Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 30
Chapter 30
IN the little German watering-place to which the Shtcherbatskys had betaken themselves,
as in all places indeed where people are gathered together, the usual process,
as it were, of the crystallization of society went on, assigning to each member
of that society a definite and unalterable place. Just as the particle of water in frost,
definitely and unalterably, takes the special form of the crystal of snow, so each new
person that arrived at the springs was at once placed in his special place.
Fürst Shtcherbatsky, sammt Gemahlin und Tochter, by the apartments they took, and
from their name and from the friends they made, were immediately crystallized into
a definite place marked out for them.
There was visiting the watering-place that year a real German Fürstin, in consequence
of which the crystallizing process went on more vigorously than ever.
Princess Shtcherbatskaya wished, above everything, to present her daughter to this
German princess, and the day after their arrival she duly performed this rite. Kitty
made a low and graceful curtsey in the very simple, that is to say, very elegant frock
that had been ordered her from Paris. The German princess said, “I hope the roses
will soon come back to this pretty little face,” and for the Shtcherbatskys certain
definite lines of existence were at once laid down from which there was no departing.
The Shtcherbatskys made the acquaintance too of the family of an English
Lady Somebody, and of a German countess and her son, wounded in the last
war, and of a learned Swede, and of M. Canut and his sister. But yet inevitably
the Shtcherbatskys were thrown most into the society of a Moscow lady, Marya
Yevgenyevna Rtishtcheva and her daughter, whom Kitty disliked, because she had
fallen ill, like herself, over a love affair, and a Moscow colonel, whom Kitty had
known from childhood, and always seen in uniform and epaulets, and who now,
with his little eyes and his open neck and flowered cravat, was uncommonly ridiculous
and tedious, because there was no getting rid of him. When all this was so
firmly established, Kitty began to be very much bored, especially as the prince went
away to Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother. She took no interest in the
people she knew, feeling that nothing fresh would come of them. Her chief mental
interest in the watering-place consisted in watching and making theories about the
people she did not know. It was characteristic of Kitty that she always imagined
everything in people in the most favorable light possible, especially so in those she
did not know. And now as she made surmises as to who people were, what were
their relations to one another, and what they were like, Kitty endowed them with
the most marvelous and noble characters, and found confirmation of her idea in her
observations.
Of these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian girl who had come to
the watering-place with an invalid Russian lady, Madame Stahl, as everyone called
her. Madame Stahl belonged to the highest society, but she was so ill that she could
not walk, and only on exceptionally fine days made her appearance at the springs in
an invalid carriage. But it was not so much from ill-health as from pride–so Princess
Shtcherbatskaya interpreted it–that Madame Stahl had not made the acquaintance
of anyone among the Russians there. The Russian girl looked after Madame Stahl,
and besides that, she was, as Kitty observed, on friendly terms with all the invalids
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