And the baroness, without letting go of Vronsky’s hand, began telling him her latest plans for her life, interspersing it with jokes, and asking for his advice.
‘He keeps refusing to grant me a divorce! Well, what am I to do?’ (‘He’ was her husband.) ‘I want to start proceedings. How would you advise me? Kamerovsky, keep an eye on the coffee, it’s boiling over — you can see I’m busy! I want proceedings, because I need my fortune. Do you understand this stupidity - that I’m supposedly unfaithful to him,’ she said with scorn, ‘and so he wants to have use of my estate?’
Vronsky listened with pleasure to this merry prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave half-jocular advice, and generally adopted his habitual tone in dealing with women of her kind. In his Petersburg world, all people were divided into two completely opposite sorts. One was the inferior sort: the banal, stupid and, above all, ridiculous people who believed that one husband should live with one wife, whom he has married in church, that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, a man manly, temperate and firm, that one should raise children, earn one’s bread, pay one’s debts, and other such stupidities. This was an old-fashioned and ridiculous sort of people. But there was another sort of people, the real ones, to which they all belonged, and for whom one had, above all, to be elegant, handsome, magnanimous, bold, gay, to give oneself to every passion without blushing and laugh at everything else.
Vronsky was stunned only for the first moment, after the impressions of a completely different world that he had brought from Moscow; but at once, as if putting his feet into old slippers, he stepped back into his former gay and pleasant world.
The coffee never got made, but splashed on everything and boiled over and produced precisely what was needed - that is, gave an excuse for noise and laughter, spilling on the expensive carpet and the baroness’s dress.
‘Well, good-bye now, or else you’ll never get washed, and I’ll have on my conscience the worst crime of a decent person - uncleanliness. So your advice is a knife at his throat?’
‘Absolutely, and with your little hand close to his lips. He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end well,’ Vronsky replied.
‘Tonight, then, at the French Theatre!’ And she disappeared, her dress rustling.
Kamerovsky also stood up, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to leave, gave him his hand and went to his dressing room. While he washed, Petritsky described his own situation in a few strokes, to the extent that it had changed since Vronsky’s departure. Of money there was none. His father said he would not give him any, nor pay his debts. One tailor wanted to have him locked up, and the other was also threatening to have him locked up without fail. The commander of the regiment announced that if these scandals did not stop, he would have to resign. He was fed up with the baroness, especially since she kept wanting to give him money; but there was one, he would show her to Vronsky, a wonder, a delight, in the severe Levantine style, the ‘slave-girl Rebecca genre,44 you know’. He had also quarrelled yesterday with Berkoshev, who wanted to send his seconds, but surely nothing would come of that. Generally, everything was excellent and extremely jolly. And, not letting his friend go deeper into the details of his situation, Petritsky started telling him all the interesting news. Listening to his so-familiar stories, in the so-familiar surroundings of his apartment of three years, Vronsky experienced the pleasant feeling of returning to his accustomed and carefree Petersburg life.
‘It can’t be!’ he cried, releasing the pedal of the washstand from which water poured over his robust red neck. ‘It can’t be!’ he cried at the news that Laura was now with Mileev and had dropped Fertinhoff. ‘And he’s still just as stupid and content? Well, and what about Buzulukov?’
‘Ah, there was a story with Buzulukov - lovely!’ cried Petritsky. ‘He has this passion for balls, and he never misses a single court ball. So he went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new helmets? Very good, much lighter. There he stands ... No, listen.’
‘I am listening,’ Vronsky replied, rubbing himself with a Turkish towel.
