Page 444 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

were to witness, and at which he was bound to be present.
He was going to see his wife, because he had determined
to see her once a week to keep up appearances. And
besides, on that day, as it was the fifteenth, he had to give

his wife some money for her expenses, according to their
usual arrangement.
With his habitual control over his thoughts, though he
thought all this about his wife, he did not let his thoughts
stray further in regard to her.
That morning was a very full one for Alexey
Alexandrovitch. The evening before, Countess Lidia
Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet by a celebrated traveler
in China, who was staying in Petersburg, and with it she
enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler himself, as
he was an extremely interesting person from various points
of view, and likely to be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch
had not had time to read the pamphlet through in the
evening, and finished it in the morning. Then people
began arriving with petitions, and there came the reports,
interviews, appointments, dismissals, apportionment of
rewards, pensions, grants, notes, the workaday round, as
Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that always took up so
much time. Then there was private business of his own, a
visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his

443 of 1759