Page 269 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

The prince listened to the princess’s scolding rather a
long while without speaking, but his face was more and
more frowning.
‘She’s so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be

pitied, and you don’t feel how it hurts her to hear the
slightest reference to the cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken
in people!’ said the princess, and by the change in her tone
both Dolly and the prince knew she was speaking of
Vronsky. ‘I don’t know why there aren’t laws against such
base, dishonorable people.’
‘Ah, I can’t bear to hear you!’ said the prince gloomily,
getting up from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get
away, yet stopping in the doorway. ‘There are laws,
madam, and since you’ve challenged me to it, I’ll tell you
who’s to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody
else. Laws against such young gallants there have always
been, and there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that
ought not to have been, old as I am, I’d have called him
out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes, and now you
physic her and call in these quacks.’
The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as
soon as the princess heard his tone she subsided at once,
and became penitent, as she always did on serious
occasions.

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