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his whiskers to cover the yawn, and shook himself together. But soon
after he became aware that he was dropping asleep and on the very
point of snoring. He recovered himself at the very moment when the
voice of Countess Lidia Ivanovna was saying “he’s asleep.” Stepan
Arkadyevitch started with dismay, feeling guilty and caught. But he
was reassured at once by seeing that the words “he’s asleep” referred
not to him, but to Landau. The Frenchman was asleep as well as
Stepan Arkadyevitch. But Stepan Arkadyevitch’s being asleep would
have offended them, as he thought (though even this, he thought,
might not be so, as everything seemed so queer), while Landau’s being
asleep delighted them extremely, especially Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
“Mon ami,” said Lidia Ivanovna, carefully holding the folds of her
silk gown so as not to rustle, and in her excitement calling Karenin not
Alexey Alexandrovitch, but “mon ami,” “donnez-lui la main. Vous
voyez? Sh!” she hissed at the footman as he came in again. “Not at
home.”
The Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with his
head on the back of his chair, and his moist hand, as it lay on his knee,
made faint movements, as though trying to catch something. Alexey
Alexandrovitch got up, tried to move carefully, but stumbled against
the table, went up and laid his hand in the Frenchman’s hand. Stepan
Arkadyevitch got up too, and opening his eyes wide, trying to wake
himself up if he were asleep, he looked first at one and then at the
other. It was all real. Stepan Arkadyevitch felt that his head was
getting worse and worse.
“Que la personne qui est arrivee la derniere, celle qui demande,
qu’elle sorte! Qu’elle sorte!” articulated the Frenchman, without open-
ing his eyes.
“Vous m’excuserez, mais vous voyez.... Revenez vers dix heures,
encore mieux demain.”
“Qu’elle sorte!” repeated the Frenchman impatiently.
“C’est moi, n’est-ce pas?” And receiving an answer in the affirma-
tive, Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting the favor he had meant to ask of
Lidia Ivanovna, and forgetting his sister’s affairs, caring for nothing,
but filled with the sole desire to get away as soon as possible, went out
on tiptoe and ran out into the street as though from a plague-stricken
house. For a long while he chatted and joked with his cab-driver, trying
to recover his spirits.
At the French theater where he arrived for the last act, and after-
wards at the Tatar restaurant after his champagne, Stepan Arkadyevitch
felt a little refreshed in the atmosphere he was used to. But still he felt
quite unlike himself all that evening.
On getting home to Pyotr Oblonsky’s, where he was staying, Stepan
Arkadyevitch found a note from Betsy. She wrote to him that she was
very anxious to finish their interrupted conversation, and begged him
to come next day. He had scarcely read this note, and frowned at its
contents, when he heard below the ponderous tramp of the servants,
carrying something heavy.
Stepan Arkadyevitch went out to look. It was the rejuvenated
Pyotr Oblonsky. He was so drunk that he could not walk upstairs; but
he told them to set him on his legs when he saw Stepan Arkadyevitch,
and clinging to him, walked with him into his room and there began
telling him how he had spent the evening, and fell asleep doing so.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was in very low spirits, which happened rarely
with him, and for a long while he could not go to sleep. Everything he
could recall to his mind, everything was disgusting; but most disgust-
ing of all, as if it were something shameful, was the memory of the
evening he had spent at Countess Lidia Ivanovna’s.