Anna Karenina (Dole translation)

Anna Karenina (Dole translation)<br/><br/> PART FIRST<br/><br/> "Vengeance is mine, I will repay "<br/><br/> CHAPTER I<br/><br/> All happy families resemble one another; every<br/> unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.<br/><br/> All was confusion in the house of the Oblonskys.<br/> The wife had discovered that her husband was having<br/> an intrigue with a French governess who had been in<br/> their employ, and she declared that she could not live<br/> in the same house with him. This condition of things<br/> had lasted now three days, and was causing deep dis-<br/> comfort, not only to the husband and wife, but also to all<br/> the members of the family and the domestics. All the<br/> members of the family and the domestics felt that there<br/> was no sense in their living together, and that in any<br/> hotel people meeting casually had more mutual inter-<br/> ests than they, the members of the family and the<br/> domestics of the house of Oblonsky. The wife did not<br/> come out of her own rooms ; the husband had not been<br/> at home for two days. The children were running over<br/> the whole house as if they were crazy ; the English<br/> maid was angry with the housekeeper and wrote to a<br/> friend begging her to find her a new place. The head<br/> cook had departed the evening before just at dinner-<br/> time ; the kitchen-maid and the coachman demanded<br/> their wages.<br/><br/> On the third day after the quarrel, Prince Stepan<br/> Arkadyevitch Oblonsky — Stiva, as he was called in<br/> society — awoke at the usual hour, that is to say about<br/> eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's chamber,<br/> but in his library, on a leather-covered divan. He<br/> turned his portly pampered body on the springs of the<br/> divan, as if intending to go to sleep again, and as he<br/> did so threw his arm round the cushion and pressed his<br/> cheek to