Anna Karenina (Annotated Maude Translation) - Leo Tolstoy

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again, just as the whole business should be concluded, my Titular Councillor flies into a rage, gets red, his sausages stick out, and again I dissolve into diplomatic subtlety.’

      ‘Oh, you must hear this!’ cried Betsy, laughing and turning to a lady who was just entering the box. ‘He has made me laugh so!’

      ‘Well, bonne chance! [good luck!]’ she added, giving Vronsky a finger that was not engaged in holding her fan, and with a movement of her shoulders making the bodice of her dress, that had risen a little, slip down again that she might be befittingly nude on returning to the front of the box into the glare of gaslight and the gaze of all eyes.

      Vronsky went to the French Theatre, where he really had to see the Commander of his regiment (who never omitted a single performance there) to talk over this reconciliation business which had occupied and amused him for the last three days. Petritsky, whom Vronsky was fond of, was mixed up in the affair, and so was young Prince Kedrov, a first-rate fellow and a capital comrade, who had lately joined the regiment. Above all, the interests of the regiment were involved.

      Both officers belonged to Vronsky’s squadron. Titular Councillor Wenden had been to see the Commander and had lodged a complaint against the officers who had insulted his wife. His young wife, so Wenden declared (he had been married six months), had been to church with her mother, and suddenly feeling unwell as a result of her interesting condition, was unable to stand any longer and took the first good sledge she could find. These officers, in their sledge, raced after her; she became frightened, and feeling still more unwell ran up the stairs to her flat. Wenden himself having returned from his office and hearing the front-door bell and voices, went out, saw the tipsy officers with the letter, and hustled them out. He requested that they should be severely punished.

      ‘No, say what you like,’ the Commander remarked to Vronsky, whom he had invited to his house, ‘Petritsky is becoming impossible. Not a week passes without some scandal. That Councillor will not let the matter rest: he will go further with it.’

      Vronsky realized how ungrateful a task it was — that a duel was out of the question, and that everything must be done to soften the Titular Councillor and hush up the affair. The C.O. had called Vronsky in just because he knew him to be honourable and able, and above all a man who valued the honour of the regiment. After discussing the matter, they decided that Vronsky should go with Petritsky and Kedrov to apologize to the Councillor. Both the Commander and Vronsky were aware that Vronsky’s name and his badge as aide-de-camp to the Emperor ought greatly to help in softening the Titular Councillor’s feelings, and really these things had a partial effect; but the result of the peacemaking still remained doubtful, as Vronsky had explained.

      Having reached the French Theatre, Vronsky went out into the foyer with the C.O., and informed him of his success or lack of success. After considering the whole question, the Commander decided to let the matter drop; but, for amusement, he asked Vronsky for particulars of the interview, and could not help laughing for a long time as he listened to the description of how the Titular Councillor suddenly again flared up at the recollection of some incident of the affair, and how Vronsky manoeuvred so as to retire just at the last half-word of reconciliation, pushing Petritsky before him.

      ‘A bad business, but most amusing! Kedrov cannot fight that good man! And so he was in a great rage?’ repeated the Commander, laughing. ‘But what do you think of Clare this evening? Wonderful!’ he went on, referring to the new French actress. ‘However often one sees her, she is new each day. Only the French can do that!’

      Chapter 6

      PRINCESS BETSY went home without waiting for the end of the last act. She had scarcely time to go to her dressing-room, put powder on her long pale face and rub it off again, smarten herself up, and order tea to be served in the big drawing-room, before one carriage after another began to arrive at the door of her immense house on the Great Morskaya. The visitors passed beneath the broad portico, and the massive hall porter, who in the mornings read a newspaper behind the glass panes of the front door for the edification of passers-by, now noiselessly opened this enormous door to admit them.

      Almost at one and the same time the hostess, her hair rearranged and her face freshened up, entered at one door and the visitors at another of the large, dark-walled drawing-room, with its thick carpets and brightly-lit table, shining in the candle-light with white table-cloth, silver samovar and translucent china.

      The hostess sat down beside the samovar and took off her gloves. The chairs being moved by the aid of unobtrusive footmen, the company settled down, separating into two circles: one with the hostess round the samovar, the other, at the opposite end of the room, round the wife of an ambassador, a beautiful woman with black sharply-outlined eyebrows, in a black velvet dress. The conversation in both circles, as always happens at first, hesitated for a few minutes, was interrupted by greetings, recognitions, and offers of tea, and seemed to be seeking something to settle on.

      ‘She is wonderfully good as an actress; one sees that she has studied Kaulbach,’ remarked an attaché in the circle round the ambassador’s wife. ‘Did you notice how she fell …’

      ‘Oh, please don’t let us talk about Nilsson! It’s impossible to say anything new about her,’ said a stout, red-faced, fair-haired lady who wore an old silk dress and had no eyebrows and no chignon: This was the Princess Myagkaya, notorious for her simplicity and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed l’enfant terrible. The Princess Myagkaya was seated midway between the two circles, listening and taking part in the conversation of both. ‘This very same sentence about Kaulbach has been repeated to me by three different people to-day, as if by arrangement. That sentence, I don’t know why, seemed to please them very much.’ The conversation was broken by this remark, and it became necessary to find another topic.

      ‘Tell us something amusing but not malicious,’ said the ambassador’s wife, a great adept at that kind of elegant conversation which the English call ‘small-talk,’ turning to the attaché, who was also at a loss what subject to start.

      ‘People say that is very difficult, and that only what is malicious is amusing,’ he began with a smile. ‘But I will try, if you will give me a theme. The theme is everything. Once one has a theme, it is easy to embroider on it. I often think that the famous talkers of the last century would find it difficult to talk cleverly nowadays. We are all so tired of the clever things …’

      ‘That was said long ago,’ interrupted the ambassador’s wife, laughingly.

      The conversation had begun very prettily, but just because it was too pretty it languished again. They had to return to the one sure and never-failing resource — slander.

      ‘Don’t you think there is something Louis Quinze about Tushkevich?’ said the attaché, glancing at a handsome, fair-haired young man who stood by the tea-table.

      ‘Oh yes! He matches the drawing-room; that is why he comes here so often!’

      This conversation did not flag, since it hinted at what could not be spoken of in this room, namely, at the relations existing between Tushkevich and their hostess.

      Around the hostess and the samovar, the conversation, after flickering for some time in the same way between the three inevitable themes: the latest public news, the theatre, and criticism of one’s neighbour, also caught on when it got to the last of these themes — slander.

      ‘Have you heard? That that Maltyshcheva woman also — not the daughter but the mother — is having a diable rose [shocking pink] costume made for herself?’

      ‘You don’t mean to say so! How delicious!’

      ‘I wonder that she, with her common sense — for she is not stupid — does not see how ridiculous she makes herself.’

      Every one had something disparaging to say about the unfortunate Maltyshcheva, and the conversation began crackling merrily like a kindling bonfire.

      The Princess Betsy’s husband, a fat, good-natured man, an enthusiastic collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, entered the

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