Anna Karenina

Chapter 7
Levin reached the club just at the right time. Members and visitors were
driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been at the club for a very long
while--not since he lived in Moscow, when he was leaving the university
and going into society. He remembered the club, the external details of its
arrangement, but he had completely forgotten the impression it had made
on him in old days. But as soon as, driving into the wide semicircular court
and getting out of the sledge, he mounted the steps, and the hall porter,
adorned with a crossway scarf, noiselessly opened the door to him with a
bow; as soon as he saw in the porter's room the cloaks and galoshes of
members who thought it less trouble to take them off downstairs; as soon as
he heard the mysterious ringing bell that preceded him as he ascended the
easy, carpeted staircase, and saw the statue on the landing, and the third
porter at the top doors, a familiar figure grown older, in the club livery,
opening the door without haste or delay, and scanning the visitors as they
passed in--Levin felt the old impression of the club come back in a rush, an
impression of repose, comfort, and propriety.
"Your hat, please," the porter said to Levin, who forgot the club rule to
leave his hat in the porter's room. "Long time since you've been. The prince
put your name down yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch is not here
yet."
The porter did not only know Levin, but also all his ties and relationships,
and so immediately mentioned his intimate friends.
Passing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the room
partitioned on the right, where a man sits at the fruit buffet, Levin overtook
an old man walking slowly in, and entered the dining room full of noise and
people.
He walked along the tables, almost all full, and looked at the visitors. He
saw people of all sorts, old and young; some he knew a little, some intimate
friends. There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to
have left their cares and anxieties in the porter's room with their hats, and
Chapter 7
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were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life.
Sviazhsky was here and Shtcherbatsky, Nevyedovsky and the old prince,
and Vronsky and Sergey Ivanovitch.
"Ah! why are you late?" the prince said smiling, and giving him his hand
over his own shoulder. "How's Kitty?" he added, smoothing out the napkin
he had tucked in at his waistcoat buttons.
"All right; they are dining at home, all the three of them."
"Ah, 'Aline-Nadine,' to be sure! There's no room with us. Go to that table,
and make haste and take a seat," said the prince, and turning away he
carefully took a plate of eel soup.
"Levin, this way!" a good-natured voice shouted a little farther on. It was
Turovtsin. He was sitting with a young officer, and beside them were two
chairs turned upside down. Levin gladly went up to them. He had always
liked the good-hearted rake, Turovtsin--he was associated in his mind with
memories of his courtship--and at that moment, after the strain of
intellectual conversation, the sight of Turovtsin's good-natured face was