The highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it everyone

knows everyone else, everyone even visits everyone else. But

this great set has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina

had friends and close ties in three different circles of this

highest society. One circle was her husband's government

official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates,

brought together in the most various and capricious manner, and

belonging to different social strata. Anna found it difficult

now to recall the feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence which

she had at first entertained for these persons. Now she knew all

of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew

their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one

of them. She knew their relations with one another and with the

head authorities, knew who was for whom, and how each one

maintained his position, and where they agreed and disagreed.

But the circle of political, masculine interests had never

interested her, in spite of countess Lidia Ivanovna's influence,

and she avoided it.

Another little set with which Anna was in close relations was the

one by means of which Alexey Alexandrovitch had made his career.

The center of this circle was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It

was a set made up of elderly, ugly, benevolent, and godly women,

and clever, learned, and ambitious men. One of the clever people

belonging to the set had called it "the conscience of Petersburg

society." Alexey Alexandrovitch had the highest esteem for this

circle, and Anna with her special gift for getting on with

everyone, had in the early days of her life in Petersburg made

friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow,

she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her

that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so

bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the

Countess Lidia Ivanovna as little as possible.

The third circle with which Anna had ties was preeminently the

fashionable world--the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous

dresses, the world that hung on to the court with one hand, so as

to avoid sinking to the level of the demi-monde. For the

demi-monde the members of that fashionable world believed that

they despised, though their tastes were not merely similar, but

in fact identical. Her connection with this circle was kept up

through Princess Betsy Tverskaya, her cousin's wife, who had an

income of a hundred and twenty thousand roubles, and who had

taken a great fancy to Anna ever since she first came out, showed

her much attention, and drew her into her set, making fun of

Countess Lidia Ivanovna's coterie.




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