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 unteers still going off?" added he, looking at Sergyeï Ivanovitch.

Sergyeï Ivanovitch was busy with a knife-blade rescuing a live bee from the honey that had flowed out of the white honeycomb at the bottom of his cup, and he did not answer.

"Indeed! I should say so!" said Katavasof, biting into a cucumber. "If you had only seen them at the station this morning!"

"Now, what an idea this is! For Christ's sake, tell me, Sergyeï Ivanovitch, where all these volunteers are going, and whom they are going to fight with?" asked the old prince, evidently pursuing a conversation which they had begun before Levin joined them.

"With the Turks," answered Sergyeï Ivanovitch, smiling quietly, as he at last rescued the helpless honey-smeared bee on the point of his knife, and set him on an aspen leaf.

"But who has declared war on the Turks? Is it Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozof and the Countess Lidia Ivanovna and Madame Stahl?"

"No one has declared war; but the people sympathize with their oppressed brethren, and want to help them," said Sergyeï Ivanovitch.

"The prince was not speaking of help, but of war," said Levin, coming to the assistance of his father-in-law. "The prince means that private persons have no right to take part in a war without being authorized by the government."

"Kostia, look out! there's a bee! Won't he sting?" cried Dolly, defending herself from a wasp.

"That's not a bee; that's a wasp!" said Levin.

"Come, now! give us your theory," demanded Katavasof, evidently provoking Levin to a discussion. "Why shouldn't private persons have that right?"

"Well, my theory is this: war, on the one hand, is such a terrible, such an atrocious, thing that no man, at least no Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of beginning it; but it belongs to government alone, when it becomes inevitable. On the other