第309章

As they were talking before dinner, Stepan Arkadyevich said to Bartniansky:

`You're friendly, I fancy, with Mordvinsky; you might do me a favor: say a word to him, please, for me. There's an appointment I should like to get - member of the agency...'

`Oh, I shan't remember all that, if you tell it to me.... But what possesses you to have to do with railways and Yids?... Take it as you will, it's a low business.'

Stepan Arkadyevich did not say to Bartniansky that it was a `growing thing' - Bartniansky would not have understood that.

`I want the money - I've nothing to live on.'

`You're living, aren't you?'

`Yes, but in debt.'

`Are you, though? Heavily?' said Bartniansky sympathetically.

`Very heavily: twenty thousand.'

Bartniansky broke into good-humored laughter.

`Oh, lucky fellow!' said he. `My debts mount up to a million and a half, and I've nothing, and still I can live, as you see!'

And Stepan Arkadyevich saw the correctness of this view not in words only but in actual fact. Zhivakhov owed three hundred thousand, and hadn't a copper to bless himself with, and he lived, and in style too!

Count Krivtsov was considered a hopeless case by everyone, and yet he kept two mistresses. Petrovsky had run through five millions, and still lived in just the same style, and was even a manager in the financial department with a salary of twenty thousand. But besides this, Peterburg had physically an agreeable effect on Stepan Arkadyevich. It made him younger. In Moscow he sometimes found a gray hair in his head, dropped asleep after dinner, stretched, walked slowly upstairs, breathing heavily, was bored by the society of young women, and did not dance at balls. In Peterburg he always felt ten years younger.

His experience in Peterburg was exactly what had been described to him on the previous day by Prince Piotr Oblonsky, a man of sixty, who had just come back from abroad:

`We don't know how to live here,' said Piotr Oblonsky. `I spent the summer in Baden, and you wouldn't believe it, I felt quite a young man. At a glimpse of a pretty woman, my thoughts... One dines and drinks a glass of wine, and feels strong and ready for anything. I came home to Russia - had to see my wife, and, what's more, go to my country place;and there, you'd hardly believe it, in a fortnight I'd got into a dressing gown and given up dressing for dinner. Needn't say I had no thoughts left for pretty women. I became quite an old gentleman. There was nothing left for me but to think of my eternal salvation. I went off to Paris - I was at once as right as could be.'

Stepan Arkadyevich felt exactly the difference that Piotr Oblonsky described. In Moscow he degenerated so much that if he had had to be there for long together, he might in good earnest have come to considering his salvation; in Peterburg he felt himself a man of the world again.

Between Princess Betsy Tverskaia and Stepan Arkadyevich there had long existed rather curious relations. Stepan Arkadyevich always flirted with her in jest, and used to say to her, also in jest, the most unseemly things, knowing that nothing delighted her so much. The day after his conversation with Karenin, Stepan Arkadyevich went to see her, and felt so youthful that in this jesting flirtation and nonsense he recklessly went so far that he did not know how to extricate himself, as unluckily he was so far from being attracted by her that he thought her positively disagreeable.

What made it hard to change the conversation was the fact that he was very attractive to her. So that he was considerably relieved at the arrival of Princess Miaghkaia, which cut short their tête-à-têyte .

`Ah, so you're here!' said she when she saw him. `Well, and what news of your poor sister? You needn't look at me like that,' she added.

`Ever since they've all turned against her, all those who're a thousand times worse than she, I've thought she did a very fine thing. I can't forgive Vronsky for not letting me know when she was in Peterburg. I'd have gone to see her and gone about with her everywhere. Please give her my love.

Come, tell me about her.'

`Yes, her position is very difficult; she...' began Stepan Arkadyevich, in the simplicity of his heart accepting as sterling coin Princess Miaghkaia's words: `Tell me about her.' Princess Miaghkaia interrupted him immediately, as she always did, and began talking herself.

`She's done what they all do, except me - only the others hide it. But she wouldn't be deceitful, and she did a fine thing. And she did better still in throwing up that crazy brother-in-law of yours. You must excuse me. Everybody used to say he was so clever, so very clever; I was the only one that said he was a fool. Now that he's so thick with Lidia Ivanovna and Landau, they all say he's crazy, and I should prefer not to agree with everybody, but this time I can't help it.'

`Oh, do please explain,' said Stepan Arkadyevich; `what does it mean? Yesterday I was seeing him on my sister's behalf, and I asked him to give me a final answer. He gave me no answer, and said he would think it over. But this morning, instead of an answer, I received an invitation from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for this evening.'

`Ah, so that's it, that's it!' said Princess Miaghkaia gleefully, `they're going to ask Landau what he's to say.'

`Ask Landau? What for? Who or what's Landau?'

`What! you don't know Jules Landau, le fameux Jules Landau, le clairvoyant ? He's crazy too, but on him your sister's fate depends.

See what comes of living in the provinces - you know nothing about anything.