`That's in the same style as, ``that's a thing I can't endure!'
You know the story?' said Stepan Arkadyevich. `Ah, that's exquisite! Another bottle,' he said to the waiter, and he began to relate his good story.
`Piotr Illyich Vinovsky invites you to drink with him,' a little old waiter interrupted Stepan Arkadyevich, bringing two delicate glasses of sparkling champagne, and addressing Stepan Arkadyevich and Levin. Stepan Arkadyevich took the glass, and looking toward a bald man with red mustaches at the other end of the table, he nodded to him, smiling.
`Who's that?' asked Levin.
`You met him once at my place, don't you remember? A good-natured fellow.'
Levin did the same as Stepan Arkadyevich and took the glass.
Stepan Arkadyevich's anecdote too was very amusing. Levin told his story, and that too was successful. Then they talked of horses, of the races, of what they had been doing that day, and of how smartly Vronsky's Atlas had won the first prize. Levin did not notice how the time passed at dinner.
`Ah! And here they are!' Stepan Arkadyevich said toward the end of dinner, leaning over the back of his chair and holding out his hand to Vronsky, who came up with a tall colonel of the Guards. Vronsky's face too beamed with the look of good-humored enjoyment that was general in the club. He propped his elbow playfully on Stepan Arkadyevich's shoulder, whispering something to him, and he held out his hand to Levin with the same good-humored smile.
`Very glad to meet you,' he said. `I looked out for you at the election, but I was told you had gone away.'
`Yes, I left the same day. We've just been talking of your horse.
I congratulate you,' said Levin. `It was run in very fast time.'
`Yes; you've race horses too, haven't you?'
`No, my father had; but I remember and know something about them.'
`Where have you dined?' asked Stepan Arkadyevich.
`We were at the second table, behind the columns.'
`We've been celebrating his success,' said the tall colonel. `It's his second Imperial prize. I wish I might have the luck at cards he has with horses.'
`Well, why waste precious time? I'm going to the ``infernal regions,''
added the colonel, and he walked away.
`That's Iashvin,' Vronsky said in answer to Turovtsin, and he sat down in the vacated seat beside them. He drank the glass offered him, and ordered a bottle of wine. Under the influence of the club atmosphere or the wine he had drunk, Levin chatted away to Vronsky of the best breeds of cattle, and was very glad not to feel the slightest hostility to this man. He even told him, among other things, that he had heard from his wife that she had met him at Princess Marya Borissovna's.
`Ah, Princess Marya Borissovna - she's exquisite!' said Stepan Arkadyevich, and he told an anecdote about her which set them all laughing.
Vronsky in particular laughed with such simplehearted amusement that Levin felt quite reconciled to him.
`Well, have we finished?' said Stepan Arkadyevich, getting up with a smile. `Let us go.'
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents] TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 7, Chapter 08[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 8 Getting up from the table, Levin walked with Gaghin through the lofty rooms to the billiard room, feeling his arms swing as he walked with a peculiar lightness and ease. As he crossed the big room, he came upon his father-in-law.
`Well, how do you like our Temple of Indolence?' said the Prince, taking his arm. `Come along, come along!'
`Yes, I wanted to walk about and look at everything. It's interesting.'
`Yes, it's interesting for you. But its interest for me is quite different. You look at such little ancients, now,' he said, pointing to a club member with bent back and pendulous lip, shuffling toward them in his soft boots, `and imagine that they were shlupiks like that from their birth up.'
`Shlupiks?'
`I see you don't know that name. That's our club designation.
You know the game of rolling eggs: when one's rolled a long while it becomes a shlupik. So it is with us; one goes on coming and coming to the club, and ends by becoming a shlupik. Ah, you laugh! but we look out, for fear of dropping into it ourselves. You know Prince Chechensky?' inquired the Prince; and Levin saw by his face that he was just going to relate something funny.
`No, I don't know him.'
`You don't say so! Well, Prince Chechensky is a well-known figure.
No matter, though. He's always playing billiards here. Only three years ago he was not a shlupik, and kept up his spirits, and even used to call other people shlupiks. But one day he turns up, and our porter... You know Vassilii? Why, that fat one; he's famous for his bons mots. And so Prince Chechensky asks him, ``Come, Vassilii who's here? Any shlupiks here yet?'
And he says: ``You're the third.' Yes, my dear boy, that he did!'
Talking and greeting the friends they met, Levin and the Prince walked through all the rooms: the great room where tables had already been set, and the usual partners were playing for small stakes; the divan room, where they were playing chess, and Sergei Ivanovich was sitting talking to somebody; the billiard room, where, about the sofa in a recess, there was a lively party drinking champagne - Gaghin was one of them. They peeped into the `infernal regions,' where a good many men were crowding round one table, at which Iashvin was sitting. Trying not to make a noise, they walked into the dark reading room, where under the shaded lamps there sat a young man with a wrathful countenance, turning over one journal after another, and a bald general buried in a book. They went, too, into what the Prince called the intellectual room, where three gentlemen were engaged in a heated discussion of the latest political news.
