Page 280 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Another little set with which Anna was in close
relations was the one by means of which Alexey
Alexandrovitch had made his career. The center of this
circle was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It was a set made

up of elderly, ugly, benevolent, and godly women, and
clever, learned, and ambitious men. One of the clever
people belonging to the set had called it ‘the conscience of
Petersburg society.’ Alexey Alexandrovitch had the
highest esteem for this circle, and Anna with her special
gift for getting on with everyone, had in the early days of
her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now,
since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this
set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of
them were insincere, and she fell so bored and ill at ease in
that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia
Ivanovna as little as possible.
The third circle with which Anna had ties was
preeminently the fashionable world—the world of balls, of
dinners, of sumptuous dresses, the world that hung on to
the court with one hand, so as to avoid sinking to the level
of the demi-monde. For the demi-monde the members of
that fashionable world believed that they despised, though
their tastes were not merely similar, but in fact identical.
Her connection with this circle was kept up through

279 of 1759