Anna Karenina | Page 7

family--the monkey. And so
Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked
his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it
diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was
maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that
radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements,
and that the government ought to take measures to crush the
revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger
lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of
traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc. He read another article, too,
a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some
innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic
quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it
came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him,
as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was
embittered by Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory
state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to
have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and
of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation;
but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet,
ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee
and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his
waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not
because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind--the
joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.
But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew
thoughtful.
Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of

Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard outside
the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.
"I told you not to sit passengers on the roof," said the little girl in
English; "there, pick them up!"
"Everything's in confusion," thought Stepan Arkadyevitch; "there are
the children running about by themselves." And going to the door, he
called them. They threw down the box, that represented a train, and
came in to their father.
The little girl, her father's favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him, and
hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the smell of
scent that came from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed his face,
which was flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with
tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about to run away again; but her
father held her back.
"How is mamma?" he asked, passing his hand over his daughter's
smooth, soft little neck. "Good morning," he said, smiling to the boy,
who had come up to greet him. He was conscious that he loved the boy
less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond
with a smile to his father's chilly smile.
"Mamma? She is up," answered the girl.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. "That means that she's not slept again all
night," he thought.
"Well, is she cheerful?"
The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and
mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father
must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when he asked about
it so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it,
and blushed too.
"I don't know," she said. "She did not say we must do our lessons, but

she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to grandmamma's."
"Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though," he said, still
holding her and stroking her soft little hand.
He took off the matelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little box of
sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate and a
fondant.
"For Grisha?" said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.
"Yes, yes." And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed her on the
roots of here hair and neck, and let her go.
"The carriage is ready," said Matvey; "but there's some one to see you
with a petition."
"Been here long?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Half an hour."
"How many times have I told you to tell me at once?"
"One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least," said Matvey, in
the affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be angry.
"Well, show the person up at once," said Oblonsky, frowning with
vexation.
The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a
request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he