“I can’t defend his opinions,” Darya Alexandrovna said, firing up; “but I can say that he’s a highly cultivated man, and if he were here he would know very well how to answer you, though I am not capable of doing so.”

“I like him extremely, and we are great friends,” Sviazhsky said, smiling good-naturedly. “ Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toqué; he maintains, for instance, that district councils and arbitration boards are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything.”

“It’s our Russian apathy,” said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; “we’ve no sense of the duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize these duties.”

“I know no man more strict in the performance of his duties,” said Darya Alexandrovna, irritated by Vronsky’s tone of superiority.