“What else was there for him to do?” he thought.
“I’ll send him to you at once.”
“What madness is this?” Stepan Arkadyevitch said when, after hearing from his friend that he was being turned out of the house, he found Levin in the garden, where he was walking about waiting for his guest’s departure. “ Mais c’est ridicule! What fly has stung you? Mais c’est du dernier ridicule! What did you think, if a young man. …”
But the place where Levin had been stung was evidently still sore, for he turned pale again, when Stepan Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on the reason, and he himself cut him short.
“Please don’t go into it! I can’t help it. I feel ashamed of how I’m treating you and him. But it won’t be, I imagine, a great grief to him to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife.”
“But it’s insulting to him! Et puis c’est ridicule. ”
“And to me it’s both insulting and distressing! And I’m not at fault in any way, and there’s no need for me to suffer.”
“Well, this I didn’t expect of you! On peut être jaloux, mais à ce point, c’est du dernier ridicule! ”
Levin turned quickly, and walked away from him into the depths of the avenue, and he went on walking up and down alone. Soon he heard the rumble of the trap, and saw from behind the trees how Vassenka, sitting in the hay (unluckily there was no seat in the trap) in his Scotch cap, was driven along the avenue, jolting up and down over the ruts.
“What’s this?” Levin thought, when a footman ran out of the house and stopped the trap. It was the mechanician, whom Levin had totally forgotten. The mechanician, bowing low, said something to Veslovsky, then clambered into the trap, and they drove off together.