Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART EIGHT CHAPTER 15
Chapter 15
“Do you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch traveled on his way here?”
said Dolly, doling out cucumbers and honey to the children; “with Vronsky! He’s
going to Servia.”
“And not alone; he’s taking a squadron out with him at his own expense,” said
Katavasov.
“That’s the right thing for him,” said Levin. “Are volunteers still going out then?”
he added, glancing at Sergey Ivanovitch.
Sergey Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully with a blunt knife getting a
live bee covered with sticky honey out of a cup full of white honeycomb.
“I should think so! You should have seen what was going on at the station yesterday!”
said Katavasov, biting with a juicy sound into a cucumber.
“Well, what is one to make of it? For mercy’s sake, do explain to me, Sergey
Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they fighting with?”
asked the old prince, unmistakably taking up a conversation that had sprung up in
Levin’s absence.
“With the Turks,” Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling serenely, as he extricated
the bee, dark with honey and helplessly kicking, and put it with the knife on a stout
aspen leaf.
“But who has declared war on the Turks?–Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozov and Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, assisted by Madame Stahl?”
“No one has declared war, but people sympathize with their neighbors’ sufferings
and are eager to help them,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“But the prince is not speaking of help,” said Levin, coming to the assistance of
his father-in-law, “but of war. The prince says that private persons cannot take part
in war without the permission of the government.”
“Kostya, mind, that’s a bee! Really, they’ll sting us!” said Dolly, waving away a
wasp.
“But that’s not a bee, it’s a wasp,” said Levin.
“Well now, well, what’s your own theory?” Katavasov said to Levin with a smile,
distinctly challenging him to a discussion. “Why have not private persons the right
to do so?”
“Oh, my theory’s this: war is on one side such a beastly, cruel, and awful thing,
that no one man, not to speak of a Christian, can individually take upon himself the
responsibility of beginning wars; that can only be done by a government, which is
called upon to do this, and is driven inevitably into war. On the other hand, both
political science and common sense teach us that in matters of state, and especially
in the matter of war, private citizens must forego their personal individual will.”
Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had their replies ready, and both began speaking
at the same time.
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