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prince he was an inferior, and his contemptuous and indulgent attitude
to him revolted him.
“Brainless beef! can I be like that?” he thought.
Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the
prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he
was happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant
reflection of himself. He said good-bye to him at the station on their
return from a bear hunt, at which they had had a display of Russian
prowess kept up all night.
Chapter 2.
When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She
wrote, “I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on
longer without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey
Alexandrovitch goes to the council at seven and will be there till ten.”
Thinking for an instant of the strangeness of her bidding him come
straight to her, in spite of her husband’s insisting on her not receiving
him, he decided to go.
Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had
left the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having some
lunch, he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memo-
ries of the hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days
were confused together and joined on to a mental image of Anna and
of the peasant who had played an important part in the bear hunt, and
Vronsky fell asleep. He waked up in the dark, trembling with horror,
and made haste to light a candle. “What was it? What? What was
the dreadful thing I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with
a disheveled beard was stooping down doing something, and all of a
sudden he began saying some strange words in French. Yes, there was
nothing else in the dream,” he said to himself. “But why was it so
awful?” He vividly recalled the peasant again and those incomprehen-
sible French words the peasant had uttered, and a chill of horror ran