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"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?
"Then they ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox." "I was in love in my young days with a deacon," said the Princess Myakaya. "I don't know that it did me any good." "No; I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one must make mistakes and then correct them," said Princess Betsy. "Even after marriage?" said the ambassador's wife playfully.
Princess Myakaya, sitting in the middle between the two groups, and listening to both, took part in the conversation first of one and then of the other. "Three people have used that very phrase about Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had made a compact about it. And I can't see why they liked that remark so."
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."
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.
Between Princess Betsy Tverskaya and Stepan Arkadyevitch there had long existed rather curious relations. Stepan Arkadyevitch always flirted with her in jest, and used to say to her, also in jest, the most unseemly things, knowing that nothing delighted her so much. The day after his conversation with Karenin, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to see her, and felt so youthful that in this jesting flirtation and nonsense he recklessly went so far that he did not know how to extricate himself, as unluckily he was so far from being attracted by her that he thought her positively disagreeable. What made it hard to change the conversation was the fact that he was very attractive to her. So that he was considerably relieved at the arrival of Princess Myakaya, which cut short their tête-
The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came into the drawing room before going to his club. Stepping noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up to Princess Myakaya. "How did you like Nilsson?" he asked. "Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled me!" she responded.
Please tell her that they've seen me and that it's 'all right, as the English say. She'll understand. Oh, and be so good as to tell her I'm appointed secretary of the committee.... But she'll understand! You know, les petites misères de la vie humaine," he said, as it were apologizing to the princess. "And Princess Myakaya not Liza, but Bibish is sending a thousand guns and twelve nurses.
"Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin and Count Bezzubov," the porter answered severely. "Princess Myakaya guessed right," thought Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he went upstairs. "Curious! It would be quite as well, though, to get on friendly terms with her. She has immense influence. If she would say a word to Pomorsky, the thing would be a certainty."
"Oh, please, don't let us talk about Nilsson! No one can possibly say anything new about her," said a fat, red-faced, flaxen-headed lady, without eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old silk dress. This was Princess Myakaya, noted for her simplicity and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed enfant terrible.
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