Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [299]
Anna.
Everything in this letter annoyed Countess Lydia Ivanovna: the content, the reference to magnanimity and especially what seemed to her the casual tone.
‘Tell him there will be no reply,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna said and at once, opening her blotting pad, wrote to Alexei Alexandrovich that she hoped to see him between twelve and one for the felicitations at the palace.
‘I must discuss an important and sad matter with you. We will arrange where when we meet. Best of all would be my house, where I shall prepare your tea. It is necessary. He imposes the cross. He also gives the strength,’ she added, so as to prepare him at least a little.
Countess Lydia Ivanovna usually wrote two or three notes a day to Alexei Alexandrovich. She liked this process of communicating with him, as having both elegance and mystery, which were lacking in her personal relations.
XXIV
The felicitations were coming to an end. On their way out, people met and discussed the latest news of the day, the newly bestowed awards, and the transfers of important officials.
‘What if Countess Marya Borisovna got the ministry of war, and Princess Vatkovsky was made chief of staff?’ a grey-haired little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform said, addressing a tall, beautiful lady-in-waiting who had asked about the transfers.
‘And I an aide-de-camp,’ the lady-in-waiting said, smiling.
‘You already have an appointment. In the religious department. And for your assistant - Karenin.’
‘How do you do, Prince!’ said the old man, shaking hands with a man who came over.
‘What did you say about Karenin?’ asked the prince.
‘He and Putyatov got the Alexander Nevsky.’36
‘I thought he already had it.’
‘No. Just look at him,’ said the old man, pointing with his embroidered hat to Karenin in his court uniform, a new red sash over his shoulder, standing in the doorway of the reception room with an influential member of the State Council. ‘Happy and pleased as a new copper penny,’ he added, stopping to shake hands with a handsome, athletically built gentleman of the bed-chamber.
‘No, he’s aged,’ the gentleman of the bed-chamber said.
‘From worry. He keeps writing projects nowadays. He won’t let that unfortunate fellow go now until he’s told him everything point by point.’
‘Aged? Il fait des passions.ao I think Countess Lydia Ivanovna is now jealous of his wife.’
‘Come, come! Please don’t say anything bad about Countess Lydia Ivanovna.’
‘But is it bad that she’s in love with Karenin?’
‘And is it true that Madame Karenina’s here?’
‘That is, not here in the palace, but in Petersburg. I met them yesterday, her and Alexei Vronsky, bras dessus, bras dessous,ap on Morskaya.’
‘C’est un homme qui n‘a pas ...’aq the gentleman of the bed-chamber began, but stopped, making way and bowing to a person of the tsar’s family passing by.
So people talked ceaselessly of Alexei Alexandrovich, judging him and laughing at him, while he, standing in the way of a State Council member he had caught, explained his financial project to him point by point, not interrupting his explanation for a moment, so as not to let him slip away.
At almost the same time that his wife had left him, the bitterest of events for a man in the service had also befallen Alexei Alexandrovich-the cessation of his upward movement. This cessation was an accomplished fact and everyone saw it clearly, but Alexei Alexandrovich himself was not yet aware that his career was over. Whether it was the confrontation with Stremov, or the misfortune with his wife,