Page 833 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 9

It was past five, and several guests had already arrived,
before the host himself got home. He went in together
with Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev and Pestsov, who had
reached the street door at the same moment. These were
the two leading representatives of the Moscow
intellectuals, as Oblonsky had called them. Both were men
respected for their character and their intelligence. They
respected each other, but were in complete and hopeless
disagreement upon almost every subject, not because they
belonged to opposite parties, but precisely because they
were of the same party (their enemies refused to see any
distinction between their views); but, in that party, each
had his own special shade of opinion. And since no
difference is less easily overcome than the difference of
opinion about semi-abstract questions, they never agreed
in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to
jeer without anger, each at the other’s incorrigible
aberrations.
They were just going in at the door, talking of the
weather, when Stepan Arkadyevitch overtook them. In
the drawing room there were already sitting Prince

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