` Es kommt drauf an... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden .' And the German, roused from his taciturnity, turned to Vronsky.
` Das lässt sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht .' The German was just feeling in the pocket where were his pencil and the notebook he always wrote in, but recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing Vronsky's chilly glance, he checked himself. ` Zu compliziert, macht zu viel pains ,'
he concluded.
` Wünscht man gains, so hat man auch pains ,' said Vassenka Veslovsky, bantering the German. ` J'adore l'allemand ,' he addressed Anna again with the same smile.
` Cessez ,' she said with playful severity.
`We expected to find you in the fields, Vassilii Semionich,' she said to the doctor, a sickly-looking man; `have you been there?'
`I went there, but I evaporated,' the doctor answered with gloomy jocoseness.
`Then you've taken a good constitutional?'
`Splendid!'
`Well, and how was the old woman? I hope it's not typhus?'
`Typhus it isn't, but she's not to be found to the best advantage.'
`What a pity!' said Anna, and having thus paid the dues of civility to her domestic circle, she turned to her own friends.
`It would be a hard task, though, to construct a machine from your description, Anna Arkadyevna,' Sviiazhsky said jestingly.
`Oh, no, why so?' said Anna with a smile that betrayed that she knew there was something charming in her disquisitions upon the machine, that had been noticed by Sviiazhsky too. This new trait of girlish coquettishness made an unpleasant impression on Dolly.
`But Anna Arkadyevna's knowledge of architecture is marvelous,'
said Tushkevich.
`To be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna saying yesterday: ``by cramp'
and ``plinths,'' said Veslovsky. `Have I got it right?'
`There's nothing marvelous about it, when one sees and hears so much of it,' said Anna. `But, I dare say, you don't even know what houses are made of?'
Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of playfulness that existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against her will.
Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from Levin. He obviously attached no significance to Veslovsky's chattering; on the contrary, he encouraged his jests.
`Come now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held together?'
`By cement, of course.'
`Bravo! And what is cement?'
`Oh, some sort of paste.... No, putty,' said Veslovsky, raising a general laugh.
The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect, and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on another, and at times stinging one or the other of the company to the quick. Once Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the quick, and got so hot that she positively flushed and wondered afterward whether she had said anything extreme or unpleasant. Sviiazhsky began talking of Levin, describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its effects on Russian agriculture.
`I have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Levin,' Vronsky said, smiling, `but most likely he has never seen the machines he condemns; or if he has seen and tried any, it must have been after a queer fashion, some Russian imitation, not a machine from abroad. What sort of views can anyone have on such a subject?'
`Turkish views, in general,' Veslovsky said, turning to Anna with a smile.
`I can't defend his opinions,' Darya Alexandrovna said, flaring up; `but I can say that he's a highly cultivated man, and if he were here he would know very well how to answer you, though I am not capable of doing so.'
`I like him extremely, and we are great friends,' Sviiazhsky said, smiling good-naturedly. ` Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toque ;he maintains, for instance, that zemstvoes and justices of the peace are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything.'
`It's our Russian apathy,' said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; `we've no sense of the duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize these duties.'
`I know no man more strict in the performance of his duties,'
said Darya Alexandrovna, irritated by Vronsky's tone of superiority.
`For my part,' pursued Vronsky, who was evidently for some reason or other keenly affected by this conversation, `such as I am, I am, on the contrary, extremely grateful for the honor they have done me, thanks to Nikolai Ivanich' (he indicated Sviiazhsky), `in electing me an honorary justice of the peace. I consider that for me the duty of being present at the session, of judging some peasants' quarrel about a horse, is as important as anything I can do. And I shall regard it as an honor if they elect me for the district council. It's only in that way I can pay for the advantages I enjoy as a landowner. Unluckily they don't understand the importance that the big landowners ought to have in the state.'
It was strange to Darya Alexandrovna to hear how serenely confident he was of being right at his own table. She thought how Levin, who believed the opposite, was just as positive in his opinions at his own table. But she loved Levin, and so she was on his side.
`So we can reckon upon you, Count, for the coming elections?'
said Sviiazhsky. `But you must come a little beforehand, so as to be on the spot by the eighth. If you would do me the honor to stop with me!'
`I rather agree with your beau-frère ', said Anna, `though not quite on the same ground as he,' she added with a smile. `I'm afraid that we have too many of these public duties in these latter days.