Page 1589 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

make me! That’ll be too imbecile. And what stuff it is
she’s reading! but she has a good accent. Landau—
Bezzubov— what’s he Bezzubov for?’ All at once Stepan
Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw was

uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled his whiskers to
cover the yawn, and shook himself together. But soon
after he became aware that he was dropping asleep and on
the very point of snoring. He recovered himself at the
very moment when the voice of Countess Lidia Ivanovna
was saying ‘he’s asleep.’ Stepan Arkadyevitch started with
dismay, feeling guilty and caught. But he was reassured at
once by seeing that the words ‘he’s asleep’ referred not to
him, but to Landau. The Frenchman was asleep as well as
Stepan Arkadyevitch. But Stepan Arkadyevitch’s being
asleep would have offended them, as he thought (though
even this, he thought, might not be so, as everything
seemed so queer), while Landau’s being asleep delighted
them extremely, especially Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
‘Mon ami,’ said Lidia Ivanovna, carefully holding the
folds of her silk gown so as not to rustle, and in her
excitement calling Karenin not Alexey Alexandrovitch,
but ‘mon ami,’ ‘donnez-lui la main. Vous voyez? Sh!’ she
hissed at the footman as he came in again. ‘Not at home.’

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