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In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week. A
foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put under
his charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Vronsky
was of distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of
behaving with respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with
such grand personages—that was how he came to be put in charge of
the prince. But he felt his duties very irksome. The prince was anxious
to miss nothing of which he would be asked at home, had he seen that
in Russia? And on his own account he was anxious to enjoy to the
utmost all Russian forms of amusement. Vronsky was obliged to be his
guide in satisfying both these inclinations. The mornings they spent
driving to look at places of interest; the evenings they passed enjoying
the national entertainments. The prince rejoiced in health exceptional
even among princes. By gymnastics and careful attention to his health
he had brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excess in
pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber. The
prince had traveled a great deal, and considered one of the chief ad-
vantages of modern facilities of communication was the accessibility of
the pleasures of all nations.
He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and
had made friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In
Switzerland he had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a
red coat over hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In
Turkey he had got into a harem; in India he had hunted on an el-
ephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the specially Russian
forms of pleasure.
Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him,
was at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements suggested
by various persons to the prince. They had race horses, and Russian
pancakes and bear hunts and three-horse sledges, and gypsies and
drinking feasts, with the Russian accompaniment of broken crockery.
And the prince with surprising ease fell in with the Russian spirit,
smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and
seemed to be asking—what more, and does the whole Russian spirit
consist in just this?
In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked best
French actresses and ballet dancers and white-seal champagne.
Vronsky was used to princes, but, either because he had himself
changed of late, or that he was in too close proximity to the prince, that
week seemed fearfully wearisome to him. The whole of that week he
experienced a sensation such as a man might have set in charge of a
dangerous madman, afraid of the madman, and at the same time, from
being with him, fearing for his own reason. Vronsky was continually
conscious of the necessity of never for a second relaxing the tone of
stern official respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted. The
prince’s manner of treating the very people who, to Vronsky’s surprise,
were ready to descend to any depths to provide him with Russian
amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women,
whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky crimson with
indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so particularly dis-
agreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help seeing himself in him.
And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He was
a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-
washed man, and nothing else. He was a gentleman—that was true,
and Vronsky could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with
his superiors, was free and ingratiating in his behavior with his equals,
and was contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors. Vronsky was
himself the same, and regarded it as a great merit to be so. But for this