The gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously an inveterate

adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his

life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the

old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in

his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the

imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the

resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old

betrothal ring on the little finger.

Chapter 27

“If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set going ... such a lot

of trouble wasted ... I’d turn my back on the whole business, sell up,

go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch ... to hear _La Belle Hélène_,” said the

landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.

“But you see you don’t throw it up,” said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky;

“so there must be something gained.”

“The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor

hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though,

instead of that, you’d never believe it—the drunkenness, the

immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a

sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but just go

and take him on as a laborer, he’ll do his best to do you a mischief,

and then bring you up before the justice of the peace.”

“But then you make complaints to the justice too,” said Sviazhsky.

“I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a talking, and

such a to-do, that one would have cause to regret it. At the works, for

instance, they pocketed the advance-money and made off. What did the

justice do? Why, acquitted them. Nothing keeps them in order but their

own communal court and their village elder. He’ll flog them in the good

old style! But for that there’d be nothing for it but to give it all up

and run away.”

Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far from resenting

it, was apparently amused by it.

“But you see we manage our land without such extreme measures,” said

he, smiling: “Levin and I and this gentleman.”

He indicated the other landowner.

“Yes, the thing’s done at Mihail Petrovitch’s, but ask him how it’s

done. Do you call that a rational system?” said the landowner,

obviously rather proud of the word “rational.”

“My system’s very simple,” said Mihail Petrovitch, “thank God. All my

management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn taxes, and

the peasants come to me, ‘Father, master, help us!’ Well, the peasants

are all one’s neighbors; one feels for them. So one advances them a

third, but one says: ‘Remember, lads, I have helped you, and you must

help me when I need it—whether it’s the sowing of the oats, or the

haycutting, or the harvest’; and well, one agrees, so much for each

taxpayer—though there are dishonest ones among them too, it’s true.”

Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods,

exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted Mihail Petrovitch,

turning again to the gentleman with the gray whiskers.

“Then what do you think?” he asked; “what system is one to adopt

nowadays?”

“Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the crop

or for rent to the peasants; that one can do—only that’s just how the

general prosperity of the country is being ruined. Where the land with

serf-labor and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on the

half-crop system it yields three to one. Russia has been ruined by the

emancipation!”

Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a faint

gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the landowner’s words

absurd, he understood them better than he did Sviazhsky. A great deal

more of what the gentleman with the gray whiskers said to show in what

way Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him indeed as very

true, new to him, and quite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably

spoke his own individual thought—a thing that very rarely happens—and a

thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding some

exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown up out of the

conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in the solitude of

his village, and had considered in every aspect.

“The point is, don’t you see, that progress of every sort is only made

by the use of authority,” he said, evidently wishing to show he was not

without culture. “Take the reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of

Alexander. Take European history. And progress in agriculture more than

anything else—the potato, for instance, that was introduced among us by

force. The wooden plough too wasn’t always used. It was introduced

maybe in the days before the Empire, but it was probably brought in by

force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf times used

various improvements in our husbandry: drying machines and thrashing

machines, and carting manure and all the modern implements—all that we

brought into use by our authority, and the peasants opposed it at

first, and ended by imitating us. Now, by the abolition of serfdom we

have been deprived of our authority; and so our husbandry, where it had

been raised to a high level, is bound to sink to the most savage

primitive condition. That’s how I see it.”

“But why so? If it’s rational, you’ll be able to keep up the same

system with hired labor,” said Sviazhsky.

“We’ve no power over them. With whom am I going to work the system,

allow me to ask?”

“There it is—the labor force—the chief element in agriculture,” thought

Levin.

“With laborers.”

“The laborers won’t work well, and won’t work with good implements. Our

laborer can do nothing but get drunk like a pig, and when he’s drunk he

ruins everything you give him. He makes the horses ill with too much

water, cuts good harness, barters the tires of the wheels for drink,

drops bits of iron into the thrashing machine, so as to break it. He

loathes the sight of anything that’s not after his fashion. And that’s

how it is the whole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of

cultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants, and

where millions of bushels were raised you get a hundred thousand; the

wealth of the country has decreased. If the same thing had been done,

but with care that....”

And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation by means of

which these drawbacks might have been avoided.

This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished, Levin went back

to his first position, and, addressing Sviazhsky, and trying to draw

him into expressing his serious opinion:—

“That the standard of culture is falling, and that with our present

relations to the peasants there is no possibility of farming on a

rational system to yield a profit—that’s perfectly true,” said he.

“I don’t believe it,” Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; “all I see is

that we don’t know how to cultivate the land, and that our system of

agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high, but too low. We

have no machines, no good stock, no efficient supervision; we don’t

even know how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won’t be able to

tell you what crop’s profitable, and what’s not.”

“Italian bookkeeping,” said the gentleman of the gray whiskers

ironically. “You may keep your books as you like, but if they spoil

everything for you, there won’t be any profit.”

“Why do they spoil things? A poor thrashing machine, or your Russian

presser, they will break, but my steam press they don’t break. A

wretched Russian nag they’ll ruin, but keep good dray-horses—they won’t

ruin them. And so it is all round. We must raise our farming to a

higher level.”

“Oh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolay Ivanovitch! It’s all

very well for you; but for me, with a son to keep at the university,

lads to be educated at the high school—how am I going to buy these

dray-horses?”

“Well, that’s what the land banks are for.”

“To get what’s left me sold by auction? No, thank you.”

“I don’t agree that it’s necessary or possible to raise the level of

agriculture still higher,” said Levin. “I devote myself to it, and I

have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I don’t know to whom

they’re any good. For my part, anyway, whatever I’ve spent money on in

the way of husbandry, it has been a loss: stock—a loss, machinery—a

loss.”

“That’s true enough,” the gentleman with the gray whiskers chimed in,

positively laughing with satisfaction.

“And I’m not the only one,” pursued Levin. “I mix with all the

neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a rational

system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at a loss. Come,

tell us how does your land do—does it pay?” said Levin, and at once in

Sviazhsky’s eyes he detected that fleeting expression of alarm which he

had noticed whenever he had tried to penetrate beyond the outer

chambers of Sviazhsky’s mind.

Moreover, this question on Levin’s part was not quite in good faith.

Madame Sviazhskaya had just told him at tea that they had that summer

invited a German expert in bookkeeping from Moscow, who for a

consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated the management

of their property, and found that it was costing them a loss of three

thousand odd roubles. She did not remember the precise sum, but it

appeared that the German had worked it out to the fraction of a

farthing.

The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profits of

Sviazhsky’s farming, obviously aware how much gain his neighbor and

marshal was likely to be making.

“Possibly it does not pay,” answered Sviazhsky. “That merely proves

either that I’m a bad manager, or that I’ve sunk my capital for the

increase of my rents.”

“Oh, rent!” Levin cried with horror. “Rent there may be in Europe,

where land has been improved by the labor put into it, but with us all

the land is deteriorating from the labor put into it—in other words

they’re working it out; so there’s no question of rent.”

“How no rent? It’s a law.”

“Then we’re outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but simply

muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of rent?...”

“Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket or raspberries.”

He turned to his wife. “Extraordinarily late the raspberries are

lasting this year.”

And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked off,

apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the very point

when to Levin it seemed that it was only just beginning.

Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation with the

gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all the

difficulty arises from the fact that we don’t find out the

peculiarities and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, like all

men who think independently and in isolation, was slow in taking in any

other person’s idea, and particularly partial to his own. He stuck to

it that the Russian peasant is a swine and likes swinishness, and that

to get him out of his swinishness one must have authority, and there is

none; one must have the stick, and we have become so liberal that we

have all of a sudden replaced the stick that served us for a thousand

years by lawyers and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking

peasant is fed on good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of

air.

“What makes you think,” said Levin, trying to get back to the question,

“that it’s impossible to find some relation to the laborer in which the

labor would become productive?”

“That never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we’ve no power over

them,” answered the landowner.

“How can new conditions be found?” said Sviazhsky. Having eaten some

junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the discussion. “All

possible relations to the labor force have been defined and studied,”

he said. “The relic of barbarism, the primitive commune with each

guarantee for all, will disappear of itself; serfdom has been

abolished—there remains nothing but free labor, and its forms are fixed

and ready made, and must be adopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers,

rammers—you can’t get out of those forms.”

“But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms.”

“Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all

probability.”

“That’s just what I was meaning,” answered Levin. “Why shouldn’t we

seek them for ourselves?”

“Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for

constructing railways. They are ready, invented.”

“But if they don’t do for us, if they’re stupid?” said Levin.

And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of Sviazhsky.

“Oh, yes; we’ll bury the world under our caps! We’ve found the secret

Europe was seeking for! I’ve heard all that; but, excuse me, do you

know all that’s been done in Europe on the question of the organization

of labor?”

“No, very little.”

“That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The

Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then all this enormous literature of

the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle movement ... the

Mulhausen experiment? That’s a fact by now, as you’re probably aware.”

“I have some idea of it, but very vague.”

“No, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it as well as I do.

I’m not a professor of sociology, of course, but it interested me, and

really, if it interests you, you ought to study it.”

“But what conclusion have they come to?”

“Excuse me....”

The two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once more checking Levin in

his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond the outer

chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.

Chapter 28

Levin was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was

stirred as he had never been before by the idea that the

dissatisfaction he was feeling with his system of managing his land was

not an exceptional case, but the general condition of things in Russia;

that the organization of some relation of the laborers to the soil in

which they would work, as with the peasant he had met half-way to the

Sviazhskys’, was not a dream, but a problem which must be solved. And

it seemed to him that the problem could be solved, and that he ought to

try and solve it.

After saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to stay the whole

of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback with them to

see an interesting ruin in the crown forest, Levin went, before going

to bed, into his host’s study to get the books on the labor question

that Sviazhsky had offered him. Sviazhsky’s study was a huge room,

surrounded by bookcases and with two tables in it—one a massive

writing-table, standing in the middle of the room, and the other a

round table, covered with recent numbers of reviews and journals in

different languages, ranged like the rays of a star round the lamp. On

the writing-table was a stand of drawers marked with gold lettering,

and full of papers of various sorts.

Sviazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking-chair.

“What are you looking at there?” he said to Levin, who was standing at

the round table looking through the reviews.

“Oh, yes, there’s a very interesting article here,” said Sviazhsky of

the review Levin was holding in his hand. “It appears,” he went on,

with eager interest, “that Friedrich was not, after all, the person

chiefly responsible for the partition of Poland. It is proved....”

And with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new, very

important, and interesting revelations. Although Levin was engrossed at

the moment by his ideas about the problem of the land, he wondered, as

he heard Sviazhsky: “What is there inside of him? And why, why is he

interested in the partition of Poland?” When Sviazhsky had finished,

Levin could not help asking: “Well, and what then?” But there was

nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that it had been proved to

be so and so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain

why it was interesting to him.

“Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor,” said

Levin, sighing. “He’s a clever fellow, and said a lot that was true.”

“Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart,

like all of them!” said Sviazhsky.

“Whose marshal you are.”

“Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction,” said Sviazhsky,

laughing.

“I’ll tell you what interests me very much,” said Levin. “He’s right

that our system, that’s to say of rational farming, doesn’t answer,

that the only thing that answers is the money-lender system, like that

meek-looking gentleman’s, or else the very simplest.... Whose fault is

it?”

“Our own, of course. Besides, it’s not true that it doesn’t answer. It

answers with Vassiltchikov.”

“A factory....”

“But I really don’t know what it is you are surprised at. The people

are at such a low stage of rational and moral development, that it’s

obvious they’re bound to oppose everything that’s strange to them. In

Europe, a rational system answers because the people are educated; it

follows that we must educate the people—that’s all.”

“But how are we to educate the people?”

“To educate the people three things are needed: schools, and schools,

and schools.”

“But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of material

development: what help are schools for that?”

“Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to the

sick man—You should try purgative medicine. Taken: worse. Try leeches.

Tried them: worse. Well, then, there’s nothing left but to pray to God.

Tried it: worse. That’s just how it is with us. I say political

economy; you say—worse. I say socialism: worse. Education: worse.”

“But how do schools help matters?”

“They give the peasant fresh wants.”

“Well, that’s a thing I’ve never understood,” Levin replied with heat.

“In what way are schools going to help the people to improve their

material position? You say schools, education, will give them fresh

wants. So much the worse, since they won’t be capable of satisfying

them. And in what way a knowledge of addition and subtraction and the

catechism is going to improve their material condition, I never could

make out. The day before yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the

evening with a little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said

she was going to the wise woman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was

taking him to be doctored. I asked, ‘Why, how does the wise woman cure

screaming fits?’ ‘She puts the child on the hen-roost and repeats some

charm....’”

“Well, you’re saying it yourself! What’s wanted to prevent her taking

her child to the hen-roost to cure it of screaming fits is just....”

Sviazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.

“Oh, no!” said Levin with annoyance; “that method of doctoring I merely

meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools. The people are

poor and ignorant—that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the

baby is ill because it screams. But in what way this trouble of poverty

and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as incomprehensible as how

the hen-roost affects the screaming. What has to be cured is what makes

him poor.”

“Well, in that, at least, you’re in agreement with Spencer, whom you

dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the consequence of

greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he says,

but not of being able to read and write....”

“Well, then, I’m very glad—or the contrary, very sorry, that I’m in

agreement with Spencer; only I’ve known it a long while. Schools can do

no good; what will do good is an economic organization in which the

people will become richer, will have more leisure—and then there will

be schools.”

“Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory.”

“And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?” asked Levin.

But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky’s eyes, and he said

smiling:

“No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really hear it

yourself?”

Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this man’s

life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least what his

reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the process of reasoning. And

he did not like it when the process of reasoning brought him into a

blind alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and avoided by

changing the conversation to something agreeable and amusing.

All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made by

the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the fundamental basis of

all the conceptions and ideas of the day, threw Levin into violent

excitement. This dear good Sviazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas simply

for social purposes, and obviously having some other principles hidden

from Levin, while with the crowd, whose name is legion, he guided

public opinion by ideas he did not share; that irascible country

gentleman, perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been

worried into by life, but wrong in his exasperation against a whole

class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with

the work he had been doing, and the vague hope of finding a remedy for

all this—all was blended in a sense of inward turmoil, and anticipation

of some solution near at hand.

Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring mattress that

yielded unexpectedly at every movement of his arm or his leg, Levin did

not fall asleep for a long while. Not one conversation with Sviazhsky,

though he had said a great deal that was clever, had interested Levin;

but the conclusions of the irascible landowner required consideration.

Levin could not help recalling every word he had said, and in

imagination amending his own replies.

“Yes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our husbandry does not

answer because the peasant hates improvements, and that they must be

forced on him by authority. If no system of husbandry answered at all

without these improvements, you would be quite right. But the only

system that does answer is where laborer is working in accordance with

his habits, just as on the old peasant’s land half-way here. Your and

our general dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are to

blame or the laborers. We have gone our way—the European way—a long

while, without asking ourselves about the qualities of our labor force.

Let us try to look upon the labor force not as an abstract force, but

as the _Russian peasant_ with his instincts, and we shall arrange our

system of culture in accordance with that. Imagine, I ought to have

said to him, that you have the same system as the old peasant has, that

you have found means of making your laborers take an interest in the

success of the work, and have found the happy mean in the way of

improvements which they will admit, and you will, without exhausting

the soil, get twice or three times the yield you got before. Divide it

in halves, give half as the share of labor, the surplus left you will

be greater, and the share of labor will be greater too. And to do this

one must lower the standard of husbandry and interest the laborers in

its success. How to do this?—that’s a matter of detail; but undoubtedly

it can be done.”

This idea threw Levin into a great excitement. He did not sleep half

the night, thinking over in detail the putting of his idea into

practice. He had not intended to go away next day, but he now

determined to go home early in the morning. Besides, the sister-in-law

with her low-necked bodice aroused in him a feeling akin to shame and

remorse for some utterly base action. Most important of all—he must get

back without delay: he would have to make haste to put his new project

to the peasants before the sowing of the winter wheat, so that the

sowing might be undertaken on a new basis. He had made up his mind to

revolutionize his whole system.

Chapter 29

The carrying out of Levin’s plan presented many difficulties; but he

struggled on, doing his utmost, and attained a result which, though not

what he desired, was enough to enable him, without self-deception, to

believe that the attempt was worth the trouble. One of the chief

difficulties was that the process of cultivating the land was in full

swing, that it was impossible to stop everything and begin it all again

from the beginning, and the machine had to be mended while in motion.

When on the evening that he arrived home he informed the bailiff of his

plans, the latter with visible pleasure agreed with what he said so

long as he was pointing out that all that had been done up to that time

was stupid and useless. The bailiff said that he had said so a long

while ago, but no heed had been paid him. But as for the proposal made

by Levin—to take a part as shareholder with his laborers in each

agricultural undertaking—at this the bailiff simply expressed a

profound despondency, and offered no definite opinion, but began

immediately talking of the urgent necessity of carrying the remaining

sheaves of rye the next day, and of sending the men out for the second

ploughing, so that Levin felt that this was not the time for discussing

it.

On beginning to talk to the peasants about it, and making a proposition

to cede them the land on new terms, he came into collision with the

same great difficulty that they were so much absorbed by the current

work of the day, that they had not time to consider the advantages and

disadvantages of the proposed scheme.

The simple-hearted Ivan, the cowherd, seemed completely to grasp

Levin’s proposal—that he should with his family take a share of the

profits of the cattle-yard—and he was in complete sympathy with the

plan. But when Levin hinted at the future advantages, Ivan’s face

expressed alarm and regret that he could not hear all he had to say,

and he made haste to find himself some task that would admit of no

delay: he either snatched up the fork to pitch the hay out of the pens,

or ran to get water or to clear out the dung.

Another difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the peasant that

a landowner’s object could be anything else than a desire to squeeze

all he could out of them. They were firmly convinced that his real aim

(whatever he might say to them) would always be in what he did not say

to them. And they themselves, in giving their opinion, said a great

deal but never said what was their real object. Moreover (Levin felt

that the irascible landowner had been right) the peasants made their

first and unalterable condition of any agreement whatever that they

should not be forced to any new methods of tillage of any kind, nor to

use new implements. They agreed that the modern plough ploughed better,

that the scarifier did the work more quickly, but they found thousands

of reasons that made it out of the question for them to use either of

them; and though he had accepted the conviction that he would have to

lower the standard of cultivation, he felt sorry to give up improved

methods, the advantages of which were so obvious. But in spite of all

these difficulties he got his way, and by autumn the system was

working, or at least so it seemed to him.

At first Levin had thought of giving up the whole farming of the land

just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and the bailiff on new

conditions of partnership; but he was very soon convinced that this was

impossible, and determined to divide it up. The cattle-yard, the

garden, hay fields, and arable land, divided into several parts, had to

be made into separate lots. The simple-hearted cowherd, Ivan, who,

Levin fancied, understood the matter better than any of them,

collecting together a gang of workers to help him, principally of his

own family, became a partner in the cattle-yard. A distant part of the

estate, a tract of waste land that had lain fallow for eight years, was

with the help of the clever carpenter, Fyodor Ryezunov, taken by six

families of peasants on new conditions of partnership, and the peasant

Shuraev took the management of all the vegetable gardens on the same

terms. The remainder of the land was still worked on the old system,

but these three associated partnerships were the first step to a new

organization of the whole, and they completely took up Levin’s time.

It is true that in the cattle-yard things went no better than before,

and Ivan strenuously opposed warm housing for the cows and butter made

of fresh cream, affirming that cows require less food if kept cold, and

that butter is more profitable made from sour cream, and he asked for

wages just as under the old system, and took not the slightest interest

in the fact that the money he received was not wages but an advance out

of his future share in the profits.

It is true that Fyodor Ryezunov’s company did not plough over the

ground twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying themselves

on the plea that the time was too short. It is true that the peasants

of the same company, though they had agreed to work the land on new

conditions, always spoke of the land, not as held in partnership, but

as rented for half the crop, and more than once the peasants and

Ryezunov himself said to Levin, “If you would take a rent for the land,

it would save you trouble, and we should be more free.” Moreover the

same peasants kept putting off, on various excuses, the building of a

cattleyard and barn on the land as agreed upon, and delayed doing it

till the winter.

It is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchen gardens

he had undertaken in small lots to the peasants. He evidently quite

misunderstood, and apparently intentionally misunderstood, the

conditions upon which the land had been given to him.

Often, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them all the

advantages of the plan, Levin felt that the peasants heard nothing but

the sound of his voice, and were firmly resolved, whatever he might

say, not to let themselves be taken in. He felt this especially when he

talked to the cleverest of the peasants, Ryezunov, and detected the

gleam in Ryezunov’s eyes which showed so plainly both ironical

amusement at Levin, and the firm conviction that, if anyone were to be

taken in, it would not be he, Ryezunov. But in spite of all this Levin

thought the system worked, and that by keeping accounts strictly and

insisting on his own way, he would prove to them in the future the

advantages of the arrangement, and then the system would go of itself.

These matters, together with the management of the land still left on

his hands, and the indoor work over his book, so engrossed Levin the

whole summer that he scarcely ever went out shooting. At the end of

August he heard that the Oblonskys had gone away to Moscow, from their

servant who brought back the side-saddle. He felt that in not answering

Darya Alexandrovna’s letter he had by his rudeness, of which he could

not think without a flush of shame, burned his ships, and that he would

never go and see them again. He had been just as rude with the

Sviazhskys, leaving them without saying good-bye. But he would never go

to see them again either. He did not care about that now. The business

of reorganizing the farming of his land absorbed him as completely as

though there would never be anything else in his life. He read the

books lent him by Sviazhsky, and copying out what he had not got, he

read both the economic and socialistic books on the subject, but, as he

had anticipated, found nothing bearing on the scheme he had undertaken.

In the books on political economy—in Mill, for instance, whom he

studied first with great ardor, hoping every minute to find an answer

to the questions that were engrossing him—he found laws deduced from

the condition of land culture in Europe; but he did not see why these

laws, which did not apply in Russia, must be general. He saw just the

same thing in the socialistic books: either they were the beautiful but

impracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was a student,

or they were attempts at improving, rectifying the economic position in

which Europe was placed, with which the system of land tenure in Russia

had nothing in common. Political economy told him that the laws by

which the wealth of Europe had been developed, and was developing, were

universal and unvarying. Socialism told him that development along

these lines leads to ruin. And neither of them gave an answer, or even

a hint, in reply to the question what he, Levin, and all the Russian

peasants and landowners, were to do with their millions of hands and

millions of acres, to make them as productive as possible for the

common weal.

Having once taken the subject up, he read conscientiously everything

bearing on it, and intended in the autumn to go abroad to study land

systems on the spot, in order that he might not on this question be

confronted with what so often met him on various subjects. Often, just

as he was beginning to understand the idea in the mind of anyone he was

talking to, and was beginning to explain his own, he would suddenly be

told: “But Kauffmann, but Jones, but Dubois, but Michelli? You haven’t

read them: they’ve thrashed that question out thoroughly.”

He saw now distinctly that Kauffmann and Michelli had nothing to tell

him. He knew what he wanted. He saw that Russia has splendid land,

splendid laborers, and that in certain cases, as at the peasant’s on

the way to Sviazhsky’s, the produce raised by the laborers and the land

is great—in the majority of cases when capital is applied in the

European way the produce is small, and that this simply arises from the

fact that the laborers want to work and work well only in their own

peculiar way, and that this antagonism is not incidental but

invariable, and has its roots in the national spirit. He thought that

the Russian people whose task it was to colonize and cultivate vast

tracts of unoccupied land, consciously adhered, till all their land was

occupied, to the methods suitable to their purpose, and that their

methods were by no means so bad as was generally supposed. And he

wanted to prove this theoretically in his book and practically on his

land.

Chapter 30

At the end of September the timber had been carted for building the

cattleyard on the land that had been allotted to the association of

peasants, and the butter from the cows was sold and the profits

divided. In practice the system worked capitally, or, at least, so it

seemed to Levin. In order to work out the whole subject theoretically

and to complete his book, which, in Levin’s daydreams, was not merely

to effect a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that

science entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the

relation of the people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make

a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been done in the

same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence that all that had

been done there was not what was wanted. Levin was only waiting for the

delivery of his wheat to receive the money for it and go abroad. But

the rains began, preventing the harvesting of the corn and potatoes

left in the fields, and putting a stop to all work, even to the

delivery of the wheat.

The mud was impassable along the roads; two mills were carried away,

and the weather got worse and worse.

On the 30th of September the sun came out in the morning, and hoping

for fine weather, Levin began making final preparations for his

journey. He gave orders for the wheat to be delivered, sent the bailiff

to the merchant to get the money owing him, and went out himself to

give some final directions on the estate before setting off.

Having finished all his business, soaked through with the streams of

water which kept running down the leather behind his neck and his

gaiters, but in the keenest and most confident temper, Levin returned

homewards in the evening. The weather had become worse than ever

towards evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so cruelly that she

went along sideways, shaking her head and ears; but Levin was all right

under his hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the muddy streams

running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on every bare twig, at

the whiteness of the patch of unmelted hailstones on the planks of the

bridge, at the thick layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay

heaped up about the stripped elm-tree. In spite of the gloominess of

nature around him, he felt peculiarly eager. The talks he had been

having with the peasants in the further village had shown that they

were beginning to get used to their new position. The old servant to

whose hut he had gone to get dry evidently approved of Levin’s plan,

and of his own accord proposed to enter the partnership by the purchase

of cattle.

“I have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall attain my

end,” thought Levin; “and it’s something to work and take trouble for.

This is not a matter of myself individually; the question of the public

welfare comes into it. The whole system of culture, the chief element

in the condition of the people, must be completely transformed. Instead

of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility,

harmony and unity of interests. In short, a bloodless revolution, but a

revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little circle of

our district, then the province, then Russia, the whole world. Because

a just idea cannot but be fruitful. Yes, it’s an aim worth working for.

And its being me, Kostya Levin, who went to a ball in a black tie, and

was refused by the Shtcherbatskaya girl, and who was intrinsically such

a pitiful, worthless creature—that proves nothing; I feel sure Franklin

felt just as worthless, and he too had no faith in himself, thinking of

himself as a whole. That means nothing. And he too, most likely, had an

Agafea Mihalovna to whom he confided his secrets.”

Musing on such thoughts Levin reached home in the darkness.

The bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and brought

part of the money for the wheat. An agreement had been made with the

old servant, and on the road the bailiff had learned that everywhere

the corn was still standing in the fields, so that his one hundred and

sixty shocks that had not been carried were nothing in comparison with

the losses of others.

After dinner Levin was sitting, as he usually did, in an easy chair

with a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the journey before

him in connection with his book. Today all the significance of his book

rose before him with special distinctness, and whole periods ranged

themselves in his mind in illustration of his theories. “I must write

that down,” he thought. “That ought to form a brief introduction, which

I thought unnecessary before.” He got up to go to his writing-table,

and Laska, lying at his feet, got up too, stretching and looking at him

as though to inquire where to go. But he had not time to write it down,

for the head peasants had come round, and Levin went out into the hall

to them.

After his levee, that is to say, giving directions about the labors of

the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had business with him,

Levin went back to his study and sat down to work.

Laska lay under the table; Agafea Mihalovna settled herself in her

place with her stocking.

After writing for a little while, Levin suddenly thought with

exceptional vividness of Kitty, her refusal, and their last meeting. He

got up and began walking about the room.

“What’s the use of being dreary?” said Agafea Mihalovna. “Come, why do

you stay on at home? You ought to go to some warm springs, especially

now you’re ready for the journey.”

“Well, I am going away the day after tomorrow, Agafea Mihalovna; I must

finish my work.”

“There, there, your work, you say! As if you hadn’t done enough for the

peasants! Why, as ’tis, they’re saying, ‘Your master will be getting

some honor from the Tsar for it.’ Indeed and it is a strange thing; why

need you worry about the peasants?”

“I’m not worrying about them; I’m doing it for my own good.”

Agafea Mihalovna knew every detail of Levin’s plans for his land. Levin

often put his views before her in all their complexity, and not

uncommonly he argued with her and did not agree with her comments. But

on this occasion she entirely misinterpreted what he had said.

“Of one’s soul’s salvation we all know and must think before all else,”

she said with a sigh. “Parfen Denisitch now, for all he was no scholar,

he died a death that God grant everyone of us the like,” she said,

referring to a servant who had died recently. “Took the sacrament and

all.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said he. “I mean that I’m acting for my own

advantage. It’s all the better for me if the peasants do their work

better.”

“Well, whatever you do, if he’s a lazy good-for-nought, everything’ll

be at sixes and sevens. If he has a conscience, he’ll work, and if not,

there’s no doing anything.”

“Oh, come, you say yourself Ivan has begun looking after the cattle

better.”

“All I say is,” answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking at

random, but in strict sequence of idea, “that you ought to get married,

that’s what I say.”

Agafea Mihalovna’s allusion to the very subject he had only just been

thinking about, hurt and stung him. Levin scowled, and without

answering her, he sat down again to his work, repeating to himself all

that he had been thinking of the real significance of that work. Only

at intervals he listened in the stillness to the click of Agafea

Mihalovna’s needles, and recollecting what he did not want to remember,

he frowned again.

At nine o’clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a

carriage over the mud.

“Well, here’s visitors come to us, and you won’t be dull,” said Agafea

Mihalovna, getting up and going to the door. But Levin overtook her.

His work was not going well now, and he was glad of a visitor, whoever

it might be.

Chapter 31

Running halfway down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he knew, a

familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the

sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught

sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, and now it seemed there was no

possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall

man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his brother Nikolay.

Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Just

now, when Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that had come to

him, and Agafea Mihalovna’s hint, was in a troubled and uncertain

humor, the meeting with his brother that he had to face seemed

particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some

outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain humor, he

had to see his brother, who knew him through and through, who would

call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to show

himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do.

Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as

soon as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of selfish

disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as

his brother Nikolay had been before in his emaciation and sickliness,

now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted. He was a

skeleton covered with skin.

He stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the scarf

off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile,

submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.

“You see, I’ve come to you,” said Nikolay in a thick voice, never for

one second taking his eyes off his brother’s face. “I’ve been meaning

to a long while, but I’ve been unwell all the time. Now I’m ever so

much better,” he said, rubbing his beard with his big thin hands.

“Yes, yes!” answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened when,

kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his brother’s skin

and saw close to him his big eyes, full of a strange light.

A few weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother that

through the sale of the small part of the property, that had remained

undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles to come to him

as his share.

Nikolay said that he had come now to take this money and, what was more

important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the

earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work

that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop, and the

emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements were as

rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his study.

His brother dressed with particular care—a thing he never used to

do—combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs.

He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Levin

often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to Sergey

Ivanovitch without rancor. When he saw Agafea Mihalovna, he made jokes

with her and asked after the old servants. The news of the death of

Parfen Denisitch made a painful impression on him. A look of fear

crossed his face, but he regained his serenity immediately.

“Of course he was quite old,” he said, and changed the subject. “Well,

I’ll spend a month or two with you, and then I’m off to Moscow. Do you

know, Myakov has promised me a place there, and I’m going into the

service. Now I’m going to arrange my life quite differently,” he went

on. “You know I got rid of that woman.”

“Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?”

“Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries.” But

he did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that he had

cast off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and, above all,

because she would look after him, as though he were an invalid.

“Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I’ve done

silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money’s the last

consideration; I don’t regret it. So long as there’s health, and my

health, thank God, is quite restored.”

Levin listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing to

say. Nikolay probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother

about his affairs; and Levin was glad to talk about himself, because

then he could speak without hypocrisy. He told his brother of his plans

and his doings.

His brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.

These two men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest

gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could be said in words.

Both of them now had only one thought—the illness of Nikolay and the

nearness of his death—which stifled all else. But neither of them dared

to speak of it, and so whatever they said—not uttering the one thought

that filled their minds—was all falsehood. Never had Levin been so glad

when the evening was over and it was time to go to bed. Never with any

outside person, never on any official visit had he been so unnatural

and false as he was that evening. And the consciousness of this

unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made him even more

unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly loved brother, and

he had to listen and keep on talking of how he meant to live.

As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated, Levin

put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.

His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, tossed

about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his throat

clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he

said, “Oh, my God!” Sometimes when he was choking he muttered angrily,

“Ah, the devil!” Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him.

His thoughts were of the most various, but the end of all his thoughts

was the same—death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first

time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which

was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit

calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as

it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too, he felt that. If

not today, tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn’t it all

the same! And what was this inevitable death—he did not know, had never

thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the

courage to think about it.

“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I

had forgotten—death.”

He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and

holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the

more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was

indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten

one little fact—that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was

even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it

was awful, but it was so.

“But I am alive still. Now what’s to be done? what’s to be done?” he

said in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously and went to the

looking-glass, and began looking at his face and hair. Yes, there were

gray hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were

beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength

in them. But Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of

lungs, had had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how

they used to go to bed together as children, and how they only waited

till Fyodor Bogdanitch was out of the room to fling pillows at each

other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly, so that even their awe of Fyodor

Bogdanitch could not check the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life

and happiness. “And now that bent, hollow chest ... and I, not knowing

what will become of me, or wherefore....”

“K...ha! K...ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why don’t you go

to sleep?” his brother’s voice called to him.

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m not sleepy.”

“I have had a good sleep, I’m not in a sweat now. Just see, feel my

shirt; it’s not wet, is it?”

Levin felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the candle, but for

a long while he could not sleep. The question how to live had hardly

begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question

presented itself—death.

“Why, he’s dying—yes, he’ll die in the spring, and how help him? What

can I say to him? What do I know about it? I’d even forgotten that it

was at all.”

Chapter 32

Levin had long before made the observation that when one is

uncomfortable with people from their being excessively amenable and

meek, one is apt very soon after to find things intolerable from their

touchiness and irritability. He felt that this was how it would be with

his brother. And his brother Nikolay’s gentleness did in fact not last

out for long. The very next morning he began to be irritable, and

seemed doing his best to find fault with his brother, attacking him on

his tenderest points.

Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt

that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is

called, from the heart—that is to say, had said only just what they

were thinking and feeling—they would simply have looked into each

other’s faces, and Konstantin could only have said, “You’re dying,

you’re dying!” and Nikolay could only have answered, “I know I’m dying,

but I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” And they could have said

nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life

like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had

been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as

far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and

without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not

thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that

his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it.

The third day Nikolay induced his brother to explain his plan to him

again, and began not merely attacking it, but intentionally confounding

it with communism.

“You’ve simply borrowed an idea that’s not your own, but you’ve

distorted it, and are trying to apply it where it’s not applicable.”

“But I tell you it’s nothing to do with it. They deny the justice of

property, of capital, of inheritance, while I do not deny this chief

stimulus.” (Levin felt disgusted himself at using such expressions, but

ever since he had been engrossed by his work, he had unconsciously come

more and more frequently to use words not Russian.) “All I want is to

regulate labor.”

“Which means, you’ve borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that gave it

its force, and want to make believe that it’s something new,” said

Nikolay, angrily tugging at his necktie.

“But my idea has nothing in common....”

“That, anyway,” said Nikolay Levin, with an ironical smile, his eyes

flashing malignantly, “has the charm of—what’s one to call

it?—geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It may be a

Utopia. But if once one allows the possibility of making of all the

past a _tabula rasa_—no property, no family—then labor would organize

itself. But you gain nothing....”

“Why do you mix things up? I’ve never been a communist.”

“But I have, and I consider it’s premature, but rational, and it has a

future, just like Christianity in its first ages.”

“All that I maintain is that the labor force ought to be investigated

from the point of view of natural science; that is to say, it ought to

be studied, its qualities ascertained....”

“But that’s utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form of

activity of itself, according to the stage of its development. There

have been slaves first everywhere, then metayers; and we have the

half-crop system, rent, and day laborers. What are you trying to find?”

Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom of

his heart he was afraid that it was true—true that he was trying to

hold the balance even between communism and the familiar forms, and

that this was hardly possible.

“I am trying to find means of working productively for myself and for

the laborers. I want to organize....” he answered hotly.

“You don’t want to organize anything; it’s simply just as you’ve been

all your life, that you want to be original to pose as not exploiting

the peasants simply, but with some idea in view.”

“Oh, all right, that’s what you think—and let me alone!” answered

Levin, feeling the muscles of his left cheek twitching uncontrollably.

“You’ve never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is to

please your vanity.”

“Oh, very well; then let me alone!”

“And I will let you alone! and it’s high time I did, and go to the

devil with you! and I’m very sorry I ever came!”

In spite of all Levin’s efforts to soothe his brother afterwards,

Nikolay would listen to nothing he said, declaring that it was better

to part, and Konstantin saw that it simply was that life was unbearable

to him.

Nikolay was just getting ready to go, when Konstantin went in to him

again and begged him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if he had hurt

his feelings in any way.

“Ah, generosity!” said Nikolay, and he smiled. “If you want to be

right, I can give you that satisfaction. You’re in the right; but I’m

going all the same.”

It was only just at parting that Nikolay kissed him, and said, looking

with sudden strangeness and seriousness at his brother:

“Anyway, don’t remember evil against me, Kostya!” and his voice

quivered. These were the only words that had been spoken sincerely

between them. Levin knew that those words meant, “You see, and you

know, that I’m in a bad way, and maybe we shall not see each other

again.” Levin knew this, and the tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed

his brother once more, but he could not speak, and knew not what to

say.

Three days after his brother’s departure, Levin too set off for his

foreign tour. Happening to meet Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in the

railway train, Levin greatly astonished him by his depression.

“What’s the matter with you?” Shtcherbatsky asked him.

“Oh, nothing; there’s not much happiness in life.”

“Not much? You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhausen. You shall

see how to be happy.”

“No, I’ve done with it all. It’s time I was dead.”

“Well, that’s a good one!” said Shtcherbatsky, laughing; “why, I’m only

just getting ready to begin.”

“Yes, I thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall soon be

dead.”

Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing

but death or the advance towards death in everything. But his cherished

scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had to be got through somehow

till death did come. Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but

just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the

darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his

strength.

PART FOUR

Chapter 1

The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met

every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey

Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the

servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at

home. Vronsky was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house, but Anna saw

him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.

The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would

have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had

not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a

temporary painful ordeal which would pass over. Alexey Alexandrovitch

hoped that this passion would pass, as everything does pass, that

everyone would forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied.

Anna, on whom the position depended, and for whom it was more miserable

than for anyone, endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly

believed, that it would all very soon be settled and come right. She

had not the least idea what would settle the position, but she firmly

believed that something would very soon turn up now. Vronsky, against

his own will or wishes, followed her lead, hoped too that something,

apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all difficulties.

In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week. A

foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put under

his charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Vronsky was

of distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of

behaving with respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with

such grand personages—that was how he came to be put in charge of the

prince. But he felt his duties very irksome. The prince was anxious to

miss nothing of which he would be asked at home, had he seen that in

Russia? And on his own account he was anxious to enjoy to the utmost

all Russian forms of amusement. Vronsky was obliged to be his guide in

satisfying both these inclinations. The mornings they spent driving to

look at places of interest; the evenings they passed enjoying the

national entertainments. The prince rejoiced in health exceptional even

among princes. By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had

brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excess in pleasure

he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber. The prince had

traveled a great deal, and considered one of the chief advantages of

modern facilities of communication was the accessibility of the

pleasures of all nations.

He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had made

friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he

had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over

hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In Turkey he had got

into a harem; in India he had hunted on an elephant, and now in Russia

he wished to taste all the specially Russian forms of pleasure.

Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him,

was at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements suggested by

various persons to the prince. They had race horses, and Russian

pancakes and bear hunts and three-horse sledges, and gypsies and

drinking feasts, with the Russian accompaniment of broken crockery. And

the prince with surprising ease fell in with the Russian spirit,

smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and

seemed to be asking—what more, and does the whole Russian spirit

consist in just this?

In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked best

French actresses and ballet dancers and white-seal champagne. Vronsky

was used to princes, but, either because he had himself changed of

late, or that he was in too close proximity to the prince, that week

seemed fearfully wearisome to him. The whole of that week he

experienced a sensation such as a man might have set in charge of a

dangerous madman, afraid of the madman, and at the same time, from

being with him, fearing for his own reason. Vronsky was continually

conscious of the necessity of never for a second relaxing the tone of

stern official respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted.

The prince’s manner of treating the very people who, to Vronsky’s

surprise, were ready to descend to any depths to provide him with

Russian amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women,

whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky crimson with

indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so particularly

disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help seeing himself in

him. And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He

was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very

well-washed man, and nothing else. He was a gentleman—that was true,

and Vronsky could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his

superiors, was free and ingratiating in his behavior with his equals,

and was contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors. Vronsky was

himself the same, and regarded it as a great merit to be so. But for

this prince he was an inferior, and his contemptuous and indulgent

attitude to him revolted him.

“Brainless beef! can I be like that?” he thought.

Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the

prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was

happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant

reflection of himself. He said good-bye to him at the station on their

return from a bear hunt, at which they had had a display of Russian

prowess kept up all night.

Chapter 2

When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote, “I

am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer

without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to

the council at seven and will be there till ten.” Thinking for an

instant of the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in

spite of her husband’s insisting on her not receiving him, he decided

to go.

Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had left

the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having some lunch,

he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of

the hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were

confused together and joined on to a mental image of Anna and of the

peasant who had played an important part in the bear hunt, and Vronsky

fell asleep. He waked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made

haste to light a candle. “What was it? What? What was the dreadful

thing I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with a disheveled

beard was stooping down doing something, and all of a sudden he began

saying some strange words in French. Yes, there was nothing else in the

dream,” he said to himself. “But why was it so awful?” He vividly

recalled the peasant again and those incomprehensible French words the

peasant had uttered, and a chill of horror ran down his spine.

“What nonsense!” thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.

It was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressed in

haste, and went out onto the steps, completely forgetting the dream and

only worried at being late. As he drove up to the Karenins’ entrance he

looked at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine. A high, narrow

carriage with a pair of grays was standing at the entrance. He

recognized Anna’s carriage. “She is coming to me,” thought Vronsky,

“and better she should. I don’t like going into that house. But no

matter; I can’t hide myself,” he thought, and with that manner peculiar

to him from childhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of,

Vronsky got out of his sledge and went to the door. The door opened,

and the hall-porter with a rug on his arm called the carriage. Vronsky,

though he did not usually notice details, noticed at this moment the

amazed expression with which the porter glanced at him. In the very

doorway Vronsky almost ran up against Alexey Alexandrovitch. The gas

jet threw its full light on the bloodless, sunken face under the black

hat and on the white cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat.

Karenin’s fixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky’s face. Vronsky

bowed, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, chewing his lips, lifted his hand to

his hat and went on. Vronsky saw him without looking round get into the

carriage, pick up the rug and the opera-glass at the window and

disappear. Vronsky went into the hall. His brows were scowling, and his

eyes gleamed with a proud and angry light in them.

“What a position!” he thought. “If he would fight, would stand up for

his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but this weakness or

baseness.... He puts me in the position of playing false, which I never

meant and never mean to do.”

Vronsky’s ideas had changed since the day of his conversation with Anna

in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the weakness of Anna—who

had surrendered herself up to him utterly, and simply looked to him to

decide her fate, ready to submit to anything—he had long ceased to

think that their tie might end as he had thought then. His ambitious

plans had retreated into the background again, and feeling that he had

got out of that circle of activity in which everything was definite, he

had given himself entirely to his passion, and that passion was binding

him more and more closely to her.

He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of her retreating

footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, had listened for him,

and was now going back to the drawing-room.

“No,” she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice the

tears came into her eyes. “No; if things are to go on like this, the

end will come much, much too soon.”

“What is it, dear one?”

“What? I’ve been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours ... No, I

won’t ... I can’t quarrel with you. Of course you couldn’t come. No, I

won’t.” She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long

while at him with a profound, passionate, and at the same time

searching look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she

had not seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture

of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in

reality) fit with him as he really was.

Chapter 3

“You met him?” she asked, when they had sat down at the table in the

lamplight. “You’re punished, you see, for being late.”

“Yes; but how was it? Wasn’t he to be at the council?”

“He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again. But

that’s no matter. Don’t talk about it. Where have you been? With the

prince still?”

She knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that he had

been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at her thrilled

and rapturous face, he was ashamed. And he said he had had to go to

report on the prince’s departure.

“But it’s over now? He is gone?”

“Thank God it’s over! You wouldn’t believe how insufferable it’s been

for me.”

“Why so? Isn’t it the life all of you, all young men, always lead?” she

said, knitting her brows; and taking up the crochet work that was lying

on the table, she began drawing the hook out of it, without looking at

Vronsky.

“I gave that life up long ago,” said he, wondering at the change in her

face, and trying to divine its meaning. “And I confess,” he said, with

a smile, showing his thick, white teeth, “this week I’ve been, as it

were, looking at myself in a glass, seeing that life, and I didn’t like

it.”

She held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked at him

with strange, shining, and hostile eyes.

“This morning Liza came to see me—they’re not afraid to call on me, in

spite of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna,” she put in—“and she told me

about your Athenian evening. How loathsome!”

“I was just going to say....”

She interrupted him. “It was that Thérèse you used to know?”

“I was just saying....”

“How disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can’t understand that a

woman can never forget that,” she said, getting more and more angry,

and so letting him see the cause of her irritation, “especially a woman

who cannot know your life? What do I know? What have I ever known?” she

said, “what you tell me. And how do I know whether you tell me the

truth?...”

“Anna, you hurt me. Don’t you trust me? Haven’t I told you that I

haven’t a thought I wouldn’t lay bare to you?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, evidently trying to suppress her jealous

thoughts. “But if only you knew how wretched I am! I believe you, I

believe you.... What were you saying?”

But he could not at once recall what he had been going to say. These

fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent with

her, horrified him, and however much he tried to disguise the fact,

made him feel cold to her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy

was her love for him. How often he had told himself that her love was

happiness; and now she loved him as a woman can love when love has

outweighed for her all the good things of life—and he was much further

from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had

thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that

the best happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what

she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had

changed for the worse. She had broadened out all over, and in her face

at the time when she was speaking of the actress there was an evil

expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks

at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it

the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he

felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly

wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now, when as at

that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what

bound him to her could not be broken.

“Well, well, what was it you were going to say about the prince? I have

driven away the fiend,” she added. The fiend was the name they had

given her jealousy. “What did you begin to tell me about the prince?

Why did you find it so tiresome?”

“Oh, it was intolerable!” he said, trying to pick up the thread of his

interrupted thought. “He does not improve on closer acquaintance. If

you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes

medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more,” he said, with a tone of

vexation that interested her.

“No; how so?” she replied. “He’s seen a great deal, anyway; he’s

cultured?”

“It’s an utterly different culture—their culture. He’s cultivated, one

sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise everything

but animal pleasures.”

“But don’t you all care for these animal pleasures?” she said, and

again he noticed a dark look in her eyes that avoided him.

“How is it you’re defending him?” he said, smiling.

“I’m not defending him, it’s nothing to me; but I imagine, if you had

not cared for those pleasures yourself, you might have got out of them.

But if it affords you satisfaction to gaze at Thérèse in the attire of

Eve....”

“Again, the devil again,” Vronsky said, taking the hand she had laid on

the table and kissing it.

“Yes; but I can’t help it. You don’t know what I have suffered waiting

for you. I believe I’m not jealous. I’m not jealous: I believe you when

you’re here; but when you’re away somewhere leading your life, so

incomprehensible to me....”

She turned away from him, pulled the hook at last out of the crochet

work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop

after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while

the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff.

“How was it, then? Where did you meet Alexey Alexandrovitch?” Her voice

sounded in an unnatural and jarring tone.

“We ran up against each other in the doorway.”

“And he bowed to you like this?”

She drew a long face, and half-closing her eyes, quickly transformed

her expression, folded her hands, and Vronsky suddenly saw in her

beautiful face the very expression with which Alexey Alexandrovitch had

bowed to him. He smiled, while she laughed gaily, with that sweet, deep

laugh, which was one of her greatest charms.

“I don’t understand him in the least,” said Vronsky. “If after your

avowal to him at your country house he had broken with you, if he had

called me out—but this I can’t understand. How can he put up with such

a position? He feels it, that’s evident.”

“He?” she said sneeringly. “He’s perfectly satisfied.”

“What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so happy?”

“Only not he. Don’t I know him, the falsity in which he’s utterly

steeped?... Could one, with any feeling, live as he is living with me?

He understands nothing, and feels nothing. Could a man of any feeling

live in the same house with his unfaithful wife? Could he talk to her,

call her ‘my dear’?”

And again she could not help mimicking him: “‘Anna, _ma chère_; Anna,

dear!’”

“He’s not a man, not a human being—he’s a doll! No one knows him; but I

know him. Oh, if I’d been in his place, I’d long ago have killed, have

torn to pieces a wife like me. I wouldn’t have said, ‘Anna, _ma

chère_’! He’s not a man, he’s an official machine. He doesn’t

understand that I’m your wife, that he’s outside, that he’s

superfluous.... Don’t let’s talk of him!...”

“You’re unfair, very unfair, dearest,” said Vronsky, trying to soothe

her. “But never mind, don’t let’s talk of him. Tell me what you’ve been

doing? What is the matter? What has been wrong with you, and what did

the doctor say?”

She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit on

other absurd and grotesque aspects in her husband and was awaiting the

moment to give expression to them.

But he went on:

“I imagine that it’s not illness, but your condition. When will it be?”

The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile, a

consciousness of something, he did not know what, and of quiet

melancholy, came over her face.

“Soon, soon. You say that our position is miserable, that we must put

an end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me, what I would give

to be able to love you freely and boldly! I should not torture myself

and torture you with my jealousy.... And it will come soon, but not as

we expect.”

And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable to

herself that tears came into her eyes, and she could not go on. She

laid her hand on his sleeve, dazzling and white with its rings in the

lamplight.

“It won’t come as we suppose. I didn’t mean to say this to you, but

you’ve made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall all, all be

at peace, and suffer no more.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, understanding her.

“You asked when? Soon. And I shan’t live through it. Don’t interrupt

me!” and she made haste to speak. “I know it; I know for certain. I

shall die; and I’m very glad I shall die, and release myself and you.”

Tears dropped from her eyes; he bent down over her hand and began

kissing it, trying to hide his emotion, which, he knew, had no sort of

grounds, though he could not control it.

“Yes, it’s better so,” she said, tightly gripping his hand. “That’s the

only way, the only way left us.”

He had recovered himself, and lifted his head.

“How absurd! What absurd nonsense you are talking!”

“No, it’s the truth.”

“What, what’s the truth?”

“That I shall die. I have had a dream.”

“A dream?” repeated Vronsky, and instantly he recalled the peasant of

his dream.

“Yes, a dream,” she said. “It’s a long while since I dreamed it. I

dreamed that I ran into my bedroom, that I had to get something there,

to find out something; you know how it is in dreams,” she said, her

eyes wide with horror; “and in the bedroom, in the corner, stood

something.”

“Oh, what nonsense! How can you believe....”

But she would not let him interrupt her. What she was saying was too

important to her.

“And the something turned round, and I saw it was a peasant with a

disheveled beard, little, and dreadful looking. I wanted to run away,

but he bent down over a sack, and was fumbling there with his

hands....”

She showed how he had moved his hands. There was terror in her face.

And Vronsky, remembering his dream, felt the same terror filling his

soul.

“He was fumbling and kept talking quickly, quickly in French, you know:

_Il faut le battre, le fer, le broyer, le pétrir_.... And in my horror

I tried to wake up, and woke up ... but woke up in the dream. And I

began asking myself what it meant. And Korney said to me: ‘In

childbirth you’ll die, ma’am, you’ll die....’ And I woke up.”

“What nonsense, what nonsense!” said Vronsky; but he felt himself that

there was no conviction in his voice.

“But don’t let’s talk of it. Ring the bell, I’ll have tea. And stay a

little now; it’s not long I shall....”

But all at once she stopped. The expression of her face instantaneously

changed. Horror and excitement were suddenly replaced by a look of

soft, solemn, blissful attention. He could not comprehend the meaning

of the change. She was listening to the stirring of the new life within

her.

Chapter 4

Alexey Alexandrovitch, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps, drove,

as he had intended, to the Italian opera. He sat through two acts

there, and saw everyone he had wanted to see. On returning home, he

carefully scrutinized the hat stand, and noticing that there was not a

military overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But,

contrary to his usual habit, he did not go to bed, he walked up and

down his study till three o’clock in the morning. The feeling of

furious anger with his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and

keep to the one stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her

lover in her own home, gave him no peace. She had not complied with his

request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his threat—obtain

a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the difficulties connected

with this course, but he had said he would do it, and now he must carry

out his threat. Countess Lidia Ivanovna had hinted that this was the

best way out of his position, and of late the obtaining of divorces had

been brought to such perfection that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a

possibility of overcoming the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never

come singly, and the affairs of the reorganization of the native

tribes, and of the irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky province,

had brought such official worries upon Alexey Alexandrovitch that he

had been of late in a continual condition of extreme irritability.

He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort of

vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the

morning. He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup full of

wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath

the energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her

room directly he heard she was up.

Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at his

appearance when he went in to her. His brow was lowering, and his eyes

stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was tightly and

contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his

voice there was a determination and firmness such as his wife had never

seen in him. He went into her room, and without greeting her, walked

straight up to her writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.

“What do you want?” she cried.

“Your lover’s letters,” he said.

“They’re not here,” she said, shutting the drawer; but from that action

he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her hand, he

quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used to put her most

important papers. She tried to pull the portfolio away, but he pushed

her back.

“Sit down! I have to speak to you,” he said, putting the portfolio

under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his

shoulder stood up. Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.

“I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this

house.”

“I had to see him to....”

She stopped, not finding a reason.

“I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her

lover.”

“I meant, I only....” she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his

angered her, and gave her courage. “Surely you must feel how easy it is

for you to insult me?” she said.

“An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief

he’s a thief is simply _la constatation d’un fait_.”

“This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.”

“You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her

the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of

observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?”

“It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to know!” Anna cried, in

a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.

“No!” he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher

than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so

violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing,

he forcibly sat her down in her place.

“Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband

and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!”

She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening

before to her lover, that _he_ was her husband, and her husband was

superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the justice of

his words, and only said softly:

“You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself;

but what are you saying all this for?”

“What am I saying it for? what for?” he went on, as angrily. “That you

may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to

observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this

state of things.”

“Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway,” she said; and again, at the

thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her

eyes.

“It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must

have the satisfaction of animal passion....”

“Alexey Alexandrovitch! I won’t say it’s not generous, but it’s not

like a gentleman to strike anyone who’s down.”

“Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was

your husband have no interest for you. You don’t care that his whole

life is ruined, that he is thuff ... thuff....”

Alexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and

was utterly unable to articulate the word “suffering.” In the end he

pronounced it “thuffering.” She wanted to laugh, and was immediately

ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a moment. And for the

first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place,

and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and

she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began

speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasizing random words that

had no special significance.

“I came to tell you....” he said.

She glanced at him. “No, it was my fancy,” she thought, recalling the

expression of his face when he stumbled over the word “suffering.” “No;

can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied complacency,

feel anything?”

“I cannot change anything,” she whispered.

“I have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and shall

not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of what I

decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall intrust the task of

getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister’s,” said Alexey

Alexandrovitch, with an effort recalling what he had meant to say about

his son.

“You take Seryozha to hurt me,” she said, looking at him from under her

brows. “You do not love him.... Leave me Seryozha!”

“Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is

associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take

him. Good-bye!”

And he was going away, but now she detained him.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch, leave me Seryozha!” she whispered once more. “I

have nothing else to say. Leave Seryozha till my ... I shall soon be

confined; leave him!”

Alexey Alexandrovitch flew into a rage, and, snatching his hand from

her, he went out of the room without a word.

Chapter 5

The waiting-room of the celebrated Petersburg lawyer was full when

Alexey Alexandrovitch entered it. Three ladies—an old lady, a young

lady, and a merchant’s wife—and three gentlemen—one a German banker

with a ring on his finger, the second a merchant with a beard, and the

third a wrathful-looking government clerk in official uniform, with a

cross on his neck—had obviously been waiting a long while already. Two

clerks were writing at tables with scratching pens. The appurtenances

of the writing-tables, about which Alexey Alexandrovitch was himself

very fastidious, were exceptionally good. He could not help observing

this. One of the clerks, without getting up, turned wrathfully to

Alexey Alexandrovitch, half closing his eyes. “What are you wanting?”

He replied that he had to see the lawyer on some business.

“He is engaged,” the clerk responded severely, and he pointed with his

pen at the persons waiting, and went on writing.

“Can’t he spare time to see me?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

“He has no time free; he is always busy. Kindly wait your turn.”

“Then I must trouble you to give him my card,” Alexey Alexandrovitch

said with dignity, seeing the impossibility of preserving his

incognito.

The clerk took the card and, obviously not approving of what he read on

it, went to the door.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was in principle in favor of the publicity of

legal proceedings, though for some higher official considerations he

disliked the application of the principle in Russia, and disapproved of

it, as far as he could disapprove of anything instituted by authority

of the Emperor. His whole life had been spent in administrative work,

and consequently, when he did not approve of anything, his disapproval

was softened by the recognition of the inevitability of mistakes and

the possibility of reform in every department. In the new public law

courts he disliked the restrictions laid on the lawyers conducting

cases. But till then he had had nothing to do with the law courts, and

so had disapproved of their publicity simply in theory; now his

disapprobation was strengthened by the unpleasant impression made on

him in the lawyer’s waiting room.

“Coming immediately,” said the clerk; and two minutes later there did

actually appear in the doorway the large figure of an old solicitor who

had been consulting with the lawyer himself.

The lawyer was a little, squat, bald man, with a dark, reddish beard,

light-colored long eyebrows, and an overhanging brow. He was attired as

though for a wedding, from his cravat to his double watch-chain and

varnished boots. His face was clever and manly, but his dress was

dandified and in bad taste.

“Pray walk in,” said the lawyer, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch; and,

gloomily ushering Karenin in before him, he closed the door.

“Won’t you sit down?” He indicated an armchair at a writing-table

covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his little hands

with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent his head on one

side. But as soon as he was settled in this position a moth flew over

the table. The lawyer, with a swiftness that could never have been

expected of him, opened his hands, caught the moth, and resumed his

former attitude.

“Before beginning to speak of my business,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch,

following the lawyer’s movements with wondering eyes, “I ought to

observe that the business about which I have to speak to you is to be

strictly private.”

The lawyer’s overhanging reddish mustaches were parted in a scarcely

perceptible smile.

“I should not be a lawyer if I could not keep the secrets confided to

me. But if you would like proof....”

Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at his face, and saw that the shrewd,

gray eyes were laughing, and seemed to know all about it already.

“You know my name?” Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed.

“I know you and the good”—again he caught a moth—“work you are doing,

like every Russian,” said the lawyer, bowing.

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, plucking up his courage. But having once

made up his mind he went on in his shrill voice, without timidity—or

hesitation, accentuating here and there a word.

“I have the misfortune,” Alexey Alexandrovitch began, “to have been

deceived in my married life, and I desire to break off all relations

with my wife by legal means—that is, to be divorced, but to do this so

that my son may not remain with his mother.”

The lawyer’s gray eyes tried not to laugh, but they were dancing with

irrepressible glee, and Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that it was not

simply the delight of a man who has just got a profitable job: there

was triumph and joy, there was a gleam like the malignant gleam he saw

in his wife’s eyes.

“You desire my assistance in securing a divorce?”

“Yes, precisely so; but I ought to warn you that I may be wasting your

time and attention. I have come simply to consult you as a preliminary

step. I want a divorce, but the form in which it is possible is of

great consequence to me. It is very possible that if that form does not

correspond with my requirements I may give up a legal divorce.”

“Oh, that’s always the case,” said the lawyer, “and that’s always for

you to decide.”

He let his eyes rest on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s feet, feeling that he

might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible amusement. He

looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and moved his hands, but

did not catch it from regard for Alexey Alexandrovitch’s position.

“Though in their general features our laws on this subject are known to

me,” pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch, “I should be glad to have an idea

of the forms in which such things are done in practice.”

“You would be glad,” the lawyer, without lifting his eyes, responded,

adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his client’s

remarks, “for me to lay before you all the methods by which you could

secure what you desire?”

And on receiving an assuring nod from Alexey Alexandrovitch, he went

on, stealing a glance now and then at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face,

which was growing red in patches.

“Divorce by our laws,” he said, with a slight shade of disapprobation

of our laws, “is possible, as you are aware, in the following cases....

Wait a little!” he called to a clerk who put his head in at the door,

but he got up all the same, said a few words to him, and sat down

again. “... In the following cases: physical defect in the married

parties, desertion without communication for five years,” he said,

crooking a short finger covered with hair, “adultery” (this word he

pronounced with obvious satisfaction), “subdivided as follows” (he

continued to crook his fat fingers, though the three cases and their

subdivisions could obviously not be classified together): “physical

defect of the husband or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of the

wife.” As by now all his fingers were used up, he uncrooked all his

fingers and went on: “This is the theoretical view; but I imagine you

have done me the honor to apply to me in order to learn its application

in practice. And therefore, guided by precedents, I must inform you

that in practice cases of divorce may all be reduced to the

following—there’s no physical defect, I may assume, nor desertion?...”

Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent.

“—May be reduced to the following: adultery of one of the married

parties, and the detection in the fact of the guilty party by mutual

agreement, and failing such agreement, accidental detection. It must be

admitted that the latter case is rarely met with in practice,” said the

lawyer, and stealing a glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch he paused, as a

man selling pistols, after enlarging on the advantages of each weapon,

might await his customer’s choice. But Alexey Alexandrovitch said

nothing, and therefore the lawyer went on: “The most usual and simple,

the sensible course, I consider, is adultery by mutual consent. I

should not permit myself to express it so, speaking with a man of no

education,” he said, “but I imagine that to you this is

comprehensible.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch was, however, so perturbed that he did not

immediately comprehend all the good sense of adultery by mutual

consent, and his eyes expressed this uncertainty; but the lawyer

promptly came to his assistance.

“People cannot go on living together—here you have a fact. And if both

are agreed about it, the details and formalities become a matter of no

importance. And at the same time this is the simplest and most certain

method.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch fully understood now. But he had religious

scruples, which hindered the execution of such a plan.

“That is out of the question in the present case,” he said. “Only one

alternative is possible: undesigned detection, supported by letters

which I have.”

At the mention of letters the lawyer pursed up his lips, and gave

utterance to a thin little compassionate and contemptuous sound.

“Kindly consider,” he began, “cases of that kind are, as you are aware,

under ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the reverend fathers are fond of

going into the minutest details in cases of that kind,” he said with a

smile, which betrayed his sympathy with the reverend fathers’ taste.

“Letters may, of course, be a partial confirmation; but detection in

the fact there must be of the most direct kind, that is, by

eyewitnesses. In fact, if you do me the honor to intrust your

confidence to me, you will do well to leave me the choice of the

measures to be employed. If one wants the result, one must admit the

means.”

“If it is so....” Alexey Alexandrovitch began, suddenly turning white;

but at that moment the lawyer rose and again went to the door to speak

to the intruding clerk.

“Tell her we don’t haggle over fees!” he said, and returned to Alexey

Alexandrovitch.

On his way back he caught unobserved another moth. “Nice state my rep

curtains will be in by the summer!” he thought, frowning.

“And so you were saying?...” he said.

“I will communicate my decision to you by letter,” said Alexey

Alexandrovitch, getting up, and he clutched at the table. After

standing a moment in silence, he said: “From your words I may

consequently conclude that a divorce may be obtained? I would ask you

to let me know what are your terms.”

“It may be obtained if you give me complete liberty of action,” said

the lawyer, not answering his question. “When can I reckon on receiving

information from you?” he asked, moving towards the door, his eyes and

his varnished boots shining.

“In a week’s time. Your answer as to whether you will undertake to

conduct the case, and on what terms, you will be so good as to

communicate to me.”

“Very good.”

The lawyer bowed respectfully, let his client out of the door, and,

left alone, gave himself up to his sense of amusement. He felt so

mirthful that, contrary to his rules, he made a reduction in his terms

to the haggling lady, and gave up catching moths, finally deciding that

next winter he must have the furniture covered with velvet, like

Sigonin’s.

Chapter 6

Alexey Alexandrovitch had gained a brilliant victory at the sitting of

the Commission of the 17th of August, but in the sequel this victory

cut the ground from under his feet. The new commission for the inquiry

into the condition of the native tribes in all its branches had been

formed and despatched to its destination with an unusual speed and

energy inspired by Alexey Alexandrovitch. Within three months a report

was presented. The condition of the native tribes was investigated in

its political, administrative, economic, ethnographic, material, and

religious aspects. To all these questions there were answers admirably

stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt, since they were not a

product of human thought, always liable to error, but were all the

product of official activity. The answers were all based on official

data furnished by governors and heads of churches, and founded on the

reports of district magistrates and ecclesiastical superintendents,

founded in their turn on the reports of parochial overseers and parish

priests; and so all of these answers were unhesitating and certain. All

such questions as, for instance, of the cause of failure of crops, of

the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient beliefs,

etc.—questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the

official machine, are not, and cannot be solved for ages—received full,

unhesitating solution. And this solution was in favor of Alexey

Alexandrovitch’s contention. But Stremov, who had felt stung to the

quick at the last sitting, had, on the reception of the commission’s

report, resorted to tactics which Alexey Alexandrovitch had not

anticipated. Stremov, carrying with him several members, went over to

Alexey Alexandrovitch’s side, and not contenting himself with warmly

defending the measure proposed by Karenin, proposed other more extreme

measures in the same direction. These measures, still further

exaggerated in opposition to what was Alexey Alexandrovitch’s

fundamental idea, were passed by the commission, and then the aim of

Stremov’s tactics became apparent. Carried to an extreme, the measures

seemed at once to be so absurd that the highest authorities, and public

opinion, and intellectual ladies, and the newspapers, all at the same

time fell foul of them, expressing their indignation both with the

measures and their nominal father, Alexey Alexandrovitch. Stremov drew

back, affecting to have blindly followed Karenin, and to be astounded

and distressed at what had been done. This meant the defeat of Alexey

Alexandrovitch. But in spite of failing health, in spite of his

domestic griefs, he did not give in. There was a split in the

commission. Some members, with Stremov at their head, justified their

mistake on the ground that they had put faith in the commission of

revision, instituted by Alexey Alexandrovitch, and maintained that the

report of the commission was rubbish, and simply so much waste paper.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, with a following of those who saw the danger of

so revolutionary an attitude to official documents, persisted in

upholding the statements obtained by the revising commission. In

consequence of this, in the higher spheres, and even in society, all

was chaos, and although everyone was interested, no one could tell

whether the native tribes really were becoming impoverished and ruined,

or whether they were in a flourishing condition. The position of Alexey

Alexandrovitch, owing to this, and partly owing to the contempt

lavished on him for his wife’s infidelity, became very precarious. And

in this position he took an important resolution. To the astonishment

of the commission, he announced that he should ask permission to go

himself to investigate the question on the spot. And having obtained

permission, Alexey Alexandrovitch prepared to set off to these remote

provinces.

Alexey Alexandrovitch’s departure made a great sensation, the more so

as just before he started he officially returned the posting-fares

allowed him for twelve horses, to drive to his destination.

“I think it very noble,” Betsy said about this to the Princess Myakaya.

“Why take money for posting-horses when everyone knows that there are

railways everywhere now?”

But Princess Myakaya did not agree, and the Princess Tverskaya’s

opinion annoyed her indeed.

“It’s all very well for you to talk,” said she, “when you have I don’t

know how many millions; but I am very glad when my husband goes on a

revising tour in the summer. It’s very good for him and pleasant

traveling about, and it’s a settled arrangement for me to keep a

carriage and coachman on the money.”

On his way to the remote provinces Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped for

three days at Moscow.

The day after his arrival he was driving back from calling on the

governor-general. At the crossroads by Gazetoy Place, where there are

always crowds of carriages and sledges, Alexey Alexandrovitch suddenly

heard his name called out in such a loud and cheerful voice that he

could not help looking round. At the corner of the pavement, in a

short, stylish overcoat and a low-crowned fashionable hat, jauntily

askew, with a smile that showed a gleam of white teeth and red lips,

stood Stepan Arkadyevitch, radiant, young, and beaming. He called him

vigorously and urgently, and insisted on his stopping. He had one arm

on the window of a carriage that was stopping at the corner, and out of

the window were thrust the heads of a lady in a velvet hat, and two

children. Stepan Arkadyevitch was smiling and beckoning to his

brother-in-law. The lady smiled a kindly smile too, and she too waved

her hand to Alexey Alexandrovitch. It was Dolly with her children.

Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to see anyone in Moscow, and least

of all his wife’s brother. He raised his hat and would have driven on,

but Stepan Arkadyevitch told his coachman to stop, and ran across the

snow to him.

“Well, what a shame not to have let us know! Been here long? I was at

Dussots’ yesterday and saw ‘Karenin’ on the visitors’ list, but it

never entered my head that it was you,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,

sticking his head in at the window of the carriage, “or I should have

looked you up. I am glad to see you!” he said, knocking one foot

against the other to shake the snow off. “What a shame of you not to

let us know!” he repeated.

“I had no time; I am very busy,” Alexey Alexandrovitch responded dryly.

“Come to my wife, she does so want to see you.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch unfolded the rug in which his frozen feet were

wrapped, and getting out of his carriage made his way over the snow to

Darya Alexandrovna.

“Why, Alexey Alexandrovitch, what are you cutting us like this for?”

said Dolly, smiling.

“I was very busy. Delighted to see you!” he said in a tone clearly

indicating that he was annoyed by it. “How are you?”

“Tell me, how is my darling Anna?”

Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled something and would have gone on. But

Stepan Arkadyevitch stopped him.

“I tell you what we’ll do tomorrow. Dolly, ask him to dinner. We’ll ask

Koznishev and Pestsov, so as to entertain him with our Moscow

celebrities.”

“Yes, please, do come,” said Dolly; “we will expect you at five, or six

o’clock, if you like. How is my darling Anna? How long....”

“She is quite well,” Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled, frowning.

“Delighted!” and he moved away towards his carriage.

“You will come?” Dolly called after him.

Alexey Alexandrovitch said something which Dolly could not catch in the

noise of the moving carriages.

“I shall come round tomorrow!” Stepan Arkadyevitch shouted to him.

Alexey Alexandrovitch got into his carriage, and buried himself in it

so as neither to see nor be seen.

“Queer fish!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch to his wife, and glancing at his

watch, he made a motion of his hand before his face, indicating a

caress to his wife and children, and walked jauntily along the

pavement.

“Stiva! Stiva!” Dolly called, reddening.

He turned round.

“I must get coats, you know, for Grisha and Tanya. Give me the money.”

“Never mind; you tell them I’ll pay the bill!” and he vanished, nodding

genially to an acquaintance who drove by.

Chapter 7

The next day was Sunday. Stepan Arkadyevitch went to the Grand Theater

to a rehearsal of the ballet, and gave Masha Tchibisova, a pretty

dancing-girl whom he had just taken under his protection, the coral

necklace he had promised her the evening before, and behind the scenes

in the dim daylight of the theater, managed to kiss her pretty little

face, radiant over her present. Besides the gift of the necklace he

wanted to arrange with her about meeting after the ballet. After

explaining that he could not come at the beginning of the ballet, he

promised he would come for the last act and take her to supper. From

the theater Stepan Arkadyevitch drove to Ohotny Row, selected himself

the fish and asparagus for dinner, and by twelve o’clock was at

Dussots’, where he had to see three people, luckily all staying at the

same hotel: Levin, who had recently come back from abroad and was

staying there; the new head of his department, who had just been

promoted to that position, and had come on a tour of revision to

Moscow; and his brother-in-law, Karenin, whom he must see, so as to be

sure of bringing him to dinner.

Stepan Arkadyevitch liked dining, but still better he liked to give a

dinner, small, but very choice, both as regards the food and drink and

as regards the selection of guests. He particularly liked the program

of that day’s dinner. There would be fresh perch, asparagus, and _la

pièce de resistance_—first-rate, but quite plain, roast beef, and wines

to suit: so much for the eating and drinking. Kitty and Levin would be

of the party, and that this might not be obtrusively evident, there

would be a girl cousin too, and young Shtcherbatsky, and _la pièce de

resistance_ among the guests—Sergey Koznishev and Alexey

Alexandrovitch. Sergey Ivanovitch was a Moscow man, and a philosopher;

Alexey Alexandrovitch a Petersburger, and a practical politician. He

was asking, too, the well-known eccentric enthusiast, Pestsov, a

liberal, a great talker, a musician, an historian, and the most

delightfully youthful person of fifty, who would be a sauce or garnish

for Koznishev and Karenin. He would provoke them and set them off.

The second installment for the forest had been received from the

merchant and was not yet exhausted; Dolly had been very amiable and

good-humored of late, and the idea of the dinner pleased Stepan

Arkadyevitch from every point of view. He was in the most light-hearted

mood. There were two circumstances a little unpleasant, but these two

circumstances were drowned in the sea of good-humored gaiety which

flooded the soul of Stepan Arkadyevitch. These two circumstances were:

first, that on meeting Alexey Alexandrovitch the day before in the

street he had noticed that he was cold and reserved with him, and

putting the expression of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face and the fact

that he had not come to see them or let them know of his arrival with

the rumors he had heard about Anna and Vronsky, Stepan Arkadyevitch

guessed that something was wrong between the husband and wife.

That was one disagreeable thing. The other slightly disagreeable fact

was that the new head of his department, like all new heads, had the

reputation already of a terrible person, who got up at six o’clock in

the morning, worked like a horse, and insisted on his subordinates

working in the same way. Moreover, this new head had the further

reputation of being a bear in his manners, and was, according to all

reports, a man of a class in all respects the opposite of that to which

his predecessor had belonged, and to which Stepan Arkadyevitch had

hitherto belonged himself. On the previous day Stepan Arkadyevitch had

appeared at the office in a uniform, and the new chief had been very

affable and had talked to him as to an acquaintance. Consequently

Stepan Arkadyevitch deemed it his duty to call upon him in his

non-official dress. The thought that the new chief might not tender him

a warm reception was the other unpleasant thing. But Stepan

Arkadyevitch instinctively felt that everything would _come round_ all

right. “They’re all people, all men, like us poor sinners; why be nasty

and quarrelsome?” he thought as he went into the hotel.

“Good-day, Vassily,” he said, walking into the corridor with his hat

cocked on one side, and addressing a footman he knew; “why, you’ve let

your whiskers grow! Levin, number seven, eh? Take me up, please. And

find out whether Count Anitchkin” (this was the new head) “is

receiving.”

“Yes, sir,” Vassily responded, smiling. “You’ve not been to see us for

a long while.”

“I was here yesterday, but at the other entrance. Is this number

seven?”

Levin was standing with a peasant from Tver in the middle of the room,

measuring a fresh bearskin, when Stepan Arkadyevitch went in.

“What! you killed him?” cried Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Well done! A

she-bear? How are you, Arhip!”

He shook hands with the peasant and sat down on the edge of a chair,

without taking off his coat and hat.

“Come, take off your coat and stay a little,” said Levin, taking his

hat.

“No, I haven’t time; I’ve only looked in for a tiny second,” answered

Stepan Arkadyevitch. He threw open his coat, but afterwards did take it

off, and sat on for a whole hour, talking to Levin about hunting and

the most intimate subjects.

“Come, tell me, please, what you did abroad? Where have you been?” said

Stepan Arkadyevitch, when the peasant had gone.

“Oh, I stayed in Germany, in Prussia, in France, and in England—not in

the capitals, but in the manufacturing towns, and saw a great deal that

was new to me. And I’m glad I went.”

“Yes, I knew your idea of the solution of the labor question.”

“Not a bit: in Russia there can be no labor question. In Russia the

question is that of the relation of the working people to the land;

though the question exists there too—but there it’s a matter of

repairing what’s been ruined, while with us....”

Stepan Arkadyevitch listened attentively to Levin.

“Yes, yes!” he said, “it’s very possible you’re right. But I’m glad

you’re in good spirits, and are hunting bears, and working, and

interested. Shtcherbatsky told me another story—he met you—that you

were in such a depressed state, talking of nothing but death....”

“Well, what of it? I’ve not given up thinking of death,” said Levin.

“It’s true that it’s high time I was dead; and that all this is

nonsense. It’s the truth I’m telling you. I do value my idea and my

work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours

is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet.

And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it’s all

dust and ashes.”

“But all that’s as old as the hills, my boy!”

“It is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then somehow

everything becomes of no consequence. When you understand that you will

die tomorrow, if not today, and nothing will be left, then everything

is so unimportant! And I consider my idea very important, but it turns

out really to be as unimportant too, even if it were carried out, as

doing for that bear. So one goes on living, amusing oneself with

hunting, with work—anything so as not to think of death!”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled a subtle affectionate smile as he listened

to Levin.

“Well, of course! Here you’ve come round to my point. Do you remember

you attacked me for seeking enjoyment in life? Don’t be so severe, O

moralist!”

“No; all the same, what’s fine in life is....” Levin hesitated—“oh, I

don’t know. All I know is that we shall soon be dead.”

“Why so soon?”

“And do you know, there’s less charm in life, when one thinks of death,

but there’s more peace.”

“On the contrary, the finish is always the best. But I must be going,”

said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up for the tenth time.

“Oh, no, stay a bit!” said Levin, keeping him. “Now, when shall we see

each other again? I’m going tomorrow.”

“I’m a nice person! Why, that’s just what I came for! You simply must

come to dinner with us today. Your brother’s coming, and Karenin, my

brother-in-law.”

“You don’t mean to say he’s here?” said Levin, and he wanted to inquire

about Kitty. He had heard at the beginning of the winter that she was

at Petersburg with her sister, the wife of the diplomat, and he did not

know whether she had come back or not; but he changed his mind and did

not ask. “Whether she’s coming or not, I don’t care,” he said to

himself.

“So you’ll come?”

“Of course.”

“At five o’clock, then, and not evening dress.”

And Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and went down below to the new head of

his department. Instinct had not misled Stepan Arkadyevitch. The

terrible new head turned out to be an extremely amenable person, and

Stepan Arkadyevitch lunched with him and stayed on, so that it was four

o’clock before he got to Alexey Alexandrovitch.

Chapter 8

Alexey Alexandrovitch, on coming back from church service, had spent

the whole morning indoors. He had two pieces of business before him

that morning; first, to receive and send on a deputation from the

native tribes which was on its way to Petersburg, and now at Moscow;

secondly, to write the promised letter to the lawyer. The deputation,

though it had been summoned at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s instigation, was

not without its discomforting and even dangerous aspect, and he was

glad he had found it in Moscow. The members of this deputation had not

the slightest conception of their duty and the part they were to play.

They naïvely believed that it was their business to lay before the

commission their needs and the actual condition of things, and to ask

assistance of the government, and utterly failed to grasp that some of

their statements and requests supported the contention of the enemy’s

side, and so spoiled the whole business. Alexey Alexandrovitch was

busily engaged with them for a long while, drew up a program for them

from which they were not to depart, and on dismissing them wrote a

letter to Petersburg for the guidance of the deputation. He had his

chief support in this affair in the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. She was a

specialist in the matter of deputations, and no one knew better than

she how to manage them, and put them in the way they should go. Having

completed this task, Alexey Alexandrovitch wrote the letter to the

lawyer. Without the slightest hesitation he gave him permission to act

as he might judge best. In the letter he enclosed three of Vronsky’s

notes to Anna, which were in the portfolio he had taken away.

Since Alexey Alexandrovitch had left home with the intention of not

returning to his family again, and since he had been at the lawyer’s

and had spoken, though only to one man, of his intention, since

especially he had translated the matter from the world of real life to

the world of ink and paper, he had grown more and more used to his own

intention, and by now distinctly perceived the feasibility of its

execution.

He was sealing the envelope to the lawyer, when he heard the loud tones

of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s voice. Stepan Arkadyevitch was disputing with

Alexey Alexandrovitch’s servant, and insisting on being announced.

“No matter,” thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, “so much the better. I will

inform him at once of my position in regard to his sister, and explain

why it is I can’t dine with him.”

“Come in!” he said aloud, collecting his papers, and putting them in

the blotting-paper.

“There, you see, you’re talking nonsense, and he’s at home!” responded

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s voice, addressing the servant, who had refused to

let him in, and taking off his coat as he went, Oblonsky walked into

the room. “Well, I’m awfully glad I’ve found you! So I hope....” Stepan

Arkadyevitch began cheerfully.

“I cannot come,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly, standing and not

asking his visitor to sit down.

Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought to pass at once into those frigid

relations in which he ought to stand with the brother of a wife against

whom he was beginning a suit for divorce. But he had not taken into

account the ocean of kindliness brimming over in the heart of Stepan

Arkadyevitch.

Stepan Arkadyevitch opened wide his clear, shining eyes.

“Why can’t you? What do you mean?” he asked in perplexity, speaking in

French. “Oh, but it’s a promise. And we’re all counting on you.”

“I want to tell you that I can’t dine at your house, because the terms

of relationship which have existed between us must cease.”

“How? How do you mean? What for?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a

smile.

“Because I am beginning an action for divorce against your sister, my

wife. I ought to have....”