Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/978

 Stepan Arkadyevitch's nap would have offended them,—he did not think of this at the time, so strange did everything seem,—but Landau's rejoiced them exceedingly, and especially the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"Mon ami," said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, cautiously, so as not to disturb him; and, picking up the folds of her silk gown, in the enthusiasm of the moment, calling Karenin, not Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, but, "Mon ami, donnez lui la main! vous voyez? Sh-h!" said she to the lackey, who once more entered the parlor with a message. "I can't receive it now."

The Frenchman slept, or pretended to sleep, leaning his head on the back of his arm-chair, and resting his hand on his knee, but making feeble gestures, as if he were trying to catch something.

Alekseï Aleksandrovitch got up, and cautiously, though he tripped over a table as he did so, stepped over to the chair, and put his hand into the Frenchman's hand. Stepan Arkadyevitch also got up, and opening his eyes wide, and trying to decide whether he were asleep or not, looked from one to the other, and felt his ideas growing more and more confused.

"Que la personne qui est arrivée la dernière, celle qui demande, qu'elle ....sorte. Qu'elle sorte," murmured the Frenchman, without opening his eyes.

"Vous m'excuserez, mais vous voyez—revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain."

"Qu'elle sorte,' repeated the Frenchman, impatiently.

"C'est moi, n'est ce pas?" asked Oblonsky, and at an affirmative sign, forgetting what he was going to ask Lidia Ivanovna, forgetting his sister's affairs, with one single desire to escape as soon as possible, hastened out on his tiptoes and rushed down into the street, as if he were fleeing from a pest-house, and for a long time talked and jested with his driver, so as to bring back his spirits.