feeling that the joy which flooded his soul was suffocating him. "How," thought he, "could I have dared to associate anything but innocence with this fascinating creature? Yes, Darya Aleksandrovna was right."
Stepan Arkadyevitch came to conduct him to Karenin.
"Allow me to make you acquainted," said he, calling each by name.
"It is very pleasant to meet you again," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, coolly, as he took Levin's hand.
"What! do you already know each other?" asked Oblonsky, with surprise.
"We traveled together for three hours," said Levin, smiling, "but we parted as from a masked ball, very much mystified; at least, it was the case with me."
"Really? .... Will you pass into the dining-room?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch pointing toward the door.
The gentlemen walked into the dining-room, and went to a table laden with the zakuska, which was composed of six kinds of vodka, as many varieties of cheese with silver shovels and without, caviare, herring, preserves of different kinds, and platefuls of French bread sliced thin.
The men stood around the table; and, while waiting for the dinner, the conversation between Sergyeï Ivanovitch Koznuishef, Karenin, and Pestsof, about the Russification of Poland, began to languish. Sergyeï Ivanovitch, who had a faculty peculiar to himself for ending even the most absorbing and serious dispute, by an unexpected infusion of Attic salt and so putting the disputants into a better frame of mind, did this now. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch was trying to prove that the Russification of Poland could be accomplished only by means of the highest principles, and that these ought to be introduced by the Russian administration. Pestsof maintained that one nation could only assimilate another by surpassing it in density of population.
Koznuishef, with certain restrictions, shared the opinions of both; and to close this serious conversation with a joke, he added as they left the drawing-room, smiling:—
"The most logical way, then, for us to assimilate foreigners, it seems to me, is to have as many children as
