The second servant—in his thick felt shoes, his coarse clothes—carried a woman’s dress in his arms, the only one of Anna’s that the countess had kept (the rest, as previously mentioned, had been donated to a charity next to Olga’s Poorhouse, which helped fallen women, because it pleased the countess to think about floozies wearing them). The third footman—his socks so threadbare it would set your teeth on edge—carried in his right hand the blue box in which Anna had stored her manu script, and over his left shoulder, a huge, green cloth sack, which contained her collected correspondence and calling cards.

They also delivered a letter from the Countess Vronskaya, a curt, sloppy note to the widower Karenin, saying she would keep Anna Karenina’s jewels for Anya, both the ones he had given her himself and the ones from her son. Karenin understood that these lies were intended only to wound him.

The arrival of the portrait and its entourage at the Karenin Palace had the effect the countess desired, but not in the way she had imagined. Sergei was on his way home. He was returning from school, his eyes glued to the ground. In the morning, walking in the opposite direction, he had almost stepped on a sparrow recently hatched from its shell, its bony body half covered in bluish down, still breathing. The sight frightened and disgusted him. This creature, grayish like a piece of the sky, its beak soft as cartilage, its feet disfigured, looked more like an insect or entrails than a bird. Sergei was afraid of seeing the sparrow again, terrified of stepping on it. That’s why he was scouring the ground anxiously, searching but hoping not to find the little bird. His eyes darted from the ground to his waist and back, a somber zigzag. He looked up when he heard Kapitonich’s voice say, “Heavens!”

It was the third time in a row that Kapitonich had uttered these two syllables. Sergei, absorbed in his search for the harmless creature, staring at the ground, submerging all his worries in this search, anxious but relieved of his other anxieties, didn’t hear him.

He was about to be sent away to boarding school. He was afraid; he didn’t want to go, but he had to, he knew there was no alternative; three nights ago he had wet the bed, which he had never done before, not even when he was really little. Inside him a storm raged, one he couldn’t describe to anyone, not even himself.