Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy

spirit with the greatest ease, smashed trays full of crockery, made gipsy girls sit on his lap, and yet seemed to be always asking: ‘What next? Is this the whole of the Russian spirit?’

      But, on the whole, of all the Russian amusements the Prince liked the French actresses, a ballet girl and white-seal champagne best. Vronsky was used to Princes, but whether it was that he himself had lately changed, or whether his intimacy with this Prince was too close, that week at any rate appeared very wearisome to him. All that week he felt like a man attending a lunatic and afraid for his own reason too. He was obliged to be on his guard the whole time not to deviate from the path of severe official respect, for fear of being insulted. The Prince’s manner toward the very people who, to Vronsky’s astonishment, were ready to go through fire and water to provide Russian amusements for him, was contemptuous. His opinion of Russian women, whom he wanted to study, more than once made Vronsky flush with indignation.

      But the chief reason why the Prince’s presence oppressed Vronsky was that he saw himself reflected in the Prince, and what he saw in that mirror was not flattering to his vanity. The Prince was a very stupid, very healthy and very cleanly man — and nothing more. He was a gentleman, it is true, and Vronsky could not deny it. He was quiet and not cringing with those above him, free and simple with his equals, and contemptuously good-natured with his inferiors. Vronsky was the same, and considered it very meritorious to be so, but in his relations with the Prince he was the inferior and felt indignant with that condescendingly good-natured treatment.

      ‘Stupid ox! can I really be like that myself?’ he thought.

      However this may have been, he parted from the Prince (who went on to Moscow) and received his thanks. Vronsky was very pleased to be rid of the embarrassing situation and the unpleasant mirror. He took leave of him at the railway station on the seventh day, on returning from a bear-hunt, after which there had been demonstrations of Russian ‘prowess’ all night.