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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy PART SEVEN
Chapter 6
"Perhaps they're not at home?" said Levin, as he went into the hall of
Countess Bola's house.
"At home; please walk in," said the porter, resolutely removing his
overcoat.
"How annoying!" thought Levin with a sigh, taking off one glove and
stroking his hat. "What did I come for? What have I to say to them?"
As he passed through the first drawing room Levin met in the doorway
Countess Bola, giving some order to a servant with a care-worn and
severe face. On seeing Levin she smiled, and asked him to come into the
little drawing room, where he heard voices. In this room there were
sitting in armchairs the two daughters of the countess, and a Moscow
colonel, whom Levin knew. Levin went up, greeted them, and sat down
beside the sofa with his hat on his knees.
"How is your wife? Have you been at the concert? We couldn't go. 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 asked after his
wife and inquired about the concert.
Levin answered, and repeated an inquiry about Madame Apraksina's sudden
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 no consequence to
him what they thought of him, he began repeating what they had heard a
hundred times about the characteristics of the singer's talent. Countess
Bola pretended to be listening. Then, when he had said enough and
paused, the colonel, who had been silent till then, began to talk. The
colonel too talked of the opera, and about culture. At last, after
speaking of the proposed _folle journée_ at Turin's, the colonel
laughed, got up noisily, and went away. Levin too rose, but he saw by
the face of the countess that it was not yet time for him to go. He must
stay two minutes longer. He sat down.
But as he was thinking all the while how stupid it was, he could not
find a subject for conversation, and sat silent.
"You are not going to the public meeting? They say it will be very
interesting," began the countess.
"No, I promised my _belle-soeur_ to fetch her from it," said Levin.
A silence followed. The mother once more exchanged glances with a
daughter.
"Well, now I think the time has come," thought Levin, and he got up. The
ladies shook hands with him, and begged him to say _mille choses_ to his
wife for them.
The porter asked him, as he gave him his coat, "Where is your honor
staying?" and immediately wrote down his address in a big handsomely
bound book.
"Of course I don't care, but still I feel ashamed and awfully stupid,"
thought Levin, consoling himself with the reflection that everyone does
it. He drove to the public meeting, where he was to find his
sister-in-law, so as to drive home with her.
At the public meeting of the committee there were a great many people,
and almost all the highest society. Levin was in time for the report
which, as everyone said, was very interesting. When the reading of the
report was over, people moved about, and Levin met Sviazhsky, who
invited him very 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.