Part 6. Chapter 4.

Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair, surrounded by the children, gaily and good-humoredly looking after them, and at the same time visibly excited at the possibility of receiving a declaration from the man she cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her, he recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her lips, all the good he knew about her, and became more and more conscious that the feeling he had for her was something special that he had felt long, long ago, and only once, in his early youth. En la regardant, il se rappela toutes les choses délicieuses qu'il avait entendues de ses lèvres, tout le bien qu'il savait d'elle, et devint de plus en plus conscient que le sentiment qu'il avait pour elle était quelque chose de spécial qu'il avait ressenti il y a très, très longtemps, et une seule fois, dans sa jeunesse. The feeling of happiness in being near her continually grew, and at last reached such a point that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her basket, he looked straight into her face, and noticing the flush of glad and alarmed excitement that overspread her face, he was confused himself, and smiled to her in silence a smile that said too much. Le sentiment de bonheur d'être près d'elle grandissait continuellement et atteignit enfin un tel point que, alors qu'il mettait un énorme champignon agarique à la tige mince dans son panier, il la regarda droit dans le visage, et remarqua le rougissement de la joie et de l'alarme. l'excitation qui envahit son visage, il était lui-même confus et lui sourit en silence un sourire qui en disait trop.

"If so," he said to himself, "I ought to think it over and make up my mind, and not give way like a boy to the impulse of a moment." - Jei taip, - tarė jis sau, - turėčiau tai gerai apgalvoti ir apsispręsti, o ne akimirkos impulsui nusileisti kaip berniukas. "I'm going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or else my efforts will make no show," he said, and he left the edge of the forest where they were walking on low silky grass between old birch trees standing far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood, where between the white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and dark bushes of hazel. «Je vais choisir moi-même à part de tout le reste, ou bien mes efforts ne feront rien», dit-il, et il quitta la lisière de la forêt où ils marchaient sur de l'herbe basse et soyeuse entre de vieux bouleaux debout loin à part, et s'enfonçait davantage au cœur du bois, où, entre les troncs de bouleau blanc, il y avait des troncs gris de tremble et des buissons sombres de noisetier. „Aš rinksiuosi pats, išskyrus visus likusius, kitaip mano pastangos nebus parodytos“, - sakė jis ir paliko miško pakraštį, kur jie vaikščiojo ant žemos šilkinės žolės tarp toli stovinčių senų beržų. atskirai, ir labiau nuėjo į medienos širdį, kur tarp baltų beržo kamienų buvo pilki drebulės kamienai ir tamsūs lazdyno krūmai. Walking some forty paces away, Sergey Ivanovitch, knowing he was out of sight, stood still behind a bushy spindle-tree in full flower with its rosy red catkins. A une quarantaine de pas, Sergey Ivanovitch, se sachant hors de vue, se tenait immobile derrière un fusain touffu en pleine fleur avec ses chatons rouge rosé. Eidamas maždaug už keturiasdešimt žingsnių, Sergejus Ivanovičius, žinodamas, kad jo nematė, sustojo už krūmo verpstės, pilnos gėlės su rausvais raudonais kačiukais. It was perfectly still all round him. Only overhead in the birches under which he stood, the flies, like a swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time the children's voices were floated across to him. Seulement au-dessus de sa tête dans les bouleaux sous lesquels il se tenait, les mouches, comme un essaim d'abeilles, bourdonnaient sans cesse, et de temps en temps les voix des enfants flottaient vers lui. All at once he heard, not far from the edge of the wood, the sound of Varenka's contralto voice, calling Grisha, and a smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitch's face. Conscious of this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly at his own condition, and taking out a cigar, he began lighting it. For a long while he could not get a match to light against the trunk of a birch tree. Ilgą laiką jis negalėjo gauti degtuko, kuris būtų apšviestas beržo kamieno. The soft scales of the white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and the light went out. Les écailles molles de l'écorce blanche détachaient le phosphore et la lumière s'éteignit. At last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant cigar smoke, hovering uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away forwards and upwards over a bush under the overhanging branches of a birch tree. Enfin une des allumettes a brûlé, et la fumée parfumée du cigare, planant incertain en larges bobines plates, s'étirait vers l'avant et vers le haut sur un buisson sous les branches en surplomb d'un bouleau. Watching the streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked gently on, deliberating on his position.

"Why not?" he thought. "If it were only a passing fancy or a passion, if it were only this attraction—this mutual attraction (I can call it a mutual attraction), but if I felt that it was in contradiction with the whole bent of my life—if I felt that in giving way to this attraction I should be false to my vocation and my duty…but it's not so. The only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie, I said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory. That's the only thing I can say against my feeling…. That's a great thing," Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this consideration had not the slightest importance for him personally, but would only perhaps detract from his romantic character in the eyes of others. "But apart from that, however much I searched, I should never find anything to say against my feeling. If I were choosing by considerations of suitability alone, I could not have found anything better." Si je n'avais choisi que par souci d'aptitude, je n'aurais rien pu trouver de mieux. " However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively all, the qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the charm and freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she loved him consciously as a woman ought to love; that was one thing. Another point: she was not only far from being worldly, but had an unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the same time she knew the world, and had all the ways of a woman of the best society, which were absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitch's conception of the woman who was to share his life. Un autre point: elle était non seulement loin d'être mondaine, mais avait un dégoût indéniable pour la société mondaine, et en même temps elle connaissait le monde, et avait toutes les manières d'une femme de la meilleure société, qui étaient absolument essentielles à Sergey. La conception d'Ivanovitch de la femme qui devait partager sa vie. Thirdly: she was religious, and not like a child, unconsciously religious and good, as Kitty, for example, was, but her life was founded on religious principles. Even in trifling matters, Sergey Ivanovitch found in her all that he wanted in his wife: she was poor and alone in the world, so she would not bring with her a mass of relations and their influence into her husband's house, as he saw now in Kitty's case. She would owe everything to her husband, which was what he had always desired too for his future family life. Elle devait tout à son mari, ce qu'il avait toujours souhaité aussi pour sa future vie de famille. And this girl, who united all these qualities, loved him. He was a modest man, but he could not help seeing it. And he loved her. There was one consideration against it—his age. But he came of a long-lived family, he had not a single gray hair, no one would have taken him for forty, and he remembered Varenka's saying that it was only in Russia that men of fifty thought themselves old, and that in France a man of fifty considers himself dans la force de l'âge , while a man of forty is un jeune homme . Mais il venait d'une famille de longue date, il n'avait pas un seul cheveu gris, personne ne l'aurait pris pendant quarante ans, et il se souvenait du dire de Varenka que ce n'était qu'en Russie que les hommes de cinquante ans se croyaient vieux, et qu'en France un homme de cinquante ans se considère dans la force de l'âge, tandis qu'un homme de quarante ans est un jeune homme. But what did the mere reckoning of years matter when he felt as young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Mais qu'importait le simple calcul des années alors qu'il se sentait aussi jeune de cœur qu'il y a vingt ans? Was it not youth to feel as he felt now, when coming from the other side to the edge of the wood he saw in the glowing light of the slanting sunbeams the gracious figure of Varenka in her yellow gown with her basket, walking lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when this impression of the sight of Varenka blended so harmoniously with the beauty of the view, of the yellow oatfield lying bathed in the slanting sunshine, and beyond it the distant ancient forest flecked with yellow and melting into the blue of the distance? N'était-ce pas la jeunesse de ressentir ce qu'il ressentait maintenant, en venant de l'autre côté de la lisière du bois, il vit dans la lumière éclatante des rayons obliques du soleil la gracieuse silhouette de Varenka dans sa robe jaune avec son panier, marchant légèrement près du tronc d'un vieux bouleau, et quand cette impression de la vue de Varenka se mêlait si harmonieusement à la beauté de la vue, du champ d'avoine jaune baigné dans le soleil oblique, et au-delà de la forêt ancienne lointaine mouchetée de jaune et se fondant en le bleu de la distance? His heart throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over him. He felt that he had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. Varenka, qui venait de s'accroupir pour cueillir un champignon, se leva d'un mouvement souple et se retourna. Flinging away the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute steps towards her.