‘Have you heard, that Maltishchev woman, too - not the daughter, but the mother — is making herself a diable rose9 costume.’
‘It can’t be! No, that’s lovely!’
‘I’m amazed, with her intelligence - for she’s not stupid - how can she not see how ridiculous she is?’
Each had something demeaning and derisive to say about the unfortunate Mme Maltishchev, and the conversation began to crackle merrily, like a blazing bonfire.
The princess Betsy’s husband, a fat good-natured man, a passionate collector of etchings, learning that his wife had guests, stopped in the drawing room before going to his club. He approached Princess Miagky inaudibly over the soft carpet.
‘How did you like Nilsson?’ he said.
‘Ah, how can you sneak up like that! You frightened me so,’ she replied. ‘Please don’t talk to me about opera, you understand nothing about music. Better if I descend to your level and talk about your majolica and etchings. Well, what treasure have you bought recently at the flea market?’
‘Want me to show you? But you know nothing about it.’
‘Show me. I’ve learned from those — what’s their name ... the bankers ... they have excellent etchings. They showed them to us.’
‘So you visited the Schützburgs?’ the hostess asked from her samovar.
‘We did, ma chère. They invited my husband and me for dinner, and I was told that the sauce at that dinner cost a thousand roubles,’ Princess Miagky said loudly, sensing that everyone was listening to her, ‘and it was a most vile sauce - something green. I had to invite them back, and I made a sauce for eighty-five kopecks, and everybody liked it. I can’t make thousand-rouble sauces.’
‘She’s one of a kind!’ said the ambassador’s wife.
‘Amazing!’ someone said.
The effect produced by Princess Miagky’s talk was always the same, and the secret of it consisted in her saying simple things that made sense, even if, as now, they were not quite appropriate. In the society in which she lived, such words produced the impression of a most witty joke. Princess Miagky could not understand why it worked that way, but she knew that it did work, and she took advantage of it.
Since everyone listened to Princess Miagky while she talked and the conversation around the ambassador’s wife ceased, the hostess wanted to unite the company into one, and she addressed the ambassador’s wife:
‘You definitely don’t want tea? You should move over here with us.’
‘No, we are quite all right here,’ the ambassador’s wife replied with a smile and continued the conversation they had begun.
It was a very pleasant conversation. They were denouncing the Karenins, wife and husband.
‘Anna’s changed very much since her trip to Moscow. There’s something strange about her,’ said a friend of hers.
‘The main change is that she’s brought a shadow with her — Alexei Vronsky,’ said the ambassador’s wife.
‘What of it? Grimm has a fable — a man without a shadow, a man deprived of a shadow.10 And it’s his punishment for something. I could never understand where the punishment lay. But it must be unpleasant for a woman to be without a shadow.’
‘Yes, but women with a shadow generally end badly,’ said Anna’s friend.
‘Button your lip,’ Princess Miagky suddenly said, hearing these words. ‘Karenina is a wonderful woman. Her husband I don’t like, but I like her very much.’
‘Why don’t you like the husband? He’s such a remarkable man,’ said the ambassador’s wife. ‘My husband says there are few such statesmen in Europe.’
‘And my husband says the same thing to me, but I don’t believe it,’ said Princess Miagky. ‘If our husbands didn’t say it, we’d see what’s there, and Alexei Alexandrovich, in my opinion, is simply stupid. I say it in a whisper ... Doesn’t that make everything clear? Before, when I was told to find him intelligent, I kept searching and found myself stupid for not seeing his intelligence; but as soon as I say “He’s stupid” in a whisper - everything becomes so clear, doesn’t it?’
‘How wicked you are today!’
‘Not in the least. I have no other way out. One of us is stupid. Well, and you know one can never say that about oneself.’
‘No one is pleased with his fortune, but everyone is pleased with his wit,’ said the diplomat, quoting some French verse.11
‘That’s it exactly.’ Princess Miagky turned to him hastily. ‘But the thing is that I won’t let you have Anna. She’s so dear, so sweet. What can she do if they’re all in love with her and follow her like shadows?’
‘But I never thought of judging her.’ Anna’s friend tried to excuse herself.
‘If no one follows us like a shadow, it doesn’t prove that we have the right to judge.’
And having dealt properly with Anna’s friend, Princess Miagky stood up and, together with the ambassador’s wife, joined the table where a conversation was going on about the king of Prussia.
‘Who were you maligning there?’ asked Betsy.
‘The Karenins. The princess gave a characterization of Alexei Alexandrovich,’ the ambassador’s wife replied with a smile, sitting down at the table.
‘A pity we didn’t hear it,’ said the hostess, glancing at the door. ‘Ah, here you are at last!’ She addressed Vronsky with a smile as he came in.
Vronsky was not only acquainted with all those he met there but saw them every day, and therefore he entered with that calm manner with which one enters a room full of people one has only just left.
‘Where am I coming from?’ he replied to the ambassador’s wife’s question. ‘No help for it, I must confess. From the Bouffe.12 It seems the hundredth time and always a new pleasure. Lovely! I know it’s shameful, but at the opera I fall asleep, and at the Bouffe I stay till the last moment and enjoy it. Tonight...’
He named a French actress and wanted to tell some story about her; but the ambassador’s wife interrupted him in mock alarm:
‘Please, don’t talk about that horror.’
‘Well, I won’t then, the more so as everybody knows about these horrors.’
‘And everybody would have gone there, if it was as accepted as the opera,’ put in Princess Miagky.
VII
Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing that it was Anna, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking at the door, and his face had a strange new expression. He was looking joyfully, intently, and at the same time timidly at the entering woman and slowly getting up from his seat. Anna was entering the drawing room. Holding herself extremely straight as always, with her quick, firm and light step, which distinguished her from other society women, and not changing the direction of her gaze, she took the few steps that separated her from the hostess, pressed her hand, smiled, and with that smile turned round to Vronsky. Vronsky made a low bow and moved a chair for her.
She responded only with an inclination of the head, then blushed and frowned. But at once, while quickly nodding to acquaintances and pressing the proffered hands, she addressed the hostess:
‘I was at Countess Lydia’s and intended to come earlier, but had to stay. Sir John was there. He’s very interesting.’
‘Ah, it’s that missionary?’
‘Yes, he was telling very interesting things about Indian life.’
The conversation, disrupted by her arrival, began to waver again like a lamp flame being blown out.