Page 895 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

the table, and taking the guidebook, began considering the
route of his journey.
‘Two telegrams,’ said his manservant, coming into the
room. ‘I beg your pardon, your excellency; I’d only just

that minute gone out.’
Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened
them. The first telegram was the announcement of
Stremov’s appointment to the very post Karenin had
coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung the telegram down,
and flushing a little, got up and began to pace up and
down the room. ‘Quos vult perdere dementat,’ he said,
meaning by quos the persons responsible for this
appointment. He was not so much annoyed that he had
not received the post, that he had been conspicuously
passed over; but it was incomprehensible, amazing to him
that they did not see that the wordy phrase-monger
Stremov was the last man fit for it. How could they fail to
see how they were ruining themselves, lowering their
prestige by this appointment?
‘Something else in the same line,’ he said to himself
bitterly, opening the second telegram. The telegram was
from his wife. Her name, written in blue pencil, ‘Anna,’
was the first thing that caught his eye. ‘I am dying; I beg, I
implore you to come. I shall die easier with your

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