"Ah, you shall hear. I've just been to make peace between them."

"Well, and what then?"

"That's the most interesting part of the story. It appears that

it's a happy couple, a government clerk and his lady. The

government clerk lodges a complaint, and I became a mediator, and

such a mediator!... I assure you Talleyrand couldn't hold a

candle to me."

"Why, where was the difficulty?"

"Ah, you shall hear.... We apologize in due form: we are in

despair, we entreat forgiveness for the unfortunate

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misunderstanding. The government clerk with the sausages begins

to melt, but he, too, desires to express his sentiments, and as

soon as ever he begins to express them, he begins to get hot and

say nasty things, and again I'm obliged to trot out all my

diplomatic talents. I allowed that their conduct was bad, but I

urged him to take into consideration their heedlessness, their

youth; then, too, the young men had only just been lunching

together. 'You understand. They regret it deeply, and beg you

to overlook their misbehavior.' The government clerk was

softened once more. 'I consent, count, and am ready to overlook

it; but you perceive that my wife--my wife's a respectable woman

--has been exposed to the persecution, and insults, and

effrontery of young upstarts, scoundrels....' And you must

understand, the young upstarts are present all the while, and I

have to keep the peace between them. Again I call out all my

diplomacy, and again as soon as the thing was about at an end,

our friend the government clerk gets hot and red, and his

sausages stand on end with wrath, and once more I launch out into

diplomatic wiles."

"Ah, he must tell you this story!" said Betsy, laughing, to a

lady who came into her box. "He has been making me laugh so."

"Well, _bonne chance_!" she added, giving Vronsky one finger of the

hand in which she held her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders

she twitched down the bodice of her gown that had worked up, so

as to be duly naked as she moved forward towards the footlights

into the light of the gas, and the sight of all eyes.

Vronsky drove to the French theater, where he really had to see

the colonel of his regiment, who never missed a single

performance there. He wanted to see him, to report on the result

of his mediation, which had occupied and amused him for the last

three days. Petritsky, whom he liked, was implicated in the

affair, and the other culprit was a capital fellow and first-rate

comrade, who had lately joined the regiment, the young Prince

Kedrov. And what was most important, the interests of the

regiment were involved in it too.




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