Anna Karenina — Chapter 110 in French
By Leo Tolstoy
Pestzov, qui aimait pousser le raisonnement jusqu’au bout, ne se contentait pas des paroles par lesquelles Serge Ivanovitch l’avait interrompu, d’autant plus qu’il sentait la faiblesse de sa propre opinion. Pestsof, who liked to discuss a question thoroughly, was not satisfied with what Koznuishef had said; he felt that he had not been allowed to express his thought sufficiently.
— Je n’ai jamais pensé à la densité seule de la population, dit-il, pendant le souper, à Alexis Alexandrovitch. "In speaking of the density of the population," said he, after the soup, addressing Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, "I did n't intend to make it the principle of an assimilation, but only a means."
— Il me semble, répondit celui ci mollement et sans se hâter, que c’est la même chose. "It seems to me that that amounts to the same thing," replied Karenin, slowly and indolently. Selon moi, la plus grande influence appartient au peuple le plus avancé. "In my judgment, a people can have no influence over another people unless it has the highest development which .... "
— Mais c’est précisément la question ; où se trouve le développement supérieur ? Des Anglais, des Français, des Allemands, qui est à un degré supérieur de développement ? "That is precisely the question," interrupted Pestsof, who always spoke with so much ardor that he seemed to put his whole soul into defending his own opinions "How is one to decide on what is the highest development? Which stands on the highest plane of civilization, the English, the French, or the Germans? Qui nationalisera l’autre ? Which nation is to naturalize the others? Nous voyons que le Rhin s’est francisé ? Est-ce une raison pour que les Allemands soient inférieurs ! We have seen the Rhine made French; but are the Germans inferior? cria-t-il. Non, il y a ici une autre loi ! No; there is some other law," he cried in his bass voice.