He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had
made friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In
Switzerland he had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in
a red coat over hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a
bet. In Turkey he had got into a harem; in India he had hunted
on an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the
specially Russian forms of pleasure.
Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to
him, was at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements
suggested by various persons to the prince. They had race
horses, and Russian pancakes and bear hunts and three-horse
sledges, and gypsies and drinking feasts, with the Russian
accompaniment of broken crockery. And the prince with surprising
ease fell in with the Russian spirit, smashed trays full of
crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to be
asking--what more, and does the whole Russian spirit consist in
just this?
In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked
best French actresses and ballet dancers and white-seal
champagne. Vronsky was used to princes, but, either because he
had himself changed of late, or that he was in too close
proximity to the prince, that week seemed fearfully wearisome to
him. The whole of that week he experienced a sensation such as a
man might have set in charge of a dangerous madman, afraid of the
madman, and at the same time, from being with him, fearing for
his own reason. Vronsky was continually conscious of the
necessity of never for a second relaxing the tone of stern
official respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted.
The prince's manner of treating the very people who, to Vronsky's
surprise, were ready to descend to any depths to provide him with
Russian amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian
women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky
crimson with indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so
particularly disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help
seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror did not
gratify his self-esteem. He was a very stupid and very
self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and
nothing else. He was a gentleman--that was true, and Vronsky
could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his
superiors, was free and ingratiating in his behavior with his
equals, and was contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors.
Vronsky was himself the same, and regarded it as a great merit to
be so. But for this prince he was an inferior, and his
contemptuous and indulgent attitude to him revolted him.