Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

PART 8 Chapter 15

"Do you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch traveled on his way here?" said Dolly, doling out cucumbers and honey to the children; "with Vronsky! He's going to Servia."

"And not alone; he's taking a squadron out with him at his own expense," said Katavasov.

"That's the right thing for him," said Levin. "Are volunteers still going out then?" he added, glancing at Sergey Ivanovitch.

Sergey Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully with a blunt knife getting a live bee covered with sticky honey out of a cup full of white honeycomb.

"I should think sol You should have seen what was going on at the station yesterday!" said Katavasov, biting with a juicy sound into a cucumber.

"Well, what is one to make of it? For mercy's sake, do explain to me, Sergey Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they fighting with?" asked the old prince, unmistakably taking up a conversation that had sprung up in Levin's absence.

"With the Turks," Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling serenely, as he extricated the bee, dark with honey and helplessly kicking, and put it with the knife on a stout aspen leaf.

"But who has declared war on the Turks?--Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozov and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, assisted by Madame Stahl?"

"No one has declared war, but people sympathize with their neighbors' sufferings and are eager to help them," said Sergey Ivanovitch.

"But the prince is not speaking of help," said Levin, coming to the assistance of his father-in-law, "but of war. The prince says that private persons cannot take part in war without the permission of the government."

"Kostya, mind, that's a bee! Really, they'll sting us!" said Dolly, waving away a wasp.

"But that's not a bee, it's a wasp," said Levin.