Page 1734 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘With the Turks,’ Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling
serenely, as he extricated the bee, dark with honey and
helplessly kicking, and put it with the knife on a stout
aspen leaf.

‘But who has declared war on the Turks?—Ivan
Ivanovitch Ragozov and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, assisted
by Madame Stahl?’
‘No one has declared war, but people sympathize with
their neighbors’ sufferings and are eager to help them,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘But the prince is not speaking of help,’ said Levin,
coming to the assistance of his father-in-law, ‘but of war.
The prince says that private persons cannot take part in
war without the permission of the government.’
‘Kostya, mind, that’s a bee! Really, they’ll sting us!’ said
Dolly, waving away a wasp.
‘But that’s not a bee, it’s a wasp,’ said Levin.
‘Well now, well, what’s your own theory?’ Katavasov
said to Levin with a smile, distinctly challenging him to a
discussion. ‘Why have not private persons the right to do
so?’
‘Oh, my theory’s this: war is on one side such a beastly,
cruel, and awful thing, that no one man, not to speak of a
Christian, can individually take upon himself the

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