Levin did not answer. What they had said in the
conversation, that he acted justly only in a negative sense,
absorbed his thoughts. ‘Can it be that it’s only possible to
be just negatively?’ he was asking himself.
‘How strong the smell of the fresh hay is, though,’ said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up. ‘There’s not a chance of
sleeping. Vassenka has been getting up some fun there. Do
you hear the laughing and his voice? Hadn’t we better go?
Come along!’
‘No, I’m not coming,’ answered Levin.
‘Surely that’s not a matter of principle too,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling, as he felt about in the dark for his
cap.
‘It’s not a matter of principle, but why should I go?’
‘But do you know you are preparing trouble for
yourself,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, finding his cap and
getting up.
‘How so?’
‘Do you suppose I don’t see the line you’ve taken up
with your wife? I heard how it’s a question of the greatest
consequence, whether or not you’re to be away for a
couple of days’ shooting. That’s all very well as an idyllic
episode, but for your whole life that won’t answer. A man
must be independent; he has his masculine interests. A
man has to be manly,’ said Oblonsky, opening the door.
‘In what way? To go running after servant girls?’ said
Levin.
‘Why not, if it amuses him? Ca ne tire pas a
consequence. It won’t do my wife any harm, and it’ll
amuse me. The great thing is to respect the sanctity of the
home. There should be nothing in the home. But don’t
tie your own hands.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Levin dryly, and he turned on his
side. ‘Tomorrow, early, I want to go shooting, and I
won’t wake anyone, and shall set off at daybreak.’
‘Messieurs, venes vite!’ they heard the voice of
Veslovsky coming back. ‘Charmante! I’ve made such a
discovery. Charmante! a perfect Gretchen, and I’ve already
made friends with her. Really, exceedingly pretty,’ he
declared in a tone of approval, as though she had been
made pretty entirely on his account, and he was expressing
his satisfaction with the entertainment that had been
provided for him.
Levin pretended to be asleep, while Oblonsky, putting
on his slippers, and lighting a cigar, walked out of the
barn, and soon their voices were lost.
For a long while Levin could not get to sleep. He heard
the horses munching hay, then he heard the peasant and
his elder boy getting ready for the night, and going off for
the night watch with the beasts, then he heard the soldier
arranging his bed on the other side of the barn, with his
nephew, the younger son of their peasant host. He heard
the boy in his shrill little voice telling his uncle what he
thought about the dogs, who seemed to him huge and
terrible creatures, and asking what the dogs were going to
hunt next day, and the soldier in a husky, sleepy voice,
telling him the sportsmen were going in the morning to
the marsh, and would shoot with their guns; and then, to
check the boy’s questions, he said, ‘Go to sleep, Vaska; go
to sleep, or you’ll catch it,’ and soon after he began
snoring himself, and everything was still. He could only
hear the snort of the horses, and the guttural cry of a snipe.
‘Is it really only negative?’ he repeated to himself.
‘Well, what of it? It’s not my fault.’ And he began
thinking about the next day.
‘Tomorrow I’ll go out early, and I’ll make a point of
keeping cool. There are lots of snipe; and there are grouse
too. When I come back there’ll be the note from Kitty.
Yes, Stiva may be right, I’m not manly with her, I’m tied

to her apron-strings.... Well, it can’t be helped! Negative
again...’
Half asleep, he heard the laughter and mirthful talk of
Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch. For an instant he
opened his eyes: the moon was up, and in the open
doorway, brightly lighted up by the moonlight, they were
standing talking. Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying
something of the freshness of one girl, comparing her to a
freshly peeled nut, and Veslovsky with his infectious laugh
was repeating some words, probably said to him by a
peasant: ‘Ah, you do your best to get round her!’ Levin,
half asleep, said:
‘Gentlemen, tomorrow before daylight!’ and fell asleep.
Chapter 12
Waking up at earliest dawn, Levin tried to wake his
companions. Vassenka, lying on his stomach, with one leg
in a stocking thrust out, was sleeping so soundly that he
could elicit no response. Oblonsky, half asleep, declined to
get up so early. Even Laska, who was asleep, curled up in
the hay, got up unwillingly, and lazily stretched out and
straightened her hind legs one after the other. Getting on
his boots and stockings, taking his gun, and carefully
opening the creaking door of the barn, Levin went out
into the road. The coachmen were sleeping in their
carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily
eating oats, dipping its nose into the manger. It was still
gray out-of-doors.
‘Why are you up so early, my dear?’ the old woman,
their hostess, said, coming out of the hut and addressing
him affectionately as an old friend.
‘Going shooting, granny. Do I go this way to the
marsh?’
‘Straight out at the back; by our threshing floor, my
dear, and hemp patches; there’s a little footpath.’ Stepping
carefully with her sunburnt, bare feet, the old woman
conducted Levin, and moved back the fence for him by
the threshing floor.
‘Straight on and you’ll come to the marsh. Our lads
drove the cattle there yesterday evening.’
Laska ran eagerly forward along the little path. Levin
followed her with a light, rapid step, continually looking
at the sky. He hoped the sun would not be up before he
reached the marsh. But the sun did not delay. The moon,
which had been bright when he went out, by now shone
only like a crescent of quicksilver. The pink flush of dawn,
which one could not help seeing before, now had to be
sought to be discerned at all. What were before undefined,
vague blurs in the distant countryside could now be
distinctly seen. They were sheaves of rye. The dew, not
visible till the sun was up, wetted Levin’s legs and his
blouse above his belt in the high growing, fragrant hemp
patch, from which the pollen had already fallen out. In the
transparent stillness of morning the smallest sounds were
audible. A bee flew by Levin’s ear with the whizzing
sound of a bullet. He looked carefully, and saw a second
and a third. They were all flying from the beehives behind
the hedge, and they disappeared over the hemp patch in
the direction of the marsh. The path led straight to the
marsh. The marsh could be recognized by the mist which
rose from it, thicker in one place and thinner in another,
so that the reeds and willow bushes swayed like islands in
this mist. At the edge of the marsh and the road, peasant
boys and men, who had been herding for the night, were
lying, and in the dawn all were asleep under their coats.
Not far from them were three hobbled horses. One of
them clanked a chain. Laska walked beside her master,
pressing a little forward and looking round. Passing the
sleeping peasants and reaching the first reeds, Levin
examined his pistols and let his dog off. One of the horses,
a sleek, dark-brown three-year-old, seeing the dog, started
away, switched its tail and snorted. The other horses too
were frightened, and splashing through the water with
their hobbled legs, and drawing their hoofs out of the
thick mud with a squelching sound, they bounded out of
the marsh. Laska stopped, looking ironically at the horses
and inquiringly at Levin. Levin patted Laska, and whistled
as a sign that she might begin.
Laska ran joyfully and anxiously through the slush that
swayed under her.
Running into the marsh among the familiar scents of
roots, marsh plants, and slime, and the extraneous smell of
horse dung, Laska detected at once a smell that pervaded
the whole marsh, the scent of that strong-smelling bird
that always excited her more than any other. Here and
there among the moss and marsh plants this scent was very
strong, but it was impossible to determine in which
direction it grew stronger or fainter. To find the direction,
she had to go farther away from the wind. Not feeling the
motion of her legs, Laska bounded with a stiff gallop, so
that at each bound she could stop short, to the right, away
from the wind that blew from the east before sunrise, and
turned facing the wind. Sniffing in the air with dilated
nostrils, she felt at once that not their tracks only but they
themselves were here before her, and not one, but many.
Laska slackened her speed. They were here, but where
precisely she could not yet determine. To find the very
spot, she began to make a circle, when suddenly her
master’s voice drew her off. ‘Laska! here?’ he asked,
pointing her to a different direction. She stopped, asking
him if she had better not go on doing as she had begun.
But he repeated his command in an angry voice, pointing
to a spot covered with water, where there could not be
anything. She obeyed him, pretending she was looking, so
as to please him, went round it, and went back to her
former position, and was at once aware of the scent again.
Now when he was not hindering her, she knew what to
do, and without looking at what was under her feet, and
to her vexation stumbling over a high stump into the
water, but righting herself with her strong, supple legs, she
began making the circle which was to make all clear to
her. The scent of them reached her, stronger and stronger,
and more and more defined, and all at once it became
perfectly clear to her that one of them was here, behind
this tuft of reeds, five paces in front of her; she stopped,
and her whole body was still and rigid. On her short legs
she could see nothing in front of her, but by the scent she
knew it was sitting not more than five paces off. She stood
still, feeling more and more conscious of it, and enjoying
it in anticipation. Her tail was stretched straight and tense,
and only wagging at the extreme end. Her mouth was
slightly open, her ears raised. One ear had been turned
wrong side out as she ran up, and she breathed heavily but
warily, and still more warily looked round, but more with
her eyes than her head, to her master. He was coming
along with the face she knew so well, though the eyes
were always terrible to her. He stumbled over the stump
as he came, and moved, as she thought, extraordinarily
slowly. She thought he came slowly, but he was running.
Noticing Laska’s special attitude as she crouched on the
ground, as it were, scratching big prints with her hind
paws, and with her mouth slightly open, Levin knew she
was pointing at grouse, and with an inward prayer for
luck, especially with the first bird, he ran up to her.
Coming quite close up to her, he could from his height
look beyond her, and he saw with his eyes what she was
seeing with her nose. In a space between two little
thickets, to a couple of yards’ distance, he could see a
grouse. Turning its head, it was listening. Then lightly
preening and folding its wings, it disappeared round a
corner with a clumsy wag of its tail.
‘Fetch it, fetch it!’ shouted Levin, giving Laska a shove
from behind.
‘But I can’t go,’ thought Laska. ‘Where am I to go?
From here I feel them, but if I move forward I shall know
nothing of where they are or who they are.’ But then he
shoved her with his knee, and in an excited whisper said,
‘Fetch it, Laska.’
‘Well, if that’s what he wishes, I’ll do it, but I can’t
answer for myself now,’ she thought, and darted forward
as fast as her legs would carry her between the thick
bushes. She scented nothing now; she could only see and
hear, without understanding anything.
Ten paces from her former place a grouse rose with a
guttural cry and the peculiar round sound of its wings.
And immediately after the shot it splashed heavily with its
white breast on the wet mire. Another bird did not linger,
but rose behind Levin without the dog. When Levin
turned towards it, it was already some way off. But his
shot caught it. Flying twenty paces further, the second
grouse rose upwards, and whirling round like a ball,
dropped heavily on a dry place.
‘Come, this is going to be some good!’ thought Levin,
packing the warm and fat grouse into his game bag. ‘Eh,
Laska, will it be good?’
When Levin, after loading his gun, moved on, the sun
had fully risen, though unseen behind the storm-clouds.
The moon had lost all of its luster, and was like a white
cloud in the sky. Not a single star could be seen. The
sedge, silvery with dew before, now shone like gold. The
stagnant pools were all like amber. The blue of the grass
had changed to yellow-green. The marsh birds twittered
and swarmed about the brook and upon the bushes that
glittered with dew and cast long shadows. A hawk woke
up and settled on a haycock, turning its head from side to
side and looking discontentedly at the marsh. Crows were
flying about the field, and a bare-legged boy was driving
the horses to an old man, who had got up from under his
long coat and was combing his hair. The smoke from the
gun was white as milk over the green of the grass.
One of the boys ran up to Levin.
‘Uncle, there were ducks here yesterday!’ he shouted to
him, and he walked a little way off behind him.
And Levin was doubly pleased, in sight of the boy, who
expressed his approval, at killing three snipe, one after
another, straight off.
Chapter 13
The sportsman’s saying, that if the first beast or the first
bird is not missed, the day will be lucky, turned out
correct.
At ten o’clock Levin, weary, hungry, and happy after a
tramp of twenty miles, returned to his night’s lodging with
nineteen head of fine game and one duck, which he tied
to his belt, as it would not go into the game bag. His
companions had long been awake, and had had time to get
hungry and have breakfast.
‘Wait a bit, wait a bit, I know there are nineteen,’ said
Levin, counting a second time over the grouse and snipe,
that looked so much less important now, bent and dry and
bloodstained, with heads crooked aside, than they did
when they were flying.
The number was verified, and Stepan Arkadyevitch’s
envy pleased Levin. He was pleased too on returning to
find the man sent by Kitty with a note was already there.
‘I am perfectly well and happy. If you were uneasy
about me, you can feel easier than ever. I’ve a new
bodyguard, Marya Vlasyevna,’— this was the midwife, a
new and important personage in Levin’s domestic life.
‘She has come to have a look at me. She found me
perfectly well, and we have kept her till you are back. All
are happy and well, and please, don’t be in a hurry to
come back, but, if the sport is good, stay another day.’
These two pleasures, his lucky shooting and the letter
from his wife, were so great that two slightly disagreeable
incidents passed lightly over Levin. One was that the
chestnut trace horse, who had been unmistakably
overworked on the previous day, was off his feed and out
of sorts. The coachman said he was ‘Overdriven yesterday,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch. Yes, indeed! driven ten miles
with no sense!’
The other unpleasant incident, which for the first
minute destroyed his good humor, though later he
laughed at it a great deal, was to find that of all the
provisions Kitty had provided in such abundance that one
would have thought there was enough for a week,
nothing was left. On his way back, tired and hungry from
shooting, Levin had so distinct a vision of meat-pies that as
he approached the hut he seemed to smell and taste them,
as Laska had smelt the game, and he immediately told
Philip to give him some. It appeared that there were no
pies left, nor even any chicken.

‘Well, this fellow’s appetite!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
laughing and pointing at Vassenka Veslovsky. ‘I never
suffer from loss of appetite, but he’s really marvelous!..’
‘Well, it can’t be helped,’ said Levin, looking gloomily
at Veslovsky. ‘Well, Philip, give me some beef, then.’
‘The beef’s been eaten, and the bones given to the
dogs,’ answered Philip.
Levin was so hurt that he said, in a tone of vexation,
‘You might have left me something!’ and he felt ready to
cry.
‘Then put away the game,’ he said in a shaking voice to
Philip, trying not to look at Vassenka, ‘and cover them
with some nettles. And you might at least ask for some
milk for me.’
But when he had drunk some milk, he felt ashamed
immediately at having shown his annoyance to a stranger,
and he began to laugh at his hungry mortification.
In the evening they went shooting again, and
Veslovsky had several successful shots, and in the night
they drove home.
Their homeward journey was as lively as their drive out
had been. Veslovsky sang songs and related with
enjoyment his adventures with the peasants, who had
regaled him with vodka, and said to him, ‘Excuse our
homely ways,’ and his night’s adventures with kiss-in-thering
and the servant-girl and the peasant, who had asked
him was he married, and on learning that he was not, said
to him, ‘Well, mind you don’t run after other men’s
wives—you’d better get one of your own.’ These words
had particularly amused Veslovsky.
‘Altogether, I’ve enjoyed our outing awfully. And you,
Levin?’
‘I have, very much,’ Levin said quite sincerely. It was
particularly delightful to him to have got rid of the
hostility he had been feeling towards Vassenka Veslovsky
at home, and to feel instead the most friendly disposition
to him.
Chapter 14
Next day at ten o’clock Levin, who had already gone
his rounds, knocked at the room where Vassenka had been
put for the night.
‘Entrez!’ Veslovsky called to him. ‘Excuse me, I’ve only
just finished my ablutions,’ he said, smiling, standing
before him in his underclothes only.
‘Don’t mind me, please.’ Levin sat down in the
window. ‘Have you slept well?’
‘Like the dead. What sort of day is it for shooting?’
‘What will you take, tea or coffee?’
‘Neither. I’ll wait till lunch. I’m really ashamed. I
suppose the ladies are down? A walk now would be
capital. You show me your horses.’
After walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and
even doing some gymnastic exercises together on the
parallel bars, Levin returned to the house with his guest,
and went with him into the drawing room.
‘We had splendid shooting, and so many delightful
experiences!’ said Veslovsky, going up to Kitty, who was
sitting at the samovar. ‘What a pity ladies are cut off from
these delights!’
‘Well, I suppose he must say something to the lady of
the house,’ Levin said to himself. Again he fancied
something in the smile, in the all-conquering air with
which their guest addressed Kitty....
The princess, sitting on the other side of the table with
Marya Vlasyevna and Stepan Arkadyevitch, called Levin to
her side, and began to talk to him about moving to
Moscow for Kitty’s confinement, and getting ready rooms
for them. Just as Levin had disliked all the trivial
preparations for his wedding, as derogatory to the
grandeur of the event, now he felt still more offensive the
preparations for the approaching birth, the date of which
they reckoned, it seemed, on their fingers. He tried to
turn a deaf ear to these discussions of the best patterns of
long clothes for the coming baby; tried to turn away and
avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting, the
triangles of linen, and so on, to which Dolly attached
special importance. The birth of a son (he was certain it
would be a son) which was promised him, but which he
still could not believe in—so marvelous it seemed—
presented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a happiness so
immense, and therefore so incredible; on the other, as an
event so mysterious, that this assumption of a definite
knowledge of what would be, and consequent preparation
for it, as for something ordinary that did happen to people,
jarred on him as confusing and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings, and
put down his reluctance to think and talk about it to
carelessness and indifference, and so she gave him no
peace. She had commissioned Stepan Arkadyevitch to
look at a fiat, and now she called Levin up.
‘I know nothing about it, princess. Do as you think fit,’
he said.
‘You must decide when you will move.’
‘I really don’t know. I know millions of children are
born away from Moscow, and doctors...why..’
‘But if so..’
‘Oh, no, as Kitty wishes.’
‘We can’t talk to Kitty about it! Do you want me to
frighten her? Why, this spring Natalia Golitzina died from
having an ignorant doctor.’
‘I will do just what you say,’ he said gloomily.
The princess began talking to him, but he did not hear
her. Though the conversation with the princess had
indeed jarred upon him, he was gloomy, not on account
of that conversation, but from what he saw at the samovar.
‘No, it’s impossible,’ he thought, glancing now and
then at Vassenka bending over Kitty, telling her something
with his charming smile, and at her, flushed and disturbed.
There was something not nice in Vassenka’s attitude, in
his eyes, in his smile. Levin even saw something not nice
in Kitty’s attitude and look. And again the light died away
in his eyes. Again, as before, all of a sudden, without the
slightest transition, he felt cast down from a pinnacle of
happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair,
rage, and humiliation. Again everything and everyone had
become hateful to him.
‘You do just as you think best, princess,’ he said again,
looking round.
‘Heavy is the cap of Monomach,’ Stepan Arkadyevitch
said playfully, hinting, evidently, not simply at the
princess’s conversation, but at the cause of Levin’s
agitation, which he had noticed.
‘How late you are today, Dolly!’
Everyone got up to greet Darya Alexandrovna.
Vassenka only rose for an instant, and with the lack of
courtesy to ladies characteristic of the modern young man,
he scarcely bowed, and resumed his conversation again,
laughing at something.
‘I’ve been worried about Masha. She did not sleep well,
and is dreadfully tiresome today,’ said Dolly.
The conversation Vassenka had started with Kitty was
running on the same lines as on the previous evening,
discussing Anna, and whether love is to be put higher than
worldly considerations. Kitty disliked the conversation,
and she was disturbed both by the subject and the tone in
which it was conducted, and also by the knowledge of the
effect it would have on her husband. But she was too
simple and innocent to know how to cut short this
conversation, or even to conceal the superficial pleasure
afforded her by the young man’s very obvious admiration.
She wanted to stop it, but she did not know what to do.
Whatever she did she knew would be observed by her
husband, and the worst interpretation put on it. And, in
fact, when she asked Dolly what was wrong with Masha,
and Vassenka, waiting till this uninteresting conversation
was over, began to gaze indifferently at Dolly, the
question struck Levin as an unnatural and disgusting piece
of hypocrisy.
‘What do you say, shall we go and look for mushrooms
today?’ said Dolly.
‘By all means, please, and I shall come too,’ said Kitty,
and she blushed. She wanted from politeness to ask
Anna Karenina
1298 of 1759
Vassenka whether he would come, and she did not ask
him. ‘Where are you going, Kostya?’ she asked her
husband with a guilty face, as he passed by her with a
resolute step. This guilty air confirmed all his suspicions.
‘The mechanician came when I was away; I haven’t
seen him yet,’ he said, not looking at her.
He went downstairs, but before he had time to leave
his study he heard his wife’s familiar footsteps running
with reckless speed to him.
‘What do you want?’ he said to her shortly. ‘We are
busy.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said to the German
mechanician; ‘I want a few words with my husband.’
The German would have left the room, but Levin said
to him:
‘Don’t disturb yourself.’
‘The train is at three?’ queried the German. ‘I mustn’t
be late.’
Levin did not answer him, but walked out himself with
his wife.
‘Well, what have you to say to me?’ he said to her in
French.
He did not look her in the face, and did not care to see
that she in her condition was trembling all over, and had a
piteous, crushed look.
‘I...I want to say that we can’t go on like this; that this
is misery...’ she said.
‘The servants are here at the sideboard,’ he said angrily;
‘don’t make a scene.’
‘Well, let’s go in here!’
They were standing in the passage. Kitty would have
gone into the next room, but there the English governess
was giving Tanya a lesson.
‘Well, come into the garden.’
In the garden they came upon a peasant weeding the
path. And no longer considering that the peasant could see
her tear-stained and his agitated face, that they looked like
people fleeing from some disaster, they went on with rapid
steps, feeling that they must speak out and clear up
misunderstandings, must be alone together, and so get rid
of the misery they were both feeling.
‘We can’t go on like this! It’s misery! I am wretched;
you are wretched. What for?’ she said, when they had at
last reached a solitary garden seat at a turn in the lime tree
avenue.
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‘But tell me one thing: was there in his tone anything
unseemly, not nice, humiliatingly horrible?’ he said,
standing before her again in the same position with his
clenched fists on his chest, as he had stood before her that
night.
‘Yes,’ she said in a shaking voice; ‘but, Kostya, surely
you see I’m not to blame? All the morning I’ve been
trying to take a tone...but such people ...Why did he
come? How happy we were!’ she said, breathless with the
sobs that shook her.
Although nothing had been pursuing them, and there
was nothing to run away from, and they could not
possibly have found anything very delightful on that
garden seat, the gardener saw with astonishment that they
passed him on their way home with comforted and radiant
faces.
Chapter 15
After escorting his wife upstairs, Levin went to Dolly’s
part of the house. Darya Alexandrovna, for her part, was
in great distress too that day. She was walking about the
room, talking angrily to a little girl, who stood in the
corner roaring.
‘And you shall stand all day in the corner, and have
your dinner all alone, and not see one of your dolls, and I
won’t make you a new frock,’ she said, not knowing how
to punish her.
‘Oh, she is a disgusting child!’ she turned to Levin.
‘Where does she get such wicked propensities?’
‘Why, what has she done?’ Levin said without much
interest, for he had wanted to ask her advice, and so was
annoyed that he had come at an unlucky moment.
‘Grisha and she went into the raspberries, and there...I
can’t tell you really what she did. It’s a thousand pities
Miss Elliot’s not with us. This one sees to nothing—she’s a
machine.... Figurez-vous que la petite?..’
And Darya Alexandrovna described Masha’s crime.
‘That proves nothing; it’s not a question of evil
propensities at all, it’s simply mischief,’ Levin assured her.
‘But you are upset about something? What have you
come for?’ asked Dolly. ‘What’s going on there?’
And in the tone of her question Levin heard that it
would be easy for him to say what he had meant to say.
‘I’ve not been in there, I’ve been alone in the garden
with Kitty. We’ve had a quarrel for the second time
since...Stiva came.’
Dolly looked at him with her shrewd, comprehending
eyes.
‘Come, tell me, honor bright, has there been...not in
Kitty, but in that gentleman’s behavior, a tone which
might be unpleasant— not unpleasant, but horrible,
offensive to a husband?’
‘You mean, how shall I say.... Stay, stay in the corner!’
she said to Masha, who, detecting a faint smile in her
mother’s face, had been turning round. ‘The opinion of
the world would be that he is behaving as young men do
behave. Il fait la cour a une jeune et jolie femme, and a
husband who’s a man of the world should only be flattered
by it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Levin gloomily; ‘but you noticed it?’
‘Not only I, but Stiva noticed it. Just after breakfast he
said to me in so many words, Je crois que Veslovsky fait
un petit brin de cour a Kitty.’
‘Well, that’s all right then; now I’m satisfied. I’ll send
him away,’ said Levin.
‘What do you mean!b Are you crazy?’ Dolly cried in
horror; ‘nonsense, Kostya, only think!’ she said, laughing.
‘You can go now to Fanny,’ she said to Masha. ‘No, if
you wish it, I’ll speak to Stiva. He’ll take him away. He
can say you’re expecting visitors. Altogether he doesn’t fit
into the house.’
‘No, no, I’ll do it myself.’
‘But you’ll quarrel with him?’
‘Not a bit. I shall so enjoy it,’ Levin said, his eyes
flashing with real enjoyment. ‘Come, forgive her, Dolly,
she won’t do it again,’ he said of the little sinner, who had
not gone to Fanny, but was standing irresolutely before
her mother, waiting and looking up from under her brows
to catch her mother’s eye.
The mother glanced at her. The child broke into sobs,
hid her face on her mother’s lap, and Dolly laid her thin,
tender hand on her head.
‘And what is there in common between us and him?’
thought Levin, and he went off to look for Veslovsky.
As he passed through the passage he gave orders for the
carriage to be got ready to drive to the station.
‘The spring was broken yesterday,’ said the footman.
‘Well, the covered trap, then, and make haste. Where’s
the visitor?’
‘The gentleman’s gone to his room.’
Levin came upon Veslovsky at the moment when the
latter, having unpacked his things from his trunk, and laid
out some new songs, was putting on his gaiters to go out
riding.
Whether there was something exceptional in Levin’s
face, or that Vassenka was himself conscious that ce petit
brin de cour he was making was out of place in this
family, but he was somewhat (as much as a young man in
society can be) disconcerted at Levin’s entrance.
‘You ride in gaiters?’
‘Yes, it’s much cleaner,’ said Vassenka, putting his fat
leg on a chair, fastening the bottom hook, and smiling
with simple-hearted good humor.
He was undoubtedly a good-natured fellow, and Levin
felt sorry for him and ashamed of himself, as his host,
when he saw the shy look on Vassenka’s face.
On the table lay a piece of stick which they had broken
together that morning, trying their strength. Levin took
the fragment in his hands and began smashing it up,
breaking bits off the stick, not knowing how to begin.
‘I wanted....’ He paused, but suddenly, remembering
Kitty and everything that had happened, he said, looking
him resolutely in the face: ‘I have ordered the horses to be
put-to for you.’
‘How so?’ Vassenka began in surprise. ‘To drive
where?’
‘For you to drive to the station,’ Levin said gloomily.
‘Are you going away, or has something happened?’
‘It happens that I expect visitors,’ said Levin, his strong
fingers more and more rapidly breaking off the ends of the
split stick. ‘And I’m not expecting visitors, and nothing has
happened, but I beg you to go away. You can explain my
rudeness as you like.’
Vassenka drew himself up.
‘I beg you to explain...’ he said with dignity,
understanding at last.
‘I can’t explain,’ Levin said softly and deliberately,
trying to control the trembling of his jaw; ‘and you’d
better not ask.’
And as the split ends were all broken off, Levin
clutched the thick ends in his finger, broke the stick in
two, and carefully caught the end as it fell.
Probably the sight of those nervous fingers, of the
muscles he had proved that morning at gymnastics, of the
glittering eyes, the soft voice, and quivering jaws,
convinced Vassenka better than any words. He bowed,
shrugging his shoulders, and smiling contemptuously.
‘Can I not see Oblonsky?’
The shrug and the smile did not irritate Levin.
‘What else was there for him to do?’ he thought.
‘I’ll send him to you at once.’
‘What madness is this?’ Stepan Arkadyevitch said when,
after hearing from his friend that he was being turned out
of the house, he found Levin in the garden, where he was
walking about waiting for his guest’s departure. ‘Mais c’est
ridicule! What fly has stung you? Mais c’est du dernier
ridicule! What did you think, if a young man..’
But the place where Levin had been stung was
evidently still sore, for he turned pale again, when Stepan
Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on the reason, and he
himself cut him short.
‘Please don’t go into it! I can’t help it. I feel ashamed of
how I’m treating you and him. But it won’t be, I imagine,
a great grief to him to go, and his presence was distasteful
to me and to my wife.’
‘But it’s insulting to him! Et puis c’est ridicule.’
‘And to me it’s both insulting and distressing! And I’m
not at fault in any way, and there’s no need for me to
suffer.’
‘Well, this I didn’t expect of you! On peut etre jaloux,
mais a ce point, c’est du dernier ridicule!’
Levin turned quickly, and walked away from him into
the depths of the avenue, and he went on walking up and
down alone. Soon he heard the rumble of the trap, and
saw from behind the trees how Vassenka, sitting in the hay
(unluckily there was no seat in the trap) in his Scotch cap,
was driven along the avenue, jolting up and down over
the ruts.
‘What’s this?’ Levin thought, when a footman ran out
of the house and stopped the trap. It was the mechanician,
whom Levin had totally forgotten. The mechanician,
bowing low, said something to Veslovsky, then clambered
into the trap, and they drove off together.
Stepan Arkadyevitch and the princess were much upset
by Levin’s action. And he himself felt not only in the
highest degree ridicule, but also utterly guilty and
disgraced. But remembering what sufferings he and his
wife had been through, when he asked himself how he
should act another time, he answered that he should do
just the same again.
In spite of all this, towards the end of that day,
everyone except the princess, who could not pardon
Levin’s action, became extraordinarily lively and good
humored, like children after a punishment or grown-up
people after a dreary, ceremonious reception, so that by
the evening Vassenka’s dismissal was spoken of, in the
absence of the princess, as though it were some remote
event. And Dolly, who had inherited her father’s gift of
humorous storytelling, made Varenka helpless with
laughter as she related for the third and fourth time, always
with fresh humorous additions, how she had only just put
on her new shoes for the benefit of the visitor, and on
going into the drawing room, heard suddenly the rumble
of the trap. And who should be in the trap but Vassenka
himself, with his Scotch cap, and his songs and his gaiters,
and all, sitting in the hay.
‘If only you’d ordered out the carriage! But no! and
then I hear: ‘Stop!’ Oh, I thought they’ve relented. I look
out, and behold a fat German being sat down by him and
driving away.... And my new shoes all for nothing!..’