“Well, what if they like it better?” Lvov said, with his beautiful smile, touching her hand.  “Anyone who didn’t know you would think you were a stepmother, not a true mother.”

“No, extremes are not good in anything,” Natalia said serenely, putting his paper knife straight in its proper place on the table.

“Well, come here, you perfect children,” Lvov said to the two handsome boys who came in, and after bowing to Levin, went up to their father, obviously wishing to ask him about something.

Levin would have liked to talk to them, to hear what they would say to their father, but Natalia began talking to him, and then Lvov’s colleague in the service, Mahotin, walked in, wearing his court uniform, to go with him to meet someone, and a conversation was kept up without a break upon Herzegovina, Princess Korzinskaya, the town council, and the sudden death of Madame Apraksina.

Levin even forgot the commission intrusted to him.  He recollected it as he was going into the hall.

“Oh, Kitty told me to talk to you about Oblonsky,” he said, as Lvov was standing on the stairs, seeing his wife and Levin off.

“Yes, yes, maman wants us, les beaux-freres, to attack him,” he said, blushing.  “But why should I?”

“Well, then, I will attack him,” said Madame Lvova, with a smile, standing in her white sheepskin cape, waiting till they had finished speaking.  “Come, let us go.”

Chapter 5

At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were performed.  One was a fantasia, King Lear; the other was a quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach.  Both were new and in the new style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them.  After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against a column and tried to listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible.  He tried not to let his attention be distracted, and not to spoil his impression by looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his arms, which always disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with strings carefully tied over their ears, and all these people either thinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things except the music.  He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs or talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor straight before him, listening.

But the more he listened to the fantasia of King Lear the further he felt from forming any definite opinion of it.  There was, as it were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds.  And these fragmentary musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything.  Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without any connection, like the emotions of a madman.  And those emotions, like a madman’s, sprang up quite unexpectedly.