182 183
What do you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee; it’s boiling
over. You see, I’m engrossed with business! I want a lawsuit, because I
must have my property. Do you understand the folly of it, that on the
pretext of my being unfaithful to him,” she said contemptuously, “he
wants to get the benefit of my fortune.”
Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty
woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether
dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women.
In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed
classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous
people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife
whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman
modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to
bring up one’s children, earn one’s bread, and pay one’s debts; and
various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and
ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real
people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to
be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush
to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.
For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled after the impres-
sion of a quite different world that he had brought with him from
Moscow. But immediately as though slipping his feet into old slippers,
he dropped back into the light-hearted, pleasant world he had always
lived in.
The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over every one,
and boiled away, doing just what was required of it—that is, providing
much cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and
the baroness’s gown.
“Well now, good-bye, or you’ll never get washed, and I shall have
on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you would
advise a knife to his throat?”
“To be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far from his
lips. He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,” answered
Vronsky.
“So at the Francais!” and, with a rustle of her skirts, she vanished.
Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go,
shook hands and went off to his dressing room.
While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief outlines
his position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky had left Petersburg.
No money at all. His father said he wouldn’t give him any and pay his
debts. His tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow,
too, was threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the regiment
had announced that if these scandals did not cease he would have to
leave. As for the baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially since
she’d taken to offering continually to lend him money. But he had
found a girl—he’d show her to Vronsky—a marvel, exquisite, in the
strict Oriental style, “genre of the slave Rebecca, don’t you know.” He’d
had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to send seconds to him,
but of course it would come to nothing. Altogether everything was
supremely amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into
further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the
interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky’s familiar stories in the
familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in,
Vronsky felt a delightful sense of coming back to the careless Peters-
burg life that he was used to.
“Impossible!” he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing basin
in which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. “Impossible!” he
cried, at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made