Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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her as a thing so stupid,
ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as
putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was
broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?
But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother
considered herself to blame.
"May I trouble you to sit down, princess?" the celebrated doctor
said to her.
He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again
began asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at
once got up, furious.
"Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This
is the third time youve asked me the same thing."
The celebrated doctor did not take offense.
"Nervous irritability," he said to the princess, when Kitty had
left the room. "However, I had finished..."
And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess,
as an exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young
princess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of
the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question:
Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation,
as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was
pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in
foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.
It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass
after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful
when she went back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be
more cheerful. She had often, almost always, to be pretending
now.
"Really, Im quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad,
lets go!" she said, and trying to appear interested in the
proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the
journey.
Chapter 2
Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there
was to be a consultation that day, and though she was only just
up after her confinement (she had another baby, a little girl,
born at the end of the winter), though she had trouble and
anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a sick
child, to come and hear Kittys fate, which was to be decided
that day.
"Well, well?" she said, coming into the drawing room, without
taking off her hat. "Youre all in good spirits. Good news,
then?"
They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared
that though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great
length, it was utterly impossible to report what he had said.
The only point of interest was that it was settled they should go
abroad.
Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister,
was going away. And her life was not a cheerful one. Her
relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had
become humiliating. The union Anna had cemented turned out to be
of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down again
at the same point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan
Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever
forthcoming, and Dolly was continually tortured by suspicions of
infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of
jealousy she had been through already. The first onslaught of
jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again, and
even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as
it had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean
breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived,
despising him and still more herself, for the weakness. Besides
this, the care of her large family was a constant worry to her:
first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the
nurse had gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill.
"Well, how are all of you?" asked her mother.
"Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill,
and Im afraid its scarlatina. I have come here now to hear
about Kitty, and then I shall shut myself up entirely, if--God
forbid--it should be scarlatina."
The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctors
departure, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a
few words to her, he turned to his wife:
"How have you settled it? youre going? Well, and what do you
mean to do with me?"
"I suppose you had better stay here, Alexander,"
Anna Karenina page 67 Anna Karenina page 69
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