Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 14
“Well, Yegor, it’s hard work not sleeping, isn’t it?”
“One’s got to put up with it! It’s part of our work, you see. In a gentleman’s house
it’s easier; but then here one makes more.”
It appeared that Yegor had a family, three boys and a daughter, a sempstress,
whom he wanted to marry to a cashier in a saddler’s shop.
Levin, on hearing this, informed Yegor that, in his opinion, in marriage the great
thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests
only on oneself. Yegor listened attentively, and obviously quite took in Levin’s idea,
but by way of assent to it he enunciated, greatly to Levin’s surprise, the observation
that when he had lived with good masters he had always been satisfied with
his masters, and now was perfectly satisfied with his employer, though he was a
Frenchman.
“Wonderfully good-hearted fellow!” thought Levin.
“Well, but you yourself, Yegor, when you got married, did you love your wife?”
“Ay! and why not?” responded Yegor.
And Levin saw that Yegor too was in an excited state and intending to express all
his most heartfelt emotions.
“My life, too, has been a wonderful one. From a child up...” he was beginning with
flashing eyes, apparently catching Levin’s enthusiasm, just as people catch yawning.
But at that moment a ring was heard. Yegor departed, and Levin was left alone.
He had eaten scarcely anything at dinner, had refused tea and supper at Sviazhsky’s,
but he was incapable of thinking of supper. He had not slept the previous night, but
was incapable of thinking of sleep either. His room was cold, but he was oppressed
by heat. He opened both the movable panes in his window and sat down to the
table opposite the open panes. Over the snow-covered roofs could be seen a decorated
cross with chains, and above it the rising triangle of Charles’s Wain with the
yellowish light of Capella. He gazed at the cross, then at the stars, drank in the fresh
freezing air that flowed evenly into the room, and followed as though in a dream the
images and memories that rose in his imagination. At four o’clock he heard steps
in the passage and peeped out at the door. It was the gambler Myaskin, whom he
knew, coming from the club. He walked gloomily, frowning and coughing. “Poor,
unlucky fellow!” thought Levin, and tears came into his eyes from love and pity for
this man. He would have talked with him, and tried to comfort him, but remembering
that he had nothing but his shirt on, he changed his mind and sat down again
at the open pane to bathe in the cold air and gaze at the exquisite lines of the cross,
silent, but full of meaning for him, and the mounting lurid yellow star. At seven
o’clock there was a noise of people polishing the floors, and bells ringing in some
servants’ department, and Levin felt that he was beginning to get frozen. He closed
the pane, washed, dressed, and went out into the street.
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