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Chapter 30.
In the little German watering-place to which the Shtcherbatskys
had betaken themselves, as in all places indeed where people are
gathered together, the usual process, as it were, of the crystallization of
society went on, assigning to each member of that society a definite
and unalterable place. Just as the particle of water in frost, definitely
and unalterably, takes the special form of the crystal of snow, so each
new person that arrived at the springs was at once placed in his special
place.
Fuerst Shtcherbatsky, sammt Gemahlin und Tochter, by the apart-
ments they took, and from their name and from the friends they made,
were immediately crystallized into a definite place marked out for them.
There was visiting the watering-place that year a real German
Fuerstin, in consequence of which the crystallizing process went on
more vigorously than ever. Princess Shtcherbatskaya wished, above
everything, to present her daughter to this German princess, and the
day after their arrival she duly performed this rite. Kitty made a low
and graceful curtsey in the very simple, that is to say, very elegant frock
that had been ordered her from Paris. The German princess said, “I
hope the roses will soon come back to this pretty little face,” and for the
Shtcherbatskys certain definite lines of existence were at once laid
down from which there was no departing. The Shtcherbatskys made
the acquaintance too of the family of an English Lady Somebody, and
of a German countess and her son, wounded in the last war, and of a
learned Swede, and of M. Canut and his sister. But yet inevitably the
Shtcherbatskys were thrown most into the society of a Moscow lady,
Marya Yevgenyevna Rtishtcheva and her daughter, whom Kitty dis-
liked, because she had fallen ill, like herself, over a love affair, and a
Moscow colonel, whom Kitty had known from childhood, and always
seen in uniform and epaulets, and who now, with his little eyes and his
open neck and flowered cravat, was uncommonly ridiculous and te-
dious, because there was no getting rid of him. When all this was so
firmly established, Kitty began to be very much bored, especially as the
prince went away to Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother.
She took no interest in the people she knew, feeling that nothing fresh
would come of them. Her chief mental interest in the watering-place
consisted in watching and making theories about the people she did
not know. It was characteristic of Kitty that she always imagined ev-
erything in people in the most favorable light possible, especially so in
those she did not know. And now as she made surmises as to who
people were, what were their relations to one another, and what they
were like, Kitty endowed them with the most marvelous and noble
characters, and found confirmation of her idea in her observations.
Of these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian girl
who had come to the watering-place with an invalid Russian lady,
Madame Stahl, as everyone called her. Madame Stahl belonged to the
highest society, but she was so ill that she could not walk, and only on
exceptionally fine days made her appearance at the springs in an in-
valid carriage. But it was not so much from ill-health as from pride—so
Princess Shtcherbatskaya interpreted it—that Madame Stahl had not
made the acquaintance of anyone among the Russians there. The