Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 35
Chapter 35
THE prince communicated his good humor to his own family and his friends, and
even to the German landlord in whose rooms the Shtcherbatskys were staying.
On coming back with Kitty from the springs, the prince, who had asked the
colonel, and Marya Yevgenyevna, and Varenka all to come and have coffee with
them, gave orders for a table and chairs to be taken into the garden under the chestnut
tree, and lunch to be laid there. The landlord and the servants, too, grew brisker
under the influence of his good spirits. They knew his open-handedness; and half
an hour later the invalid doctor from Hamburg, who lived on the top floor, looked
enviously out of the window at the merry party of healthy Russians assembled under
the chestnut tree. In the trembling circles of shadow cast by the leaves, at a table,
covered with a white cloth, and set with coffeepot, bread-and-butter, cheese, and
cold game, sat the princess in a high cap with lilac ribbons, distributing cups and
bread-and-butter. At the other end sat the prince, eating heartily, and talking loudly
and merrily. The prince had spread out near him his purchases, carved boxes, and
knick-knacks, paper-knives of all sorts, of which he bought a heap at every wateringplace,
and bestowed them upon everyone, including Lieschen, the servant girl, and
the landlord, with whom he jested in his comically bad German, assuring him that
it was not the water had cured Kitty, but his splendid cookery, especially his plum
soup. The princess laughed at her husband for his Russian ways, but she was more
lively and good-humored than she had been all the while she had been at the waters.
The colonel smiled, as he always did, at the prince’s jokes, but as far as regards
Europe, of which he believed himself to be making a careful study, he took the
princess’s side. The simple-hearted Marya Yevgenyevna simply roared with laughter
at everything absurd the prince said, and his jokes made Varenka helpless with
feeble but infectious laughter, which was something Kitty had never seen before.
Kitty was glad of all this, but she could not be light-hearted. She could not solve
the problem her father had unconsciously set her by his goodhumored view of her
friends, and of the life that had so attracted her. To this doubt there was joined
the change in her relations with the Petrovs, which had been so conspicuously and
unpleasantly marked that morning. Everyone was good humored, but Kitty could
not feel good humored, and this increased her distress. She felt a feeling such as she
had known in childhood, when she had been shut in her room as a punishment, and
had heard her sisters’ merry laughter outside.
“Well, but what did you buy this mass of things for?” said the princess, smiling,
and handing her husband a cup of coffee.
“One goes for a walk, one looks in a shop, and they ask you to buy. ‘Erlaucht,
Durchlaucht?’ Directly they say ‘Durchlaucht,’ I can’t hold out. I lose ten thalers.”
“It’s simply from boredom,” said the princess.
“Of course it is. Such boredom, my dear, that one doesn’t know what to do with
oneself.”
“How can you be bored, prince? There’s so much that’s interesting now in Germany,”
said Marya Yevgenyevna.
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