Part Seven: Chapter 22

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Stepan Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the strangetalk which he was hearing for the first time. The complexity ofPetersburg, as a rule, had a stimulating effect on him, rousinghim out of his Moscow stagnation. But he liked thesecomplications, and understood them only in the circles he knewand was at home in. In these unfamiliar surroundings he waspuzzled and disconcerted, and could not get his bearings. As helistened to Countess Lidia Ivanovna, aware of the beautiful,artless--or perhaps artful, he could not decide which--eyes ofLandau fixed upon him, Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be consciousof a peculiar heaviness in his head.

　　The most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. "MarieSanina is glad her child's dead.... How good a smoke would benow!... To be saved, one need only believe, and the monksdon't know how the thing's to be done, but Countess LidiaIvanovna does know.... And why is my head so heavy? Is it thecognac, or all this being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I've donenothing unsuitable so far. But anyway, it won't do to ask hernow. They say they make one say one's prayers. I only hopethey won't make me! That'll be too imbecile. And what stuff itis she's reading! but she has a good accent. Landau--Bezzubov--what's he Bezzubov for?" All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch becameaware that his lower jaw was uncontrollably forming a yawn. Hepulled his whiskers to cover the yawn, and shook himselftogether. But soon after he became aware that he was droppingasleep and on the very point of snoring. He recovered himself atthe very moment when the voice of Countess Lidia Ivanovna wassaying "he's asleep." Stepan Arkadyevitch started with dismay,feeling guilty and caught. But he was reassured at once byseeing that the words "he's asleep" referred not to him, but toLandau. 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, aseverything seemed so queer), while Landau's being asleepdelighted them extremely, especially Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

　　"Mon ami," said Lidia Ivanovna, carefully holding the folds ofher silk gown so as not to rustle, and in her excitement callingKarenin not Alexey Alexandrovitch, but "mon ami," "donnez-lui lamain. Vous voyez? Sh!" she hissed at the footman as he came inagain. "Not at home."

　　The Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with hishead on the back of his chair, and his moist hand, as it lay onhis knee, made faint movements, as though trying to catchsomething. Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, tried to movecarefully, but stumbled against the table, went up and laid hishand in the Frenchman's hand. Stepan Arkadyevitch got up too,and opening his eyes wide, trying to wake himself up if he wereasleep, he looked first at one and then at the other. It was allreal. Stepan Arkadyevitch felt that his head was getting worseand worse.

　　"Que la personne qui est arrivee la derniere, celle qui demande,qu'elle sorte! Qu'elle sorte!" articulated the Frenchman,without opening 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 theaffirmative, Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting the favor he hadmeant to ask of Lidia Ivanovna, and forgetting his sister'saffairs, caring for nothing, but filled with the sole desire toget away as soon as possible, went out on tiptoe and ran out intothe street as though from a plague-stricken house. For a longwhile he chatted and joked with his cab-driver, trying to recoverhis spirits.

　　At the French theater where he arrived for the last act, andafterwards at the Tatar restaurant after his champagne, StepanArkadyevitch felt a little refreshed in the atmosphere he wasused to. But still he felt quite unlike himself all thatevening.

　　On getting home to Pyotr Oblonsky's, where he was staying, StepanArkadyevitch found a note from Betsy. She wrote to him that shewas very anxious to finish their interrupted conversation, andbegged him to come next day. He had scarcely read this note, andfrowned at its contents, when he heard below the ponderous trampof the servants, carrying something heavy.

　　Stepan Arkadyevitch went out to look. It was the rejuvenatedPyotr Oblonsky. He was so drunk that he could not walk upstairs;but he told them to set him on his legs when he saw StepanArkadyevitch, and clinging to him, walked with him into his roomand there began telling him how he had spent the evening, andfell asleep doing so.

　　Stepan Arkadyevitch was in very low spirits, which happenedrarely with him, and for a long while he could not go to sleep.Everything he could recall to his mind, everything wasdisgusting; but most disgusting of all, as if it were somethingshameful, was the memory of the evening he had spent at CountessLidia Ivanovna's.

　　Next day he received from Alexey Alexandrovitch a final answer,refusing to grant Anna's divorce, and he understood that thisdecision was based on what the Frenchman had said in his real orpretended trance.