Page 1530 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

At the chemist’s the lank shopman sealed up a packet of
powders for a coachman who stood waiting, and refused
him opium with the same callousness with which the
doctor’s footman had cleaned his lamp chimneys. Trying

not to get flurried or out of temper, Levin mentioned the
names of the doctor and midwife, and explaining what the
opium was needed for, tried to persuade him. The assistant
inquired in German whether he should give it, and
receiving an affirmative reply from behind the partition,
he took out a bottle and a funnel, deliberately poured the
opium from a bigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a
label, sealed it up, in spite of Levin’s request that he would
not do so, and was about to wrap it up too. This was more
than Levin could stand; he took the bottle firmly out of
his hands, and ran to the big glass doors. The doctor was
not even now getting up, and the footman, busy now in
putting down the rugs, refused to wake him. Levin
deliberately took out a ten rouble note, and, careful to
speak slowly, though losing no time over the business, he
handed him the note, and explained that Pyotr
Dmitrievitch (what a great and important personage he
seemed to Levin now, this Pyotr Dmitrievitch, who had
been of so little consequence in his eyes before!) had

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