Princess Myagkaya defends Anna

Betsy leaves before the last act to receive at her house on the Great Morskaya, where the company settles into two circles — one round the samovar, one round the ambassador's wife in black velvet. Conversation flickers over Nilsson and Kaulbach, fails to be amusing without being malicious, and catches properly only on slander: Tushkevich's Louis Quinze looks, which hint at what cannot be said about him and the hostess; the Maltyshcheva woman's diable rose costume. Princess Myagkaya, l'enfant terrible, sits between the circles and reports that the Schuzburgs' sauce cost a thousand roubles while hers cost eighty-five kopeks. The other circle is disparaging the Karenins: Anna has come back from Moscow with Vronsky as her shadow, and a woman with a shadow generally ends badly. Myagkaya rounds on them — Anna is splendid, Karenin is simply stupid, and if nobody follows us about we have no right to judge her. Vronsky arrives.

Society is given a whole chapter to be itself before it is asked to judge anybody, and Tolstoy's method is acoustic: two circles, a woman seated between them, conversation that only ignites on slander. Myagkaya's defence of Anna rests on chance rather than principle, which is precisely what will fail when the scandal arrives. Her whispered verdict on Karenin is the plainest thing said about him in the book.