nd of how
unfair it would be to punish him by exile abroad, Levin repeated
what he had heard the day before in conversation from an
acquaintance.

"I think sending him abroad is much the same as punishing a carp
by putting it into the water," said Levin. Then he recollected
that this idea, which he had heard from an acquaintance and
uttered as his own, came from a fable of Krilov's, and that the
acquaintance had picked it up from a newspaper article.

After driving home with his sister-in-law, and finding Kitty in
good spirits and quite well, Levin drove to the club.

Chapter 7

Levin reached the club just at the right time. Members and
visitors were driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been at
the club for a very long while--not since he lived in Moscow,
when he was leaving the university and going into society. He
remembered the club, the external details of its arrangement, but
he had completely forgotten the impression it had made on him in
old days. But as soon as, driving into the wide semicircular
court and getting out of the sledge, he mounted the steps, and
the hall porter, adorned with a crossway scarf, noiselessly
opened the door to him with a bow; as soon as he saw in the
porter's room the cloaks and galoshes of members who thought it
less trouble to take them off downstairs; as soon as he heard the
mysterious ringing bell that preceded him as he ascended the
easy, carpeted staircase, and saw the statue on the landing, and
the third porter at the top doors, a familiar figure grown older,
in the club livery, opening the door without haste or delay, and
scanning the visitors as they passed in--Levin felt the old
impression of the club come back in a rush, an impression of
repose, comfort, and propriety.

"Your hat, please," the porter said to Levin, who forgot the club
rule to leave his hat in the porter's room. "Long time since
you've been. The prince put your name down yesterday. Prince
Stepan Arkadyevitch is not here yet."

The porter did not only know Levin, but also all his ties and
relationships, and so immediately mentioned his intimate friends.

Passing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the
room partitioned on the right, where a man sits at the fruit
buffet, Levin overtook an old man walking slowly in, and entered
the dining room full of noise and people.

He walked along the tables, almost all full, and looked at the
visitors. He saw people of all sorts,