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to be considered and arranged. One thing was unmistakable, that
there must be no delay, as it was already half-past six.
Nothing special happened at the ceremony of benediction with
the holy picture. Stepan Arkadyevitch stood in a comically solemn
pose beside his wife, took the holy picture, and telling Levin to bow
down to the ground, he blessed him with his kindly, ironical smile, and
kissed him three times; Darya Alexandrovna did the same, and imme-
diately vas in a hurry to get off, and again plunged into the intricate
question of the destinations of the various carriages.
“Come, I’ll tell you how we’ll manage: you drive in our carriage to
fetch him, and Sergey Ivanovitch, if he’ll be so good, will drive there
and then send his carriage.”
“Of course; I shall be delighted.”
“We’ll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?” said
Stepan Arkadyevitch.
“Yes,” answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes
for him to dress.
Chapter 3.
A crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the
church lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in
getting into the main entrance were crowding about the windows,
pushing, wrangling, and peeping through the gratings.
More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks
along the street by the police. A police officer, regardless of the frost,
stood at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More carriages were
continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their
trains, and men taking off their helmets or black hats kept walking into
the church. Iside the church both lusters were already lighted, and all
the candles before the holy pictures. The gilt on the red ground of the
holy picture-stand, and the gilt relief on the pictures, and the silver of
the lusters and candlesticks, and the stones of the floor, and the rugs,
and the banners above in the choir, and the steps of the altar, and the
old blackened books, and the cassocks and surplices—all were flooded
with light. On the right side of the warm church, in the crowd of frock
coats and white ties, uniforms and broadcloth, velvet, satin, hair and
flowers, bare shoulders and arms and long gloves, there was discreet
but lively conversation that echoed strangely in the high cupola. Every
time there was heard the creak of the opened door the conversation in
the crowd died away, and everybody looked round expecting to see the