Everyone laughed, and Stepan Arkadyevich with particular good humor.
`Oh, yes, that's the best method!' he said, munching cheese and filling the wineglass with a special sort of vodka. The conversation dropped at the jest.
`This cheese is not bad. Shall I give you some?' said the master of the house. `Why, have you been going in for gymnastics again?' he asked Levin, pinching his muscle with his left hand. Levin smiled, bent his arm, and under Stepan Arkadyevich's fingers the muscles swelled up like a sound cheese, hard as a knob of iron, through the fine cloth of the coat.
`What biceps! A perfect Samson!'
`I imagine great strength is needed for hunting bears,' observed Alexei Alexandrovich, who had the mistiest notions about the chase. He cut off and spread with cheese a wafer of bread fine as a spiderweb.
Levin smiled.
`Not at all. Quite the contrary - a child can kill a bear,' he said, with a slight bow moving aside for the ladies, who were approaching the hors d'oeuvres table.
`You have killed a bear, I've been told!' said Kitty, trying assiduously to catch with her fork a perverse mushroom that would slip away, and shaking the lace over her white arm. `Are there bears on your place?' she added, turning her charming little head to him and smiling.
There was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but what unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every turn of her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was entreaty for forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness - soft, timid tenderness - and promise, and hope, and love for him, which he could not but believe in, and which suffocated him with happiness.
`No, we've been hunting in the Tver province. It was coming back from there that I met your beau-frere in the train, or your beau-frere's brother-in-law,' he said with a smile. `It was an amusing meeting.'
And he began telling with droll good humor how, after not sleeping all night, he had, wearing a fur-lined, full-skirted coat, got into Alexei Alexandrovich's compartment.
`The conductor, forgetting the proverb, would have chucked me out on account of my attire; but thereupon I began expressing my feelings in elevated language, and... you, too,' he said, addressing Karenin and forgetting his name, `at first would have ejected me on the ground of my coat, but afterward you took my part, for which I am extremely grateful.'
`The rights of passengers generally to choose their seats are too ill-defined,' said Alexei Alexandrovich, rubbing the tips of his fingers on his handkerchief.
`I saw you were in uncertainty about me,' said Levin, smiling good-naturedly, `but I made haste to plunge into intellectual conversation to smooth over the defects of my attire.'
Sergei Ivanovich, while he kept a conversation with their hostess, had one ear for his brother, and he glanced askance at him. `What is the matter with him today? Why such a conquering hero?' he thought. He did not know that Levin was feeling as though he had grown wings. Levin knew she was listening to his words and that she was glad to listen to him.
And this was the only thing that interested him. Not in that room only, but in the whole world, there existed for him only himself, with enormously increased importance and dignity in his own eyes, and she. He felt himself on a pinnacle that made him giddy, and far away down below were all those kind, excellent Karenins, Oblonskys, and all the world.
Quite without attracting notice, without glancing at them, as though there were no other places left, Stepan Arkadyevich put Levin and Kitty side by side.
`Oh, you may as well sit there,' he said to Levin.
The dinner was as choice as the china, of which Stepan Arkadyevich was a connoisseur. The soupe Marie-Louise was a splendid success; the tiny patties eaten with it melted in the mouth and were irreproachable. The two footmen and Matvei, in white cravats, did their duty with the dishes and wines unobtrusively, quietly, and dexterously. On the material side the dinner was a success; it was no less so on the immaterial. The conversation, at times general and at times between individuals, never paused, and toward the end the company was so lively that the men rose from the table without stopping speaking, and even Alexei Alexandrovich became lively.
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 4, Chapter 10[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 10 Pestsov liked threshing an argument out to the end, and was not satisfied with Sergei Ivanovich's words, especially as he felt the injustice of his view.
`I did not mean,' he said over the soup, addressing Alexei Alexandrovich, `mere density of population alone, but in conjunction with fundamental ideas, and not by means of principles.'
`It seems to me,' Alexei Alexandrovich said languidly, and with no haste, `that that's the same thing. In my opinion, influence over another people is only possible to the people which has the higher development, which...'
`But that's just the question,' Pestsov broke in in his bass.
He was always in a hurry to speak, and seemed always to put his whole soul into whatever he was saying; `of what are we to make higher development consist? The English, the French, the Germans - which is at the highest stage of development? Which of them will nationalize the other? We see the Rhine provinces have been turned French, yet the Germans are not at a lower stage!' he shouted. `There is another law at work there!'
`I fancy that the greater influence is always on the side of true civilization,' said Alexei Alexandrovich, slightly lifting his eyebrows.
`But what are we to lay down as the outward signs of true civilization?'
said Pestsov.
`I imagine such signs are generally very well known,' said Alexei Alexandrovich.
