"The mummers from Count Rostow's; they are his teams," replied the
servants.

* * * * *

Pélaguéïa Danilovna Mélukow, a stout and commanding personality, in
spectacles and a flowing dressing-gown, was sitting in her drawing-room
surrounded by her children, whom she was doing her best to amuse by
modelling heads in wax and tracing the shadows they cast on the wall,
when steps and voices were heard in the ante-room. Hussars, witches,
clowns, and bears were rubbing their faces, which were scorched by the
cold and covered with rime, or shaking the snow off their clothes. As
soon as they had cast off their furs they rushed into the large
drawing-room, which was hastily lighted up. Dimmler, the clown, and
Nicolas, the marquise, performed a dance, while the others stood close
along the wall, the children shouting and jumping about them with glee.

"It is impossible to know who is who--can that really be Natacha? Look
at her; does not she remind you of some one? Edward, before Karlovitch,
how fine you are! and how beautifully you dance! Oh! and that splendid
Circassian--why, it is Sonia! What a kind and delightful surprise; we
were so desperately dull. Ha, ha! what a beautiful hussar! A real
hussar, or a real monkey of a boy--which is he, I wonder? I cannot look
at you without laughing." They all shouted and laughed and talked at
once, at the top of their voices.

Natacha, to whom the Mélukows were devoted, soon vanished with them to
their own room, where corks and various articles of men's clothing were
brought to them, and clutched by bare arms through a half-open door. Ten