Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 34
Madame Berthe, with her guide, and the prince was delighted to see the old Frenchwoman’s
face light up when she heard Kitty’s voice. She at once began talking to
him with French exaggerated politeness, applauding him for having such a delightful
daughter, extolling Kitty to the skies before her face, and calling her a treasure, a
pearl, and a consoling angel.
“Well, she’s the second angel, then,” said the prince, smiling. “she calls Mademoiselle
Varenka angel number one.”
“Oh! Mademoiselle Varenka, she’s a real angel, allez,” Madame Berthe assented.
In the arcade they met Varenka herself. She was walking rapidly towards them
carrying an elegant red bag.
“Here is papa come,” Kitty said to her.
Varenka made–simply and naturally as she did everything–a movement between
a bow and a curtsey, and immediately began talking to the prince, without shyness,
naturally, as she talked to everyone.
“Of course I know you; I know you very well,” the prince said to her with a smile,
in which Kitty detected with joy that her father liked her friend. “Where are you off
to in such haste?”
“Maman’s here,” she said, turning to Kitty. “She has not slept all night, and the
doctor advised her to go out. I’m taking her her work.”
“So that’s angel number one?” said the prince when Varenka had gone on.
Kitty saw that her father had meant to make fun of Varenka, but that he could not
do it because he liked her.
“Come, so we shall see all your friends,” he went on, “even Madame Stahl, if she
deigns to recognize me.”
“Why, did you know her, papa?” Kitty asked apprehensively, catching the gleam
of irony that kindled in the prince’s eyes at the mention of Madame Stahl.
“I used to know her husband, and her too a little, before she’d joined the Pietists.”
“What is a Pietist, papa?” asked Kitty, dismayed to find that what she prized so
highly in Madame Stahl had a name.
“I don’t quite know myself. I only know that she thanks God for everything, for
every misfortune, and thanks God too that her husband died. And that’s rather droll,
as they didn’t get on together.”
“Who’s that? What a piteous face!” he asked, noticing a sick man of medium
height sitting on a bench, wearing a brown overcoat and white trousers that fell in
strange folds about his long, fleshless legs. This man lifted his straw hat, showed his
scanty curly hair and high forehead, painfully reddened by the pressure of the hat.
“That’s Petrov, an artist,” answered Kitty, blushing. “And that’s his wife,” she
added, indicating Anna Pavlovna, who, as though on purpose, at the very instant
they approached walked away after a child that had run off along a path.
“Poor fellow! and what a nice face he has!” said the prince. “Why don’t you go
up to him? He wanted to speak to you.”
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