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where he hoped to meet Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
“And how strong they all are, how sound physically,” thought Alexey
Alexandrovitch, looking at the powerfully built gentleman of the
bedchamber with his well-combed, perfumed whiskers, and at the red
neck of the prince, pinched by his tight uniform. He had to pass them
on his way. “Truly is it said that all the world is evil,” he thought, with
another sidelong glance at the calves of the gentleman of the
bedchamber.
Moving forward deliberately, Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed with
his customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had
been talking about him, and looking towards the door, his eyes sought
Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
“Ah! Alexey Alexandrovitch!” said the little old man, with a mali-
cious light in his eyes, at the moment when Karenin was on a level with
them, and was nodding with a frigid gesture, “I haven’t congratulated
you yet,” said the old man, pointing to his newly received ribbon.
“Thank you,” answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. “What an EX-
QUISITE day to-day,” he added, laying emphasis in his peculiar way
on the word EXQUISITE.
That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did not expect
anything but hostility from them; he was used to that by now.
Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia Ivanovna jutting
out above her corset, and her fine pensive eyes bidding him to her,
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and
went towards her.
Lidia Ivanovna’s dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all her
dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the reverse
of that she had pursued thirty years before. Then her desire had been
to adorn herself with something, and the more adorned the better.
Now, on the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so inconsis-
tent with her age and her figure, that her one anxiety was to contrive
that the contrast between these adornments and her own exterior
should not be too appalling. And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was
concerned she succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive. For him she
was the one island not only of goodwill to him, but of love in the midst
of the sea of hostility and jeering that surrounded him.
Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally to
her loving glance as a plant to the sun.
“I congratulate you,” she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.
Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders, closing
his eyes, as though to say that that could not be a source of joy to him.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well aware that it was one of his
chief sources of satisfaction, though he never admitted it.
“How is our angel?” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, meaning
Seryozha.
“I can’t say I was quite pleased with him,” said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. “And
Sitnikov is not satisfied with him.” (Sitnikov was the tutor to whom
Seryozha’s secular education had been intrusted.) “As I have men-
tioned to you, there’s a sort of coldness in him towards the most impor-
tant questions which ought to touch the heart of every man and every
child....” Alexey Alexandrovitch began expounding his views on the
sole question that interested him besides the service—the education
of his son.
When Alexey Alexandrovitch with Lidia Ivanovna’s help had been
brought back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to undertake
the education of the son left on his hands. Having never before taken
any interest in educational questions, Alexey Alexandrovitch devoted