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LL happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

All was confusion in the house of the Oblonskys. The wife had discovered that her husband was having an intrigue with a French governess who had been in their employ, and she declared that she could not live in the same house with him. This condition of things had lasted now three days, and was causing deep discomfort, not only to the husband and wife, but also to all the members of the family and the domestics. All the members of the family and the domestics felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that in any hotel people meeting casually had more mutual interests than they, the members of the family and the domestics of the house of Oblonsky. The wife did not come out of her own rooms; the husband had not been at home for two days. The children were running over the whole house as if they were crazy; the English maid was angry with the housekeeper and wrote to a friend begging her to find her a new place. The head cook had departed the evening before just at dinnertime; the kitchen-maid and the coachman demanded their wages.

On the third day after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky—Stiva, as he was called in society—awoke at the usual hour, that is to say about