was the difficulty?"

"Ah, you shall hear.... We apologize in due form: we are in
despair, we entreat forgiveness for the unfortunate
misunderstanding. The government clerk with the sausages begins
to melt, but he, too, desires to express his sentiments, and as
soon as ever he begins to express them, he begins to get hot and
say nasty things, and again I'm obliged to trot out all my
diplomatic talents. I allowed that their conduct was bad, but I
urged him to take into consideration their heedlessness, their
youth; then, too, the young men had only just been lunching
together. 'You understand. They regret it deeply, and beg you
to overlook their misbehavior.' The government clerk was
softened once more. 'I consent, count, and am ready to overlook
it; but you perceive that my wife--my wife's a respectable woman
--has been exposed to the persecution, and insults, and
effrontery of young upstarts, scoundrels....' And you must
understand, the young upstarts are present all the while, and I
have to keep the peace between them. Again I call out all my
diplomacy, and again as soon as the thing was about at an end,
our friend the government clerk gets hot and red, and his
sausages stand on end with wrath, and once more I launch out into
diplomatic wiles."

"Ah, he must tell you this story!" said Betsy, laughing, to a
lady who came into her box. "He has been making me laugh so."

"Well, _bonne chance_!" she added, giving Vronsky one finger of the
hand in which she held her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders
she twitched down the bodice of her gown that had worked up, so
as to be duly naked as she moved forward towards the footlights
into the light of the gas, and the sight of all eyes.

Vronsky drove to the French theater, where he really had to see
the colonel of his regiment, who never missed a single
performance there. He wanted to see him, to report on the result
of his mediation, which had occupied and amused him for the last
three days. Petritsky, whom he liked, was implicated in the
affair, and the other culprit was a capital fellow and first-rate
comrade, who had lately joined the regiment, the young Prince
Kedrov. And what was most important, the interests of the
regiment were involved in it too.

Both the young men were in Vronsky's company. The colonel of the
regiment was waited upon by the government clerk, Venden, with a
complaint against his officers, who had insulted his wife. His
young