Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/320

 agreeably. All the rest were gay, but Kitty could not be gay, and this still more annoyed her. She experienced a feeling analogous to that which she had known in her childhood, when, as a punishment for some offense, she was shut up in her room and heard the gay merriment of her sisters.

"Now, why did you purchase this heap of things?" asked the princess, smiling and offering her husband a cup of coffee.

"You go out for a walk, well! and you come to a shop, and they address you, and say, ' Erlaucht, Excellenz, Durchlaucht! ' Well, when they say Durchlaucht , I cannot resist any longer, and my ten thalers vanish."

"It was merely because you were bored," said the princess.

"Certainly I was bored! It was ennui which one does not know how to escape from."

"But how can you be bored? There are so many interesting things to see in Germany now," said Marya Yevgenyevna.

"Yes! I know all which is interesting just at the present time: I know soup with prunes, I know pea pudding, I know everything."

"Just as you please, prince, but their institutions are interesting," said the colonel.

"Yes! but what is there interesting about them? They are as contented as copper kopeks. They have whipped the world! Now, why should I find anything to content me here? I never conquered anybody; but I have to take off my boots myself, and, what is worse, put them out myself in the corridor. In the morning I get up, and have to dress myself, and go down to the dining-room and drink execrable tea. 'T is n't like that at home. There you can get up when you please; if you are out of sorts, you can grumble; you have all the time you need for remembering things, and you can do whatever you please without hurrying."

"But time is money; you forget that," said the colonel.