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‘Really! This way, please,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, pointing in the direction of the dining room.

The men went to the dining room and approached the table of hors d‘oeuvres, set with six kinds of vodka and as many kinds of cheese with silver spreaders or without, with caviars, herring, various tinned delicacies and platters of sliced French bread.

The men stood by the fragrant vodkas and hors d‘oeuvres, and the conversation between Koznyshev, Karenin and Pestsov about the russification of Poland began to die down in anticipation of dinner.

Sergei Ivanovich, who knew like no one else how to add some Attic salt8 to the end of a most abstract and serious discussion and thereby change the mood of his interlocutors, did so now.

Alexei Alexandrovich maintained that the russification of Poland could be accomplished only as a result of higher principles, which ought to be introduced by the Russian administration.

Pestsov insisted that one nation could assimilate another only if it had a denser population.

Koznyshev acknowledged the one and the other, but with limitations. To conclude the conversation, he said with a smile as they were leaving the drawing room:

‘Therefore there is only one way of russifying the racial minorities - by breeding as many children as possible. There’s where my brother and I are at our worst. And you married gentlemen, especially you, Stepan Arkadyich, are quite patriotic. How many do you have?’ He turned with a gentle smile to his host and held out his tiny glass to him.

Everybody laughed, Stepan Arkadyich with particular gaiety.

‘Yes, that’s the best way!’ he said, chewing some cheese and pouring some special sort of vodka into the held-out glass. The conversation indeed ceased on that joke.

‘This cheese isn’t bad. Would you care for some?’ said the host. ‘So you’ve gone back to doing exercises?’ He turned to Levin, feeling his muscle with his left hand. Levin smiled, flexed his arm, and under Stepan Arkadyich’s fingers a steely bump rose like a round cheese under the thin cloth of the frock coat.

‘What a biceps! Samson!’

‘I suppose it takes great strength to hunt bear,’ said Alexei Alexandrovich, who had very foggy notions of hunting, spreading some cheese and tearing through the gossamer-thin slice of bread.

Levin smiled.

‘None at all. On the contrary, a child can kill a bear,’ he said with a slight bow, stepping aside before the ladies who, together with the hostess, were approaching the table of hors d‘oeuvres.

‘And you killed a bear, I’m told?’ said Kitty, trying in vain to spear a disobedient, slippery mushroom with her fork and shaking the lace through which her arm showed white. ‘Do you really have bears there?’ she added, half turning her lovely head towards him and smiling.

It seemed there was nothing extraordinary in what she said, yet for him, what meaning, inexpressible in words, there was in every sound, in every movement of her lips, eyes, arm, as she said it! Here was a plea for forgiveness, and trust in him, and a caress, a tender, timid caress, and a promise, and hope, and love for him, in which he could not but believe and which choked him with happiness.

‘No, we went to Tver province. On my way back I met your beau-frère ah on the train, or your beau-frère’s brother-in-law,’ he said with a smile. ‘It was a funny encounter.’

And he told, gaily and amusingly, how, after not sleeping all night, he had burst into Alexei Alexandrovich’s compartment in his sheepskin jacket.

‘The conductor, contrary to the proverb, judged me by my clothes and wanted to throw me out. But at that point I began talking in high-flown language, and ... you, too,’ he said, forgetting Karenin’s name as he turned to him, ‘wanted to chase me out at first, judging by my jacket, but then stood up for me, for which I’m very grateful.’

‘In general, passengers’ rights in the choice of seats are rather vague,’ said Alexei Alexandrovich, wiping the tips of his fingers with a handkerchief.