Anna Karenina (tr. Constance Garnett)
by Leo Tolstoy
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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"Well, it's a long while since you've been to see us, Ronstantin
DmitrievitchI"

Not only he knew all about it, but he was unmistakably delighted
and making efforts to conceal his joy. Looking into his kindly
old eyes, Levin realized even something new in his happiness.

"Are they up?"

"Pray walk in! Leave it here," said he, smiling, as Levin would
have come back to take his hat. That meant something.

"To whom shall I announce your honor?" asked the footman.

The footman, though a young man, and one of the new school of
footmen, a dandy, was a very kind-hearted, good fellow, and he
too knew all about it.

"The princess ...the prince ...the young princess . . ."
said Levin.

The first person he saw was Mademoiselle Linon. She walked across
the room, and her ringlets and her face were beaming. He had only
just spoken to her, when suddenly he heard the rustle of a skirt
at the door, and Mademoiselle Linon vanished from Levin's eyes,
and a joyful terror came over him at the nearness of his
happiness. Mademoiselle Linon was in great haste, and leaving
him, went out at the other door. Directly she had gone out,
swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss,
his life, himself--what was best in himself, what he had so long
sought and longed for--was quickly, so quickly approaching him.
She did not walk, but seemed, by some unseen force, to float to
him. He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by
the same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were
shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love.
She stopped still close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and
dropped onto his shoulders.

She had done all she could--she had run up to him and given
herself up entirely, shy and happy. He put his arms round her and
pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss.

She too had not slept all night, and had been expecting him all
the morning.

Her mother and father had consented without demur, and were happy
in her happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to be
the first to tell him her happiness and his. She had got ready to
see him alone, and had been delighted at the idea, and had been
shy and ashamed, and did not know herself what she was doing. She
had heard his steps and voice, and had waited at the door for
Mademoiselle Linon to go. Mademoiselle Linon had gone away.
Without thinking, without asking herself how and what, she had
gone up to him, and did as she was doing.

"Let us go to mamma!" she said, taking him by the hand. For a
long while he could say nothing, not so much because he was
afraid of desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as
that every time he tried to say something, instead of words he
felt that tears of happiness were welling up. He took her hand
and kissed it.

"Can it be true?" he said at last in a choked voice. "I can't
believe you love me, dear!"

She smiled at that "dear," and at the timidity with which he
glanced at her.

"Yes!" she said significantly, deliberately. "I am so happy!"

Not letting go his hands, she went into the drawing-room. The
princess, seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to
cry and then immediately began to laugh and with a vigorous step
Levin had not expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head,
kissed him, wetting his cheeks with her tears.

"So it is all settled! I am glad. Love her. I am glad.... Kitty!"

"You've not been long settling things," said the old prince,
trying to seem unmoved; but Levin noticed that his eyes were wet
when he turned to him.

"I've long, always wished for this!" said the prince, taking
Levin by the arm and drawing him towards himself. "Even when this
little feather-head fancied . . ."

"Papa!" shrieked Kitty, and shut his mouth with her hands.

"Well, I won't!" he said. "I'm very, very ...plea ...Oh,
what a fool I am . . ."

He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again and
made the sign of the cross over her.

And there came over Levin a new feeling of love for this man,
till then BO little known to him, when he saw how slowly and
tenderly Kitty kissed his muscular hand.

Chapter 16

The princess sat in her armchair, silent and smiling; the prince
sat  down beside her. Kitty stood by her father's chair, still
holding his hand. All were silent.

The princess was the first to put everything into words, and to
translate all thoughts and feelings into practical questions. And
all equally felt this strange and painful for the first minute.

"When is it to be? We must have the benediction and announcement.
And when's the wedding to be? What do you think, Alexander?"

"Here he is," said the old prince, pointing to Levin--"he's the
principal person in the matter."

"When?" said Levin blushing. "To-morrow; If you ask me, I should
say, the benediction to-day and the wedding to-morrow."

"Come, mon cher, that's nonsense!"

"Well, in a week."

"He's quite mad."

"No, why so?"

"Well, upon my wordl" said the mother, smiling, delighted at this
haste. "How about the trousseau?"

"Will there really be a trousseau and all that?" Levin thought
with horror. "But can the trousseau and the benediction and all
that--can it spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!" He
glanced at Kitty, and noticed that she was not in the least, not
in the very least, disturbed by the idea of the trousseau. "Then
it must be all right," he thought.

"Oh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like," he
said apologetically.

"We'll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can
take place now. That's very well."

The princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have
gone away, but he kept her, embraced her, and tenderly as a young
lover, kissed her several times, smiling. The old people were
obviously muddled for a moment, and did not quite know whether it
was they who were in love again or their daughter. When the
prince and the princess had gone, Levin went up to his betrothed
and took her hand. He was self-possessed now and could speak, and
he had a great deal he wanted to tell her. But he said not at all
what he had to say.

"How I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my
heart I was always sure," he said. "I believe that it was
ordained."

"And I!" she said. "Even when . . ." She stopped and went on
again, looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, "Even
when I thrust from me my happiness. I always loved you alone, but
I was carried away. I ought to tell you ...Can you forgive
that?"

"Perhaps it was- for the best. You will have to forgive me so
much. I ought to tell you . . ."

This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had
resolved from the first to tell her two things--that he was not
chaste as she was, and that he was not a believer. It was
agonizing, but he considered he ought to tell her both these
facts.

"No, not now, later!" he said.

"Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I'm not afraid
of anything. I want to know everything. Now it is settled."

He added: "Settled that you'll take me whatever I may be--you
won't give me up? Yes?"

"Yes, yes."

Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who
with an affected but tender smile came to congratulate her
favorite pupil. Before she had gone, the servants came in with
their congratulations. Then relations arrived, and there began
that state of blissful absurdity from which Levin did not emerge
till the day after his wedding. Levin was in a continual state of
awkwardness and discomfort, but the intensity of his happiness
went on all the while increasing. He felt continually that a
great deal was being expected of him--what, he did not know; and
he did everything he was told, and it all gave him happiness. He
had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like
others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would
spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as
other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby
and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything
that had ever happened.

"Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat," said Mademoiselle Linon--
and Levin drove off to buy sweetmeats.

"Well, I'm very glad," said Sviazhsky. "I advise you to get the
bouquets from Fomin's."

"Oh, are they wanted?" And he drove to Fomin's.

His brother offered to lend him money, as he would have so many
expenses, presents to give....

"Oh, are presents wanted?" And he galloped to Foulde's.

And at the confectioner's, and at Fomin's, and at Foulde's he saw
that he was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and
prided themselves on his happiness, just as every one whom he had
to do with during those days. What was extraordinary was that
every one not only liked him, but even people previously
unsympathetic, cold, and callous, were enthusiastic over him,
gave way to him in everything, treated his feeling with
tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he was
the happiest man in the world because his betrothed was beyond
perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing. When Countess Nordston
ventured to hint that she had hoped for something better, Kitty
was so angry and proved so conclusively that nothing in the world
could be better than Levin, that Countess Nordston had to admit
it, and in Kitty's presence never met Levin without a smile of
ecstatic admiration.

The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of
this time. He consulted the old prince, and with his sanction
gave Kitty his diary, in which there was written the confession
that tortured him. He had written this diary at the time with a
view to his future wife. Two things caused him anguish: his lack
of purity and his lack of faith. His confession of unbelief
passed unnoticed. She was religious, had never doubted the truths
of religion, but his external unbelief did not affect her in the
least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his soul she
saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be
called unbelieving was to her a matter of no account. The other
confession set her weeping bitterly.

Levin, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He
knew that between him and her there could not be, and should not
be, secrets, and so he had decided that so it must be. But he had
not realized what an effect it would have on her, he had not put
himself in her place. It was only when the same evening he came
to their house before the theater, went into her room and saw her
tear-stained, pitiful, sweet face, miserable with suffering he
had caused and nothing could undo, he felt the abyss that
separated his shameful past from her dovelike purity, and was
appalled at what he had done.

"Take them, take these dreadful books!" she said, pushing away
the note-books lying before her on the table. "Why did you give
them me? No, it was better anyway," she added, touched by his
despairing face. "But it's awful, awful!"

His head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.

"You can't forgive me," he whispered.

"Yes, I forgive you; but it's terrible!"

But his happiness was so immense that this confession did not
shatter it, it only added another shade to it. She forgave him;
but from that time more than ever he considered himself unworthy
of her, morally bowed down lower than ever before her, and prized
more highly than ever his undeserved happiness.

Chapter 17

Unconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that had
taken place during and after dinner, Alexey Alexandrovitch
returned to his solitary room. Darya Alexandrovna's words about
forgiveness had aroused in him nothing but annoyance. The
applicability or non- applicability of the Christian precept to
his own case was too difficult a question to be discussed
lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by Alexey
Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what
stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured
Turovtsin--"ACTED LIKE A MAN, HE DID! CALLED HIM OUT AND SHOT
HIM!" Every one had apparently shared this feeling, though from
politeness they had not expressed it.

"But the matter is settled, it's useless thinking about it,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. And thinking of nothing but
the journey before him, and the revision work he had to do, he
went into his room and asked the porter who escorted him where
his man was. The porter said that the man had only just gone out.
Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be sent him, sat down to the
table, and taking the guide-book, began considering the route of
his journey.

"Two telegrams," said his manservant, coming into the room. "I
beg your pardon, your excellency; I'd only just that minute gone
out."

Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them. The
first telegram was the announcement of Stremov's appointment to
the very post Karenin had coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung
the telegram down, and flushing a little, got up and began to
pace up and down the room. "Quos cult perdere dementat," he said,
meaning by quos the persons responsible for this appointment. He
was not so much annoyed that he had not received the post, that
he had been conspicuously passed over; but it was
incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the
wordy phrase-monger Stremov was the last man fit for it. How
could they fail to see how they were ruining themselves, lowering
their prestige by this appointment?

"Something else in the same line," he said to himself bitterly,
opening the second telegram. The telegram was from his wife. Her
name, written in blue pencil, "Anna," was the first thing that
caught his eye. "I am dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I
shall die easier with your forgiveness," he read. He smiled
contemptuously, and flung down the telegram. That this was a
trick and a fraud, of that, he thought for the first minute,
there could be no doubt.

"There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her
confinement. Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be their
aim? To legitimize the child, to compromise me, and prevent a
divorce," he thought. "But something was said in it: I am dying .
. ." He read the telegram again, and suddenly the plain meaning
of what was said in it struck him.

"And if it is true?" he said to himself. "If it is true that in
the moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely
penitent, and I, taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would
not only be cruel, and every one would blame me, but it would be
stupid on my part."

"Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg," he said to his
servant.

Alexey Alexandrovitch decided that he would go to Petersburg and
see his wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing
and go away again. If she was really in danger, and wished to see
him before her

death, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and pay her
the last duties if he came too late.

All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.

With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in
the train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch
drove through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him,
not thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about
it, because in picturing what would happen, he could not drive
away the reflection that her death would at once remove all the
difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen,
porters sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he
watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was
awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping
for He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage with the
coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the entry,
Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution from
the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it thoroughly. Its
meaning ran: "If it's a trick, then calm contempt and departure.
If truth, do what is proper."

The porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang. The
porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a tie,
and iD skippers.

"How is your mistress?"

"A successful confinement yesterday."

Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt
distinctly now how intensely he had longed for her death.

"And how is she?"

Korney in his morning apron ran down-stairs.

"Very ill," he answered. "There was a consultation yesterday, and
the doctor's here now."

"Take my things," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and feeling some
relief at the news that there was still hope of her death, he
went into the hall

On the hat-stand there was a military overcoat. Alexey
Alexandrovitch noticed it and asked:

"Who is here?"

"The doctor, the midwife and Count Vronsky."

Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the inner rooms.

In the drawing-room there was no one; at the sound of his steps
there came out of her boudoir the midwife in a cap with lilac
ribbons.

She went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and with the familiarity
given by the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him
towards the bedroom.

"Thank God you've come! She keeps on about you and nothing but
you," she said.

"Make haste with the ice!" the doctor's peremptory voice said
from the bedroom. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir.

At the table, sitting side-ways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his
face hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor's
voice, took his hands from his face, and saw Alexey
Alexandrovitch. Seeing the husband, he was so overwhelmed that he
sat down again, drawing his head down to his shoulders, as if he
wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got up
and said:

"She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in
your power, only let me be here ...though I am at your
disposal. I . . ."

Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky's tears, felt a rush of
that nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other
people's suffering, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly
to the door, without hearing the rest of his words. From the
bedroom came the sound of Anna's voice saying something. Her
voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct intonations.
Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the bedroom, and went up to the
bed. She was lying turned with her face towards him. Her cheeks
were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands
thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing-gown were playing
with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were
not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind.
She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally
correct articulation and expressive intonation.

"For Alexey--I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a
strange and awful thing that both are Alexey, isn't it?)--Alexey
would not refuse me. I should forget, he would forgive.... But
why doesn't he come? He's so good he doesn't know himself how
good he is. Ah, my God, what agony! Give me some water, quick!
Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl! Oh, very well then,
give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it's better in fact. He'll be
coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the nurse."

"Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!" said the midwife,
trying to attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Oh, what nonsense!" Anna went on, not seeing her husband. "No,
give her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You
say he won't forgive me, because you don't know him. No one knows
him. I'm the only one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I
ought to know--Seryozha has just the same eyes--and I can't bear
to see them because of it. Has Seryozha had his dinner? I know
every one will forget him. He would not forget. Seryozha must be
moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be asked to sleep
with him."

All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as
though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised
her hands to her face. She had seen her husband.

"No, no!" she began. "I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of
death. Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I've no time,
I've not long left to live; the fever will begin directly and I
shall understand nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it
all, I see it all!"

Alexey Alexandrovitch's wrinkled face wore an expression of
agony; he took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he
could not utter it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on
struggling with his emotion, and only now and then glanced at
her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw her eyes gazing at
him with such passionate and triumphant tenderness as he had
never seen in them.

"Wait a minute, you don't know ...stay a little, stay! . . ."
She stopped, as though collecting her ideas. "Yes," she began;
"yes, yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don't be surprised
at me. I'm still the same ...But there is another woman in me,
I'm afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you,
and could not forget about her that used to be. I'm not that
woman. Now I'm my real self, all myself. I'm dying now, I know I
shall die, ask him. Even now I feel--see here, the weights on my
feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers--see how huge they
are! But this will soon all be over.... Only one thing I want:
forgive me, forgive me quite. I'm terrible, but my nurse used to
tell me; the holy martyr--what was her name? She was worse. And
I'll go to Rome; there's a wilderness, and there I shall be no
trouble to any one, only I'll take Seryozha and the little
one.... No, you can't forgive me! I know, it can't be forgiven!
No, no, go away, you're too good!" She held his hand in one
burning hand,while she pushed him away with the other.

The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing,
and had by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle
with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous
agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that
gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did
not think that the Christian law that he had been all his life
trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his
enemies; but a glad feeling of love and forgiveness for his
enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in
the curve of her arm, wbuch burned him as with fire through the
sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his
head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her
eyes.

"That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, every one, forgive me!
...They've come again; why don't they go away? ...Oh, take
these cloaks off me!"

The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the
pillow, and covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back
submissively, and looked before her with beaming eyes.

"Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I
want nothing more.... Why doesn't he come?" she said, turning to
the door towards Vronsky. "Do come, do come! Give him your hand."

Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid
his face in his hands. "Uncover your face--look at him! He's a
saint," she said. "Oh! uncover your face, do uncover itl" she
said angrily. "Alexey Alexandrovitch, do uncover his face! I want
to see him."

Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky's hands and drew them away
from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and
shame upon it.

"Give him your hand. Forgive him."

Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to
restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes.

"Thank God, thank God!" she said, "now everything is ready. Only
to stretch my legs a little. There, that's capital. How badly
these flowers are done--not a bit like a violet," she said,
pointing to the hangings. "My God, my God! when will it end? Give
me some morphine. Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my God, my
God!"

And she tossed about on the bed.

The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was
ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole
day long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At
midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost
without pulse.

The end was expected every minute.

Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: "Better
stay, she might ask for you," and himself led him to his wife's
boudoir. Towards morning, there was a return again of excitement,
rapid thought and talk, and again it ended in unconsciousness. On
the third day it was the same thing, and the doctors said there
was hope. That day Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the boudoir
where Vronsky was sitting, and closing the door sat down opposite
him.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch," said Vronsky, feeling that a statement
of the position was coming, "I can't speak, I can't understand.
Spare me! However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more
terrible for me."

He would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the
hand and said:

"I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my
feelings, the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so
that you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had
resolved on a divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings. I
won't conceal from you that in beginning this I was in
uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued
by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When I got the
telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more, I
longed for her death. But . . ." He paused, pondering whether to
disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. "But I saw her
and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to
me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek,
I would give my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not
to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!"

Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them
impressed Vronsky.

"This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the
laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will
never utter a word of reproach to you," Alexey Alexandrovitch
went on. "My duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with
her, and I will be. If she wishes to see you, I will let you
know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to go away."

He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting
up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him
from under his brows. He did not understand Alexey
Alexandrovitch's feeling, but he felt that it was something
higher and even unattainable for him with his view of life.

Chapter 18

After the conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch, Vronsky went
out onto the steps of the Karenins' house and stood still, with
difficulty remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk
or drive. He felt disgraced, humiliated, guilty, and deprived of
all possibility of washing away his humiliation. He felt thrust
out of the beaten Pack along which he had so proudly and lightly
walked till then. All the habits and rules of his life that had
seemed so firm, had turned out suddenly false and inapplicable.
The betrayed husband, who had figured till that time as a
pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat ludicrous obstacle
to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her herself,
elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle, and on the pinnacle that
husband had shown himself, not malignant, not false, not
ludicrous, but kind and straightforward and large. Vronsky could
not but feel this, and the parts were suddenly reversed. Vronsky
felt his elevation and his own abasement, his truth and his own
falsehood. He felt that the husband was magnanimous even in his
sorrow, while he had been base and petty in his deceit. But this
sense of his own humiliation before the man he had unjustly
despised made up only a small part of his misery. He felt
unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Anna, which had
seemed to him of late to be growing cooler, now that he knew he
had lost her forever, was stronger than ever it had been. He had
seen all of her in her illness, had come to know her very soul,
and it seemed to him that he had never loved her till then. And
now when he had learned to know her, to love her as she should be
loved, he had been humiliated before her, and had lost her
forever, leaving with her nothing of himself but a shameful
memory. Most terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful
position when Alexey Alexandrovitch had pulled his hands away
from his humiliated face. He stood on the steps of the Karenins'
house like one distraught, and did not know what to do.

"A sledge, sir?" asked the porter.

"Yes, a sledge."

On getting home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without
undressing, lay down fiat on the sofa, clasping his hands and
laying his head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories,
and ideas of the strangest description followed one another with
extraordinary rapidity and vividness. First it was the medicine
he had poured out for the patient and spilt over the spoon, then
the midwife's white hands, then the queer posture of Alexey
Alexandrovitch on the floor beside the bed.

"To sleep! To forget!" he said to himself with the serene
confidence of a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he
will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did begin
to feel drowsy and he began to drop off into forgetfulness. The
waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over his
head, when all at once--it was as though a violent shock of
electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leaped up
on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got in a
panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as though he had
never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the weariness in
his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone.

"You may trample me in the mud," he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch's
words and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna's face with
its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and
tenderness not at him but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his
own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexey
Alexandrovitch took his hands away from his face. He stretched
out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same
position and shut his eyes.

"To sleep! To forget!" he repeated to himself. But with his eyes
shut he saw more distinctly than ever Anna's face as it had been
on the memorable evening before the races.

"That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her
memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled!
how can we be reconciled?" he said aloud, and unconsciously began
to repeat these words. This repetition checked the rising up of
fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging in his
brain. But repeating words did not check his imagination for
long. Again in extraordinarily rapid succession his best moments
rose before his mind,and then his recent humiliation. "Take away
his hands," Anna's voice says. He takes away his hands and feels
the shamestruck and idiotic expression of his face.

He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not
the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some
chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of
fresh images. He listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper
words repeated: "I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of
it. I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it."

"What's this? Am I going out of my mind?" he said to himself.
"Perhaps. What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men
shoot themselves?" he answered himself, and opening his eyes, he
saw with wonder an embroidered cushion beside him, worked by
Varya, his brother's wife. He touched the tassel of the cushion,
and tried to think of Varya, of when he had seen her last. But to
think of anything extraneous was an agonizing effort. "No, I must
sleep!" He moved the cushion up, and pressed his head into it,
but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut. He jumped up
and sat down. "That's all over for me," he said to himself. "I
must think what to do. What is left?" His mind rapidly ran
through his life apart from his love of Anna.

"Ambition? Serpohovskoy? Society? The court?" He could not come
to a pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but now
there was no reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took off his
coat, undid his belt, and uncovering his hairy chest to breathe
more freely, walked up and down the room. "This is how people go
mad," he repeated, "and how they shoot themselves ...to escape
humiliation," he added slowly.

He went to the door and closed it, then with fixed eyes and
clenched teeth he went up to the table, took a revolver, looked
round him, turned it to a loaded bamel, and sank into thought.
For two minutes, his head bent forward with an expression of an
intense effort of thought, he stood with the revolver in his
hand, motionless, thinking.

"Of course," he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous,
and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable
conclusion. In reality this "of course," that seemed convincing
to him, was simply the result of exactly the same circle of
memories and images through which he had passed ten times already
during the last hour--memories of happiness lost forever. There
was the same conception of the senselessness of everything to
come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. Even the
sequence of these images and emotions was the same.

"Of course," he repeated, when for the third time his thought
passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and
images, and pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest,
and clutching it vigorously with his whole hand, as it were,
squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger. He did not hear
the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent him
reeling. He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the
revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about
him in astonishment. He did not recognize his room, looking up
from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the
wastepaper-basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried, creaking
steps of his servant coming through the drawing-room brought him
to his senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that
he was on the floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and
on his arm, he knew he had shot himself. "Idiotic! Missed!" he
said, fumbling after the revolver. The revolver was close beside
him--he sought further off. Still feeling for it, he stretched
out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his
balance, fell over, streaming with blood.

The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually
complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nones,
was so panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor,
that he left him losing blood while he ran for assistance. An
hour later Varya, his brother's wife, had arrived, and with the
assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for in all
directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the
wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.

Chapter 19

The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing
for seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her
repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she
might not die--this mistake was two months after his return from
Moscow brought home to him in all its significance. But the
mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having
overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until
that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known
his own heart. At his sick wife's bedside he had for the first
time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic
suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and
hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And
pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most
of all, the joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not
simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual
peace he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the
very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the
source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while
he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple
when he forgave and loved.

He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her
remorse. He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after
reports reached him of his despairing action. He felt more for
his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having taken
too little interest in him. But for the little new-born baby he
felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity, only, but of
tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had
been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his
child, and who was cast on one side during her mother's illness,
and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her,
and he did not himself obsene how fond he became of her. He would
go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long
while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got
quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a
stretch he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy,
wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the movements of the
frowning brows, and the fat little hands, with clenched fingers,
that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments
particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect peace
and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his
position, nothing that ought to be changed.

But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however
natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be
allowed to remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed
spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal
force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life,
and that this force would not allow him that humble peace he
longed for. He felt that every one was looking at him with
inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and that something
was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability and
unnaturalness of his relations with his wife.

When the softening effect of the near approach of death had
passed away, Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was
afraid of him, ill at ease with him, and could not look him
straight in the face. She seemed to be wanting, and not daring,
to tell him something; and as though foreseeing their present
relations could not continue, she seemed to be expecting
something from him.

Towards the end of February it happened that Anna's baby
daughter, who had been named Anna too, fell ill. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was in the nursery in the morning, and leaving
orders for the doctor to be sent for, he went to his office. On
finishing his work, he returned home at four. Going into the hall
he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery and a bear fur cape,
holding a white fur cloak.

"Who is here?" asked Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Princess Elizaveta Federovna Tverskaya," the groom answered, and
it seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned.

During all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed
that his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar
interest in him and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed
with difficulty concealing their mirth at something; the same
mirth that he had perceived in the lawyer's eyes, and just now in
the eyes of this groom. Every one seemed, somehow, hugely
delighted, as though they had just been at a wedding. When they
met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment they inquired after his
wife's health. The presence of Princess Tverskaya was unpleasant
to Alexey Alexandrovitch from the memories associated with her,
and also because he disliked her, and he went straight to the
nursery. In the day-nursery Seryozha, leaning on the table with
his legs on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily. The
English governess, who had during Anna's illness replaced the
French one, was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl. She
hurriedly got up, curtseyed, and pulled Seryozha. Alexey
Alexandrovitch stroked his son's hair, answered the governess's
inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of
the baby.

"The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath,
sir."

"But she is still in pain," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening
to the baby's screaming in the next room.

"I think it's the wet-nurse, sir," the Englishwoman said firmly.

"What makes you think so?" he asked, stopping short.

"It's just as it was at Countess Paul's, sir. They gave the baby
medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the
nurse had no milk, sir."

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few
seconds he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its
head thrown back, stiffening itself in the nurse's arms, and
would not take the plump breast offered it; and it never ceased
screaming in spite of the double hushing of the wet-nurse and the
other nurse, who was bending over her.

"Still no better?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"She's very restless," answered the nurse in a whisper.

"Miss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk," he
said.

"I think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"Who's one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna still ill . . ." said
the nurse discontentedly.

The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple
words there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his
position.

The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The
nurse, with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the
wet-nurse's arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it.

"You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse,
frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to
herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the
idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that
smile, too, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.

"Luckless child!" said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still
walking up and down with it.

Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and
suffering face watched the nurse walking to and fro.

When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed,
and the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her,
Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe,
approached the baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same
despondent face gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that
moved his hair and the skin of his forehead, came out on his
face, and he went as softly out of the room.

In the dining-room he rang the bell, and told the servant who
came in to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife
for not being anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this
vexed humor he had no wish to go to her; he had no wish, either,
to see Princess Betsy. But his wife might wonder why he did not
go to her as usual; and so, overcoming his disinclination, he
went towards the bedroom. As he walked over the soft rug towards
the door, he could not help overhearing a conversation he did not
want to hear.

"If he hadn't been going away, I could have understood your
answer and his too. But your husband ought to be above that,"
Betsy was saying.

"It's not for my husband; for myself I don't wish it. Don't say
that!" answered Anna's excited voice.

"Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot
himself on your account...."

"That's just why I don't want to."

With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch
stopped and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that
this would be undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his
throat, he went up to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he
went in.

Anna, in a gray dressing-gown, with a crop of short clustering
black curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The
eagerness died out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of
her husband; she dropped her head and looked round uneasily at
Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the height of the latest fashion, in a
hat that towered somewhere over her head like a shade on a lamp,
in a blue dress with violet crossway stripes slanting one way on
the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting beside
Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her head, she
greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.

"Ahl" she said, as though surprised. "I'm very glad you're at
home. You never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven't seen
you ever since Anna has been ill. I have heard all about it--your
anxiety. Yes, you're a wonderful husband," she said, with a
meaning and affable air, as though she were bestowing an order of
magnanimity on him for his conduct to his wife.

Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife's
hand, asked how she was.

"Better, I think," she said, avoiding his eyes.

"But you've rather a feverish-looking color," he said, laying
stress on the word "feverish."

"We've been talking too much," said Betsy. "I feel it's
selfishness on my part, and I am going away." She got up, but
Anna, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her hand. "No, wait a
minute, please. I must tell you ...no, you." She turned to
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with
crimson. "I won't and can't keep anything secret from you," she
said.

Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.

"Betsy's been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to
say good-bye before his departure for Tashkend." She did not look
at her husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything
out, however hard it might be for her. "I told her I could not
receive him."

"You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey
Alexandrovitch," Betsy corrected her.

"Oh, no, I can't receive him; and what object would there . . ."
She stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he
did not look at her). "In short, I don't wish it...."

Alexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.

Her first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand
with big swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious
effort to control herself she pressed his hand.

"I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but. . ." he
said, feeling with confusion and annoyance that what he could
decide easily and clearly by himself, he could not discuss before
Princess Tverskaya, who to him stood for the incarnation of that
brute force which would inevitably control him in the life he led
in the eyes of the world, and hinder him from giving way to his
feeling of love and forgiveness. He stopped short, looking at
Princess Tverskaya.

"Well, good-bye, my darling," said Betsy, getting up. She kissed
Anna, and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man,"
said Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special
warmth shaking hands with him once more. "I am an outsider, but I
so love her and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive
him. Alexey Vronsky is the soul of honor, and he is going away to
Tashkend."

"Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the
question of whether my wife can or cannot see any one she must
decide herself."

He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and
reflected immediately that whatever his words might be, there
could be no dignity in his position. And he saw this by the
suppressed, malicious, and ironical smile with which Betsy
glanced at him after this phrase.

Chapter 20

Alexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the drawing-room,
and went to his wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps
she sat up hastily in her former attitude, and looked in a scared
way at him. He saw she had been crying.

"I am very grateful for your confidence in me." He repeated
gently in Russian the phrase he had said in Betsy's presence in
French, and sat down beside her. When he spoke to her in Russian,
using the Russian "thou" of intimacy and affection, it was
insufferably irritating to Anna. "And I am very grateful for your
decision. I, too, imagine that since he is going away, there is
no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky to come here. However, if
. . ."

"But I've said so already, so why repeat it?" Anna suddenly
interrupted him with an irritation she could not succeed in
repressing. "No sort of necessity," she thought, "for a man to
come and say good- bye to the woman he loves, for whom he was
ready to ruin himself, and has ruined himself, and who cannot
live without him. No sort of necessityI" She compressed her lips,
and dropped her burning eyes to his hands with their swollen
veins. They were rubbing each other.

"Let us never speak of it," she added more calmly.

"I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad
to see . . ." Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.

"That my wish coincides with your own," she finished quickly,
exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand
all he would say.

"Yes," he assented; "and Princess Tverskaya's interference in the
most difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She
especially . . ."

"I don't believe a word of what's said about her," said Anna
quickly. "I know she really cares for me."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played
nervously with the tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him
with that torturing sensation of physical repulsion for which she
blamed herself, though she could not control it. Her only desire
now was to be rid of his oppressne presence.

"I have just sent for the doctor," said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?"

"No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn't enough
milk."

"Why didn't you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway"
(Alexey Alexandrovitch knew what was meant by that "anyway"),
"she's a baby, and they're killing her." She rang the bell and
ordered the baby to be brought her. "I begged to nurse her, I
wasn't allowed to, and now I'm blamed for it."

"I don't blame . . ."

"Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn't I die!" And she broke
into sobs. "Forgive me, I'm nervous, I'm unjust," she said,
controlling herself, "but do go away . . ."

"No, it can't go on like this," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to
himself decidedly as he left his wife's room.

Never had the impossibility of his position in the world's eyes,
and his wife's hatred of him, and altogether the might of that
mysterious brutal force that guided his life against his
spiritual inclinations, and exacted conformity with its decrees
and change in his attitude to his wife, been presented to~him
with such distinctness as that day. He saw clearly that all the
world and his wife expected of him something, but what exactly,
he could not make out. He felt that this was rousing in his soul
a feeling of anger destructive of his peace of mind and of all
the good of his achievement. He believed that for Anna herself it
would be better to break off all relations with Vronsky; but if
they all thought this out of the question, he was even ready to
allow these relations to be renewed, so long as the children were
not disgraced, and he was not deprived of them nor forced to
change his position. Bad as this might be, it was anyway better
than a rupture, which would put her in a hopeless and shameful
position, and deprive him of everything he cared for. But he felt
helpless; he knew beforehand that every one was against him, and
that he would not be allowed to do what seemed to him now so
natural and right, but would be forced to do what was wrong,
though it seemed the proper thing to them.

Chapter 21

Before Betsy had time to walk out of the drawing-room, she was
met in the doorway by Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just come from
Yeliseev's, where a consignment of fresh oysters had been
received.

"Ah! princess! what a delightful meeting!" he began. "I've been
to see you."

"A meeting for one minute, for I'm going," said Betsy, smiling
and putting on her glove.

"Don't put on your glove yet, princess; let me kiss your hand.
There's nothing I'm so thankful to the revival of the old
fashions for as the kissing the hand." He kissed Betsy's hand.
"When shall we see each other?"

"You don't deserve it," answered Betsy, smiling.

"Oh, yes, I deserve a great deal, for I've become a most serious
person. I don't only manage my own affairs, but other people's
too," he said with a significant expression.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" answered Betsy, at once understanding that he
was speaking of Anna. And going back into the drawing-room, they
stood in a corner. "He's killing her," said Betsy in a whisper
full of meaning. "It's impossible, impossible . . ."

"I'm so glad you think so," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, shaking his
head with a serious and sympathetically distressed expression,
"that's what I've come to Petersburg for."

"The whole town's talking of it," she said. "It's an impossible
position. She pines and pines away. He doesn't understand that
she's one of those women who can't trifle with their feelings.
One of two things t either let him take her away, act with
energy, or give her a divorce. This is stifling her."

"Yes, yes ...just so . . ." Oblonsky said, sighing. "That's
what I've come for. At least not solely for that ...I've been
made a Kammerherr,' of course, one has to say thank you. But the
chief thing was having to settle this."

"Well, God help you!" said Betsy.

After accompanying Betsy to the outside hall, once more kissing
her hand above the glove, at the point where the pulse beats, and
murmuring to her such unseemly nonsense that she did not know
whether to laugh or be angry, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to his
sister. He found her in tears.

Although he happened to be bubbling over with good spirits,
Stepan Arkadyevitch immediately and quite naturally fell into the
sympathetic, poetically emotional tone which harmonized with her
mood. He asked her how she was, and how she had spent the
morning.

"Very, very miserably. To-day and this morning and all past days
and days to come," she said.

"I think you're giving way to pessimism. You must rouse yourself,
you must look life in the face. I know it's hard, but . . ."

"I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,"
Anna began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't
live with him. Do you understand? the sight of him has a physical
effect on me, it makes me beside myself. I can't, I can't live
with him. What am I to do? I have been unhappy, and used to think
one couldn't be more unhappy, but the awful state of things I am
going through now, I could never have conceived. Would you
believe it, that knowing he's a good man, a splendid man, that
I'm not worth his little finger, still I hate him. I hate him for
his generosity. And there's nothing left for me but . . ."

She would have said death, but Stepan Arkadyevitch would not let
her finish.

"You are ill and overwrought," he said; "believe me, you're
exagaerating dreadfully. There's nothing so terrible in it."

And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one else in Stepan
Arkadyevitch's place, having to do with such despair, would have
ventured to smile (the smile would have seemed brutal); but in
his smile there was so much of sweetness and almost feminine
tenderness that his smile did not wound, but softened and
soothed. His gentle, soothing words and smiles were as soothing
and softening as almond oil. And Anna soon felt this.

"No, Stiva," she said, "I'm lost, lost! worse than lost! I can't
say yet that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it's not
over. I'm an overstrained string that must snap. But it's not
ended yet ...and it will have a fearful end." "No matter, we
must let the string be loosened, little by little. There's no
position from which there is no way of escape."

"I have thought, and thought. Only one . . ."

Again he knew from her terrified eyes that this one way of escape
in her thought was death, and he would not let her say it.

"Not at all," he said. "Listen to me. You can't see your own
position as I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion." Again he
smiled discreetly his almond-oil smile. "I'll begin from the
beginning. You married a man twenty years older than yourself.
You married him without love and not knowing what love was. It
was a mistake, let's admit."

"A fearful mistake!" said Anna.

"But I repeat, it's an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us
say, the misfortune to love a man not your husband. That was a
misfortune; but that, too, is an accomplished fact. And your
husband knew it and forgave it." He stopped at each sentence,
waiting for her to object, but she made no answer. "That's so.
Now the question is: can you go on living with your husband? Do
you wish it? Does he wish it?"

"I know nothing, nothing."

"But you said yourself that you can't endure him."

"No, I didn't say so. I deny it. I can't tell, I don't know
anything about it."

"Yes, but let . . ."

"You can't understand. I feel I'm lying head downwards in a sort
of pit, but I ought not to save myself. And I can't . . ."

"Never mind, we'll slip something under and pull you out. I
understand you: I understand that you can't take it on yourself
to express your wishes, your feelings."

"There's nothing, nothing I wish ...except for it to be all
over."

"But he sees this and knows it. And do you suppose it weighs on
him any less than on you7 You're wretched, he's wretched, and
what good can come of it? while divorce would solve the
difficulty completely." With some effort Stepan Arkadyevitch
brought out his central idea, and looked significantly at her.

She said nothing, and shook her cropped head in dissent. But from
the look in her face, that suddenly brightened into its old
beauty, he saw that if she did not desire this, it was simply
because it seemed to her unattainable happiness.

"I'm awfully sorry for yout And how happy I should be if I could
arrange things!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling more boldly.
"Don't speak, don't say a word! God grant only that I may speak
as I feel. I'm going to him."

Anna looked at him with dreamy, shining eyes, and said nothing.

Chapter 22

Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the same somewhat solemn expression
with which he used to take his presidential chair at his board,
walked into Alexey Alexandrovitch's room. Alexey Alexandrovitch
was walking about his room with his hands behind his back,
thinking of just what Stepan Arkadyevitch had been discussing
with his wife.

"I'm not interrupting you?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, on the
sight of his brother-in-law becoming suddenly aware of a sense of
embarrassment unusual with him. To conceal this embarrassment he
took out a cigarette-case he had just bought that opened in a new
way, and sniffing the leather, took a cigarette out of it.

"No. Do you want anything?" Alexey Alexandrovitch asked without
eagerness.

"Yes, I wished ...I wanted ...yes, I wanted to talk to
you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with surprise aware of an
unaccustomed timidity.

This feeling was so unexpected and so strange that he did not
believe it was the voice of conscience telling him that what he
was meaning to do was wrong.

Stepan Arkadyevitch made an effort and struggled with the
timidity that had come over him.

"I hope you believe in my love for my sister and my sincere
affection and respect for you," he said, reddening.

Alexey Alexandrovitch stood still and said nothing, but his face
struck Stepan Arkadyevitch by its expression of an unresisting
sacrifice.

"I intended ...I wanted to have a little talk with you about
my sister and your mutual position," he said, still struggling
with an unaccustomed constraint.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled mournfully, looked at his
brother-inlaw, and without answering went up to the table, took
from it an unfinished letter, and handed it to his
brother-in-law.

"I think unceasingly of the same thing. And here is what I had
begun writing, thinking I could say it better by letter, and that
my presence irritates her," he said, as he gave him the letter.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took the letter, looked with incredulous
surprise at the lusterless eyes fixed so immovably on him, and
began to read.

"I see that my presence is irksome to you. Painful as it is to me
to believe it, I see that it is so, and cannot be otherwise. I
don't blame you, and God is my witness that on seeing you at the
time of your illness I resolved with my whole heart to forget all
that had passed between us and to begin a new life. I do not
regret, and shall never regret, what I have done; but I have
desired one thing--your good, the good of your soul--and now I
see I have not attained that. Tell me yourself what will give you
true happiness and peace to your soul. I put myself entirely in
your hands, and trust to your feeling of what's right."

Stepan Arkadyevitch handed back the letter, and with the same
surprise continued looking at his brother-in-law, not knowing
what to say. This silence was so awkward for both of them that
Stepan Arkadyevitch's lips began twitching nervously, while he
still gazed without speak~ng at Karemn's face.

"That's what I wanted to say to her," said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
turning away.

"Yes, yes . . ." said Stepan Arkadyevitch, not able to answer for
the tears that were choking him.

"Yes, yes, I understand you," he brought out at last.

"I want to know what she would like," said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"I am afraid she does not understand her own position. She is not
a judge," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, recovering himself. "She is
crushed, simply crushed by your generosity. If she were to read
this letter, she would be incapable of saying anything, she would
only hang her head lower than ever."

"Yes, but what's to be done in that case? how explain, how find
out her wishes?"

"If you will allow me to give my opinion, I think that it lies
with you to point out directly the steps you consider necessary
to end the position.

"So you consider it must be ended?" Alexey Alexandrovitch
interrupted him. "But how?" he added, with a gesture of his hands
before his eyes not usual with him. "I see no possible way out of
it."

"There is some way of getting out of every position," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, standing up and becoming more cheerful. "There was
a time when you thought of breaking off.... If you are convinced
now that you cannot make each other happy . . ."

"Happiness may be variously understood. But suppose that I agree
to everything, that I want nothing: what way is there of getting
out of our position?"

"If you care to know my opinion," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with
the same smile of softening, almond-oil tenderness with which he
had been talking to Anna. His kindly smile was so winning that
Alexey Alexandrovitch, feeling his own weakness and unconsciously
swayed by it, was ready to believe what Stepan Arkadyevitch was
saying.

"She will never speak out about it. But one thing is possible,
one thing she might desire," he went on: "that is the cessation
of your relations and all memories associated with them. To my
thinking, in your position what's essential is the formation of a
new attitude to one another. And that can only rest on a basis of
freedom on both sides."

"Divorce," Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of
aversion.

"Yes, I imagine that divorce--yes, divorce," Stepan Arkadyevitch
repeated, reddening. "That is from every point of view the most
rational course for married people who find themselves in the
position you are in. What can be done if married people find that
life is impossible for them together? That may always happen."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

"There's only one point to be considered: is either of the
parties desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very simple,"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free from
constraint.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered something
to himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to
Stepan Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over
thousands of times. And, so far from being simple, it all seemed
to him utterly irnpossible. Divorce, the details of which he knew
by this time, seemed to him now out of the quesdon, because the
sense of his own dignity and respect for religion forbade his
taking upon himself a fictitious charge of adultery, and still
more suffering his wife, pardoned and beloved by him, to be
caught in the fact and put to public shame. Divorce appeared to
him impossible also on other still more weighty grounds.

What would become of his son in case of a divorce? To leave him
with his mother was out of the question. The divorced mother
would have her own illegitimate family, in which his position as
a stepson and his education would not be good. Keep him with him?
He knew that would be an act of vengeance on his part, and that
he did not want. But apart from this, what more than all made
divorce seem impossible to Alexey Alexandrovitch was, that by
consenting to a divorce he would be completely ruining Anna. The
saying of Darya Alexandrovna at Moscow, that in deciding on a
divorce he was thinking of himself, and not consideAng that by
this he would be ruining her irrevocably, had sunk into his
heart. And connecting this saying with his forgiveness of her,
with his devotion to the children, he understood it now in his
own way. To consent to a divorce, to give her her freedom, meant
in his thoughts to take from himself the last tie that bound him
to life--the children whom he loved; and to take from her the
last prop that stayed her on the path of right, to thrust her
down to her ruin. If she were divorced, he knew she would join
her life to Vronsky's, and their tie would be an illegitimate and
criminal one, since a-wife, by the interpretation of the
ecclesiastical law, could not marry while her husband was hying.
"She will join him, and in a year or two he will throw her over,
or she will form a new tie," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch. "And
I, by agreeing to an unlawful divorce, shall be to blame for her
ruin." He had thought it all over hundreds of times, and was
convinced that a divorce was not at all simple, as Stepan
Arkadyevitch had said, but was utterly impossible. He did not
believe a single word Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him; to every
word  he had a thousand objections to make, but he listened to
him, feelings that his words were the expression of that mighty
brutal force which controlled his life and to which he would have
to submit.

"The only question is on what terms you agree to give her a
divorce. She does not want anything, does not dare ask you for
anything, she leaves it all to your generosity."

"My God, my God! what for?" thought Alexey Alexandrovitch,
remembering the details of divorce proceedings in which the
husband took the blame on himself, and with just the same gesture
with which Vronsky had done the same, he hid his face for shame
in his hands.

"You are distressed, I understand that. But if you think it over
. . ."

"Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the
other also; and if any man take away thy coat, let him have thy
cloak also," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Yes, yes!" he cried in a shrill voice. "I will take the disgrace
on myself, I will give up even my son, but ...but wouldn't it
be better to let it alone? Still you may do as you like . . ."

And turning away so that his brother-in-law could not see him, he
sat down on a chair at the window. There was bitterness, there
was shame in his heart, but with bitterness and shame he felt joy
and emotion at the height of his own meekness.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was touched. He was silent for a space.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch, believe me, she appreciates your
generosity," he said. "But it seems it was the will of God," he
added, and as he said it felt how foolish a remark it was, and
with difficulty repressed a smile at his own foolishness.

Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made some reply, but tears
stopped him.

"This is an unhappy fatality, and one must accept it as such. I
accept the calamity as an accomplished fact, and am doing my best
to help both her and you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

When he went out of his brother-in-law's room he was touched, but
that did not prevent him from being glad he had successfully
brought the matter to a conclusion, for he felt certain Alexey
Alexandrovitch would not go back on his words. To this
satisfaction was added the fact that an idea had just struck him
for a riddle turning on his successful achievement, that when the
affair was over he would ask his wife and most intimate friends.
He put this riddle into two or three different ways. "But I'll
work it out better than that," he said to himself with a smile.

Chapter 23

Vronsky's wound had been a dangerous one, though it did not
touch the heart, and for several days he had lain between life
and death. The first time he was able to speak, Varya, his
brother's wife, was death. The first time he was able to speak,
Varya, his brother's wife, was alone in the room.

"Varya," he said, looking sternly at her, "I shot myself by
accident. And please never speak of it, and tell every one so. Or
else it's too ridiculous."

Without answering his words, Varya bent over him, and with a
delighted smile gazed into his face. His eyes were clear, not
feverish; but their expression was stern.

"Thank God!" she said. "You're not in pain?"

"A little here." He pointed to his breast.

"Then let me change your bandages."

In silence, stiffening his broad jaws, he looked at her while she
bandaged him up. When she had finished he said:

"I'm not delirious. Please manage that there may be no talk of my
having shot myself on purpose."

"No one does say so. Only I hope you won't shoot yourself by
accident any more," she said, with a questioning smile.

"Of course I won't, but it would have been better . . ."

And he smiled gloomily.

In spite of these words and this smile, which so frightened
Varya, when the inflammation was over and he began to recover, he
felt that he was completely free from one part of his misery. By
his action he had, as it were, washed away the shame and
humiliation he had felt before. He could now think calmly of
Alexey Alexandrovitch. He recognized all his magnanimity, but he
did not now feel himself humiliated by it. Besides, he got back
again into the beaten track of his life. He saw the possibility
of looking men in the face again without shame, and he could live
in accordance with his own habits. One thing he could not pluck
out of his heart, though he never ceased struggling with it, was
the regret, amounting to despair, that he had lost her forever.
That now, having expiated his sin against the husband, he was
bound to renounce her, and never in future to stand between her
with her repentance and her husband, he had firmly decided in his
heart; but he could not tear out of his heart his regret at the
loss of her love, he could not erase from his memory those
moments of happiness that he had so little prized at the time,
and that haunted him in all their charm.

Serpuhovskoyhad planned his appointment at Tashkend, and Vronsky
agreed to the proposition without the slightest hesitation. But
the nearer the time of departure came, the bitterer was the
sacrifice he was making to what he thought his duty.

His wound had healed, and he was driving about making
preparations for his departure for Tashkend.

"To see her once and then to bury myself, to die," he thought,
and as ee was paying farewell visits, he uttered this thought to
Betsy. Charged with this commission, Betsy had gone to Anna, and
brought him back a negative reply.

"So much the better," thought Vronsky, when he received the news.
"It was a weakness, which would have shattered what strength I
have left."

Next day Betsy herself came to him in the morning, and announced
that she had heard through Oblonsky as a positive fact that
Alexey Alexandrovitch had agreed to a divorce, and that therefore
Vronsky could see Anna.

Without even troubling himself to see Betsy out of his fiat,
forgetting all his resolutions, without asking when he could see
her, where her husband was, Vronsky drove straight to the
Karenins'. He ran up the stairs seeing no one and nothing, and
with a rapid step, almost breaking into a run, he went into her
room. And without considering, without noticing whether there was
any one in the room or not, he flung his arms round her, and
began to cover her face, her hands, her neck with kisses.

Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought
what she would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying
anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm him,
to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her.
Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing.

"Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last,
pressing his hands to her bosom.

"So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I
know it now."

"That's true," she said, getting whiter and whiter, and embracing
his head. "Still there is something terrible in it after all that
has happened."

"It will all pass, it will all pass; we shall be so happy. Our
love, if it could be stronger, will be strengthened by there
being something terrible in it," he said, lifting his head and
parting his strong teeth in a smile.

And she could not but respond with a smile--not to his words, but
to the love in his eyes. She took his hand and stroked her
chilled cheeks and cropped head with it.

"I don't know you with this short hair. You've grown so pretty. A
boy. But how pale you are!"

"Yes, I'm very weak," she said, smiling. And her lips began
trembling again.

"We'll go to Italy; you will get strong," he said.

"Can it be possible we could be like husband and wife, alone,
your family with you?" she said, looking close into his eyes.

"It only seems strange to me that it can ever have been
otherwise."

"Stiva says that he has agreed to everything, but I can't accept
HIS generosity," she said, looking dreamily past Vronsky's face.
"I don't want a divorce; it's all the same to me now. Only I
don't know what he will decide about Seryozha."

He could not conceive how at this moment of their meeting she
could remember and think of her son, of divorce. What did it all
matter?

"Don't speak of that, don't think of it," he said, turning her
hand in his, and trying to draw her attention to him; but still
she did not look at him.

"Oh, why didn't I die! it would have been better," she said, and
silent tears flowed down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile,
so as not to wound him.

To decline the flattering and dangerous appointment at Tashkend
would have been, Vronsky had till then considered, disgraceful
and impossible. But now, without an instant's consideration, he
declined it, and observing dissatisfaction in the most exalted
quarters at this step, he immediately retired from the army.

A month later Alexey Alexandrovitch was left alone with his son
in his house at Petersburg, while Anna and Vronsky had gone
abroad, not having obtained a divorce, but having absolutely
declined all idea of one.

PART 5

Chapter 1

Princess Shtcherbaiskaya considered that it was out of the
question for the wedding to take place before Lent, just five
weeks off, Since not half the trousseau could possibly be ready
by that time. But she could not but agree with Levin that to fix
it for after Lent would be putting it off too late, as an old
aunt of Prince Shtcherbatsky's was seriously ill and might die,
and then the mourning would delay the wedding still longer. And
therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two parts--a
larger and smaller trousseau--the princess consented to have the
wedding before Lent. She determined that she would get the
smaller part of the trousseau all ready now, and the larger part
should be made later, and she was much vexed with Levin because
he was incapable of giving her a serious answer to the question
whether he agreed to this arrangement or not. The arrangement was
the more suitable as, immediately after the wedding, the young
people were to go to the country, where the more important part
of the trousseau would not be wanted.

Levin still continued in the same delirious condition in which it
seemed to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and
sole aim of all existence, and that he need not now think or care
about anything, that everything was being done and would be done
for him by others. He had not even plans and aims for the future,
he left its arrangement to others, knowing that everything would
be delightful. His brother Sergey Ivanovitch, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, and the princess guided him in doing what he had to
do. All he did was to agree entirely with everything suggested to
him. His brother raised money for him, the princess advised him
to leave Moscow after the wedding. Stepan Arkadyevitch advised
him to go abroad. He agreed to everything.. "Do what you choose,
if it amuses you. I'm happy, and my happiness can be no greater
and no less for anything you do," he thought. When he told Kitty
of Stepan Arkadyevitch's advice that they should go abroad, he
was much surprised that she did not agree to this, and had some
definite requirements of her own in regard to their future. She
knew Levin had work he loved in the country. She did not, as he
saw, understand this work, she did not even care to understand
it. But that did not prevent her from regarding it as a matter of
great importance. And then she knew their home would be in the
country, and she wanted to go, not abroad where she was not going
to live, but to the place where their home would be. This
definitely expressed purpose astonished Levin. But since he did
not care either way, he immediately asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, as
though it were his duty, to go down to the country and to arrange
everything there to the best of his ability with the taste of
which he had so much.

"But I say," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him one day after he had
come back from the country, where he had got everything ready for
the young people's arrival, "have you a certificate of having
been at confession?"

"No. But what of it?"

"You can't be married without it."

"Aie, aie, aie!" cried Levin. "Why, I believe it's nine years
since I've taken the sacrament! I never thought of it."

"You're a pretty fellow!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch laughing, "and
you call me a Nihilist! But this won't do, you know. You must
take the sacrament."

"When? There are four days left now."

Stepan Arkadyevitch arranged this also, and Levin had to go to
confession. To Levin, as to any unbeliever who respects the
beliefs of others, it was exceedingly disagreeable to be present
at and take part in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his
present softened state of feeling, sensitive to everything, this
inevitable act of hypocrisy was not merely painful to Levin it
seemed to him utterly impossible. Now, in the heyday of his
highest glory, his fullest flower, he would have to be a liar or
a scoffer. He felt incapable of being either. But though he
repeatedly plied Stepan Arkadyevitch with questions as to the
possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually
communicating, Stepan Arkadyevitch maintained that it was out of
the question.

"Besides, what is it to you--two days? And he's an awfully nice
clever old fellow. He'll pull the tooth out for you so gently,
you won't notice it."

Standing at the first litany, Levin attempted to revive in
himself his youthful recollections of the intense religious
emotion he had passed through between the ages of sixteen and
seventeen.

But he was at once convinced that it was utterly impossible to
him. He attempted to look at it all as an empty custom, having no
sort of meaning, like the custom of paying calls. But he felt
that he could not do that either. Levin found himself, like the
majority of his contemporaries, in the vaguest position in regard
to religion. Believe he could not, and at the same time he had no
firm conviction that it was all wrong. And consequently, not
being able to believe in the significance of what he was doing
nor to regard it with indifference as an empty formality, during
the whole period of preparing for the sacrament he was conscious
of a feeling of discomfort and shame at doing what he did not
himself understand, and what, as an inner voice told him, was
therefore false and wrong.

During the service he would first listen to the prayers, trying
to attach some meaning to them not discordant with his own views;
then feeling that he could not understand and must condemn them,
he tried not to listen to them, but to attend to the thoughts,
observations, and memories which floated through his brain with
extreme vividness during this idle time of standing in church.

He had stood through the litany, the evening service and the
midnight service, and the next day he got up earlier than usual,
and without having tea went at eight o'clock in the morning to
the church for the morning service and the confession.

There was no one in the church but a beggar soldier, two old
women and the church officials. A young deacon, whose long back
showed in two distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met
him, and at once going to a little table at the wall readable
exhortation. During the reading, especially at the frequent and
rapid repetition of the same words, "Lord, have mercy on us!"
which resounded with an echo, Levin felt that thought was shut
and sealed up, and that it must not be touched or stirred now or
confusion would be the result; and so standing behind the deacon
he went on thinking of his own affairs, neither listening nor
examining what was said. "It's wonderful what expression there is
in her hand," he thought, remembering how they had been sitting
the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk about,
as was almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand
on the table she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed
herself as she watched her action. He remembered how he had
kissed it and then had examined the lines on the pink palm. "Have
mercy on us again!" thought Levin, crossing himself, bowing, and
looking at the supple spring of the deacon's back bowing before
him. "She took my hand then and examined the lines 'You've got a
splendid hand,' she said." And he looked at his own hand and the
short hand of the deacon. "Yes, now it will soon be over," he
thought. "No, it seems to be beginning again," he thought,
listening to the prayers. "No, it's just ending: there he is
bowing down to the ground. That's always at the end."

The deacon's hand in a plush cuff accepted a three-rouble note
unobtrusively, and the deacon said he would put it down in the
register, and his new boots creaking jauntily over the flagstones
of the empty church, he went to the altar. A moment later he
peeped out thence and beckoned to Levin. Thought, till then
locked up, began to stir in Levin's head, but he made haste to
drive it away. "It will come right somehow," he thought, and went
towards the altar-rails. He went up the steps, and turning to the
right saw the priest. The priest, a little old man with a scanty
grizzled beard and weary, good-natured eyes, was standing at the
altar-rails, turning over the pages of a missal. With a slight
bow to Levin he began immediately reading prayers in the official
voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the ground and
turned, facing Levin.

"Christ is present here unseen, receiving your confession," he
said, pointing to the crucifix. "Do you believe in all the
doctrines of the Holy Apostolic Church?" the priest went on,
turning his eyes away from Levin's face and folding his hands
under his stole.

"I have doubted, I doubt everything," said Levin in a voice that
jarred on himself, and he ceased speaking.

The priest waited a few seconds to see if he would not say more,
and closing his eyes he said quickly, with a broad, Vladimirsky
accent:

"Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind, but we must pray
that God in His mercy will strengthen us. What are your special
sins?" he added, without the slightest interval, as though
anxious not to waste time.

"My chief sin is doubt. I have doubts of everything, and for the
most part I am in doubt."

"Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind," the priest
repeated the same words. "What do you doubt about principally?"

"I doubt of everything. I sometimes even have doubts of the
existence of God," Levin could not help saying, and he was
horrified at the impropriety of what he was saying. But Levin's
words did not, it seemed, make much impression on the priest.

"What sort of doubt can there be of the existence of God?" he
said hurriedly, with a just perceptible smile.

Levin did not speak.

"What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His
creation?" the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. "Who
has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has
clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the
Creator?" he said, looking inquiringly at Levin.

Levin felt that it would be improper to enter upon a metaphysical
discussion with the priest, and so he said in reply merely what
was a direct answer to the question.

"I don't know," he said.

"You don't knowl Then how can you doubt that God created all?"
the priest said, with good-humored perplexity.

"I don't understand it at all," said Levin, blushing, and feeling
that his words were stupid, and that they could not be anything
but stupid n such a position.

"Pray to God and beseech Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts,
and prayed to God to strengthen their faith. The devil has great
power, and we must resist him. Pray to God, beseech Hint Pray to
God," he repeated hurriedly.

The priest paused for some time, as though meditating.

"You're about, I hear, to marry the daughter of my parishioner
and son in the spirit, Prince Shtcherbatsky?" he resumed, with a
smile. "An excellent young lady."

"Yes," answered Levin, blushing for the priest. "What does he
want to ask me about this at confession for?" he thought.

And, as though answering his thought, the priest said to him:

"You are about to enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless
you with offspring. Well, what sort of bringing-up can you give
your babes if you do not overcome the temptation of the devil,
enticing you to infidelity?" he said, with gentle
reproachfulness. "If you love your child as a good father, you
will not desire only wealth, luxury, honor for your infant; you
will be anxious for his salvation, his spiritual enlightenment
with the light of truth. Eh? What answer will you make him when
the innocent babe asks you: 'Papa! who made all that enchants me
in this world--the earth; the waters, the sun, the flowers, the
grass?' Can you say to him: 'I don't know'? You cannot but know,
since the Lord God in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us.
Or your child will ask you: 'What awaits me in the life beyond
the tomb?' What will you say to him when you know nothing? How
will you answer him? Will you leave him to the allurements of the
world and the devil? That's not right," he said, and he stopped,
putting his head on one side and looking at Levin with his
kindly, gentle eyes.

Levin made no answer this time, not because he did not want to
enter upon a discussion with the priest, but because, so far, no
one had ever asked him such questions, and when his babes did ask
him those questions, it would be time enough to think about
answering them.

"You are entering upon a time of life," pursued the priest, "when
you must choose your path and keep to it. Pray to God that He may
in His mercy aid you and have mercy on your" he concluded. "Our
Lord and God, Jesus Christ, in the abundance and riches of His
loving-kindness, forgives this child . . ." and, finishing the
prayer of absolution, the priest blessed him and dismissed him.

On getting home that day, Levin had a delightful sense of relief
at the awkward position being over and having been got through
without his having to tell a lie. Apart from this, there remained
a vague memory that what the kind, nice old fellow had said had
not been at all so stupid as he had fancied at first, and that
there was something in it that must be cleared up.

"Of course, not now," thought Levin, "but some day later on."
Levin felt more than ever now that there was something not clear
and not clean in his soul, and that, in regard to religion, he
was in the same position which he perceived so clearly and
disliked in others, and for which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky.

Levin spent that evening with his betrothed at Dolly's, and was
in very high spirits. To explain to Stepan Arkadyevitch the state
of excitement in which he found himself, he said that he was
happy like a dog being trained to jump through a hoop, who,
having at last caught the idea, and done what was required of
him, whines and wags its tail, and jumps up to the table and the
windows in its delight.

Chapter 2

On the day of the wedding, according to the Russian custom (the
princess and Darya Alexandrovna insisted on strictly keeping all
the customs), Levin did not see his betrothed, and dined at his
hotel with three bachelor friends, casually brought together at
his rooms. These were Sergey Ivanovitch, Katavasov, a university
friend, now professor of natural science, whom Levin had met in
the street and insisted on taking home with him, and Tchirikov,
his best man, a Moscow conciliation-board judge, Levin's
companion in his bear-hunts. The dinner was a very merry one:
Sergey Ivanovitch was in his happiest mood, and was much amused
by Katavasov's originality. Katavasov, feeling his originality
was appreciated and understood, made the most of it. Tchirikov
always gave a lively and good-humored support to conversation of
any sort.

"See, now," said Katavasov, drawling his words from a habit
acquired in the lecture-room, "what a capable fellow was our
friend Konstantin Dmitrievitch. I'm not speaking of present
company, for he's absent. At the time he left the university he
was fond of science, took an interest in humanity; now one-half
of his abilities is devoted to deceiving himself, and the other
to justifying the deceit."

"A more determined enemy of matrimony than you I never saw," said
Sergey Ivanovitch.

"Oh, no, I'm not an enemy of matrimony. I'm in favor of division
of labor. People who can do nothing else ought to rear people
while the rest work for their happiness and enlightenment. That's
how I look at it. To muddle up two trades is the error of the
amateur; I'm not one of their number."

"How happy I shall be when I hear that you're in love!" said
Levin. "Please invite me to the wedding."

"I'm in love now."

"Yes, with a cuttlefishl You know," Levin turned to his brother,
"Mihail Semyonovitch is writing a work on the digestive organs of
the . . ."

"Now, make a muddle of it! It doesn't matter what about. And the
fact is, I certainly do love cuttlefish."

"But that's no hindrance to your loving your wife."

"The cuttlefish is no hindrance. The wife is the hindrance."

"Why so?"

"Oh, you'll see! You care about farming, hunting,--well, you'd
better look out!"

"Arhip was here to-day; he said there were a lot of elks in
Prudno, and two bears," said Tchirikov.

"Well, you must go and get them without me."

"Ah, that's the truth," said Sergey Ivanovitch. "And you may say
good-bye to bear-hunting for the future--your wife won't allow
it!"

Levin smiled. The picture of his wife not letting him go was so
pleasant that he was ready to renounce the delights of looking
upon bears forever.

"Still, it's a pity they should get those two bears without you.
Do you remember last time at Hapilovo? That was a delightful
hunt!" said Tchirikov.

Levin had not the heart to disillusion him of the notion that
there could be something delightful apart from her, and so said
nothing.

"There's some sense in this custom of saying good-bye to bachelor
life," said Sergey Ivanovitch. "However happy you may be, you
must regret your freedom."

"And confess there is a feeling that you want to jump out of the
window, like Gogol's bridegroom?"

"Of course there is, but it isn't confessed," said Katavasov, and
he broke into loud laughter.

"Oh, well, the window's open. Let's start off this instant to
Tverl There's a big she-bear; one can go right up to the lair.
Seriously, let's go by the five o'clock! And here let them do
what they like," said Tchirikov, smiling.

"Well, now, on my honor," said Levin, smiling, "I can't find in
my heart that feeling of regret for my freedom."

"Yes, there's such a chaos in your heart just now that you can't
find anything there," said Katavasov. "Wait a bit, when you set
it to rights a little, you'll find it!"

"No; if so, I should have felt a little, apart from my feeling"
(he could not say love before them) "and happiness, a certain
regret at losing my freedom.... On the contrary, I am glad at the
very loss of my freedom."

"Awful! It's a hopeless case!" said Katavasov. "Well, let's drink
to his recovery, or wish that a hundredth part of his dreams may
be realized--and that would be happiness such as never has been
seen on earth!"

Soon after dinner the guests went away to be in time to be
dressed for the wedding.

When he was left alone, and recalled the conversation of these
bachelor friends, Levin asked himself: had he in his heart that
regret for his freedom of which they had spoken? He smiled at the
question. "Freedom! What is freedom for? Happiness is only in
loving and wishing her wishes, thinking her thoughts, that is to
say, not freedom at all--that's happiness!"

"But do I know her ideas, her wishes, her feelings?" some voice
suddenly whispered to him. The smile died away from his face, and
he grew thoughtful. And suddenly a strange feeling came upon him.
There came over him a dread and doubt--doubt of everything.

"What if she does not love me? What if she's marrying me simply
to be married? What if she doesn't see herself what she's doing?"
he asked himself. "She may come to her senses, and only when she
is being married realize that she does not and cannot love me."
And strange, most evil thoughts of her began to come to him. He
was jealous of Vronsky, as he had been a year ago, as though the
evening he had seen her with Vronsky had been yesterday. He
suspected she had not told him everything.

He jumped up quickly. "No, this can't go on!" he said to himself
in despair. "I'll go to her; I'll ask her; I'll say for the last
time: we are free, and hadn't we better stay so! Anything's
better than endless misery, disgrace, unfaithfulness!" With
despair in his heart and bitter anger against all men, against
himself, against her, he went out of the hotel and drove to her
house.

He found her in one of the back rooms. She was sitting on a chest
and making some arrangements with her maid, sorting over heaps of
dresses of different colors, spread on the backs of chairs and on
the floor.

"Ah!" she cried, seeing him, and beaming with delight. "Kostya!
Konstantin Dmitrievitch!" (These latter days she used these names
almost alternately.) "I didn't expect you! I'm going through my
wardrobe to see what's for whom . . ."

"Oht that's very nice!" he said gloomily, looking at the maid.

"You can go, Dunyasha, I'll call you presently," said Kitty.
"Kostya, what's the matter?" she asked, definitely adopting this
familiar name as soon as the maid had gone out. She noticed his
strange face, agitated and gloomy, and a panic came over her.

"Kitty! I'm in torture. I can't suffer alone," he said with
despair in his voice, standing before her and looking imploringly
into her eyes. He saw already from her loving, truthful face,
that nothing could come of what he had meant to say, but yet he
wanted her to reassure him herself. "I've come to say that
there's still time. This can all be stopped and set right."

"What? I don't understand. What is the matter?"

"What I have said a thousand times over, and can't help thinking
...that I'm not worthy of you. You couldn't consent to marry
me. Think a little. You've made a mistake. Think it over
thoroughly. You can't love me.... If ... better say so," he said,
not looking at her. "I shall be wretched. Let people say what
they like; anything's better than misery.... Far better now while
there's still time...."

"I don't understand," she answered, panic-stricken; "you mean you
want to give it up ...don't want it?"

"Yes, if you don't love me."

"You're out of your mind!" she cried, turning crimson with
vexation. But his face was so piteous, that she restrained her
vexation, and flinging some clothes off an arm-chair, she sat
down beside him. "What are you thinking? tell me all."

"I am thinking you can't love me. What can you love me for?"

"My God! what can I do? . . ." she said, and burst into tears.

"Oh! what have I done?" he cried, and kneeling before her, he
fell to kissing her hands.

When the princess came into the room five minutes later, she
found them completely reconciled. Kitty had not simply assured
him that she loved him, but had gone so far--in answer to his
question, what she loved him for--as to explain what for. She
told him that she loved him because she understood him
completely, because she knew what he would like, and because
everything he liked was good. And this seemed to him perfectly
clear. When the princess came to them, they were sitting side by
side on the chest, sorting the dresses and disputing over Kitty's
wanting to give Dunyasha the brown dress she had been wearing
when Levin proposed to her, while he insisted that that dress
must never be given away, but Dunyasha must have the blue one.

"How is it you don't see? She's a brunette, and it won't suit
her.... I've worked it all out."

Hearing why he had come, the princess was half humorously, half
seriously angry with him, and sent him home to dress and not to
hinder Kitty's hair-dressing, as Charles the hair-dresser was
just coming.

"As it is, she's been eating nothing lately and is losing her
looks, and then you must come and upset her with your nonsense,"
she said to him. "Get along with you, my dear!"

Levin, guilty and shamefaced, but pacified, went back to his
hotel. His brother, Darya Alexandrovna, and Stepan Arkadyevitch,
all in full dress, were waiting for him to bless him with the
holy picture. There was no time to lose. Darya Alexandrovna had
to drive home again to fetch her curled and pomaded son, who was
to carry the holy pictures after the bride. Then a carriage had
to be sent for the best man, and another that would take Sergey
Ivanovitch away would have to be sent back.... Altogether
there were a great many most complicated matters to be considered
and arranged. One thing was unmistakable, that there must be no
delay, as it was already half-past six.

Nothing special happened at the ceremony of benediction with the
holy picture. Stepan Arkadyevitch stood in a comically solemn
pose beside his- wife, took the holy picture, and telling Levin
to bow down to the ground, he blessed him with his kindly,
ironical smile, and kissed him three times; Darya Alexandrovna
did the same, and immediately vas in a hurry to get off, and
again plunged into the intricate question of the destinations of
the various carriages.

"Come, I'll tell you how we'll manage: you drive in our carriage
to fetch him, and Sergey Ivanovitch, if he'll be so good, will
drive there and then send his carriage."

"Of course; I shall be delighted."

"We'll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?" said
Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Yes," answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes
for him to dress.

Chapter 3

A crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the
church lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in
getting into the main entrance were crowding about the windows,
pushing, wrangling, and peeping through the gratings.

More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks
along the street by the police. A police officer, regardless of
the frost, stood at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More
carriages were continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers
and carrying their trains, and men taking off their helmets or
black hats kept walking into the church. Inside the church both
lusters were already lighted, and all the candles before the holy
pictures. The gilt on the red ground of the holy picture-stand,
and the gilt relief on the pictures, and the silver of the
lusters and candlesticks, and the stones of the floor, and the
rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the steps of the
altar, and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and
surplices--all were flooded with light. On the right side of the
warm church, in the crowd of frock coats and white ties, uniforms
and broadcloth, velvet, satin, hair and flowers, bare shoulders
and arms and long gloves, there was discreet but lively
conversation that echoed strangely in the high cupola. Every time
there was heard the creak of the opened door the conversation in
the crowd died away, and everybody looked round expecting to see
the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had opened more
than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest or
guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or a
spectator, who had eluded or softened the police officer, and
went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. Both the guests
and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases
of anticipation.

At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive
immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being
late. Then they began to look more and more often towards the
door, and to talk of whether anything could have happened. Then
the long delay began to be positively discomforting, and
relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking
of the bridegroom but were engrossed in conversation.

The head deacon, as though to remind them of the value of his
time, coughed impatiently, making the window-panes quiver in
their frames. In the choir the bored choristers could be heard
trying their voices and blowing their noses. The priest was
continually sending first the beadle and then the deacon to find
out whether the bridegroom had not come, more and more often he
went himself, in a lilac vestment and an embroidered sash, to the
side-door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At last one of the
ladies, glancing at her watch, said, "It really is strange,
though!" and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly
expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the
bridegroom's best men went to find out what had happened. Kitty
meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and in her white dress
and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms she was standing in
the drawing-room of the Shtcherbatskys' house with her sister,
Madame Lvova, who was her bridal-mother. She was looking out of
the window, and had been for over half an hour anxiously
expecting to hear from her best man that her bridegroom was at
the church.

Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and
waistcoat, was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel,
continually putting his head out of the door and looking up and
down the corridor. But in the corridor there was no sign of the
person he was looking for and he came back in despair, and
frantically waving his hands addressed Stepan Arkadyevitch, who
was smoking serenely.

"Was ever a man in such a fearful fool's position?" he said.

"Yes, it is stupid," Stepan Arkadyevitch asserited, smiling
soothingly. "But don't worry, it'll be brought directly."

"No, what is to be done!" said Levin, with smothered fury. "And
these fools of open waistcoats! Out of the question!" he said,
looking at the crumpled front of his shirt. "And what if the
things have been taken on to the railway station!" he roared in
desperation.

"Then you must put on mine."

"I ought to have done so long ago, if at all."

"It's not nice to look ridiculous.... Wait a bit! it will come
round."

The point was that when Levin asked for his evening suit, Kouzma,
his old servant, had brought him the coat, waistcoat, and
everything that was wanted.

"But the shirt!" cried Levin.

"You've got a shirt on," Konzma answered, with a placid smile.

Kouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on
receiving instructions to pack up everything and send it round to
the Shtcherbatskys' house, from which the young people were to
set out the same evening, he had done so, packing everything but
the dress suit. The shirt worn since the morning was crumpled and
out of the question with the fashionable open waistcoat. It was a
long way to send to the Shtcherbatskys'. They sent out to buy a
shirt. The servant came back; everything was shut up--it was
Sunday. They sent to Stepan Arkadyevitch's and brought a shirt--
it was impossibly wide and short. They sent finally to the
Shtcherbatskys' to unpack the things. The bridegroom was expected
at the church while he was pacing up and down his room like a
wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor, and with
horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to
Kitty and what she might be thinking now.

At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the
shirt.

"Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van," said
Kouzma.

Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor, not
looking at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.

"You won't help matters like this," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with
a smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. "It will come
round, it will come round ...I tell you."

Chapter 4

"They've come!" "Here he is!" "Which one?" "Rather young, eh?"
"Why, my dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!" were the
comments in the crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the
entrance, walked with her into the church.

Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the
guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw
nothing and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.

Every one said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was
not nearly so pretty on her wedding-day as usual; but Levin did
not think so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long
white veil and white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped
collar, that in such a maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the
sides and only showed it in front, her strikingly slender figure,
and it seemed to him that she looked better than ever--not
because these flowers, this veil, this gown from Paris added
anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the elaborate
sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet face, of
her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic expression
of guileless truthfulness.

"I was beginning to think you meant to run away," she said, and
smiled to him.

"It's so stupid, what happened to me, I'm ashamed to speak of
it!" he said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey
Ivanovitch, who came up to him.

"This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!" said Sergey
Ivanovitch, shaking his head and smiling.

"Yes, yes!" answered Levin, without an idea of what they were
talking about.

"Now, Kostya, you have to decide," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with
an air of mock dismay, "a weighty question. You are at this
moment just in the humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask
me, are they to light the candles that have been lighted before
or candles that have never been lighted? It's a matter of ten
roubles," he added, relaxing his lips into a smile. "I have
decided, but I was afraid you might not agree."

Levin saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.

"Well, how's it to be then?--unlighted or lighted candles? that's
the question."

"Yes, yes, unlighted."

"Oh, I'm very glad. The question's decided!" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling. "How silly men are, though, in this
position," he said to Tchirikov, when Levin, after looking
absently at him, had moved back to his bride.

"Kitty, mind you're the first to step on the carpet," said
Countess Nordston, coming up. "You're a nice person!" she said to
Levin.

"Aren't you frightened, eh?" said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.

"Are you cold? You're pale. Stop a minute, stoop down," said
Kitty's sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, handsome arms
she smilingly set straight the flowers on her head.

Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried
and then laughed unnaturally.

Kitty looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Levin.

Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments,
and the priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in
the forepart of the church. The priest turned to Levin saying
something. Levin did not hear what the priest said.

"Take the bride's hand and lead her up," the best man said to
Levin.

It was a long while before Levin could make out what was expected
of him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him
begin again--because he kept taking Kitty by the wrong arm or
with the wrong arm--till he understood at last that what he had
to do was, without changing his position, to take her right hand
in his right hand. When at last he had taken the bride's hand in
the correct way, the priest walked a few paces in front of them
and stopped at the lectern. The crowd of friends and relations
moved after them, with a buzz of talk and a rustle of skirts.
Some one stooped down and pulled out the bride's train. The
church became so still that the drops of wax could be heard
falling from the candles.

The little old priest in his ecclesiastical cap, with his long
silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling
with something at the lectern, putting out his little old hands
from under the heavy silver vestment with the gold cross on the
back of it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch approached him cautiously, whispered
something, and making a sign to Levin, walked back again.

The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and
holding them sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he
turned, facing the bridal pair. The priest was the same old man
that had confessed Levin. He looked with weary and melancholy
eyes at the bride and bridegroom, sighed, and putting his right
hand out from his vestment, blessed the bridegroom with it, and
also with a shade of solicitous tenderness laid the crossed
fingers on the bowed head of Kitty. Then he gave them the
candles, and taking the censer, moved slowly away from them.

"Can it be true?" thought Levin, and he looked round at his
bride. Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from
the scarcely perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew
she was aware of his eyes upon her. She did not look round, but
the high scalloped collar, that reached her little pink ear,
trembled faintly. He saw that a sigh was held back in her throat,
and the little hand in the long glove shook as it held the
candle.

All the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends
and relations, their annoyance, his ludicrous position--all
suddenly passed way and he was filled with joy and dread.

The handsome, stately head-deacon wearing a silver robe and his
curly locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped
smartly forward, and lifting his stole on two fingers, stood
opposite the priest.

"Blessed be the name of the Lord," the solemn syllables rang out
slowly one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of
sound.

"Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, is now, and
ever shall be," the little old priest answered in a submissive,
piping voice, still fingering something at the lectern. And the
full chorus of the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole
church, from the windows to the vaulted roof, with broad waves of
melody. It grew stronger, rested for an instant, and slowly died
away.

They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for
salvation, for the Holy Synod, and for the Tsar; they prayed,
too, for the servants of God, Konstantin and Ekaterina, now
plighting their troth.

"Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we
beseech Thee," the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice
of the head-deacon.

Levin heard the words, and they impressed him. "How did they
guess that it is help, just help that one wants?" he thought,
recalling all his fears and doubts of late. "What do I know? what
can I do in this fearful business," he thought, "without help?
Yes, it is help I want now."

When the deacon had finished the prayer for the Imperial family,
the priest turned to the bridal pair with a book: "Eternal God,
that joinest together in love them that were separate," he read
in a gentle, piping voice: "who hast ordained the union of holy
wedlock that cannot be set asunder, Thou who didst bless Isaac
and Rebecca and their descendants, according to Thy Holy
Covenant; bless Thy servants, Konstantin and Ekaterina, leading
them in the path of all good works. For gracious and merciful art
Thou, our Lord, and glory be to Thee, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost, now and ever shall be."

"Amen!" the unseen choir sent rolling again upon the air.

" 'Joinest together in love them that were separate.' What deep
meaning in those words, and how they correspond with what one
feels at this moment," thought Levin. "Is she feeling the same as
I?"

And looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he
concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this
was a mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the
words of the service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could
not listen to them and take them in, so strong was the one
feeling that filled her breast and grew stronger and stronger.
That feeling was joy at the completion of the process that for
the last month and a half had been going on in her soul, and had
during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her. On the
day when in the drawing-room of the house in Arbaty Street she
had gone up to him in her brown dress, and given herself to him
without a word--on that day, at that hour, there took place in
her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite
different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, while the
old life was actually going on as before. Those six weeks had for
her been a time of the utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All
her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this one
man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a
feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion, even less
comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was
going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living
the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter
insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to
habits, to the people she had loved, who loved her--to her
mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender
father, till then dearer than all the world. At one moment she
was horrified at this indifference, at another she rejoiced at
what had brought her to this indifference. She could not frame a
thought, not a wish apart from life with this man; but this new
life was not yet, and she could not even picture it clearly to
herself. There was only anticipation, the dread and joy of the
new and the unknown. And now behold--anticipation and uncertainty
and remorse at the abandonment of the old life--all was ending,
and the new was beginning. This new life could not but have
terrors for her inexperience; but, terrible or not, the change
had been wrought six weeks before in her soul, and this was
merely the final sanction of what had long been completed in her
heart.

Turning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty
took Kitty's little ring, and asking Levin for his hand, put it
on the first joint of his finger. "The servant of God,
Konstantin, plights his troth to the servant of God, Ekaterina."
And putting his big ring on Kitty's touchingly weak, pink little
finger, the priest said the same thing.

And the bridal pair tried several times to understand what they
had to do, and each time made some mistake and were corrected by
the priest in a whisper. At last, having duly performed the
ceremony, having signed the rings with the cross, the priest
handed Kitty the big ring, and Levin the little one. Again they
were puzzled and passed the rings from hand to hand, still
without doing what was expected.

Dolly, Tchirikov, and Stepan Arkadyevitch stepped forward to set
them right. There was an interval of hesitation, whispering, and
smiles; but the expression of solemn emotion on the faces of the
betrothed pair did not change: on the contrary, in their
perplexity over their hands they looked more grave and deeply
moved than before, and the smile with which Stepan Arkadyevitch
whispered to them that now they would each put on their own ring
died away on his lips. He had a feeling that any smile would jar
on them.

"Thou who didst from the beginning create male and female," the
priest read after the exchange of rings, "from Thee woman was
given to man to be a helpmeet to him, and for the procreation of
children. O Lord, our God, who hast poured down the blessings of
Thy Truth according to Thy Holy Covenant upon Thy chosen
servants, our fathers, from generation to generation, bless Thy
servants Konstantin and Ekaterina, and make their troth fast in
faith, and union of hearts, and truth, and love...."

Levin felt more and more that all his ideas of marriage, all his
dreams of how he would order his life, were mere childishness,
and that it was something he had not understood hitherto, and now
understood less than ever, though it was being performed upon
him. The lump in his throat rose higher and higher, tears that
would not be checked came into his eyes.

Chapter 5

In the church there was all  Moscow, all the friends and
relations; and  during the ceremony of plighting troth, in the
brilliantly lighted church, there was an incessant flow of
discreetly subdued talk in the circle of gaily dressed women and
girls, and men in white ties, frockcoats, and uniforms. The talk
was principally kept up by the men, while the women were absorbed
in watching every detail of the ceremony, which always means so
much to them.

In the little group nearest to the bride were her two sisters:
Dolly, and the other one, the self-possessed beauty, Madame
Lvova, who had just arrived from abroad.

"Why is it Marie's in lilac, as bad as black, at a wedding?" said
Madame Korsunskaya.

"With her complexion, it's the one salvation," responded Madame
Trubetskaya. "I wonder why they had the wedding in the evening?
It's like shop-people . . ."

"So much prettier. I was married in the evening too . . ."
answered Madame Korsunskaya, and she sighed, remembering how
charming she had been that day, and how absurdly in love her
husband was, and how different it all was now.

"They say if any one's best man more than ten times, he'll never
be married. I wanted to be for the tenth time, but the post was
taken," said Count Siniavin to the pretty Princess Tcharskaya,
who had designs on him.

Princess Tcharskaya only answered with a smile. She looked at
Kitty, thinking how and when she would stand with Count Siniavin
in Kitty's place, and how she would remind him then of his joke
to-day.

Shtcherbatsky told the old maid of honor, Madame Nikolaeva, that
he meant to put the crown on Kitty's chignon for luck.

"She ought not to have worn a chignon," answered Madame
Nikolaeva, who had long ago made up her mind that if the elderly
widower she was angling for married her, the wedding should be of
the simplest. "I don't like such grandeur."

Sergey Ivanovitch was talking to Darya Alexandrovna, jestingly
assuring her that the custom of going away after the wedding was
becoming common because newly married people always felt a little
ashamed of themselves.

"Your brother may feel proud of himself. She's a marvel of
sweetness. I believe you're envious."

"Oh, I've got over that, Darya Alexandrovna," he answered, and a
melancholy and serious expression suddenly came over his face.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling his sister-in-law his joke about
divorce.

"The wreath wants setting straight," she answered, not hearing
him.

"What a pity she's lost her looks so," Countess Nordston said to
Madame Lvova. "Still he's not worth her little finger, is he?"

"Oh, I like him so--not because he's my future beau-frere,"
answered Madame Lvova. "And how well he's behaving! It's so
difficult, too, to look well in such a position, not to be
ridiculous. And he's not ridiculous, and not affected; one can
see he's moved."

"You expected it, I suppose?"

"Almost. She always cared for him."

"Well, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I
warned Kitty."

"It will make no difference," said Madame Lvova; "we're all
obedient wives; it's in our family."

"Oh, I stepped on the rug before Vassily on purpose. And you,
Dolly?"

Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer.
She was deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes, and she could
not have spoken without crying. She was rejoicing over Kitty and
Levin; going back in thought to her own wedding, she glanced at
the radiant figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgot all the
present, and remembered only her own innocent love. She recalled
not herself only, but all her women-friends and acquaintances.
She thought of them on the one day of their triumph, when they
had stood hke Kitty under the wedding crown, with love and hope
and dread in their hearts, renouncing the past, and stepping
forward into the mysterious future. Among the brides that came
back to her memory, she thought too of her darlng Anna, of whose
proposed divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood
just as innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil. And now? "It
s terribly strange," she said to herself. It was not merely the
sisters, the women-friends and female relations of the bride who
were following every detail of the ceremony. Women who were quite
strangers, mere spectators, were watching it excitedly, holding
their breath, in fear of losing a single movement or expression
of the bride and bridegroom, and angrily not answering, often not
hearing, the remarks of the callous men, who kept making joking
or irrelevant observations.

"Why has she been crying? Is she being married against her will?"

"Against her will to a fine fellow like that? A prince, isn't
he?"

"Is that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the
deacon booms out, 'And fearing her husband.'"

"Are the choristers from Tchudovo?"

"No, from the Synod."

"I asked the footman. He says he's going to take her home to his
country place at once. Awfully rich, they say. That's why she's
being married to him."

"No, they're a well-matched pair."

"I say, Marya Vassibevna, you were making out those fly-away
crinolines were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce
dress--an ambassador's wife they say she is--how her skirt
bounces out from side to sides"

"What a pretty dear the bride is--like a lamb decked with
flowers! Well, say what you will, we women feel for our sister."

Such were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had
succeeded in slipping in at the church doors.

Chapter 6

When the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the beadle spread
before the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink
silken stuff, the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psahm,
in which the bass and tenor sang responses to one another, and
the priest turning round pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk
rug. Though both had often heard a great deal about the saying
that the one who steps first on the rug will be the head of the
house, neither Levin nor Kitty were capable of recollecting it,
as they took the few steps towards it. They did not hear the loud
remarks and disputes that followed, some maintaining he had
stepped on first, and others that both had stepped on together.

After the customary questions, whether they desired to enter upon
matrimony, and whether they were pledged to any one else, and
their answers, which sounded strange to themselves, a new
ceremony began Kitty listened to the words of the prayer, trying
to make out their mean ing, but she could not. The feeling of
triumph and radiant happiness flooded her soul more and more as
the ceremony went on, and deprived her of all power of attention.

They prayed: "Endow them with continence and fruitfulness, and
vouchsafe that their hearts may rejoice looking upon their sons
and daughters." They alluded to God's creation of a wife from
Adam's rib "and for this cause a man shall leave father and
mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one
flesh," and that "this is a great mystery"; they prayed that God
would make them fruitful and bless them like Isaac and Rebecca,
Joseph, Moses and Zipporah, and that they might look upon their
children's children. "That's all splendid," thought Kitty,
catching the words, "all that's just as it should be," and a
smile of happiness, unconsciously reflected in everyone who
looked at her, beamed on her radiant face.

"Put it on quite," voices were heard urging when the priest had
put on the wedding crowns and Shtcherbatsky, his hand shaking in
its three-button glove, held the crown high above her head.

"Put it on!" she whispered, smiling.

Levin looked round at her, and was struck by the joyful radiance
on her face, and unconsciously her feeling infected him. He too,
like her felt glad and happy.

They enjoyed hearing the epistle read, and the roll of the head-
deacon's voice at the last verse, awaited with such impatience by
the outside public. They enjoyed drinking out of the shallow cup
of warm red wine and water, and they were still more pleased when
the priest, flinging back his stole and taking both their hands
in his, led them round the lectern to the accompaniment of bass
voices chanting "Glory to God."

Shtcherbatsky and Tchirikov, supporting the crowns and stumbling
over the bride's train, smiling too and seeming delighted at
something, were at one moment left behind, at the next treading
on the bridal pair as the priest came to a halt. The spark of joy
kindled in Kitty seemed to have infected every one in the church.
It seemed to Levin that the priest and the deacon too wanted to
smile just as he did.

Taking the crowns off their heads the priest read the last prayer
and congratulated the young people. Levin looked at Kitty, and he
had never before seen her look as she did. She was charming with
the new radiance of happiness in her face. Levin longed to say
something to her, but he did not know whether it was all over.
The priest got him out of his difficulty. He smiled his kindly
smile and said gently, "Kiss your wife, and you kiss your
husband," and took the candles out of their hands.

Levin kissed her smiling lips with timid care, gave her his arm,
and with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the
church. He did not believe, he could not believe, that it was
true. It was only when their wondering and timid eyes met that he
believed in it, because he felt that they were one.

After supper, the same night, the young people left for the
country.

Chapter 7

Vronsky and Anna had been traveling for three months together  in
Europe. They had visited Venice, Rome, and Naples, and had just
arrived at a small Italian town where they meant to stay some
time. A handsome head waiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from
the neck upwards, an evening coat, a broad white cambric
shirt-front, and a bunch of trinkets hanging above his rounded
stomach, stood with his hands in the full curve of his pockets,
looking contemptuously from under his eyelids while he gave some
frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped him. Catching the
sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the entry
towards the stair-case, the head waiter turned round, and seeing
the Russian count, who had taken their best rooms, he took his
hands out of his pockets deferentially, and with a bow informed
him that a courier had been, and that the business about the
palazzo had been arranged. The steward was prepared to sign the
agreement.

"Ah! I'm glad to hear it," said Vronsky. "Is madame at home or
not?"

"Madame has been out for a walk but has returned now," answered
the waiter.

Vronsky took off his soft, wide-brimmed hat and passed his
handkerchief over his heated brow and hair, which had grown half
over his ears, and was brushed back covering the bald patch on
his head. And glancing casually at the gentleman, who still stood
there gazing intently at him, he would have gone on.

"This gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring after you," said
the head waiter.

With mingled feelings of annoyance at never being able to get
away from acquaintances anywhere, and longing to find some sort
of diversion from the monotony of his life, Vronsky looked once
more at the gentleman, who had retreated and stood still again,
and at the same moment a light came into the eyes of both.

"Golenishtchev!"

"Vronsky!"

It really was Golenishtchev, a comrade of Vronsky's in the Corps
of Pages. In the corps Golenishtchev had belonged to the liberal
party; he left the corps without entering the army, and had never
taken office under the government. Vronsky and he had gone
completely different ways on leaving the corps, and had only met
once since.

At that meeting Vronsky perceived that Golenishtchev had taken up
a sort of lofty, intellectually liberal line, and was
consequently disposed to look down upon Vronsky's interests and
calling in life. Hence Vronsky had met him with the chilling and
haughty manner he so well knew how to assume, the meaning of
which was: "You may like or dislike my way of life, that's a
matter of the most perfect indifference to me; you will have to
treat me with respect if you want to know me." Golenishtchev had
been contemptuously indifferent to the tone taken by Vronsky.
This second meeting might have been expected, one would have
supposed, to estrange them still more. But now they beamed and
exclaimed with delight on recognizing one another. Vronsky would
never have expected to be so pleased to see Golenishtchev, but
probably he was not himself aware how bored he was. He forgot the
disagreeable impression of their last meeting, and with a face of
frank delight held out his hand to his old comrade. The same
expression of delight replaced the look of uneasiness on
Golenishtchev's face.

"How glad I am to meet you!" said Vronsky, showing his strong
white teeth in a friendly smile.

"I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn't know which one. I'm very,
very glad!"

"Let's go in. Come, tell me what you're doing."

"I've been living here for two years. I'm working."

"Ah!" said Vronsky, with sympathy; "let's go in." And with the
habit common with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he
wanted to keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.

"Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am
going to see her now," he said in French, carefully scrutinizing
Golenishtchev's face.

"Ah! I did not know" (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered
carelessly. "Have you been here long?" he added.

"Four days," Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his
friend's face intently.

"Yes, he's a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,"
Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of
Golenishtchev's face and the change of subject. "I can introduce
him to Anna, he looks at it properly."

During those three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with
Anna, he had always on meeting new people asked himself how the
new person would look at his relations with Anna, and for the
most part, in men, he had met with the "proper" way of looking at
it. But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it
"properly" had been asked, exactly how they did look at it, both
he and they would have been greatly puzzled to answer.

In reality, those who in Vronsky's opinion had the "proper" view
had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred
persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble
problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they
behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant
questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import
and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of
it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for to put all
this into words.

Vronsky at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and
therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And in fact,
Golenishtchev's manner to Madame Karenina, when he was taken to
call on her, was all that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously
without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects
which might lead to embarrassment.

He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and
still more by the frankness with which she accepted her position.
She blushed when Vronsky brought in Golenishtchev, and he was
extremely charmed by this childish blush overspreading her candid
and handsome face. But what he liked particularly was the way in
which at once, as though on purpose that there might be no
misunderstanding with an outsider, she called Vronsky simply
Alexey, and said they were moving into a house they had just
taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev liked this
direct and simple attitude to her own position. Looking at Anna's
manner of simple-hearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing Alexey
Alexandrovitch and Vronsky, Golenishtchev fancied that he
understood her perfectly. He fancied that he understood what she
was utterly unable to understand: how it was that, having made
her husband wretched, having abandoned him and her son and lost
her good name, she yet felt full of spirits, gaiety, and
happiness.

"It's in the guide-book," said Golenishtchev, referring to the
palazzo Vronsky had taken. "There's a first-rate Tintoretto
there. One of his latest period."

"I tell you what: it's a lovely day, let's go and have another
look at it," said Vronsky, addressing Anna.

"I shall be very glad to; I'll go and put on my hat. Would you
say it's hot?" she said, stopping short in the door-way and
looking inquiringly at Vronsky. And again a vivid flush
overspread her face.

Vronsky saw from her eyes that she did not know on what terms he
cared to be with Golenishtchev, and so was afraid of not behaving
as he would wish.

He looked a long, tender look at her.

"No, not very," he said.

And it seemed to her that she understood everything, most of all,
that he was pleased with her; and smiling to him, she walked with
her rapid step out at the door.

The friends glanced at one another, and a look of hesitation came
into both faces, as though Golenishtchev, unmistakably admiring
her, would have liked to say something about her, and could not
find the right thing to say, while Vronsky desired and dreaded
his doing so.

"Well then," Vronsky began to start a conversation of some sort;
"so you're settled here? You're still at the same work, then?" he
went on, recalling that he had been told Golenishtchev was
writing something.

"Yes, I'm writing the second part of the Two Elements," said
Golenishtchev, coloring with pleasure at the question--"that is,
to be exact, I am not writing it yet; I am preparing, collecting
materials. It will be of far wider scope, and will touch on
almost all questions. We in Russia refuse to see that we are the
heirs of Byzantium," and he launched into a long and heated
explanation of his views.

Vronsky at the first moment felt embarrassed at not even knowing
of the first part of the Two Elements, of which the author spoke
as something well known. But as Golenishtchev began to lay down
his opinions and Vronsky was able to follow them even without
knowing the Two Elements, he listened to him with some interest,
for Golenishtchev spoke well. But Vronsky was startled and
annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which Golenishtchev
talked of the subject that engrossed him. As he went on talking,
his eyes glittered more and more angrily; he was more and more
hurried in his replies to imaginary opponents, and his face grew
more and more excited and worried. Remembering Golenishtchev, a
thin, lively, good-natured and well-bred boy, always at the head
of the class, Vronsky could not make out the reason of his
irritability, and he did not like it. What he particularly
disliked was that Golenishtchev, a man belonging to a good set,
should put himself on a level with some scribbling fellows, with
whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth it? Vronsky
disliked it, yet he felt that Golenishtchev was unhappy, and was
sorry for him. Unhappiness, almost mental derangement, was
visible on his mobile, rather handsome face, while without even
noticing Anna's coming in, he went on hurriedly and hotly
expressing his views.

When Anna came in in her hat and cape, and her lovely hand
rapidly swinging her parasol, and stood beside him, it was with a
feeling of relief that Vronsky broke away from the plaintive eyes
of Golenishtchev which fastened persistently upon him, and with a
fresh rush of love looked at his charming companion, full of life
and happiness. Golenishtchev recovered himself with an effort,
and at first was dejected and gloomy, but Anna, disposed to feel
friendly with every one as she was at that time, soon revived his
spirits by her direct and lively manner. After trying various
subjects of conversation, she got him upon painting, of which he
talked very well, and she listened to him attentively. They
walked to the house they had taken, and looked over it.

"I am very glad of one thing," said Anna to Golenishtchev when
they were on their way back: "Alexey will have a capital atelier.
You must certainly take that room," she said to Vronsky in
Russian, using the affectionately familiar form as though she saw
that Golenishtchev would become intimate with them in their
isolation, and that there was no need of reserve before him.

"Do you paint?" said Golenishtchev, turning round quickly to
Vronsky.

"Yes, I used to study long ago, and now I have begun to do a
little," said Vronsky, reddening.

"He has great talent," said Anna with a delighted smile. "I'm no
judge, of course. But good judges have said the same."

Chapter 8

Anna, in that first period of her emancipation and rapid return
to  health, felt herself unpardonably happy and full of the joy
of life. The thought of her husband's unhappiness did not poison
her happiness. On one side that memory was too awful to be
thought of. On the other side her husband's unhappiness had given
her too much happiness to be regretted. The memory of all that
had happened after her illness: her reconciliation with her
husband, its breakdown, the news of Vronsky's Wound, his visit,
the preparations for divorce, the departure from her husband's
house, the parting from her son--all that seemed to her like a
delirious dream, from which she had waked up alone with Vronsky
abroad. The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in
her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man
might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That
man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the
sole means of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful
facts.

One consolatory reflection upon her conduct had occurred to her
at the first moment of the final rupture, and when now she
recalled all the past, she remembered that one reflection. "I
have inevitably made that man wretched," she thought; "but I
don't want to profit by his misery. I too am suffering, and shall
suffer; I am losing what I prized above everything--I am losing
my good name and my son. I have done wrong, and so I don't want
happiness, I don't want a divorce, and shall suffer from my shame
and the separation from my child." But, however sincerely Anna
had meant to suffer, she was not suffering. Shame there was not.
With the tact of which both had such a large share, they had
succeeded in avoiding Russian ladies abroad, and so had never
placed themselves in a false position, and everywhere they had
met people who pretended that they perfectly understood their
position, far better indeed than they did themselves. Separation
from the son she loved--even that did not cause her anguish in
these early days. The baby girl--his child--was so sweet, and had
so won Anna's heart, since she was all that was left her, that
Anna rarely thought of her son.

The desire for life, waxing stronger with recovered health, was
so intense, and the conditions of life were so new and pleasant,
that Anna felt unpardonably happy. The more she got to know
Vronsky, the more she loved him. She loved him for himself, and
for his love for her. Her complete ownership of him was a
continual joy to her. His presence was always sweet to her. All
the traits of his character, which she learned to know better and
better, were unutterably dear to her. His appearance, changed by
his civilian dress, was as fascinating to her as though she were
some young girl in love. In everything he said, thought, and did,
she saw something particularly noble and elevated. Her adoration
of him alarmed her indeed; she sought and could not find in him
anything not fine. She dared not show him her sense of her own
insignificance beside him. It seemed to her that, knowing this,
he might sooner cease to love her; and she dreaded nothing now so
much as losing his love, though she had no grounds for fearing
it. But she could not help being grateful to him for his attitude
to her, and showing that she appreciated it. He, who had in her
opinion such a marked aptitude for a political career, in which
he would have been certain to play a leading part--he had
sacrificed his ambition for her sake, and never betrayed the
slightest regret. He was more lovingly respectful to her than
ever, and the constant care that she should not feel the
awkwardness of her position never deserted him for a single
instant. He, so manly a man, never opposed her, had indeed, with
her, no will of his own, and was anxious, it seemed, for nothing
but to anticipate her wishes. And she could not but appreciate
this, even though the very intensity of his solicitude for her,
the atmosphere of care with which he surrounded her, sometimes
weighed upon her.

Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what
he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt
that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain
of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It
showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves
happiness as the realization of their desires. For a time after
joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had
felt all the delight of freedom in general of which he had known
nothing before, and of freedom in his love,--and he was content,
but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up
in his heart a desire for desires--ennui. Without conscious
intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it
for a desire and an object. Sixteen hours of the day must be
occupied in some way, since they were living abroad in complete
freedom, outside the conditions of social life which filled up
time in Petersburg. As for the amusements of bachelor existence,
which had provided Vronsky with entertainment on previous tours
abroad, they could not be thought of, since the sole attempt of
the sort had led to a sudden attack of depression in Anna, quite
out of proportion with the cause--a late supper with bachelor
friends. Relations with the society of the place--foreign and
Russian--were equally cut of the question awing to the
irregularity of their position. The inspection of objects of
interest, apart from the fact that everything had been seen
already, had not for Vronsky, a Russian and a sensible man, the
immense significance Englishmen are able to attach to that
pursuit.

And just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it
can get, hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite
unconsciously clutched first at politics, then at new books, and
then at pictures.

As he had from a child a taste for painting, and as, not knowing
what to spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings,
he came to a stop at painting, began to take interest in it, and
concentrated upon it the unoccupied mass of desires which
demanded satisfaction.

He had a ready appreciation of art, and probably, with a taste
for imitating art, he supposed himself to have the real thing
essential for an artist, and after hesitating for some time which
style of painting to select--religious, historical, realistic, or
genre painting--he set to work to paint. He appreciated all
kinds, and could have felt inspired by any one of them; but he
had no conception of the possibility of knowing nothing at all of
any school of painting, and of being inspired directly by what is
within the soul, without caring whether what is painted will
belong to any recognized school. Since he knew nothing of this,
and drew his inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly
from life embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly and
easily, and as quickly and easily came his success in painting
something very similar to the sort of painting he was trying to
imitate.

More than any other style he liked the French--graceful and
effective --and in that style he began to paint Anna's portrait
in Italian costume, and the portrait seemed to him, and to every
one who saw it, extremely successful.

Chapter 9

The old neglected palazzo, with its lofty carved ceilings and
frescoes on the walls, with its floors of mosaic, with its heavy
yellow stuff curtains on the windows, with its vases on
pedestals, and its open fireplaces, its carved doors and gloomy
reception-rooms, hung with pictures--this palazzo did much, by
its very appearance after they had moved into it, to confirm in
Vronsky the agreeable illusion that he was not so much a Russian
country gentleman, a retired army officer, as an enlightened
amateur and patron of the arts, himself a modest artist who had
renounced the world, his connections, and his ambition for the
sake of the woman he loved.

The pose chosen by Vronsky with their removal into the palazzo
was completely successful, and having, through Golenishtchev,
made acquaintance with a few interesting people, for a time he
was satisfied. He painted studies from nature under the guidance
of an Italian professor of painting, and studied mediaeval
Italian life. Media vat Italian life so fascinated Vronsky that
he even wore a hat and flung a cloak over his shoulder in the
medieval style, which, indeed, was extremely becoming to him.

"Here we live, and know nothing of what's going on," Vronsky said
to Golenishtchev as he came to see him one morning. "Have you
seen Mihailov's picture?" he said, handing him a Russian gazette
he had received that morning, and pointing to an article on a
Russian artist, living in the very same town, and just finishing
a picture which had long been talked about, and had been bought
beforehand. The article reproached the government and the academy
for letting so remarkable an artist be left without encouragement
and support.

"I've seen it," answered Golenishtchev. "Of course, he's not
without talent, but it's all in a wrong direction. It's all the
Ivanov-Strauss-Renan attitude to Christ and to religious
painting."

"What is the subject of the picture?" asked Anna.

"Christ before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all
the realism of the new school."

And the question of the subject of the picture having brought him
to one of his favorite theories, Golenishtchev launched forth
into a disquisition on it.

"I can't understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake.
Christ always has His definite embodiment in the art of the great
masters. And therefore, if they want to depict, not God, but a
revolutionist or a sage, let them take from history a Socrates, a
Franklin, a Charlotte Corday, but not Christ. They take the very
figure which cannot be taken for their art, and then . . ."

"And is it true that this Mihailov is in such poverty?" asked
Vronsky, thinking that, as a Russian Maecenas, it was his duty to
assist the artist regardless of whether the picture were good or
bad.

"I should say not. He's a remarkable portrait-painter. Have you
ever seen his portrait of Madame Vassiltchikova? But I believe he
doesn't care about painting any more portraits, and so very
likely he is in want. I maintain that . . ."

"Couldn't we ask him to paint a portrait of Anna Arkadyevna?"
said Vronsky.

"Why mine?" said Anna. "After yours I donit want another
portrait. Better have one of Annie" (so she called her baby
girl). "Here she is," she added, looking out of the window at the
handsome Italian nurse, who was carrying the child out into the
garden, and immediately glancing unnoticed at Vronsky. The
handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was painting a head for his
picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna's life. He painted with
her as his model, admired her beauty and mediaevalism, and Anna
dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming
jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly
gracious and condescending both to her and her little son.
Vronsky, too, glanced out of the window and into Anna's eyes,
and, turning at once to Golenishtchev, he said:

"Do you know this Mihailov?"

"I have met him. But he's a queer fish, and quite without
breeding. You know, one of those uncouth new people one's so
often coming across nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you
know, who are reared d'emblee in theories of atheism, scepticism,
and materialism. In former days," said Golenishtchev, not
observing, or not willing to observe, that both Anna and Vronsky
wanted to speak, "in former days the freethinker was a man who
had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and
only through conflict and struggle came to freethought; but now
there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up
without even having heard of principles of morality or of
religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly
in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages.
Well, he's of that class. He's the son, it appears, of some
Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he
got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he's no
fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him the
very source of culture--the magazines. In old times, you see, a
man who wanted to educate himself--a Frenchman, for instance--
would have set to work to study all the classics and theologians
and tragedians and historiaris and philosophers, and, you know,
all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he
goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly
assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation, and he's
ready. And that's not all--twenty years ago he would have found
in that literature traces of conflict with authorities, with the
creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict
that there was something else; but now he comes at once upon a
literature in which the old creeds do not even furnish matter for
discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is nothing
else~volution, natural selection, struggle for existence--and
that's all. In my article I've . . ."

"I tell you what," said Anna, who had for a long while been
exchanging wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in
the least interested in the education of this artist, but was
simply absorbed by the idea of assisting him, and ordering a
portrait of him; "I tell you what," she said, resolutely
interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still talking away, "let's go
and see him!"

Golenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed.
But as the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to
take the carriage.

An hour later Anna, with Golenishtchev by her side and Vronsky on
the front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new
ugly house in the remote suburb. On learning from the porter's
wife, who came out to them, that Mihailov saw visitors at his
studio, but that at that moment he was in his lodging only a
couple of steps off, they sent her to him with their cards,
asking permission to see his picture.

Chapter 10

The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of
Count  Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the
morning he had been working in his studio at his big picture. On
getting home he flew into a rage with his wife for not having
managed to put off the landlady, who had been asking for money.

"I've said it to you twenty times, don't enter into details.
You're fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining
things in Italian you're a fool three times as foolish," he said
after a long dispute.

"Don't let it run so long; it's not my fault. If I had the money
. . ."

"Leave me in peace, for God's sake!" Mihailov shrieked, with
tears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his
working room, the other side of a partition wall, and closed the
door after him. "Idiotic woman!" he said to himself, sat down to
the table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with
peculiar fervor at a sketch he had begun.

Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things
went ill with him, and especially when he quarreled with his
wife. "Oh! damn them all!" he thought as he went on working. He
was making a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage. A
sketch had been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it.
"No, that one was better ...where is it?" He went back to his
wife, and scowling, and not looking at her, asked his eldest
little girl, where was that piece of paper he had given them? The
paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it was
dirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took the sketch,
laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his
eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and
gesticulated gleefully.

"That's it! that's it!" he said, and, at once picking up the
pencil, he began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given
the man a new pose.

He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the
face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous
face with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this
chin on to the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight.
The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and
such that it could never be changed. That figure lived, and was
clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might be corrected
in accordance with the requirements of the figure, the legs,
indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position of
the left hand must be quite altered; the hair too might be thrown
back. But in making these corrections he was not altering the
figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. He
was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered it
from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought out the
whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly come
to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the
figure when the cards were brought him.

"Coming, coming!"

He went in to his wife.

"Come, Sasha, don't be cross!" he said, smiling timidly and
affectionately at her. "You were to blame. I was to blame. I'll
make it all right." And having made peace with his wife he put on
an olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went
towards his studio. The successful figure he had already
forgotten. Now he was delighted and excited at the visit of these
people of consequence, Russians, who had come in their carriage.

Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at
the bottom of his heart one conviction--that no one had ever
painted a picture like it. He did not believe that his picture
was better than all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that
what he tried to convey in that picture, no one ever had
conveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while,
ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people's
criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequence
in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul. Any
remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic saw
even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him
to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a
more profound comprehension than he had himself, and always
expected from them something he did not himself see in the
picture. And often in their criticisms he fancied that he had
found this.

He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his
excitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna's figure as
she stood in the shade of the entrance listening to
Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her something, while she
evidently wanted to look round at the artist. He was himself
unconscious how, as he approached them, he seized on this
impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper
who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be
brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably
impressed beforehand by Golenishtchev's account of the artist,
were still less so by his personal appearance. Thick-set and of
middle height, with nimble movements, with his brown hat,
olive-green coat and narrow trousers--though wide trousers had
been a long while in fashion,--most of all, with the ordinariness
of his broad face, and the combined expression of timidity and
anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov made an unpleasant
impression.

"Please step in," he said, trying to look indifferent, and going
into the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened the
door.

Chapter 11

In entering the studio, Mihailov once more scanned his visitors
and noted down in his imagination Vronsky's expression too, and
especially his jaws. Although his artistic sense was unceasingly
at work collecting materials, although he felt a continually
increasing excitement as the moment of criticizing his work drew
nearer, he rapidly and subtly formed, from imperceptible signs, a
mental image of these three persons.

That fellow (Golenishtchev) was a Russian living here. Mihailov
did not remember his surname nor where he had met him, nor what
he had said to him. He only remembered his face as he remembered
all the faces he had ever seen; but he remembered, too, that it
was one of the faces laid by in his memory in the immense class
of the falsely consequential and poor in expression. The abundant
hair and very open forehead gave an appearance of consequence to
the face, which had only one expression--a petty, childish,
peevish expression, concentrated just above the bridge of the
narrow nose. Vronsky and Madame Karenina must be, Mihailov
supposed, distinguished and wealthy Russians, knowing nothing
about art, like all those wealthy Russians, but posing as
amateurs and connoisseurs. "Most likely they've already looked at
all the antiques, and now they're making the round of the studios
of the new people, the German humbug, and the cracked
Pre-Raphaelite English fellow, and have only come to me to make
the point of view complete," he thought. He was well acquainted
with the way dilettanti have (the cleverer they were the worse he
found them) of looking at the works of contemporary artists with
the sole object of being in a position to say that art is a thing
of the past, and that the more one sees of the new men the more
one sees how inimitable the works of the great old masters have
remained. He expected all this; he saw it all in their faces, he
saw it in the careless indifference with which they talked among
themselves, stared at the lay figures and busts, and walked about
in leisurely fashion, waiting for him to uncover his picture. But
in spite of this, while he was turning over his studies, pulling
up the blinds and taking off the sheet, he was in intense
excitement, especially as, in spite of his conviction that all
distinguished and wealthy Russians were certain to be beasts and
fools, he liked Vronsky, and still more Anna.

"Here, if you please," he said, moving on one side with his
nimble gait and pointing to his picture, "it's the exhortation to
Pilate. Matthew, chapter xxvii," he said, feeling his lips were
beginning to tremble with emotion. He moved away and stood behind
them.

For the few seconds during which the visitors were gazing at the
picture in silence Mihailov too gazed at it with the indifferent
eye of an outsider. For those few seconds he was sure in
anticipation that a higher, juster criticism would be uttered by
them, by those very visitors whom he had been so despising a
moment before. He forgot all he had thought about his picture
before during the three years he had been painting it; he forgot
all its qualities which had been absolutely certain to him--he
saw the picture with their indifferent, new, outside eyes, and
saw nothing good in it. He saw in the foreground Pilate's
irritated face and the serene face of Christ, and in the
background the figures of Pilate's retinue and the face of John
watching what was happening. Every face that, with such agony,
such blunders and corrections had grown up within him with its
special character, every face that had given him such torments
and such raptures, and all these faces so many times transposed
for the sake of the harmony of the whole, all the shades of color
and tones that he had attained with such labor--all of this
together seemed to him now, looking at it with their eyes, the
merest vulgarity, something that had been done a thousand times
over. The face dearest to him, the face of Christ, the center of
the picture, which had given him such ecstasy as it unfolded
itself to him, was utterly lost to him when he glanced at the
picture with their eyes. He saw a well-painted (no, not even
that--he distinctly saw now a mass of defects) repetition of
those endless Christs of Titian, Raphael, Rubens, and the same
soldiers and Pilate. It was all common, poor, and stale, and
positively badly painted--weak and unequal. They would be
justified in repeating hypocritically civil speeches in the
presence of the painter, and pitying him and laughing at him when
they were alone again.

The silence (though it lasted no more than a minute) became too
intolerable to him. To break it, and to show he was not agitated,
he made an effort and addressed Golenishtchev.

"I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you," he said, looking
uneasily first at Anna, then at Vronsky, in fear of losing any
shade of their expression.

"To be surer We met at Rossi's, do you remember, at that soiree
when that Italian lady recited--the new Rachel?" Golenishtchev
answered easily, removing his eyes without the slightest regret
from the picture and turning to the artist.

Noticing, however, that Mihailov was expecting a criticism of the
picture, he said:

"Your picture has got on a great deal since I saw it last time;
and what strikes me particularly now, as it did then, is the
figure of Pilate. One so knows the man: a good-natured, capital
fellow, but an official through and through, who does not know
what it is he's doing. But I fancy . . ."

All Mihailov's mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He
tried to say something, but he could not speak for excitement,
and pretended to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of
Golenishtchev's capacity for understanding art, trifling as was
the true remark upon the fidelity of the expression of Pilate as
an official, and offensive as might have seemed the utterance of
so unimportant an observation while nothing was said of more
serious points, Mihailov was in an ecstasy of delight at this
observation. He had himself thought about Pilate's figure just
what Golenishtchev said. The fact that this reflection was but
one of millions of reflections,which as Mihailov knew for certain
would be true, did not diminish for him the significance of
Golenishtchev's remark. His heart warmed to Golenishtchev for
this remark, and from a state of depression he suddenly passed to
ecstasy. At once the whole of his picture lived before him in all
the indescribable complexity of everything living. Mihailov again
tried to say that that was how he understood Pilate, but his lips
quivered intractably, and he could not pronounce the words.
Vronsky and Anna too said something in that subdued voice in
which, partly to avoid hurting the artist's feelings and partly
to avoid saying out loud something silly--so easily said when
talking of art--people usually speak at exhibitions of pictures.
Mihailov fancied that the picture had made an impression on them
too. He went up to them.

"How marvelous Christ's expression is!" said Anna. Of all she saw
she liked that expression most of all, and she felt that it was
the center of the picture, and so praise of it would be pleasant
to the artist. "One can see that He is pitying Pilate."

This again was one of the million true reflections that could be
found in his picture and in the figure of Christ. She said that
He was pitying Pilate. In Christ's expression there ought to be
indeed an expression of pity, since there is an expression of
love, of heavenly peace, of readiness for death, and a sense of
the vanity of words. Of course there is the expression of an
official in Pilate and of pity in Christ, seeing that one is the
incarnation of the fleshly and the other of the spiritual life.
All this and much more flashed into Mihailov's thoughts.

"Yes, and how that figure is done--what atmosphere! One can walk
round it," said Golenishtchev, unmistakably betraying by this
remark that he did not approve of the meaning and idea of the
figure.

"Yes, there's a wonderful mastery!" said Vronsky. "How those
figures in the background stand out! There you have technique,"
he said, addressing Golenishtchev, alluding to a conversation
between them about Vronsky's despair of attaining this technique.

"Yes, yes, marvelous!" Golenishtchev and Anna assented. In spite
of the excited condition in which he was, the sentence about
technique had sent a pang to Mihailov's heart, and looking
angrily at Vronsky he suddenly scowled. He had often heard this
word technique, and was utterly unable to understand what was
understood by it. He knew that by this term was understood a
mechanical facility for painting or drawing, entirely apart from
its subject. He had noticed often that even in actual praise
technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one could
paint well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of
attention and care was necessary in taking off the coverings, to
avoid injuring the creation itself, and to take off all the
coverings; but there was no art of painting--no technique of any
sort--about it. If to a little child or to his cook were revealed
what he saw, it or she would have been able to peel the wrappings
off what was seen. And the most experienced and adroit painter
could not by mere mechanical facility paint anything if the lines
of the subject were not revealed to him first. Besides, he saw
that if it came to talking about technique, it was impossible to
praise him for it. In all he had painted and repainted he saw
faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off
the wrappings--faults he could not correct now without spoiling
the whole. And in almost all the figures and faces he saw, too,
remnants of the wrappings not perfectly removed that spoiled the
picture.

"One thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark
. . ." observed Golenishtchev.

"Oh, I shall be delighted, I beg you," said Mihailov with a
forced smile.

"That is, that you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But
I know that was what you meant to do."

"I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart," said Mihailov
gloomily.

"Yes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think
...Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract
from it, and, besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you
it is different. Your very motive is different. But let us take
Ivanov. I imagine that if Christ is brought down to the level of
an historical character, it would have been better for Ivanov to
select some other historical subject, fresh, untouched."

"But if this is the greatest subject presented to art?"

"If one looked one would find others. But the point is that art
cannot suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of
Ivanov the question arises for the believer and the unbeliever
alike, 'Is it God, or is it not God?' and the unity of the
impression is destroyed."

"Why so? I think that for educated people," said Mihailov, "the
question cannot exist."

Golenishtchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mihailov by
his support of his first idea of the unity of the impression
being essential to art.

Mihailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in
defense of his own idea.

Chapter 12

Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting Xt
their friend's flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without
waiting for the artist, walked away to another small picture.

"Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!"
they cried with one voice.

"What is it they're so pleased with?" thought Mihailov. He had
positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago.
He had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived
through with that picture when for several months it had been the
one thought haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he
always forgot, the pictures he had finished. He did not even like
to look at it, and had only brought it out because he was
expecting an Englishman who wanted to buy it.

"Oh, that's only an old study," he said.

"How fine!" said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakable
sincerity, falling under the spell of the picture.

Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elder
had just dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float
from behind a bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The
other, a little younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his
elbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at
the water with his dreamy blue eyes. What was he thinking of?

The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling
for it in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of
feeling for things past, and so, even though this praise was
grateful to him, he tried to draw his visitors away to a third
picture.

But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale. To Mihailov
at that moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful
to speak of money matters.

"It is put up there to be sold," he answered, scowling gloomily.

When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the
picture of Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had
been said, and what, though not said, had been implied by those
visitors. And, strange to say, what had had such weight with him,
while they were there and while he mentally put himself at their
point of view, suddenly lost all importance for him. He began to
look at his picture with all his own full artist vision, and was
soon in that mood of conviction of the perfectibility, and so of
the significance, of his picture--a conviction essential to the
most intense fervor, excluding all other interests--in which
alone he could work.

Christ's foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his
palette and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked
continually at the figure of John in the background, which his
visitors had not even noticed, but which he knew was beyond
perfection. When he had finished the leg he wanted to touch that
figure, but he felt too much excited for it. He was equally
unable to work when he was cold and when he was too much affected
and saw everything too much. There was only one stage in the
transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was
possible. To-day he was too much agitated. He would have covered
the picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and,
smiling blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John. At
last, as it were regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped the
cloth, and, exhausted but happy, went home.

Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, were
particularly lively and cheerful. They talked of Mihailov and his
pictures. The word talent, by which they meant an inborn, almost
physical, aptitude apart from brain and heart, and in which they
tried to find an expression for all the artist had gained from
life, recurred particularly often in their talk, as though it
were necessary for them to sum up what they had no conception of,
though they wanted to talk of it. They said that there was no
denying his talent, but that his talent could not develop for
want of education--the common defect of our Russian artists. But
the picture of the boys had imprinted itself on their memories,
and they were continually coming back to it. "What an exquisite
thing! How he has succeeded in it, and how simply! He doesn't
even comprehend how good it is. Yes, I mustn't let it slip; I
must buy it," said Vronsky.

Chapter 13

Mikhailov sold Vronsky his picture, and agreed to paint a
portrait of Anna. On the day fixed he came and began the work.

From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed every one,
especially From sky, not only by its resemblance, but by its
characteristic beauty. It was strange how Mihailov could have
discovered just her characteristic beauty. "One needs to know and
love her as I have loved her to discover the very sweetest
expression of her soul," Vronsky thought, though it was only from
this portrait that he had himself learned this sweetest
expression of her soul. But the expression was so true that he,
and others too, fancied they had long known it.

"I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing
anything," he said of his own portrait of her, "and he just
looked and painted it. That's where technique comes in."

"That will come," was the consoling reassurance given him by
Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent, and what
was most importent, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art.
Golenishtchev's faith in Vronsky's talent was propped up by his
own need of Vronsky's sympathy and approval for his own articles
and ideas, and he felt that the praise and support must be
mutual.

In another man's house, and especially in Vronsky's palazzo,
Mihailov was quite a different man from what he was in his
studio. He behaved with hostile courtesy, as though he were
afraid of coming closer to people he did not respect. He called
Vronsky "your excellency," and notwithstanding Anna's and
Vronsky's invitations, he would never stay to dinner, nor come
except for the sittings. Anna was even more friendly to him than
to other people, and was very grateful for her portrait. Vronsky
was more than cordial with him, and was obviously interested to
know the artist's opinion of his picture. Golenishtchev never let
slip an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into
Mihailov. But Mihailov remained equally chilly to all of them.
Anna was aware from his eyes that he liked looking at her, but he
avoided conversation with her. Vronsky's talk about his painting
he met with stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent
when hewas shown Vronsky's picture. He was unmistakably bored by
Golenishtchev's conversation, and he did not attempt to oppose
him.

Altogether Mihailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, as it
were, hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to
know him better; and they were glad when the sittings were over,
and they were left with a magnificent portrait in their
possession, and he gave up coming. Golenishtchev was the first to
give expression to an idea that had occurred to all of them,
which was that Mihailov was simply jealous of Vronsky.

"Not envious, let us say, since he has talent; but it annoys him
that a wealthy man of the highest society, and a count, too (you
know they all detest a title), can, without any particular
trouble, do as well, if not better, than he who has devoted all
his life to it. And more than all, it's a question of culture,
which he is without."

Vronsky defended Mihailov, but at the bottom of his heart he
believed it, because in his view a man of a different, lower
world would be sure to be envious.

Anna's portrait--the same subject painted from nature both by him
and by Mihailov--ought to have shown Vronsky the difference
between him and Mihailov; but he did not see it. Only after
Mihailov's portrait was painted he left off painting his portrait
of Anna, deciding that it was now not needed. His picture of
medieval life he went on with. And he himself, and Golenishtchev,
and still more Anna, thought it very good, because it was far
more like the celebrated pictures they knew than Mihailov's
picture.

Mihailov meanwhile, although Anna's portrait greatly fascinated
him, was even more glad than they were when the sittings were
over, and he had no longer to listen to Golenishtchev's
disquisitions upon art, and couldforget about Vronsky's painting.
He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself
with painting; he knew that he and all dilettanti had a perfect
right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A
man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll,
and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit
before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover
caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the
lover.

Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the
sight of Vronsky's painting: he felt it both ludicrous and
irritating, both pitiable and offensive.

Vronsky's interest in painting and the Middle Ages did not last
long He had enough taste for painting to be unable to fmish his
picture. The picture came to a standstill. He was vaguely aware
that its defects, in conspicuous at first, would be glaring if he
were to go on with it. The same experience befell him as
Golenishtchev, who felt that he had noth ing to say, and
continually deceived himself with the theory that his idea was
not yet mature, that he was working it out and collecting
materials. This exasperated and tortured Golenishtchev, but
Vronsky was incapable of deceiving and torturing himself, and
even more incapable of exasperation. With his characteristic
decision, without explanation or apology, he simply ceased
working at painting.

But without this occupation, the life of Vronsky and of Anna, who
wondered at his loss of interest in it, struck them as
intolerably tedious in an Italian town. The palazzo suddenly
seemed so obtrusively old and dirty, the spots on the curtains,
the cracks in the floors, the broken plaster on the cornices
became so disagreeably obvious, and the everlasting sameness of
Golenishtchev, and the Italian professor and the German traveler
became so wearisome, that they had to make some change. They
resolved to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg Vronsky
intended to arrange a partition of the land with his brother,
while Anna meant to see her son. The summer they intended to
spend on Vronsky's great family estate.

Chapter 14

Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all
in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his
former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of
happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw
at every step that it was utterly different from what he had
imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would
experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a
little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat.
He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that
one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was
floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must
row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it
was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though
very delightful, was very difficult.

As a bachelor, when he had watched other people's married life,
seen the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only
smiled contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life
there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the
external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the
life of others in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his
life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it was,
on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details, which
he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own,
had gained an extraordinary importance that it was useless to
contend against. And Levin saw that the organization of all these
details was by no means so easy as he had fancied before.
Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact
conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he
pictured domestic life as the happiest enjoyment of love, with
nothing to hinder and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as he
conceived the position, to do his work, and to find repose from
it in the happiness of love. She ought to be beloved, and nothing
more. But, like all men, he forgot that she too would want work.
And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite Kitty,
could, not merely in the first weeks, but even in the first days
of their married life, think, remember, and busy herself about
table-cloths, and furniture, about mattresses for visitors, about
a tray, about the cook, and the dinner, and so on. While they
were still engaged, he had been struck by the definiteness with
which she had declined the tour abroad and decided to go into the
country, as though she knew of something she wanted, and could
still think of something outside her love. This had jarred upon
him then, and now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him
several times. But he saw that this was essential for her. And,
loving her as he did, though he did not understand the reason of
them, and jeered at these domestic pursuits, he could not help
admiring them. He jeered at the way in which she arranged the
furniture they had brought from Moscow; rearranged their room;
hung up curtains; prepared rooms for visitors; a room for Dolly;
saw after an abode for her new maid; ordered dinner of the old
cook; came into collision with Agafea Mihalovna, taking from her
the charge of the stores. He saw how the old cook smiled,
adrniring her, and listening to her inexperienced, impossible
orders, how mournfully and tenderly Agafea Mihalovna shook her
head over the young mistress's new arrangements. He saw that
Kitty was extraordinarily sweet when, laughing and crying, she
came to tell him that her maid, Masha, was used to looking upon
her as her young lady, and so no one obeyed her. It seemed to him
sweet, but strange, and he thought it would have been better
without this.

He did not know how great a sense of change she was experiencing;
she, who at home had sometimes wanted some favorite dish, or
sweets, without the possibility of getting either, now could
order what she liked, buy pounds of sweets, spend as much money
as she liked, and order any puddings she pleased.

She was dreaming with delight now of Dolly's coming to them with
her children, especially because she would order for the children
their favorite puddings and Dolly would appreciate all her new
housekeeping. She did not know herself why and wherefore, but the
arranging of her house had an irresistible attraction for her.
Instinctively feeling the approach of spring, and knowing that
there would be days of rough weather too, she built her nest as
best she could, and was in haste at the same time to build it and
to learn how to do it.

This care for domestic details in Kitty, so opposed to Levin's
ideal of exalted happiness, was at first one of the
disappointments; and this sweet care of her household, the aim of
which he did not understand, but could not help loving, was one
of the new happy surprises.

Another disappointment and happy surprise came in their quarrels.
Levin could never have conceived that between him and his wife
any relations could arise other than tender, respectful and
loving, and all at once in the very early days they quarreled, so
that she said he did not care for her, that he cared for no one
but himself, burst into tears, and wrung her arms.

This first quarrel arose from Levin's having gone out to a new
farmhouse and having been away half an hour too long, because he
had tried to get home by a short cut and had lost his way. He
drove home thinking of nothing but her, of her love, of his own
happiness, and the nearer he drew to home, the warmer was his
tenderness for her. He ran into the room with the same feeling,
with an even stronger feeling than he had had when he reached the
Shtcherbatskys' house to make his offer. And suddenly he was met
by a lowering expression he had never seen in her. He would have
kissed her; she pushed him away.

"What is it?"

"You've been enjoying yourself," she began, trying to be calm and
spiteful. But as soon as she opened her mouth, a stream of
reproach, of senseless jealousy, of all that had been torturing
her during that halfhour which she had spent sitting motionless
at the window, burst from her. It was only then, for the first
time, that he clearly understood what he had not understood when
he led her out of the church after the wedding. He felt now that
he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he
ended and she began. He felt this from the agonizing sensation of
division that he experienced at that instant. He was offended for
the first instant, but the very same second he felt that he could
not be offended by her, that she was himself. He felt for the
first moment as a man feels when, having suddenly received a
violent blow from behind, he turns round, angry and eager to
avenge himself, to look for his antagonist, and finds that it is
he himself who has accidentally struck himself, that there is no
one to be angry with, and that he must put up with and try to
soothe the pain.

Never afterwards did he feel it with such intensity, but this
first time he could not for a long while get over it. His natural
feeling urged him to defend himself, to prove to her she was
wrong; but to prove her wrong would mean irritating her still
more and making the rupture greater that was the cause of all his
suffering. One habitual feeling impelled him to get rid of the
blame and to pass it on her. Another feeling, even stronger,
impelled him as quickly as possible to smooth over the rupture
without letting it grow greater. To remain under such undeserved
reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by justifying
himself was worse still. Like a man half-awake in an agony of
pain, he wanted to tear out, to fling away the aching place, and
coming to his senses, he felt that the aching place was himself.
He could do nothing but try to help the aching place to bear it,
and this he tried to do.

They made peace. She, recognizing that she was wrong, though she
did not say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new,
redoubled happiness in their love. But that did not prevent such
quarrels from happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the
most unexpected and trivial grounds. These quarrels frequently
arose from the fact that they did not yet-know what was of
importance to each other and that all this early period they were
both often in a bad temper. When one was in a good temper, and
the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken; but when
both happened to be in an ill-humor, quarrels sprang up from such
incomprehensibly trifling causes, that they could never remember
afterwards what they had quarreled about. It is true that when
they were both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was
redoubled. But still this first period of their married life was
a difficult time for them.

During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of
tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the
chain by which they were bound. Altogether their honeymoon--that
is to say, the month after their wedding--from which from
tradition Levin expected so much, was not merely not a time of
sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the bitterest
and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike tried
in later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous,
shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely
in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite themselves.

It was only in the third month of their married life, after their
return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that
their life began to go more smoothly.

Chapter 15

They had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone.
He was sitting at the writing-table in his study, writing. She,
wearing the dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days
of their married life, and put on again to-day, a dress
particularly remembered and loved by him, was sitting on the
sofa, the same old-fashioned leather sofa which had always stood
in the study in Levin's father's and grandfather's days. She was
sewing at broderie anglaise. He thought and wrote, never losing
the happy consciousness of her presence. His work, both on the
land and on the book, in which the principles of the new land
system were to be laid down, had not been abandoned; but just as
formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed to him petty and
trivial in comparison with the darkness that overspread all life,
now they seemed as unimportant and petty in comparison with the
life that lay before him suffused with the brilliant light of
happiness. He went on with his work, but he felt now that the
center of gravity of his attention had passed to something else,
and that consequently he looked at his work quite differently and
more clearly. Formerly this work had been for him an escape from
life. Formerly he had felt that without this work his life would
be too gloomy. Now these pursuits were necessary for him that
life might not be too uniformly bright. Taking up his manuscript,
reading through what he had written, he found with pleasure that
the work was worth his working at. Many of his old ideas seemed
to him superfluous and extreme, but many blanks became distinct
to him when he reviewed the whole thing in his memory. He was
writing now a new chapter on the causes of the present disastrous
condition of agriculture in Russia. He maintained that the
poverty of Russia arises not merely from the anomalous
distribution of landed property and misdirected reforms, but that
what had contributed of late years to this result was the
civilization from without abnormally grafted upon Russia,
especially facilities of communication, as railways, leading to
centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and the
consequent development of manufactures, credit and its
accompaniment of speculation--all to the detriment of
agriculture. It seemed to him that in a normal development of
wealth in a state all these phenomena would arise only when a
considerable amount of labor had been put into agriculture, when
it had come under regular, or at least definite, conditions; that
the wealth of a country ought to increase proportionally, and
especially in such a way that other sources of wealth should not
outstrip agriculture; that in harmony with a certain stage of
agriculture there should be means of communication corresponding
to it, and that in our unsettled condition of the land, railways,
called into being by political and not by economic needs, were
premature, and instead of promoting agriculture, as was expected
of them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting the
development of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its
progress; and that just as the one-sided and premature
development of one organ in an animal would hinder its general
development, so in the general development of wealth in Russia,
credit, facilities of communication, manufacturing activity,
indubitably necessary in Europe, where they had arisen in their
proper time, had with us only done harm, by throwing into the
background the chief question calling for settlement--the
question of the organization of agriculture.

While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally
cordial her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had,
with great want of tact, flirted with her the day before they
left Moscow. "He's jealous," she thought. "Goodness! how sweet
and silly he is! He's jealous of me! If he knew that I think no
more of them than of Piotr the cook," she thought, looking at his
head and red neck with a feeling of possession strange to
herself. "Though it's a pity to take him from his work (but he
has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he feel I'm
looking at him? I wish he'd turn round ...I'll will him to!"
and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the
influence of her gaze.

"Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of
prosperity," he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that
she was looking at him and smiling, he looked round.

"Well?" he queried, smiling, and getting up.

"He looked round," she thought.

"It's nothing; I wanted you to look round," she said, watching
him, and trying to guess whether he was vexed at being
interrupted or not.

"How happy we are alone together!--I am, that is," he said, going
up to her with a radiant smile of happiness.

"I'm just as happy. I'll never go anywhere, especially not to
Moscow."

"And what were you thinking about?"

"I? I was thinking ...No, no, go along, go on writing; don't
break off," she said, pursing up her lips, "and I must cut out
these little holes now, do you see?"

She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.

"No; tell me, what was it?" he said, sitting down beside her and
watching the tiny scissors moving round.

"Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow,
about the back of your head."

"Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It's
unnatural, too good," he said, kissing her hand.

"I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more
natural it seems to me."

"And you've got a little curl loose," he said, carefully turning
her head round.

"A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!"

Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one
another like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea
was ready.

"Have they come from the town?" Levin asked Kouzma.

"They've just come; they're unpacking the things."

"Come quickly," she said to him as she went out of the study, "or
else I shall read your letters without you."

Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new
portfolio bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand
with the elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance
with her. Levin smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head
disapprovingly at those thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse
fretted him. There was something shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as
he called it to himself, in his present mode of life. "It's not
right to go on like this," he thought. "It'll soon be three
months, and I'm doing next to nothing. To-day, almost for the
first time, I set to work seriously, and what happened? I did
nothing but begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I
have almost given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about
at all to look after things. Either I am loath to leave her, or I
see she's dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage,
life was nothing much, somehow didn't count, but that after
marriage, life began in earnest. And here almost three months
have passed, and I have spent my time so idly and unprofitably.
No, this won't do; I must begin. Of course, it's not her fault.
She's not to blame in any way. I ought myself to be firmer, to
maintain my masculine independence of action; or else I shall get
into such ways, and she'll get used to them too.... Of course
she's not to blame," he told himself.

But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some
one else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for
the ground of his dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into
Levin's mind that she herself was not to blame (she could not be
to blame for anything), but what was to blame was her education,
too superficial and frivolous. ("That fool Tcharsky: she wanted,
I know, to stop him, but didn't know how to.") "Yes, apart from
her interest in the house (that she has), apart from dress and
broderie anglaise, she has no serious interests. No interest in
her work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music, though
she's rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and is
perfectly satisfied." Levin, in his heart, censured this, and did
not as yet understand that she was preparing for that period of
activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the
wife of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear,
and nurse, and bring up children. He knew not that she was
instinctively aware of this, and preparing herself for this time
of terrible toil, did not reproach herself for the moments of
carelessness and happiness in her love that she enjoyed now while
gaily building her nest for the future.

Chapter 16

When Levin went up-stairs, his wife was sitting near the new
silver samovar behind the new tea-service, and, having settled
old Agafea Mihalovna at a little table with a full cup of tea,
was reading a letter from Dolly, with whom they were in continual
and frequent correspondence.

"You see, your good lady's settled me here, told me to sit a bit
with her," said Agafea Mihalovna, smiling affectionately at
Kitty.

In these words of Agafea Mihalovna, Levin read the final act of
the drama which had been enacted of late between her and Kitty.
He saw that, in spite of Agafea Mihalovna's feelings being hurt
by a new mistress taking the reins of government out of her
hands, Kitty had yet conquered her and made her love her.

"Here, I opened your letter too," said Kitty, handing him an
illiterate letter. "It's from that woman, I think, your brother's
. . ." she said. "I did not read it through. This is from my
people and from Dolly. Fancy! Dolly took Tanya and Grisha to a
children's ball at the Sarmatskys': Tanya was a French marquise."

But Levin did not hear her. Flushing, he took the letter from
Marya Nikolaevna, his brother's former mistress, and began to
read it. This was the second letter he had received from Marya
Nikolaevna. In the first letter, Marya Nikolaevna wrote that his
brother had sent her away for no fault of hers, and, with
touching simplicity, added that though she was in want again, she
asked for nothing, and wished for nothing, but was only tormented
by the thought that Mkolay Dmitrievitch would come to grief
without her, owing to the weak state of his health, and begged
his brother to look after him. Now she wrote quite differently.
She had found Nikolay Dmitrievitch, had again made it up with him
in Moscow, and had moved with him to a provincial town, where he
had received a post in the government service. But that he had
quarreled with the head official, and was on his way back to
Moscow, only he had been taken so ill on the road that it was
doubtful if he would ever leave his bed again, she wrote. "It's
always of you he has talked, and, besides, he has no more money
left."

"Read this; Dolly writes about you," Kitty was beginning, with a
smile; but she stopped suddenly, noticing the changed expression
on her husband's face.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

"She writes to me that Nikolay, my brother, is at death's door. I
shall go to him."

Kitty's face changed at once. Thoughts of Tanya as a marquise, of
Dolly, all had vanished.

"When are you going?" she said.

"To-morrow."

"And I will go with you, can I?" she said.

"Kitty! What are you thinking of?" he said reproachfully.

"How do you mean?" offended that he should seem to take her
suggestion unwillingly and with vexation. "Why shouldn't I go? I
shan't be in your way. I . . ."

"I'm going because my brother is dying," said Levin. "Why should
you . . ."

"Why? For the same reason as you."

"And, at a moment of such gravity for me, she only thinks of her
being

dull by herself," thought Levin. And this lack of candor in a
matter of such gravity infuriated him.

"It's out of the question," he said sternly.

Agafea Mihalovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently
put down her cup and withdrew. Kitty did not even notice her. The
tone in which her husband had said the last words wounded her,
especially because he evidently did not believe what she had
said.

"I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall
certainly come," she said hastily and wrathfully. "Why out of the
question? Why do you say it's out of the question?"

"Because it'll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads
and to all sorts of hotels. You would be a hindrance to me," said
Levin, trying to be cool.

"Not at all. I don't want anything. Where you can go, I can. . ."

"Well, for one thing then, because this woman's there whom you
can't meet."

"I don't know and don't care to know who's there and what. I know
that my husband's brother is dying and my husband is going to
him, and I go with my husband too...."

"Kitty! Don't get angry. But just think a little: this is a
matter of such importance that I can't bear to think that you
should bring in a feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left
alone. Come, you'll be dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a
little."

"There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me," she said
with tears of wounded pride and fury. "I didn't mean, it wasn't
weakness, it wasn't ...I feel that it's my duty to be with my
husband when he's in trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me,
you try on purpose not to understand...."

"No; this is awful! To be such a slave!" cried Levin, getting up,
and unable to restrain his anger any longer. But at the same
second he felt that he was beating himself.

"Then why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you,
if you regret it?" she said, getting up and running away into the
drawing-room.

When he went to her, she was sobbing.

He began to speak, trying to find words not to dissuade but
simply to soothe her. But she did not heed him, and would not
agree to anything. He bent down to her and took her hand, which
resisted him. He kissed her hand, kissed her hair, kissed her
hand again--still she was silent. But when he took her face in
both his hands and said "Kitty!" she suddenly recovered herself,
and began to cry, and they were reconciled.

It was decided that they should go together the next day. Levin
told his wife that he believed she wanted to go simply in order
to be of use, agreed that Marya Nikolaevna's being with his
brother did not make her going improper, but he set off at the
bottom of his heart dissatisfied both with her and with himself.
He was dissatisfied with her for being unable to make up her mind
to let him go when it was necessary (and how strange it was for
him to think that he, so lately hardly daring to believe in such
happiness as that she could love him--now was unhappy because she
loved him too much!), and he was dissatisfied with himself for
not showing more strength of will. Even greater was the feeling
of disagreement at the bottom of his heart as to her not needing
to consider the woman who was with his brother, and he thought
with horror of all the contingencies they might meet with. The
mere idea of his wife, his Kitty, being in the same room with a
common wench, set him shuddering with horror and loathing.

Chapter 17

The hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Levin was lying
ill  was one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on
the newest model of modern improvements, with the best intentions
of cleanliness, comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the
public that patronizes them, are with astounding rapidity
transformed into filthy taverns with a pretension of modern
improvement that only makes them worse than the old-fashioned,
honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached that
stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry,
supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery,
dark, and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in
a filthy frock coat, and the common dining-room with a dusty
bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and
disorder everywhere, and at the same time the sort of modern
up-to-date self-complacent railway uneasiness of this hotel,
aroused a most painful feeling in Levin after their fresh young
life, especially because the impression of falsity made by the
hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited them.

As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what
price they wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one
decent room for them; one decent room had been taken by the
inspector of railroads, another by a lawyer from Moscow, a third
by Princess Astafieva from the country. There remained only one
filthy room, next to which they promised that another should be
empty by the evening. Feeling angry with his wife because what he
had expected had come to pass, which was that at the moment of
arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to know
how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after
her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Levin conducted
her to the room assigned them.

"Go, do go!" she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.

He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over
Marya Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared
to go in to see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in
Moscow; the same woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the
same good-naturedly stupid, pockmarked face, only a little
plumper.

"Well, how is he? how is he?"

"Very bad. He can't get up. He has kept expecting you. He . . .
Are you ...with your wife?"

Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was
confused her, but she immediately enlightened him.

"I'll go away. I'll go down to the kitchen," she brought out.
"Nikolay Dmitrievitch will be delighted. He heard about it, and
knows your lady, and remembers her abroad."

Levin realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what
answer to make.

"Come along, come along to him!" he said.

But as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty
peeped out. Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger with his
wife, who had put herself and him in such a difficult position;
but Marya Nikolaevna crimsoned still more. She positively shrank
together and flushed to the point of tears, and clutching the
ends of her apron in both hands, twisted them in her red fingers
without knowing what to say and what to do.

For the first instant Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity
in the eyes with which Kitty looked at this awful woman, so
incomprehensible to her; but it lasted only a single instant.

"Well! how is he?" she turned to her husband and then to her.

"But one can't go on talking in the passage like this!" Levin
said, looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that
instant across the corridor, as though about his affairs.

"Well then, come in," said Kitty, turning to Marya Nikolaevna,
who had recovered herself, but noticing her husband's face of
dismay, "or go on; go, and then come for me," she said, and went
back into the room.

Levin went to his brother's room. He had not in the least
expected what he saw and felt in his brother's room. He had
expected to find him in the same state of self-deception which he
had heard was so frequent with the consumptive, and which had
struck him so much during his brother's visit in the autumn. He
had expected to find the physical signs of the approach of death
more marked--greater weakness, greater emaciation, but still
almost the same condition of things. He had expected himself to
feel the same distress at the loss of the brother he loved and
the same horror in face of death as he had felt then, only in a
greater degree. And he had prepared himself for this; but he
found something utterly different.

In a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls
filthy with spittle, and conversation audible through the thin
partition from the next room, in a stifling atmosphere saturated
with impurities, on a bedstead moved away from the wall, there
lay covered with a quilt, a body.

One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as
a rake-handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the
thin, long bone of the arm smooth from the beginning to the
middle. The head lay sideways on the pillow. Levin could see the
scanty locks wet with sweat on the temples and tense,
transparent-looking forehead.

"It cannot be that that fearful body was my brother Nikolay?"
thought Levin. But he went closer, saw the face, and doubt became
impossible. In spite of the terrible change in the face, Levin
had only to glance at those eager eyes raised at his approach,
only to catch the faint movement of the mouth under the sticky
mustache, to realize the terrible truth that this death-like body
was his living brother.

The glittering eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at his
brother as he drew near. And immediately this glance established
a living relationship between living men. Levin immediately felt
the reproach in the eyes fixed on him, and felt remorse at his
own happiness.

When Konstantin took him by the hand, Nikolay smiled. The smile
was faint, scarcely perceptible, and in spite of the smile the
stern expression of the eyes was unchanged.

"You did not expect to find me like this," he articulated with
effort.

"Yes ...no," said Levin, hesitating over his words. "How was
it you didn't let me know before, that is, at the time of my
wedding? I made inquiries in all directions."

He had to talk so as not to be silent, and he did not know what
to say, especially as his brother made no reply, and simply
stared without dropping his eyes, and evidently penetrated to the
inner meaning of each word. Levin told his brother that his wife
had come with him. Nikolay expressed pleasure, but said he was
afraid of frightening her by his condition. A silence followed.
Suddenly Nikolay stirred, and began to say something. Levin
expected something of peculiar gravity and importance from the
expression of his face, but Nikolay began speaking of his health.
He found fault with the doctor, regretting he had not a
celebrated Moscow doctor. Levin saw that he still hoped.

Seizing the first moment of silence, Levin got up, anxious to
escape, if only for an instant, from his agonizing emotion, and
said that he would go and fetch his wife.

"Very well, and I'll tell her to tidy up here. It's dirty and
stinking here, I expect. Marya! clear up the room," the sick man
said with effort. "Oh, and when you've cleared up, go away
yourself," he added, looking inquiringly at his brother.

Levin made no answer. Going out into the corridor, he stopped
short. He had said he would fetch his wife, but now, taking stock
of the emotion he was feeling, he decided that he would try on
the contrary to persuade her not to go in to the sick man. "Why
should she suffer as I am suffering?" he thought.

"Well, how is he?" Kitty asked with a frightened face.

"Oh, it's awful, it's awful! What did you come for?" said Levin.

Kitty was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and ruefully
at her husband; then she went up and took him by the elbow with
both hands.

"Kostya! take me to him; it will be easier for us to bear it
together. You only take me, take me to him, please, and go away,"
she said. "You must understand that for me to see you, and not to
see him, is far more painful. There I might be a help to you and
to him. Please, let me!" she besought her husband, as though the
happiness of her life depended on it.

Levin was obliged to agree, and regaining his composure, and
completely forgetting about Marya Nikolaevna by now, he went
again in to his brother with Kitty.

Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband,
showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the
sick-room, and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the
door. With inaudible steps she went quickly to the sick man's
bedside, and going up so that he had not to turn his head, she
immediately clasped in her fresh young hand the skeleton of his
huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft
eagerness, sympathetic and not jarring, which is peculiar to
women.

"We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden," she said.
"You never thought I was to be your sister?"

"You would not have recognized me?" he said, with a radiant smile
at her entrance.

"Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has
passed that Kostya has not mentioned you, and been anxious."

But the sick man's interest did not last long.

Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his
face the stern, reproachful expression of the dying man's envy of
the living.

"I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here," she said,
turning away from his fixed stare, and looking about the room.
"We must ask about another room," she said to her husband, "so
that we might be nearer."

Chapter 18

Levin could not look calmly at his brother; he could not himself
be natural and calm in his presence. When he went in to the sick
man, his eyes and his attention were unconsciously dimmed, and he
did not see and did not distinguish the details of his brother's
position. He smelt the awful odor, saw the dirt, disorder, and
miserable condition, and heard the groans, and felt that nothing
could be done to help. It never entered his head to analyze the
details of the sick man's situation, to consider how that body
was lying under the quilt, how those emaciated legs and thighs
and spine were lying huddled up, and whether they could not be
made more comfortable, whether anything could not be done to make
things, if not better, at least less bad. It made his blood run
cold when he began to think of all these details. He was
absolutely convinced that nothing could be done to prolong his
brother's life or to relieve his suffering. But a sense of his
regarding all aid as out of the question was felt by the sick
man, and exasperated him. And this made it still more painful for
Levin. To be in the sick-room was agony to him, not to be there
still worse. And he was continually, on various pretexts, going
out of the room, and coming in again, because he was unable to
remain alone.

But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On
seeing the sick man, she pitied him. And pity in her womanly
heart did not arouse at all that feeling of horror and loathing
that it aroused in her husband, but a desire to act, to find out
all the details of his state, and to remedy them. And since she
had not the slightest doubt that it was her duty to help him, she
had no doubt either that it was possible, and immediately set to
work. The very details, the mere thought of which reduced her
husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention. She sent
for the doctor, sent to the chemist's, set the maid who had come
with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub; she
herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid
something under the quilt. Something was by her directions
brought into the sick-room, something else was carried out. She
herself went several times to her room, regardless of the men she
met in the corridor, got out and brought in sheets, pillow-cases,
towels, and shirts.

The waiter who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the
dining-hall, came several times with an irate countenance in
answer to her summons, and could not avoid carrying out her
orders, as she gave them with such gracious insistence that there
was no evading her. Levin did not approve of all this; he did not
believe it would be of any good to the patient. Above all, he
feared the patient would be angry at it. But the sick man, though
he seemed and was indifferent about it, was not angry, but only
abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what she was
doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty had
sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the sick man at
the instant when, by Kitty's directions, they were changing his
linen. The long white ridge of his spine, with the huge,
prominent shoulderblades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was
bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with
the sleeve of the night-shirt, and could not get the long, limp
arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door after Levin, was
not looking that way; but the sick man groaned, and she moved
rapidly towards him.

"Make haste," she said.

"Oh, don't you come," said the sick man angrily. "I'll do it my
myself...."

"What say?" queried Marya Nikolaevna. But Kitty heard and saw he
was ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.

"I'm not looking, I'm not looking!" she said, putting the arm in.
"Marya Nikolaevna, you come this side, you do it," she added.

"Please go for me, there's a little bottle in my small bag," she
said, turning to her husband, "you know, in the side pocket;
bring it, please, and meanwhile they'll finish clearing up here."

Returning with the bottle, Levin found the sick man settled
comfortably and everything about him completely changed. The
heavy smell was replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which
Kitty with pouting lips and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting
through a little pipe. There was no dust visible anywhere, a rug
was laid by the bedside. On the table stood medicine bottles and
decanters tidily arranged, and the linen needed was folded up
there, and Kitty's broderie anglaise. On the other table by the
patient's bed there were candles and drink and powders. The sick
man himself, washed and combed, lay in clean sheets on high
raised pillows, in a clean night-shirt with a white collar about
his astoundingly thin neck, and with a new expression of hope
looked fixedly at Kitty.

The doctor brought by Levin, and found by him at the club, was
not the one who had been attending Nikolay Levin, as the patient
was dissatisfied with him. The new doctor took up a stethoscope
and sounded the patient, shook his head, prescribed medicine, and
with extreme minuteness explained first how to take the medicine
and then what diet was to be kept to. He advised eggs, raw or
hardly cooked, and seltzer water, with warm milk at a certain
temperature. When the doctor had gone away the sick man said
something to his brother, of which Levin could distinguish only
the last words: "Your Katya." By the expression with which he
gazed at her, Levin saw that he was praising her. He called
indeed to Katya, as he called her.

"I'm much better already," he said. "Why, with you I should have
got well long ago. How nice it is!" he took her hand and drew it
towards his lips, but as though afraid she would dislike it he
changed his mind, let it go, and only stroked it. Kitty took his
hand in both hers and pressed it.

"Now turn me over on the left side and go to bed," he said.

No one could make out what he said but Kitty; she alone
understood. She understood because she was all the while mentally
keeping watch on what he needed.

"On the other side," she said to her husband, "he always sleeps
on that side. Turn him over, it's so disagreeable calling the
servants. I'm not strong enough. Can you?" she said to Marya
Nikolaevna.

"I'm afraid not," answered Marya Nikolaevna.

Terrible as it was to Levin to put his arms round that terrible
body, to take hold of that under the quilt, of which he preferred
to know nothing, under his wife's influence he made his resolute
face that she knew so well, and putting his arms into the bed
took hold of the body, but in spite of his own strength he was
struck by the strange heaviness of those powerless limbs. While
he was turning him over, conscious of the huge emaciated arm
about his neck, Kitty swiftly and noiselessly turned the pillow,
beat it up and settled in it the sick man's head, smoothing back
his hair, which was sticking again to his moist brow.

The sick man kept his brother's hand in his own. Levin felt that
he meant to do something with his hand and was pulling it
somewhere. Levin yielded with a sinking heart: yes, he drew it to
his mouth and kissed it. Levin, shaking with sobs and unable to
articulate a word, went out of the room.

Chapter 19

"Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast
revealed them unto babes." So Levin thought about his wife as he
talked to her that evening.

Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself
"wise and prudent." He did not so consider himself, but he could
not help knowing that he had more intellect than his wife and
Agafea Mihalovna, and he could not help knowing that when he
thought of death, he thought with all the force of his intellect.
He knew too that the brains of many great men, whose thoughts he
had read, had brooded over death and yet knew not a hundredth
part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew about it.
Different as those two women were, Agafea Mihalovna and Katya, as
his brother Nikolay had called her, and as Levin particularly
liked to call her now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew,
without a shade of doubt, what sort of thing life was and what
was death, and though neither of them could have answered, and
would even not have understood the questions that presented
themselves to Levin, both had no doubt of the significance of
this event, and were precisely alike in their way of looking at
it, which they shared with millions of people. The proof that
they knew for a certainty the nature of death lay in the fact
that they knew without a second of hesitation how to deal with
the dying, and were not frightened of them. Levin and other men
like him, though they could have said a great deal about death,
obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and
were absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying. If
Levin had been alone now with his brother Nikolay, he would have
looked at him with terror, and with still greater terror waited,
and would not have known what else to do.

More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to
move. To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking,
impossible, to talk of death and depressing subjects--also
impossible. To be silent, also impossible. "If I look at him he
will think I am studying him, I am afraid; if I don't look at
him, he'll think I'm thinking of other things. If I walk on
tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I'm ashamed." Kitty
evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to think
about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew
something, and all went well. She told him about herself even and
about her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him and petted
him, and talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so then
she must know. The proof that her behavior and Agafea Mihalovna's
was not instinctive, animal, irrational, was that apart from the
physical treatment, the relief of suffering, both Agafea
Mihalovna and Kitty required for the dying man something else
more important than the physical treatment, and something which
had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agafea Mihalovna,
speaking of the man just dead, had said: "Well, thank God, he
took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one of
us such a death." Katya in just the same way, besides all her
care about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day
to persuade the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament
and receiving absolution.

On getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the
night, Levin sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to
speak of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they
were going to do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was
ashamed to. Kitty, on the contrary, was more active than usual.
She was even livelier than usual. She ordered supper to be
brought, herself unpacked their things, and herself helped to
make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle them with
Persian powder. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of
reflection comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the
dangerous and decisive moments of life--those moments when a man
shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has not
been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments.

Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve
o'clock all their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her
rooms, in such a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the
beds were made, brushes, combs, looking-glasses were put out,
table-napkins were spread.

Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk
even now, and it seemed to him that every movement he made was
unseemly. She arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that
there was nothing shocking in it.

They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while
they could not sleep, and did not even go to bed.

"I am very glad I persuaded him to receive extreme unction
to-morrow," she said, sitting in her dressingjacket before her
folding lookingglass, combing her soft, fragrant hair with a fine
comb. "I have never seen it, but I know, mamma has told me, there
are prayers said for recovery."

"Do you suppose he can possibly recover?" said Levin, watching a
slender tress at the back of her round little head that was
continually hidden when she passed the comb through the front.

"I asked the doctor; he said he couldn't live more than three
days. But can they be sure? I'm very glad, anyway, that I
persuaded him," she said, looking askance at her husband through
her hair. "Anything is possible," she added with that peculiar,
rather sly expression that was always in her face when she spoke
of religion.

Since their conversation about religion when they were engaged
neither of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but
she performed all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her
prayers, and so on, always with the unvarying conviction that
this ought to be so. In spite of his assertion to the contrary,
she was firmly persuaded that he was as much a Christian as she,
and indeed a far better one; and all that he said about it was
simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as he would say
about her broderie anglaise that good people patch holes, but
that she cut them on purpose, and so on.

"Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to
manage all this," said Levin. "And ...I must own I'm very,
very glad you came. You are such purity that . . ." He took her
hand and did not kiss it (to kiss her hand in such closeness to
death seemed to him improper); he merely squeezed it with a
penitent air, looking at her brightening eyes.

"It would have been miserable for you to be alone," she said, and
lifting her hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure,
twisted her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it
there. "No," she went on, "she did not know how.... Luckily, I
learned a lot at Soden."

"Surely there are not people there so ill?"

"Worse."

"What's so awful to me is that I can't see him as he was when he
was young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth,
but I did not understand him then."

"I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have
been friends!" she said; and, distressed at what she had said,
she looked round at her husband, and tears came into her eyes.

"Yes, MIGHT HAVE BEEN," he said mournfully. "He's just one of
those people of whom they say they're not for this world."

"But we have many days before us; we must go to bed," said Kitty,
glancing at her tiny watch.

Chapter 20

The next day the sick man received the sacrament and extreme
unction. During the ceremony Nikolay Levin prayed fervently. His
great eyes, fastened on the holy image that was set out on a
card-table covered with a colored napkin, expressed such
passionate prayer and hope that it was awful to Levin to see it.
Levin knew that this passionate prayer and hope would only make
him feel more bitterly parting from the life he so loved. Levin
knew his brother and the workings of his intellect: he knew that
his unbelief came not from life being easier for him without
faith, but had grown up because step by step the contemporary
scientific interpretation of natural phenomena crushed out the
possibility of faith; and so he knew that his present return was
not a legitimate one, brought about by way of the same working of
his intellect, but simply a temporary, interested return to faith
in a desperate hope of recovery. Levin knew too that Kitty had
strengthened his hope by accounts of the marvelous recoveries she
had heard of. Levin knew all this; and it was agonizingly painful
to him to behold the supplicating, hopeful eyes and the emaciated
wrist, lifted with difficulty, making the sign of the cross on
the tense brow, and the prominent shoulders and hollow, gasping
chest, which one could not feel consistent with the life the sick
man was praying for. During the sacrament Levin did what he, an
unbeliever, had done a thousand times. He said, addressing God,
"If Thou cost exist, make this man to recover" (of course this
same thing has been repeated many times), "and Thou wilt save him
and me."

After extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better.
He did not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed
Kitty's hand, thanking her with tears, and said he was
comfortable, free from pain, and that he felt strong and had an
appetite. He even raised himself when his soup was brought, and
asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly ill as he was, obvious as
it was at the first glance that he could not recover, Levin and
Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of excitement,
happy, though fearful of being mistaken.

"Is he better?"

"Yes, much."

"It's wonderful."

"There's nothing wonderful in it."

"Anyway, he's better," they said in a whisper, smiling to one
another.

This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell
into a quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his
cough. And all at once every hope vanished in those about him and
in himself. The reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in
Levin and Kitty and in the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no
memory even of past hopes.

Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before,
as though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to
inhale in a bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him
the bottle, and the same look of passionate hope with which he
had taken the sacrament was now fastened on his brother,
demanding from him the confirmation of the doctor's words that
inhaling iodine worked wonders.

"Is Katya not here?" he gasped, looking round while Levin
reluctantly assented to the doctor's words. "No; so I can say
it.... It was for her sake I went through that farce. She's so
sweet; but you and I can't deceive ourselves. This is what I
believe in," he said, and, squeezing the bottle in his bony hand,
he began breathing over it.

At eight o'clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking
tea in their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them
breathlessly. She was pale, and her lips were quivering. "He is
dying!" she whispered. "I'm afraid will die this minute."

Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow
on the bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.

"How do you feel?" Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.

"I feel I'm setting off," Nikolay said with difficulty, but with
extreme distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did
not raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without
their reaching his brother's face. "Katya, go away!" he added.

Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.

"I'm setting off," he said again.

"Why do you think so?" said Levin, so as to say something.

"Because I'm setting off," he repeated, as though he had a liking
for the phrase. "It's the end."

Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.

"You had better lie down; you'd be easier," she said.

"I shall lie down soon enough," he pronounced slowly, "when I'm
dead," he said sarcastically, wrathfully. "Well, you can lay me
down if you like."

Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and
gazed at his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with
closed eyes, but the muscles twitched from time to time on his
forehead, as with one thinking deeply and intensely. Levin
involuntarily thought with him of what it was that was happening
to him now, but in spite of all his mental efforts to go along
with him he saw by the expression of that calm, stern face that
for the dying man all was growing clearer and clearer that was
still as dark as ever for Levin.

"Yes, yes, so," the dying man articulated slowly at intervals.
"Wait a little." He was silent. "Right!" he pronounced all at
once reassuringly, as though all were solved for him. "O Lord!"
he murmured, and sighed deeply.

Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. "They're getting cold," she
whispered.

For a long while, a very long while it seemed to Levin, the sick
man lay motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time
he sighed. Levin by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt
that, with no mental effort, could he understand what it was that
was *right. He could not even think of the problem of death
itself, but with no will of his own thoughts kept coming to him
of what he had to do next; closing the dead man's eyes, dressing
him, ordering the coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly
cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of
pity for his brother. If he had any feeling for his brother at
that moment, it was envy for the knowledge the dying man had now
that he could not have.

A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the
end. But the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty
appeared. Levin got up to stop her. But at the moment he was
getting up, he caught the sound of the dying man stirring.

"Don't go away," said Nikolay and held out his hand. Levin gave
him his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away.

With the dying man's hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour,
an hour, another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He
wondered what Kitty was doing; who lived in the next room;
whether the doctor lived in a house of his own. He longed for
food and for sleep. He cautiously drew away his hand and felt the
feet. The feet were cold, but the sick man was still breathing.
Levin tried again to move away on tiptoe, but the sick man
stirred again and said: "Don't go."

         * * * * * * * *

The dawn came; the sick man's condition was unchanged. Levin
stealthily withdrew his hand, and without looking at the dying
man, went off to his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up,
instead of news of his brother's death which he expected, he
learned that the sick man had returned to his earlier condition.
He had begun sitting up again, coughing, had begun eating again,
talking again, and again had ceased to talk of death, again had
begun to express hope of his recovery, and had become more
irritable and more gloomy than ever. No one, neither his brother
nor Kitty, could soothe him. He was angry with every one, and
said nasty things to every one, reproached every one for his
sufferings, and insisted that they should get him a celebrated
doctor from Moscow. To all inquiries made him as to how he felt,
he made the same answer with an expression of vindictive
reproachfulness, "I'm suffering horribly, intolerably!"

The sick man was suffering more and more, especially from
bedsores, which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more
and more angry with every one about him, blaming them for
everything, and especially for not having brought him a doctor
from Moscow. Kitty tried in every possible way to relieve him, to
soothe him; but it was all in vain, and Levin saw that she
herself was exhausted both physically and morally, though she
would not admit it. The sense of death, which had been evoked in
all by his taking leave of life on the night when he had sent for
his brother, was broken up. Every one knew that he must
inevitably die soon, that he was half dead already. Every one
wished for nothing but that he should die as soon as possible,
and every one, concealing this, gave him medicines, tried to find
remedies and doctors, and deceived him and themselves and each
other. All this was falsehood, disgusting, irreverent deceit. And
owing to the bent of his character, and because he loved the
dying man more than any one else did, Levin was most painfully
conscious of this deceit.

Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his
brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother,
Sergey Ivanovitch, and having received an answer from him, he
read this letter to the sick man. Sergey Ivanovitch wrote that he
could not come himself, and in touching terms he begged his
brother's forgiveness.

The sick man said nothing.

"What am I to write to him?" said Levin. "I hope you are not
angry with him?"

"No, not the least!" Nikolay answered, vexed at the question.
"Tell him to send me a doctor."

Three more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the
same condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by
every one now at the mere sight of him, by the waiters and the
hotel-keeper and all the people staying in the hotel, and the
doctor and Marya Nikolaevna and Levin and Kitty. The sick man
alone did not express this feeling, but on the contrary was
furious at their not getting him doctors, and went on taking
medicine and talking of life. Only at rare moments, when the
opium gave him an instant's relief from the never-ceasing pain,
he would sometimes, half asleep, utter what was ever more intense
in his heart than in all the others: "Oh, if it were only the
end!" or: "When will it be over?"

His sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and
prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not
in pain, there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of
it, not a limb, not a part of his body that did not ache and
cause him agony. Even the memories, the impressions, the thoughts
of this body awakened in him now the same aversion as the body
itself. The sight of other people, their remarks, his own
reminiscences, everything was for him a source of agony. Those
about him felt this, and instinctively did not allow themselves
to move freely, to talk, to express their wishes before him. All
his life was merged in the one feeling of suffering and desire to
be rid of it.

There was evidently coming over him that revulsion that would
make him look upon death as the goal of his desires, as
happiness. Hitherto each individual desire, aroused by suffering
or privation, such as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied
by some bodily function giving pleasure. But now no physical
craving or suffering received relief, and the effort to relieve
them only caused fresh suffering. And so all desires were merged
in one--the desire to be rid of all his sufferings and their
source, the body. But he had no words to express this desire of
deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit asked
for the satisfaction of desires which could not now be satisfied.
"Turn me over on the other side," he would say, and immediately
after he would ask to be turned back again as before. "Give me
some broth. Take away the broth. Talk of something: why are you
silent?" And directly they began to talk ho would close his eyes,
and would show weariness, indifference, and loathing.

On the tenth day from their arrival at the town, Kitty was
unwell. She suffered from headache and sickness, and she could
not get up all the morning.

The doctor opined that the indisposition arose from fatigue and
excitement, and prescribed rest.

After dinner, however, Kitty got up and went as usual with her
work to the sick man. He looked at her sternly when she came in,
and smiled contemptuously when she said she had been unwell. That
day he was continually blowing his nose, and groaning piteously.

"How do you feel?" she asked him.

"Worse," he articulated with difficulty. "In pain!"

"In pain, where?"

"Everywhere."

"It will be over to-day, you will see," said Marya Nikolaevna.
Though it was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing
Levin had noticed was very keen, must have heard. Levin said hush
to her, and looked round at the sick man. Nikolay had heard; but
these words produced no effect on him. His eyes had still the
same intense, reproachful look.

"Why do you think so?" Levin asked her, when she had followed him
into the corridor.

"He has begun picking at himself," said Marya Nikolaevna.

"How do you mean?"

"Like this," she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt.
Levin noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at
himself, as it were, trying to snatch something away.

Marya Nikolaevna's prediction came true. Towards night the sick
man was not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before
him with the same intensely concentrated expression in his eyes.
Even when his brother or Kitty bent over him, so that he could
see them, he looked just the same. Kitty sent for the priest to
read the prayer for the dying.

While the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any
sign of life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Marya
Nikolaevna stood at the bedside. The priest had not quite
finished reading the prayer when the dying man stretched, sighed,
and opened his eyes. The priest, on finishing the prayer, put the
cross to the cold forehead, then slowly returned it to the stand,
and after standing for two minutes more in silence, he touched
the huge, bloodless hand that was turning cold.

"He is gone," said the priest, and would have moved away; but
suddenly there was a faint stir in the mustaches of the dead man
that seemed glued together, and quite distinctly in the hush they
heard from the bottom of the chest the sharply defined sounds:

"Not quite ...soon."

And a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under
the mustaches, and the women who had gathered round began
carefully laying out the corpse.

The sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in
Levin that sense of horror in face of the insoluble enigma,
together with the nearness and inevitability of death, that had
come upon him that autumn evening when his brother had come to
him. This feeling was now even stronger than before; even less
than before did he feel capable of apprehending the meaning of
death, and its inevitability rose up before him more terrible
than ever. But now, thanks to his wife's presence, that feeling
did not reduce him to despair. In spite of death, he felt the
need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair,
and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still
stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had
scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen,
as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.

The doctor confirmed his suppositions in regard to Kitty. Her
indisposition was a symptom that she was with child.

Chapter 21

From the moment when Alexey Alexandrovitch understood from MU his
interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that
was expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without
burdening her with his presence, and that his wife herself
desired this, he felt so distraught that he could come to no
decision of himself; he did not know himself what he wanted now,
and putting himself in the hands of those who were so pleased to
interest themselves in his affairs, he met everything with
unqualified assent. It was only when Anna had left his house, and
the English governess sent to ask him whether she should dine
with him or separately, that for the first time he clearly
comprehended his position, and was appalled by it. Most difficult
of all in this position was the fact that he could not in any way
connect and reconcile his past with what was now. It was not the
past when he had lived happily with his wife that troubled him.
The transition from that past to a knowledge of his wife's
unfaithfulness he had lived through miserably already; that state
was painful, but he could understand it. If his wife had then, on
declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him, he would have been
wounded, unhappy, but he would not have been in the hopeless
position--incomprehensible to himself--in which he felt himself
now. He could not now reconcile his immediate past, his
tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the other man's
child with what was now the case, that is with the fact that, as
it were, in return for all this he now found himself alone, put
to shame, a laughing-stock, needed by no one, and despised by
every one.

For the first two days after his wife's departure Alexey
Alexandrovitch received applicants for assistance and his chief
secretary, drove to the committee, and went down to dinner in the
dining-room as usual. Without giving himself a reason for what he
was doing, he strained every nerve of his being for those two
days, simply to preserve an appearance of composure, and even of
indifference. Answering inquiries about the disposition of Anna
Arkadyevna's rooms and belongings, he had exercised immense
self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what had occurred
was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of events, and
he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him signs of
despair. But on the second day after her departure, when Korney
gave him a bill from a fashionable draper's shop, which Anna had
forgotten to pay, and announced that the clerk from the shop was
waiting, Alexey Alexandrovitch told him to show the clerk up.

"Excuse me, your excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if
you direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously
oblige us with her address?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and
all at once, turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting his
head sink into his hands, he sat for a long while in that
position, several times attempted to speak and stopped short.
Korney, perceiving his master's emotion, asked the clerk to call
another time. Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch recognized that
he had not the strength to keep up the line of firmness and
composure any longer. He gave orders for the carriage that was
awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and
he did not go down to dinner.

He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt
and exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the
clerk and of Korney, and of every one, without exception, whom he
had met during those two days. He felt that he could not turn
aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not
come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be
better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy.
He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn
with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men
would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He
knew that his sole means of security against people was to hide
his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to do this for
two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the unequal
struggle.

His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was
utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a
human being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who
would feel for him, not as a high official, not as a member of
society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed he had not such a
one in the whole world.

Alexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan. There were two brothers.
They did not remember their father, and their mother died when
Alexey Alexandrovitch was ten years old. The property was a small
one. Their uncle, Karenin, a government official of high
standing, at one time a favorite of the late Tsar, had brought
them up.

On completing his high school and university courses with medals,
Alexey Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle's aid, immediately
started in a prominent position in the service, and from that
time forward he had devoted himself exclusively to political
ambition. In the high school and the university, and afterwards
in the service, Alexey Alexandrovitch had never formed a close
friendship with any one. His brother had been the person nearest
to his heart, but he had a post in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had died shortly after
Alexey Alexandrovitch's marriage.

While he was governor of a province, Anna's aunt, a wealthy
provincial lady, had thrown him--middle-aged as he was, though
young for a governor--with her niece, and had succeeded in
putting him in such a position that he had either to declare
himself or to leave the town. Alexey Alexandrovitch was not long
in hesitation. There were at the time as many reasons for the
step as against it, and there was no overbalancing consideration
to outweigh his invariable rule of abstaining when in doubt. But
Anna's aunt had through a common acquaintance insinuated that he
had already compromised the girl, and that he was in honor bound
to make her an offer. He made the offer, and concentrated on his
betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he was capable.

The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need
of intimate relations with others. And now among all his
acquaintances he had not one friend. He had plenty of so-called
connections, but no friendships. Alexey Alexandrovitch had plenty
of people whom he could invite to dinner, to whose sympathy he
could appeal in any public affair he was concerned about, whose
interest he could reckon upon for any one he wished to help, with
whom he could candidly discuss other people's business and
affairs of state. But his relations with these people were
confined to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain
routine from which it was impossible to depart. There was one
man, a comrade of his at the university, with whom he had made
friends later, and with whom he could have spoken of a personal
sorrow; but this friend had a post in the Department of Education
in a remote part of Russia. Of the people in Petersburg the most
intimate and most possible were his chief secretary and his
doctor.

Mihail Vassilievitch Sludin, the chief secretary, was a
straightforward, intelligent, good-hearted, and conscientious
man, and Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of his personal
good-will. But their five years of official work together seemed
to have put a barrier between them that cut off warmer relations.

After signing the papers brought him, Alexey Alexandrovitch had
sat for a long while in silence, glancing at Mihail
Vassilievitch, and several times he attempted to speak, but could
not. He had already prepared the phrase: "You have heard of my
trouble?" But he ended by saying, as usual: "So you'll get this
ready for me?" and with that dismissed him.

The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling
for him; but there had long existed a taciturn understanding
between them that both were weighed down by work, and always in a
hurry.

Of his women-friends, foremost amongst them Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, Alexey Alexandrovitch never thought. All women, simply
as women, were terrible and distasteful to him.

Chapter 22

Alexey Alexandrovitch had forgotten the Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
but she had not forgotten him. At the bitterest moment of his
lonely despair she came to him, and without waiting to be
announced, walked straight into his study. She found him as he
was sitting with his head in both hands.

"J'ai force la consigne," she said, walking in with rapid steps
and breathing hard with excitement and rapid exercise. "I have
heard all! Alexey Alexandrovitch! Dear friend!" she went on,
warmly squeezing his hand in both of hers and gazing with her
fine pensive eyes into his.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, frowning, got up, and disengaging his
hand, moved her a chair.

"Won't you sit down, countess? I'm seeing no one because I'm
unwell, countess," he said, and his lips twitched.

"Dear friend!" repeated Countess Lidia Ivanovna, never taking her
eyes off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the inner
corners, describing a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellow
face became still uglier, but Alexey Alexandrovitch felt that she
was sorry for him and was preparing to cry. And he too was
softened; he snatched her plump hand and proceeded to kiss it.

"Dear friend!" she said in a voice breaking with emotion. "You
ought not to give way to grief. Your sorrow is a great one, but
you ought to find consolation."

"I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!" said
Alexey Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into
her brimming eyes. "My position is so awful because I can find
nowhere, I cannot find within me strength to support me."

"You will find support; seek it--not in me, though I beseech you
to believe in my friendship," she said, with a sigh. "Our support
is love, that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is
light," she said, with the look of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch
knew so well. "He will be your support and your succor."

Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental
emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor
which had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to
Alexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to
him to hear this now.

"I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I understand
nothing."

"Dear friend," repeated Lidia Ivanovna.

"It's not the loss of what I have not now, it's not that!"
pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch. "I do not grieve for that. But I
cannot help feeling humiliated before other people for the
position I am placed in. It is wrong, but I can't help it, I
can't help it."

"Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which
I was moved to ecstasy, and every one else too, but He, working
within your heart," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her
eyes rapturously, "and so you cannot be ashamed of your act."

Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands,
he cracked his fingers.

"One must know all the facts," he said in his thin voice. "A
man's strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my
limits. The whole day I have had to be making arrangements,
arrangements about household matters arising" (he emphasized the
word arising) "from my new, solitary position. The servants, the
governess, the accounts.... These pinpricks have stabbed me to
the heart, and I have not the strength to bear it. At dinner . .
. yesterday, I was almost getting up from the dinnertable. I
could not bear the way my son looked at me. He did not ask me the
meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could not bear the
look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is not
all...." Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to the bill
that had been brought him, but his voice shook, and he stopped.
That bill on blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he could not
recall without a rush of self-pity.

"I understand, dear friend," said Lidia Ivanovna. "I understand
it all. Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though I have
come only to aid you if I can. If I could take from off you all
these petty, humiliating cares ...I understand that a woman's
word, a woman's superintendence is needed. You will intrust it to
met"

Silently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed her hand.

"Together we will take care of Seryozha. Practical affairs are
not my strong point. But I will set to work. I will be your
housekeeper. Don't thank me. I do it not from myself . . ."

"I cannot help thanking you."

"But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which you
spoke--being ashamed of what is the Christian's highest glory:
*he who humbles himself shall be exalted*. And you cannot thank
me. You must thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him alone
we find peace, consolation, salvation, and love," she said, and
turning her eyes heavenwards, she began praying, as Alexey
Alexandrovitch gathered from her silence.

Alexey Alexandrovitch listened to her now, and those expressions
which had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at least
exaggerated, now seemed to him natural and consolatory. Alexey
Alexandrovitch had disliked this new enthusiastic fervor. He was
a believer, who was interested in religion primarily in its
political aspect, and the new doctrine which ventured upon
several new interpretations, just because it paved the way to
discussion and analysis, was in principle disagreeable to him. He
had hitherto taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude to
this new doctrine, and with Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who had been
carried away by it, he had never argued, but by silence had
assiduously parried her attempts to provoke him into argument.
Now for the first time he heard her words with pleasure, and did
not inwardly oppose them.

"I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for
your words," he said, when she had finished praying.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna once more pressed both her friend's
hands.

"Now I will enter upon my duties," she said with a smile after a
pause, as she wiped away the traces of tears. "I am going to
Seryozha. Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you." And
she got up and went out.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha's part of the house,
and dropping tears on the scared child's cheeks, she told him
that his father was a saint and his mother was dead.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually take
upon herself the care of the organization and management of
Alexey Alexandrovitch's household. But she had not overstated the
case when saying that practical affairs were not her strong
point. All her arrangements had to be modified because they could
not be carried out, and they were modified by Korney, Alexey
Alexandrovitch's valet, who, though no one was aware of the fact,
now managed Karenin's household, and quietly and discreetly
reported to his master while he was dressing all it was necessary
for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna's help was none the less
real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral support in the
consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more, as
it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him
to Christianity--that is, from an indifferent and apathetic
believer she turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of
the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been
gaining ground of late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey
Alexandrovitch to believe in this teaching. Alexey
Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared
their views, was completely devoid of vividness of imagination,
that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked
by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in
harmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw
nothing impossible and inconceivable in the idea that death,
though existing for unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that,
as he was possessed of the most perfect faith, of the measure of
which he was himself the judge, therefore there was no sin in his
soul, and he was experiencing complete salvation here on earth.

It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this
conception of his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey
Alexandrovitch, and he knew that when, without the slightest idea
that his forgiveness was the action of a higher power, he had
surrendered directly to the feeling of forgiveness, he had felt
more happiness than now when he was thinking every instant that
Christ was in his heart, and that in signing official papers he
was doing His will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a
necessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him
in his humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, however
imaginary, from which, looked down upon by all, he could look
down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to his
delusion of salvation.

Chapter 23

The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and sentimental
girl, been married to a wealthy man of high rank, an extremely
good-natured, jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. Two months
after marriage her husband abandoned her, and her impassioned
protestations of affection he met with a sarcasm and even
hostility that people knowing the count's good heart, and seeing
no defects in the sentimental Lidia, were at loss to explain.
Though they were divorced and lived apart, yet whenever the
husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to her with the same
malignant irony, the cause of which was incomprehensible.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna had long given up being in love with her
husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love
with some one. She was in love with several people at once, both
men and women; she had been in love with almost every one who had
been particularly distinguished in any way. She was in love with
all the new princes and princesses who married into the imperial
family; she had been in love with a high dignitary of the Church,
a vicar, and a parish priest; she had been in love with a
journalist, three Slavaphils, with Komissarov, with a minister, a
doctor, an English missionary and Karenin. All these passions
constantly waning or growing more ardent, did not prevent her
from keeping up the most extended and complicated relations with
the court and fashionable society. But from the time that after
Karenin's trouble she took him under her special protection, from
the time that she set to work in Karenin's household looking
after his welfare, she felt that all her other attachments were
not the real thing, and that she was now genuinely in love, and
with no one but Karenin. The feeling she now experienced for him
seemed to her stronger than any of her former feelings. Analyzing
her feeling, and comparing it with former passions, she
distinctly perceived that she would not have been in love with
Komissarov if he had not saved the life of the Tsar, that she
would not have been in love with Ristitch-Kudzhitsky if there had
been no Slavonic question, but that she loved Karenin for
himself, for his lofty, uncomprehended soul, for the sweet--to
her--high notes of his voice, for his drawling intonation, his
weary eyes, his character, and his soft white hands with their
swollen veins. She was not simply overjoyed at meeting him, but
she sought in his face signs of the impression she was making on
him. She tried to please him, not by her words only, but in her
whole person. For his sake it was that she now lavished more care
on her dress than before. She caught herself in reveries on what
might have been, if she had not been married and he had been
free. She blushed with emotion when he came into the room, she
could not repress a smile of rapture when he said anything
amiable to her.

For several days now Countess Lidia Ivanovna had been in a state
of intense excitement. She had learned that Anna and Vronsky were
in Petersburg. Alexey Alexandrovitch must be saved from seeing
her, he must be saved even from the torturing knowledge that that
awful woman was in the same town with him, and that he might meet
her any minute.

Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to what
those infamous people, as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended
doing, and she endeavored so to guide every movement of her
friend during those days that he could not come across them. The
young adjutant, an acquaintance of Vronsky, through whom she
obtained her information, and who hoped through Countess Lidia
Ivanovna to obtain a concession, told her that they had finished
their business and were going away next day. Lidia Ivanovna had
already begun to calm down, when the next morning a note was
brought her, the handwriting of which she recognized with horror.
It was the handwriting of Anna Karenina. The envelope was of
paper as thick as bark; on the oblong yellow paper there was a
huge monogram, and the letter smelt of agreeable scent.

"Who brought it?"

"A commissionaire from the hotel."

It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could sit down to
read the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma,
to which she was subject. When she had recovered her composure,
she read the following letter in French:

"Madame la  Comtesse,

"The Christian feelings with which your heart spilled give me
the, I feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I am
miserable at being separated from my son. I entreat permission to
see him once before my departure. Forgive me for recalling myself
to your memory. I apply to you and not to Alexey Alexandrovitch,
simply because I do not wish to cause that generous man to suffer
in remembering me. Knowing your friendship for him, I know you
will understand me. Could you send Seryozha to me, or should I
come to the house at some fixed hour, or will you let me know
when and where I could see him away from home? I do not
anticipate a refusal, knowing the magnanimity of him with whom it
rests. You cannot conceive the craving I have to see him, and so
cannot conceive the gratitude your help will arouse in me.

Anna"

Everything in this letter exasperated Countess Lidia Ivanovna:
its contents and the allusion to magnanimity, and especially its
free and easy--as she considered--tone.

"Say that there is no answer," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, and
immediately opening her blotting-book, she wrote to Alexey
Alexandrovitch that she hoped to see him at one o'clock at the
levee.

"I must talk with you of a grave and painful subject. There we
will arrange where to meet. Best of all at my house, where I will
order tea as you like it. Urgent. He lays the cross, but He gives
the strength to bear it," she added, so as to give him some
slight preparation. Countess Lidia Ivanovna usually wrote some
two or three letters a day to Alexey Alexandrovitch. She enjoyed
that form of communication, which gave opportunity for a
refinement and air of mystery not afforded by their personal
interviews.

Chapter 24

The levee was drawing to a close. People met as they were going
away, and gossiped of the latest news, of the newly bestowed
honors and the changes in the positions of the higher
functionaries.

"If only Countess Marya Borissovna were Minister of War, and
Princess Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-Chief," said a
gray-headed, little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform,
addressing a tall, handsome maid of honor who had questioned him
about the new appointments.

"And me among the adjutants," said the maid of honor, smiling.

"You have an appointment already. You're over the ecclesiastical
department. And your assistant's Karenin."

"Good-day, prince!" said the little old man to a man who came up
to him.

"What were you saying of Karenin?" said the prince.

"He and Putyatov have received the Alexander Nevsky."

"I thought he had it already."

"No. Just look at him," said the little old man, pointing with
his embroidered hat to Karenin in a court uniform with the new
red ribbon across his shoulders, standing in the doorway of the
hall with an influential member of the Imperial Council. "Pleased
and happy as a brass farthing," he added, stopping to shake hands
with a handsome gentleman of the bedchamber of colossal
proportions.

"No; he's looking older," said the gentleman of the bedchamber.

"From overwork. He's always drawing up projects nowadays. He
won't let a poor devil go nowadays till he's explained it all to
him under heads."

"Looking older, did you say? Il fait des passions. I believe
Countess Lidia Ivanovna's jealous now of his wife."

"Oh, come now, please don't say any harm of Countess Lidia
Ivanovna."

"Why, is there any harm in her being in love with Karenin?"

"But is it true Madame Karenina's here?"

"Well, not here in the palace, but in Petersburg. I met her
yesterday with Alexey Vronsky, bras dessous, bras dessous, in the
Morsky."

"C'est un homme qui n'a pas . . ." the gentleman of the
bedchamber was beginning, but he stopped to make room, bowing,
for a member of the Imperial family to pass.

Thus people talked incessantly of Alexey A'iexandrovitch, finding
fault with him and laughing at him, while he, blocking up the way
of the member of the Imperial Council he had captured, was
explaining to him point by point his new financial project, never
interrupting his discourse for an instant for fear he should
escape.

Almost at the same time that his wife left Alexey Alexandrovitch
there had come to him that bitterest moment in the life of an
official--the moment when his upward career comes to a full stop.
This full stop had arrived and every one perceived it, but Alexey
Alexandrovitch himself was not yet aware that his career was
over. Whether it was due to his feud with Stremov, or his
misfortune with his wife, or simply that Alexey Alexandrovitch
had reached his destined limits, it had become evident to every
one in the course of that year that his career was at an end. He
still filled a position of consequence, he sat on many
commissions and committees, but he was a man whose day was over,
and from whom nothing was expected. Whatever he said, whatever he
proposed, was heard as though it were something long familiar,
and the very thing that was not needed. But Alexey Alexandrovitch
was not aware of this, and, on the contrary, being cut off from
direct participation in governmental activity, he saw more
clearly than ever the errors and defects in the action of others,
and thought it his duty to point out means for their correction.
Shortly after his separation from his wife, he began writing his
first note on the new judicial procedure, the first of the
endless series of notes he was destined to write in the future.

Alexey Alexandrovitch did not merely fail to observe his hopeless
position in the official world, he was not merely free from
anxiety on this head, he was positively more satisfied than ever
with his own activity.

"He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the
Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth
for the things that are of the world, how he may please his
wife," says the Apostle Paul, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, who was
now guided in every action by Scripture, often recalled this
text. It seemed to him that ever since he had been left without a
wife, he had in these very projects of reform been serving the
Lord more zealously than before.

The unmistakable impatience of the member of the Council trying
to get away from him did not trouble Alexey Alexandrovitch; he
gave up his exposition only when the member of the Council,
seizing his chance when one of the Imperial family was passing,
slipped away from him.

Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch looked down, collecting his
thoughts, then looked casually about him and walked towards the
door, where he hoped to meet Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"And how strong they all are, how sound physically," thought
Alexey Alexandrovitch, looking at the powerfully built gentleman
of the bedchamber with his well-combed, perfumed whiskers, and at
the red neck of the prince, pinched by his tight uniform. He had
to pass them on his way. "Truly is it said that all the world is
evil," he thought, with another sidelong glance at the calves of
the gentleman of the bedchamber.

Moving forward deliberately, Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed with his
customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had
been talking about him, and looking towards the door, his eyes
sought Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"Ah! Alexey Alexandrovitch!" said the little old man, with a
malicious light in his eyes, at the moment when Karenin was on a
level with them, and was nodding with a frigid gesture, "I
haven't congratulated you yet," said the old man, pointing to his
newly received ribbon.

"Thank you," answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. "What an EXQUISITE
day to-day," he added, laying emphasis in his peculiar way on the
word EXQUISITE.

That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did not expect
anything but hostility from them; he was used to that by now.

Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia Ivanovna jutting
out above her corset, and her fine pensive eyes bidding him to
her, Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled, revealing untarnished white
teeth, and went towards her.

Lidia Ivanovna's dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all
her dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the
reverse of that she had pursued thirty years before. Then her
desire had been to adorn herself with something, and the more
adorned the better. Now, on the contrary, she was perforce decked
out in a way so inconsistent with her age and her figure, that
her one anxiety was to contrive that the contrast between these
adornments and her own exterior should not be too appalling. And
as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was concerned she succeeded, and
was in his eyes attractive. For him she was the one island not
only of good-will to him, but of love in the midst of the sea of
hostility and jeering that surrounded him.

Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally
to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.

"I congratulate you," she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.

Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders,
closing his eyes, as though to say that that could not be a
source of joy to him. Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well aware
that it was one of his chief sources of satisfaction, though he
never admitted it.

"How is our angel?" said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, meaning
Seryozha.

"I can't say I was quite pleased with him," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. "And
Sitnikov is not satisfied with him." (Sitnikov was the tutor to
whom Seryozha's secular education had been intrusted.) "As I have
mentioned to you, there's a sort of coldness in him towards the
most important questions which ought to touch the heart of every
man and every child...." Alexey Alexandrovitch began expounding
his views on the sole question that interested him besides the
service--the education of his son.

When Alexey Alexandrovitch with Lidia Ivanovna's help had been
brought back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to
undertake the education of the son left on his hands. Having
never before taken any interest in educational questions, Alexey
Alexandrovitch devoted some time to the theoretical study of the
subject. After reading several books on anthropology, education,
and didactics, Alexey Alexandrovitch drew up a plan of education,
and engaging the best tutor in Petersburg to superintend it, he
set to work, and the subject continually absorbed him.

"Yes, but the heart. I see in him his father's heart, and with
such a heart a child cannot go far wrong," said Lidia Ivanovna
with enthusiasm.

"Yes, perhaps.... As for me, I do my duty. It's all I can do."

"You're coming to me," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, after a
pause; "we have to speak of a subject painful for you. I would
give anything to have spared you certain memories, but others are
not of the same mind. I have received a letter from *her. She is
here in Petersburg."

Alexey Alexandrovitch shuddered at the allusion to his wife, but
immediately his face assumed the deathlike rigidity which
expressed utter helplessness in the matter.

"I was expecting it," he said.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna looked at him ecstatically, and tears of
rapture at the greatness of his soul came into her eyes.

Chapter 25

When Alexey Alexandrovitch came into the Countess Lidia
Ivanovna's snug little boudoir, decorated with old china and hung
with portraits, the lady herself had not yet made her appearance.
She was changing her dress.

A cloth was laid on a round table, and on it stood a china
tea-service and a silver spirit-lamp and tea-kettle. Alexey
Alexandrovitch looked idly about at the endless familiar
portraits which adorned the room, and sitting down to the table,
he opened a New Testament lying upon it. The rustle of the
countess's silk skirt drew his attention off.

"Well now, we can sit quietly," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
slipping hurriedly with an agitated smile between the table and
the sofa, "and talk over our tea."

After some words of preparation, Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
breathing hard and flushing crimson, gave into Alexey
Alexandrovitch's hands the letter she had received.

After reading the letter, he sat a long while in silence.

"I don't think I have the right to refuse her," he said, timidly
lifting his eyes.

"Dear friend, you never see evil in any one!"

"On the contrary, I see that all is evil. But whether it is just
. . ."

His face showed irresolution, and a seeking for counsel, support,
and guidance in a matter he did not understand.

"No," Countess Lidia Ivanovna interrupted him; "there are limits
to everything. I can understand immorality," she said, not quite
truthfully, since she never could understand that which leads
women to immorality; "but I don't understand cruelty: to whom? to
youl How can she stay in the town where you are? No, the longer
one lives the more one learns. And I'm learning to understand
your loftiness and her baseness."

"Who is to throw a stone?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
unmistakably pleased with the part he had to play. "I have
forgiven all, and so I cannot deprive her of what is exacted by
love in her--by her love for her son...."

"But is that love, my friend? Is it sincere? Admitting that you
have forgiven--that you forgive--have we the right to work on the
feelings of that angel? He looks on her as dead. He prays for
her, and beseeches God to have mercy on her sins. And it is
better so. But now what will he think?"

"I had not thought of that," said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
evidently agreeing.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna hid her face in her hands and was silent.
She was praying.

"If you ask my advice," she said, having finished her prayer and
uncovered.her face, "I do not advise you to do this. Do you
suppose I don't see how you are suffering, how this has torn open
your wounds? But supposing that, as always, you don't think of
yourself, what can it lead to?--to fresh suffering for you, to
torture for the child. If there were a trace of humanity left in
her, she ought not to wish for it herself. No, I have no
hesitation in saying I advise not, and if you will intrust it to
me, I will write to her."

And Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna
sent the following letter in French:

"Dear Madame,

"To be reminded of you might have results for your son in leading
to questions on his part which could not be answered without
implanting in the child's soul a spirit of censure towards what
should be for him sacred, and therefore I beg you to interpret
your husband's refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I pray to
Almighty God to have mercy on you.
                                Countess Lidia"

This letter attained the secret object which Countess Lidia
Ivanovna had concealed from herself. It wounded Anna to the
quick.

For his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning home from Lidia
Ivanovna's, could not all that day concentrate himself on his
usual pursuits, and find that spiritual peace of one saved and
believing which he had felt of late.

The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him,
and towards whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia
Ivanovna had so justly told him, ought not to have troubled him;
but he was not easy; he could not understand the book he was
reading; he could not drive away harassing recollections of his
relations with her, of the mistake which, as it now seemed, he
had made in regard to her. The memory of how he had received her
confession of infidelity on their way home from the races
(especially that he had insisted only on the observance of
external decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like
a remorse. He was tortured too by the thought of the letter he
had written her; and most of all, his forgiveness, which nobody
wanted, and his care of the other man's child made his heart burn
with shame and remorse.

And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he
reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in
which, after long wavering, he had made her an offer.

"But how have I been to blame?" he said to himself. And this
question always excited another question in him--whether they
felt differently, did their loving and marrying differently,
these Vronskys and Oblonskys ...these gentlemen of the
bedchamber, with their fine calves. And there passed before his
mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous, self-
confident men, who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive
attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel these thoughts,
he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this
transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was
peace and love in his heart.

But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as
it seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though
the eternal salvation in which he believed had no existence. But
this temptation did not last long, and soon there was
reestablished once more in Alexey Alexandrovitch's soul the peace
and the elevation by virtue of which he could forget what he did
not want to remember.

Chapter 26

"Well, Kapitonitch?" said Seryozha, coming back rosy and good-
humored from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his
overcoat to the tall old hall-porter, who smiled down at the
little person from the height of his long figure. "Well, has the
bandaged clerk been here to-day? Did papa see him!"

"He saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out, I announced
him," said the hall-porter with a good-humored wink. "Here, I'll
take it off."

"Seryozha!" said the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to
the inner rooms. "Take it off yourself." But Seryozha, though he
heard his tutor's feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He
stood keeping hold of the hall-porter's belt, and gazing into his
face.

"Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?"

The hall-porter nodded his head affirmatively. The clerk with his
face tied up, who had already been seven times to ask some favor
of Alexey Alexandrovitch, interested both Seryozha and the
hall-porter. Seryozha had come upon him in the hall, and had
heard him plaintively beg the hall-porter to announce him, saying
that he and his children had death staring them in the face.

Since then Seryozha, having met him a second time in the hall,
took great interest in him.

"Well, was he very glad?" he asked.

"Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away."

"And has anything been left?" asked Seryozha, after a pause.

"Come, sir," said the hall-porter; then with a shake of his head
he whispered, "Something from the countess."

Seryozha understood at once that what the hall-porter was
speaking of was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his
birthday.

"What do you say? Where?"

"Korney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be too!"

"How big? Like this?"

"Rather small, but a fine thing."

"A book."

"No, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling
you," said the porter, hearing the tutor's steps approaching, and
carefully taking away from his belt the little hand in the glove
half pulled off, he signed with his head towards the tutor.

"Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!" answered Seryozha with that
gay and loving smile which always won over the conscientious
Vassily Lukitch.

Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to
be able to help sharing with his friend the porter the family
good fortune of which he had heard during his walk in the public
gardens from Lidia Ivanovna's niece. This piece of good news
seemed to him particularly important from its coming at the same
time with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his own gladness
at toys having come for him. It seemed to Seryozha that this was
a day on which every one ought to be glad and happy.

"You know papa's received the Alexander Nevsky to-day?"

"To be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him."

"And is he glad?"

"Glad at the Tsar's gracious favor! I should think so! It's a
proof he's deserved it," said the porter severely and seriously.

Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter,
which he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the
chin that hung down between the gray whiskers, never seen by any
one but Seryozha, who saw him only from below.

"Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?"

The porter's daughter was a ballet-dancer.

"When is she to come on week-days? They've their lessons to learn
too. And you've your lesson, sir; run along."

On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his
lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been
brought him must be a machine. "What do you think?" he inquired.

But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of
learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at
two.

"No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch," he asked suddenly, when
he was seated at their work-table with the book in his hands,
"what is greater than the Alexander Nevsky? You know papa's
received the Alexander Nevsky?"

Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the
Alexander Nevsky.

"And higher still?"

"Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny."

"And higher than the Andrey?"

"I don't know."

"What, you don't know?" and Seryozha, leaning on his elbows, sank
into deep meditation.

His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character.
He imagined his father's having suddenly been presented with both
the Vladimir and the Andrey to-day, and in consequence being much
better tempered at his lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown
up, he would himself receive all the orders, and what they might
invent higher than the Andrey. Directly any higher order were
invented, he would win it. They would make a higher one still,
and he would immediately win that too.

The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came,
the lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of
action was not ready, and the teacher was not only displeased,
but hurt. This touched Seryozha. He felt he was not to blame for
not having learned the lesson; however much he tried, he was
utterly unable to do that. As long as the teacher was explaining
to him, he believed him and seemed to comprehend, but as soon as
he was left alone, he was positively unable to recollect and to
understand that the short and familiar word "suddenly" is an
adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he had
disappointed the teacher.

He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the
book.

"Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?" he asked all, of a
sudden.

"You'd much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of
no importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other on
which one has to do one's work."

Seryozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at
his spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his
nose, and fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of
what the teacher was explaining to him. He knew that the teacher
did not think what he said; he felt it from the tone in which it
was said. "But why have they all agreed to speak just in the same
manner always the dreariest and most useless stuff? Why does he
keep me off; why doesn't he love me?" he asked himself
mournfully, and could not think of an answer.

Chapter 27

After the lesson with the grammar teacher came his father's
lesson. While waiting for his father, Seryozha sat at the table
playing with a penknife, and fell to dreaming. Among Seryozha's
favorite occupations was searching for his mother during his
walks. He did not believe in death generally, and in her death in
particular, in spite of what Lidia Ivanovna had told him and his
father had confirmed, and it was just because of that, and after
he had been told she was dead, that he had begun looking for her
when out for a walk. Every woman of full, graceful figure with
dark hair was his mother. At the sight of such a woman such a
feeling of tenderness was stirred within him that his breath
failed him, and tears came into his eyes. And he was on the
tiptoe of expectation that she would come up to him, would lift
her veil. All her face would be visible, she would smile, she
would hug him, he would sniff her fragrance, feel the softness of
her arms, and cry with happiness, just as he had one evening lain
on her lap while she tickled him, and he laughed and bit her
white, ring-covered fingers. Later, when he accidentally reamed
from his old nurse that his mother was not dead, and his father
and Lidia Ivanovna had explained to him that she was dead to him
because she was wicked (which he could not possibly believe,
because he loved her), he went on seeking her and expecting her
in the same way. That day in the public gardens there had been a
lady in a lilac veil, whom he had watched with a throbbing heart,
believing it to be she as she came towards them along the path.
The lady had not come up to them, but had disappeared somewhere.
That day, more intensely than ever, Seryozha felt a rush of love
for her, and now, waiting for his father, he forgot everything,
and cut all round the edge of the table with his penknife,
staring straight before him with sparkling eyes and dreaming of
her.

"Here is your papa!" said Vassily Lukitch, rousing him.

Seryozha jumped up and went up to his father, and kissing his
hand, looked at him intently, trying to discover signs of his joy
at receiving the Alexander Nevsky.

"Did you have a nice walk?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch, sitting
down in his easy-chair, pulling the volume of the Old Testament
to him and opening it. Although Alexey Alexandrovitch had more
than once told Seryozha that every Christian ought to know
Scripture history thoroughly, he often referred to the Bible
himself during the lesson, and Seryozha observed this.

"Yes, it was very nice indeed, papa," said Seryozha, sitting
sideways on his chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. "I saw
Nadinka" (Nadinka was a niece of Lidia Ivanovna's who was being
brought up in her house). "She told me you'd been given a new
star. Are you glad, papa?"

"First of all, don't rock your chair, please," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. "And secondly, it's not the reward that's
precious, but the work itself. And I could have wished you
understood that. If you now are going to work, to study in order
to win a reward, then the work will seem hard to you; but when
you work" (Alexey Alexandrovitch, as he spoke, thought of how he
had been sustained by a sense of duty through the wearisome labor
of the moming, consisting of signing one hundred and eighty
papers), "loving your work, you will find your reward in it."

Seryozha's eyes, that had been shining with gaiety and tendemess,
grew dull and dropped before his father's gaze. This was the same
longfamiliar tone his father always took with him, and Seryozha
had reamed by now to fall in with it. His father always talked to
him--so Seryozha felt--as though he were addressing some boy of
his own imagination, one of those boys that exist in books,
utterly unlike himself. And Seryozha always tried with his father
to act being the story-book boy.

"You understand that, I hope?" said his father.

"Yes, papa," answered Seryozha, acting the part of the imaginary
boy.

The lesson consisted of learning by heart several verses out of
the Gospel and the repetition of the beginning of the Old
Testament. The verses from the Gospel Seryozha knew fairly well,
but at the moment when he was saying them he became so absorbed
in watching the sharply protruding, bony knobbiness of his
father's forehead, that he lost the thread, and he transposed the
end of one verse and the beginning of another. So it was evident
to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he did not understand what he was
saying, and that irritated him.

He frowned, and began explaining what Seryozha had heard many
times before and never could remember, because he understood it
too well, just as that "suddenly" is an adverb of manner of
action. Seryozha looked with scared eyes at his father, and could
think of nothing but whether his father would make him repeat
what he had said, as he sometimes did. And this thought so
alarmed Seryozha that he now understood nothing. But his father
did not make him repeat it, and passed on to the lesson out of
the Old Testament. Seryozha recounted the events themselves well
enough, but when he had to answer questions as to what certain
events prefigured, he knew nothing, though he had already been
punished over this lesson. The passage at which he was utterly
unable to say anything, and began fidgeting and cutting the table
and swinging his chair,was where he had to repeat the patriarchs
before the Flood.He did not know one of them, except Enoch, who
had been taken up alive to heaven. Last time he had remembered
their names, but now he had forgotten them utterly, chiefly
because Enoch was the personage he liked best in the whole of the
Old Testament, and Enoch's translation to heaven was connected in
his mind with a whole long train of thought, in which he became
absorbed now while he gazed with fascinated eyes at his father's
watch-chain and a half-unbuttoned button on his waistcoat.

In death, of which they talked to him so often, Seryozha
disbelieved entirely. He did not believe that those he loved
could die, above all that he himself would die. That was to him
something utterly inconceivable and impossible. But he had been
told that all men die; he had asked people, indeed whom he
trusted, and they too, had confirmed it; his old nurse, too, said
the same, though reluctantly. But Enoch had not died, and so it
followed that every one did not die. "And why cannot any one else
so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?" thought Seryozha. Bad
people, that is those Seryozha did not like, they might die, but
the good might all be like Enoch.

"Well, what are the names of the patriarchs?"

"Epoch, Enos--"

"But you have said that already. This is bad, Seryozha, very bad.
If you don't try to learn what is more necessary than anything
for a Christian," said his father, getting up, "whatever can
interest you? I am displeased with you, and Pyotr Ignatitch"
(this was the most important of his teachers) "is displeased with
you.... I shall have to punish you."

His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seryozha,
and he certainly did learn his lessons very badly. But still it
could not be said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was
far cleverer than the boys his teacher held up as examples to
Seryozha. In his father's opinion, he did not want to learn what
he was taught. In reality he could not learn that. He could not,
because the claims of his own soul were more binding on him than
those claims his father and his teacher made upon him. Those
claims were in opposition, and he was in direct conflict with his
education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but he knew his
own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid
guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into
his soul. His teachers complained that he would not learn, while
his soul was brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he
reamed from Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from
Vassily Lukitch, but not from his teachers. The spring his father
and his teachers reckoned upon to turn their mill-wheels had long
dried up at the source, but its waters did their work in another
channel.

His father punished Seryozha by not letting him go to see
Nadinka, Lidia Ivanovna's niece; but this punishment turned out
happily for Seryozha. Vassily Lukitch was in a good humor, and
showed him how to make windmills.The whole evening passed over
this work and in dreaming how to make a windmill on which he
could turn himself--clutching at the sails or tying himself on
and whirling round. Of his mother Seryozha did not think all the
evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly remembered her,
and prayed in his own words that his mother tomorrow for his
birthday might leave off hiding herself and come to him.

"Vassily Lukitch, do you know what I prayed for to-night extra
besides the regular things?"

"That you might learn your lessons better?"

"No."

"Toys?"

"No. You'll never guess. A splendid thing; but it's a secret!
When it comes to pass I'll tell you. Can't you guess!"

"No, I can't guess. You tell me," said Vassily Lukitch with a
smile, which was rare with him. "Come, lie down, I'm putting out
the candle."

"Without the candle I can see better what I see and what I prayed
for. There! I was almost telling the secret!" said Seryozha,
laughing gaily.

When the candle was taken away, Seryozha heard and felt his
mother. She stood over him, and with loving eyes caressed him.
But then came windmills, a knife, everything began to be mixed
up, and he fell asleep.

Chapter 28

On arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of the
Lad best hotels; Vronsky apart in a lower story, Anna above with
her hild, its nurse, and her maid, in a large suite of four
rooms.

On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother's. There he
found his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His
mother and sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him
about his stay abroad, and talked of their common acquaintances,
but did not let drop a single word in allusion to his connection
with Anna. His brother came the next morning to see Vronsky, and
of his own accord asked him about her, and Alexey Vronskytold him
directly that he looked upon his connection with Madame Karenina
as marriage; that he hoped to arrange a divorce, and then to
marry her, and until then he considered her as much a wife as any
other wife, and he begged him to tell their mother and his wife
so.

"If the world disapproves, I don't care," said Vronksky; "but if
my relations want to be on temms of relationship with me, they
will have to be on the same temms with my wife."

The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger
brother's judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or
not till the world had decided the question; for his part he had
nothing against it, and with Alexey he went up to see Anna.

Before his brother, as before every one, Vronsky addressed Anna
with a certain fommality, treating her as he might a very
intimate friend, but it was understood that his brother knew
their real relations, and they talked about Anna's going to
Vronsky's estate.

In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in consequence
of the new position in which he was placed, laboring under a
strange misapprehension. One would have thought he must have
understood that society was closed for him and Anna; but now some
vague ideas had sprung up in his brain that this was only the
case in old-fashioned days, and that now with the rapidity of
modern progress (he had unconsciously become by now a partisan of
every sort of progress) the views of society had changed, and
that the question whether they would be received in society was
not a foregone conclusion. "Of course," he thought, "she would
not be received at court, but intimate friends can and must look
at it in the proper light." One may sit for several hours at a
stretch with one's legs crossed in the same position, if one
knows that there's nothing to prevent one's changing one's
position; but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with
crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and
to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw them.
This was what Vronsky was experiencing in regard to the world.
Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that the world was shut
on them, he put it to the test whether the world had not changed
by now and would not receive them. But he very quickly perceived
that though the world was open for him personally, it was closed
for Anna. Just as in the game of cat and mouse, the hands raised
for him were dropped to bar the way for Anna.

One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Vronsky saw
was his cousin Betsy.

"At last!" she greeted him joyfully. "And Anna? How glad I aml
Where are you stopping? I can fancy after your delightful travels
you must find our poor Petersburg horrid. I can fancy your
honeymoon in Rome. How about the divorce? Is that all over?"

Vronsky noticed that Betsy's enthusiasm waned when she learned
that no divorce had as yet taken place.

"People will throw stones at me, I know," she said, "but I shall
come and see Anna; yes, I shall certainly come. You won't be here
long, I suppose?"

And she did certainly come to see Anna the same day, but her tone
was not at all the same as in former days. She unmistakably
prided herself on her courage, and wished Anna to appreciate the
fidelity of her friendship. She only stayed ten minutes, talking
of society gossip, and on leaving she said:

"You've never told me when the divorce is to be? Supposing I'm
ready to fling my cap over the mill, other starchy people will
give you the cold shoulder until you're married. And that's so
simple nowadays. Ca se fait. So you're going on Friday? Sorry we
shan't see each other again."

From Betsy's tone Vronsky might have grasped what he had to
expect from the world; but he made another effort in his own
family. His mother he did not reckon upon. He knew that his
mother, who had been so enthusiastic over Anna at their first
acquaintance, would have no mercy on her now for having ruined
her son's career. But he had more hope of Varya, his brother's
wife. He fancied she would not throw stones, and would go simply
arid directly to see Anna, and would receive her in her own
house.

The day after his arrival Vronsky went to her, and finding her
alone, expressed his wishes directly.

"You know, Alexey," she said after hearing him, "how fond I am of
you, and how ready I am to do anything for you; but I have not
spoken, because I knew I could be of no use to you and to Anna
Arkadyevna," she said, articulating the name "Anna Arkadyevna"
with particular care. "Don't suppose, please, that I judge her.
Never; perhaps in her place I should have done the same. I don't
and can't enter into that," she said, glancing timidly at his
gloomy face. "But one must call things by their names. You want
me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to rehabilitate her in
society; but do understand that I CANNOT do so. I have daughters
growing up, and I must live in the world for my husband's sake.
Well, I'm ready to come and see Anna Arkadyevna: she will
understand that I can't ask her here, or I should have to do so
in such a way that she would not meet people who look at things
differently; that would offend her. I can't raise her . . ."

"Oh, I don't regard her as fallen more than hundreds of women you
do receive!" Vronsky interrupted her still more gloomily, and he
got up in silence, understanding that his sister-in-law's
decision was not to be shaken.

"Alexey! don't be angry with me. Please understand that I'm not
to blame," began Varya, looking at him with a timid smile.

"I'm not angry with you," he said still as gloomily; "but I'm
sorry in two ways. I'm sorry, too, that this means breaking up
our friendship-- if not breaking up, at least weakening it. You
will understand that for me, too, it cannot be otherwise."

And with that he left her.

Vronsky knew that further efforts were useless, and that he had
to spend these few days in Petersburg as though in a strange
town, avoiding every sort of relation with his own old circle in
order not to be exposed to the annoyances and humiliations which
were so intolerable to him. One of the most unpleasant features
of his position in Petersburg was that Alexey Alexandrovitch-and
his name seemed to meet him everywhere. He could not begin to
talk of anything without the conversation turning on Alexey
Alexandrovitch; he could not go anywhere without risk of meeting
him. So at least it seemed toVronsky, just as it seems to a man
with a sore finger that he is continually, as though on purpose,
grazing his sore finger on everything.

Their stay in Petersburg was the more painful to Vronsky that he
perceived all the time a sort of new mood that he could not
understand in Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him,
and then she would become cold, irritable, and impenetrable. She
was worrying over something, and keeping something back from him,
and did not seem to notice the humiliations which poisoned his
existence, and for her, with her delicate intuition, must have
been still more unbearable.

Chapter 29

One of Anna's objects in coming back to Russia had been to see
her son. From the day she left Italy the thought of it had never
ceased to agitate her. And as she got nearer to Petersburg, the
delight and importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her
imagination. She did not even put to herself the question how to
arrange it. It seemed to her natural and simple to see her son
when she should be in the same town with him. But on her arrival
in Petersburg she was suddenly made distinctly aware of her
present position in society, and she grasped the fact that to
arrange this meeting was no easy matter.

She had now been two days in Petersburg. The thought of her son
never left her for a single instant, but she had not yet seen
him. To go straight to the house, where she might meet Alexey
Alexandrovitch, that she felt she had no right to do. She might
be refused admittance and insulted. To write and so enter into
relations with her husband--that it made her miserable to think
of doing; she could only be at peace when she did not think of
her husband. To get a glimpse of her son out walking, finding out
where and when he went out, was not enough for her; she had so
looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she must say to
him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him. Seryozha's old
nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the
nurse was not now living in Alexey Alexandrovitch's house. In
this uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had
slipped by.

Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexey Alexandrovitch and
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write
to her a letter, which cost her great pains, and in which she
intentionally said that permission to see her son must depend on
her husband's generosity. She knew that if the letter were shown
to her husband, he would keep up his character of magnanimity,
and would not refuse her request.

The commissionaire who took the letter had brought her back the
most cruel and unexpected answer, that there was no answer. She
had never felt so humiliated as at the moment when, sending for
the commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how
he had waited, and how afterwards he had been told there was no
answer. Anna felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that from her
point of view Countess Lidia Ivanovna was right. Her suffering
was the more poignant that she had to bear it in solitude. She
could not and would not share it with Vronsky. She knew that to
him, although he was the primary cause of her distress, the
question of her seeing her son would seem a matter of very little
consequence. She knew that he would never be capable of
understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his cool
tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate him. And she
dreaded that more than anything in the world, and so she hid from
him everything that related to her son. Spending the whole day at
home she considered ways of seeing her son, and had reached a
decision to write to her husband. She was just composing this
letter when she was handed the letter from Lidia Ivanovna. The
countess's silence had subdued and depressed her, but the letter,
all that she read between the lines in it, so exasperated her,
this malice was so revolting beside her passionate, legitimate
tenderness for her son, that she turned against other people and
left off blaming herself.

"This coldness--this pretense of feeling!" she said to herself.
"They must needs insult me and torture the child, and I am to
submit to it! Not on any consideration! She is worse than I am. I
don't lie, anyway." And she decided on the spot that next day,
Seryozha's birthday, she would go straight to her husband's
house, bribe or deceive the servants, but at any cost see her son
and overturn the hideous deception with which they were
encompassing the unhappy child.

She went to a toy-shop, bought toys and thought over a plan of
action. She would go early in the morning at eight o'clock, when
Alexey Alexandrovitch would be certain not to be up. She would
have money in her hand to give the hall-porter and the footman,
so that they should let her in, and not raising her veil, she
would say that she had come from Seryozha's godfather to
congratulate him, and that she had been charged to leave the toys
at his bedside. She had prepared everything but the words she
should say to her son. Often as she had dreamed of it, she could
never think of anything.