Page 1661 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

in Moscow. He had a great deal of leisure and intellectual
energy still to dispose of.
Fortunately for him, at this period so difficult for him
from the failure of his book, the various public questions

of the dissenting sects, of the American alliance, of the
Samara famine, of exhibitions, and of spiritualism, were
definitely replaced in public interest by the Slavonic
question, which had hitherto rather languidly interested
society, and Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been one of the
first to raise this subject, threw himself into it heart and
soul.
In the circle to which Sergey Ivanovitch belonged,
nothing was talked of or written about just now but the
Servian War. Everything that the idle crowd usually does
to kill time was done now for the benefit of the Slavonic
States. Balls, concerts, dinners, matchboxes, ladies’ dresses,
beer, restaurants— everything testified to sympathy with
the Slavonic peoples.
From much of what was spoken and written on the
subject, Sergey Ivanovitch differed on various points. He
saw that the Slavonic question had become one of those
fashionable distractions which succeed one another in
providing society with an object and an occupation. He
saw, too, that a great many people were taking up the

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