Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 22
“Es kommt drauf an.... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden.“ And the German,
roused from his taciturnity, turned to Vronsky. “Das lässt sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht.“
The German was just feeling in the pocket where were his pencil and the
notebook he always wrote in, but recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing
Vronsky’s chilly glance, he checked himself. “Zu compliziert, macht zu viel Klopot,” he
concluded.
“Wünscht man Dochots, so hat man auch Klopots,” said Vassenka Veslovsky, mimicking
the German. “J’adore l’allemand,” he addressed Anna again with the same smile.
“Cessez,” she said with playful severity.
“We expected to find you in the fields, Vassily Semyonitch,” she said to the doctor,
a sickly-looking man; “have you been there?”
“I went there, but I had taken flight,” the doctor answered with gloomy jocoseness.
“Then you’ve taken a good constitutional?”
“Splendid!”
“Well, and how was the old woman? I hope it’s not typhus?”
“Typhus it is not, but it’s taking a bad turn.”
“What a pity!” said Anna, and having thus paid the dues of civility to her domestic
circle, she turned to her own friends.
“It would be a hard task, though, to construct a machine from your description,
Anna Arkadyevna,” Sviazhsky said jestingly.
“Oh, no, why so?” said Anna with a smile that betrayed that she knew there was
something charming in her disquisitions upon the machine that had been noticed by
Sviazhsky. This new trait of girlish coquettishness made an unpleasant impression
on Dolly.
“But Anna Arkadyevna’s knowledge of architecture is marvelous,” said Tushkevitch.
“To be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna talking yesterday about plinths and dampcourses,”
said Veslovsky. “Have I got it right?”
“There’s nothing marvelous about it, when one sees and hears so much of it,” said
Anna. “But, I dare say, you don’t even know what houses are made of?”
Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of raillery that existed between
her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against her will.
Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from Levin. He obviously attached
no significance to Veslovsky’s chattering; on the contrary, he encouraged his jests.
“Come now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held together?”
“By cement, of course.”
“Bravo! And what is cement?”
“Oh, some sort of paste...no, putty,” said Veslovsky, raising a general laugh.
The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect, and the
steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a conversation that
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