In spite of his ineffectual attempt at the prison, Nekhludoff, still in the same vigorous, energetic frame of mind, went to the Governor’s office to see if the original of the document had arrived for Maslova. It had not arrived, so Nekhludoff went back to the hotel and wrote without delay to Selenin and the advocate about it. When he had finished writing he looked at his watch and saw it was time to go to the General’s dinner party.
On the way he again began wondering how Katusha would receive the news of the mitigation of her sentence. Where she would be settled? How he should live with her? What about Simonson? What would his relations to her be? He remembered the change that had taken place in her, and this reminded him of her past.
"I must forget it for the present," he thought, and again hastened to drive her out of his mind. "When the time comes I shall see," he said to himself, and began to think of what he ought to say to the General.
The dinner at the General’s, with the luxury habitual to the lives of the wealthy and those of high rank, to which Nekhludoff had been accustomed, was extremely enjoyable after he had been so long deprived not only of luxury but even of the most ordinary comforts.
The mistress of the house was a Petersburg grande dame of the old school, a maid of honour at the court of Nicholas I., who spoke French quite naturally and Russian very unnaturally. She held herself very erect and, moving her hands, she kept her elbows close to her waist. She was quietly and, somewhat sadly considerate for her husband, and extremely kind to all her visitors, though with a tinge of difference in her behaviour according to their position.
She received Nekhludoff as if he were one of them, and her fine, almost imperceptibleflattery made him once again aware of his virtues and gave him a feeling of satisfaction. She made him feel that she knew of that honest though rather singular step of his which had brought him to Siberia, and held him to be an exceptional man.
This refined flattery and the elegance and luxury of the General’s house had the effect of making Nekhludoff succumb to the enjoyment of the handsome surroundings, the delicate dishes and the case and pleasure of intercourse with educated people of his own class, so that the surroundings in the midst of which he had lived for the last months seemed a dream from which he had awakened to reality.
Besides those of the household, the General’s daughter and her husband and an aide-de-camp, there were an Englishman, a merchant interested in gold mines, and the governor of a distant Siberian town. All these people seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff.
The Englishman, a healthy man with a rosy complexion, who spoke very bad French, but whose command of his own language was very good and oratorically impressive, who had seen a great deal, was very interesting to listen to when he spoke about America, India, Japan and Siberia.
The young merchant interested in the gold mines, the son of a peasant, whose evening dress was made in London, who had diamond studs to his shirt, possessed a fine library, contributed freely to philanthropic work, and held liberal European views, seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff as a sample of a quite new and good type of civilised European culture, grafted on a healthy, uncultivated peasant stem.
The governor of the distant Siberian town was that same man who had been so much talked about in Petersburg at the time Nekhludoff was there. He was plump, with thin, curly hair, soft blue eyes, carefully-tended white hands, with rings on the fingers, a pleasant smile, and very big in the lower part of his body.
The master of the house valued this governor because of all the officials he was the only one who would not be bribed. The mistress of the house, who was very fond of music and a very good pianist herself, valued him because he was a good musician and played duets with her.
Nekhludoff was in such good humour that even this man was not unpleasant to him, in spite of what he knew of his vices. The bright, energetic aide-de-camp, with his bluey grey chin, who was continually offering his services, pleased Nekhludoff by his good nature. But it was the charming young couple, the General’s daughter and her husband, who pleased Nekhludoff best.
The daughter was a plain-looking, simple-minded young woman, wholly absorbed in her two children. Her husband, whom she had fallen in love with and married after a long struggle with her parents, was a Liberal, who had taken honours at the Moscow University, a modest and intellectual young man in Government service, who made up statistics and studied chiefly the foreign tribes, which he liked and tried to save from dying out.
All of them were not only kind and attentive to Nekhludoff, but evidently pleased to see him, as a new and interesting acquaintance. The General, who came in to dinner in uniform and with a white cross round his neck, greeted Nekhludoff as a friend, and asked the visitors to the side table to take a glass of vodka and something to whet their appetites.
The General asked Nekhludoff what he had been doing since he left that morning, and Nekhludoff told him he had been to the post-office and received the news of the mitigation of that person’s sentence that he had spoken of in the morning, and again asked for a permission to visit the prison.
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将军对吃饭时谈公事,显然很不满意,他皱起眉头,一言不发。
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The General, apparently displeased that business should be mentioned at dinner, frowned and said nothing.
"Have a glass of vodka" he said, addressing the Englishman, who had just come up to the table. The Englishman drank a glass, and said he had been to see the cathedral and the factory, but would like to visit the great transportation prison.
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“那正好,”将军对聂赫留朵夫说,“你们可以一起去。您给他们开张通行证,”他对副官说。
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"Oh, that will just fit in," said the General to Nekhludoff. "You will he able to go together. Give them a pass," he added, turning to his aide-de-camp.
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“您希望什么时候去?”聂赫留朵夫问英国人。
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"When would you like to go?" Nekhludoff asked.
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“我愿意晚上去参观监狱,”英国人说,“所有的人都在监狱里,事先不作准备,一切都保持本来面目。”
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"I prefer visiting the prisons in the evening," the Englishman answered. "All are indoors and there is no preparation; you find them all as they are."
"Ah, he would like to see it in all its glory! Let him do so. I have written about it and no attention has been paid to it. Let him find out from foreign publications," the General said, and went up to the dinner table, where the mistress of the house was showing the visitors their places.
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聂赫留朵夫坐在女主人和英国人中间。他对面坐着将军的女儿和某局前任局长。
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Nekhludoff sat between his hostess and the Englishman. In front of him sat the General’s daughter and the ex-director of the Government department in Petersburg.
The conversation at dinner was carried on by fits and starts, now it was India that the Englishman talked about, now the Tonkin expedition that the General strongly disapproved of, now the universal bribery and corruption in Siberia. All these topics did not interest Nekhludoff much.
But after dinner, over their coffee, Nekhludoff and the Englishman began a very interesting conversation about Gladstone, and Nekhludoff thought he had said many clever things which were noticed by his interlocutor. And Nekhludoff felt it more and more pleasant to be sipping his coffee seated in an easy-chair among amiable, well-bred people.
And when at the Englishman’s request the hostess went up to the piano with the ex-director of the Government department, and they began to play in well-practised style Beethoven’s fifth symphony, Nekhludoff fell into a mental state of perfect self-satisfaction to which he had long been a stranger, as though he had only just found out what a good fellow he was.
The grand piano was a splendid instrument, the symphony was well performed. At least, so it seemed to Nekhludoff, who knew and liked that symphony. Listening to the beautiful andante, he felt a tickling in his nose, he was so touched by his many virtues.
Nekhludoff thanked his hostess for the enjoyment that he had been deprived of for so long, and was about to say goodbye and go when the daughter of the house came up to him with a determined look and said, with a blush, "You asked about my children. Would you like to see them?"
"She thinks that everybody wants to see her children," said her mother, smiling at her daughter’s winning tactlessness. "The Prince is not at all interested."
"She’s taking the Prince to see her babies," the General shouted, laughing from the card-table, where he sat with his son-in-law, the mine owner and the aide-de-camp. "Go, go, pay your tribute."
The young woman, visibly excited by the thought that judgment was about to be passed on her children, went quickly towards the inner apartments, followed by Nekhludoff. In the third, a lofty room, papered with white and lit up by a shaded lamp, stood two small cots, and a nurse with a white cape on her shoulders sat between the cots. She had a kindly, true Siberian face, with its high cheek-bones.
The nurse rose and bowed. The mother stooped over the first cot, in which a two-year-old little girl lay peacefully sleeping with her little mouth open and her long, curly hair tumbled over the pillow.
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“喏,这就是卡嘉,”做母亲的说,拉拉天蓝条纹的线毯,把从毯子底下伸出来的一只雪白小脚盖好。
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"This is Katie," said the mother, straightening the white and blue crochetcoverlet, from under which a little white foot pushed itself languidly out.
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“好看吗?她才两岁呢。”
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"Is she not pretty? She’s only two years old, you know."
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“太美了!”
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"Lovely."
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“这是华秀克,是他外公起的名。他可完全是另一种模样了。他是个西伯利亚人。不是吗?”
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"And this is Vasiuk, as ’grandpapa’ calls him. Quite a different type. A Siberian, is he not?"
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“是个很可爱的孩子,”聂赫留朵夫看着背朝天睡的胖娃娃,说。
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"A splendid boy," said Nekhludoff, as he looked at the little fatty lying asleep on his stomach.
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“是吗?”做母亲的得意扬扬地笑着说。
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"Yes," said the mother, with a smile full of meaning.
Nekhludoff recalled to his mind chains, shaved heads, fighting debauchery, the dying Kryltzoff, Katusha and the whole of her past, and he began to feel envious and to wish for what he saw here, which now seemed to him pure and refined happiness.