Stepan Arkadyevich was standing at the top of the stairs. His good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his uniform beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming up.
`Why, it's actually you, Levin, at last!' he said with a friendly mocking smile, gazing on the approaching man. `How is it you have deigned to look me up in this den?' said Stepan Arkadyevich and, not content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend. `Have you been here long?'
`I have just come, and very much wanted to see you,' said Levin, looking about him shyly, and, at the same time, angrily and uneasily.
`Well, let's go into my room,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, who knew his friend's sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his arm, he drew him along, as though guiding him through dangers.
Stepan Arkadyevich was on familiar terms with almost all his acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian names: old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants and adjutant generals, so that many of his intimate chums were to be found at the extreme ends of the social ladder, and would have been very much surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of Oblonsky, something in common. He was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums, as he used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to diminish any possible disagreeable impression.
Levin was not a disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready tact, felt that Levin fancied Oblonsky might not care to show his intimacy with him before subordinates, and so Stepan Arkadyevich made haste to take him off into his room.
Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them -as is often the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds - though in discussion he would even justify the other's career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm.
Oblonsky could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin.
How often he had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevich could never quite make out, and indeed took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyevich laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at and regarded as trifling.
But the difference was that Oblonsky, since he was doing the same as everyone did, laughed assuredly and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without assuredness and sometimes angrily.
`We have long been expecting you,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, going into his room and letting Levin's hand go as though to show that here all danger was over. `I am very, very glad to see you,' he went on. `Well, what now? How are you? When did you come?'
Levin was silent, looking at the unfamiliar faces of Oblonsky's two companions, and especially at the elegant Grinevich's hands - with such long white fingers, such long yellow nails, curved at their end, and such huge shining studs on the shirt cuff, that apparently these hands absorbed all his attention, and allowed him no ******* of thought. Oblonsky noticed this at once, and smiled.
`Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you,' he said. `My colleagues:
Philip Ivanich Nikitin, Mikhail Stanislavich Grinevich' - and turning to Levin - `a Zemstvo member, a modern Zemstvo man, a gymnast who lifts five poods with one hand, a cattle breeder and sportsman, and my friend - Constantin Dmitrievich Levin, the brother of Sergei Ivanovich Koznishev.'
`Delighted,' said the veteran.
`I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergei Ivanovich,'
said Grinevich, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.
Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to Oblonsky.
Though he had a great respect for his half-brother, an author well known to all Russia, he could not endure it when people treated him not as Constantin Levin, but as the brother of the celebrated Koznishev.
`No, I am no longer a Zemstvo man. I have quarreled with them all, and don't go to the sessions any more,' he said, turning to Oblonsky.
`You've been quick about it!' said Oblonsky with a smile. `But how? Why?'
`It's a long story. I will tell you some time,' said Levin - but began telling him at once. `Well, to put it shortly, I was convinced that nothing was really done by the Zemstvo councils, or ever could be,' he began, as though someone had just insulted him. `On one side it's a plaything;they play at being a parliament, and I'm neither young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the other side' (he stammered)`it's a means for the coterie of the district to feather their nests.
Formerly they did this through wardships and courts of justice, now they do it through the Zemstvo - instead of taking the bribes, they take the unearned salary,' he said, as hotly as though one of those present had opposed his opinion.
`Aha! You're in a new phase again, I see - a conservative,' said Stepan Arkadyevich. `However, we can go into that later.'
`Yes, later. But I had to see you,' said Levin, looking with hatred at Grinevich's hand.
Stepan Arkadyevich gave a scarcely perceptible smile.