Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 14
Stepan Arkadyevitch, going down, carefully took the canvas cover off his varnished
gun case with his own hands, and opening it, began to get ready his expensive
new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who already scented a big tip, never left Stepan
Arkadyevitch’s side, and put on him both his stockings and boots, a task which
Stepan Arkadyevitch readily left him.
“Kostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin comes...I told him to come today,
he’s to be brought in and to wait for me...”
“Why, do you mean to say you’re selling the forest to Ryabinin?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, ‘positively and conclusively.”’
Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed. “Positively and conclusively” were the merchant’s
favorite words.
“Yes, it’s wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where her master’s
going!” he added, patting Laska, who hung about Levin, whining and licking his
hands, his boots, and his gun.
The trap was already at the steps when they went out.
“I told them to bring the trap round; or would you rather walk?”
“No, we’d better drive,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting into the trap. He sat
down, tucked the tiger-skin rug round him, and lighted a cigar. “How is it you don’t
smoke? A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward
sign of pleasure. Come, this is life! How splendid it is! This is how I should like to
live!”
“Why, who prevents you?” said Levin, smiling.
“No, you’re a lucky man! You’ve got everything you like. You like horses–and
you have them; dogs–you have them; shooting– you have it; farming–you have it.”
“Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don’t fret for what I haven’t,” said
Levin, thinking of Kitty.
Stepan Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his never-failing tact, that he
dreaded conversation about the Shtcherbatskys, and so saying nothing about them.
But now Levin was longing to find out what was tormenting him so, yet he had not
the courage to begin.
“Come, tell me how things are going with you,” said Levin, bethinking himself
that it was not nice of him to think only of himself.
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled merrily.
“You don’t admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when one has had
one’s rations of bread–to your mind it’s a crime; but I don’t count life as life without
love,” he said, taking Levin’s question his own way. “What am I to do? I’m made
that way. And really, one does so little harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much
pleasure...”
“What! is there something new, then?” queried Levin.
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