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"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still in a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we remember...." "May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat down by them. "If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas. "No, that can't be!"
While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other door of the sitting room. "They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper. "It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied Natasha. In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and went up to the harp that stood there in a corner.
"Yes; but it is very difficult to conceive of that eternity," said Dimmler, whose ironical smile had died away. "Why?" asked Natacha. "After to-day comes to-morrow, and then the day after, and so on forever; yesterday has been, to-morrow will be " "Natacha, now it is your turn; sing me something," said her mother. "What are you doing in that corner like a party of conspirators?"
It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof. Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas' sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than at home.
She thought of Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince Andrew. Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with closed eyes. "Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she has nothing to learn what softness, tenderness, and strength...."
"Do you know," whispered Natacha, while Dimmler, after playing the nocturne, let his fingers wander over the strings, uncertain what to play next, "when I go on remembering one thing beyond another, I go back so far, so far, that at last I remember things that happened before I was born, and " "That is metempsychosis," interrupted Sonia, with a reminiscence of her early lessons.
None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the resonance was best, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.
Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule, came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The clown Dimmler and the lady Nicholas started a dance.
Natacha, who had noted everything, managed so that she, Mme. Schoss, and Dimmler should return in one sleigh, while the maids went with Nicolas and Sonia in another. Nicolas was in no hurry to get home; he could not help looking at Sonia and trying to find under her disguise the true Sonia his Sonia, from whom nothing now could ever part him.
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