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The efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the dinner

should be particularly good, only ended in the two famished

friends attacking the preliminary course, eating a great deal of

bread and butter, salt goose and salted mushrooms, and in Levin's

finally ordering the soup to be served without the accompaniment

of little pies, with which the cook had particularly meant to

impress their visitor. But though Stepan Arkadyevitch was

accustomed to very different dinners, he thought everything

excellent: the herb brandy, and the bread, and the butter, and

above all the salt goose and the mushrooms, and the nettle soup,

and the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean

wine-everything was superb and delicious.