Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 09.djvu/22

4 to a friend of hers asking her to find her a new place; the cook had left the evening before, during dinner; the scullion and the coachman asked to be paid off.

On the third day after the quarrel, Prince Stepán Arkádevich Oblónski, — Stíva, as he was called in society, — awoke at the usual hour, that is at eight o'clock, not in his wife's sleeping-room, but in his cabinet, on a saffron divan. He turned his plump, well-fed body on the springs of the divan, as though intending to fall asleep again for a long time, and on the other side firmly embraced a pillow and pressed his cheek against it; but suddenly he sprang up, sat down on the divan, and opened his eyes.

“Yes, yes, how was it?” he thought, trying to recall a dream. “Yes, how was it? Yes. Alábin gave a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not at Darmstadt, but in something American, Yes, Darmstadt was somewhere in America. Yes, Alábin gave a dinner on glass tables, yes, — and the tables sang ' Il mio tesoro,'  no, not ’ Il mio tesoro,’  but something better, and there were some little decanters, who were women, too,” he kept recalling.

Stepán Arkádevich’s eyes sparkled merrily, and he felt to musing, and smiled. “Yes, it was nice, very nice. There were many fine things there, such as you can’t mention in words, and can’t express by thoughts, while awake.” And, noticing a strip of light which beat sidewise through one of the cloth blinds, he merrily threw his feet down from the divan, found, by means of his feet, the gold-saffron slippers which his wife had embroidered for him (a present for his last year’s birthday), and, without rising, in accordance with an old habit of nine years’ standing, stretched forth his hand to the place where, in his sleeping-room, his morning-gown used to hang. He then suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife’s chamber, but in his cabinet, and he recalled the reason why; the smile left his face and he knit his brow.