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Vronsky had not even attempted to fall asleep all that night. He sat in
his armchair, his eyes fixed before him or scanning the people who got in and
out, and if he had indeed, on previous occasions, struck and aroused people who
did not know him by his air of unshakable calmness, he now seemed prouder and
more self-sufficient than ever. He regarded people as if they were things. A
nervous young man, a clerk in a law court, who had the seat opposite his,
conceived a hatred for him because of this air. The young man asked him for a
light, and entered into conversation with him, and even jostled him, to make him
feel that he was not a thing, but a man. But Vronsky kept on regarding him as if
he were a lamppost, and the young man grimaced, feeling that he was losing his
self-possession under the oppressiveness of this refusal to recognize him as a
human being. |
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Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not because he
believed that he had made any impression on Anna- he did not yet believe that-
but because the impression she had made on him afforded him happiness and pride. |
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What would come of it all he did not know, or even think. He felt that
all his forces, hitherto dissolute, scattered, were centered on one thing, and
bent with fearful energy toward one blissful goal. And therein lay his
happiness. He did but know that he had told her the truth, that he had come
where she was, that all the happiness of life, the sole meaning in life for him,
now lay in seeing her and hearing her voice. And when he got out of his car at
Bologovo to get some seltzer water, and had caught sight of Anna, his very first
word had involuntarily told her his very thoughts. And he was glad he had told
her, that she knew now, and was thinking of it. He did not sleep all night. Back
in his compartment, he incessantly kept ruminating upon every posture in which
he had seen her, every word she had uttered; and, in his imagination, making his
heart swoon, floated pictures of a possible future. |
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When he got out of the train at Peterburg, he felt after his sleepless
night as lively and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused near his car, waiting
for her to emerge. "Once more," he said to himself, smiling
unconsciously, "once more I shall see her walk, her face; she may say
something, turn her head, glance, smile, perhaps." But before he caught
sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the stationmaster was deferentially
escorting through the crowd. "Ah, yes. The husband." Only now, for the
first time, did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that there was someone attached
to her- a husband. He had known that she had a husband, but had hardly believed
in his existence, and only now, when he saw him, did he fully believe in him,
with his head, and shoulders, and his black-trousered legs; especially when he
saw this husband placidly take her arm, with a consciousness of proprietorship. |
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Seeing Alexei Alexandrovich with his spick-and-span Peterburg face and
austerely self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent
spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as
might be felt by a man who, tortured by thirst, finds, on reaching a spring, a
dog, a sheep or a pig therein that has not only drunk of it, but also muddied
the water. Alexei Alexandrovich's manner of walking, gyrating his whole pelvis
and his flat feet, was especially offensive to Vronsky. He could recognize in no
one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But she was still the same,
and the sight of her affected him the same way, physically reviving him,
stirring him, and filling his soul with happiness. He told his German valet, who
ran up to him from the second class, to take his things and go on, he himself
went up to her. He saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and
noted, with a lover's insight, the sign of the slight embarrassment with which
she spoke to her husband. "No, she does not love him, and cannot love
him," he decided to himself. |
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At the very moment that he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna from the back,
he noticed with joy that she was conscious of his drawing near, and that she
looked round; after which, seeing him, she turned again to her husband. |
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"Have you had a good night?" he said, bowing both to her and to
her husband, and leaving it to Alexei Alexandrovich to accept the bow on his own
account, and to return it or not, as he might see fit. |
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"Thank you- a very good one," she answered. |
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Her face seemed tired, and lacking in that play of animation which
usually hovered between her smile and her eyes; but for a single instant, as she
glanced at him, something flashed in her eyes, and although this flash died away
at once, he was made happy by that moment. She glanced at her husband, to find
out whether he knew Vronsky. Alexei Alexandrovich was regarding Vronsky with
displeasure, absent-mindedly trying to recall who he was. Vronsky's calmness and
self-confidence had here run up, like a scythe against a stone, on the frigid
self-confidence of Alexei Alexandrovich. |
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"Count Vronsky," said Anna. |
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"Ah! We are acquainted, I believe," said Alexei Alexandrovich
apathetically, proffering his hand. "You set out with the mother and return
with the son," he said to Anna, articulating distinctly, as though each
word were a coin of high value bestowed by him on his hearers.- "You're
back from leave, I suppose?" he said, and without waiting for a reply, he
addressed his wife in his bantering tone: "Well, were a great many tears
shed in Moscow at parting?" |
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By addressing his wife thus he meant Vronsky to perceive that he wished
to be left alone, and, turning slightly toward him, he touched his hat; but
Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna: |
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"I hope to have the honor of calling on you," he said. |
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Alexei Alexandrovich glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky. |
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"Delighted," he said coldly. "We're at home Mondays."
Then, dismissing Vronsky entirely, he said to his wife: "I am rather lucky
to have just half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove to you my
fondness," he went on, in the same bantering tone. |
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"You lay too great a stress on your fondness for me to value it very
much," she responded in the same bantering tone, involuntarily listening to
the sound of Vronsky's steps behind them. "But what have I to do with
that?" she said to herself, and began questioning her husband as to how
Seriozha had got on without her. |
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"Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been a very darling boy, and...
I must disappoint you... But he has not languished for you as your husband has.
But once more merci, my dear, for bestowing a whole day upon me. Our dear
Samovar will be enraptured." (He called the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well
known in society, a samovar, because she was bubbling over with excitement on
any and every occasion.) "She has been asking for you. And, d'you know, if
I may venture to advise you, you ought to go to see her today. You know how she
takes everything to heart. Just now, with all her own cares, she's anxious about
the reconciliation of the Oblonskys." |
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The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband's, and the center
of that one of the coteries of the Peterburg beau monde with which Anna was,
through her husband, in the closest rapport. |
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"But I wrote to her." |
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"Yes, but she must have full details. Go to see her, if you're not
too tired, my dear. Well, Kondratii will take you in the carriage, while I go to
my committee. Once more I shall not be alone at dinner," Alexei
Alexandrovich continued, but no longer in a jesting tone. "You wouldn't
believe how I've grown used to you...." |
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And, with a prolonged pressure of her hand, and a particular smile, he
helped her into her carriage. |
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The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed down the
stairs to her, in spite of the governess's call, and with frenzied rapture
shrieked: "Mother! mother!" Running up to her, he hung on her neck. |
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"I told you it was mother!" he shouted to the governess.
"I knew it!" |
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And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to
disappointment. In her imagination he had been better than he was in reality.
She had to descend to reality to enjoy him as he was. But, even so, he was
charming, with his fair curls, his blue eyes and his chubby, graceful little
legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Anna experienced an almost physical delight
in the sensation of his nearness, and his caresses; and a moral reassurance,
when she met his ingenuous, trusting and loving glance, and heard his naive
questions. Anna took out the presents Dolly's children had sent him, and told
her son about Tania, a little girl in Moscow, and how Tania could read, and even
taught the other children. |
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"Why, am I not as good as she?" asked Seriozha. |
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"To me you're better than anyone else in the whole world." |
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"I know that," said Seriozha, smiling. |
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Anna had scarcely drunk her coffee when the Countess Lidia Ivanovna was
announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, fleshy woman, with an
unwholesomely yellow complexion and beautiful, pensive black eyes. Anna liked
her, but today she seemed, for the first time, to see her with all her
shortcomings. |
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"Well, my friend, were you the bearer of the olive branch?"
asked Countess Lidia Ivanovna, the minute she entered the room. |
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"Yes, it's all over, but it was not at all as serious as we
thought," answered Anna. "My belle-soeur is, in general, much too
categorical." |
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But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who was interested in everything that did
not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested her; she
interrupted Anna: |
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"Yes, there's plenty of sorrow and evil in the world- and I am so
fatigued today!" |
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"Oh, why?" asked Anna, trying to repress a smile. |
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"I'm beginning to weary of vainly breaking lances for the truth, and
at times I'm altogether unstrung. The affair with our Dear Sisters [this was a
religiously patriotic, philanthropic institution] started off splendidly, but
it's impossible to do anything with such people," added Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, with a mocking submissiveness to fate. "They pounced on the idea,
and mangled it, and afterward they thrash it out so pettily and trivially. Two
or three people, your husband among them, grasp all the significance of this
affair but the others merely degrade it. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me..." |
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Pravdin was a well-known Pan-Slavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna
told the gist of his letter. |
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Next the Countess spoke of other unpleasantnesses and intrigues against
the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, since that
day she had to attend the meeting of another society, and also a Slavonic
committee. |
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"All this is as it has always been; but how is it I didn't notice it
before?" Anna asked herself. "Or has she been very much irritated
today? It's really ludicrous: her object is to do good; she's a Christian; yet
she's forever angry, and forever having enemies- and always enemies in the name
of Christianity and doing good." |
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After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a director
of the Department, who told her all the news of the town. At three o'clock she
too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexei Alexandrovich was at the
Ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in lending her presence
to her son's dinner (he dined apart from his parents), in putting her things in
order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated
on her escritoire. |
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The feeling of unreasoning shame, which she had felt during the journey,
and her agitation, had completely vanished. In the accustomed conditions of her
life she again felt herself firm and irreproachable. |
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She recalled with wonder her state of mind only yesterday. "What was
it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put an end to,
and I answered just as I should have. To speak of it to my husband would be
unnecessary and impermissible. To speak of it would be to attach importance to
that which has none." She remembered how she had told her husband of what
was almost declaration made her in Peterburg by a young man, a subordinate of
her husband's, and how Alexei Alexandrovich had answered that every woman of the
world was exposed to this sort of thing, but that he had the fullest confidence
in her tact, and would never permit himself to degrade her and himself by
jealousy. "So then, there's no reason to say anything? And, thank God,
there isn't anything to say," she told herself. |
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Alexei Alexandrovich came back from the Ministry at four o'clock, but as
often happened, had no chance to drop in at her room. He went into his study to
see the people waiting for him with petitions, and to sign certain papers
brought him by his head clerk. At dinnertime (there were always at least three
people dining with the Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexei
Alexandrovich; the director of the Department and his wife; and a young man who
had been recommended to Alexei Alexandrovich for a post. Anna went into the
drawing room to entertain these guests. Precisely at five o'clock, before the
bronze Peter the First clock had finished the fifth stroke, Alexei Alexandrovich
made his entry, in white tie and evening coat with two stars, as he had to go
out directly after dinner. Every minute of Alexei Alexandrovich's life was taken
up and apportioned. And in order to accomplish all that each day held for him,
he adhered to the strictest orderliness. "Nor haste nor rest," was his
device. He entered the dining hall, bowed to all, and hurriedly sat down,
smiling to his wife: |
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"Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn't believe how uncomfortable
[he laid stress on the word uncomfortable] it is to dine alone." |
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At dinner he chatted with his wife about things at Moscow, and asked,
with his mocking smile, about Stepan Arkadyevich; but the conversation was for
the most part general, dealing with the official and public news of Peterburg.
After dinner he spent half an hour with his guests, and, again with a smile,
pressed his wife's hand, withdrew, and drove off to the Council. Anna went that
evening neither to the Princess Betsy Tverskaia, who, hearing of her return, had
invited her, nor to the theater, where she had a box for that evening. Her
principal reason for not going out was because the dress she had expected to
wear was not ready. All in all, Anna was exceedingly annoyed when she started to
dress for the evening after the departure of her guests. Before her departure
for Moscow she, who was generally a mistress of the art of dressing well yet
inexpensively, had given her dressmaker three dresses to make over. The dresses
were to be made over so that their old selves would be unrecognizable, and they
should have been ready three days ago. It turned out that two dresses were
nowhere near ready, while the other one had not been made over to Anna's liking.
The dressmaker came to explain, asserting that her way was best, and Anna had
become so heated that she blushed at the recollection. To regain her composure
fully she went into the nursery and spent the whole evening with her son,
putting him to bed herself, making the sign of the cross over him, and tucking
him in. She was glad she had not gone out anywhere, and had spent the evening so
well. She felt so lighthearted and calm, she saw so clearly that all that had
seemed to her so significant on her railway journey was merely one of the
ordinary trivial incidents of fashionable life, and that she had no cause to
feel ashamed before anyone else or before herself. Anna sat down near the
fireplace with an English novel and waited for her husband. Exactly at half-past
nine she heard his ring, and he entered the room. |
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"Here you are at last!" she observed, extending her hand to
him. |
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He kissed her hand and sat down beside her. |
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"All in all, I can see your trip was a success," he said to
her. |
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"Yes, very much so," said she, and she began telling him
everything from the beginning: her journey with Countess Vronskaia, her arrival,
the accident at the station. Then she described the pity she had felt, first for
her brother, and, afterward, for Dolly. |
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"I do not suppose there is any excuse for such a man, even though he
is your brother," said Alexei Alexandrovich sternly. |
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Anna smiled. She knew that he said this precisely to show that family
considerations could not prevent him from expressing his sincere opinion. She
knew this trait in her husband and liked it. |
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"I am glad everything has ended so well, and that you have
returned," he went on. "Well, and what do they say there about the new
bill I have got passed in the Council?" |
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Anna had heard nothing of this bill, and she felt conscience-stricken
that she could so readily forget what was to him of such importance. |
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"Here, on the other hand, this has created a great deal of
talk," said he, with a self-satisfied smile. |
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She saw that Alexei Alexandrovich wanted to tell her something that
pleased him about it, and she brought him by questions to telling it. With the
same self-satisfied smile he told her of the ovations he had received as a
consequence of the bill he had passed. |
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"I was very, very happy. It shows that at last an intelligent and
firm view of the matter is forming among us." |
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After his second cup of tea, with cream and bread, Alexei Alexandrovich
got up, and went toward his study. |
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"And you went nowhere this evening? Weren't You really bored?"
he said. |
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"Oh, no!" she answered, getting up after him and accompanying
him across the room to his study. "What are you reading now?" she
asked. |
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"Just now I'm reading Duc de Lille- Poisie des enfers," he
answered. "A most remarkable book." |
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Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love, and,
putting her hand in his, she kept him company to the door of his study. She knew
his habit, now become a necessity, of reading in the evening. She knew, too,
that in spite of his official duties, which engrossed almost all his time, he
deemed it his duty to keep up with everything of note that appeared in the
intellectual sphere. She knew, too, that his actual interest lay in books
dealing with politics, philosophy and theology, that art was utterly foreign to
his nature; but, in spite of this- or rather, in consequence of it- Alexei
Alexandrovich never missed anything which created a sensation in the world of
art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in politics, in
philosophy, in theology, Alexei Alexandrovich was a doubter and a seeker; yet in
matters of art and poetry- and, above all, of music, of which he was totally
devoid of understanding- he had the most definite and decided opinions. He was
fond of discoursing on Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, on the significance of
new schools of poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with most
obvious consistency. |
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"Well, God be with you," she said at the door of the study,
where a shaded candle and a decanter of water were already placed near his
armchair. "As for me, I'm going to write to Moscow." |
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He squeezed her hand, and again kissed it. |
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"Still, he's a good man; truthful, kindhearted, and remarkable in
his own sphere," Anna said to herself, back in her room, as though
defending him before someone who accused him, saying that one could not love
him. "But why is it his ears stick out so queerly? Or has he had his hair
cut?..." |
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Exactly at twelve, as Anna was still sitting at her desk finishing a
letter to Dolly, she heard the sound of measured, slippered steps, and Alexei
Alexandrovich, washed and combed, a book under his arm, approached her. |
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"Come, come," said he, with a particular smile, and passed on
into their bedroom. |
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"And what right had he to look at him like that?" reflected
Anna, recalling how Vronsky had looked at Alexei Alexandrovich. |
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Having disrobed, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of the
animation which, during her stay at Moscow, had fairly spurted from her eyes and
her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed extinct in her, or hidden
somewhere far away. |
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Upon his departure from Peterburg Vronsky had left his large apartments
on Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade Petritsky. |
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Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected, and
not merely not wealthy, but in debt all around. Toward evening he was always
drunk, and he had often found himself in the guardhouse because of sorts of
ludicrous and disgraceful scrapes, but he was a favorite both of his comrades
and his superior officers. At twelve o'clock, as Vronsky was driving up from the
station to his quarters, he saw, near the entrance of the house, a hired
carriage familiar to him. Even as he rang he heard, beyond the door, masculine
laughter, the twitter of a feminine voice, and Petritsky's shout: "If
that's one of the villains, don't let him in!" Vronsky told the servant not
to announce him, and slipped noiselessly into the first room. Baroness Shilton,
a friend of Petritsky's, with a rosy little face and flaxen-fair, resplendent in
a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Parisian
accents, sat at a round table, brewing coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and
the cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably just come from duty,
were sitting near her. |
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"Bravo! Vronsky!" shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his
chair. "Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new
coffeepot. There, we didn't expect you! I Hope you're satisfied with the
adornment of your study," he said, indicating the Baroness. "You know
each other, of course?" |
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"I should say so!" said Vronsky, with a bright smile, squeezing
the Baroness's little hand. "Why, we're old friends." |
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"You've just returned after traveling," said the Baroness,
"so I'll run along. Oh, I'll be off this minute, if I'm in the way!" |
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"You're home, wherever you are, Baroness," said Vronsky.
"How do you do, Kamerovsky?" he added, coldly shaking hands with
Kamerovsky. |
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"There, you can never say such charming things," said the
Baroness, turning to Petritsky. |
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"No- why not? After dinner even I can say things quite as
good." |
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"After dinner there's no merit in them! Well, then, I'll give you
some coffee; go wash and tidy up," said the Baroness, sitting down again,
and anxiously turning a gadget in the new coffee urn. "Pierre, give me the
coffee," she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she called Pierre, playing on
his surname, making no secret of her relations with him. "I want to put
some more in." |
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"You'll spoil it!" |
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"No, I won't spoil it! Well, and how is your wife?" said the
Baroness suddenly, interrupting Vronsky's conversation with his comrade.
"We've been marrying you off here. Have you brought your wife along?" |
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"No, Baroness. I was born a gypsy, and a gypsy I'll die." |
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"So much the better- so much the better. Shake hands on it." |
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And the Baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him, interspersing her
story with many jokes, about her latest plans of life, and seeking his counsel. |
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"He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to
do?" (He was her husband.) "Now I want to begin a suit against him.
What would you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee- it's boiled out; you
can see I'm taken up with business! I want a lawsuit, because I must have my
property. You can understand the stupidity of his saying that I am unfaithful to
him," she said contemptuously, "yet through it he wants to get the
benefit of my fortune." |
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Vronsky heard with pleasure this lighthearted prattle of a pretty woman,
said yes to everything, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether dropped at
once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women. In his Peterburg
world all people were divided into two utterly opposed kinds. One, the lower,
consisted of vulgar, stupid and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that
one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully wedded; that a
girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and
strong; that one ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread and pay
one's debts; and various similar absurdities. Those people were of an
old-fashioned and ridiculous kind. But there was another kind of people- real
people, to which they all belonged, and here the chief thing was to be elegant,
magnanimous, daring, gay, and to abandon oneself without a blush to every
passion, and to laugh at everything else. |
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For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled, after the impressions of
a quite different world that he had brought with him from Moscow; but
immediately, as though he had thrust his feet into old slippers, he stepped into
his former lighthearted, pleasant world. |
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The coffee was really never made, but spluttered over everyone and boiled
away, doing just what was required of it- that is, providing cause for much
noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the Baroness's gown. |
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"Well, good-by now- or else you'll never get washed, and I shall
have on my conscience the worst offense any decent person can commit-
uncleanliness. So you would advise a knife at his throat?" |
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"Absolutely- and in such a way that your little hand may not be far
from his lips. He'll kiss it, and all will end well," answered Vronsky. |
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"So, the Francais tonight!" and, with a rustle of her skirts,
she vanished. |
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Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, without waiting for him to go, shook
hands and went off to his dressing room. While he was washing, Petritsky briefly
outlined to him his position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky's departure
from Peterburg. No money whatsoever. His father said he wouldn't give him any,
nor pay his debts. His tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another
fellow, too, was threatening to do so without fail. The colonel of his regiment
had announced that if these scandals did not cease a resignation would be
inevitable. As for the Baroness, he was fed up with her, particularly because
she was forever wanting to give him money. But there was another girl- he
intended showing her to Vronsky- a marvel, exquisite, in the strict Oriental
style, "genre of the slave Rebecca, you see." He had had a row, too,
with Berkoshev, and the latter intended sending seconds, but, of course, it
would all come to nothing. Altogether everything was going splendidly and was
most jolly. And, without letting his comrade enter into further details of his
position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the interesting news. As he
listened to Petritsky's familiar stories, in the familiar setting of the rooms
he had spent the last three years in, Vronsky felt the delightful sensation of
coming back to the insouciant and customary life of Peterburg. |
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"Impossible!" he cried, releasing the pedal of the wash basin
in which he had been sousing his stalwart red neck. "Impossible!" he
cried, at the news that Laura had dropped Fertinghof and had tied up with
Mileev. "And is he as stupid and satisfied as ever? Well, and what's
Buzulukov doing?" |
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"Oh, Buzulukov got into a scrape- simply lovely!" cried
Petritsky. "You know his passion for balls- and he never misses a single
one at court. He went to a big ball in a new casque. Have you seen the new
casques? Very good, and lighter. Well, he's standing... No- do listen." |
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"I am listening," answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a
rough towel. |
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"The Grand Duchess passes by with some ambassador or other, and, as
ill luck would have it, their talk veers to the new casques. And so the Grand
Duchess wanted to show the new casque to the ambassador.... Just then they catch
sight of our dear boy standing there." (Petritsky mimicked him, standing
with his casque.) "The Grand Duchess requested him to give her the casque-
he doesn't do so. What's up? Well, they all wink at him, and nod and frown- give
it to her, do! He still doesn't. Just stands there, stock-still. You can picture
it to yourself!... Well, this... what's his name... tries to take the casque
from him... He won't give it up!... This chap tore it from him, and hands it to
the Grand Duchess. "This is the new casque," says the Grand Duchess.
She turned the casque over, and- just picture it!- bang went a pear and candy
out of it- two pounds of candy!... He'd collected all that- our dear boy!" |
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Vronsky rolled with laughter. And, long afterward, even when he was
talking of other things, he would go off into peals of his hearty laughter
baring his strong, closely set teeth, whenever he thought of the casque. |
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Having learned all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance of his valet,
got into his uniform, and went off to report himself. He intended, afterward, to
go to his brother and to Betsy, and to pay several visits, as an entering wedge
into that society where he might meet Madame Karenina. As always in Peterburg,
he left home without any intention of returning before very late at night. |
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