Anna Karenina - Part 7

Getting up from the table, Levin walked with Gagin through the

lofty room to the billiard room, feeling his arms swing as he

walked with a peculiar lightness and ease. As he crossed the big

room, he came upon his father-in-law.

"Well, how do you like our Temple of Indolence?" said the prince,

taking his arm. "Come along, come along!"

"Yes, I wanted to walk about and look at everything. It's

interesting."

"Yes, it's interesting for you. But its interest for me is quite

different. You look at those little old men now," he said,

pointing to a club member with bent back and projecting lip,

shuffling towards them in his soft boots, "and imagine that they

were _shlupiks_ like that from their birth up."

"How _shlupiks_?"

"I see you don't know that name. That's our club designation.

You know the game of rolling eggs: when one's rolled a long while

it becomes a _shlupik_. So it is with us; one goes on coming and

coming to the club, and ends by becoming a _shlupik_. Ah, you

laugh! but we look out, for fear of dropping into it ourselves.

You know Prince Tchetchensky?" inquired the prince; and Levin saw

by his face that he was just going to relate something funny.

"No, I don't know him."

"You don't say so! Well, Prince Tchetchensky is a well-known

figure. No matter, though. He's always playing billiards here.

Only three years ago he was not a _shlupik_ and kept up his spirits

and even used to call other people _shlupiks_. But one day he

turns up, and our porter...you know Vassily? Why, that fat one;

he's famous for his _bon mots_. And so Prince Tchetchensky asks

him, 'Come, Vassily, who's here? Any _shlupiks_ here yet?' And he

says, 'You're the third.' Yes, my dear boy, that he did!"

Talking and greeting the friends they met, Levin and the prince

walked through all the rooms: the great room where tables had

already been set, and the usual partners were playing for small

stakes; the divan room, where they were playing chess, and Sergey

Ivanovitch was sitting talking to somebody; the billiard room,

where, about a sofa in a recess, there was a lively party

drinking champagne--Gagin was one of them. They peeped into the

"infernal regions," where a good many men were crowding round one

table, at which Yashvin was sitting. Trying not to make a noise,

they walked into the dark reading room, where under the shaded

lamps there sat a young man with a wrathful countenance, turning

over one journal after another, and a bald general buried in a

book. They went, too, into what the prince called the

intellectual room, where three gentlemen were engaged in a heated

discussion of the latest political news.