Page 49 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

father and mother. All the members of that family,
especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, as it
were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and
he not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but

under the poetical veil that shrouded them he assumed the
existence of the loftiest sentiments and every possible
perfection. Why it was the three young ladies had one day
to speak French, and the next English; why it was that at
certain hours they played by turns on the piano, the
sounds of which were audible in their brother’s room
above, where the students used to work; why they were
visited by those professors of French literature, of music,
of drawing, of dancing; why at certain hours all the three
young ladies, with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the
coach to the Tversky boulevard, dressed in their satin
cloaks, Dolly in a long one, Natalia in a half-long one, and
Kitty in one so short that her shapely legs in tightly-drawn
red stockings were visible to all beholders; why it was they
had to walk about the Tversky boulevard escorted by a
footman with a gold cockade in his hat—all this and much
more that was done in their mysterious world he did not
understand, but he was sure that everything that was done
there was very good, and he was in love precisely with the
mystery of the proceedings.

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