What the guests are saying

All Moscow has come, and beneath the service runs an unflagging low conversation started mostly by the men. Mrs Korsunskaya objects to Marie's lilac and to a wedding held in the evening like tradespeople, then sighs remembering her own. Count Sinyavin explains that a tenth turn as best man makes a man safe from marriage. Countess Nordston says Kitty has grown plainer and Levin is not worth her little finger; Princess Lvova answers that he behaves well, which is hard to do without being ridiculous, and that all wives are submissive by nature. Dolly, near enough to hear the argument about who steps first on the mat, cannot speak for tears: she is thinking of her own wedding, of the beaming Oblonsky, and of every woman she knows as she stood crowned with love, hope and fear — among them Anna, of whose divorce she has lately heard. At the back the women who got in speculate about the bridegroom's money, the crinolines, and the darling bride, 'like a lamb decked for the slaughter'.

Tolstoy turns from the altar to the congregation and lets chatter do the work of judgement: every marriage in the room is quietly audited, and the sacrament is heard through gossip about lilac and crinolines. Dolly's silent roll-call of brides, ending on Anna, is the chapter's real argument. The strangers at the back supply the verdict nobody inside would say.