Chapter 1

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its

own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had

discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French

girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced

to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with

him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only

the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family

and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the

house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that

the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in

common with one another than they, the members of the family and

household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the

husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all

over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper,

and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for

her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time;

the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch

Oblonsky—Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world—woke up at

his usual hour, that is, at eight o’clock in the morning, not in his

wife’s bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned

over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he

would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow

on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped

up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

“Yes, yes, how was it now?” he thought, going over his dream. “Now, how

was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not

Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in

America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the

tables sang, _Il mio tesoro_—not _Il mio tesoro_ though, but something

better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and

they were women, too,” he remembered.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a

smile. “Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal more that

was delightful, only there’s no putting it into words, or even

expressing it in one’s thoughts awake.” And noticing a gleam of light

peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his

feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his

slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on

gold-colored morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine

years, he stretched out his hand, without getting up, towards the place

where his dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he

suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife’s room, but in

his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his

brows.

“Ah, ah, ah! Oo!...” he muttered, recalling everything that had

happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was

present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and

worst of all, his own fault.

“Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me. And the most

awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault—all my fault, though I’m

not to blame. That’s the point of the whole situation,” he reflected.

“Oh, oh, oh!” he kept repeating in despair, as he remembered the

acutely painful sensations caused him by this quarrel.

Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy and

good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for his

wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise

had not found her in the study either, and saw her at last in her

bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand.

She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details,

and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still

with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of

horror, despair, and indignation.

“What’s this? this?” she asked, pointing to the letter.

And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case,

was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he

had met his wife’s words.

There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when

they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not

succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed

towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt,

denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining

indifferent even—anything would have been better than what he did

do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected

Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)—utterly involuntarily

assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.

This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that

smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her

characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the

room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.

“It’s that idiotic smile that’s to blame for it all,” thought Stepan

Arkadyevitch.

“But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to himself in

despair, and found no answer.

Chapter 2

Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself.

He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he

repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact

that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love

with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and

only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had

not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the

difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children,

and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better

from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would

have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the

subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have

suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the

fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young

or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good

mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It

had turned out quite the other way.

“Oh, it’s awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!” Stepan Arkadyevitch kept

repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. “And

how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was

contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in

anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she

liked. It’s true it’s bad _her_ having been a governess in our house.

That’s bad! There’s something common, vulgar, in flirting with one’s

governess. But what a governess!” (He vividly recalled the roguish

black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) “But after all, while she

was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is

that she’s already ... it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh,

oh! But what, what is to be done?”

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to

all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one

must live in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself. To forget

himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could

not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must

forget himself in the dream of daily life.

“Then we shall see,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and getting

up he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the

tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad,

bare chest, he walked to the window with his usual confident step,

turning out his feet that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled

up the blind and rang the bell loudly. It was at once answered by the

appearance of an old friend, his valet, Matvey, carrying his clothes,

his boots, and a telegram. Matvey was followed by the barber with all

the necessaries for shaving.

“Are there any papers from the office?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch,

taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.

“On the table,” replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his

master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, “They’ve

sent from the carriage-jobbers.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the

looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the

looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another. Stepan

Arkadyevitch’s eyes asked: “Why do you tell me that? don’t you know?”

Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and

gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.

“I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or

themselves for nothing,” he said. He had obviously prepared the

sentence beforehand.

Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract

attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through,

guessing at the words, misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and

his face brightened.

“Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow,” he said,

checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a

pink path through his long, curly whiskers.

“Thank God!” said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like his

master, realized the significance of this arrival—that is, that Anna

Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a

reconciliation between husband and wife.

“Alone, or with her husband?” inquired Matvey.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on his

upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the

looking-glass.

“Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?”

“Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders.”

“Darya Alexandrovna?” Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.

“Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and then do

what she tells you.”

“You want to try it on,” Matvey understood, but he only said, “Yes,

sir.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be

dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came

back into the room with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.

“Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away. Let

him do—that is you—as he likes,” he said, laughing only with his eyes,

and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with his

head on one side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a

good-humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome

face.

“Eh, Matvey?” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s all right, sir; she will come round,” said Matvey.

“Come round?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think so? Who’s there?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, hearing the

rustle of a woman’s dress at the door.

“It’s I,” said a firm, pleasant, woman’s voice, and the stern,

pockmarked face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust in at

the doorway.

“Well, what is it, Matrona?” queried Stepan Arkadyevitch, going up to

her at the door.

Although Stepan Arkadyevitch was completely in the wrong as regards his

wife, and was conscious of this himself, almost everyone in the house

(even the nurse, Darya Alexandrovna’s chief ally) was on his side.

“Well, what now?” he asked disconsolately.

“Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid you. She is

suffering so, it’s sad to see her; and besides, everything in the house

is topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir, on the children. Beg her

forgiveness, sir. There’s no help for it! One must take the

consequences....”

“But she won’t see me.”

“You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir, pray to God.”

“Come, that’ll do, you can go,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, blushing

suddenly. “Well now, do dress me.” He turned to Matvey and threw off

his dressing-gown decisively.

Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse’s collar, and,

blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious pleasure

over the well-groomed body of his master.

Chapter 3

When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on

himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his pockets his

cigarettes, pocketbook, matches, and watch with its double chain and

seals, and shaking out his handkerchief, feeling himself clean,

fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease, in spite of his unhappiness,

he walked with a slight swing on each leg into the dining-room, where

coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the coffee, letters and

papers from the office.

He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who was

buying a forest on his wife’s property. To sell this forest was

absolutely essential; but at present, until he was reconciled with his

wife, the subject could not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of

all was that his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the

question of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea that he

might be led on by his interests, that he might seek a reconciliation

with his wife on account of the sale of the forest—that idea hurt him.

When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch moved the

office-papers close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of

business, made a few notes with a big pencil, and pushing away the

papers, turned to his coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he opened a

still damp morning paper, and began reading it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme

one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of

the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for

him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held

by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the

majority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change

them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views;

these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just

as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took

those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain

society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion,

for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as

indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his

preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many

of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more

rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of

life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and

certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of

money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out

of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly

afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into

lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal

party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is

only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and

Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without

his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the

object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world

when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this,

Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man

by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop

at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so

Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked

his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it

diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was

maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry

that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative

elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the

revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, “in our opinion the danger

lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of

traditionalism clogging progress,” etc., etc. He read another article,

too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped

some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic

quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it

came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him,

as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction

was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna’s advice and the unsatisfactory

state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to

have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and

of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a

situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a

quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup

of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the

roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled

joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his

mind—the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.

But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew

thoughtful.

Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of

Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard

outside the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.

“I told you not to sit passengers on the roof,” said the little girl in

English; “there, pick them up!”

“Everything’s in confusion,” thought Stepan Arkadyevitch; “there are

the children running about by themselves.” And going to the door, he

called them. They threw down the box, that represented a train, and

came in to their father.

The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him,

and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the smell

of scent that came from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed

his face, which was flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with

tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about to run away again; but her

father held her back.

“How is mamma?” he asked, passing his hand over his daughter’s smooth,

soft little neck. “Good morning,” he said, smiling to the boy, who had

come up to greet him. He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and

always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with

a smile to his father’s chilly smile.

“Mamma? She is up,” answered the girl.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. “That means that she’s not slept again all

night,” he thought.

“Well, is she cheerful?”

The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and

mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father

must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when he asked about

it so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it,

and blushed too.

“I don’t know,” she said. “She did not say we must do our lessons, but

she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to grandmamma’s.”

“Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though,” he said,

still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.

He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little

box of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate

and a fondant.

“For Grisha?” said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.

“Yes, yes.” And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed her on

the roots of her hair and neck, and let her go.

“The carriage is ready,” said Matvey; “but there’s someone to see you

with a petition.”

“Been here long?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Half an hour.”

“How many times have I told you to tell me at once?”

“One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least,” said Matvey,

in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be

angry.

“Well, show the person up at once,” said Oblonsky, frowning with

vexation.

The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a

request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he

generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end attentively

without interrupting her, and gave her detailed advice as to how and to

whom to apply, and even wrote her, in his large, sprawling, good and

legible hand, a confident and fluent little note to a personage who

might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff captain’s widow,

Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to recollect whether he

had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing

except what he wanted to forget—his wife.

“Ah, yes!” He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a harassed

expression. “To go, or not to go!” he said to himself; and an inner

voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of it but

falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible,

because it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to

inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to love.

Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and

lying were opposed to his nature.

“It must be some time, though: it can’t go on like this,” he said,

trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a

cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl

ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through the drawing-room, and

opened the other door into his wife’s bedroom.

Chapter 4

Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her now scanty, once

luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with hairpins on the nape of

her neck, with a sunken, thin face and large, startled eyes, which

looked prominent from the thinness of her face, was standing among a

litter of all sorts of things scattered all over the room, before an

open bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing her husband’s

steps, she stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to

give her features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt she

was afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview. She was just

attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times already in

these last three days—to sort out the children’s things and her own, so

as to take them to her mother’s—and again she could not bring herself

to do this; but now again, as each time before, she kept saying to

herself, “that things cannot go on like this, that she must take some

step” to punish him, put him to shame, avenge on him some little part

at least of the suffering he had caused her. She still continued to

tell herself that she should leave him, but she was conscious that this

was impossible; it was impossible because she could not get out of the

habit of regarding him as her husband and loving him. Besides this, she

realized that if even here in her own house she could hardly manage to

look after her five children properly, they would be still worse off

where she was going with them all. As it was, even in the course of

these three days, the youngest was unwell from being given unwholesome

soup, and the others had almost gone without their dinner the day

before. She was conscious that it was impossible to go away; but,

cheating herself, she went on all the same sorting out her things and

pretending she was going.

Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the bureau

as though looking for something, and only looked round at him when he

had come quite up to her. But her face, to which she tried to give a

severe and resolute expression, betrayed bewilderment and suffering.

“Dolly!” he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent his head towards

his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he

was radiant with freshness and health. In a rapid glance she scanned

his figure that beamed with health and freshness. “Yes, he is happy and

content!” she thought; “while I.... And that disgusting good nature,

which everyone likes him for and praises—I hate that good nature of

his,” she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek

contracted on the right side of her pale, nervous face.

“What do you want?” she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.

“Dolly!” he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. “Anna is coming

today.”

“Well, what is that to me? I can’t see her!” she cried.

“But you must, really, Dolly....”

“Go away, go away, go away!” she shrieked, not looking at him, as

though this shriek were called up by physical pain.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he could

hope that she would _come round_, as Matvey expressed it, and could

quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when he

saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice,

submissive to fate and full of despair, there was a catch in his breath

and a lump in his throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears.

“My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God’s sake!... You know....” He

could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

“Dolly, what can I say?... One thing: forgive.... Remember, cannot nine

years of my life atone for an instant....”

She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as it

were beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe

differently.

“—instant of passion?” he said, and would have gone on, but at that

word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again, and

again the muscles of her right cheek worked.

“Go away, go out of the room!” she shrieked still more shrilly, “and

don’t talk to me of your passion and your loathsomeness.”

She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a chair to

support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled, his eyes were

swimming with tears.

“Dolly!” he said, sobbing now; “for mercy’s sake, think of the

children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me, make me

expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything! I am to

blame, no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive

me!”

She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was

unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to begin to speak,

but could not. He waited.

“You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I remember

them, and know that this means their ruin,” she said—obviously one of

the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of

the last few days.

She had called him “Stiva,” and he glanced at her with gratitude, and

moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.

“I think of the children, and for that reason I would do anything in

the world to save them, but I don’t myself know how to save them. By

taking them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious

father—yes, a vicious father.... Tell me, after what ... has happened,

can we live together? Is that possible? Tell me, eh, is it possible?”

she repeated, raising her voice, “after my husband, the father of my

children, enters into a love affair with his own children’s governess?”

“But what could I do? what could I do?” he kept saying in a pitiful

voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank lower and

lower.

“You are loathsome to me, repulsive!” she shrieked, getting more and

more heated. “Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you

have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me,

disgusting, a stranger—yes, a complete stranger!” With pain and wrath

she uttered the word so terrible to herself—_stranger_.

He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed

him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She

saw in him sympathy for her, but not love. “No, she hates me. She will

not forgive me,” he thought.

“It is awful! awful!” he said.

At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it had

fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face suddenly

softened.

She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though

she did not know where she was, and what she was doing, and getting up

rapidly, she moved towards the door.

“Well, she loves my child,” he thought, noticing the change of her face

at the child’s cry, “my child: how can she hate me?”

“Dolly, one word more,” he said, following her.

“If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children! They

may all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once, and you may

live here with your mistress!”

And she went out, slamming the door.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued tread

walked out of the room. “Matvey says she will come round; but how? I

don’t see the least chance of it. Ah, oh, how horrible it is! And how

vulgarly she shouted,” he said to himself, remembering her shriek and

the words—“scoundrel” and “mistress.” “And very likely the maids were

listening! Horribly vulgar! horrible!” Stepan Arkadyevitch stood a few

seconds alone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and walked out of the

room.

It was Friday, and in the dining-room the German watchmaker was winding

up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his joke about this

punctual, bald watchmaker, “that the German was wound up for a whole

lifetime himself, to wind up watches,” and he smiled. Stepan

Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: “And maybe she will come round! That’s

a good expression, ‘_come round,_’” he thought. “I must repeat that.”

“Matvey!” he shouted. “Arrange everything with Darya in the sitting

room for Anna Arkadyevna,” he said to Matvey when he came in.

“Yes, sir.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the steps.

“You won’t dine at home?” said Matvey, seeing him off.

“That’s as it happens. But here’s for the housekeeping,” he said,

taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. “That’ll be enough.”

“Enough or not enough, we must make it do,” said Matvey, slamming the

carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.

Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and knowing

from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went back again to

her bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from the household cares which

crowded upon her directly she went out from it. Even now, in the short

time she had been in the nursery, the English governess and Matrona

Philimonovna had succeeded in putting several questions to her, which

did not admit of delay, and which only she could answer: “What were the

children to put on for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should

not a new cook be sent for?”

“Ah, let me alone, let me alone!” she said, and going back to her

bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when talking to

her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the rings that

slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to going over in her memory

all the conversation. “He has gone! But has he broken it off with her?”

she thought. “Can it be he sees her? Why didn’t I ask him! No, no,

reconciliation is impossible. Even if we remain in the same house, we

are strangers—strangers forever!” She repeated again with special

significance the word so dreadful to her. “And how I loved him! my God,

how I loved him!... How I loved him! And now don’t I love him? Don’t I

love him more than before? The most horrible thing is,” she began, but

did not finish her thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her head

in at the door.

“Let us send for my brother,” she said; “he can get a dinner anyway, or

we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till six again, like

yesterday.”

“Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you send for

some new milk?”

And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, and drowned

her grief in them for a time.

Chapter 5

Stepan Arkadyevitch had learned easily at school, thanks to his

excellent abilities, but he had been idle and mischievous, and

therefore was one of the lowest in his class. But in spite of his

habitually dissipated mode of life, his inferior grade in the service,

and his comparative youth, he occupied the honorable and lucrative

position of president of one of the government boards at Moscow. This

post he had received through his sister Anna’s husband, Alexey

Alexandrovitch Karenin, who held one of the most important positions in

the ministry to whose department the Moscow office belonged. But if

Karenin had not got his brother-in-law this berth, then through a

hundred other personages—brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and

aunts—Stiva Oblonsky would have received this post, or some other

similar one, together with the salary of six thousand absolutely

needful for him, as his affairs, in spite of his wife’s considerable

property, were in an embarrassed condition.

Half Moscow and Petersburg were friends and relations of Stepan

Arkadyevitch. He was born in the midst of those who had been and are

the powerful ones of this world. One-third of the men in the

government, the older men, had been friends of his father’s, and had

known him in petticoats; another third were his intimate chums, and the

remainder were friendly acquaintances. Consequently the distributors of

earthly blessings in the shape of places, rents, shares, and such, were

all his friends, and could not overlook one of their own set; and

Oblonsky had no need to make any special exertion to get a lucrative

post. He had only not to refuse things, not to show jealousy, not to be

quarrelsome or take offense, all of which from his characteristic good

nature he never did. It would have struck him as absurd if he had been

told that he would not get a position with the salary he required,

especially as he expected nothing out of the way; he only wanted what

the men of his own age and standing did get, and he was no worse

qualified for performing duties of the kind than any other man.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was not merely liked by all who knew him for his

good humor, but for his bright disposition, and his unquestionable

honesty. In him, in his handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes,

black hair and eyebrows, and the white and red of his face, there was

something which produced a physical effect of kindliness and good humor

on the people who met him. “Aha! Stiva! Oblonsky! Here he is!” was

almost always said with a smile of delight on meeting him. Even though

it happened at times that after a conversation with him it seemed that

nothing particularly delightful had happened, the next day, and the

next, everyone was just as delighted at meeting him again.

After filling for three years the post of president of one of the

government boards at Moscow, Stepan Arkadyevitch had won the respect,

as well as the liking, of his fellow-officials, subordinates, and

superiors, and all who had had business with him. The principal

qualities in Stepan Arkadyevitch which had gained him this universal

respect in the service consisted, in the first place, of his extreme

indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness of his own

shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect liberalism—not the liberalism he

read of in the papers, but the liberalism that was in his blood, in

virtue of which he treated all men perfectly equally and exactly the

same, whatever their fortune or calling might be; and thirdly—the most

important point—his complete indifference to the business in which he

was engaged, in consequence of which he was never carried away, and

never made mistakes.

On reaching the offices of the board, Stepan Arkadyevitch, escorted by

a deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his little private

room, put on his uniform, and went into the boardroom. The clerks and

copyists all rose, greeting him with good-humored deference. Stepan

Arkadyevitch moved quickly, as ever, to his place, shook hands with his

colleagues, and sat down. He made a joke or two, and talked just as

much as was consistent with due decorum, and began work. No one knew

better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between

freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable

conduct of business. A secretary, with the good-humored deference

common to everyone in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s office, came up with

papers, and began to speak in the familiar and easy tone which had been

introduced by Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“We have succeeded in getting the information from the government

department of Penza. Here, would you care?...”

“You’ve got them at last?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laying his finger

on the paper. “Now, gentlemen....”

And the sitting of the board began.

“If they knew,” he thought, bending his head with a significant air as

he listened to the report, “what a guilty little boy their president

was half an hour ago.” And his eyes were laughing during the reading of

the report. Till two o’clock the sitting would go on without a break,

and at two o’clock there would be an interval and luncheon.

It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the boardroom

suddenly opened and someone came in.

All the officials sitting on the further side under the portrait of the

Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked round at the

door; but the doorkeeper standing at the door at once drove out the

intruder, and closed the glass door after him.

When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and

stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the times took

out a cigarette in the boardroom and went into his private room. Two of

the members of the board, the old veteran in the service, Nikitin, and

the _Kammerjunker_ Grinevitch, went in with him.

“We shall have time to finish after lunch,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“To be sure we shall!” said Nikitin.

“A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be,” said Grinevitch of one of

the persons taking part in the case they were examining.

Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch’s words, giving him thereby

to understand that it was improper to pass judgment prematurely, and

made him no reply.

“Who was that came in?” he asked the doorkeeper.

“Someone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly my back

was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when the members come

out, then....”

“Where is he?”

“Maybe he’s gone into the passage, but here he comes anyway. That is

he,” said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built,

broad-shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off his

sheepskin cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of the

stone staircase. One of the members going down—a lean official with a

portfolio—stood out of his way and looked disapprovingly at the legs of

the stranger, then glanced inquiringly at Oblonsky.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the stairs. His

good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his uniform

beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming up.

“Why, it’s actually you, Levin, at last!” he said with a friendly

mocking smile, scanning Levin as he approached. “How is it you have

deigned to look me up in this den?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and not

content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend. “Have you been here

long?”

“I have just come, and very much wanted to see you,” said Levin,

looking shyly and at the same time angrily and uneasily around.

“Well, let’s go into my room,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who knew his

friend’s sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his arm, he drew

him along, as though guiding him through dangers.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his

acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian names:

old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants, and

adjutant-generals, so that many of his intimate chums were to be found

at the extreme ends of the social ladder, and would have been very much

surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of Oblonsky,

something in common. He was the familiar friend of everyone with whom

he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with

everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums,

as he used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his

subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to

diminish the disagreeable impression made on them. Levin was not a

disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready tact, felt that Levin

fancied he might not care to show his intimacy with him before his

subordinates, and so he made haste to take him off into his room.

Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not

rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of

his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the

difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one

another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this,

each of them—as is often the way with men who have selected careers of

different kinds—though in discussion he would even justify the other’s

career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the

life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his

friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight

mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he had seen him come up

to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but what

precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he

took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited

and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of

ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of

things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same

way Levin in his heart despised the town mode of life of his friend,

and his official duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling.

But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as

everyone did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin

laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.

“We have long been expecting you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going into

his room and letting Levin’s hand go as though to show that here all

danger was over. “I am very, very glad to see you,” he went on. “Well,

how are you? Eh? When did you come?”

Levin was silent, looking at the unknown faces of Oblonsky’s two

companions, and especially at the hand of the elegant Grinevitch, which

had such long white fingers, such long yellow filbert-shaped nails, and

such huge shining studs on the shirt-cuff, that apparently they

absorbed all his attention, and allowed him no freedom of thought.

Oblonsky noticed this at once, and smiled.

“Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you,” he said. “My colleagues: Philip

Ivanitch Nikitin, Mihail Stanislavitch Grinevitch”—and turning to

Levin—“a district councilor, a modern district councilman, a gymnast

who lifts thirteen stone with one hand, a cattle-breeder and sportsman,

and my friend, Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, the brother of Sergey

Ivanovitch Koznishev.”

“Delighted,” said the veteran.

“I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanovitch,” said

Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.

Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to Oblonsky.

Though he had a great respect for his half-brother, an author well

known to all Russia, he could not endure it when people treated him not

as Konstantin Levin, but as the brother of the celebrated Koznishev.

“No, I am no longer a district councilor. I have quarreled with them

all, and don’t go to the meetings any more,” he said, turning to

Oblonsky.

“You’ve been quick about it!” said Oblonsky with a smile. “But how?

why?”

“It’s a long story. I will tell you some time,” said Levin, but he

began telling him at once. “Well, to put it shortly, I was convinced

that nothing was really done by the district councils, or ever could

be,” he began, as though someone had just insulted him. “On one side

it’s a plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I’m neither

young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the

other side” (he stammered) “it’s a means for the coterie of the

district to make money. Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice,

now they have the district council—not in the form of bribes, but in

the form of unearned salary,” he said, as hotly as though someone of

those present had opposed his opinion.

“Aha! You’re in a new phase again, I see—a conservative,” said Stepan

Arkadyevitch. “However, we can go into that later.”

“Yes, later. But I wanted to see you,” said Levin, looking with hatred

at Grinevitch’s hand.

Stepan Arkadyevitch gave a scarcely perceptible smile.

“How was it you used to say you would never wear European dress again?”

he said, scanning his new suit, obviously cut by a French tailor. “Ah!

I see: a new phase.”

Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being

themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are

ridiculous through their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and

blushing still more, almost to the point of tears. And it was so

strange to see this sensible, manly face in such a childish plight,

that Oblonsky left off looking at him.

“Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to you,”

said Levin.

Oblonsky seemed to ponder.

“I’ll tell you what: let’s go to Gurin’s to lunch, and there we can

talk. I am free till three.”

“No,” answered Levin, after an instant’s thought, “I have got to go on

somewhere else.”

“All right, then, let’s dine together.”

“Dine together? But I have nothing very particular, only a few words to

say, and a question I want to ask you, and we can have a talk

afterwards.”

“Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we’ll gossip after

dinner.”

“Well, it’s this,” said Levin; “but it’s of no importance, though.”

His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was

making to surmount his shyness.

“What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?” he

said.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin was in love with his

sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his eyes

sparkled merrily.

“You said a few words, but I can’t answer in a few words, because....

Excuse me a minute....”

A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest

consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of superiority to his

chief in the knowledge of their business; he went up to Oblonsky with

some papers, and began, under pretense of asking a question, to explain

some objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch, without hearing him out, laid his

hand genially on the secretary’s sleeve.

“No, you do as I told you,” he said, softening his words with a smile,

and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he turned away

from the papers, and said: “So do it that way, if you please, Zahar

Nikititch.”

The secretary retired in confusion. During the consultation with the

secretary Levin had completely recovered from his embarrassment. He was

standing with his elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a

look of ironical attention.

“I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it,” he said.

“What don’t you understand?” said Oblonsky, smiling as brightly as

ever, and picking up a cigarette. He expected some queer outburst from

Levin.

“I don’t understand what you are doing,” said Levin, shrugging his

shoulders. “How can you do it seriously?”

“Why not?”

“Why, because there’s nothing in it.”

“You think so, but we’re overwhelmed with work.”

“On paper. But, there, you’ve a gift for it,” added Levin.

“That’s to say, you think there’s a lack of something in me?”

“Perhaps so,” said Levin. “But all the same I admire your grandeur, and

am proud that I’ve a friend in such a great person. You’ve not answered

my question, though,” he went on, with a desperate effort looking

Oblonsky straight in the face.

“Oh, that’s all very well. You wait a bit, and you’ll come to this

yourself. It’s very nice for you to have over six thousand acres in the

Karazinsky district, and such muscles, and the freshness of a girl of

twelve; still you’ll be one of us one day. Yes, as to your question,

there is no change, but it’s a pity you’ve been away so long.”

“Oh, why so?” Levin queried, panic-stricken.

“Oh, nothing,” responded Oblonsky. “We’ll talk it over. But what’s

brought you up to town?”

“Oh, we’ll talk about that, too, later on,” said Levin, reddening again

up to his ears.

“All right. I see,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I should ask you to come

to us, you know, but my wife’s not quite the thing. But I tell you

what; if you want to see them, they’re sure now to be at the Zoological

Gardens from four to five. Kitty skates. You drive along there, and

I’ll come and fetch you, and we’ll go and dine somewhere together.”

“Capital. So good-bye till then.”

“Now mind, you’ll forget, I know you, or rush off home to the country!”

Stepan Arkadyevitch called out laughing.

“No, truly!”

And Levin went out of the room, only when he was in the doorway

remembering that he had forgotten to take leave of Oblonsky’s

colleagues.

“That gentleman must be a man of great energy,” said Grinevitch, when

Levin had gone away.

“Yes, my dear boy,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, nodding his head, “he’s a

lucky fellow! Over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district;

everything before him; and what youth and vigor! Not like some of us.”

“You have a great deal to complain of, haven’t you, Stepan

Arkadyevitch?”

“Ah, yes, I’m in a poor way, a bad way,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with

a heavy sigh.

Chapter 6

When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levin blushed,

and was furious with himself for blushing, because he could not answer,

“I have come to make your sister-in-law an offer,” though that was

precisely what he had come for.

The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were old, noble

Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms.

This intimacy had grown still closer during Levin’s student days. He

had both prepared for the university with the young Prince

Shtcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and Dolly, and had entered at the

same time with him. In those days Levin used often to be in the

Shtcherbatskys’ house, and he was in love with the Shtcherbatsky

household. Strange as it may appear, it was with the household, the

family, that Konstantin Levin was in love, especially with the feminine

half of the household. Levin did not remember his own mother, and his

only sister was older than he was, so that it was in the

Shtcherbatskys’ house that he saw for the first time that inner life of

an old, noble, cultivated, and honorable family of which he had been

deprived by the death of his father and mother. All the members of that

family, especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, as it were,

wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and he not only

perceived no defects whatever in them, but under the poetical veil that

shrouded them he assumed the existence of the loftiest sentiments and

every possible perfection. Why it was the three young ladies had one

day to speak French, and the next English; why it was that at certain

hours they played by turns on the piano, the sounds of which were

audible in their brother’s room above, where the students used to work;

why they were visited by those professors of French literature, of

music, of drawing, of dancing; why at certain hours all the three young

ladies, with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the coach to the Tversky

boulevard, dressed in their satin cloaks, Dolly in a long one, Natalia

in a half-long one, and Kitty in one so short that her shapely legs in

tightly-drawn red stockings were visible to all beholders; why it was

they had to walk about the Tversky boulevard escorted by a footman with

a gold cockade in his hat—all this and much more that was done in their

mysterious world he did not understand, but he was sure that everything

that was done there was very good, and he was in love precisely with

the mystery of the proceedings.

In his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest, Dolly,

but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began being in love with

the second. He felt, as it were, that he had to be in love with one of

the sisters, only he could not quite make out which. But Natalia, too,

had hardly made her appearance in the world when she married the

diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin left the university.

Young Shtcherbatsky went into the navy, was drowned in the Baltic, and

Levin’s relations with the Shtcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship

with Oblonsky, became less intimate. But when early in the winter of

this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the country, and saw

the Shtcherbatskys, he realized which of the three sisters he was

indeed destined to love.

One would have thought that nothing could be simpler than for him, a

man of good family, rather rich than poor, and thirty-two years old, to

make the young Princess Shtcherbatskaya an offer of marriage; in all

likelihood he would at once have been looked upon as a good match. But

Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in

every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and

that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be

conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy

of her.

After spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment, seeing

Kitty almost every day in society, into which he went so as to meet

her, he abruptly decided that it could not be, and went back to the

country.

Levin’s conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea that in

the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and worthless match for

the charming Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him. In her

family’s eyes he had no ordinary, definite career and position in

society, while his contemporaries by this time, when he was thirty-two,

were already, one a colonel, and another a professor, another director

of a bank and railways, or president of a board like Oblonsky. But he

(he knew very well how he must appear to others) was a country

gentleman, occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game, and building

barns; in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out

well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of the world,

is done by people fit for nothing else.

The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such an ugly

person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such an ordinary,

in no way striking person. Moreover, his attitude to Kitty in the

past—the attitude of a grown-up person to a child, arising from his

friendship with her brother—seemed to him yet another obstacle to love.

An ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself, might, he

supposed, be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such a love as

that with which he loved Kitty, one would need to be a handsome and,

still more, a distinguished man.

He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but

he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not

himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional

women.

But after spending two months alone in the country, he was convinced

that this was not one of those passions of which he had had experience

in his early youth; that this feeling gave him not an instant’s rest;

that he could not live without deciding the question, would she or

would she not be his wife, and that his despair had arisen only from

his own imaginings, that he had no sort of proof that he would be

rejected. And he had now come to Moscow with a firm determination to

make an offer, and get married if he were accepted. Or ... he could not

conceive what would become of him if he were rejected.

Chapter 7

On arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Levin had put up at the house

of his elder half-brother, Koznishev. After changing his clothes he

went down to his brother’s study, intending to talk to him at once

about the object of his visit, and to ask his advice; but his brother

was not alone. With him there was a well-known professor of philosophy,

who had come from Harkov expressly to clear up a difference that had

arisen between them on a very important philosophical question. The

professor was carrying on a hot crusade against materialists. Sergey

Koznishev had been following this crusade with interest, and after

reading the professor’s last article, he had written him a letter

stating his objections. He accused the professor of making too great

concessions to the materialists. And the professor had promptly

appeared to argue the matter out. The point in discussion was the

question then in vogue: Is there a line to be drawn between

psychological and physiological phenomena in man? and if so, where?

Sergey Ivanovitch met his brother with the smile of chilly friendliness

he always had for everyone, and introducing him to the professor, went

on with the conversation.

A little man in spectacles, with a narrow forehead, tore himself from

the discussion for an instant to greet Levin, and then went on talking

without paying any further attention to him. Levin sat down to wait

till the professor should go, but he soon began to get interested in

the subject under discussion.

Levin had come across the magazine articles about which they were

disputing, and had read them, interested in them as a development of

the first principles of science, familiar to him as a natural science

student at the university. But he had never connected these scientific

deductions as to the origin of man as an animal, as to reflex action,

biology, and sociology, with those questions as to the meaning of life

and death to himself, which had of late been more and more often in his

mind.

As he listened to his brother’s argument with the professor, he noticed

that they connected these scientific questions with those spiritual

problems, that at times they almost touched on the latter; but every

time they were close upon what seemed to him the chief point, they

promptly beat a hasty retreat, and plunged again into a sea of subtle

distinctions, reservations, quotations, allusions, and appeals to

authorities, and it was with difficulty that he understood what they

were talking about.

“I cannot admit it,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual

clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase. “I cannot

in any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external

world has been derived from perceptions. The most fundamental idea, the

idea of existence, has not been received by me through sensation;

indeed, there is no special sense-organ for the transmission of such an

idea.”

“Yes, but they—Wurt, and Knaust, and Pripasov—would answer that your

consciousness of existence is derived from the conjunction of all your

sensations, that that consciousness of existence is the result of your

sensations. Wurt, indeed, says plainly that, assuming there are no

sensations, it follows that there is no idea of existence.”

“I maintain the contrary,” began Sergey Ivanovitch.

But here it seemed to Levin that just as they were close upon the real

point of the matter, they were again retreating, and he made up his

mind to put a question to the professor.

“According to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my body is dead, I

can have no existence of any sort?” he queried.

The professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental suffering at the

interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer, more like a

bargeman than a philosopher, and turned his eyes upon Sergey

Ivanovitch, as though to ask: What’s one to say to him? But Sergey

Ivanovitch, who had been talking with far less heat and one-sidedness

than the professor, and who had sufficient breadth of mind to answer

the professor, and at the same time to comprehend the simple and

natural point of view from which the question was put, smiled and said:

“That question we have no right to answer as yet.”

“We have not the requisite data,” chimed in the professor, and he went

back to his argument. “No,” he said; “I would point out the fact that

if, as Pripasov directly asserts, perception is based on sensation,

then we are bound to distinguish sharply between these two

conceptions.”

Levin listened no more, and simply waited for the professor to go.

Chapter 8

When the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch turned to his brother.

“Delighted that you’ve come. For some time, is it? How’s your farming

getting on?”

Levin knew that his elder brother took little interest in farming, and

only put the question in deference to him, and so he only told him

about the sale of his wheat and money matters.

Levin had meant to tell his brother of his determination to get

married, and to ask his advice; he had indeed firmly resolved to do so.

But after seeing his brother, listening to his conversation with the

professor, hearing afterwards the unconsciously patronizing tone in

which his brother questioned him about agricultural matters (their

mother’s property had not been divided, and Levin took charge of both

their shares), Levin felt that he could not for some reason begin to

talk to him of his intention of marrying. He felt that his brother

would not look at it as he would have wished him to.

“Well, how is your district council doing?” asked Sergey Ivanovitch,

who was greatly interested in these local boards and attached great

importance to them.

“I really don’t know.”

“What! Why, surely you’re a member of the board?”

“No, I’m not a member now; I’ve resigned,” answered Levin, “and I no

longer attend the meetings.”

“What a pity!” commented Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.

Levin in self-defense began to describe what took place in the meetings

in his district.

“That’s how it always is!” Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him. “We

Russians are always like that. Perhaps it’s our strong point, really,

the faculty of seeing our own shortcomings; but we overdo it, we

comfort ourselves with irony which we always have on the tip of our

tongues. All I say is, give such rights as our local self-government to

any other European people—why, the Germans or the English would have

worked their way to freedom from them, while we simply turn them into

ridicule.”

“But how can it be helped?” said Levin penitently. “It was my last

effort. And I did try with all my soul. I can’t. I’m no good at it.”

“It’s not that you’re no good at it,” said Sergey Ivanovitch; “it is

that you don’t look at it as you should.”

“Perhaps not,” Levin answered dejectedly.

“Oh! do you know brother Nikolay’s turned up again?”

This brother Nikolay was the elder brother of Konstantin Levin, and

half-brother of Sergey Ivanovitch; a man utterly ruined, who had

dissipated the greater part of his fortune, was living in the strangest

and lowest company, and had quarreled with his brothers.

“What did you say?” Levin cried with horror. “How do you know?”

“Prokofy saw him in the street.”

“Here in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?” Levin got up from his

chair, as though on the point of starting off at once.

“I am sorry I told you,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head at

his younger brother’s excitement. “I sent to find out where he is

living, and sent him his IOU to Trubin, which I paid. This is the

answer he sent me.”

And Sergey Ivanovitch took a note from under a paper-weight and handed

it to his brother.

Levin read in the queer, familiar handwriting: “I humbly beg you to

leave me in peace. That’s the only favor I ask of my gracious

brothers.—Nikolay Levin.”

Levin read it, and without raising his head stood with the note in his

hands opposite Sergey Ivanovitch.

There was a struggle in his heart between the desire to forget his

unhappy brother for the time, and the consciousness that it would be

base to do so.

“He obviously wants to offend me,” pursued Sergey Ivanovitch; “but he

cannot offend me, and I should have wished with all my heart to assist

him, but I know it’s impossible to do that.”

“Yes, yes,” repeated Levin. “I understand and appreciate your attitude

to him; but I shall go and see him.”

“If you want to, do; but I shouldn’t advise it,” said Sergey

Ivanovitch. “As regards myself, I have no fear of your doing so; he

will not make you quarrel with me; but for your own sake, I should say

you would do better not to go. You can’t do him any good; still, do as

you please.”

“Very likely I can’t do any good, but I feel—especially at such a

moment—but that’s another thing—I feel I could not be at peace.”

“Well, that I don’t understand,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “One thing I

do understand,” he added; “it’s a lesson in humility. I have come to

look very differently and more charitably on what is called infamous

since brother Nikolay has become what he is ... you know what he

did....”

“Oh, it’s awful, awful!” repeated Levin.

After obtaining his brother’s address from Sergey Ivanovitch’s footman,

Levin was on the point of setting off at once to see him, but on second

thought he decided to put off his visit till the evening. The first

thing to do to set his heart at rest was to accomplish what he had come

to Moscow for. From his brother’s Levin went to Oblonsky’s office, and

on getting news of the Shtcherbatskys from him, he drove to the place

where he had been told he might find Kitty.

Chapter 9

At four o’clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Levin stepped out of

a hired sledge at the Zoological Gardens, and turned along the path to

the frozen mounds and the skating ground, knowing that he would

certainly find her there, as he had seen the Shtcherbatskys’ carriage

at the entrance.

It was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sledges, drivers, and

policemen were standing in the approach. Crowds of well-dressed people,

with hats bright in the sun, swarmed about the entrance and along the

well-swept little paths between the little houses adorned with carving

in the Russian style. The old curly birches of the gardens, all their

twigs laden with snow, looked as though freshly decked in sacred

vestments.

He walked along the path towards the skating-ground, and kept saying to

himself—“You mustn’t be excited, you must be calm. What’s the matter

with you? What do you want? Be quiet, stupid,” he conjured his heart.

And the more he tried to compose himself, the more breathless he found

himself. An acquaintance met him and called him by his name, but Levin

did not even recognize him. He went towards the mounds, whence came the

clank of the chains of sledges as they slipped down or were dragged up,

the rumble of the sliding sledges, and the sounds of merry voices. He

walked on a few steps, and the skating-ground lay open before his eyes,

and at once, amidst all the skaters, he knew her.

He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his

heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the

ground. There was apparently nothing striking either in her dress or

her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a

rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the

smile that shed light on all round her. “Is it possible I can go over

there on the ice, go up to her?” he thought. The place where she stood

seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there was one moment

when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He

had to make an effort to master himself, and to remind himself that

people of all sorts were moving about her, and that he too might come

there to skate. He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at

her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without

looking.

On that day of the week and at that time of day people of one set, all

acquainted with one another, used to meet on the ice. There were crack

skaters there, showing off their skill, and learners clinging to chairs

with timid, awkward movements, boys, and elderly people skating with

hygienic motives. They seemed to Levin an elect band of blissful beings

because they were here, near her. All the skaters, it seemed, with

perfect self-possession, skated towards her, skated by her, even spoke

to her, and were happy, quite apart from her, enjoying the capital ice

and the fine weather.

Nikolay Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in a short jacket and tight

trousers, was sitting on a garden seat with his skates on. Seeing

Levin, he shouted to him:

“Ah, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? First-rate ice—do put

your skates on.”

“I haven’t got my skates,” Levin answered, marveling at this boldness

and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight of her,

though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming

near him. She was in a corner, and turning out her slender feet in

their high boots with obvious timidity, she skated towards him. A boy

in Russian dress, desperately waving his arms and bowed down to the

ground, overtook her. She skated a little uncertainly; taking her hands

out of the little muff that hung on a cord, she held them ready for

emergency, and looking towards Levin, whom she had recognized, she

smiled at him, and at her own fears. When she had got round the turn,

she gave herself a push off with one foot, and skated straight up to

Shtcherbatsky. Clutching at his arm, she nodded smiling to Levin. She

was more splendid than he had imagined her.

When he thought of her, he could call up a vivid picture of her to

himself, especially the charm of that little fair head, so freely set

on the shapely girlish shoulders, and so full of childish brightness

and good humor. The childishness of her expression, together with the

delicate beauty of her figure, made up her special charm, and that he

fully realized. But what always struck him in her as something unlooked

for, was the expression of her eyes, soft, serene, and truthful, and

above all, her smile, which always transported Levin to an enchanted

world, where he felt himself softened and tender, as he remembered

himself in some days of his early childhood.

“Have you been here long?” she said, giving him her hand. “Thank you,”

she added, as he picked up the handkerchief that had fallen out of her

muff.

“I? I’ve not long ... yesterday ... I mean today ... I arrived,”

answered Levin, in his emotion not at once understanding her question.

“I was meaning to come and see you,” he said; and then, recollecting

with what intention he was trying to see her, he was promptly overcome

with confusion and blushed.

“I didn’t know you could skate, and skate so well.”

She looked at him earnestly, as though wishing to make out the cause of

his confusion.

“Your praise is worth having. The tradition is kept up here that you

are the best of skaters,” she said, with her little black-gloved hand

brushing a grain of hoarfrost off her muff.

“Yes, I used once to skate with passion; I wanted to reach perfection.”

“You do everything with passion, I think,” she said smiling. “I should

so like to see how you skate. Put on skates, and let us skate

together.”

“Skate together! Can that be possible?” thought Levin, gazing at her.

“I’ll put them on directly,” he said.

And he went off to get skates.

“It’s a long while since we’ve seen you here, sir,” said the attendant,

supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of the skate. “Except

you, there’s none of the gentlemen first-rate skaters. Will that be all

right?” said he, tightening the strap.

“Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please,” answered Levin, with difficulty

restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his face.

“Yes,” he thought, “this now is life, this is happiness! _Together,_

she said; _let us skate together!_ Speak to her now? But that’s just

why I’m afraid to speak—because I’m happy now, happy in hope,

anyway.... And then?... But I must! I must! I must! Away with

weakness!”

Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and scurrying over the

rough ice round the hut, came out on the smooth ice and skated without

effort, as it were, by simple exercise of will, increasing and

slackening speed and turning his course. He approached with timidity,

but again her smile reassured him.

She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster and

faster, and the more rapidly they moved the more tightly she grasped

his hand.

“With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,” she

said to him.

“And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,” he said,

but was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and blushed. And

indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, when all at once, like

the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and

Levin detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted the

working of thought; a crease showed on her smooth brow.

“Is there anything troubling you?—though I’ve no right to ask such a

question,” he added hurriedly.

“Oh, why so?... No, I have nothing to trouble me,” she responded

coldly; and she added immediately: “You haven’t seen Mlle. Linon, have

you?”

“Not yet.”

“Go and speak to her, she likes you so much.”

“What’s wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!” thought Levin, and

he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who was

sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted

him as an old friend.

“Yes, you see we’re growing up,” she said to him, glancing towards

Kitty, “and growing old. _Tiny bear_ has grown big now!” pursued the

Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the three

young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the English

nursery tale. “Do you remember that’s what you used to call them?”

He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke

for ten years now, and was fond of it.

“Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate

nicely, hasn’t she?”

When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her eyes

looked at him with the same sincerity and friendliness, but Levin

fancied that in her friendliness there was a certain note of deliberate

composure. And he felt depressed. After talking a little of her old

governess and her peculiarities, she questioned him about his life.

“Surely you must be dull in the country in the winter, aren’t you?” she

said.

“No, I’m not dull, I am very busy,” he said, feeling that she was

holding him in check by her composed tone, which he would not have the

force to break through, just as it had been at the beginning of the

winter.

“Are you going to stay in town long?” Kitty questioned him.

“I don’t know,” he answered, not thinking of what he was saying. The

thought that if he were held in check by her tone of quiet friendliness

he would end by going back again without deciding anything came into

his mind, and he resolved to make a struggle against it.

“How is it you don’t know?”

“I don’t know. It depends upon you,” he said, and was immediately

horror-stricken at his own words.

Whether it was that she had heard his words, or that she did not want

to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out, and

hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said

something to her, and went towards the pavilion where the ladies took

off their skates.

“My God! what have I done! Merciful God! help me, guide me,” said

Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a need of

violent exercise, he skated about describing inner and outer circles.

At that moment one of the young men, the best of the skaters of the

day, came out of the coffee-house in his skates, with a cigarette in

his mouth. Taking a run, he dashed down the steps in his skates,

crashing and bounding up and down. He flew down, and without even

changing the position of his hands, skated away over the ice.

“Ah, that’s a new trick!” said Levin, and he promptly ran up to the top

to do this new trick.

“Don’t break your neck! it needs practice!” Nikolay Shtcherbatsky

shouted after him.

Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could, and

dashed down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement with his

hands. On the last step he stumbled, but barely touching the ice with

his hand, with a violent effort recovered himself, and skated off,

laughing.

“How splendid, how nice he is!” Kitty was thinking at that time, as she

came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon, and looked towards him with

a smile of quiet affection, as though he were a favorite brother. “And

can it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of

flirtation. I know it’s not he that I love; but still I am happy with

him, and he’s so jolly. Only, why did he say that?...” she mused.

Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at the

steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still and pondered

a minute. He took off his skates, and overtook the mother and daughter

at the entrance of the gardens.

“Delighted to see you,” said Princess Shtcherbatskaya. “On Thursdays we

are home, as always.”

“Today, then?”

“We shall be pleased to see you,” the princess said stiffly.

This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to

smooth over her mother’s coldness. She turned her head, and with a

smile said:

“Good-bye till this evening.”

At that moment Stepan Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked on one side, with

beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden like a conquering hero.

But as he approached his mother-in-law, he responded in a mournful and

crestfallen tone to her inquiries about Dolly’s health. After a little

subdued and dejected conversation with his mother-in-law, he threw out

his chest again, and put his arm in Levin’s.

“Well, shall we set off?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking about you all

this time, and I’m very, very glad you’ve come,” he said, looking him

in the face with a significant air.

“Yes, come along,” answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly the

sound of that voice saying, “Good-bye till this evening,” and seeing

the smile with which it was said.

“To the England or the Hermitage?”

“I don’t mind which.”

“All right, then, the England,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, selecting

that restaurant because he owed more there than at the Hermitage, and

consequently considered it mean to avoid it. “Have you got a sledge?

That’s first-rate, for I sent my carriage home.”

The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was wondering what that

change in Kitty’s expression had meant, and alternately assuring

himself that there was hope, and falling into despair, seeing clearly

that his hopes were insane, and yet all the while he felt himself quite

another man, utterly unlike what he had been before her smile and those

words, “Good-bye till this evening.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in composing the menu

of the dinner.

“You like turbot, don’t you?” he said to Levin as they were arriving.

“Eh?” responded Levin. “Turbot? Yes, I’m _awfully_ fond of turbot.”

Chapter 10

When Levin went into the restaurant with Oblonsky, he could not help

noticing a certain peculiarity of expression, as it were, a restrained

radiance, about the face and whole figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch.

Oblonsky took off his overcoat, and with his hat over one ear walked

into the dining-room, giving directions to the Tatar waiters, who were

clustered about him in evening coats, bearing napkins. Bowing to right

and left to the people he met, and here as everywhere joyously greeting

acquaintances, he went up to the sideboard for a preliminary appetizer

of fish and vodka, and said to the painted Frenchwoman decked in

ribbons, lace, and ringlets, behind the counter, something so amusing

that even that Frenchwoman was moved to genuine laughter. Levin for his

part refrained from taking any vodka simply because he felt such a

loathing of that Frenchwoman, all made up, it seemed, of false hair,

_poudre de riz,_ and _vinaigre de toilette_. He made haste to move away

from her, as from a dirty place. His whole soul was filled with

memories of Kitty, and there was a smile of triumph and happiness

shining in his eyes.

“This way, your excellency, please. Your excellency won’t be disturbed

here,” said a particularly pertinacious, white-headed old Tatar with

immense hips and coat-tails gaping widely behind. “Walk in, your

excellency,” he said to Levin; by way of showing his respect to Stepan

Arkadyevitch, being attentive to his guest as well.

Instantly flinging a fresh cloth over the round table under the bronze

chandelier, though it already had a table cloth on it, he pushed up

velvet chairs, and came to a standstill before Stepan Arkadyevitch with

a napkin and a bill of fare in his hands, awaiting his commands.

“If you prefer it, your excellency, a private room will be free

directly; Prince Golistin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in.”

“Ah! oysters.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch became thoughtful.

“How if we were to change our program, Levin?” he said, keeping his

finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious hesitation.

“Are the oysters good? Mind now.”

“They’re Flensburg, your excellency. We’ve no Ostend.”

“Flensburg will do, but are they fresh?”

“Only arrived yesterday.”

“Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the

whole program? Eh?”

“It’s all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge

better than anything; but of course there’s nothing like that here.”

“_Porridge à la Russe,_ your honor would like?” said the Tatar, bending

down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child.

“No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I’ve been

skating, and I’m hungry. And don’t imagine,” he added, detecting a look

of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky’s face, “that I shan’t appreciate your

choice. I am fond of good things.”

“I should hope so! After all, it’s one of the pleasures of life,” said

Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Well, then, my friend, you give us two—or better

say three—dozen oysters, clear soup with vegetables....”

“_Printanière,_” prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevitch apparently

did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving the French names

of the dishes.

“With vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce, then

... roast beef; and mind it’s good. Yes, and capons, perhaps, and then

sweets.”

The Tatar, recollecting that it was Stepan Arkadyevitch’s way not to

call the dishes by the names in the French bill of fare, did not repeat

them after him, but could not resist rehearsing the whole menu to

himself according to the bill:—“_Soupe printanière, turbot, sauce

Beaumarchais, poulard à l’estragon, macédoine de fruits_ ... etc.,” and

then instantly, as though worked by springs, laying down one bound bill

of fare, he took up another, the list of wines, and submitted it to

Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“What shall we drink?”

“What you like, only not too much. Champagne,” said Levin.

“What! to start with? You’re right though, I dare say. Do you like the

white seal?”

“_Cachet blanc,_” prompted the Tatar.

“Very well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then we’ll

see.”

“Yes, sir. And what table wine?”

“You can give us Nuits. Oh, no, better the classic Chablis.”

“Yes, sir. And _your_ cheese, your excellency?”

“Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?”

“No, it’s all the same to me,” said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.

And the Tatar ran off with flying coat-tails, and in five minutes

darted in with a dish of opened oysters on mother-of-pearl shells, and

a bottle between his fingers.

Stepan Arkadyevitch crushed the starchy napkin, tucked it into his

waistcoat, and settling his arms comfortably, started on the oysters.

“Not bad,” he said, stripping the oysters from the pearly shell with a

silver fork, and swallowing them one after another. “Not bad,” he

repeated, turning his dewy, brilliant eyes from Levin to the Tatar.

Levin ate the oysters indeed, though white bread and cheese would have

pleased him better. But he was admiring Oblonsky. Even the Tatar,

uncorking the bottle and pouring the sparkling wine into the delicate

glasses, glanced at Stepan Arkadyevitch, and settled his white cravat

with a perceptible smile of satisfaction.

“You don’t care much for oysters, do you?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,

emptying his wine-glass, “or you’re worried about something. Eh?”

He wanted Levin to be in good spirits. But it was not that Levin was

not in good spirits; he was ill at ease. With what he had in his soul,

he felt sore and uncomfortable in the restaurant, in the midst of

private rooms where men were dining with ladies, in all this fuss and

bustle; the surroundings of bronzes, looking-glasses, gas, and

waiters—all of it was offensive to him. He was afraid of sullying what

his soul was brimful of.

“I? Yes, I am; but besides, all this bothers me,” he said. “You can’t

conceive how queer it all seems to a country person like me, as queer

as that gentleman’s nails I saw at your place....”

“Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevitch’s nails,”

said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing.

“It’s too much for me,” responded Levin. “Do try, now, and put yourself

in my place, take the point of view of a country person. We in the

country try to bring our hands into such a state as will be most

convenient for working with. So we cut our nails; sometimes we turn up

our sleeves. And here people purposely let their nails grow as long as

they will, and link on small saucers by way of studs, so that they can

do nothing with their hands.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled gaily.

“Oh, yes, that’s just a sign that he has no need to do coarse work. His

work is with the mind....”

“Maybe. But still it’s queer to me, just as at this moment it seems

queer to me that we country folks try to get our meals over as soon as

we can, so as to be ready for our work, while here are we trying to

drag out our meal as long as possible, and with that object eating

oysters....”

“Why, of course,” objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. “But that’s just the

aim of civilization—to make everything a source of enjoyment.”

“Well, if that’s its aim, I’d rather be a savage.”

“And so you are a savage. All you Levins are savages.”

Levin sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolay, and felt ashamed and

sore, and he scowled; but Oblonsky began speaking of a subject which at

once drew his attention.

“Oh, I say, are you going tonight to our people, the Shtcherbatskys’, I

mean?” he said, his eyes sparkling significantly as he pushed away the

empty rough shells, and drew the cheese towards him.

“Yes, I shall certainly go,” replied Levin; “though I fancied the

princess was not very warm in her invitation.”

“What nonsense! That’s her manner.... Come, boy, the soup!... That’s

her manner—_grande dame,_” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I’m coming, too,

but I have to go to the Countess Bonina’s rehearsal. Come, isn’t it

true that you’re a savage? How do you explain the sudden way in which

you vanished from Moscow? The Shtcherbatskys were continually asking me

about you, as though I ought to know. The only thing I know is that you

always do what no one else does.”

“Yes,” said Levin, slowly and with emotion, “you’re right. I am a

savage. Only, my savageness is not in having gone away, but in coming

now. Now I have come....”

“Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!” broke in Stepan Arkadyevitch,

looking into Levin’s eyes.

“Why?”

“‘I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,

And by his eyes I know a youth in love,’”

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Everything is before you.”

“Why, is it over for you already?”

“No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is

mine, and the present—well, it’s not all that it might be.”

“How so?”

“Oh, things go wrong. But I don’t want to talk of myself, and besides I

can’t explain it all,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Well, why have you

come to Moscow, then?... Hi! take away!” he called to the Tatar.

“You guess?” responded Levin, his eyes like deep wells of light fixed

on Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“I guess, but I can’t be the first to talk about it. You can see by

that whether I guess right or wrong,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, gazing

at Levin with a subtle smile.

“Well, and what have you to say to me?” said Levin in a quivering

voice, feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering too.

“How do you look at the question?”

Stepan Arkadyevitch slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking

his eyes off Levin.

“I?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, “there’s nothing I desire so much as

that—nothing! It would be the best thing that could be.”

“But you’re not making a mistake? You know what we’re speaking of?”

said Levin, piercing him with his eyes. “You think it’s possible?”

“I think it’s possible. Why not possible?”

“No! do you really think it’s possible? No, tell me all you think! Oh,

but if ... if refusal’s in store for me!... Indeed I feel sure....”

“Why should you think that?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling at his

excitement.

“It seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for her

too.”

“Oh, well, anyway there’s nothing awful in it for a girl. Every girl’s

proud of an offer.”

“Yes, every girl, but not she.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Levin’s,

that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes:

one class—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with

all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other

class—she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all

humanity.

“Stay, take some sauce,” he said, holding back Levin’s hand as it

pushed away the sauce.

Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Stepan

Arkadyevitch go on with his dinner.

“No, stop a minute, stop a minute,” he said. “You must understand that

it’s a question of life and death for me. I have never spoken to anyone

of this. And there’s no one I could speak of it to, except you. You

know we’re utterly unlike each other, different tastes and views and

everything; but I know you’re fond of me and understand me, and that’s

why I like you awfully. But for God’s sake, be quite straightforward

with me.”

“I tell you what I think,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. “But I’ll

say more: my wife is a wonderful woman....” Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed,

remembering his position with his wife, and, after a moment’s silence,

resumed—“She has a gift of foreseeing things. She sees right through

people; but that’s not all; she knows what will come to pass,

especially in the way of marriages. She foretold, for instance, that

Princess Shahovskaya would marry Brenteln. No one would believe it, but

it came to pass. And she’s on your side.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s not only that she likes you—she says that Kitty is certain to be

your wife.”

At these words Levin’s face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a smile

not far from tears of emotion.

“She says that!” cried Levin. “I always said she was exquisite, your

wife. There, that’s enough, enough said about it,” he said, getting up

from his seat.

“All right, but do sit down.”

But Levin could not sit down. He walked with his firm tread twice up

and down the little cage of a room, blinked his eyelids that his tears

might not fall, and only then sat down to the table.

“You must understand,” said he, “it’s not love. I’ve been in love, but

it’s not that. It’s not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has

taken possession of me. I went away, you see, because I made up my mind

that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness that does not

come on earth; but I’ve struggled with myself, I see there’s no living

without it. And it must be settled.”

“What did you go away for?”

“Ah, stop a minute! Ah, the thoughts that come crowding on one! The

questions one must ask oneself! Listen. You can’t imagine what you’ve

done for me by what you said. I’m so happy that I’ve become positively

hateful; I’ve forgotten everything. I heard today that my brother

Nikolay ... you know, he’s here ... I had even forgotten him. It seems

to me that he’s happy too. It’s a sort of madness. But one thing’s

awful.... Here, you’ve been married, you know the feeling ... it’s

awful that we—old—with a past ... not of love, but of sins ... are

brought all at once so near to a creature pure and innocent; it’s

loathsome, and that’s why one can’t help feeling oneself unworthy.”

“Oh, well, you’ve not many sins on your conscience.”

“Alas! all the same,” said Levin, “when with loathing I go over my

life, I shudder and curse and bitterly regret it.... Yes.”

“What would you have? The world’s made so,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: ‘Forgive me

not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy

loving-kindness.’ That’s the only way she can forgive me.”

Chapter 11

Levin emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.

“There’s one other thing I ought to tell you. Do you know Vronsky?”

Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Levin.

“No, I don’t. Why do you ask?”

“Give us another bottle,” Stepan Arkadyevitch directed the Tatar, who

was filling up their glasses and fidgeting round them just when he was

not wanted.

“Why you ought to know Vronsky is that he’s one of your rivals.”

“Who’s Vronsky?” said Levin, and his face was suddenly transformed from

the look of childlike ecstasy which Oblonsky had just been admiring to

an angry and unpleasant expression.

“Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one

of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. I made his

acquaintance in Tver when I was there on official business, and he came

there for the levy of recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome, great

connections, an aide-de-camp, and with all that a very nice,

good-natured fellow. But he’s more than simply a good-natured fellow,

as I’ve found out here—he’s a cultivated man, too, and very

intelligent; he’s a man who’ll make his mark.”

Levin scowled and was dumb.

“Well, he turned up here soon after you’d gone, and as I can see, he’s

over head and ears in love with Kitty, and you know that her

mother....”

“Excuse me, but I know nothing,” said Levin, frowning gloomily. And

immediately he recollected his brother Nikolay and how hateful he was

to have been able to forget him.

“You wait a bit, wait a bit,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling and

touching his hand. “I’ve told you what I know, and I repeat that in

this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I

believe the chances are in your favor.”

Levin dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.

“But I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as may be,” pursued

Oblonsky, filling up his glass.

“No, thanks, I can’t drink any more,” said Levin, pushing away his

glass. “I shall be drunk.... Come, tell me how are you getting on?” he

went on, obviously anxious to change the conversation.

“One word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question soon.

Tonight I don’t advise you to speak,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Go

round tomorrow morning, make an offer in due form, and God bless

you....”

“Oh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come next

spring, do,” said Levin.

Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this

conversation with Stepan Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was

profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of the

suppositions and the counsels of Stepan Arkadyevitch.

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin’s soul.

“I’ll come some day,” he said. “But women, my boy, they’re the pivot

everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And

it’s all through women. Tell me frankly now,” he pursued, picking up a

cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; “give me your advice.”

“Why, what is it?”

“I’ll tell you. Suppose you’re married, you love your wife, but you’re

fascinated by another woman....”

“Excuse me, but I’m absolutely unable to comprehend how ... just as I

can’t comprehend how I could now, after my dinner, go straight to a

baker’s shop and steal a roll.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled more than usual.

“Why not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can’t resist it.”

“Himmlisch ist’s, wenn ich bezwungen

Meine irdische Begier;

Aber doch wenn’s nich gelungen

Hatt’ ich auch recht hübsch Plaisir!”

As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin, too, could

not help smiling.

“Yes, but joking apart,” resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “you must

understand that the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature, poor and

lonely, and has sacrificed everything. Now, when the thing’s done,

don’t you see, can one possibly cast her off? Even supposing one parts

from her, so as not to break up one’s family life, still, can one help

feeling for her, setting her on her feet, softening her lot?”

“Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided

into two classes ... at least no ... truer to say: there are women and

there are ... I’ve never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never

shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the

counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women

are the same.”

“But the Magdalen?”

“Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had

known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the

only ones remembered. However, I’m not saying so much what I think, as

what I feel. I have a loathing for fallen women. You’re afraid of

spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you’ve not made a study of

spiders and don’t know their character; and so it is with me.”

“It’s very well for you to talk like that; it’s very much like that

gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over his

right shoulder. But to deny the facts is no answer. What’s to be

done—you tell me that, what’s to be done? Your wife gets older, while

you’re full of life. Before you’ve time to look round, you feel that

you can’t love your wife with love, however much you may esteem her.

And then all at once love turns up, and you’re done for, done for,”

Stepan Arkadyevitch said with weary despair.

Levin half smiled.

“Yes, you’re done for,” resumed Oblonsky. “But what’s to be done?”

“Don’t steal rolls.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright.

“Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one

insists only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which you

can’t give her; and the other sacrifices everything for you and asks

for nothing. What are you to do? How are you to act? There’s a fearful

tragedy in it.”

“If you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I’ll tell you

that I don’t believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why.

To my mind, love ... both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato

defines in his Banquet, served as the test of men. Some men only

understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who only know

the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love

there can be no sort of tragedy. ‘I’m much obliged for the

gratification, my humble respects’—that’s all the tragedy. And in

platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love all is

clear and pure, because....”

At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner conflict

he had lived through. And he added unexpectedly:

“But perhaps you are right. Very likely ... I don’t know, I don’t

know.”

“It’s this, don’t you see,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, “you’re very much

all of a piece. That’s your strong point and your failing. You have a

character that’s all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be

of a piece too—but that’s not how it is. You despise public official

work because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all

the while with the aim—and that’s not how it is. You want a man’s work,

too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to

be undivided—and that’s not how it is. All the variety, all the charm,

all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own affairs, and

did not hear Oblonsky.

And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though

they had been dining and drinking together, which should have drawn

them closer, yet each was thinking only of his own affairs, and they

had nothing to do with one another. Oblonsky had more than once

experienced this extreme sense of aloofness, instead of intimacy,

coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do in such cases.

“Bill!” he called, and he went into the next room where he promptly

came across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance and dropped into

conversation with him about an actress and her protector. And at once

in the conversation with the aide-de-camp Oblonsky had a sense of

relaxation and relief after the conversation with Levin, which always

put him to too great a mental and spiritual strain.

When the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six roubles and odd

kopecks, besides a tip for himself, Levin, who would another time have

been horrified, like anyone from the country, at his share of fourteen

roubles, did not notice it, paid, and set off homewards to dress and go

to the Shtcherbatskys’ there to decide his fate.

Chapter 12

The young Princess Kitty Shtcherbatskaya was eighteen. It was the first

winter that she had been out in the world. Her success in society had

been greater than that of either of her elder sisters, and greater even

than her mother had anticipated. To say nothing of the young men who

danced at the Moscow balls being almost all in love with Kitty, two

serious suitors had already this first winter made their appearance:

Levin, and immediately after his departure, Count Vronsky.

Levin’s appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits,

and evident love for Kitty, had led to the first serious conversations

between Kitty’s parents as to her future, and to disputes between them.

The prince was on Levin’s side; he said he wished for nothing better

for Kitty. The princess for her part, going round the question in the

manner peculiar to women, maintained that Kitty was too young, that

Levin had done nothing to prove that he had serious intentions, that

Kitty felt no great attraction to him, and other side issues; but she

did not state the principal point, which was that she looked for a

better match for her daughter, and that Levin was not to her liking,

and she did not understand him. When Levin had abruptly departed, the

princess was delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly: “You see

I was right.” When Vronsky appeared on the scene, she was still more

delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was to make not simply a

good, but a brilliant match.

In the mother’s eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky and

Levin. She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising opinions

and his shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on his pride and

his queer sort of life, as she considered it, absorbed in cattle and

peasants. She did not very much like it that he, who was in love with

her daughter, had kept coming to the house for six weeks, as though he

were waiting for something, inspecting, as though he were afraid he

might be doing them too great an honor by making an offer, and did not

realize that a man, who continually visits at a house where there is a

young unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions clear. And

suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. “It’s as well he’s not

attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him,” thought

the mother.

Vronsky satisfied all the mother’s desires. Very wealthy, clever, of

aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant career in the army

and at court, and a fascinating man. Nothing better could be wished

for.

Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and came

continually to the house, consequently there could be no doubt of the

seriousness of his intentions. But, in spite of that, the mother had

spent the whole of that winter in a state of terrible anxiety and

agitation.

Princess Shtcherbatskaya had herself been married thirty years ago, her

aunt arranging the match. Her husband, about whom everything was well

known beforehand, had come, looked at his future bride, and been looked

at. The matchmaking aunt had ascertained and communicated their mutual

impression. That impression had been favorable. Afterwards, on a day

fixed beforehand, the expected offer was made to her parents, and

accepted. All had passed very simply and easily. So it seemed, at

least, to the princess. But over her own daughters she had felt how far

from simple and easy is the business, apparently so commonplace, of

marrying off one’s daughters. The panics that had been lived through,

the thoughts that had been brooded over, the money that had been

wasted, and the disputes with her husband over marrying the two elder

girls, Darya and Natalia! Now, since the youngest had come out, she was

going through the same terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent

quarrels with her husband than she had over the elder girls. The old

prince, like all fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the

score of the honor and reputation of his daughters. He was irrationally

jealous over his daughters, especially over Kitty, who was his

favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the princess for

compromising her daughter. The princess had grown accustomed to this

already with her other daughters, but now she felt that there was more

ground for the prince’s touchiness. She saw that of late years much was

changed in the manners of society, that a mother’s duties had become

still more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty’s age formed some

sort of clubs, went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men’s

society; drove about the streets alone, many of them did not curtsey,

and, what was the most important thing, all the girls were firmly

convinced that to choose their husbands was their own affair, and not

their parents’. “Marriages aren’t made nowadays as they used to be,”

was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their

elders. But how marriages were made now, the princess could not learn

from anyone. The French fashion—of the parents arranging their

children’s future—was not accepted; it was condemned. The English

fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not accepted,

and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of matchmaking

by the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered

unseemly; it was ridiculed by everyone, and by the princess herself.

But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them,

no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss the

matter said the same thing: “Mercy on us, it’s high time in our day to

cast off all that old-fashioned business. It’s the young people have to

marry; and not their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people

to arrange it as they choose.” It was very easy for anyone to say that

who had no daughters, but the princess realized that in the process of

getting to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall

in love with someone who did not care to marry her or who was quite

unfit to be her husband. And, however much it was instilled into the

princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives

for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have

been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most suitable

playthings for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And

so the princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over her

elder sisters.

Now she was afraid that Vronsky might confine himself to simply

flirting with her daughter. She saw that her daughter was in love with

him, but tried to comfort herself with the thought that he was an

honorable man, and would not do this. But at the same time she knew how

easy it is, with the freedom of manners of today, to turn a girl’s

head, and how lightly men generally regard such a crime. The week

before, Kitty had told her mother of a conversation she had with

Vronsky during a mazurka. This conversation had partly reassured the

princess; but perfectly at ease she could not be. Vronsky had told

Kitty that both he and his brother were so used to obeying their mother

that they never made up their minds to any important undertaking

without consulting her. “And just now, I am impatiently awaiting my

mother’s arrival from Petersburg, as peculiarly fortunate,” he told

her.

Kitty had repeated this without attaching any significance to the

words. But her mother saw them in a different light. She knew that the

old lady was expected from day to day, that she would be pleased at her

son’s choice, and she felt it strange that he should not make his offer

through fear of vexing his mother. However, she was so anxious for the

marriage itself, and still more for relief from her fears, that she

believed it was so. Bitter as it was for the princess to see the

unhappiness of her eldest daughter, Dolly, on the point of leaving her

husband, her anxiety over the decision of her youngest daughter’s fate

engrossed all her feelings. Today, with Levin’s reappearance, a fresh

source of anxiety arose. She was afraid that her daughter, who had at

one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might, from extreme

sense of honor, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin’s arrival might

generally complicate and delay the affair so near being concluded.

“Why, has he been here long?” the princess asked about Levin, as they

returned home.

“He came today, mamma.”

“There’s one thing I want to say....” began the princess, and from her

serious and alert face, Kitty guessed what it would be.

“Mamma,” she said, flushing hotly and turning quickly to her, “please,

please don’t say anything about that. I know, I know all about it.”

She wished for what her mother wished for, but the motives of her

mother’s wishes wounded her.

“I only want to say that to raise hopes....”

“Mamma, darling, for goodness’ sake, don’t talk about it. It’s so

horrible to talk about it.”

“I won’t,” said her mother, seeing the tears in her daughter’s eyes;

“but one thing, my love; you promised me you would have no secrets from

me. You won’t?”

“Never, mamma, none,” answered Kitty, flushing a little, and looking

her mother straight in the face, “but there’s no use in my telling you

anything, and I ... I ... if I wanted to, I don’t know what to say or

how.... I don’t know....”

“No, she could not tell an untruth with those eyes,” thought the

mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess smiled

that what was taking place just now in her soul seemed to the poor

child so immense and so important.

Chapter 13

After dinner, and till the beginning of the evening, Kitty was feeling

a sensation akin to the sensation of a young man before a battle. Her

heart throbbed violently, and her thoughts would not rest on anything.

She felt that this evening, when they would both meet for the first

time, would be a turning point in her life. And she was continually

picturing them to herself, at one moment each separately, and then both

together. When she mused on the past, she dwelt with pleasure, with

tenderness, on the memories of her relations with Levin. The memories

of childhood and of Levin’s friendship with her dead brother gave a

special poetic charm to her relations with him. His love for her, of

which she felt certain, was flattering and delightful to her; and it

was pleasant for her to think of Levin. In her memories of Vronsky

there always entered a certain element of awkwardness, though he was in

the highest degree well-bred and at ease, as though there were some

false note—not in Vronsky, he was very simple and nice, but in herself,

while with Levin she felt perfectly simple and clear. But, on the other

hand, directly she thought of the future with Vronsky, there arose

before her a perspective of brilliant happiness; with Levin the future

seemed misty.

When she went upstairs to dress, and looked into the looking-glass, she

noticed with joy that it was one of her good days, and that she was in

complete possession of all her forces,—she needed this so for what lay

before her: she was conscious of external composure and free grace in

her movements.

At half-past seven she had only just gone down into the drawing-room,

when the footman announced, “Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin.” The

princess was still in her room, and the prince had not come in. “So it

is to be,” thought Kitty, and all the blood seemed to rush to her

heart. She was horrified at her paleness, as she glanced into the

looking-glass. At that moment she knew beyond doubt that he had come

early on purpose to find her alone and to make her an offer. And only

then for the first time the whole thing presented itself in a new,

different aspect; only then she realized that the question did not

affect her only—with whom she would be happy, and whom she loved—but

that she would have that moment to wound a man whom she liked. And to

wound him cruelly. What for? Because he, dear fellow, loved her, was in

love with her. But there was no help for it, so it must be, so it would

have to be.

“My God! shall I myself really have to say it to him?” she thought.

“Can I tell him I don’t love him? That will be a lie. What am I to say

to him? That I love someone else? No, that’s impossible. I’m going

away, I’m going away.”

She had reached the door, when she heard his step. “No! it’s not

honest. What have I to be afraid of? I have done nothing wrong. What is

to be, will be! I’ll tell the truth. And with him one can’t be ill at

ease. Here he is,” she said to herself, seeing his powerful, shy

figure, with his shining eyes fixed on her. She looked straight into

his face, as though imploring him to spare her, and gave her hand.

“It’s not time yet; I think I’m too early,” he said glancing round the

empty drawing-room. When he saw that his expectations were realized,

that there was nothing to prevent him from speaking, his face became

gloomy.

“Oh, no,” said Kitty, and sat down at the table.

“But this was just what I wanted, to find you alone,” he began, not

sitting down, and not looking at her, so as not to lose courage.

“Mamma will be down directly. She was very much tired....

Yesterday....”

She talked on, not knowing what her lips were uttering, and not taking

her supplicating and caressing eyes off him.

He glanced at her; she blushed, and ceased speaking.

“I told you I did not know whether I should be here long ... that it

depended on you....”

She dropped her head lower and lower, not knowing herself what answer

she should make to what was coming.

“That it depended on you,” he repeated. “I meant to say ... I meant to

say ... I came for this ... to be my wife!” he brought out, not knowing

what he was saying; but feeling that the most terrible thing was said,

he stopped short and looked at her....

She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was feeling ecstasy.

Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never anticipated that the

utterance of love would produce such a powerful effect on her. But it

lasted only an instant. She remembered Vronsky. She lifted her clear,

truthful eyes, and seeing his desperate face, she answered hastily:

“That cannot be ... forgive me.”

A moment ago, and how close she had been to him, of what importance in

his life! And how aloof and remote from him she had become now!

“It was bound to be so,” he said, not looking at her.

He bowed, and was meaning to retreat.

Chapter 14

But at that very moment the princess came in. There was a look of

horror on her face when she saw them alone, and their disturbed faces.

Levin bowed to her, and said nothing. Kitty did not speak nor lift her

eyes. “Thank God, she has refused him,” thought the mother, and her

face lighted up with the habitual smile with which she greeted her

guests on Thursdays. She sat down and began questioning Levin about his

life in the country. He sat down again, waiting for other visitors to

arrive, in order to retreat unnoticed.

Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty’s, married the

preceding winter, Countess Nordston.

She was a thin, sallow, sickly, and nervous woman, with brilliant black

eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her affection for her showed itself,

as the affection of married women for girls always does, in the desire

to make a match for Kitty after her own ideal of married happiness; she

wanted her to marry Vronsky. Levin she had often met at the

Shtcherbatskys’ early in the winter, and she had always disliked him.

Her invariable and favorite pursuit, when they met, consisted in making

fun of him.

“I do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his grandeur,

or breaks off his learned conversation with me because I’m a fool, or

is condescending to me. I like that so; to see him condescending! I am

so glad he can’t bear me,” she used to say of him.

She was right, for Levin actually could not bear her, and despised her

for what she was proud of and regarded as a fine characteristic—her

nervousness, her delicate contempt and indifference for everything

coarse and earthly.

The Countess Nordston and Levin got into that relation with one another

not seldom seen in society, when two persons, who remain externally on

friendly terms, despise each other to such a degree that they cannot

even take each other seriously, and cannot even be offended by each

other.

The Countess Nordston pounced upon Levin at once.

“Ah, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! So you’ve come back to our corrupt

Babylon,” she said, giving him her tiny, yellow hand, and recalling

what he had chanced to say early in the winter, that Moscow was a

Babylon. “Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?” she

added, glancing with a simper at Kitty.

“It’s very flattering for me, countess, that you remember my words so

well,” responded Levin, who had succeeded in recovering his composure,

and at once from habit dropped into his tone of joking hostility to the

Countess Nordston. “They must certainly make a great impression on

you.”

“Oh, I should think so! I always note them all down. Well, Kitty, have

you been skating again?...”

And she began talking to Kitty. Awkward as it was for Levin to withdraw

now, it would still have been easier for him to perpetrate this

awkwardness than to remain all the evening and see Kitty, who glanced

at him now and then and avoided his eyes. He was on the point of

getting up, when the princess, noticing that he was silent, addressed

him.

“Shall you be long in Moscow? You’re busy with the district council,

though, aren’t you, and can’t be away for long?”

“No, princess, I’m no longer a member of the council,” he said. “I have

come up for a few days.”

“There’s something the matter with him,” thought Countess Nordston,

glancing at his stern, serious face. “He isn’t in his old argumentative

mood. But I’ll draw him out. I do love making a fool of him before

Kitty, and I’ll do it.”

“Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” she said to him, “do explain to me, please,

what’s the meaning of it. You know all about such things. At home in

our village of Kaluga all the peasants and all the women have drunk up

all they possessed, and now they can’t pay us any rent. What’s the

meaning of that? You always praise the peasants so.”

At that instant another lady came into the room, and Levin got up.

“Excuse me, countess, but I really know nothing about it, and can’t

tell you anything,” he said, and looked round at the officer who came

in behind the lady.

“That must be Vronsky,” thought Levin, and, to be sure of it, glanced

at Kitty. She had already had time to look at Vronsky, and looked round

at Levin. And simply from the look in her eyes, that grew unconsciously

brighter, Levin knew that she loved that man, knew it as surely as if

she had told him so in words. But what sort of a man was he? Now,

whether for good or for ill, Levin could not choose but remain; he must

find out what the man was like whom she loved.

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what,

are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and

to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who

desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he

has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what

is good. Levin belonged to the second class. But he had no difficulty

in finding what was good and attractive in Vronsky. It was apparent at

the first glance. Vronsky was a squarely built, dark man, not very

tall, with a good-humored, handsome, and exceedingly calm and resolute

face. Everything about his face and figure, from his short-cropped

black hair and freshly shaven chin down to his loosely fitting,

brand-new uniform, was simple and at the same time elegant. Making way

for the lady who had come in, Vronsky went up to the princess and then

to Kitty.

As he approached her, his beautiful eyes shone with a specially tender

light, and with a faint, happy, and modestly triumphant smile (so it

seemed to Levin), bowing carefully and respectfully over her, he held

out his small broad hand to her.

Greeting and saying a few words to everyone, he sat down without once

glancing at Levin, who had never taken his eyes off him.

“Let me introduce you,” said the princess, indicating Levin.

“Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, Count Alexey Kirillovitch Vronsky.”

Vronsky got up and, looking cordially at Levin, shook hands with him.

“I believe I was to have dined with you this winter,” he said, smiling

his simple and open smile; “but you had unexpectedly left for the

country.”

“Konstantin Dmitrievitch despises and hates town and us townspeople,”

said Countess Nordston.

“My words must make a deep impression on you, since you remember them

so well,” said Levin, and, suddenly conscious that he had said just the

same thing before, he reddened.

Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordston, and smiled.

“Are you always in the country?” he inquired. “I should think it must

be dull in the winter.”

“It’s not dull if one has work to do; besides, one’s not dull by

oneself,” Levin replied abruptly.

“I am fond of the country,” said Vronsky, noticing, and affecting not

to notice, Levin’s tone.

“But I hope, count, you would not consent to live in the country

always,” said Countess Nordston.

“I don’t know; I have never tried for long. I experienced a queer

feeling once,” he went on. “I never longed so for the country, Russian

country, with bast shoes and peasants, as when I was spending a winter

with my mother in Nice. Nice itself is dull enough, you know. And

indeed, Naples and Sorrento are only pleasant for a short time. And

it’s just there that Russia comes back to me most vividly, and

especially the country. It’s as though....”

He talked on, addressing both Kitty and Levin, turning his serene,

friendly eyes from one to the other, and saying obviously just what

came into his head.

Noticing that Countess Nordston wanted to say something, he stopped

short without finishing what he had begun, and listened attentively to

her.

The conversation did not flag for an instant, so that the princess, who

always kept in reserve, in case a subject should be lacking, two heavy

guns—the relative advantages of classical and of modern education, and

universal military service—had not to move out either of them, while

Countess Nordston had not a chance of chaffing Levin.

Levin wanted to, and could not, take part in the general conversation;

saying to himself every instant, “Now go,” he still did not go, as

though waiting for something.

The conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits, and Countess

Nordston, who believed in spiritualism, began to describe the marvels

she had seen.

“Ah, countess, you really must take me, for pity’s sake do take me to

see them! I have never seen anything extraordinary, though I am always

on the lookout for it everywhere,” said Vronsky, smiling.

“Very well, next Saturday,” answered Countess Nordston. “But you,

Konstantin Dmitrievitch, do you believe in it?” she asked Levin.

“Why do you ask me? You know what I shall say.”

“But I want to hear your opinion.”

“My opinion,” answered Levin, “is only that this table-turning simply

proves that educated society—so called—is no higher than the peasants.

They believe in the evil eye, and in witchcraft and omens, while

we....”

“Oh, then you don’t believe in it?”

“I can’t believe in it, countess.”

“But if I’ve seen it myself?”

“The peasant women too tell us they have seen goblins.”

“Then you think I tell a lie?”

And she laughed a mirthless laugh.

“Oh, no, Masha, Konstantin Dmitrievitch said he could not believe in

it,” said Kitty, blushing for Levin, and Levin saw this, and, still

more exasperated, would have answered, but Vronsky with his bright

frank smile rushed to the support of the conversation, which was

threatening to become disagreeable.

“You do not admit the conceivability at all?” he queried. “But why not?

We admit the existence of electricity, of which we know nothing. Why

should there not be some new force, still unknown to us, which....”

“When electricity was discovered,” Levin interrupted hurriedly, “it was

only the phenomenon that was discovered, and it was unknown from what

it proceeded and what were its effects, and ages passed before its

applications were conceived. But the spiritualists have begun with

tables writing for them, and spirits appearing to them, and have only

later started saying that it is an unknown force.”

Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did listen,

obviously interested in his words.

“Yes, but the spiritualists say we don’t know at present what this

force is, but there is a force, and these are the conditions in which

it acts. Let the scientific men find out what the force consists in.

No, I don’t see why there should not be a new force, if it....”

“Why, because with electricity,” Levin interrupted again, “every time

you rub tar against wool, a recognized phenomenon is manifested, but in

this case it does not happen every time, and so it follows it is not a

natural phenomenon.”

Feeling probably that the conversation was taking a tone too serious

for a drawing-room, Vronsky made no rejoinder, but by way of trying to

change the conversation, he smiled brightly, and turned to the ladies.

“Do let us try at once, countess,” he said; but Levin would finish

saying what he thought.

“I think,” he went on, “that this attempt of the spiritualists to

explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is most futile.

They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to subject it to

material experiment.”

Everyone was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.

“And I think you would be a first-rate medium,” said Countess Nordston;

“there’s something enthusiastic in you.”

Levin opened his mouth, was about to say something, reddened, and said

nothing.

“Do let us try table-turning at once, please,” said Vronsky. “Princess,

will you allow it?”

And Vronsky stood up, looking for a little table.

Kitty got up to fetch a table, and as she passed, her eyes met Levin’s.

She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying

him for suffering of which she was herself the cause. “If you can

forgive me, forgive me,” said her eyes, “I am so happy.”

“I hate them all, and you, and myself,” his eyes responded, and he took

up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were

arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of

retiring, the old prince came in, and after greeting the ladies,

addressed Levin.

“Ah!” he began joyously. “Been here long, my boy? I didn’t even know

you were in town. Very glad to see you.” The old prince embraced Levin,

and talking to him did not observe Vronsky, who had risen, and was

serenely waiting till the prince should turn to him.

Kitty felt how distasteful her father’s warmth was to Levin after what

had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded at last to

Vronsky’s bow, and how Vronsky looked with amiable perplexity at her

father, as though trying and failing to understand how and why anyone

could be hostilely disposed towards him, and she flushed.

“Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said Countess Nordston;

“we want to try an experiment.”

“What experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must excuse me, ladies and

gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the ring game,” said

the old prince, looking at Vronsky, and guessing that it had been his

suggestion. “There’s some sense in that, anyway.”

Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and,

with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordston of

the great ball that was to come off next week.

“I hope you will be there?” he said to Kitty. As soon as the old prince

turned away from him, Levin went out unnoticed, and the last impression

he carried away with him of that evening was the smiling, happy face of

Kitty answering Vronsky’s inquiry about the ball.

Chapter 15

At the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her conversation

with Levin, and in spite of all the pity she felt for Levin, she was

glad at the thought that she had received an _offer_. She had no doubt

that she had acted rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long

while she could not sleep. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It

was Levin’s face, with his scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking

out in dark dejection below them, as he stood listening to her father,

and glancing at her and at Vronsky. And she felt so sorry for him that

tears came into her eyes. But immediately she thought of the man for

whom she had given him up. She vividly recalled his manly, resolute

face, his noble self-possession, and the good nature conspicuous in

everything towards everyone. She remembered the love for her of the man

she loved, and once more all was gladness in her soul, and she lay on

the pillow, smiling with happiness. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry; but what

could I do? It’s not my fault,” she said to herself; but an inner voice

told her something else. Whether she felt remorse at having won Levin’s

love, or at having refused him, she did not know. But her happiness was

poisoned by doubts. “Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us;

Lord, have pity on us!” she repeated to herself, till she fell asleep.

Meanwhile there took place below, in the prince’s little library, one

of the scenes so often repeated between the parents on account of their

favorite daughter.

“What? I’ll tell you what!” shouted the prince, waving his arms, and at

once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown round him again. “That

you’ve no pride, no dignity; that you’re disgracing, ruining your

daughter by this vulgar, stupid matchmaking!”

“But, really, for mercy’s sake, prince, what have I done?” said the

princess, almost crying.

She, pleased and happy after her conversation with her daughter, had

gone to the prince to say good-night as usual, and though she had no

intention of telling him of Levin’s offer and Kitty’s refusal, still

she hinted to her husband that she fancied things were practically

settled with Vronsky, and that he would declare himself so soon as his

mother arrived. And thereupon, at those words, the prince had all at

once flown into a passion, and began to use unseemly language.

“What have you done? I’ll tell you what. First of all, you’re trying to

catch an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be talking of it, and

with good reason. If you have evening parties, invite everyone, don’t

pick out the possible suitors. Invite all the young bucks. Engage a

piano player, and let them dance, and not as you do things nowadays,

hunting up good matches. It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you’ve

gone on till you’ve turned the poor wench’s head. Levin’s a thousand

times the better man. As for this little Petersburg swell, they’re

turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish.

But if he were a prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after

anyone.”

“But what have I done?”

“Why, you’ve....” The prince was crying wrathfully.

“I know if one were to listen to you,” interrupted the princess, “we

should never marry our daughter. If it’s to be so, we’d better go into

the country.”

“Well, and we had better.”

“But do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I don’t try to catch

them in the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love

with her, and she, I fancy....”

“Oh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love, and he’s no more

thinking of marriage than I am!... Oh, that I should live to see it!

Ah! spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah! the ball!” And the prince, imagining

that he was mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word.

“And this is how we’re preparing wretchedness for Kitty; and she’s

really got the notion into her head....”

“But what makes you suppose so?”

“I don’t suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though

women-folk haven’t. I see a man who has serious intentions, that’s

Levin: and I see a peacock, like this feather-head, who’s only amusing

himself.”

“Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!...”

“Well, you’ll remember my words, but too late, just as with Dolly.”

“Well, well, we won’t talk of it,” the princess stopped him,

recollecting her unlucky Dolly.

“By all means, and good-night!”

And signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife parted with

a kiss, feeling that they each remained of their own opinion.

The princess had at first been quite certain that that evening had

settled Kitty’s future, and that there could be no doubt of Vronsky’s

intentions, but her husband’s words had disturbed her. And returning to

her own room, in terror before the unknown future, she, too, like

Kitty, repeated several times in her heart, “Lord, have pity; Lord,

have pity; Lord, have pity.”

Chapter 16

Vronsky had never had a real home life. His mother had been in her

youth a brilliant society woman, who had had during her married life,

and still more afterwards, many love affairs notorious in the whole

fashionable world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had been

educated in the Corps of Pages.

Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once

got into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men. Although he did go

more or less into Petersburg society, his love affairs had always

hitherto been outside it.

In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and

coarse life at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and

innocent girl of his own rank, who cared for him. It never even entered

his head that there could be any harm in his relations with Kitty. At

balls he danced principally with her. He was a constant visitor at

their house. He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society—all

sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a

special meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to her that he

could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming

more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better

he liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling for her. He did not know

that his mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite

character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of

marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common

among brilliant young men such as he was. It seemed to him that he was

the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his

discovery.

If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if he

could have put himself at the point of view of the family and have

heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would

have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could

not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him, and

above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have believed

that he ought to marry.

Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not

only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was,

in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he

lived, conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all,

ridiculous.

But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents were

saying, he felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys’ that the secret

spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had grown so much

stronger that evening that some step must be taken. But what step could

and ought to be taken he could not imagine.

“What is so exquisite,” he thought, as he returned from the

Shtcherbatskys’, carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious

feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he

had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of

tenderness at her love for him—“what is so exquisite is that not a word

has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in

this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly

than ever she told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most

of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have

a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet,

loving eyes! When she said: ‘Indeed I do....’

“Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It’s good for me, and good for her.” And

he began wondering where to finish the evening.

He passed in review of the places he might go to. “Club? a game of

bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I’m not going. _Château des

Fleurs_; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick

of it. That’s why I like the Shtcherbatskys’, that I’m growing better.

I’ll go home.” He went straight to his room at Dussots’ Hotel, ordered

supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow,

fell into a sound sleep.

Chapter 17

Next day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the station

of the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the first person he

came across on the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who was

expecting his sister by the same train.

“Ah! your excellency!” cried Oblonsky, “whom are you meeting?”

“My mother,” Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met

Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the

steps. “She is to be here from Petersburg today.”

“I was looking out for you till two o’clock last night. Where did you

go after the Shtcherbatskys’?”

“Home,” answered Vronsky. “I must own I felt so well content yesterday

after the Shtcherbatskys’ that I didn’t care to go anywhere.”

“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,

And by his eyes I know a youth in love,”

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to Levin.

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny it,

but he promptly changed the subject.

“And whom are you meeting?” he asked.

“I? I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,” said Oblonsky.

“You don’t say so!”

“_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_ My sister Anna.”

“Ah! that’s Madame Karenina,” said Vronsky.

“You know her, no doubt?”

“I think I do. Or perhaps not ... I really am not sure,” Vronsky

answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and

tedious evoked by the name Karenina.

“But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you surely

must know. All the world knows him.”

“I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he’s clever,

learned, religious somewhat.... But you know that’s not ... _not in my

line,_” said Vronsky in English.

“Yes, he’s a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a splendid

man,” observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “a splendid man.”

“Oh, well, so much the better for him,” said Vronsky smiling. “Oh,

you’ve come,” he said, addressing a tall old footman of his mother’s,

standing at the door; “come here.”

Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for everyone, Vronsky had

felt of late specially drawn to him by the fact that in his imagination

he was associated with Kitty.

“Well, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on Sunday for the

_diva?_” he said to him with a smile, taking his arm.

“Of course. I’m collecting subscriptions. Oh, did you make the

acquaintance of my friend Levin?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Yes; but he left rather early.”

“He’s a capital fellow,” pursued Oblonsky. “Isn’t he?”

“I don’t know why it is,” responded Vronsky, “in all Moscow

people—present company of course excepted,” he put in jestingly,

“there’s something uncompromising. They are all on the defensive, lose

their tempers, as though they all want to make one feel something....”

“Yes, that’s true, it is so,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing

good-humoredly.

“Will the train soon be in?” Vronsky asked a railway official.

“The train’s signaled,” answered the man.

The approach of the train was more and more evident by the preparatory

bustle in the station, the rush of porters, the movement of policemen

and attendants, and people meeting the train. Through the frosty vapor

could be seen workmen in short sheepskins and soft felt boots crossing

the rails of the curving line. The hiss of the boiler could be heard on

the distant rails, and the rumble of something heavy.

“No,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who felt a great inclination to tell

Vronsky of Levin’s intentions in regard to Kitty. “No, you’ve not got a

true impression of Levin. He’s a very nervous man, and is sometimes out

of humor, it’s true, but then he is often very nice. He’s such a true,

honest nature, and a heart of gold. But yesterday there were special

reasons,” pursued Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a meaning smile, totally

oblivious of the genuine sympathy he had felt the day before for his

friend, and feeling the same sympathy now, only for Vronsky. “Yes,

there were reasons why he could not help being either particularly

happy or particularly unhappy.”

Vronsky stood still and asked directly: “How so? Do you mean he made

your _belle-sœur_ an offer yesterday?”

“Maybe,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I fancied something of the sort

yesterday. Yes, if he went away early, and was out of humor too, it

must mean it.... He’s been so long in love, and I’m very sorry for

him.”

“So that’s it! I should imagine, though, she might reckon on a better

match,” said Vronsky, drawing himself up and walking about again,

“though I don’t know him, of course,” he added. “Yes, that is a hateful

position! That’s why most fellows prefer to have to do with Klaras. If

you don’t succeed with them it only proves that you’ve not enough cash,

but in this case one’s dignity’s at stake. But here’s the train.”

The engine had already whistled in the distance. A few instants later

the platform was quivering, and with puffs of steam hanging low in the

air from the frost, the engine rolled up, with the lever of the middle

wheel rhythmically moving up and down, and the stooping figure of the

engine-driver covered with frost. Behind the tender, setting the

platform more and more slowly swaying, came the luggage van with a dog

whining in it. At last the passenger carriages rolled in, oscillating

before coming to a standstill.

A smart guard jumped out, giving a whistle, and after him one by one

the impatient passengers began to get down: an officer of the guards,

holding himself erect, and looking severely about him; a nimble little

merchant with a satchel, smiling gaily; a peasant with a sack over his

shoulder.

Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, watched the carriages and the

passengers, totally oblivious of his mother. What he had just heard

about Kitty excited and delighted him. Unconsciously he arched his

chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt himself a conqueror.

“Countess Vronskaya is in that compartment,” said the smart guard,

going up to Vronsky.

The guard’s words roused him, and forced him to think of his mother and

his approaching meeting with her. He did not in his heart respect his

mother, and without acknowledging it to himself, he did not love her,

though in accordance with the ideas of the set in which he lived, and

with his own education, he could not have conceived of any behavior to

his mother not in the highest degree respectful and obedient, and the

more externally obedient and respectful his behavior, the less in his

heart he respected and loved her.

Chapter 18

Vronsky followed the guard to the carriage, and at the door of the

compartment he stopped short to make room for a lady who was getting

out.

With the insight of a man of the world, from one glance at this lady’s

appearance Vronsky classified her as belonging to the best society. He

begged pardon, and was getting into the carriage, but felt he must

glance at her once more; not that she was very beautiful, not on

account of the elegance and modest grace which were apparent in her

whole figure, but because in the expression of her charming face, as

she passed close by him, there was something peculiarly caressing and

soft. As he looked round, she too turned her head. Her shining gray

eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested with friendly

attention on his face, as though she were recognizing him, and then

promptly turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone.

In that brief look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness

which played over her face, and flitted between the brilliant eyes and

the faint smile that curved her red lips. It was as though her nature

were so brimming over with something that against her will it showed

itself now in the flash of her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately

she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in

the faintly perceptible smile.

Vronsky stepped into the carriage. His mother, a dried-up old lady with

black eyes and ringlets, screwed up her eyes, scanning her son, and

smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and

handing her maid a bag, she gave her little wrinkled hand to her son to

kiss, and lifting his head from her hand, kissed him on the cheek.

“You got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God.”

“You had a good journey?” said her son, sitting down beside her, and

involuntarily listening to a woman’s voice outside the door. He knew it

was the voice of the lady he had met at the door.

“All the same I don’t agree with you,” said the lady’s voice.

“It’s the Petersburg view, madame.”

“Not Petersburg, but simply feminine,” she responded.

“Well, well, allow me to kiss your hand.”

“Good-bye, Ivan Petrovitch. And could you see if my brother is here,

and send him to me?” said the lady in the doorway, and stepped back

again into the compartment.

“Well, have you found your brother?” said Countess Vronskaya,

addressing the lady.

Vronsky understood now that this was Madame Karenina.

“Your brother is here,” he said, standing up. “Excuse me, I did not

know you, and, indeed, our acquaintance was so slight,” said Vronsky,

bowing, “that no doubt you do not remember me.”

“Oh, no,” said she, “I should have known you because your mother and I

have been talking, I think, of nothing but you all the way.” As she

spoke she let the eagerness that would insist on coming out show itself

in her smile. “And still no sign of my brother.”

“Do call him, Alexey,” said the old countess. Vronsky stepped out onto

the platform and shouted:

“Oblonsky! Here!”

Madame Karenina, however, did not wait for her brother, but catching

sight of him she stepped out with her light, resolute step. And as soon

as her brother had reached her, with a gesture that struck Vronsky by

its decision and its grace, she flung her left arm around his neck,

drew him rapidly to her, and kissed him warmly. Vronsky gazed, never

taking his eyes from her, and smiled, he could not have said why. But

recollecting that his mother was waiting for him, he went back again

into the carriage.

“She’s very sweet, isn’t she?” said the countess of Madame Karenina.

“Her husband put her with me, and I was delighted to have her. We’ve

been talking all the way. And so you, I hear ... _vous filez le parfait

amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux._”

“I don’t know what you are referring to, maman,” he answered coldly.

“Come, maman, let us go.”

Madame Karenina entered the carriage again to say good-bye to the

countess.

“Well, countess, you have met your son, and I my brother,” she said.

“And all my gossip is exhausted. I should have nothing more to tell

you.”

“Oh, no,” said the countess, taking her hand. “I could go all around

the world with you and never be dull. You are one of those delightful

women in whose company it’s sweet to be silent as well as to talk. Now

please don’t fret over your son; you can’t expect never to be parted.”

Madame Karenina stood quite still, holding herself very erect, and her

eyes were smiling.

“Anna Arkadyevna,” the countess said in explanation to her son, “has a

little son eight years old, I believe, and she has never been parted

from him before, and she keeps fretting over leaving him.”

“Yes, the countess and I have been talking all the time, I of my son

and she of hers,” said Madame Karenina, and again a smile lighted up

her face, a caressing smile intended for him.

“I am afraid that you must have been dreadfully bored,” he said,

promptly catching the ball of coquetry she had flung him. But

apparently she did not care to pursue the conversation in that strain,

and she turned to the old countess.

“Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly. Good-bye,

countess.”

“Good-bye, my love,” answered the countess. “Let me have a kiss of your

pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you simply that

I’ve lost my heart to you.”

Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenina obviously believed it

and was delighted by it. She flushed, bent down slightly, and put her

cheek to the countess’s lips, drew herself up again, and with the same

smile fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand to

Vronsky. He pressed the little hand she gave him, and was delighted, as

though at something special, by the energetic squeeze with which she

freely and vigorously shook his hand. She went out with the rapid step

which bore her rather fully-developed figure with such strange

lightness.

“Very charming,” said the countess.

That was just what her son was thinking. His eyes followed her till her

graceful figure was out of sight, and then the smile remained on his

face. He saw out of the window how she went up to her brother, put her

arm in his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously

something that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt

annoyed.

“Well, maman, are you perfectly well?” he repeated, turning to his

mother.

“Everything has been delightful. Alexander has been very good, and

Marie has grown very pretty. She’s very interesting.”

And she began telling him again of what interested her most—the

christening of her grandson, for which she had been staying in

Petersburg, and the special favor shown her elder son by the Tsar.

“Here’s Lavrenty,” said Vronsky, looking out of the window; “now we can

go, if you like.”

The old butler, who had traveled with the countess, came to the

carriage to announce that everything was ready, and the countess got up

to go.

“Come; there’s not such a crowd now,” said Vronsky.

The maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler and a porter the

other baggage. Vronsky gave his mother his arm; but just as they were

getting out of the carriage several men ran suddenly by with

panic-stricken faces. The station-master, too, ran by in his

extraordinary colored cap. Obviously something unusual had happened.

The crowd who had left the train were running back again.

“What?... What?... Where?... Flung himself!... Crushed!...” was heard

among the crowd. Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his sister on his arm,

turned back. They too looked scared, and stopped at the carriage door

to avoid the crowd.

The ladies got in, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch followed the

crowd to find out details of the disaster.

A guard, either drunk or too much muffled up in the bitter frost, had

not heard the train moving back, and had been crushed.

Before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back the ladies heard the facts from

the butler.

Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mutilated corpse. Oblonsky was

evidently upset. He frowned and seemed ready to cry.

“Ah, how awful! Ah, Anna, if you had seen it! Ah, how awful!” he said.

Vronsky did not speak; his handsome face was serious, but perfectly

composed.

“Oh, if you had seen it, countess,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “And his

wife was there.... It was awful to see her!... She flung herself on the

body. They say he was the only support of an immense family. How

awful!”

“Couldn’t one do anything for her?” said Madame Karenina in an agitated

whisper.

Vronsky glanced at her, and immediately got out of the carriage.

“I’ll be back directly, maman,” he remarked, turning round in the

doorway.

When he came back a few minutes later, Stepan Arkadyevitch was already

in conversation with the countess about the new singer, while the

countess was impatiently looking towards the door, waiting for her son.

“Now let us be off,” said Vronsky, coming in. They went out together.

Vronsky was in front with his mother. Behind walked Madame Karenina

with her brother. Just as they were going out of the station the

station-master overtook Vronsky.

“You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you kindly explain

for whose benefit you intend them?”

“For the widow,” said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders. “I should have

thought there was no need to ask.”

“You gave that?” cried Oblonsky, behind, and, pressing his sister’s

hand, he added: “Very nice, very nice! Isn’t he a splendid fellow?

Good-bye, countess.”

And he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.

When they went out the Vronsky’s carriage had already driven away.

People coming in were still talking of what happened.

“What a horrible death!” said a gentleman, passing by. “They say he was

cut in two pieces.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s the easiest—instantaneous,” observed

another.

“How is it they don’t take proper precautions?” said a third.

Madame Karenina seated herself in the carriage, and Stepan Arkadyevitch

saw with surprise that her lips were quivering, and she was with

difficulty restraining her tears.

“What is it, Anna?” he asked, when they had driven a few hundred yards.

“It’s an omen of evil,” she said.

“What nonsense!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “You’ve come, that’s the

chief thing. You can’t conceive how I’m resting my hopes on you.”

“Have you known Vronsky long?” she asked.

“Yes. You know we’re hoping he will marry Kitty.”

“Yes?” said Anna softly. “Come now, let us talk of you,” she added,

tossing her head, as though she would physically shake off something

superfluous oppressing her. “Let us talk of your affairs. I got your

letter, and here I am.”

“Yes, all my hopes are in you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Well, tell me all about it.”

And Stepan Arkadyevitch began to tell his story.

On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her

hand, and set off to his office.

Chapter 19

When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in the little

drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy, already like his

father, giving him a lesson in French reading. As the boy read, he kept

twisting and trying to tear off a button that was nearly off his

jacket. His mother had several times taken his hand from it, but the

fat little hand went back to the button again. His mother pulled the

button off and put it in her pocket.

“Keep your hands still, Grisha,” she said, and she took up her work, a

coverlet she had long been making. She always set to work on it at

depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her

fingers and counting the stitches. Though she had sent word the day

before to her husband that it was nothing to her whether his sister

came or not, she had made everything ready for her arrival, and was

expecting her sister-in-law with emotion.

Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up by it. Still she

did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law, was the wife of one of the

most important personages in Petersburg, and was a Petersburg _grande

dame_. And, thanks to this circumstance, she did not carry out her

threat to her husband—that is to say, she remembered that her

sister-in-law was coming. “And, after all, Anna is in no wise to

blame,” thought Dolly. “I know nothing of her except the very best, and

I have seen nothing but kindness and affection from her towards

myself.” It was true that as far as she could recall her impressions at

Petersburg at the Karenins’, she did not like their household itself;

there was something artificial in the whole framework of their family

life. “But why should I not receive her? If only she doesn’t take it

into her head to console me!” thought Dolly. “All consolation and

counsel and Christian forgiveness, all that I have thought over a

thousand times, and it’s all no use.”

All these days Dolly had been alone with her children. She did not want

to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not

talk of outside matters. She knew that in one way or another she would

tell Anna everything, and she was alternately glad at the thought of

speaking freely, and angry at the necessity of speaking of her

humiliation with her, his sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases

of good advice and comfort. She had been on the lookout for her,

glancing at her watch every minute, and, as so often happens, let slip

just that minute when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the

bell.

Catching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door, she looked

round, and her care-worn face unconsciously expressed not gladness, but

wonder. She got up and embraced her sister-in-law.

“What, here already!” she said as she kissed her.

“Dolly, how glad I am to see you!”

“I am glad, too,” said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying by the

expression of Anna’s face to find out whether she knew. “Most likely

she knows,” she thought, noticing the sympathy in Anna’s face. “Well,

come along, I’ll take you to your room,” she went on, trying to defer

as long as possible the moment of confidences.

“Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he’s grown!” said Anna; and kissing him,

never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood still and flushed a little.

“No, please, let us stay here.”

She took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in a lock of her

black hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed her head and shook

her hair down.

“You are radiant with health and happiness!” said Dolly, almost with

envy.

“I?... Yes,” said Anna. “Merciful heavens, Tanya! You’re the same age

as my Seryozha,” she added, addressing the little girl as she ran in.

She took her in her arms and kissed her. “Delightful child, delightful!

Show me them all.”

She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the years,

months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could not

but appreciate that.

“Very well, we will go to them,” she said. “It’s a pity Vassya’s

asleep.”

After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the

drawing-room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it away

from her.

“Dolly,” she said, “he has told me.”

Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for phrases of

conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the sort.

“Dolly, dear,” she said, “I don’t want to speak for him to you, nor to

try to comfort you; that’s impossible. But, darling, I’m simply sorry,

sorry from my heart for you!”

Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly glittered.

She moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her vigorous

little hand. Dolly did not shrink away, but her face did not lose its

frigid expression. She said:

“To comfort me’s impossible. Everything’s lost after what has happened,

everything’s over!”

And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna lifted

the wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said:

“But, Dolly, what’s to be done, what’s to be done? How is it best to

act in this awful position—that’s what you must think of.”

“All’s over, and there’s nothing more,” said Dolly. “And the worst of

all is, you see, that I can’t cast him off: there are the children, I

am tied. And I can’t live with him! it’s a torture to me to see him.”

“Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from you:

tell me about it.”

Dolly looked at her inquiringly.

Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna’s face.

“Very well,” she said all at once. “But I will tell you it from the

beginning. You know how I was married. With the education mamma gave us

I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew nothing. I know they say

men tell their wives of their former lives, but Stiva”—she corrected

herself—“Stepan Arkadyevitch told me nothing. You’ll hardly believe it,

but till now I imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So I

lived eight years. You must understand that I was so far from

suspecting infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then—try to

imagine it—with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the horror, all

the loathsomeness.... You must try and understand me. To be fully

convinced of one’s happiness, and all at once....” continued Dolly,

holding back her sobs, “to get a letter ... his letter to his mistress,

my governess. No, it’s too awful!” She hastily pulled out her

handkerchief and hid her face in it. “I can understand being carried

away by feeling,” she went on after a brief silence, “but deliberately,

slyly deceiving me ... and with whom?... To go on being my husband

together with her ... it’s awful! You can’t understand....”

“Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do understand,”

said Anna, pressing her hand.

“And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?”

Dolly resumed. “Not the slightest! He’s happy and contented.”

“Oh, no!” Anna interposed quickly. “He’s to be pitied, he’s weighed

down by remorse....”

“Is he capable of remorse?” Dolly interrupted, gazing intently into her

sister-in-law’s face.

“Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for

him. We both know him. He’s good-hearted, but he’s proud, and now he’s

so humiliated. What touched me most....” (and here Anna guessed what

would touch Dolly most) “he’s tortured by two things: that he’s ashamed

for the children’s sake, and that, loving you—yes, yes, loving you

beyond everything on earth,” she hurriedly interrupted Dolly, who would

have answered—“he has hurt you, pierced you to the heart. ‘No, no, she

cannot forgive me,’ he keeps saying.”

Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she listened to

her words.

“Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it’s worse for the guilty

than the innocent,” she said, “if he feels that all the misery comes

from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am I to be his wife

again after her? For me to live with him now would be torture, just

because I love my past love for him....”

And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each time

she was softened she began to speak again of what exasperated her.

“She’s young, you see, she’s pretty,” she went on. “Do you know, Anna,

my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and his

children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his service,

and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him. No

doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they were silent. Do

you understand?”

Again her eyes glowed with hatred.

“And after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe him? Never! No,

everything is over, everything that once made my comfort, the reward of

my work, and my sufferings.... Would you believe it, I was teaching

Grisha just now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a torture. What

have I to strive and toil for? Why are the children here? What’s so

awful is that all at once my heart’s turned, and instead of love and

tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could

kill him.”

“Darling Dolly, I understand, but don’t torture yourself. You are so

distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly.”

Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent.

“What’s to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought over

everything, and I see nothing.”

Anna could think of nothing, but her heart responded instantly to each

word, to each change of expression of her sister-in-law.

“One thing I would say,” began Anna. “I am his sister, I know his

character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything” (she

waved her hand before her forehead), “that faculty for being completely

carried away, but for completely repenting too. He cannot believe it,

he cannot comprehend now how he can have acted as he did.”

“No; he understands, he understood!” Dolly broke in. “But I ... you are

forgetting me ... does it make it easier for me?”

“Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize all the

awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the family

was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see

it, as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can’t tell

you how sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, I fully realize your

sufferings, only there is one thing I don’t know; I don’t know ... I

don’t know how much love there is still in your heart for him. That you

know—whether there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If

there is, forgive him!”

“No,” Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her hand

once more.

“I know more of the world than you do,” she said. “I know how men like

Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her. That never

happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their home and wife are sacred

to them. Somehow or other these women are still looked on with contempt

by them, and do not touch on their feeling for their family. They draw

a sort of line that can’t be crossed between them and their families. I

don’t understand it, but it is so.”

“Yes, but he has kissed her....”

“Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I

remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all

the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the

longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You

know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word:

‘Dolly’s a marvelous woman.’ You have always been a divinity for him,

and you are that still, and this has not been an infidelity of the

heart....”

“But if it is repeated?”

“It cannot be, as I understand it....”

“Yes, but could you forgive it?”

“I don’t know, I can’t judge.... Yes, I can,” said Anna, thinking a

moment; and grasping the position in her thought and weighing it in her

inner balance, she added: “Yes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I could

forgive it. I could not be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and

forgive it as though it had never been, never been at all....”

“Oh, of course,” Dolly interposed quickly, as though saying what she

had more than once thought, “else it would not be forgiveness. If one

forgives, it must be completely, completely. Come, let us go; I’ll take

you to your room,” she said, getting up, and on the way she embraced

Anna. “My dear, how glad I am you came. It has made things better, ever

so much better.”

Chapter 20

The whole of that day Anna spent at home, that’s to say at the

Oblonskys’, and received no one, though some of her acquaintances had

already heard of her arrival, and came to call the same day. Anna spent

the whole morning with Dolly and the children. She merely sent a brief

note to her brother to tell him that he must not fail to dine at home.

“Come, God is merciful,” she wrote.

Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his wife,

speaking to him, addressed him as “Stiva,” as she had not done before.

In the relations of the husband and wife the same estrangement still

remained, but there was no talk now of separation, and Stepan

Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of explanation and reconciliation.

Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna Arkadyevna, but

only very slightly, and she came now to her sister’s with some

trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this fashionable Petersburg

lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of. But she made a favorable

impression on Anna Arkadyevna—she saw that at once. Anna was

unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth: before Kitty knew

where she was she found herself not merely under Anna’s sway, but in

love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and married

women. Anna was not like a fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of

eight years old. In the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and

the unflagging eagerness which persisted in her face, and broke out in

her smile and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of

twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look in her

eyes, which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that Anna was

perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she had another

higher world of interests inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.

After dinner, when Dolly went away to her own room, Anna rose quickly

and went up to her brother, who was just lighting a cigar.

“Stiva,” she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and glancing

towards the door, “go, and God help you.”

He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through the

doorway.

When Stepan Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went back to the sofa

where she had been sitting, surrounded by the children. Either because

the children saw that their mother was fond of this aunt, or that they

felt a special charm in her themselves, the two elder ones, and the

younger following their lead, as children so often do, had clung about

their new aunt since before dinner, and would not leave her side. And

it had become a sort of game among them to sit as close as possible to

their aunt, to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her

ring, or even touch the flounce of her skirt.

“Come, come, as we were sitting before,” said Anna Arkadyevna, sitting

down in her place.

And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled with

his head on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.

“And when is your next ball?” she asked Kitty.

“Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one always

enjoys oneself.”

“Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?” Anna said, with

tender irony.

“It’s strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs’ one always enjoys

oneself, and at the Nikitins’ too, while at the Mezhkovs’ it’s always

dull. Haven’t you noticed it?”

“No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys oneself,”

said Anna, and Kitty detected in her eyes that mysterious world which

was not open to her. “For me there are some less dull and tiresome.”

“How can _you_ be dull at a ball?”

“Why should not _I_ be dull at a ball?” inquired Anna.

Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would follow.

“Because you always look nicer than anyone.”

Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little, and said:

“In the first place it’s never so; and secondly, if it were, what

difference would it make to me?”

“Are you coming to this ball?” asked Kitty.

“I imagine it won’t be possible to avoid going. Here, take it,” she

said to Tanya, who was pulling the loosely-fitting ring off her white,

slender-tipped finger.

“I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a ball.”

“Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that it’s

a pleasure to you ... Grisha, don’t pull my hair. It’s untidy enough

without that,” she said, putting up a straying lock, which Grisha had

been playing with.

“I imagine you at the ball in lilac.”

“And why in lilac precisely?” asked Anna, smiling. “Now, children, run

along, run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is calling you to tea,” she

said, tearing the children from her, and sending them off to the

dining-room.

“I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great deal

of this ball, and you want everyone to be there to take part in it.”

“How do you know? Yes.”

“Oh! what a happy time you are at,” pursued Anna. “I remember, and I

know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland. That

mist which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is

just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is a

path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming

to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is.... Who has not

been through it?”

Kitty smiled without speaking. “But how did she go through it? How I

should like to know all her love story!” thought Kitty, recalling the

unromantic appearance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.

“I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I liked him

so much,” Anna continued. “I met Vronsky at the railway station.”

“Oh, was he there?” asked Kitty, blushing. “What was it Stiva told

you?”

“Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad ... I traveled

yesterday with Vronsky’s mother,” she went on; “and his mother talked

without a pause of him, he’s her favorite. I know mothers are partial,

but....”

“What did his mother tell you?”

“Oh, a great deal! And I know that he’s her favorite; still one can see

how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance, she told me that he had

wanted to give up all his property to his brother, that he had done

something extraordinary when he was quite a child, saved a woman out of

the water. He’s a hero, in fact,” said Anna, smiling and recollecting

the two hundred roubles he had given at the station.

But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For some

reason it was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that there

was something that had to do with her in it, and something that ought

not to have been.

“She pressed me very much to go and see her,” Anna went on; “and I

shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a long while

in Dolly’s room, thank God,” Anna added, changing the subject, and

getting up, Kitty fancied, displeased with something.

“No, I’m first! No, I!” screamed the children, who had finished tea,

running up to their Aunt Anna.

“All together,” said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and

embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children, shrieking

with delight.

Chapter 21

Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people. Stepan

Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his wife’s room by the

other door.

“I am afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,” observed Dolly, addressing Anna;

“I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer.”

“Oh, please, don’t trouble about me,” answered Anna, looking intently

into Dolly’s face, trying to make out whether there had been a

reconciliation or not.

“It will be lighter for you here,” answered her sister-in-law.

“I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot.”

“What’s the question?” inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out of his

room and addressing his wife.

From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had taken

place.

“I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No one

knows how to do it; I must see to it myself,” answered Dolly addressing

him.

“God knows whether they are fully reconciled,” thought Anna, hearing

her tone, cold and composed.

“Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties,” answered her

husband. “Come, I’ll do it all, if you like....”

“Yes, they must be reconciled,” thought Anna.

“I know how you do everything,” answered Dolly. “You tell Matvey to do

what can’t be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to make a muddle

of everything,” and her habitual, mocking smile curved the corners of

Dolly’s lips as she spoke.

“Full, full reconciliation, full,” thought Anna; “thank God!” and

rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and kissed

her.

“Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvey?” said Stepan

Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing his wife.

The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her tone to

her husband, while Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and cheerful, but not

so as to seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his

offense.

At half-past nine o’clock a particularly joyful and pleasant family

conversation over the tea-table at the Oblonskys’ was broken up by an

apparently simple incident. But this simple incident for some reason

struck everyone as strange. Talking about common acquaintances in

Petersburg, Anna got up quickly.

“She is in my album,” she said; “and, by the way, I’ll show you my

Seryozha,” she added, with a mother’s smile of pride.

Towards ten o’clock, when she usually said good-night to her son, and

often before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt depressed

at being so far from him; and whatever she was talking about, she kept

coming back in thought to her curly-headed Seryozha. She longed to look

at his photograph and talk of him. Seizing the first pretext, she got

up, and with her light, resolute step went for her album. The stairs up

to her room came out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.

Just as she was leaving the drawing-room, a ring was heard in the hall.

“Who can that be?” said Dolly.

“It’s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it’s late,”

observed Kitty.

“Sure to be someone with papers for me,” put in Stepan Arkadyevitch.

When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a servant was running

up to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself was standing

under a lamp. Anna glancing down at once recognized Vronsky, and a

strange feeling of pleasure and at the same time of dread of something

stirred in her heart. He was standing still, not taking off his coat,

pulling something out of his pocket. At the instant when she was just

facing the stairs, he raised his eyes, caught sight of her, and into

the expression of his face there passed a shade of embarrassment and

dismay. With a slight inclination of her head she passed, hearing

behind her Stepan Arkadyevitch’s loud voice calling him to come up, and

the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.

When Anna returned with the album, he was already gone, and Stepan

Arkadyevitch was telling them that he had called to inquire about the

dinner they were giving next day to a celebrity who had just arrived.

“And nothing would induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he is!”

added Stepan Arkadyevitch.

Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why he

had come, and why he would not come up. “He has been at home,” she

thought, “and didn’t find me, and thought I should be here, but he did

not come up because he thought it late, and Anna’s here.”

All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to look at

Anna’s album.

There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man’s calling at

half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner

party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above

all, it seemed strange and not right to Anna.

Chapter 22

The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up the

great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen

in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as

from a hive, and the rustle of movement; and while on the landing

between trees they gave last touches to their hair and dresses before

the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the careful, distinct notes of

the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little old

man in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another mirror,

and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the stairs,

and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A

beardless youth, one of those society youths whom the old Prince

Shtcherbatsky called “young bucks,” in an exceedingly open waistcoat,

straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and after

running by, came back to ask Kitty for a quadrille. As the first

quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, she had to promise this

youth the second. An officer, buttoning his glove, stood aside in the

doorway, and stroking his mustache, admired rosy Kitty.

Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball

had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she

walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip

as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the

minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment’s

attention, as though she had been born in that tulle and lace, with her

hair done up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on the top of

it.

When, just before entering the ballroom, the princess, her mother,

tried to turn right side out of the ribbon of her sash, Kitty had drawn

back a little. She felt that everything must be right of itself, and

graceful, and nothing could need setting straight.

It was one of Kitty’s best days. Her dress was not uncomfortable

anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were not

crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, hollowed-out heels

did not pinch, but gladdened her feet; and the thick rolls of fair

chignon kept up on her head as if they were her own hair. All the three

buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that covered her

hand without concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket

nestled with special softness round her neck. That velvet was

delicious; at home, looking at her neck in the looking-glass, Kitty had

felt that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be a

doubt, but the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at the

ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare shoulders and arms

gave Kitty a sense of chill marble, a feeling she particularly liked.

Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy lips could not keep from smiling from

the consciousness of her own attractiveness. She had scarcely entered

the ballroom and reached the throng of ladies, all tulle, ribbons,

lace, and flowers, waiting to be asked to dance—Kitty was never one of

that throng—when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best

partner, the first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned

director of dances, a married man, handsome and well-built, Yegorushka

Korsunsky. He had only just left the Countess Bonina, with whom he had

danced the first half of the waltz, and, scanning his kingdom—that is

to say, a few couples who had started dancing—he caught sight of Kitty,

entering, and flew up to her with that peculiar, easy amble which is

confined to directors of balls. Without even asking her if she cared to

dance, he put out his arm to encircle her slender waist. She looked

round for someone to give her fan to, and their hostess, smiling to

her, took it.

“How nice you’ve come in good time,” he said to her, embracing her

waist; “such a bad habit to be late.” Bending her left hand, she laid

it on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink slippers began

swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically moving over the slippery floor in

time to the music.

“It’s a rest to waltz with you,” he said to her, as they fell into the

first slow steps of the waltz. “It’s exquisite—such lightness,

precision.” He said to her the same thing he said to almost all his

partners whom he knew well.

She smiled at his praise, and continued to look about the room over his

shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces

in the ballroom melt into one vision of fairyland. And she was not a

girl who had gone the stale round of balls till every face in the

ballroom was familiar and tiresome. But she was in the middle stage

between these two; she was excited, and at the same time she had

sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of

the ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered together.

There—incredibly naked—was the beauty Lidi, Korsunsky’s wife; there was

the lady of the house; there shone the bald head of Krivin, always to

be found where the best people were. In that direction gazed the young

men, not venturing to approach. There, too, she descried Stiva, and

there she saw the exquisite figure and head of Anna in a black velvet

gown. And _he_ was there. Kitty had not seen him since the evening she

refused Levin. With her long-sighted eyes, she knew him at once, and

was even aware that he was looking at her.

“Another turn, eh? You’re not tired?” said Korsunsky, a little out of

breath.

“No, thank you!”

“Where shall I take you?”

“Madame Karenina’s here, I think ... take me to her.”

“Wherever you command.”

And Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps straight towards the

group in the left corner, continually saying, “Pardon, mesdames,

pardon, pardon, mesdames”; and steering his course through the sea of

lace, tulle, and ribbon, and not disarranging a feather, he turned his

partner sharply round, so that her slim ankles, in light transparent

stockings, were exposed to view, and her train floated out in fan shape

and covered Krivin’s knees. Korsunsky bowed, set straight his open

shirt front, and gave her his arm to conduct her to Anna Arkadyevna.

Kitty, flushed, took her train from Krivin’s knees, and, a little

giddy, looked round, seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had

so urgently wished, but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown, showing her

full throat and shoulders, that looked as though carved in old ivory,

and her rounded arms, with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown was

trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, among her black hair—her

own, with no false additions—was a little wreath of pansies, and a

bouquet of the same in the black ribbon of her sash among white lace.

Her coiffure was not striking. All that was noticeable was the little

wilful tendrils of her curly hair that would always break free about

her neck and temples. Round her well-cut, strong neck was a thread of

pearls.

Kitty had been seeing Anna every day; she adored her, and had pictured

her invariably in lilac. But now seeing her in black, she felt that she

had not fully seen her charm. She saw her now as someone quite new and

surprising to her. Now she understood that Anna could not have been in

lilac, and that her charm was just that she always stood out against

her attire, that her dress could never be noticeable on her. And her

black dress, with its sumptuous lace, was not noticeable on her; it was

only the frame, and all that was seen was she—simple, natural, elegant,

and at the same time gay and eager.

She was standing holding herself, as always, very erect, and when Kitty

drew near the group she was speaking to the master of the house, her

head slightly turned towards him.

“No, I don’t throw stones,” she was saying, in answer to something,

“though I can’t understand it,” she went on, shrugging her shoulders,

and she turned at once with a soft smile of protection towards Kitty.

With a flying, feminine glance she scanned her attire, and made a

movement of her head, hardly perceptible, but understood by Kitty,

signifying approval of her dress and her looks. “You came into the room

dancing,” she added.

“This is one of my most faithful supporters,” said Korsunsky, bowing to

Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had not yet seen. “The princess helps to make

balls happy and successful. Anna Arkadyevna, a waltz?” he said, bending

down to her.

“Why, have you met?” inquired their host.

“Is there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white

wolves—everyone knows us,” answered Korsunsky. “A waltz, Anna

Arkadyevna?”

“I don’t dance when it’s possible not to dance,” she said.

“But tonight it’s impossible,” answered Korsunsky.

At that instant Vronsky came up.

“Well, since it’s impossible tonight, let us start,” she said, not

noticing Vronsky’s bow, and she hastily put her hand on Korsunsky’s

shoulder.

“What is she vexed with him about?” thought Kitty, discerning that Anna

had intentionally not responded to Vronsky’s bow. Vronsky went up to

Kitty reminding her of the first quadrille, and expressing his regret

that he had not seen her all this time. Kitty gazed in admiration at

Anna waltzing, and listened to him. She expected him to ask her for a

waltz, but he did not, and she glanced wonderingly at him. He flushed

slightly, and hurriedly asked her to waltz, but he had only just put

his arm round her waist and taken the first step when the music

suddenly stopped. Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her

own, and long afterwards—for several years after—that look, full of

love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony

of shame.

“_Pardon! pardon!_ Waltz! waltz!” shouted Korsunsky from the other side

of the room, and seizing the first young lady he came across he began

dancing himself.

Chapter 23

Vronsky and Kitty waltzed several times round the room. After the first

waltz Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few

words to Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first

quadrille. During the quadrille nothing of any significance was said:

there was disjointed talk between them of the Korsunskys, husband and

wife, whom he described very amusingly, as delightful children at

forty, and of the future town theater; and only once the conversation

touched her to the quick, when he asked her about Levin, whether he was

here, and added that he liked him so much. But Kitty did not expect

much from the quadrille. She looked forward with a thrill at her heart

to the mazurka. She fancied that in the mazurka everything must be

decided. The fact that he did not during the quadrille ask her for the

mazurka did not trouble her. She felt sure she would dance the mazurka

with him as she had done at former balls, and refused five young men,

saying she was engaged for the mazurka. The whole ball up to the last

quadrille was for Kitty an enchanted vision of delightful colors,

sounds, and motions. She only sat down when she felt too tired and

begged for a rest. But as she was dancing the last quadrille with one

of the tiresome young men whom she could not refuse, she chanced to be

_vis-à-vis_ with Vronsky and Anna. She had not been near Anna again

since the beginning of the evening, and now again she saw her suddenly

quite new and surprising. She saw in her the signs of that excitement

of success she knew so well in herself; she saw that she was

intoxicated with the delighted admiration she was exciting. She knew

that feeling and knew its signs, and saw them in Anna; saw the

quivering, flashing light in her eyes, and the smile of happiness and

excitement unconsciously playing on her lips, and the deliberate grace,

precision, and lightness of her movements.

“Who?” she asked herself. “All or one?” And not assisting the harassed

young man she was dancing with in the conversation, the thread of which

he had lost and could not pick up again, she obeyed with external

liveliness the peremptory shouts of Korsunsky starting them all into

the _grand rond_, and then into the _chaîne_, and at the same time she

kept watch with a growing pang at her heart. “No, it’s not the

admiration of the crowd has intoxicated her, but the adoration of one.

And that one? can it be he?” Every time he spoke to Anna the joyous

light flashed into her eyes, and the smile of happiness curved her red

lips. She seemed to make an effort to control herself, to try not to

show these signs of delight, but they came out on her face of

themselves. “But what of him?” Kitty looked at him and was filled with

terror. What was pictured so clearly to Kitty in the mirror of Anna’s

face she saw in him. What had become of his always self-possessed

resolute manner, and the carelessly serene expression of his face? Now

every time he turned to her, he bent his head, as though he would have

fallen at her feet, and in his eyes there was nothing but humble

submission and dread. “I would not offend you,” his eyes seemed every

time to be saying, “but I want to save myself, and I don’t know how.”

On his face was a look such as Kitty had never seen before.

They were speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the most trivial

conversation, but to Kitty it seemed that every word they said was

determining their fate and hers. And strange it was that they were

actually talking of how absurd Ivan Ivanovitch was with his French, and

how the Eletsky girl might have made a better match, yet these words

had all the while consequence for them, and they were feeling just as

Kitty did. The whole ball, the whole world, everything seemed lost in

fog in Kitty’s soul. Nothing but the stern discipline of her

bringing-up supported her and forced her to do what was expected of

her, that is, to dance, to answer questions, to talk, even to smile.

But before the mazurka, when they were beginning to rearrange the

chairs and a few couples moved out of the smaller rooms into the big

room, a moment of despair and horror came for Kitty. She had refused

five partners, and now she was not dancing the mazurka. She had not

even a hope of being asked for it, because she was so successful in

society that the idea would never occur to anyone that she had remained

disengaged till now. She would have to tell her mother she felt ill and

go home, but she had not the strength to do this. She felt crushed. She

went to the furthest end of the little drawing-room and sank into a low

chair. Her light, transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her

slender waist; one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly,

was lost in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan,

and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning face. But while she

looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass, and just about

to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her heart ached with a

horrible despair.

“But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?” And again she recalled

all she had seen.

“Kitty, what is it?” said Countess Nordston, stepping noiselessly over

the carpet towards her. “I don’t understand it.”

Kitty’s lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.

“Kitty, you’re not dancing the mazurka?”

“No, no,” said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.

“He asked her for the mazurka before me,” said Countess Nordston,

knowing Kitty would understand who were “he” and “her.” “She said:

‘Why, aren’t you going to dance it with Princess Shtcherbatskaya?’”

“Oh, I don’t care!” answered Kitty.

No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that she

had just refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused him

because she had put her faith in another.

Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the

mazurka, and told him to ask Kitty.

Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to

talk, because Korsunsky was all the time running about directing the

figure. Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite her. She saw them with her

long-sighted eyes, and saw them, too, close by, when they met in the

figures, and the more she saw of them the more convinced was she that

her unhappiness was complete. She saw that they felt themselves alone

in that crowded room. And on Vronsky’s face, always so firm and

independent, she saw that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and

humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when

it has done wrong.

Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful,

and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty’s eyes to

Anna’s face. She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating

were her round arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck

with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose

hair, fascinating the graceful, light movements of her little feet and

hands, fascinating was that lovely face in its eagerness, but there was

something terrible and cruel in her fascination.

Kitty admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was her

suffering. Kitty felt overwhelmed, and her face showed it. When Vronsky

saw her, coming across her in the mazurka, he did not at once recognize

her, she was so changed.

“Delightful ball!” he said to her, for the sake of saying something.

“Yes,” she answered.

In the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure, newly

invented by Korsunsky, Anna came forward into the center of the circle,

chose two gentlemen, and summoned a lady and Kitty. Kitty gazed at her

in dismay as she went up. Anna looked at her with drooping eyelids, and

smiled, pressing her hand. But, noticing that Kitty only responded to

her smile by a look of despair and amazement, she turned away from her,

and began gaily talking to the other lady.

“Yes, there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in her,”

Kitty said to herself.

Anna did not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house began

to press her to do so.

“Nonsense, Anna Arkadyevna,” said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm under

the sleeve of his dress coat, “I’ve such an idea for a _cotillion! Un

bijou!_”

And he moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him. Their

host smiled approvingly.

“No, I am not going to stay,” answered Anna, smiling, but in spite of

her smile, both Korsunsky and the master of the house saw from her

resolute tone that she would not stay.

“No; why, as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than I

have all the winter in Petersburg,” said Anna, looking round at

Vronsky, who stood near her. “I must rest a little before my journey.”

“Are you certainly going tomorrow then?” asked Vronsky.

“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Anna, as it were wondering at the

boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance

of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it.

Anna Arkadyevna did not stay to supper, but went home.

Chapter 24

“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive,” thought Levin, as

he came away from the Shtcherbatskys’, and walked in the direction of

his brother’s lodgings. “And I don’t get on with other people. Pride,

they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have

put myself in such a position.” And he pictured to himself Vronsky,

happy, good-natured, clever, and self-possessed, certainly never placed

in the awful position in which he had been that evening. “Yes, she was

bound to choose him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone

or anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she

would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A nobody,

not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody.” And he recalled his

brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought of him. “Isn’t

he right that everything in the world is base and loathsome? And are we

fair in our judgment of brother Nikolay? Of course, from the point of

view of Prokofy, seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he’s a

despicable person. But I know him differently. I know his soul, and

know that we are like him. And I, instead of going to seek him out,

went out to dinner, and came here.” Levin walked up to a lamppost, read

his brother’s address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a

sledge. All the long way to his brother’s, Levin vividly recalled all

the facts familiar to him of his brother Nikolay’s life. He remembered

how his brother, while at the university, and for a year afterwards,

had, in spite of the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk,

strictly observing all religious rites, services, and fasts, and

avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially women. And afterwards, how

he had all at once broken out: he had associated with the most horrible

people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered

later the scandal over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to

bring up, and, in a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that

proceedings were brought against him for unlawfully wounding. Then he

recalled the scandal with a sharper, to whom he had lost money, and

given a promissory note, and against whom he had himself lodged a

complaint, asserting that he had cheated him. (This was the money

Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he remembered how he had spent a

night in the lockup for disorderly conduct in the street. He remembered

the shameful proceedings he had tried to get up against his brother

Sergey Ivanovitch, accusing him of not having paid him his share of his

mother’s fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a western

province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble for

assaulting a village elder.... It was all horribly disgusting, yet to

Levin it appeared not at all in the same disgusting light as it

inevitably would to those who did not know Nikolay, did not know all

his story, did not know his heart.

Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage, the

period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was seeking in

religion a support and a curb for his passionate temperament, everyone,

far from encouraging him, had jeered at him, and he, too, with the

others. They had teased him, called him Noah, and monk; and, when he

had broken out, no one had helped him, but everyone had turned away

from him with horror and disgust.

Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother

Nikolay, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in

the wrong than the people who despised him. He was not to blame for

having been born with his unbridled temperament and his somehow limited

intelligence. But he had always wanted to be good. “I will tell him

everything, without reserve, and I will make him speak without reserve,

too, and I’ll show him that I love him, and so understand him,” Levin

resolved to himself, as, towards eleven o’clock, he reached the hotel

of which he had the address.

“At the top, 12 and 13,” the porter answered Levin’s inquiry.

“At home?”

“Sure to be at home.”

The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the streak of

light thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound of a voice,

unknown to Levin; but he knew at once that his brother was there; he

heard his cough.

As he went in the door, the unknown voice was saying:

“It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing’s done.”

Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker was a

young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian jerkin, and

that a pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without collar or cuffs, was

sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to be seen. Konstantin felt a

sharp pang at his heart at the thought of the strange company in which

his brother spent his life. No one had heard him, and Konstantin,

taking off his galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin

was saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.

“Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes,” his brother’s

voice responded, with a cough. “Masha! get us some supper and some wine

if there’s any left; or else go and get some.”

The woman rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw Konstantin.

“There’s some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,” she said.

“Whom do you want?” said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.

“It’s I,” answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the light.

“Who’s _I_?” Nikolay’s voice said again, still more angrily. He could

be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something, and Levin

saw, facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes, and the huge,

thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar, and yet astonishing

in its weirdness and sickliness.

He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin had

seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones

seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight

mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naïvely at

his visitor.

“Ah, Kostya!” he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his

eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at the young

man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that Konstantin

knew so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a quite different

expression, wild, suffering, and cruel, rested on his emaciated face.

“I wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don’t know you and

don’t want to know you. What is it you want?”

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him. The

worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all relations

with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin Levin when he

thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and especially that

nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all.

“I didn’t want to see you for anything,” he answered timidly. “I’ve

simply come to see you.”

His brother’s timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips twitched.

“Oh, so that’s it?” he said. “Well, come in; sit down. Like some

supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you know

who this is?” he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the

gentleman in the jerkin: “This is Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a

very remarkable man. He’s persecuted by the police, of course, because

he’s not a scoundrel.”

And he looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the room.

Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving to go, he

shouted to her, “Wait a minute, I said.” And with the inability to

express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he

began, with another look round at everyone, to tell his brother

Kritsky’s story: how he had been expelled from the university for

starting a benefit society for the poor students and Sunday schools;

and how he had afterwards been a teacher in a peasant school, and how

he had been driven out of that too, and had afterwards been condemned

for something.

“You’re of the Kiev university?” said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky, to

break the awkward silence that followed.

“Yes, I was of Kiev,” Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.

“And this woman,” Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her, “is

the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad

house,” and he jerked his neck saying this; “but I love her and respect

her, and anyone who wants to know me,” he added, raising his voice and

knitting his brows, “I beg to love her and respect her. She’s just the

same as my wife, just the same. So now you know whom you’ve to do with.

And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s the floor,

there’s the door.”

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

“Why I should be lowering myself, I don’t understand.”

“Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits and

wine.... No, wait a minute.... No, it doesn’t matter.... Go along.”

Chapter 25

“So you see,” pursued Nikolay Levin, painfully wrinkling his forehead

and twitching.

It was obviously difficult for him to think of what to say and do.

“Here, do you see?”... He pointed to some sort of iron bars, fastened

together with strings, lying in a corner of the room. “Do you see that?

That’s the beginning of a new thing we’re going into. It’s a productive

association....”

Konstantin scarcely heard him. He looked into his sickly, consumptive

face, and he was more and more sorry for him, and he could not force

himself to listen to what his brother was telling him about the

association. He saw that this association was a mere anchor to save him

from self-contempt. Nikolay Levin went on talking:

“You know that capital oppresses the laborer. The laborers with us, the

peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however

much they work they can’t escape from their position of beasts of

burden. All the profits of labor, on which they might improve their

position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after that education,

all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists. And

society’s so constituted that the harder they work, the greater the

profit of the merchants and landowners, while they stay beasts of

burden to the end. And that state of things must be changed,” he

finished up, and he looked questioningly at his brother.

“Yes, of course,” said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red that had

come out on his brother’s projecting cheekbones.

“And so we’re founding a locksmiths’ association, where all the

production and profit and the chief instruments of production will be

in common.”

“Where is the association to be?” asked Konstantin Levin.

“In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government.”

“But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty of

work as it is. Why a locksmiths’ association in a village?”

“Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever were,

and that’s why you and Sergey Ivanovitch don’t like people to try and

get them out of their slavery,” said Nikolay Levin, exasperated by the

objection.

Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and

dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolay still more.

“I know your and Sergey Ivanovitch’s aristocratic views. I know that he

applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing evils.”

“No; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?” said Levin,

smiling.

“Sergey Ivanovitch? I’ll tell you what for!” Nikolay Levin shrieked

suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch. “I’ll tell you what for....

But what’s the use of talking? There’s only one thing.... What did you

come to me for? You look down on this, and you’re welcome to,—and go

away, in God’s name go away!” he shrieked, getting up from his chair.

“And go away, and go away!”

“I don’t look down on it at all,” said Konstantin Levin timidly. “I

don’t even dispute it.”

At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolay Levin looked round

angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered something.

“I’m not well; I’ve grown irritable,” said Nikolay Levin, getting

calmer and breathing painfully; “and then you talk to me of Sergey

Ivanovitch and his article. It’s such rubbish, such lying, such

self-deception. What can a man write of justice who knows nothing of

it? Have you read his article?” he asked Kritsky, sitting down again at

the table, and moving back off half of it the scattered cigarettes, so

as to clear a space.

“I’ve not read it,” Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not desiring

to enter into the conversation.

“Why not?” said Nikolay Levin, now turning with exasperation upon

Kritsky.

“Because I didn’t see the use of wasting my time over it.”

“Oh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be wasting your time?

That article’s too deep for many people—that’s to say it’s over their

heads. But with me, it’s another thing; I see through his ideas, and I

know where its weakness lies.”

Everyone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and reached his cap.

“Won’t you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come round tomorrow with

the locksmith.”

Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolay Levin smiled and winked.

“He’s no good either,” he said. “I see, of course....”

But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him....

“What do you want now?” he said, and went out to him in the passage.

Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her.

“Have you been long with my brother?” he said to her.

“Yes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch’s health has become very

poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a great deal,” she said.

“That is ... how does he drink?”

“Drinks vodka, and it’s bad for him.”

“And a great deal?” whispered Levin.

“Yes,” she said, looking timidly towards the doorway, where Nikolay

Levin had reappeared.

“What were you talking about?” he said, knitting his brows, and turning

his scared eyes from one to the other. “What was it?”

“Oh, nothing,” Konstantin answered in confusion.

“Oh, if you don’t want to say, don’t. Only it’s no good your talking to

her. She’s a wench, and you’re a gentleman,” he said with a jerk of the

neck. “You understand everything, I see, and have taken stock of

everything, and look with commiseration on my shortcomings,” he began

again, raising his voice.

“Nikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,” whispered Marya

Nikolaevna, again going up to him.

“Oh, very well, very well!... But where’s the supper? Ah, here it is,”

he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. “Here, set it here,” he added

angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he poured out a glassful and

drank it greedily. “Like a drink?” he turned to his brother, and at

once became better humored.

“Well, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I’m glad to see you, anyway. After

all’s said and done, we’re not strangers. Come, have a drink. Tell me

what you’re doing,” he went on, greedily munching a piece of bread, and

pouring out another glassful. “How are you living?”

“I live alone in the country, as I used to. I’m busy looking after the

land,” answered Konstantin, watching with horror the greediness with

which his brother ate and drank, and trying to conceal that he noticed

it.

“Why don’t you get married?”

“It hasn’t happened so,” Konstantin answered, reddening a little.

“Why not? For me now ... everything’s at an end! I’ve made a mess of my

life. But this I’ve said, and I say still, that if my share had been

given me when I needed it, my whole life would have been different.”

Konstantin made haste to change the conversation.

“Do you know your little Vanya’s with me, a clerk in the countinghouse

at Pokrovskoe.”

Nikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought.

“Yes, tell me what’s going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house standing

still, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And Philip the

gardener, is he living? How I remember the arbor and the seat! Now mind

and don’t alter anything in the house, but make haste and get married,

and make everything as it used to be again. Then I’ll come and see you,

if your wife is nice.”

“But come to me now,” said Levin. “How nicely we would arrange it!”

“I’d come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey

Ivanovitch.”

“You wouldn’t find him there. I live quite independently of him.”

“Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me and

him,” he said, looking timidly into his brother’s face.

This timidity touched Konstantin.

“If you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I tell you

that in your quarrel with Sergey Ivanovitch I take neither side. You’re

both wrong. You’re more wrong externally, and he inwardly.”

“Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!” Nikolay shouted joyfully.

“But I personally value friendly relations with you more because....”

“Why, why?”

Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolay was

unhappy, and needed affection. But Nikolay knew that this was just what

he meant to say, and scowling he took up the vodka again.

“Enough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!” said Marya Nikolaevna, stretching out

her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.

“Let it be! Don’t insist! I’ll beat you!” he shouted.

Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was at

once reflected on Nikolay’s face, and she took the bottle.

“And do you suppose she understands nothing?” said Nikolay. “She

understands it all better than any of us. Isn’t it true there’s

something good and sweet in her?”

“Were you never before in Moscow?” Konstantin said to her, for the sake

of saying something.

“Only you mustn’t be polite and stiff with her. It frightens her. No

one ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace who tried her

for trying to get out of a house of ill-fame. Mercy on us, the

senselessness in the world!” he cried suddenly. “These new

institutions, these justices of the peace, rural councils, what

hideousness it all is!”

And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new institutions.

Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of all

public institutions, which he shared with him, and often expressed, was

distasteful to him now from his brother’s lips.

“In another world we shall understand it all,” he said lightly.

“In another world! Ah, I don’t like that other world! I don’t like it,”

he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother’s eyes. “Here one

would think that to get out of all the baseness and the mess, one’s own

and other people’s, would be a good thing, and yet I’m afraid of death,

awfully afraid of death.” He shuddered. “But do drink something. Would

you like some champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let’s go to the

Gypsies! Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian

songs.”

His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one subject

to another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded him not to go

out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.

Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to persuade

Nikolay Levin to go and stay with his brother.

Chapter 26

In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening he

reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors

about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was

overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with

himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own

station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of

his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station

fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up,

in their harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman

Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the

contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt that little

by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and

self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere sight

of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the sheepskin brought

for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off

pondering on the work that lay before him in the village, and staring

at the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse, past his prime now,

but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to see what had happened to

him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be

anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the

first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for

any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and

consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he

would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of

which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make

an offer. Then remembering his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself

that he would never allow himself to forget him, that he would follow

him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when

things should go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then,

too, his brother’s talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly

at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in economic

conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own

abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he

determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked

hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now work still

harder, and would allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed

to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in

the pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new,

better life, he reached home before nine o’clock at night.

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a

light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who

performed the duties of housekeeper in his house. She was not yet

asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out onto the

steps. A setter bitch, Laska, ran out too, almost upsetting Kouzma, and

whining, turned round about Levin’s knees, jumping up and longing, but

not daring, to put her forepaws on his chest.

“You’re soon back again, sir,” said Agafea Mihalovna.

“I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well; but at

home, one is better,” he answered, and went into his study.

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar

details came out: the stag’s horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass,

the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his

father’s sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken

ashtray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw all this,

there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of

arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All

these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: “No,

you’re not going to get away from us, and you’re not going to be

different, but you’re going to be the same as you’ve always been; with

doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to

amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you

won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.”

This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling

him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can

do anything with oneself. And hearing that voice, he went into the

corner where stood his two heavy dumbbells, and began brandishing them

like a gymnast, trying to restore his confident temper. There was a

creak of steps at the door. He hastily put down the dumbbells.

The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing well;

but informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying machine had been

a little scorched. This piece of news irritated Levin. The new drying

machine had been constructed and partly invented by Levin. The bailiff

had always been against the drying machine, and now it was with

suppressed triumph that he announced that the buckwheat had been

scorched. Levin was firmly convinced that if the buckwheat had been

scorched, it was only because the precautions had not been taken, for

which he had hundreds of times given orders. He was annoyed, and

reprimanded the bailiff. But there had been an important and joyful

event: Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought at a show, had

calved.

“Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a lantern.

I’ll come and look at her,” he said to the bailiff.

The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house.

Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went

into the cowhouse. There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the

frozen door was opened, and the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar

light of the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw. He caught a glimpse

of the broad, smooth, black and piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the

bull, was lying down with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get

up, but thought better of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed

by him. Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back

turned to them, prevented their seeing the calf, as she sniffed her all

over.

Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and

spotted calf onto her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began lowing,

but when Levin put the calf close to her she was soothed, and, sighing

heavily, began licking her with her rough tongue. The calf, fumbling,

poked her nose under her mother’s udder, and stiffened her tail out

straight.

“Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way,” said Levin, examining the

calf. “Like the mother! though the color takes after the father; but

that’s nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the haunch. Vassily

Fedorovitch, isn’t she splendid?” he said to the bailiff, quite

forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his delight in

the calf.

“How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the day after

you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” said the

bailiff. “I did inform you about the machine.”

This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of his

work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and complicated. He

went straight from the cowhouse to the counting house, and after a

little conversation with the bailiff and Semyon the contractor, he went

back to the house and straight upstairs to the drawing-room.

Chapter 27

The house was big and old-fashioned, and Levin, though he lived alone,

had the whole house heated and used. He knew that this was stupid, he

knew that it was positively not right, and contrary to his present new

plans, but this house was a whole world to Levin. It was the world in

which his father and mother had lived and died. They had lived just the

life that to Levin seemed the ideal of perfection, and that he had

dreamed of beginning with his wife, his family.

Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was for him

a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in his imagination

a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother

had been.

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage

that he positively pictured to himself first the family, and only

secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His ideas of

marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority

of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous

facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on

which its whole happiness turned. And now he had to give up that.

When he had gone into the little drawing-room, where he always had tea,

and had settled himself in his armchair with a book, and Agafea

Mihalovna had brought him tea, and with her usual, “Well, I’ll stay a

while, sir,” had taken a chair in the window, he felt that, however

strange it might be, he had not parted from his daydreams, and that he

could not live without them. Whether with her, or with another, still

it would be. He was reading a book, and thinking of what he was

reading, and stopping to listen to Agafea Mihalovna, who gossiped away

without flagging, and yet with all that, all sorts of pictures of

family life and work in the future rose disconnectedly before his

imagination. He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been

put in its place, settled down, and laid to rest.

He heard Agafea Mihalovna talking of how Prohor had forgotten his duty

to God, and with the money Levin had given him to buy a horse, had been

drinking without stopping, and had beaten his wife till he’d half

killed her. He listened, and read his book, and recalled the whole

train of ideas suggested by his reading. It was Tyndall’s _Treatise on

Heat_. He recalled his own criticisms of Tyndall of his complacent

satisfaction in the cleverness of his experiments, and for his lack of

philosophic insight. And suddenly there floated into his mind the

joyful thought: “In two years’ time I shall have two Dutch cows; Pava

herself will perhaps still be alive, a dozen young daughters of Berkoot

and the three others—how lovely!”

He took up his book again. “Very good, electricity and heat are the

same thing; but is it possible to substitute the one quantity for the

other in the equation for the solution of any problem? No. Well, then

what of it? The connection between all the forces of nature is felt

instinctively.... It’s particulary nice if Pava’s daughter should be a

red-spotted cow, and all the herd will take after her, and the other

three, too! Splendid! To go out with my wife and visitors to meet the

herd.... My wife says, ‘Kostya and I looked after that calf like a

child.’ ‘How can it interest you so much?’ says a visitor. ‘Everything

that interests him, interests me.’ But who will she be?” And he

remembered what had happened at Moscow.... “Well, there’s nothing to be

done.... It’s not my fault. But now everything shall go on in a new

way. It’s nonsense to pretend that life won’t let one, that the past

won’t let one. One must struggle to live better, much better.”... He

raised his head, and fell to dreaming. Old Laska, who had not yet fully

digested her delight at his return, and had run out into the yard to

bark, came back wagging her tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the

scent of fresh air, put her head under his hand, and whined

plaintively, asking to be stroked.

“There, who’d have thought it?” said Agafea Mihalovna. “The dog now ...

why, she understands that her master’s come home, and that he’s

low-spirited.”

“Why low-spirited?”

“Do you suppose I don’t see it, sir? It’s high time I should know the

gentry. Why, I’ve grown up from a little thing with them. It’s nothing,

sir, so long as there’s health and a clear conscience.”

Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she knew his

thought.

“Shall I fetch you another cup?” said she, and taking his cup she went

out.

Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and she

promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head on a hindpaw. And in

token of all now being well and satisfactory, she opened her mouth a

little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky lips more comfortably

about her old teeth, she sank into blissful repose. Levin watched all

her movements attentively.

“That’s what I’ll do,” he said to himself; “that’s what I’ll do!

Nothing’s amiss.... All’s well.”

Chapter 28

After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna sent her husband a

telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.

“No, I must go, I must go”; she explained to her sister-in-law the

change in her plans in a tone that suggested that she had to remember

so many things that there was no enumerating them: “no, it had really

better be today!”

Stepan Arkadyevitch was not dining at home, but he promised to come and

see his sister off at seven o’clock.

Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache. Dolly

and Anna dined alone with the children and the English governess.

Whether it was that the children were fickle, or that they had acute

senses, and felt that Anna was quite different that day from what she

had been when they had taken such a fancy to her, that she was not now

interested in them,—but they had abruptly dropped their play with their

aunt, and their love for her, and were quite indifferent that she was

going away. Anna was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her

departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances, put down her

accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly fancied she was not in a placid

state of mind, but in that worried mood, which Dolly knew well with

herself, and which does not come without cause, and for the most part

covers dissatisfaction with self. After dinner, Anna went up to her

room to dress, and Dolly followed her.

“How queer you are today!” Dolly said to her.

“I? Do you think so? I’m not queer, but I’m nasty. I am like that

sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It’s very stupid, but

it’ll pass off,” said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face over

a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric

handkerchiefs. Her eyes were particularly bright, and were continually

swimming with tears. “In the same way I didn’t want to leave

Petersburg, and now I don’t want to go away from here.”

“You came here and did a good deed,” said Dolly, looking intently at

her.

Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears.

“Don’t say that, Dolly. I’ve done nothing, and could do nothing. I

often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I

done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough to

forgive....”

“If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened! How

happy you are, Anna!” said Dolly. “Everything is clear and good in your

heart.”

“Every heart has its own _skeletons_, as the English say.”

“You have no sort of _skeleton_, have you? Everything is so clear in

you.”

“I have!” said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a sly,

ironical smile curved her lips.

“Come, he’s amusing, anyway, your _skeleton_, and not depressing,” said

Dolly, smiling.

“No, he’s depressing. Do you know why I’m going today instead of

tomorrow? It’s a confession that weighs on me; I want to make it to

you,” said Anna, letting herself drop definitely into an armchair, and

looking straight into Dolly’s face.

And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her ears, up

to the curly black ringlets on her neck.

“Yes,” Anna went on. “Do you know why Kitty didn’t come to dinner?

She’s jealous of me. I have spoiled ... I’ve been the cause of that

ball being a torture to her instead of a pleasure. But truly, truly,

it’s not my fault, or only my fault a little bit,” she said, daintily

drawling the words “a little bit.”

“Oh, how like Stiva you said that!” said Dolly, laughing.

Anna was hurt.

“Oh no, oh no! I’m not Stiva,” she said, knitting her brows. “That’s

why I’m telling you, just because I could never let myself doubt myself

for an instant,” said Anna.

But at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that they

were not true. She was not merely doubting herself, she felt emotion at

the thought of Vronsky, and was going away sooner than she had meant,

simply to avoid meeting him.

“Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him, and that he....”

“You can’t imagine how absurdly it all came about. I only meant to be

matchmaking, and all at once it turned out quite differently. Possibly

against my own will....”

She crimsoned and stopped.

“Oh, they feel it directly?” said Dolly.

“But I should be in despair if there were anything serious in it on his

side,” Anna interrupted her. “And I am certain it will all be

forgotten, and Kitty will leave off hating me.”

“All the same, Anna, to tell you the truth, I’m not very anxious for

this marriage for Kitty. And it’s better it should come to nothing, if

he, Vronsky, is capable of falling in love with you in a single day.”

“Oh, heavens, that would be too silly!” said Anna, and again a deep

flush of pleasure came out on her face, when she heard the idea, that

absorbed her, put into words. “And so here I am going away, having made

an enemy of Kitty, whom I liked so much! Ah, how sweet she is! But

you’ll make it right, Dolly? Eh?”

Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna, but she enjoyed

seeing that she too had her weaknesses.

“An enemy? That can’t be.”

“I did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you, and now I care

for you more than ever,” said Anna, with tears in her eyes. “Ah, how

silly I am today!”

She passed her handkerchief over her face and began dressing.

At the very moment of starting Stepan Arkadyevitch arrived, late, rosy

and good-humored, smelling of wine and cigars.

Anna’s emotionalism infected Dolly, and when she embraced her

sister-in-law for the last time, she whispered: “Remember, Anna, what

you’ve done for me—I shall never forget. And remember that I love you,

and shall always love you as my dearest friend!”

“I don’t know why,” said Anna, kissing her and hiding her tears.

“You understood me, and you understand. Good-bye, my darling!”

Chapter 29

“Come, it’s all over, and thank God!” was the first thought that came

to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last time to her

brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till

the third bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka, and

looked about her in the twilight of the sleeping-carriage. “Thank God!

tomorrow I shall see Seryozha and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life

will go on in the old way, all nice and as usual.”

Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day,

Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with great

care. With her little deft hands she opened and shut her little red

bag, took out a cushion, laid it on her knees, and carefully wrapping

up her feet, settled herself comfortably. An invalid lady had already

lain down to sleep. Two other ladies began talking to Anna, and a stout

elderly lady tucked up her feet, and made observations about the

heating of the train. Anna answered a few words, but not foreseeing any

entertainment from the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp,

hooked it onto the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper-knife

and an English novel. At first her reading made no progress. The fuss

and bustle were disturbing; then when the train had started, she could

not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating on the left

window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the muffled guard

passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the conversations about

the terrible snowstorm raging outside, distracted her attention.

Farther on, it was continually the same again and again: the same

shaking and rattling, the same snow on the window, the same rapid

transitions from steaming heat to cold, and back again to heat, the

same passing glimpses of the same figures in the twilight, and the same

voices, and Anna began to read and to understand what she read.

Annushka was already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her

broad hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read and

understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow

the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to

live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a

sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a

sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she

longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had

ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had

surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the

same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the

smooth paper-knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.

The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English

happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna was feeling a desire to

go with him to the estate, when she suddenly felt that _he_ ought to

feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had

he to be ashamed of? “What have I to be ashamed of?” she asked herself

in injured surprise. She laid down the book and sank against the back

of the chair, tightly gripping the paper-cutter in both hands. There

was nothing. She went over all her Moscow recollections. All were good,

pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his face of

slavish adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there was

nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her memories,

the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some inner voice, just

at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to her, “Warm,

very warm, hot.” “Well, what is it?” she said to herself resolutely,

shifting her seat in the lounge. “What does it mean? Am I afraid to

look it straight in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be that between

me and this officer boy there exist, or can exist, any other relations

than such as are common with every acquaintance?” She laughed

contemptuously and took up her book again; but now she was definitely

unable to follow what she read. She passed the paper-knife over the

window pane, then laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and

almost laughed aloud at the feeling of delight that all at once without

cause came over her. She felt as though her nerves were strings being

strained tighter and tighter on some sort of screwing peg. She felt her

eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously,

something within oppressing her breathing, while all shapes and sounds

seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed

vividness. Moments of doubt were continually coming upon her, when she

was uncertain whether the train were going forwards or backwards, or

were standing still altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or

a stranger. “What’s that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some

beast? And what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?” She was

afraid of giving way to this delirium. But something drew her towards

it, and she could yield to it or resist it at will. She got up to rouse

herself, and slipped off her plaid and the cape of her warm dress. For

a moment she regained her self-possession, and realized that the thin

peasant who had come in wearing a long overcoat, with buttons missing

from it, was the stoveheater, that he was looking at the thermometer,

that it was the wind and snow bursting in after him at the door; but

then everything grew blurred again.... That peasant with the long waist

seemed to be gnawing something on the wall, the old lady began

stretching her legs the whole length of the carriage, and filling it

with a black cloud; then there was a fearful shrieking and banging, as

though someone were being torn to pieces; then there was a blinding

dazzle of red fire before her eyes and a wall seemed to rise up and

hide everything. Anna felt as though she were sinking down. But it was

not terrible, but delightful. The voice of a man muffled up and covered

with snow shouted something in her ear. She got up and pulled herself

together; she realized that they had reached a station and that this

was the guard. She asked Annushka to hand her the cape she had taken

off and her shawl, put them on and moved towards the door.

“Do you wish to get out?” asked Annushka.

“Yes, I want a little air. It’s very hot in here.” And she opened the

door. The driving snow and the wind rushed to meet her and struggled

with her over the door. But she enjoyed the struggle.

She opened the door and went out. The wind seemed as though lying in

wait for her; with gleeful whistle it tried to snatch her up and bear

her off, but she clung to the cold door post, and holding her skirt got

down onto the platform and under the shelter of the carriages. The wind

had been powerful on the steps, but on the platform, under the lee of

the carriages, there was a lull. With enjoyment she drew deep breaths

of the frozen, snowy air, and standing near the carriage looked about

the platform and the lighted station.

Chapter 30

The raging tempest rushed whistling between the wheels of the

carriages, about the scaffolding, and round the corner of the station.

The carriages, posts, people, everything that was to be seen was

covered with snow on one side, and was getting more and more thickly

covered. For a moment there would come a lull in the storm, but then it

would swoop down again with such onslaughts that it seemed impossible

to stand against it. Meanwhile men ran to and fro, talking merrily

together, their steps crackling on the platform as they continually

opened and closed the big doors. The bent shadow of a man glided by at

her feet, and she heard sounds of a hammer upon iron. “Hand over that

telegram!” came an angry voice out of the stormy darkness on the other

side. “This way! No. 28!” several different voices shouted again, and

muffled figures ran by covered with snow. Two gentlemen with lighted

cigarettes passed by her. She drew one more deep breath of the fresh

air, and had just put her hand out of her muff to take hold of the door

post and get back into the carriage, when another man in a military

overcoat, quite close beside her, stepped between her and the

flickering light of the lamp post. She looked round, and the same

instant recognized Vronsky’s face. Putting his hand to the peak of his

cap, he bowed to her and asked, Was there anything she wanted? Could he

be of any service to her? She gazed rather a long while at him without

answering, and, in spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she

saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his face and his eyes.

It was again that expression of reverential ecstasy which had so worked

upon her the day before. More than once she had told herself during the

past few days, and again only a few moments before, that Vronsky was

for her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever exactly the

same, that are met everywhere, that she would never allow herself to

bestow a thought upon him. But now at the first instant of meeting him,

she was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. She had no need to ask why

he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was

here to be where she was.

“I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?” she said,

letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the door post. And

irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face.

“What am I coming for?” he repeated, looking straight into her eyes.

“You know that I have come to be where you are,” he said; “I can’t help

it.”

At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles, sent

the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of iron

it had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in

front, plaintively and gloomily. All the awfulness of the storm seemed

to her more splendid now. He had said what her soul longed to hear,

though she feared it with her reason. She made no answer, and in her

face he saw conflict.

“Forgive me, if you dislike what I said,” he said humbly.

He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so stubbornly,

that for a long while she could make no answer.

“It’s wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you’re a good man, to

forget what you’ve said, as I forget it,” she said at last.

“Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever

forget....”

“Enough, enough!” she cried trying assiduously to give a stern

expression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And

clutching at the cold door post, she clambered up the steps and got

rapidly into the corridor of the carriage. But in the little corridor

she paused, going over in her imagination what had happened. Though she

could not recall her own words or his, she realized instinctively that

the momentary conversation had brought them fearfully closer; and she

was panic-stricken and blissful at it. After standing still a few

seconds, she went into the carriage and sat down in her place. The

overstrained condition which had tormented her before did not only come

back, but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid

every minute that something would snap within her from the excessive

tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that nervous tension, and

in the visions that filled her imagination, there was nothing

disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary there was something blissful,

glowing, and exhilarating. Towards morning Anna sank into a doze,

sitting in her place, and when she waked it was daylight and the train

was near Petersburg. At once thoughts of home, of husband and of son,

and the details of that day and the following came upon her.

At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first

person that attracted her attention was her husband. “Oh, mercy! why do

his ears look like that?” she thought, looking at his frigid and

imposing figure, and especially the ears that struck her at the moment

as propping up the brim of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he

came to meet her, his lips falling into their habitual sarcastic smile,

and his big, tired eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant

sensation gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary

glance, as though she had expected to see him different. She was

especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that

she experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar

feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in

her relations with her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of

the feeling, now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.

“Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year

after marriage, burned with impatience to see you,” he said in his

deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always

took with her, a tone of jeering at anyone who should say in earnest

what he said.

“Is Seryozha quite well?” she asked.

“And is this all the reward,” said he, “for my ardor? He’s quite

well....”

Chapter 31

Vronsky had not even tried to sleep all that night. He sat in his

armchair, looking straight before him or scanning the people who got in

and out. If he had indeed on previous occasions struck and impressed

people who did not know him by his air of unhesitating composure, he

seemed now more haughty and self-possessed than ever. He looked at

people as if they were things. A nervous young man, a clerk in a law

court, sitting opposite him, hated him for that look. The young man

asked him for a light, and entered into conversation with him, and even

pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but a

person. But Vronsky gazed at him exactly as he did at the lamp, and the

young man made a wry face, feeling that he was losing his

self-possession under the oppression of this refusal to recognize him

as a person.

Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not because he

believed that he had made an impression on Anna—he did not yet believe

that,—but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness

and pride.

What would come of it all he did not know, he did not even think. He

felt that all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centered on

one thing, and bent with fearful energy on one blissful goal. And he

was happy at it. He knew only that he had told her the truth, that he

had come where she was, that all the happiness of his life, the only

meaning in life for him, now lay in seeing and hearing her. And when he

got out of the carriage at Bologova to get some seltzer water, and

caught sight of Anna, involuntarily his first word had told her just

what he thought. And he was glad he had told her it, that she knew it

now and was thinking of it. He did not sleep all night. When he was

back in the carriage, he kept unceasingly going over every position in

which he had seen her, every word she had uttered, and before his

fancy, making his heart faint with emotion, floated pictures of a

possible future.

When he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his sleepless

night as keen and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused near his

compartment, waiting for her to get out. “Once more,” he said to

himself, smiling unconsciously, “once more I shall see her walk, her

face; she will say something, turn her head, glance, smile, maybe.” But

before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the

station-master was deferentially escorting through the crowd. “Ah, yes!

The husband.” Only now for the first time did Vronsky realize clearly

the fact that there was a person attached to her, a husband. He knew

that she had a husband, but had hardly believed in his existence, and

only now fully believed in him, with his head and shoulders, and his

legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw this husband calmly

take her arm with a sense of property.

Seeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and severely

self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent

spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation,

such as a man might feel tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring,

should find a dog, a sheep, or a pig, who has drunk of it and muddied

the water. Alexey Alexandrovitch’s manner of walking, with a swing of

the hips and flat feet, particularly annoyed Vronsky. He could

recognize in no one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But

she was still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way,

physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with

rapture. He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the second

class, to take his things and go on, and he himself went up to her. He

saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted with a

lover’s insight the signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her

husband. “No, she does not love him and cannot love him,” he decided to

himself.

At the moment when he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna he noticed too

with joy that she was conscious of his being near, and looked round,

and seeing him, turned again to her husband.

“Have you passed a good night?” he asked, bowing to her and her husband

together, and leaving it up to Alexey Alexandrovitch to accept the bow

on his own account, and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.

“Thank you, very good,” she answered.

Her face looked weary, and there was not that play of eagerness in it,

peeping out in her smile and her eyes; but for a single instant, as she

glanced at him, there was a flash of something in her eyes, and

although the flash died away at once, he was happy for that moment. She

glanced at her husband to find out whether he knew Vronsky. Alexey

Alexandrovitch looked at Vronsky with displeasure, vaguely recalling

who this was. Vronsky’s composure and self-confidence here struck, like

a scythe against a stone, upon the cold self-confidence of Alexey

Alexandrovitch.

“Count Vronsky,” said Anna.

“Ah! We are acquainted, I believe,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch

indifferently, giving his hand.

“You set off with the mother and you return with the son,” he said,

articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate favor he was

bestowing.

“You’re back from leave, I suppose?” he said, and without waiting for a

reply, he turned to his wife in his jesting tone: “Well, were a great

many tears shed at Moscow at parting?”

By addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to understand that he

wished to be left alone, and, turning slightly towards him, he touched

his hat; but Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna.

“I hope I may have the honor of calling on you,” he said.

Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.

“Delighted,” he said coldly. “On Mondays we’re at home. Most

fortunate,” he said to his wife, dismissing Vronsky altogether, “that I

should just have half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove my

devotion,” he went on in the same jesting tone.

“You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much,” she

responded in the same jesting tone, involuntarily listening to the

sound of Vronsky’s steps behind them. “But what has it to do with me?”

she said to herself, and she began asking her husband how Seryozha had

got on without her.

“Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been very good, And ... I must

disappoint you ... but he has not missed you as your husband has. But

once more _merci,_ my dear, for giving me a day. Our dear _Samovar_

will be delighted.” (He used to call the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well

known in society, a samovar, because she was always bubbling over with

excitement.) “She has been continually asking after you. And, do you

know, if I may venture to advise you, you should go and see her today.

You know how she takes everything to heart. Just now, with all her own

cares, she’s anxious about the Oblonskys being brought together.”

The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband’s, and the

center of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with which

Anna was, through her husband, in the closest relations.

“But you know I wrote to her?”

“Still she’ll want to hear details. Go and see her, if you’re not too

tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, while I

go to my committee. I shall not be alone at dinner again,” Alexey

Alexandrovitch went on, no longer in a sarcastic tone. “You wouldn’t

believe how I’ve missed....” And with a long pressure of her hand and a

meaning smile, he put her in her carriage.

Chapter 32

The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed down the

stairs to her, in spite of the governess’s call, and with desperate joy

shrieked: “Mother! mother!” Running up to her, he hung on her neck.

“I told you it was mother!” he shouted to the governess. “I knew!”

And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to

disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She

had to let herself drop down to the reality to enjoy him as he really

was. But even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, his blue

eyes, and his plump, graceful little legs in tightly pulled-up

stockings. Anna experienced almost physical pleasure in the sensation

of his nearness, and his caresses, and moral soothing, when she met his

simple, confiding, and loving glance, and heard his naïve questions.

Anna took out the presents Dolly’s children had sent him, and told her

son what sort of little girl was Tanya at Moscow, and how Tanya could

read, and even taught the other children.

“Why, am I not so nice as she?” asked Seryozha.

“To me you’re nicer than anyone in the world.”

“I know that,” said Seryozha, smiling.

Anna had not had time to drink her coffee when the Countess Lidia

Ivanovna was announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, stout

woman, with an unhealthily sallow face and splendid, pensive black

eyes. Anna liked her, but today she seemed to be seeing her for the

first time with all her defects.

“Well, my dear, so you took the olive branch?” inquired Countess Lidia

Ivanovna, as soon as she came into the room.

“Yes, it’s all over, but it was all much less serious than we had

supposed,” answered Anna. “My _belle-sœur_ is in general too hasty.”

But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in everything

that did not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what

interested her; she interrupted Anna:

“Yes, there’s plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so worried

today.”

“Oh, why?” asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.

“I’m beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth, and

sometimes I’m quite unhinged by it. The Society of the Little Sisters”

(this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic institution) “was

going splendidly, but with these gentlemen it’s impossible to do

anything,” added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a tone of ironical

submission to destiny. “They pounce on the idea, and distort it, and

then work it out so pettily and unworthily. Two or three people, your

husband among them, understand all the importance of the thing, but the

others simply drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me....”

Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna

described the purport of his letter.

Then the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues against

the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, as

she had that day to be at the meeting of some society and also at the

Slavonic committee.

“It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn’t notice

it before?” Anna asked herself. “Or has she been very much irritated

today? It’s really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a

Christian, yet she’s always angry; and she always has enemies, and

always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.”

After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a chief

secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three o’clock she

too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was

at the ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in

assisting at her son’s dinner (he dined apart from his parents) and in

putting her things in order, and in reading and answering the notes and

letters which had accumulated on her table.

The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and

her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual

conditions of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.

She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day. “What

was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put

a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my

husband would be unnecessary and out of the question. To speak of it

would be to attach importance to what has no importance.” She

remembered how she had told her husband of what was almost a

declaration made her at Petersburg by a young man, one of her husband’s

subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had answered that every

woman living in the world was exposed to such incidents, but that he

had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and

himself by jealousy. “So then there’s no reason to speak of it? And

indeed, thank God, there’s nothing to speak of,” she told herself.

Chapter 33

Alexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of the ministers at

four o’clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come in to her.

He went into his study to see the people waiting for him with

petitions, and to sign some papers brought him by his chief secretary.

At dinner time (there were always a few people dining with the

Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexey Alexandrovitch,

the chief secretary of the department and his wife, and a young man who

had been recommended to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the service. Anna

went into the drawing-room to receive these guests. Precisely at five

o’clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had struck the fifth

stroke, Alexey Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening

coat with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every

minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s life was portioned out and occupied.

And to make time to get through all that lay before him every day, he

adhered to the strictest punctuality. “Unhasting and unresting,” was

his motto. He came into the dining hall, greeted everyone, and

hurriedly sat down, smiling to his wife.

“Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn’t believe how uncomfortable” (he

laid stress on the word _uncomfortable_) “it is to dine alone.”

At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters, and,

with a sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan Arkadyevitch; but the

conversation was for the most part general, dealing with Petersburg

official and public news. After dinner he spent half an hour with his

guests, and again, with a smile, pressed his wife’s hand, withdrew, and

drove off to the council. Anna did not go out that evening either to

the Princess Betsy Tverskaya, who, hearing of her return, had invited

her, nor to the theater, where she had a box for that evening. She did

not go out principally because the dress she had reckoned upon was not

ready. Altogether, Anna, on turning, after the departure of her guests,

to the consideration of her attire, was very much annoyed. She was

generally a mistress of the art of dressing well without great expense,

and before leaving Moscow she had given her dressmaker three dresses to

transform. The dresses had to be altered so that they could not be

recognized, and they ought to have been ready three days before. It

appeared that two dresses had not been done at all, while the other one

had not been altered as Anna had intended. The dressmaker came to

explain, declaring that it would be better as she had done it, and Anna

was so furious that she felt ashamed when she thought of it afterwards.

To regain her serenity completely she went into the nursery, and spent

the whole evening with her son, put him to bed herself, signed him with

the cross, and tucked him up. She was glad she had not gone out

anywhere, and had spent the evening so well. She felt so light-hearted

and serene, she saw so clearly that all that had seemed to her so

important on her railway journey was only one of the common trivial

incidents of fashionable life, and that she had no reason to feel

ashamed before anyone else or before herself. Anna sat down at the

hearth with an English novel and waited for her husband. Exactly at

half-past nine she heard his ring, and he came into the room.

“Here you are at last!” she observed, holding out her hand to him.

He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.

“Altogether then, I see your visit was a success,” he said to her.

“Oh, yes,” she said, and she began telling him about everything from

the beginning: her journey with Countess Vronskaya, her arrival, the

accident at the station. Then she described the pity she had felt,

first for her brother, and afterwards for Dolly.

“I imagine one cannot exonerate such a man from blame, though he is

your brother,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch severely.

Anna smiled. She knew that he said that simply to show that family

considerations could not prevent him from expressing his genuine

opinion. She knew that characteristic in her husband, and liked it.

“I am glad it has all ended so satisfactorily, and that you are back

again,” he went on. “Come, what do they say about the new act I have

got passed in the council?”

Anna had heard nothing of this act, and she felt conscience-stricken at

having been able so readily to forget what was to him of such

importance.

“Here, on the other hand, it has made a great sensation,” he said, with

a complacent smile.

She saw that Alexey Alexandrovitch wanted to tell her something

pleasant to him about it, and she brought him by questions to telling

it. With the same complacent smile he told her of the ovations he had

received in consequence of the act he had passed.

“I was very, very glad. It shows that at last a reasonable and steady

view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us.”

Having drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and bread, Alexey

Alexandrovitch got up, and was going towards his study.

“And you’ve not been anywhere this evening? You’ve been dull, I

expect?” he said.

“Oh, no!” she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him

across the room to his study. “What are you reading now?” she asked.

“Just now I’m reading Duc de Lille, _Poésie des Enfers,_” he answered.

“A very remarkable book.”

Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love, and,

putting her hand under his, she escorted him to the door of the study.

She knew his habit, that had grown into a necessity, of reading in the

evening. She knew, too, that in spite of his official duties, which

swallowed up almost the whole of his time, he considered it his duty to

keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual

world. She knew, too, that he was really interested in books dealing

with politics, philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly foreign

to his nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it,

Alexey Alexandrovitch never passed over anything in the world of art,

but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in politics, in

philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and

made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above

all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had

the most distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about

Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of

poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with very

conspicuous consistency.

“Well, God be with you,” she said at the door of the study, where a

shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his armchair.

“And I’ll write to Moscow.”

He pressed her hand, and again kissed it.

“All the same he’s a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable

in his own line,” Anna said to herself going back to her room, as

though she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said

that one could not love him. “But why is it his ears stick out so

strangely? Or has he had his hair cut?”

Precisely at twelve o’clock, when Anna was still sitting at her

writing-table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the sound of

measured steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly washed

and combed, with a book under his arm, came in to her.

“It’s time, it’s time,” said he, with a meaning smile, and he went into

their bedroom.

“And what right had he to look at him like that?” thought Anna,

recalling Vronsky’s glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch.

Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of the

eagerness which, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly flashed from her

eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in

her, hidden somewhere far away.

Chapter 34

When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his large set

of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade Petritsky.

Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected, and

not merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly in debt. Towards evening

he was always drunk, and he had often been locked up after all sorts of

ludicrous and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite both of his

comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve o’clock from

the station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the outer door, a hired

carriage familiar to him. While still outside his own door, as he rang,

he heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and

Petritsky’s voice. “If that’s one of the villains, don’t let him in!”

Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and slipped quietly into

the first room. Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy

little face and flaxen hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and

filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat

at the round table making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and the

cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably just come from

duty, were sitting each side of her.

“Bravo! Vronsky!” shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his chair.

“Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new coffee

pot. Why, we didn’t expect you! Hope you’re satisfied with the ornament

of your study,” he said, indicating the baroness. “You know each other,

of course?”

“I should think so,” said Vronsky, with a bright smile, pressing the

baroness’s little hand. “What next! I’m an old friend.”

“You’re home after a journey,” said the baroness, “so I’m flying. Oh,

I’ll be off this minute, if I’m in the way.”

“You’re home, wherever you are, baroness,” said Vronsky. “How do you

do, Kamerovsky?” he added, coldly shaking hands with Kamerovsky.

“There, you never know how to say such pretty things,” said the

baroness, turning to Petritsky.

“No; what’s that for? After dinner I say things quite as good.”

“After dinner there’s no credit in them? Well, then, I’ll make you some

coffee, so go and wash and get ready,” said the baroness, sitting down

again, and anxiously turning the screw in the new coffee pot. “Pierre,

give me the coffee,” she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she called

Pierre as a contraction of his surname, making no secret of her

relations with him. “I’ll put it in.”

“You’ll spoil it!”

“No, I won’t spoil it! Well, and your wife?” said the baroness

suddenly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation with his comrade. “We’ve

been marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?”

“No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall die.”

“So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it.”

And the baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him, with many

jokes, about her last new plans of life, asking his advice.

“He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to do?”

(_He_ was her husband.) “Now I want to begin a suit against him. What

do you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee; it’s boiling over.

You see, I’m engrossed with business! I want a lawsuit, because I must

have my property. Do you understand the folly of it, that on the

pretext of my being unfaithful to him,” she said contemptuously, “he

wants to get the benefit of my fortune.”

Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty

woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether

dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women.

In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed

classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all,

ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the

one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent,

a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one

ought to bring up one’s children, earn one’s bread, and pay one’s

debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of

old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of

people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the

great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon

oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything

else.

For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled after the impression of

a quite different world that he had brought with him from Moscow. But

immediately as though slipping his feet into old slippers, he dropped

back into the light-hearted, pleasant world he had always lived in.

The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over everyone, and

boiled away, doing just what was required of it—that is, providing much

cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the

baroness’s gown.

“Well now, good-bye, or you’ll never get washed, and I shall have on my

conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you would advise a

knife to his throat?”

“To be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far from his lips.

He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,” answered

Vronsky.

“So at the Français!” and, with a rustle of her skirts, she vanished.

Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go, shook

hands and went off to his dressing-room.

While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief outlines his

position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky had left Petersburg.

No money at all. His father said he wouldn’t give him any and pay his

debts. His tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow,

too, was threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the regiment

had announced that if these scandals did not cease he would have to

leave. As for the baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially

since she’d taken to offering continually to lend him money. But he had

found a girl—he’d show her to Vronsky—a marvel, exquisite, in the

strict Oriental style, “genre of the slave Rebecca, don’t you know.”

He’d had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to send seconds to

him, but of course it would come to nothing. Altogether everything was

supremely amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into

further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all

the interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky’s familiar stories in

the familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in,

Vronsky felt a delightful sense of coming back to the careless

Petersburg life that he was used to.

“Impossible!” he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing basin in

which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. “Impossible!” he cried,

at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made up to

Mileev. “And is he as stupid and pleased as ever? Well, and how’s

Buzulukov?”

“Oh, there is a tale about Buzulukov—simply lovely!” cried Petritsky.

“You know his weakness for balls, and he never misses a single court

ball. He went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new

helmets? Very nice, lighter. Well, so he’s standing.... No, I say, do

listen.”

“I am listening,” answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a rough towel.

“Up comes the Grand Duchess with some ambassador or other, and, as

ill-luck would have it, she begins talking to him about the new

helmets. The Grand Duchess positively wanted to show the new helmet to

the ambassador. They see our friend standing there.” (Petritsky

mimicked how he was standing with the helmet.) “The Grand Duchess asked

him to give her the helmet; he doesn’t give it to her. What do you

think of that? Well, everyone’s winking at him, nodding, frowning—give

it to her, do! He doesn’t give it to her. He’s mute as a fish. Only

picture it!... Well, the ... what’s his name, whatever he was ... tries

to take the helmet from him ... he won’t give it up!... He pulls it

from him, and hands it to the Grand Duchess. ‘Here, your Highness,’

says he, ‘is the new helmet.’ She turned the helmet the other side up,

And—just picture it!—plop went a pear and sweetmeats out of it, two

pounds of sweetmeats!... He’d been storing them up, the darling!”

Vronsky burst into roars of laughter. And long afterwards, when he was

talking of other things, he broke out into his healthy laugh, showing

his strong, close rows of teeth, when he thought of the helmet.

Having heard all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance of his valet,

got into his uniform, and went off to report himself. He intended, when

he had done that, to drive to his brother’s and to Betsy’s and to pay

several visits with a view to beginning to go into that society where

he might meet Madame Karenina. As he always did in Petersburg, he left

home not meaning to return till late at night.

PART TWO

Chapter 1

At the end of the winter, in the Shtcherbatskys’ house, a consultation

was being held, which was to pronounce on the state of Kitty’s health

and the measures to be taken to restore her failing strength. She had

been ill, and as spring came on she grew worse. The family doctor gave

her cod liver oil, then iron, then nitrate of silver, but as the first

and the second and the third were alike in doing no good, and as his

advice when spring came was to go abroad, a celebrated physician was

called in. The celebrated physician, a very handsome man, still

youngish, asked to examine the patient. He maintained, with peculiar

satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of

barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man still

youngish to handle a young girl naked. He thought it natural because he

did it every day, and felt and thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as

he did it and consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely

as a relic of barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.

There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the doctors

had studied in the same school, had read the same books, and learned

the same science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor

was a bad doctor, in the princess’s household and circle it was for

some reason accepted that this celebrated doctor alone had some special

knowledge, and that he alone could save Kitty. After a careful

examination and sounding of the bewildered patient, dazed with shame,

the celebrated doctor, having scrupulously washed his hands, was

standing in the drawing-room talking to the prince. The prince frowned

and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something

of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in

medicine, and in his heart was furious at the whole farce, specially as

he was perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause of Kitty’s

illness. “Conceited blockhead!” he thought, as he listened to the

celebrated doctor’s chatter about his daughter’s symptoms. The doctor

was meantime with difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt

for this old gentleman, and with difficulty condescending to the level

of his intelligence. He perceived that it was no good talking to the

old man, and that the principal person in the house was the mother.

Before her he decided to scatter his pearls. At that instant the

princess came into the drawing-room with the family doctor. The prince

withdrew, trying not to show how ridiculous he thought the whole

performance. The princess was distracted, and did not know what to do.

She felt she had sinned against Kitty.

“Well, doctor, decide our fate,” said the princess. “Tell me

everything.”

“Is there hope?” she meant to say, but her lips quivered, and she could

not utter the question. “Well, doctor?”

“Immediately, princess. I will talk it over with my colleague, and then

I will have the honor of laying my opinion before you.”

“So we had better leave you?”

“As you please.”

The princess went out with a sigh.

When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor began timidly

explaining his opinion, that there was a commencement of tuberculous

trouble, but ... and so on. The celebrated doctor listened to him, and

in the middle of his sentence looked at his big gold watch.

“Yes,” said he. “But....”

The family doctor respectfully ceased in the middle of his

observations.

“The commencement of the tuberculous process we are not, as you are

aware, able to define; till there are cavities, there is nothing

definite. But we may suspect it. And there are indications;

malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so on. The question stands

thus: in presence of indications of tuberculous process, what is to be

done to maintain nutrition?”

“But, you know, there are always moral, spiritual causes at the back in

these cases,” the family doctor permitted himself to interpolate with a

subtle smile.

“Yes, that’s an understood thing,” responded the celebrated physician,

again glancing at his watch. “Beg pardon, is the Yausky bridge done

yet, or shall I have to drive around?” he asked. “Ah! it is. Oh, well,

then I can do it in twenty minutes. So we were saying the problem may

be put thus: to maintain nutrition and to give tone to the nerves. The

one is in close connection with the other, one must attack both sides

at once.”

“And how about a tour abroad?” asked the family doctor.

“I’ve no liking for foreign tours. And take note: if there is an early

stage of tuberculous process, of which we cannot be certain, a foreign

tour will be of no use. What is wanted is means of improving nutrition,

and not for lowering it.” And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan

of treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily

on the ground that they could do no harm.

The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.

“But in favor of foreign travel I would urge the change of habits, the

removal from conditions calling up reminiscences. And then the mother

wishes it,” he added.

“Ah! Well, in that case, to be sure, let them go. Only, those German

quacks are mischievous.... They ought to be persuaded.... Well, let

them go then.”

He glanced once more at his watch.

“Oh! time’s up already,” And he went to the door. The celebrated doctor

announced to the princess (a feeling of what was due from him dictated

his doing so) that he ought to see the patient once more.

“What! another examination!” cried the mother, with horror.

“Oh, no, only a few details, princess.”

“Come this way.”

And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing-room

to Kitty. Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left

there by the agony of shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in

the middle of the room. When the doctor came in she flushed crimson,

and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and treatment struck

her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her

as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart

was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But

she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother considered

herself to blame.

“May I trouble you to sit down, princess?” the celebrated doctor said

to her.

He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began

asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got

up, furious.

“Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the

third time you’ve asked me the same thing.”

The celebrated doctor did not take offense.

“Nervous irritability,” he said to the princess, when Kitty had left

the room. “However, I had finished....”

And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an

exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess,

and concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were

certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doctor

plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem.

Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put

no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.

It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after

the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went

back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had

often, almost always, to be pretending now.

“Really, I’m quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let’s

go!” she said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour,

she began talking of the preparations for the journey.