Page 1017 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason
particularly gracious and condescending both to her and
her little son. Vronsky, too, glanced out of the window
and into Anna’s eyes, and, turning at once to

Golenishtchev, he said:
‘Do you know this Mihailov?’
‘I have met him. But he’s a queer fish, and quite
without breeding. You know, one of those uncouth new
people one’s so often coming across nowadays, One of
those free-thinkers you know, who are reared d’emblee in
theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In former
days,’ said Golenishtchev, not observing, or not willing to
observe, that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, ‘in
former days the free-thinker was a man who had been
brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and
only through conflict and struggle came to free-thought;
but now there has sprung up a new type of born free-
thinkers who grow up without even having heard of
principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of
authorities, who grow up directly in ideas of negation in
everything, that is to say, savages. Well, he’s of that class.
He’s the son, it appears, of some Moscow butler, and has
never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the
academy and made his reputation he tried, as he’s no fool,

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