Two letters under the mattress

Vronsky's quarters are half a Finnish peasant cottage, where Petritsky is still asleep after four bottles a head and Volkov spent the night on the roof to a Funeral March. Yashvin prescribes vodka, cucumbers, seltzer with lemon and a small bottle of champagne. Vronsky says he is going to the stables and then to Bryansky, seven miles off, about the horses; everyone understands at once that Bryansky is not the whole of it, and Petritsky winks. Yashvin says only, 'Mind and don't be late.' Petritsky, after a performance of forgetting, produces from under his mattress a letter from Vronsky's mother reproaching him for not coming and a note from his brother saying they must talk things over — both about the same subject. 'What business is it of theirs?' He pushes them between the buttons of his coat. On the way out he is told to cut his hair, too heavy on top where he is prematurely balding, and laughs.

Regimental farce with the family's summons buried in it, unread and pushed inside a coat. Tolstoy keeps the tone light and lets the detail carry the weight: the whole mess knows where Vronsky is going, and nobody says so. The bald patch under the cap is the first sign that the novel intends to age him.