"I'd come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey
Ivanovitch."
"You wouldn't find him there. I live quite independently of
him."
"Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me
and him," he said, looking timidly into his brother's face.
This timidity touched Konstantin.
"If you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I
tell you that in your quarrel with Sergey Ivanovitch I take
neither side. You're both wrong. You're more wrong externally,
and he inwardly."
"Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!" Nikolay shouted joyfully.
"But I personally value friendly relations with you more
because..."
"Why, why?"
Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolay
was unhappy, and needed affection. But Nikolay knew that this
was just what he meant to say, and scowling he took up the vodka
again.
"Enough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!" said Marya Nikolaevna, stretching
out her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.
"Let it be! Don't insist! I'll beat you!" he shouted.
Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was
at once reflected on Nikolay's face, and she took the bottle.
"And do you suppose she understands nothing?" said Nikolay. "She
understands it all better than any of us. Isn't it true there's
something good and sweet in her?"
"Were you never before in Moscow?" Konstantin said to her, for
the sake of saying something.
"Only you mustn't be polite and stiff with her. It frightens
her. No one ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace
who tried her for trying to get out of a house of ill-fame.
Mercy on us, the senselessness in the world!" he cried suddenly.
"These new institutions, these justices of the peace, rural
councils, what hideousness it all is!"
And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new
institutions.
Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of
all public institutions, which he shared with him, and often
expressed, was distasteful to him now from his brother's lips.
"In another world we shall understand it all," he said lightly.
"In another world! Ah, I don't like that other world! I don't
like it," he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother's
eyes. "Here one would think that to get out of all the baseness
and the mess, one's own and other people's, would be a good
thing, and yet I'm afraid of death, awfully afraid of death." He
shuddered. "But do drink something. Would you like some
champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let's go to the Gypsies!
Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian songs."