Part Seven: Chapter 6

by Leo Tolstoy

　　"Perhaps they're not at home?" said Levin, as he went into thehall of Countess Bola's house.

　　"At home; please walk in," said the porter, resolutely removinghis overcoat.

　　"How annoying!" thought Levin with a sigh, taking off one gloveand stroking his hat. "What did I come for? What have I to sayto them?"

　　As he passed through the first drawing room Levin met in thedoorway Countess Bola, giving some order to a servant with acare-worn and severe face. On seeing Levin she smiled, and askedhim to come into the little drawing room, where he heard voices.In this room there were sitting in armchairs the two daughters ofthe countess, and a Moscow colonel, whom Levin knew. Levin wentup, greeted them, and sat down beside the sofa with his hat onhis knees.

　　"How is your wife? Have you been at the concert? We couldn'tgo. Mamma had to be at the funeral service."

　　"Yes, I heard.... What a sudden death!" said Levin.

　　The countess came in, sat down on the sofa, and she too askedafter his wife and inquired about the concert.

　　Levin answered, and repeated an inquiry about Madame Apraksina'ssudden death.

　　"But she was always in weak health."

　　"Were you at the opera yesterday?"

　　"Yes, I was."

　　"Lucca was very good."

　　"Yes, very good," he said, and as it was utterly of noconsequence to him what they thought of him, he began repeatingwhat they had heard a hundred times about the characteristics ofthe singer's talent. Countess Bola pretended to be listening.Then, when he had said enough and paused, the colonel, who hadbeen silent till then, began to talk. The colonel too talked ofthe opera, and about culture. At last, after speaking of theproposed folle journee at Turin's, the colonel laughed, got upnoisily, and went away. Levin too rose, but he saw by the faceof the countess that it was not yet time for him to go. He muststay two minutes longer. He sat down.

　　But as he was thinking all the while how stupid it was, he couldnot find a subject for conversation, and sat silent.

　　"You are not going to the public meeting? They say it will bevery interesting," began the countess.

　　"No, I promised my belle-soeur to fetch her from it," saidLevin.

　　A silence followed. The mother once more exchanged glances witha daughter.

　　"Well, now I think the time has come," thought Levin, and he gotup. The ladies shook hands with him, and begged him to say millechoses to his wife for them.

　　The porter asked him, as he gave him his coat, "Where is yourhonor staying?" and immediately wrote down his address in a bighandsomely bound book.

　　"Of course I don't care, but still I feel ashamed and awfullystupid," thought Levin, consoling himself with the reflectionthat everyone does it. He drove to the public meeting, where hewas to find his sister-in-law, so as to drive home with her.

　　At the public meeting of the committee there were a great manypeople, and almost all the highest society. Levin was in timefor the report which, as everyone said, was very interesting.When the reading of the report was over, people moved about, andLevin met Sviazhsky, who invited him very pressingly to come thatevening to a meeting of the Society of Agriculture, where acelebrated lecture was to be delivered, and Stepan Arkadyevitch,who had only just come from the races, and many otheracquaintances; and Levin heard and uttered various criticisms onthe meeting, on the new fantasia, and on a public trial. But,probably from the mental fatigue he was beginning to feel, hemade a blunder in speaking of the trial, and this blunder herecalled several times with vexation. Speaking of the sentenceupon a foreigner who had been condemned in Russia, and of howunfair it would be to punish him by exile abroad, Levin repeatedwhat he had heard the day before in conversation from anacquaintance.

　　"I think sending him abroad is much the same as punishing a carpby putting it into the water," said Levin. Then he recollectedthat this idea, which he had heard from an acquaintance anduttered as his own, came from a fable of Krilov's, and that theacquaintance had picked it up from a newspaper article.

　　After driving home with his sister-in-law, and finding Kitty ingood spirits and quite well, Levin drove to the club.