Anna Karenina - Part 2

Princess Betsy drove home from the theater, without waiting for

the end of the last act. She had only just time to go into her

dressing room, sprinkle her long, pale face with powder, rub it,

set her dress to rights, and order tea in the big drawing room,

when one after another carriages drove up to her huge house in

Bolshaia Morskaia. Her guests stepped out at the wide entrance,

and the stout porter, who used to read the newspapers in the

mornings behind the glass door, to the edification of the

passers-by, noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the

visitors pass by him into the house.

Almost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged

coiffure and freshened face, walked in at one door and her guests

at the other door of the drawing room, a large room with dark

walls, downy rugs, and a brightly lighted table, gleaming with

the light of candles, white cloth, silver samovar, and

transparent china tea things.

The hostess sat down at the table and took off her gloves.

Chairs were set with the aid of footmen, moving almost

imperceptibly about the room; the party settled itself, divided

into two groups: one round the samovar near the hostess, the

other at the opposite end of the drawing room, round the handsome

wife of an ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined

black eyebrows. In both groups conversation wavered, as it

always does, for the first few minutes, broken up by meetings,

greetings, offers of tea, and as it were, feeling about for

something to rest upon.

"She's exceptionally good as an actress; one can see she's

studied Kaulbach," said a diplomatic attache in the group round

the ambassador's wife. "Did you notice how she fell down?..."

"Oh, please, don't let us talk about Nilsson! No one can

possibly say anything new about her," said a fat, red-faced,

flaxen-headed lady, without eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old

silk dress. This was Princess Myakaya, noted for her simplicity

and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed _enfant terrible_.

Princess Myakaya, sitting in the middle between the two groups,

and listening to both, took part in the conversation first of one

and then of the other. "Three people have used that very phrase

about Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had made

a compact about it. And I can't see why they liked that remark

so."

The conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new

subject had to be thought of again.

"Do tell me something amusing but not spiteful," said the

ambassador's wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant

conversation called by the English, _small talk_. She addressed

the attache, who was at a loss now what to begin upon.