Mlle George is reciting lines from the play
Phèdre, by Jean Racine, her most famous role. Tolstoy bases this character on the historical actress Marguerite-Josephine Weymer, who performed in Moscow around this time. The performance gives Natasha a sense of moral disorientation that compounds what happened at the opera. The influences of society offer manifold corruptions, and Natasha is too innocent to resist their pull.