Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 26
good news seemed to him particularly important from its coming at the same time
with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his own gladness at toys having come
for him. It seemed to Seryozha that this was a day on which everyone ought to be
glad and happy.
“You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky today?”
“To be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him.”
“And is he glad?”
“Glad at the Tsar’s gracious favor! I should think so! It’s a proof he’s deserved it,”
said the porter severely and seriously.
Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter, which he had thoroughly
studied in every detail, especially the chin that hung down between the gray
whiskers, never seen by anyone but Seryozha, who saw him only from below.
“Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?”
The porter’s daughter was a ballet dancer.
“When is she to come on week-days? They’ve their lessons to learn too. And
you’ve your lesson, sir; run along.”
On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his lessons, told his
tutor of his supposition that what had been brought him must be a machine. “What
do you think?” he inquired.
But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of learning the grammar
lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two.
“No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch,” he asked suddenly, when he was seated
at their work table with the book in his hands, “what is greater than the Alexander
Nevsky? You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky?”
Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the Alexander Nevsky.
“And higher still?”
“Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny.”
“And higher than the Andrey?”
“I don’t know.”
“What, you don’t know?” and Seryozha, leaning on his elbows, sank into deep
meditation.
His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character. He imagined
his father’s having suddenly been presented with both the Vladimir and the Andrey
today, and in consequence being much better tempered at his lesson, and dreamed
how, when he was grown up, he would himself receive all the orders, and what they
might invent higher than the Andrey. Directly any higher order were invented, he
would win it. They would make a higher one still, and he would immediately win
that too.
The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came, the lesson about
the adverbs of place and time and manner of action was not ready, and the teacher
was not only displeased, but hurt. This touched Seryozha. He felt he was not to
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