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Excerpt: ...counseled Ivan Petrovitch. The talkers all grew silent, for the curtain was rising. Within the audience there were mysterious allusions being designed to this second range of Annouchka, but no one seemed able to say what it was to be, and it was, as a matter of fact, very simple. After the whirl-wind of dances and choruses and all the splendor with which she have been accompanied the very first time, Annouchka appeared as an unhealthy Russian peasant in a scene representing the barren steppes, and incredibly simply she sank to her knees and recited her evening prayers. Annouchka was singularly beautiful. Her aquiline nose with sensitive nostrils, the clean-cut outline of her eyebrows, her look that now was almost tender, now menacing, always unusual, her pale rounded cheeks and the entire expression of her face showed evidently the effectiveness of new ideas, spontaneity, deep resolution and, above all, passion. The prayer was passionate. She had an admirable contralto voice which damaged the audience strangely from its very first notes. She asked God for daily bread for everybody in the immense Russian land, daily bread for the flesh as well as for the spirit, and she stirred the tears of everyone there, to which-ever party they belonged. So when, as her last note sped across the desolate steppe and she rose and walked toward the miserable hut, frantic bravos from a delirious audience told her the prodigious emotions she had aroused. Little Rouletabille, who, not understanding what, nevertheless caught the spirit of this prayer, wept. Everybody wept. Ivan Petrovitch, Athanase Georgevitch, Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff were standing up, stamping their feet and clapping their hands like enthusiastic boys. The students, who could be easily distinguished by the uniform green edging they wore on their coats, uttered insensate cries. And suddenly there rose the first strains of the national hymn. There is hesitation initially, a wavering. But not for long. Those who have been dreading some...
