too close a view of this particular prince, this week seemed terribly burdensome to him. During the whole week, without cessation, he experienced a feeling like that of a man placed in charge of a dangerous lunatic, who dreaded his patient, and, at the same time, from very force of proximity, feared for his own reason. Vronsky was constantly under the necessity of keeping up the strictest barriers of official reserve in order not to feel insulted. The prince's behavior toward the very persons who, to Vronsky's amazement, were ready to crawl out of their skin to give him experiences of Russian amusements, was scornful. His criticism on the Russian women whom he wanted to study more than once made Vronsky grow red with indignation. What irritated Vronsky most violently about this prince was that he could not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror was not flattering to his vanity. What he saw there was a very stupid, and a very self-confident, and very healthy, and very fastidious man, and that was all. He was a gentleman[1] and Vronsky could not deny the fact. He was smooth and frank with his superiors, free and easy with his equals, coolly kind toward his inferiors. Vronsky himself was exactly the same, and was proud of it; but in his relations to the prince he was the inferior, and this scornfully good-natured treatment of himself nettled him.
"Stupid ox! Is it possible that I am like him?" he thought.
However this may have been, at the end of the week, when he took leave of the prince, who was on his way to Moscow, he was delighted to be delivered from this inconvenient situation and this disagreeable mirror. They went directly to the station from a bear-hunt, which had occupied all the night with brilliant exhibitions of Russian daring.
- ↑ Buil dzhentl'men.
