"Then you'll see my wife. I have written her, but you'll see her before she gets my letter. Please tell her that you met me, and everything is all right, she will understand; and be so good as to tell her, too, that I got my place as member of the Commission of .... Well, she knows what that is, you know, les petites misères de la vie humaine," said he, turning to the princess, as if in apology. "Miagkaïa, not Liza, but Bibiche, sends a thousand guns and twelve hospital nurses. Did I tell you"
"Yes; I heard about it," answered Koznuishef, coldly.
"But what a pity you are going away," replied Stepan Arkadyevitch. "We give a farewell dinner to-morrow to two volunteers,—at Dimer's,—Bartnyansky of Petersburg, and our Veslovsky—Grisha. Both are going. Veslovsky is just married. He 's a fine lad. Isn't it so, princess?" he added, addressing the lady.
The princess did not reply, but looked at Koznuishef. The fact that the princess and Sergyef Ivanovitch evidently wanted to get rid of him did not in the least disconcert Stepan Arkadyevitch. Smiling, he glanced now at the princess's hat plume, now off to one side or the other as if searching for a new subject; and, as he saw a lady going by with a subscription-box, he beckoned to her, and handed her a five-ruble note.
"I can't bear to see these subscription-boxes pass by me, now that I have ready money," he said. "What splendid news there is! Hurrah for the Montenegrins!"
"What's that you say?" he cried, when the princess told him that Vronsky was going by the first train. For an instant Stepan Arkadyevitch's face grew sad, but the next moment, slightly limping with both feet, and stroking his side-whiskers, he went off to the room where Vronsky was. He had already entirely forgotten the tears he had shed over his sister's grave, and saw in Vronsky only a hero and an old friend.
"One must do him justice, in spite of his faults," said the princess to Sergyeï Ivanovitch, when Oblonsky was gone. "He has the true Russian, the Slavic, nature. But I am afraid it will be disagreeable to the count
