Levin told him what he had heard from Katavasov about the talk in Petersburg and, after discussing politics, told of his making the acquaintance of Metrov and going to the meeting. Lvov became very interested in that.
'I envy you your entry into that interesting world of learning,' he said. And, warming to the subject, he switched, as usual, to French, which suited him better. 'True, I also have no time. My service and the children's education deprive me of that; and besides, I'm not ashamed to say that my education is much too deficient.'
'I don't think so,' Levin said with a smile, touched as always by his low opinion of himself, by no means affected out of a desire to seem or even be modest, but perfectly sincere.
'Ah, yes! I feel now how little learning I have. For my children's education I even have to refresh my memory a good deal and simply study. Because it's not enough to have teachers, there must also be a supervisor, just as in your farming you need workers and an overseer. See what I'm reading?' he pointed to Buslaev's grammar[6] on the lectern. 'It's required of Misha, and it's so difficult... Explain this to me now. He says here ...'
Levin tried to explain to him that one cannot understand it but must simply learn it; but Lvov did not agree with him.
'Yes, see how you laugh at it!' 'On the contrary, you can't imagine how, by looking at you, I always learn what's in store for me -I mean children's education.'
'There certainly isn't anything to learn,' said Lvov.
'I only know,' said Levin, 'that I've never met better-brought-up children than yours and couldn't wish for better myself.'
Lvov obviously wanted to restrain himself and not show his joy, but he simply beamed all over.
'As long as they're better than I am. That's all I wish for. You don't know all the trouble yet,' he began, 'with boys who, like mine, were neglected in that life abroad.'
'You'll catch up on it all. They're such capable children. Above all -moral education. That's what I learn from looking at your children.'
'Moral education, you say. It's impossible to imagine how hard it is! You've just prevailed on one side when something else crops up, and the struggle starts again. Without support from religion - remember, we talked about it - no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.'
This conversation, which always interested Levin, was interrupted by the entrance of the beautiful Natalya Alexandrovna, already dressed to go out.
'I didn't know you were here,' she said, obviously not only not sorry but even glad to have interrupted this, for her, long-familiar and boring conversation. 'Well, how's Kitty? I'm dining with you today. Now then, Arseny,' she turned to her husband, 'you will take the carriage ...'
And a discussion began between husband and wife about how they were going to spend the day. Since the husband had to go and meet someone to do with his work, and the wife had to go to a concert and a public meeting of the South-Eastern Committee, there was much to be decided and thought over. Levin, as one of the family, had to take part in the planning. It was decided that Levin would go with Natalie to the concert and the public meeting, and from there the carriage would be sent to the office for Arseny, and he would come to fetch her and take her to Kitty's; or, if he was still busy, he would send the carriage and Levin would go with her.
'The man spoils me,' he said to his wife, 'he assures me that our children are wonderful, when I know how much bad there is in them.'
'Arseny goes to extremes, as I always say,' said the wife. 'If you look for perfection, you'll never be content. It's true what papa says, that when we were being brought up there was one extreme - we were kept in the attic, while the parents lived on the first floor; now it's the opposite - the parents go to the store-room and the children to the first floor. Parents mustn't have any life now, everything's given to the children.'
'Why not, if they like it?' Lvov said, smiling his handsome smile and touching her hand. 'Anyone who didn't know you would think you were not a mother but a stepmother.'
'No, extremes aren't good in anything,' Natalie said calmly, putting his paper-knife in its proper place on the desk.
'Well, come here now, you perfect children,' he said to the handsome boys who came in and, after bowing to Levin, went over to their father, evidently wishing to ask him about something.
Levin would have liked to talk with them, to hear what they said to their father, but Natalie turned to him, and just then Lvov's colleague, Makhotin, in a court uniform, came into the room to fetch him, so that they could go together to meet someone, and now an endless conversation started about Herzegovina, Princess Korzinsky, the duma, and the unexpected death of Mme Apraksin.
Levin quite forgot about the errand he had been given. He remembered it only on his way to the front hall.
'Ah, Kitty told me to discuss something about Oblonsky with you,' he said, when Lvov stopped on the stairs, seeing his wife and Levin out.
'Yes, yes, maman wants us, les beaux-freres, to fall upon him,' he said, blushing and smiling. 'But, after all, why me?'
'Then I'll fall upon him,' Natalie said, waiting in her white dog-fur rotonde for the conversation to end. 'Well, come along!'
V
Two very interesting things were offered at the matinee concert.
One was a fantasia, King Lear on the Heath,[7] the other a quartet dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both pieces were new and in the new spirit, and Levin wanted to form his own opinion of them. Having taken his sister-in-law to her seat, he installed himself by a column and resolved to listen as closely and conscientiously as possible. He tried not to get distracted and spoil his impression by looking at the arm-waving of the white-tied conductor, which is always such an unpleasant distraction of musical attention, or at the ladies in hats, who had carefully tied ribbons over their ears especially for the concert, or at all the faces, either unoccupied by anything or occupied by interests quite other than music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs and talkers, and stood with lowered eyes, listening.
But the longer he listened to the King Lear fantasia, the further he felt from any possibility of forming some definite opinion for himself. The musical expression of feeling was ceaselessly beginning, as if gathering itself up, but it fell apart at once into fragments of new beginnings of musical expressions and sometimes into extremely complex sounds, connected by nothing other than the mere whim of the composer. But these fragments of musical expressions, good ones on occasion, were unpleasant because they were totally unexpected and in no way prepared for. Gaiety, sadness, despair, tenderness and triumph appeared without justification, like a madman's feelings. And, just as with a madman, these feelings passed unexpectedly.
All through the performance Levin felt like a deaf man watching people dance. He was in utter perplexity when the piece ended and felt great fatigue from such strained but in no way rewarded attention. Loud applause came from all sides. Everybody stood up, began walking, talking. Wishing to explain his perplexity by means of other people's impressions, Levin began to walk about, looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see one well-known connoisseur talking with Pestsov, whom he knew.
'Amazing!' Pestsov's dense bass said. 'Good afternoon, Konstantin Dmitrich. Particularly graphic and, so to speak, sculptural and rich in colour is the place where you feel Cordelia approaching, where a woman, das ewig Weibliche,[8]** enters the struggle with fate. Don't you think?'
'But what does Cordelia have to do with it?' Levin asked timidly, forgetting completely that the fantasia portrayed King Lear on the heath.
'Cordelia comes in ... here!' said Pestsov, tapping his fingers on the satiny playbill he was holding and handing it to Levin.
Only then did Levin remember the title of the fantasia, and he hastened to read Shakespeare's verses in Russian translation, printed on the back of the bill.
'You can't follow without it,' said Pestsov, addressing Levin, since his interlocutor had left and there was no one else for him to talk to.
During th
e entr'acte an argument arose between Levin and Pestsov
* The eternal feminine.
about the virtues and shortcomings of the Wagnerian trend in music.[9] Levin maintained that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their music wishing to cross over to the sphere of another art, just as poetry is mistaken when it describes facial features, something that should be done by painting, and he gave as an example of such a mistake a sculptor who decided to carve in marble the phantoms of poetic images emerging around the figure of a poet on a pedestal.[10] 'The sculptor gave these phantoms so little of the phantasmic that they're even holding on to the stairs,' said Levin. He liked the phrase, but he did not remember whether he might not have used it before, and precisely with Pestsov, and having said it, he became embarrassed.
Pestsov maintained that art is one and that it can reach its highest manifestations only by uniting all its forms.
The second part of the concert Levin could not hear at all. Pestsov stood next to him and spent almost the whole time talking to him, denouncing the piece for its superfluous, cloying, affected simplicity and comparing it with the Pre-Raphaelites in painting. On the way out Levin met still more acquaintances, with whom he talked about politics, music and mutual acquaintances. Among others he met Count Bohl, whom he had completely forgotten to visit.
'Well, you can go now,' Natalie said to him when he told her of it. 'Maybe they won't receive you, and then you can come and fetch me at the meeting. I'll still be there.'
VI
'Perhaps they're not receiving?' said Levin, entering the front hall of Countess Bohl's house.
'They are. Please come in,' said the porter, resolutely helping him out of his coat.
'How annoying,' thought Levin, sighing as he removed a glove and shaped his hat. 'Well, why am I going? And what shall I talk about with them?'
Passing through the first drawing room, Levin met Countess Bohl in the doorway. With a preoccupied and stern face, she was ordering a servant to do something. Seeing Levin, she smiled and invited him into the next small drawing room, from which voices came. In this drawing room, in armchairs, sat the countess's two daughters and a Moscow colonel of Levin's acquaintance. Levin went up to them and, after the greetings, sat down by the sofa, holding his hat on his knee.
'How is your wife's health? Were you at the concert? We couldn't go. Mama had to be at a panikhida.'[11]
'Yes, I heard ... Such a sudden death,' said Levin.
The countess came in, sat on the sofa and also asked about his wife and the concert.
Levin answered her and repeated the remark about the suddenness of Mme Apraksin's death.
'Though she always had weak health.'
'Did you go to the opera yesterday?'
'Yes, I did.'
'Lucca was very good.'[12]
'Yes, very good,' he said, and as he was totally indifferent to what they thought of him, he began to repeat what he had heard hundreds of times about the singer's special talent. Countess Bohl pretended to listen. Then, when he had talked enough and fell silent, the colonel, silent up to then, began to speak. The colonel also talked about the opera and the lighting. Finally, having mentioned the planned folle journee*[13] at Tiurin's, the colonel started laughing, got up noisily and left. Levin also got up, but noticed from the countess's face that it was too early for him to leave. Another couple of minutes were called for. He sat down.
But as he kept thinking how stupid it was, he could find nothing to talk about and remained silent.
'You're not going to the public meeting? They say it's very interesting,' the countess began.
'No, I promised my belle-soeur I'd come and fetch her,' said Levin.
Silence ensued. Mother and daughter exchanged glances once more.
'Well, I suppose now is the time,' thought Levin, and he got up. The ladies shook hands with him and asked him to convey mille choses* to his wife.
As he held his coat for him, the porter asked:
'Where are you staying, if you please?' and wrote it down at once in a big, well-bound book.
'Of course, it makes no difference to me, but still it's embarrassing
* Crazy day.
* All their best.
and terribly stupid,' Levin reflected, comforting himself with the thought that everyone did it; and he drove to the public meeting of the Committee, where he was to find his sister-in-law and take her home with him.
There were many people, including almost the whole of society, at the public meeting of the Committee. Levin managed to catch the summary, which, as everyone said, was very interesting. When the reading of the summary was over, society got together, and Levin met Sviyazhsky, who insisted on inviting him that evening to the Agricultural Society, where a celebrated lecture would be read, and Stepan Arkadyich, who was just back from the races, and many other acquaintances, and Levin talked more and listened to various opinions about the meeting, about the new music, and about a certain trial. But, probably owing to the flagging attention he was beginning to experience, when he talked about the trial he made a blunder, and later he recalled that blunder several times with vexation. Speaking of the impending sentencing of a foreigner who was on trial in Russia, and about how wrong it would be to sentence him to exile abroad,[14] Levin repeated what he had heard the day before from an acquaintance.
'I think that exiling him abroad is the same as punishing a pike by throwing it into the water,' Levin said. Only later did he remember that this thought, which he seemed to pass off as his own and had really heard from an acquaintance, came from one of Krylov's fables,[15] and his acquaintance had repeated it from a newspaper feuilleton.
After taking his sister-in-law home with him, and finding Kitty happy and well, Levin went to the club.
VII
Levin arrived at the club just in time. Guests and members were driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been to the club in a very long while, not since he had lived in Moscow and gone out in society after leaving the university. Though he remembered the club, the external details of its arrangement, he had completely forgotten the impression it used to make on him. But as soon as he drove into the wide, semi-circular courtyard and stepped out of the cab on to the porch, where a porter in a sash soundlessly opened the door for him and bowed; as soon as he saw in the porter's lodge the galoshes and coats of the members who understood that it was less trouble to take off their galoshes downstairs than to go up in them; as soon as he heard the mysterious bell ringing to announce him, saw the statue on the landing as he went up the low carpeted steps of the stairway, and saw in the doorway above a third familiar though aged porter in club livery, promptly but unhurriedly opening the door while looking the visitor over, he was enveloped by the long-past impression of the club - an impression of restfulness, contentment and propriety.
'Your hat, please,' the porter said to Levin, who had forgotten the club rule about leaving hats in the porter's lodge. 'It's a long time since you were here. The prince signed you in yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyich has not arrived yet.'
The porter knew not only Levin but all his connections and family and at once mentioned people close to him.
Going through the first big room with screens and another to the right where there was a fruit buffet, overtaking a slow-walking old man, Levin entered a dining room full of noisy people.
He walked among almost completely occupied tables, looking the guests over. Here and there he saw the most diverse people, old and young, familiar or barely known to him. There was not a single angry or worried face. It seemed they had all left their anxieties and cares in the porter's lodge together with their hats and were now about to enjoy the material blessings of life at their leisure. Sviyazhsky, and Shcherbatsky, and Nevedovsky, and the old prince, and Vronsky and Sergei Ivanovich were all there.
'Ah! Why so late?' said the prince, smiling and giving him his hand over his shoulder. 'How's Kitty?' he added, straightening the napkin that he had tucked behind a waistcoat butto
n.
'Quite well, thanks. The three of them are dining at home.'
'Ah, Alines and Nadines. Well, we have no room here. Go to that table and quickly take a seat,' said the prince and, turning away, he carefully accepted a plate of burbot soup.
'Levin, over here!' a good-natured voice called from a bit further off. It was Turovtsyn. He was sitting with a young military man, and next to them two chairs were tipped forward. Levin gladly joined them. He had always liked the good-natured carouser Turovtsyn - his proposal to Kitty was connected with him - but now, after so many strained intellectual conversations, he found Turovtsyn's good-natured air especially agreeable.
'These are for you and Oblonsky. He'll be here any minute.'
The very straight-backed military man with merry, always laughing eyes was the Petersburger Gagin. Turovtsyn introduced them.
'Oblonsky's eternally late.'
'Ah, here he is.'
'Have you just arrived?' said Oblonsky, quickly coming up to them. 'Greetings! Had vodka? Well, come on!'