Book 2 Part 3 Chapter 16 (Chapter 119 Overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: Arrival of the Emperor and Empress. Natasha's disappointment. A family gathering. Pierre introduces Prince Andrei to Natasha. Natasha's maidenly charm. Natasha in demand. Pierre's moroseness.
Briggs: Pierre asks Andrey to dance with Natasha. They captivate the company.

Translation:

XVI.

Suddenly all stirred, the crowd began talking, moving, again parting, and between two parted ranks, at the sounds of playing music, entered the sovereign. Behind him went the master and hostess. The sovereign was walking fast, bowing to the right and left, as if trying to rather get rid of these first minutes of meetings. The musicians played the Polish, known then by the words composed in it. These words began: "Aleksandr, Elizabeta, you delight us." The sovereign passed into the living room, the crowd gushed to the door; a few persons with changed expressions hastily passed there and backwards. The crowd again drained away from the doors of the living room, at which appeared the sovereign, talking with the hostess. Some young person with a bewildered look advanced to the ladies, asking for them to step aside. Some lady with a face expressing perfect forgetfulness of all the conditions of the world, spoiled her toilette, and crowded forward. The men began to approach to the ladies to build to a couple’s Polish.

All parted, and the sovereign, smiling, not in tact and led behind the arm of the hostess at home, got out of the doors of the living room. Behind him went the master with М. A. Naryshkina, then envoys, ministers, different generals, which not silently were called by Peronskaya. Another half had been given to cavaliers and went or prepared to go in the Polish. Natasha felt that she stayed with her mother and Sonya in a number of the lesser parts of the ladies were displaced to the wall and not taking part in the Polish. She stood, lowering her thin hand, and with a measured lifting, little definite breast, holding back breaths, and brilliant, scared eyes looked before herself with an expression of readiness to the greatest joy and to the greatest grief. She was not occupied in the sovereign, or all the important faces at which Peronskaya pointed out — in her was a lone idea: "Is it really so that no one will approach me, is it really that I will not dance between the first, is it really that all these men will not notice me, who now, it seems do not see me, but should be watching me, watching with such an expression, as if saying: Ah! This is not her, so look at nothing. No, this may not be!" — she thought. —"They must already know how I want to dance, how fine I dance, and how fun for them it will be to dance with me."

The sounds of the Polish continued quite long, and now began to be heard as a sad memory in the ears of Natasha. She wanted to cry. Peronskaya walked away from them. The count was on the other end of the hall, the countess, Sonya and her were standing alone as in the woods in this alien crowd, uninteresting and unnecessary. Prince Andrey passed with some lady by them, obviously not recognizing them. The beauty Anatole, smiling, spoke something to a lady which he led, and looked at the face of Natasha with that look as one sees a wall. Boris two times passed by them and both times turned away. Berg with his wife, not dancing, came up to him.

To Natasha this family convergence here at the ball appeared offensive, as if there were not other places for talking with family besides at a ball. She did not listen and did not watch Vera, who spoke something to her about her green dress.

Finally the sovereign stopped beside the last lady (he was dancing with three), the music fell silent; an anxious adjutant ran over to the Rostovs, asking for them to step aside some more, although they were standing at the wall, and from the chorus was heard the distinct, careful and fascinating dimensional sounds of the waltz. The sovereign with a smile looked at the hall. A minute passed— nothing more started. A steward adjutant came up to Countess Bezuhova and invited her. She smilingly raised her hand and placed it, not looking at him, on the shoulder of the adjutant. The steward adjutant, master of his affairs, confidently, leisurely and measuredly, hugged his lady hard, set off with her on the first glide path, by the edge of the circle, at the corner of the hall picking up her left hand, turning it, and from behind all the accelerating noises of the music were heard only the dimensional clicks of fast spurs and the nimble feet of the adjutant, and through every three tacts at the bend as if flaring up fluttered the velvet dress of his lady. Natasha watched them and was ready to cry at how this was not her dancing this first round of the waltz.

Prince Andrey in his colonel, white (cavalry) uniform, in stockings and shoes, lively and merry, stood in the first ranks of the circle, near from the Rostovs. Baron Firgof spoke with him about tomorrow, the alleged first meeting of the state council. Prince Andrey, as a person close to Speransky and participating in the works of the legislative commission, could give faithful intelligence about the meeting tomorrow, about which went various talks. But he did not listen to what Firgof spoke to him, and saw the sovereign, then the gathered dancing cavaliers, not daring to march into the circle.

Prince Andrey watched these timid at the sovereign cavaliers and ladies, frozen against the willingness to be invited.

Pierre came up to Prince Andrey and grabbed him behind the arm.

— You always dance. Here is my protegée, young Rostov, invite her, — he said.

— Where? — asked Bolkonsky. — I am to blame, — he said turning to the baron, — this conversation we in another location will lead to the end, but at a ball one needs to dance. — He got out forward, by the direction which Pierre pointed out to him. The desperate, fading face of Natasha threw at the eyes of Prince Andrey. He found her, gathered his senses, got that she was a beginner, remembered her conversation in the window and with a fun expression on his face came up to Countess Rostov.

— Let me introduce you to my daughter, — said the countess, blushing.

— I have the pleasure to be familiar, should the countess remember me, — said Prince Andrey with a courteous low bow, completely contradictory to the comments of Peronskaya about his rudeness, coming up to Natasha, and bringing in his hand, so to embrace her waist still before he finished saying the invitation to dance. He proposed a round of the waltz. That fading expression on the face of Natasha, finished in despair and into delight, suddenly illuminating a happy, grateful, children's smile.

"For a long time I was waiting for you," — as if said this scared and happy girl, she manifested from behind a ready for tears smile, raising her hand to the shoulder of Prince Andrey. They were the second couple entering into the circle. Prince Andrey was one of the best dancers of his time. Natasha danced fine. Her legs in the ballroom satin slippers were fast and easy in whatever she did, but her face shone in a delight of happiness. Her naked neck and hands were thin and ugly. In comparison with the shoulders of Elen, her shoulders were thin, her chest uncertain, and her hands were thin; but Elen was now as if varnished from a whole thousand views sliding by her body, but Natasha appeared as a girl, which for the first time was bared, and who would be very ashamed at this, should she not be assured that this was so necessary and needed.

Prince Andrey loved to dance, and wished soon to get off from the political and smart talking, with which all turned to him, and wishing to soon tear up this annoying to him circle of embarrassment, formed from the presence of the sovereign, went to dance and chose Natasha, because she was pointed out to him by Pierre and because she was the first of the pretty women that hit him in the eyes; but he barely hugged this small, quivering figure, she stirred so close from him and smiled so close to him, and the wine of her charms stroked him on the head: he felt himself revived and rejuvenated, when, catching his breath and leaving her, he stopped and began to look at the dancing.

Time: see previous chapter

Locations: see previous chapter

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes:

The sovereign's entrance. Many people embarrass themselves by trying to approach the sovereign, but Natasha doesn't care about all this, just wanting someone to dance with. Andrei is grabbed by Pierre to dance with
Natasha, and says "we can finish this conversation elsewhere--at a ball one must dance."

Of course, they are both great dancers.

"on Helene there was already a sort of varnish from all the thousands of gazes that had passed over her body, while Natasha looked like a young girl who was bared for the first time and would have been very ashamed
of it" (compare later at the opera, where Helene appears to be "undressed" while Natasha feels the people looking at her arms and skin).

Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):

Emperor Alexander (also "sovereign". His wife, variably "Yelizavyeta" in Dole, "Elisaveta" in Maude, Briggs, and Mandelker, is mentioned in the song. Dunnigan and Dole keep "Aleksandr" in the song instead of normalizing
the name.)

Marya Antonovna Naruishkina (Edmonds spells the last name "Naryshkin", Dunnigan, Mandelker, and Maude "Naryshkina", "Narishkin" in Garnett. Wiener just uses "Mme. M. A. Naryshkin." "Marie Antonovna
Naryschkine" in Bell.)

Peronskaya

Natasha (also "the little Rostova")

Sonya

Countess Rostova (also "her mother")

Prince Andrei

Anatol

Boris

Berg

Viera ("his wife")

Countess Ellen Bezukhaya

Baron Firhof ("...Firhoff" in Briggs, Dunnigan, and Edmonds. "...Firhow" in Bell. "...Furhof" in Wiener.)

Speransky

Pierre

(again many characters including the host and hostess, the musicians, and a young man who asks the ladies to step back away from the sovereign, later called an adjutant and dances with Ellen)

Abridged Versions: No break in Bell.
Gibian: Line break instead of chapter break at the end.

Fuller: Other than a few details, such as Baron Firhof's role in the chapter, it is a well preserved chapter followed by a line break.

Komroff: The song with the Tsar's name is removed and the comparison between Natasha and Ellen is removed, but the chapter is mostly preserved and followed by a line break.

Kropotkin: Chapter is preserved. End of Chapter 6.
Simmons: Some of the details, such as Baron Firhof's role in the chapter, the song with the Tsar's name, and Vera's role in the chapter are removed. Line break instead of chapter break.

Additional Notes:

Rey: Page 281: "Czartoryski begged her to divorce Alexander and marry him; out of loyalty he informed Alexander of his request for marriage. But Alexander was hostile to the plan, less out of an attachment to Elizabeth than for reasons of the state...This argument ultimately convinced the dutiful Elizabeth to renounce her own happiness, and in November 1815 she went back to St. Petersburg for good." 

Mandelker: In many ways, however, the most influential work for Tolstoy may have been Thackeray's Vanity Fair, with its satirical depictions of high society and parallels between military and social conquests, making his anti-heroine, Becky Sharp, Napoleonic in her rise to social power. Thackeray's mocking depiction of human activity as a puppet-show at a fairground, with the standard types of the Punch and Judy show dancing on their strings to entertain the passers-by, provides another key to understanding Tolstoy's artistic design. Theatre and theatrical moments are highly significant in War and Peace, both in the war sequences and in the peace episodes."

After the Dance: Page 190: “Ivan Vasilievich cried out, almost shouting in anger. “There you are, moderns all over! Nowadays you think of nothing but the body. It was different in our day. The more I was in love the less corporeal she was in my eyes. Nowadays you think of nothing but the body. It was different in our day. The more I was in love the less corporeal was she in my eyes. Nowadays you see legs, ankles, and I don’t know what. You undress the women you are in love with.”