at me as it were more kindly than before. Yes! At last the time had come, had come at the moment of success, of golden hopes and perfect happiness, all, all had come, at once. The old lady had noticed, too, that her husband had begun to praise me excessively, and seemed to look at his daughter and me in a peculiar way. . . . And all at once she took fright; after all, I was not a count, nor a lord, nor a reigning prince, nor even a privy councillor, young and handsome with an order on his breast. Anna Andreyevna did not stop halfway in her wishes.
??? ??? ?? |
