pressingly to come that evening to a meeting of the Society of Agriculture,
where a celebrated lecture was to be delivered, and Stepan Arkadyevitch,
who had only just come from the races, and many other acquaintances; and
Levin heard and uttered various criticisms on the meeting, on the new
fantasia, and on a public trial. But, probably from the mental fatigue he was
beginning to feel, he made a blunder in speaking of the trial, and this
blunder he recalled several times with vexation. Speaking of the sentence
upon a foreigner who had been condemned in Russia, and of how unfair it
would be to punish him by exile abroad, Levin repeated what he had heard
the day before in conversation from an acquaintance.
“I think sending him abroad is much the same as punishing a carp by
putting it into the water,” said Levin. Then he recollected that this idea,
which he had heard from an acquaintance and uttered as his own, came
from a fable of Krilov’s, and that the acquaintance had picked it up from a
newspaper article.
After driving home with his sister-in-law, and finding Kitty in good
spirits and quite well, Levin drove to the club.
Chapter 7
Levin reached the club just at the right time. Members and visitors were
driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been at the club for a very long
while—not since he lived in Moscow, when he was leaving the university
and going into society. He remembered the club, the external details of its
arrangement, but he had completely forgotten the impression it had made on
him in old days. But as soon as, driving into the wide semicircular court and
getting out of the sledge, he mounted the steps, and the hall-porter, adorned
with a crossway scarf, noiselessly opened the door to him with a bow; as
soon as he saw in the porter’s room the cloaks and galoshes of members
who thought it less trouble to take them off downstairs; as soon as he heard
the mysterious ringing bell that preceded him as he ascended the easy,
carpeted staircase, and saw the statue on the landing, and the third porter at
the top doors, a familiar figure grown older, in the club livery, opening the
door without haste or delay, and scanning the visitors as they passed in—
Levin felt the old impression of the club come back in a rush, an impression
of repose, comfort, and propriety.
“Your hat, please,” the porter said to Levin, who forgot the club rule to
leave his hat in the porter’s room. “Long time since you’ve been. The
prince put your name down yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch is not
here yet.”
The porter did not only know Levin, but also all his ties and
relationships, and so immediately mentioned his intimate friends.
Passing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the room
partitioned on the right, where a man sits at the fruit buffet, Levin overtook
an old man walking slowly in, and entered the dining-room full of noise and
people.
He walked along the tables, almost all full, and looked at the visitors. He
saw people of all sorts, old and young; some he knew a little, some intimate
friends. There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to
have left their cares and anxieties in the porter’s room with their hats, and
were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life.
Sviazhsky was here and Shtcherbatsky, Nevyedovsky and the old prince,
and Vronsky and Sergey Ivanovitch.
“Ah! why are you late?” the prince said smiling, and giving him his hand
over his own shoulder. “How’s Kitty?” he added, smoothing out the napkin
he had tucked in at his waistcoat buttons.
“All right; they are dining at home, all the three of them.”
“Ah, ‘Aline-Nadine,’ to be sure! There’s no room with us. Go to that
table, and make haste and take a seat,” said the prince, and turning away he
carefully took a plate of eel soup.
“Levin, this way!” a good-natured voice shouted a little farther on. It was
Turovtsin. He was sitting with a young officer, and beside them were two
chairs turned upside down. Levin gladly went up to them. He had always
liked the good-hearted rake, Turovtsin—he was associated in his mind with
memories of his courtship—and at that moment, after the strain of
intellectual conversation, the sight of Turovtsin’s good-natured face was
particularly welcome.
“For you and Oblonsky. He’ll be here directly.”
The young man, holding himself very erect, with eyes forever twinkling
with enjoyment, was an officer from Petersburg, Gagin. Turovtsin
introduced them.
“Oblonsky’s always late.”
“Ah, here he is!”
“Have you only just come?” said Oblonsky, coming quickly towards
them. “Good day. Had some vodka? Well, come along then.”
Levin got up and went with him to the big table spread with spirits and
appetizers of the most various kinds. One would have thought that out of
two dozen delicacies one might find something to one’s taste, but Stepan
Arkadyevitch asked for something special, and one of the liveried waiters
standing by immediately brought what was required. They drank a wine-
glassful and returned to their table.
At once, while they were still at the soup, Gagin was served with
champagne, and told the waiter to fill four glasses. Levin did not refuse the
wine, and asked for a second bottle. He was very hungry, and ate and drank
with great enjoyment, and with still greater enjoyment took part in the
lively and simple conversation of his companions. Gagin, dropping his
voice, told the last good story from Petersburg, and the story, though
improper and stupid, was so ludicrous that Levin broke into roars of
laughter so loud that those near looked round.
“That’s in the same style as, ‘that’s a thing I can’t endure!’ You know the
story?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Ah, that’s exquisite! Another bottle,” he
said to the waiter, and he began to relate his good story.
“Pyotr Illyitch Vinovsky invites you to drink with him,” a little old waiter
interrupted Stepan Arkadyevitch, bringing two delicate glasses of sparkling
champagne, and addressing Stepan Arkadyevitch and Levin. Stepan
Arkadyevitch took the glass, and looking towards a bald man with red
mustaches at the other end of the table, he nodded to him, smiling.
“Who’s that?” asked Levin.
“You met him once at my place, don’t you remember? A good-natured
fellow.”
Levin did the same as Stepan Arkadyevitch and took the glass.
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s anecdote too was very amusing. Levin told his
story, and that too was successful. Then they talked of horses, of the races,
of what they had been doing that day, and of how smartly Vronsky’s Atlas
had won the first prize. Levin did not notice how the time passed at dinner.
“Ah! and here they are!” Stepan Arkadyevitch said towards the end of
dinner, leaning over the back of his chair and holding out his hand to
Vronsky, who came up with a tall officer of the Guards. Vronsky’s face too
beamed with the look of good-humored enjoyment that was general in the
club. He propped his elbow playfully on Stepan Arkadyevitch’s shoulder,
whispering something to him, and he held out his hand to Levin with the
same good-humored smile.
“Very glad to meet you,” he said. “I looked out for you at the election,
but I was told you had gone away.”
“Yes, I left the same day. We’ve just been talking of your horse. I
congratulate you,” said Levin. “It was very rapidly run.”
“Yes; you’ve race horses too, haven’t you?”
“No, my father had; but I remember and know something about it.”
“Where have you dined?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“We were at the second table, behind the columns.”
“We’ve been celebrating his success,” said the tall colonel. “It’s his
second Imperial prize. I wish I might have the luck at cards he has with
horses. Well, why waste the precious time? I’m going to the ‘infernal
regions,’” added the colonel, and he walked away.
“That’s Yashvin,” Vronsky said in answer to Turovtsin, and he sat down
in the vacated seat beside them. He drank the glass offered him, and ordered
a bottle of wine. Under the influence of the club atmosphere or the wine he
had drunk, Levin chatted away to Vronsky of the best breeds of cattle, and
was very glad not to feel the slightest hostility to this man. He even told
him, among other things, that he had heard from his wife that she had met
him at Princess Marya Borissovna’s.
“Ah, Princess Marya Borissovna, she’s exquisite!” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, and he told an anecdote about her which set them all
laughing. Vronsky particularly laughed with such simplehearted amusement
that Levin felt quite reconciled to him.
“Well, have we finished?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up with a
smile. “Let us go.”
