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with whom it rests. You cannot conceive the craving I have to see him,
and so cannot conceive the gratitude your help will arouse in me.
Anna”
Everything in this letter exasperated Countess Lidia Ivanovna: its
contents and the allusion to magnanimity, and especially its free and
easy—as she considered—tone.
“Say that there is no answer,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, and
immediately opening her blotting-book, she wrote to Alexey
Alexandrovitch that she hoped to see him at one o’clock at the levee.
“I must talk with you of a grave and painful subject. There we will
arrange where to meet. Best of all at my house, where I will order tea
as you like it. Urgent. He lays the cross, but He gives the strength to
bear it,” she added, so as to give him some slight preparation. Count-
ess Lidia Ivanovna usually wrote some two or three letters a day to
Alexey Alexandrovitch. She enjoyed that form of communication,
which gave opportunity for a refinement and air of mystery not af-
forded by their personal interviews.
Chapter 24.
The levee was drawing to a close. People met as they were going
away, and gossiped of the latest news, of the newly bestowed honors
and the changes in the positions of the higher functionaries.
“If only Countess Marya Borissovna were Minister of War, and
Princess Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-Chief,” said a gray-headed,
little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall, hand-
some maid of honor who had questioned him about the new appoint-
ments.
“And me among the adjutants,” said the maid of honor, smiling.
“You have an appointment already. You’re over the ecclesiastical
department. And your assistant’s Karenin.”
“Good-day, prince!” said the little old man to a man who came up
to him.
“What were you saying of Karenin?” said the prince.
“He and Putyatov have received the Alexander Nevsky.”
“I thought he had it already.”
“No. Just look at him,” said the little old man, pointing with his
embroidered hat to Karenin in a court uniform with the new red ribbon
across his shoulders, standing in the doorway of the hall with an influ-
ential member of the Imperial Council. “Pleased and happy as a brass
farthing,” he added, stopping to shake hands with a handsome gentle-