1160 1161
Borozdina? Tell her, tomorrow at two o’clock. Yes,” she said, putting
her finger in the place in the book, and gazing before her with her fine
pensive eyes, “that is how true faith acts. You know Marie Sanina?
You know about her trouble? She lost her only child. She was in
despair. And what happened? She found this comforter, and she
thanks God now for the death of her child. Such is the happiness faith
brings!”
“Oh, yes, that is most...” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, glad they were
going to read, and let him have a chance to collect his faculties. “No, I
see I’d better not ask her about anything today,” he thought. “If only I
can get out of this without putting my foot in it!”
“It will be dull for you,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, addressing
Landau; “you don’t know English, but it’s short.”
“Oh, I shall understand,” said Landau, with the same smile, and
he closed his eyes. Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Ivanovna ex-
changed meaningful glances, and the reading began.
Chapter 22.
Stepan Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the strange
talk which he was hearing for the first time. The complexity of Peters-
burg, as a rule, had a stimulating effect on him, rousing him out of his
Moscow stagnation. But he liked these complications, and understood
them only in the circles he knew and was at home in. In these unfamil-
iar surroundings he was puzzled and disconcerted, and could not get
his bearings. As he listened to Countess Lidia Ivanovna, aware of the
beautiful, artless—or perhaps artful, he could not decide which—eyes
of Landau fixed upon him, Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be con-
scious of a peculiar heaviness in his head.
The most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. “Marie
Sanina is glad her child’s dead.... How good a smoke would be now!...
To be saved, one need only believe, and the monks don’t know how the
thing’s to be done, but Countess Lidia Ivanovna does know.... And
why is my head so heavy? Is it the cognac, or all this being so queer?
Anyway, I fancy I’ve done nothing unsuitable so far. But anyway, it
won’t do to ask her now. They say they make one say one’s prayers. I
only hope they won’t make me! That’ll be too imbecile. And what stuff
it is she’s reading! but she has a good accent. Landau—Bezzubov—
what’s he Bezzubov for?” All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch became
aware that his lower jaw was uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled