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to trot out all my diplomatic talents. I allowed that their conduct was
bad, but I urged him to take into consideration their heedlessness,
their youth; then, too, the young men had only just been lunching
together. ‘You understand. They regret it deeply, and beg you to
overlook their misbehavior.’ The government clerk was softened once
more. ‘I consent, count, and am ready to overlook it; but you perceive
that my wife—my wife’s a respectable woman —his been exposed to
the persecution, and insults, and effrontery of young upstarts, scoun-
drels....’ And you must understand, the young upstarts are present all
the while, and I have to keep the peace between them. Again I call out
all my diplomacy, and again as soon as the thing was about at an end,
our friend the government clerk gets hot and red, and his sausages
stand on end with wrath, and once more I launch out into diplomatic
wiles.”
“Ah, he must tell you this story!” said Betsy, laughing, to a lady to
came into her box. “He has been making me laugh so.”
“Well, bonne chance!” she added, giving Vronsky one finger of the
hand in which she held her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders she
twitched down the bodice of her gown that had worked up, so as to be
duly naked as she moved forward towards the footlights into the light
of the gas, and the sight of all eyes.
Vronsky drove to the French theater, where he really had to see the
colonel of his regiment, who never missed a single performance there.
He wanted to see him, to report on the result of his mediation, which
had occupied and amused him for the last three days. Petritsky, whom
he liked, was implicated in the affair, and the other culprit was a capital
fellow and first-rate comrade, who had lately joined the regiment, the
young Prince Kedrov. And what was most important, the interests of
the regiment were involved in it too.
Both the young men were in Vronsky’s company. The colonel of
the regiment was waited upon by the government clerk, Venden, with
a complaint against his officers, who had insulted his wife. His young
wife, so Venden told the story—he had been married half a year—was
at church with her mother, and suddenly overcome by indisposition,
arising from her interesting condition, she could not remain standing,
she drove home in the first sledge, a smart-looking one, she came
across. On the spot the officers set off in pursuit of her; she was
alarmed, and feeling still more unwell, ran up the staircase home.
Venden himself, on returning from his office, heard a ring at their bell
and voices, went out, and seeing the intoxicated officers with a letter,
he had turned them out. He asked for exemplary punishment.
“Yes, it’s all very well,” said the colonel to Vronsky, whom he had
invited to come and see him. “Petritsky’s becoming impossible. Not a
week goes by without some scandal. This government clerk won’t let it
drop, he’ll go on with the thing.”
Vronsky saw all the thanklessness of the business, and that there
could be no question of a duel in it, that everything must be done to
soften the government clerk, and hush the matter up. The colonel had
called in Vronsky just because he knew him to be an honorable and
intelligent man, and, more than all, a man who cared for the honor of
the regiment. They talked it over, and decided that Petritsky and
Kedrov must go with Vronsky to Venden’s to apologize. The colonel
and Vronsky were both fully aware that Vronsky’s name and rank
would be sure to contribute greatly to softening of the injured husband’s
feelings.
And these two influences were not in fact without effect; though
the result remained, as Vronsky had described, uncertain.
On reaching the French theater, Vronsky retired to the foyer with