Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 6
The conversation began amiably, but just because it was too amiable, it came to a
stop again. They had to have recourse to the sure, never-failing topic–gossip.
“Don’t you think there’s something Louis Quinze about Tushkevitch?” he said,
glancing towards a handsome, fair-haired young man, standing at the table.
“Oh, yes! He’s in the same style as the drawing room and that’s why it is he’s so
often here.”
This conversation was maintained, since it rested on allusions to what could not
be talked of in that room–that is to say, of the relations of Tushkevitch with their
hostess.
Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been meanwhile vacillating
in just the same way between three inevitable topics: the latest piece of public
news, the theater, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest on the last topic, that is,
ill-natured gossip.
“Have you heard the Maltishtcheva woman–the mother, not the daughter–has ordered
a costume in diable rose color?”
“Nonsense! No, that’s too lovely!”
“I wonder that with her sense–for she’s not a fool, you know– that she doesn’t see
how funny she is.”
Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the luckless Madame
Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a burning faggot-stack.
The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent collector of
engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came into the drawing room before
going to his club. Stepping noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up to Princess
Myakaya.
“How did you like Nilsson?” he asked.
“Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled me!” she responded.
“Please don’t talk to me about the opera; you know nothing about music.
I’d better meet you on your own ground, and talk about your majolica and engravings.
Come now, what treasure have you been buying lately at the old curiosity
shops?”
“Would you like me to show you? But you don’t understand such things.”
“Oh, do show me! I’ve been learning about them at those–what’s their
names?...the bankers...they’ve some splendid engravings. They showed them to us.”
“Why, have you been at the Schützburgs?” asked the hostess from the samovar.
“Yes, ma chere. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told us the sauce
at that dinner cost a hundred pounds,” Princess Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and
conscious everyone was listening; “and very nasty sauce it was, some green mess.
We had to ask them, and I made them sauce for eighteen pence, and everybody was
very much pleased with it. I can’t run to hundred-pound sauces.”
“She’s unique!” said the lady of the house.
“Marvelous!” said someone.
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