Page 1418 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘But excuse me! They take their stand on the act,’ was
being said in another group; ‘the wife must be registered as
noble.’
‘Oh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We’re all

gentlemen, aren’t we? Above suspicion.’
‘Shall we go on, your excellency, fine champagne?’
Another group was following a nobleman, who was
shouting something in a loud voice; it was one of the
three intoxicated gentlemen.
‘I always advised Marya Semyonovna to let for a fair
rent, for she can never save a profit,’ he heard a pleasant
voice say. The speaker was a country gentleman with gray
whiskers, wearing the regimental uniform of an old
general staff-officer. It was the very landowner Levin had
met at Sviazhsky’s. He knew him at once. The landowner
too stared at Levin, and they exchanged greetings. ‘Very
glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well.
Last year at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitch’s.’
‘Well, and how is your land doing?’ asked Levin.
‘Oh, still just the same, always at a loss,’ the landowner
answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of
serenity and conviction that so it must be. ‘And how do
you come to be in our province?’ he asked. ‘Come to take
part in our coup d’etat?’ he said, confidently pronouncing

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