"Why, have you been at the Schützburgs?" asked the hostess from
the samovar.
"Yes, _ma chere_. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told
us the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds," Princess
Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was
listening; "and very nasty sauce it was, some green mess. We had
to ask them, and I made them sauce for eighteen pence, and
everybody was very much pleased with it. I can't run to
hundred-pound sauces."
"She's unique!" said the lady of the house.
"Marvelous!" said someone.
The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya's speeches was always
unique, and the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the
fact that though she spoke not always appropriately, as now, she
said simple things with some sense in them. In the society in
which she lived such plain statements produced the effect of the
wittiest epigram. Princess Myakaya could never see why it had
that effect, but she knew it had, and took advantage of it.
As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and
so the conversation around the ambassador's wife had dropped,
Princess Betsy tried to bring the whole party together, and
turned to the ambassador's wife.
"Will you really not have tea? You should come over here by us."
"No, we're very happy here," the ambassador's wife responded with
a smile, and she went on with the conversation that had been
begun.
"It was a very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the
Karenins, husband and wife.
"Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There's
something strange about her," said her friend.
"The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of
Alexey Vronsky," said the ambassador's wife.
"Well, what of it? There's a fable of Grimm's about a man
without a shadow, a man who's lost his shadow. And that's his
punishment for something. I never could understand how it was a
punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a shadow."
"Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end," said
Anna's friend.
"Bad luck to your tongue!" said Princess Myakaya suddenly.
"Madame Karenina's a splendid woman. I don't like her husband,
but I like her very much."
"Why don't you like her husband? He's such a remarkable man,"
said the ambassador's wife. "My husband says there are few
statesmen like him in Europe."
"And my husband tells me just the same, but I don't believe it,"
said Princess Myakaya. "If our husbands didn't talk to us, we
should see the facts as they are. Alexey Alexandrovitch, to my
thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper...but doesn't
it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to
consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought
myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, _he's a fool,_
though only in a whisper, everything's explained, isn't it?"