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.
_Fürst_ Shtcherbatsky, _sammt Gemahlin und Tochter_, by the
apartments 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
Fürstin, 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 disliked, 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 tedious, 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 everything 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.