Page 249 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 34

When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he
had left his large set of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and
favorite comrade Petritsky.
Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-
connected, and not merely not wealthy, but always
hopelessly in debt. Towards evening he was always drunk,
and he had often been locked up after all sorts of ludicrous
and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite both of his
comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve
o’clock from the station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the
outer door, a hired carriage familiar to him. While still
outside his own door, as he rang, he heard masculine
laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and Petritsky’s
voice. ‘If that’s one of the villains, don’t let him in!’
Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and
slipped quietly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a
friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair,
resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole
room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the
round table making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and

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