Translated by Constance Garnett

 
  PART ONE

 
  Chapter 1

    Happy families are all alike;
        every unhappy family
            is unhappy
                   in its own way.

    Everything was
           in confusion
         in the Oblonskys' house.

    The wife had discovered
         that the husband
            was carrying
                   on an intrigue
                 with a French girl,
           who had been a governess
               in their family,
         and she
            had announced to her husband
             that she
                could not go on
                 living in
                       the same house with him.

    This position of affairs
        had now lasted three days,
           and not
              only the husband
                   and wife themselves,
         but all the members
               of their family
             and household,
           were painfully conscious of it.

    Every person
           in the house felt
         that there was so sense
               in their living together,
           and that the stray
               people brought together
                   by chance in any inn
            had more
                   in common
                 with one another
                   than they,
         the members of the family
               and household of the Oblonskys.

    The wife
        did not
              leave her own room,
           the husband
            had not
                been at home
                       for three days.

    The children
        ran wild all
               over the house;
        the English governess
            quarreled with the housekeeper,
           and wrote to a friend
              asking her
                  to look
                       out for
                           a new situation for her;
        the man-cook
            had walked of the day
             before just at dinner-time;
        the kitchen-maid,
           and the coachman
            had given warning.

    Three days after the quarrel,
           Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky
         --Stiva,
               as he
                was called
                       in the fashionable world--
           woke up
               at his usual hour,
           that is,
         at eight o'clock
               in the morning,
           not in his wife's bedroom,
         but on the leather-covered sofa
               in his study.

    He turned over his stout,
           well-cared-for person
               on the springy sofa,
         as though
             he would
                  sink into
                       a long sleep again;
        he vigorously
              embraced the pillow
                   on the other side and
                  buried his face in it;
        but all at once
             he jumped up,
           sat up on the sofa,
         and opened his eyes.

    "Yes,
           yes,
         how was it now?"

    he thought,
           going over his dream.

    "Now,
           how was it?

    To be sure!

    Alabin was
          giving a dinner at Darmstadt;
        no,
           not Darmstadt,
         but something American.

    Yes,
           but then,
         Darmstadt was in America.

    Yes,
           Alabin was
              giving a dinner
                   on glass tables,
         and the tables sang,
           Il mio tesoro
          --not Il mio tesoro though,
           but something better,
         and there were
               some sort of little decanters
             on the table,
           and they were women,
         too," he remembered.

    Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes
           twinkled gaily,
         and he pondered
               with a smile.

    "Yes,
           it was nice,
         very nice.

    There was
           a great deal more
         that was delightful,
           only there's no
              putting it into words,
         or even
              expressing it
                   on one's thoughts awake."

    And noticing a gleam
           of light
         peeping in
               beside one
                   of the serge curtains,
           he cheerfully
              dropped his feet
                   over the edge
                       of the sofa,
         and felt
               about with them
                   for his slippers,
           a present
               on his last birthday,
         worked for him
               by his wife
                   on gold-colored morocco.

    And,
           as he
            had done every day
                   for the last nine years,
         he stretched out his hand,
           without getting up,
         towards the place
             where his dressing-gown always
                  hung in his bedroom.

    And thereupon
         he suddenly remembered
           that he