Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 21
“Oh, no,” answered the Englishman. “Please, don’t speak loud. The mare’s fidgety,”
he added, nodding towards the horse-box, before which they were standing,
and from which came the sound of restless stamping in the straw.
He opened the door, and Vronsky went into the horse-box, dimly lighted by one
little window. In the horse-box stood a dark bay mare, with a muzzle on, picking at
the fresh straw with her hoofs. Looking round him in the twilight of the horse-box,
Vronsky unconsciously took in once more in a comprehensive glance all the points
of his favorite mare. Frou-Frou was a beast of medium size, not altogether free from
reproach, from a breeder’s point of view. She was small-boned all over; though her
chest was extremely prominent in front, it was narrow. Her hind-quarters were a
little drooping, and in her fore-legs, and still more in her hind-legs, there was a noticeable
curvature. The muscles of both hind- and fore-legs were not very thick; but
across her shoulders the mare was exceptionally broad, a peculiarity specially striking
now that she was lean from training. The bones of her legs below the knees
looked no thicker than a finger from in front, but were extraordinarily thick seen
from the side. She looked altogether, except across the shoulders, as it were, pinched
in at the sides and pressed out in depth. But she had in the highest degree the quality
that makes all defects forgotten: that quality was blood, the blood that tells, as the English
expression has it. The muscles stood up sharply under the network of sinews,
covered with the delicate, mobile skin, soft as satin, and they were hard as bone.
Her clean-cut head, with prominent, bright, spirited eyes, broadened out at the open
nostrils, that showed the red blood in the cartilage within. About all her figure, and
especially her head, there was a certain expression of energy, and, at the same time,
of softness. She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak because the
mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.
To Vronsky, at any rate, it seemed that she understood all he felt at that moment,
looking at her.
Directly Vronsky went towards her, she drew in a deep breath, and, turning back
her prominent eye till the white looked bloodshot, she started at the approaching
figures from the opposite side, shaking her muzzle, and shifting lightly from one leg
to the other.
“There, you see how fidgety she is,” said the Englishman.
“There, darling! There!” said Vronsky, going up to the mare and speaking soothingly
to her.
But the nearer he came, the more excited she grew. Only when he stood by her
head, she was suddenly quieter, while the muscles quivered under her soft, delicate
coat. Vronsky patted her strong neck, straightened over her sharp withers a stray
lock of her mane that had fallen on the other side, and moved his face near her
dilated nostrils, transparent as a bat’s wing. She drew a loud breath and snorted
out through her tense nostrils, started, pricked up her sharp ear, and put out her
strong, black lip towards Vronsky, as though she would nip hold of his sleeve. But
remembering the muzzle, she shook it and again began restlessly stamping one after
the other her shapely legs.
“Quiet, darling, quiet!” he said, patting her again over her hind-quarters; and
with a glad sense that his mare was in the best possible condition, he went out of the
horse-box.
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