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Chapter 7.
Levin reached the club just at the right time. Members and visi-
tors were driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been at the club for
a very long while—not since he lived in Moscow, when he was leaving
the university and going into society. He remembered the club, the
external details of its arrangement, but he had completely forgotten
the impression it had made on him in old days. But as soon as, driving
into the wide semicircular court and getting out of the sledge, he
mounted the steps, and the hall porter, adorned with a crossway scarf,
noiselessly opened the door to him with a bow; as soon as he saw in the
porter’s room the cloaks and galoshes of members who thought it less
trouble to take them off downstairs; as soon as he heard the mysterious
ringing bell that preceded him as he ascended the easy, carpeted stair-
case, and saw the statue on the landing, and the third porter at the top
doors, a familiar figure grown older, in the club livery, opening the door
without haste or delay, and scanning the visitors as they passed in—
Levin felt the old impression of the club come back in a rush, an
impression of repose, comfort, and propriety.
“Your hat, please,” the porter said to Levin, who forgot the club rule
to leave his hat in the porter’s room. “Long time since you’ve been. The
prince put your name down yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch is
not here yet.”
The porter did not only know Levin, but also all his ties and rela-
tionships, and so immediately mentioned his intimate friends.
Passing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the
room partitioned on the right, where a man sits at the fruit buffet,
Levin overtook an old man walking slowly in, and entered the dining
room full of noise and people.
He walked along the tables, almost all full, and looked at the visi-
tors. He saw people of all sorts, old and young; some he knew a little,
some intimate friends. There was not a single cross or worried-looking
face. All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter’s
room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy
the material blessings of life. Sviazhsky was here and Shtcherbatsky,
Nevyedovsky and the old prince, and Vronsky and Sergey Ivanovitch.
“Ah! why are you late?” the prince said smiling, and giving him his
hand over his own shoulder. “How’s Kitty?” he added, smoothing out
the napkin he had tucked in at his waistcoat buttons.
“All right; they are dining at home, all the three of them.”
“Ah, ‘Aline-Nadine,’ to be sure! There’s no room with us. Go to
that table, and make haste and take a seat,” said the prince, and turn-
ing away he carefully took a plate of eel soup.
“Levin, this way!” a good-natured voice shouted a little farther on.
It was Turovtsin. He was sitting with a young officer, and beside them
were two chairs turned upside down. Levin gladly went up to them.
He had always liked the good-hearted rake, Turovtsin—he was asso-
ciated in his mind with memories of his courtship—and at that mo-
ment, after the strain of intellectual conversation, the sight of Turovtsin’s
good-natured face was particularly welcome.
“For you and Oblonsky. He’ll be here directly.”
The young man, holding himself very erect, with eyes forever twin-