‘That’s Yashvin,’ Vronsky answered Turovtsyn and sat down in a place that had been vacated next to them. After drinking the glass he was offered, he ordered a bottle. Levin, influenced either by the impression of the club or by the wine he had drunk, got into a conversation with Vronsky about the best breeds of cattle and was very glad to feel no hostility towards the man. He even told him, among other things, that his wife had mentioned meeting him at Princess Marya Borisovna’s.
‘Ah, Princess Marya Borisovna, she’s lovely!’ said Stepan Arkadyich, and he told a joke about Marya Borisovna that made everybody laugh. Vronsky, in particular, burst into such good-natured laughter that Levin felt completely reconciled with him.
‘So, all done?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, getting up and smiling. ‘Let’s go!’
VIII
Leaving the table, feeling his arms swinging with a special rightness and ease as he went, Levin walked with Gagin through the high-ceilinged rooms towards the billiard room. Going through the main hall, he ran into his father-in-law.
‘Well, so? How do you like our temple of idleness?’ the prince said, taking him under the arm. ‘Come, let’s take a stroll.’
‘I also wanted to have a look round. It’s interesting.’
‘Yes, for you it’s interesting. But my interest is different from yours. You look at these little old men,’ he said, indicating a club member with a bent back and a hanging lower lip who walked towards and then past them, barely moving his feet in their soft boots, ‘and you think they were born such sloshers.’
‘Why sloshers?’
‘See, you don’t even know the word. It’s our club term. You know, when you’re rolling hard-boiled eggs, an egg that’s been rolled a lot gets all cracked and turns into a slosher. It’s the same with our kind: we keep coming and coming to the club and turn into sloshers. Yes, you may laugh, but our kind have to watch out that we don’t wind up with the sloshers. You know Prince Chechensky?’ asked the prince, and Levin could see from his look that he was going to tell some funny story.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Well, really! I mean the famous Prince Chechensky. Well, it makes no difference. He’s always playing billiards. Some three years ago he was still a fine fellow and not one of the sloshers. He even called other men sloshers. Only one day he comes and our porter ... you know Vassily? Well, that fat one. He’s a great wit. So Prince Chechensky asks him, “Well, Vassily, who’s here? Any sloshers?” And he says to him “You’re the third.” Yes, brother, so it goes!’
Talking and greeting the acquaintances they met, Levin and the prince passed through all the rooms: the main one, where card tables were already set up and habitual partners were playing for small stakes; the sitting room, where people were playing chess and Sergei Ivanovich sat talking with someone; the billiard room, where, around the sofa in the curve of the room, a merry company, which included Gagin, had gathered with champagne; they also looked into the inferno, where many gamblers crowded round a single table at which Yashvin was already sitting. Trying not to make any noise, they went into the dim reading room where, under shaded lamps, a young man with an angry face sat flipping through one magazine after another and a bald-headed general was immersed in reading. They also went into a room which the prince called the ‘clever room’. In this room three gentlemen were hotly discussing the latest political news.
‘If you please, Prince, we’re ready,’ one of his partners said, finding him there, and the prince left. Levin sat and listened for a while, but, recalling all the conversations of that day, he suddenly felt terribly bored. He got up quickly and went to look for Oblonsky and Turovtsyn, with whom he felt merry.
Turovtsyn was sitting with a tankard of drink on a high-backed sofa in the billiard room, and Stepan Arkadyich was talking about something with Vronsky by the doorway in the far corner of the room.
‘It’s not that she’s bored, it’s the uncertainty, the undecidedness of the situation,’ Levin heard and was about to retreat hastily, but Stepan Arkadyich called to him.
‘Levin!’ said Stepan Arkadyich, and Levin noticed that his eyes, though not tearful, were moist, as always happened with him when he was drinking or very moved. This time it was both. ‘Levin, don’t go,’ he said and held him tightly by the elbow, obviously not wishing him to leave for anything.
‘This is my truest, maybe even my best friend,’ he said to Vronsky. ‘You, too, are even nearer and dearer to me. And I want you to be and know that you should be close friends, because you’re both good people.’
‘Well, all that’s left is for us to kiss,’ Vronsky said with good-natured humour, giving him his hand.
Levin quickly took the proffered hand and pressed it firmly.
‘I’m very, very glad,’ he said.
‘Waiter, a bottle of champagne,’ said Stepan Arkadyich.
‘I’m very glad, too,’ said Vronsky.
