Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 6
The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya’s speeches was always unique, and
the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the fact that though she spoke not
always appropriately, as now, she said simple things with some sense in them. In the
society in which she lived such plain statements produced the effect of the wittiest
epigram. Princess Myakaya could never see why it had that effect, but she knew it
had, and took advantage of it.
As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and so the conversation
around the ambassador’s wife had dropped, Princess Betsy tried to bring the
whole party together, and turned to the ambassador’s wife.
“Will you really not have tea? You should come over here by us.”
“No, we’re very happy here,” the ambassador’s wife responded with a smile, and
she went on with the conversation that had been begun.
“It was a very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the Karenins, husband
and wife.
“Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There’s something strange
about her,” said her friend.
“The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of Alexey Vronsky,”
said the ambassador’s wife.
“Well, what of it? There’s a fable of Grimm’s about a man without a shadow, a
man who’s lost his shadow. And that’s his punishment for something. I never could
understand how it was a punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a
shadow.”
“Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end,” said Anna’s friend.
“Bad luck to your tongue!” said Princess Myakaya suddenly. “Madame Karenina’s
a splendid woman. I don’t like her husband, but I like her very much.”
“Why don’t you like her husband? He’s such a remarkable man,” said the ambassador’s
wife. “My husband says there are few statesmen like him in Europe.”
“And my husband tells me just the same, but I don’t believe it,” said Princess
Myakaya. “If our husbands didn’t talk to us, we should see the facts as they are.
Alexey Alexandrovitch, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper...but
doesn’t it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider him
clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but
directly I said, he’s a fool, though only in a whisper, everything’s explained, isn’t it?”
“How spiteful you are today!”
“Not a bit. I’d no other way out of it. One of the two had to be a fool. And, well,
you know one can’t say that of oneself.”
“‘No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit.”’ The
attaché repeated the French saying.
“That’s just it, just it,” Princess Myakaya turned to him. “But the point is that I
won’t abandon Anna to your mercies. She’s so nice, so charming. How can she help
it if they’re all in love with her, and follow her about like shadows?”
“Oh, I had no idea of blaming her for it,” Anna’s friend said in self-defense.
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