“Why has she been crying?  Is she being married against her will?”

“Against her will to a fine fellow like that?  A prince, isn’t he?”

“Is that her sister in the white satin?  Just listen how the deacon booms out, ‘And fearing her husband.’”

“Are the choristers from Tchudovo?”

“No, from the Synod.”

“I asked the footman.  He says he’s going to take her home to his country place at once.  Awfully rich, they say.  That’s why she’s being married to him.”

“No, they’re a well-matched pair.”

“I say, Marya Vassilievna, you were making out those fly-away crinolines were not being worn.  Just look at her in the puce dress—­an ambassador’s wife they say she is—­how her skirt bounces out from side to side!”

“What a pretty dear the bride is—­like a lamb decked with flowers!  Well, say what you will, we women feel for our sister.”

Such were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had succeeded in slipping in at the church doors.

Chapter 6

When the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the beadle spread before the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink silken stuff, the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psalm, in which the bass and tenor sang responses to one another, and the priest turning round pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk rug.  Though both had often heard a great deal about the saying that the one who steps first on the rug will be the head of the house, neither Levin nor Kitty were capable of recollecting it, as they took the few steps towards it.  They did not hear the loud remarks and disputes that followed, some maintaining he had stepped on first, and others that both had stepped on together.

After the customary questions, whether they desired to enter upon matrimony, and whether they were pledged to anyone else, and their answers, which sounded strange to themselves, a new ceremony began.  Kitty listened to the words of the prayer, trying to make out their meaning, but she could not.  The feeling of triumph and radiant happiness flooded her soul more and more as the ceremony went on, and deprived her of all power of attention.

They prayed:  “Endow them with continence and fruitfulness, and vouchsafe that their hearts may rejoice looking upon their sons and daughters.”  They alluded to God’s creation of a wife from Adam’s rib “and for this cause a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh,” and that “this is a great mystery”; they prayed that God would make them fruitful and bless them, like Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph, Moses and Zipporah, and that they might look upon their children’s children.  “That’s all splendid,” thought Kitty, catching the words, “all that’s just as it should be,” and a smile of happiness, unconsciously reflected in everyone who looked at her, beamed on her radiant face.