Anna Karenina

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."
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"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
journee 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.
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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.
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