The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it

in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for

things past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he

tried to draw his visitors away to a third picture.

But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale. To Mihailov at that

moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of

money matters.

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

When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the picture of

Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and

what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange

to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and

while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all

importance for him. He began to look at his picture with all his own

full artist vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the

perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture—a conviction

essential to the most intense fervor, excluding all other interests—in

which alone he could work.

Christ’s foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his palette

and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the

figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even

noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had finished

the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited

for it. He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was

too much affected and saw everything too much. There was only one stage

in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was

possible. Today he was too much agitated. He would have covered the

picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and, smiling

blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John. At last, as it

were regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped the cloth, and,

exhausted but happy, went home.

Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, were particularly

lively and cheerful. They talked of Mihailov and his pictures. The word

_talent_, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude

apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an

expression for all the artist had gained from life, recurred

particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them

to sum up what they had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of

it. They said that there was no denying his talent, but that his talent

could not develop for want of education—the common defect of our

Russian artists. But the picture of the boys had imprinted itself on

their memories, and they were continually coming back to it. “What an

exquisite thing! How he has succeeded in it, and how simply! He doesn’t

even comprehend how good it is. Yes, I mustn’t let it slip; I must buy

it,” said Vronsky.

Chapter 13

Mihailov sold Vronsky his picture, and agreed to paint a portrait of

Anna. On the day fixed he came and began the work.

From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed everyone, especially

Vronsky, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty.

It was strange how Mihailov could have discovered just her

characteristic beauty. “One needs to know and love her as I have loved

her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul,” Vronsky

thought, though it was only from this portrait that he had himself

learned this sweetest expression of her soul. But the expression was so

true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it.

“I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything,” he

said of his own portrait of her, “and he just looked and painted it.

That’s where technique comes in.”

“That will come,” was the consoling reassurance given him by

Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent, and what was most

important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art. Golenishtchev’s

faith in Vronsky’s talent was propped up by his own need of Vronsky’s

sympathy and approval for his own articles and ideas, and he felt that

the praise and support must be mutual.

In another man’s house, and especially in Vronsky’s palazzo, Mihailov

was quite a different man from what he was in his studio. He behaved

with hostile courtesy, as though he were afraid of coming closer to

people he did not respect. He called Vronsky “your excellency,” and

notwithstanding Anna’s and Vronsky’s invitations, he would never stay

to dinner, nor come except for the sittings. Anna was even more

friendly to him than to other people, and was very grateful for her

portrait. Vronsky was more than cordial with him, and was obviously

interested to know the artist’s opinion of his picture. Golenishtchev

never let slip an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into

Mihailov. But Mihailov remained equally chilly to all of them. Anna was

aware from his eyes that he liked looking at her, but he avoided

conversation with her. Vronsky’s talk about his painting he met with

stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent when he was shown

Vronsky’s picture. He was unmistakably bored by Golenishtchev’s

conversation, and he did not attempt to oppose him.

Altogether Mihailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, as it were,

hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to know him

better; and they were glad when the sittings were over, and they were

left with a magnificent portrait in their possession, and he gave up

coming. Golenishtchev was the first to give expression to an idea that

had occurred to all of them, which was that Mihailov was simply jealous

of Vronsky.

“Not envious, let us say, since he has _talent_; but it annoys him that

a wealthy man of the highest society, and a count, too (you know they

all detest a title), can, without any particular trouble, do as well,

if not better, than he who has devoted all his life to it. And more

than all, it’s a question of culture, which he is without.”

Vronsky defended Mihailov, but at the bottom of his heart he believed

it, because in his view a man of a different, lower world would be sure

to be envious.

Anna’s portrait—the same subject painted from nature both by him and by

Mihailov—ought to have shown Vronsky the difference between him and

Mihailov; but he did not see it. Only after Mihailov’s portrait was

painted he left off painting his portrait of Anna, deciding that it was

now not needed. His picture of mediæval life he went on with. And he

himself, and Golenishtchev, and still more Anna, thought it very good,

because it was far more like the celebrated pictures they knew than

Mihailov’s picture.

Mihailov meanwhile, although Anna’s portrait greatly fascinated him,

was even more glad than they were when the sittings were over, and he

had no longer to listen to Golenishtchev’s disquisitions upon art, and

could forget about Vronsky’s painting. He knew that Vronsky could not

be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and

all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was

distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a

big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll

and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover

caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just

such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of

Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both

pitiable and offensive.

Vronsky’s interest in painting and the Middle Ages did not last long.

He had enough taste for painting to be unable to finish his picture.

The picture came to a standstill. He was vaguely aware that its

defects, inconspicuous at first, would be glaring if he were to go on

with it. The same experience befell him as Golenishtchev, who felt that

he had nothing to say, and continually deceived himself with the theory

that his idea was not yet mature, that he was working it out and

collecting materials. This exasperated and tortured Golenishtchev, but

Vronsky was incapable of deceiving and torturing himself, and even more

incapable of exasperation. With his characteristic decision, without

explanation or apology, he simply ceased working at painting.

But without this occupation, the life of Vronsky and of Anna, who

wondered at his loss of interest in it, struck them as intolerably

tedious in an Italian town. The palazzo suddenly seemed so obtrusively

old and dirty, the spots on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the

broken plaster on the cornices became so disagreeably obvious, and the

everlasting sameness of Golenishtchev, and the Italian professor and

the German traveler became so wearisome, that they had to make some

change. They resolved to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg

Vronsky intended to arrange a partition of the land with his brother,

while Anna meant to see her son. The summer they intended to spend on

Vronsky’s great family estate.

Chapter 14

Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in

the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams

disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy;

but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was

utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he

experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth,

happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that

little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating

smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where

one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must

row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was

only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very

delightful, was very difficult.

As a bachelor, when he had watched other people’s married life, seen

the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled

contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be,

he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms,

indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in

everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife

being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely

made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but

which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary

importance that it was useless to contend against. And Levin saw that

the organization of all these details was by no means so easy as he had

fancied before. Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact

conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured

domestic life as the happiest enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder

and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as he conceived the position,

to do his work, and to find repose from it in the happiness of love.

She ought to be beloved, and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot

that she too would want work. And he was surprised that she, his

poetic, exquisite Kitty, could, not merely in the first weeks, but even

in the first days of their married life, think, remember, and busy

herself about tablecloths, and furniture, about mattresses for

visitors, about a tray, about the cook, and the dinner, and so on.

While they were still engaged, he had been struck by the definiteness

with which she had declined the tour abroad and decided to go into the

country, as though she knew of something she wanted, and could still

think of something outside her love. This had jarred upon him then, and

now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him several times. But

he saw that this was essential for her. And, loving her as he did,

though he did not understand the reason of them, and jeered at these

domestic pursuits, he could not help admiring them. He jeered at the

way in which she arranged the furniture they had brought from Moscow;

rearranged their room; hung up curtains; prepared rooms for visitors; a

room for Dolly; saw after an abode for her new maid; ordered dinner of

the old cook; came into collision with Agafea Mihalovna, taking from

her the charge of the stores. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring

her, and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders, how

mournfully and tenderly Agafea Mihalovna shook her head over the young

mistress’s new arrangements. He saw that Kitty was extraordinarily

sweet when, laughing and crying, she came to tell him that her maid,

Masha, was used to looking upon her as her young lady, and so no one

obeyed her. It seemed to him sweet, but strange, and he thought it

would have been better without this.

He did not know how great a sense of change she was experiencing; she,

who at home had sometimes wanted some favorite dish, or sweets, without

the possibility of getting either, now could order what she liked, buy

pounds of sweets, spend as much money as she liked, and order any

puddings she pleased.

She was dreaming with delight now of Dolly’s coming to them with her

children, especially because she would order for the children their

favorite puddings and Dolly would appreciate all her new housekeeping.

She did not know herself why and wherefore, but the arranging of her

house had an irresistible attraction for her. Instinctively feeling the

approach of spring, and knowing that there would be days of rough

weather too, she built her nest as best she could, and was in haste at

the same time to build it and to learn how to do it.

This care for domestic details in Kitty, so opposed to Levin’s ideal of

exalted happiness, was at first one of the disappointments; and this

sweet care of her household, the aim of which he did not understand,

but could not help loving, was one of the new happy surprises.

Another disappointment and happy surprise came in their quarrels. Levin

could never have conceived that between him and his wife any relations

could arise other than tender, respectful and loving, and all at once

in the very early days they quarreled, so that she said he did not care

for her, that he cared for no one but himself, burst into tears, and

wrung her arms.

This first quarrel arose from Levin’s having gone out to a new

farmhouse and having been away half an hour too long, because he had

tried to get home by a short cut and had lost his way. He drove home

thinking of nothing but her, of her love, of his own happiness, and the

nearer he drew to home, the warmer was his tenderness for her. He ran

into the room with the same feeling, with an even stronger feeling than

he had had when he reached the Shtcherbatskys’ house to make his offer.

And suddenly he was met by a lowering expression he had never seen in

her. He would have kissed her; she pushed him away.

“What is it?”

“You’ve been enjoying yourself,” she began, trying to be calm and

spiteful. But as soon as she opened her mouth, a stream of reproach, of

senseless jealousy, of all that had been torturing her during that half

hour which she had spent sitting motionless at the window, burst from

her. It was only then, for the first time, that he clearly understood

what he had not understood when he led her out of the church after the

wedding. He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he

did not know where he ended and she began. He felt this from the

agonizing sensation of division that he experienced at that instant. He

was offended for the first instant, but the very same second he felt

that he could not be offended by her, that she was himself. He felt for

the first moment as a man feels when, having suddenly received a

violent blow from behind, he turns round, angry and eager to avenge

himself, to look for his antagonist, and finds that it is he himself

who has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry

with, and that he must put up with and try to soothe the pain.

Never afterwards did he feel it with such intensity, but this first

time he could not for a long while get over it. His natural feeling

urged him to defend himself, to prove to her she was wrong; but to

prove her wrong would mean irritating her still more and making the

rupture greater that was the cause of all his suffering. One habitual

feeling impelled him to get rid of the blame and to pass it on to her.

Another feeling, even stronger, impelled him as quickly as possible to

smooth over the rupture without letting it grow greater. To remain

under such undeserved reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by

justifying himself was worse still. Like a man half-awake in an agony

of pain, he wanted to tear out, to fling away the aching place, and

coming to his senses, he felt that the aching place was himself. He

could do nothing but try to help the aching place to bear it, and this

he tried to do.

They made peace. She, recognizing that she was wrong, though she did

not say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new, redoubled

happiness in their love. But that did not prevent such quarrels from

happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the most unexpected and

trivial grounds. These quarrels frequently arose from the fact that

they did not yet know what was of importance to each other and that all

this early period they were both often in a bad temper. When one was in

a good temper, and the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken;

but when both happened to be in an ill-humor, quarrels sprang up from

such incomprehensibly trifling causes, that they could never remember

afterwards what they had quarreled about. It is true that when they

were both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was redoubled. But

still this first period of their married life was a difficult time for

them.

During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of

tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by

which they were bound. Altogether their honeymoon—that is to say, the

month after their wedding—from which from tradition Levin expected so

much, was not merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the

memories of both as the bitterest and most humiliating period in their

lives. They both alike tried in later life to blot out from their

memories all the monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period,

when both were rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite

themselves.

It was only in the third month of their married life, after their

return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their

life began to go more smoothly.

Chapter 15

They had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone. He was

sitting at the writing-table in his study, writing. She, wearing the

dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days of their married

life, and put on again today, a dress particularly remembered and loved

by him, was sitting on the sofa, the same old-fashioned leather sofa

which had always stood in the study in Levin’s father’s and

grandfather’s days. She was sewing at _broderie anglaise_. He thought

and wrote, never losing the happy consciousness of her presence. His

work, both on the land and on the book, in which the principles of the

new land system were to be laid down, had not been abandoned; but just

as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed to him petty and

trivial in comparison with the darkness that overspread all life, now

they seemed as unimportant and petty in comparison with the life that

lay before him suffused with the brilliant light of happiness. He went

on with his work, but he felt now that the center of gravity of his

attention had passed to something else, and that consequently he looked

at his work quite differently and more clearly. Formerly this work had

been for him an escape from life. Formerly he had felt that without

this work his life would be too gloomy. Now these pursuits were

necessary for him that life might not be too uniformly bright. Taking

up his manuscript, reading through what he had written, he found with

pleasure that the work was worth his working at. Many of his old ideas

seemed to him superfluous and extreme, but many blanks became distinct

to him when he reviewed the whole thing in his memory. He was writing

now a new chapter on the causes of the present disastrous condition of

agriculture in Russia. He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises

not merely from the anomalous distribution of landed property and

misdirected reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to

this result was the civilization from without abnormally grafted upon

Russia, especially facilities of communication, as railways, leading to

centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and the consequent

development of manufactures, credit and its accompaniment of

speculation—all to the detriment of agriculture. It seemed to him that

in a normal development of wealth in a state all these phenomena would

arise only when a considerable amount of labor had been put into

agriculture, when it had come under regular, or at least definite,

conditions; that the wealth of a country ought to increase

proportionally, and especially in such a way that other sources of

wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that in harmony with a certain

stage of agriculture there should be means of communication

corresponding to it, and that in our unsettled condition of the land,

railways, called into being by political and not by economic needs,

were premature, and instead of promoting agriculture, as was expected

of them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting the

development of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its progress;

and that just as the one-sided and premature development of one organ

in an animal would hinder its general development, so in the general

development of wealth in Russia, credit, facilities of communication,

manufacturing activity, indubitably necessary in Europe, where they had

arisen in their proper time, had with us only done harm, by throwing

into the background the chief question calling for settlement—the

question of the organization of agriculture.

While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally cordial

her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with great want

of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. “He’s

jealous,” she thought. “Goodness! how sweet and silly he is! He’s

jealous of me! If he knew that I think no more of them than of Piotr

the cook,” she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a feeling

of possession strange to herself. “Though it’s a pity to take him from

his work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he

feel I’m looking at him? I wish he’d turn round ... I’ll _will_ him

to!” and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence

of her gaze.

“Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of

prosperity,” he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was

looking at him and smiling, he looked round.

“Well?” he queried, smiling, and getting up.

“He looked round,” she thought.

“It’s nothing; I wanted you to look round,” she said, watching him, and

trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.

“How happy we are alone together!—I am, that is,” he said, going up to

her with a radiant smile of happiness.

“I’m just as happy. I’ll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow.”

“And what were you thinking about?”

“I? I was thinking.... No, no, go along, go on writing; don’t break

off,” she said, pursing up her lips, “and I must cut out these little

holes now, do you see?”

She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.

“No; tell me, what was it?” he said, sitting down beside her and

watching the tiny scissors moving round.

“Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the

back of your head.”

“Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It’s unnatural, too

good,” he said, kissing her hand.

“I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it

seems to me.”

“And you’ve got a little curl loose,” he said, carefully turning her

head round.

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

Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another

like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready.

“Have they come from the town?” Levin asked Kouzma.

“They’ve just come; they’re unpacking the things.”

“Come quickly,” she said to him as she went out of the study, “or else

I shall read your letters without you.”

Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio

bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the

elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin

smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those

thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something

shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his

present mode of life. “It’s not right to go on like this,” he thought.

“It’ll soon be three months, and I’m doing next to nothing. Today,

almost for the first time, I set to work seriously, and what happened?

I did nothing but begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I

have almost given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all

to look after things. Either I am loath to leave her, or I see she’s

dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing

much, somehow didn’t count, but that after marriage, life began in

earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my

time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won’t do; I must begin. Of

course, it’s not her fault. She’s not to blame in any way. I ought

myself to be firmer, to maintain my masculine independence of action;

or else I shall get into such ways, and she’ll get used to them too....

Of course she’s not to blame,” he told himself.

But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone

else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground

of his dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Levin’s mind that she

herself was not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but

what was to blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous.

(“That fool Tcharsky: she wanted, I know, to stop him, but didn’t know

how to.”) “Yes, apart from her interest in the house (that she has),

apart from dress and _broderie anglaise_, she has no serious interests.

No interest in her work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music,

though she’s rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and

is perfectly satisfied.” Levin, in his heart, censured this, and did

not as yet understand that she was preparing for that period of

activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the wife

of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse,

and bring up children. He knew not that she was instinctively aware of

this, and preparing herself for this time of terrible toil, did not

reproach herself for the moments of carelessness and happiness in her

love that she enjoyed now while gaily building her nest for the future.

Chapter 16

When Levin went upstairs, his wife was sitting near the new silver

samovar behind the new tea service, and, having settled old Agafea

Mihalovna at a little table with a full cup of tea, was reading a

letter from Dolly, with whom they were in continual and frequent

correspondence.

“You see, your good lady’s settled me here, told me to sit a bit with

her,” said Agafea Mihalovna, smiling affectionately at Kitty.

In these words of Agafea Mihalovna, Levin read the final act of the

drama which had been enacted of late between her and Kitty. He saw

that, in spite of Agafea Mihalovna’s feelings being hurt by a new

mistress taking the reins of government out of her hands, Kitty had yet

conquered her and made her love her.

“Here, I opened your letter too,” said Kitty, handing him an illiterate

letter. “It’s from that woman, I think, your brother’s....” she said.

“I did not read it through. This is from my people and from Dolly.

Fancy! Dolly took Tanya and Grisha to a children’s ball at the

Sarmatskys’: Tanya was a French marquise.”

But Levin did not hear her. Flushing, he took the letter from Marya

Nikolaevna, his brother’s former mistress, and began to read it. This

was the second letter he had received from Marya Nikolaevna. In the

first letter, Marya Nikolaevna wrote that his brother had sent her away

for no fault of hers, and, with touching simplicity, added that though

she was in want again, she asked for nothing, and wished for nothing,

but was only tormented by the thought that Nikolay Dmitrievitch would

come to grief without her, owing to the weak state of his health, and

begged his brother to look after him. Now she wrote quite differently.

She had found Nikolay Dmitrievitch, had again made it up with him in

Moscow, and had moved with him to a provincial town, where he had

received a post in the government service. But that he had quarreled

with the head official, and was on his way back to Moscow, only he had

been taken so ill on the road that it was doubtful if he would ever

leave his bed again, she wrote. “It’s always of you he has talked, and,

besides, he has no more money left.”

“Read this; Dolly writes about you,” Kitty was beginning, with a smile;

but she stopped suddenly, noticing the changed expression on her

husband’s face.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“She writes to me that Nikolay, my brother, is at death’s door. I shall

go to him.”

Kitty’s face changed at once. Thoughts of Tanya as a marquise, of

Dolly, all had vanished.

“When are you going?” she said.

“Tomorrow.”

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

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

“How do you mean?” offended that he should seem to take her suggestion

unwillingly and with vexation. “Why shouldn’t I go? I shan’t be in your

way. I....”

“I’m going because my brother is dying,” said Levin. “Why should

you....”

“Why? For the same reason as you.”

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

dull by herself,” thought Levin. And this lack of candor in a matter of

such gravity infuriated him.

“It’s out of the question,” he said sternly.

Agafea Mihalovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently put

down her cup and withdrew. Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in

which her husband had said the last words wounded her, especially

because he evidently did not believe what she had said.

“I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly

come,” she said hastily and wrathfully. “Why out of the question? Why

do you say it’s out of the question?”

“Because it’ll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to

all sorts of hotels. You would be a hindrance to me,” said Levin,

trying to be cool.

“Not at all. I don’t want anything. Where you can go, I can....”

“Well, for one thing then, because this woman’s there whom you can’t

meet.”

“I don’t know and don’t care to know who’s there and what. I know that

my husband’s brother is dying and my husband is going to him, and I go

with my husband too....”

“Kitty! Don’t get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of

such importance that I can’t bear to think that you should bring in a

feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you’ll be

dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little.”

“There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me,” she said with

tears of wounded pride and fury. “I didn’t mean, it wasn’t weakness, it

wasn’t ... I feel that it’s my duty to be with my husband when he’s in

trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to

understand....”

“No; this is awful! To be such a slave!” cried Levin, getting up, and

unable to restrain his anger any longer. But at the same second he felt

that he was beating himself.

“Then why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you, if you

regret it?” she said, getting up and running away into the

drawing-room.

When he went to her, she was sobbing.

He began to speak, trying to find words not to dissuade but simply to

soothe her. But she did not heed him, and would not agree to anything.

He bent down to her and took her hand, which resisted him. He kissed

her hand, kissed her hair, kissed her hand again—still she was silent.

But when he took her face in both his hands and said “Kitty!” she

suddenly recovered herself, and began to cry, and they were reconciled.

It was decided that they should go together the next day. Levin told

his wife that he believed she wanted to go simply in order to be of

use, agreed that Marya Nikolaevna’s being with his brother did not make

her going improper, but he set off at the bottom of his heart

dissatisfied both with her and with himself. He was dissatisfied with

her for being unable to make up her mind to let him go when it was

necessary (and how strange it was for him to think that he, so lately

hardly daring to believe in such happiness as that she could love

him—now was unhappy because she loved him too much!), and he was

dissatisfied with himself for not showing more strength of will. Even

greater was the feeling of disagreement at the bottom of his heart as

to her not needing to consider the woman who was with his brother, and

he thought with horror of all the contingencies they might meet with.

The mere idea of his wife, his Kitty, being in the same room with a

common wench, set him shuddering with horror and loathing.

Chapter 17

The hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Levin was lying ill was

one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on the newest

model of modern improvements, with the best intentions of cleanliness,

comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the public that patronizes

them, are with astounding rapidity transformed into filthy taverns with

a pretension of modern improvement that only makes them worse than the

old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached

that stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry,

supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery, dark,

and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in a filthy

frock coat, and the common dining-room with a dusty bouquet of wax

flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and disorder everywhere,

and at the same time the sort of modern up-to-date self-complacent

railway uneasiness of this hotel, aroused a most painful feeling in

Levin after their fresh young life, especially because the impression

of falsity made by the hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited

them.

As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what price they

wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one decent room for them;

one decent room had been taken by the inspector of railroads, another

by a lawyer from Moscow, a third by Princess Astafieva from the

country. There remained only one filthy room, next to which they

promised that another should be empty by the evening. Feeling angry

with his wife because what he had expected had come to pass, which was

that at the moment of arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and

anxiety to know how his brother was getting on, he should have to be

seeing after her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Levin

conducted her to the room assigned them.

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

He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over Marya

Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared to go in to

see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in Moscow; the same

woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the same good-naturedly

stupid, pockmarked face, only a little plumper.

“Well, how is he? how is he?”

“Very bad. He can’t get up. He has kept expecting you. He.... Are you

... with your wife?”

Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was confused her,

but she immediately enlightened him.

“I’ll go away. I’ll go down to the kitchen,” she brought out. “Nikolay

Dmitrievitch will be delighted. He heard about it, and knows your lady,

and remembers her abroad.”

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

make.

“Come along, come along to him!” he said.

But as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty peeped

out. Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger with his wife, who had

put herself and him in such a difficult position; but Marya Nikolaevna

crimsoned still more. She positively shrank together and flushed to the

point of tears, and clutching the ends of her apron in both hands,

twisted them in her red fingers without knowing what to say and what to

do.

For the first instant Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity in the

eyes with which Kitty looked at this awful woman, so incomprehensible

to her; but it lasted only a single instant.

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

“But one can’t go on talking in the passage like this!” Levin said,

looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that instant

across the corridor, as though about his affairs.

“Well then, come in,” said Kitty, turning to Marya Nikolaevna, who had

recovered herself, but noticing her husband’s face of dismay, “or go

on; go, and then come for me,” she said, and went back into the room.

Levin went to his brother’s room. He had not in the least expected what

he saw and felt in his brother’s room. He had expected to find him in

the same state of self-deception which he had heard was so frequent

with the consumptive, and which had struck him so much during his

brother’s visit in the autumn. He had expected to find the physical

signs of the approach of death more marked—greater weakness, greater

emaciation, but still almost the same condition of things. He had

expected himself to feel the same distress at the loss of the brother

he loved and the same horror in face of death as he had felt then, only

in a greater degree. And he had prepared himself for this; but he found

something utterly different.

In a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls filthy with

spittle, and conversation audible through the thin partition from the

next room, in a stifling atmosphere saturated with impurities, on a

bedstead moved away from the wall, there lay covered with a quilt, a

body. One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as

a rake-handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the thin, long

bone of the arm smooth from the beginning to the middle. The head lay

sideways on the pillow. Levin could see the scanty locks wet with sweat

on the temples and tense, transparent-looking forehead.

“It cannot be that that fearful body was my brother Nikolay?” thought

Levin. But he went closer, saw the face, and doubt became impossible.

In spite of the terrible change in the face, Levin had only to glance

at those eager eyes raised at his approach, only to catch the faint

movement of the mouth under the sticky mustache, to realize the

terrible truth that this death-like body was his living brother.

The glittering eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at his brother as

he drew near. And immediately this glance established a living

relationship between living men. Levin immediately felt the reproach in

the eyes fixed on him, and felt remorse at his own happiness.

When Konstantin took him by the hand, Nikolay smiled. The smile was

faint, scarcely perceptible, and in spite of the smile the stern

expression of the eyes was unchanged.

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

“Yes ... no,” said Levin, hesitating over his words. “How was it you

didn’t let me know before, that is, at the time of my wedding? I made

inquiries in all directions.”

He had to talk so as not to be silent, and he did not know what to say,

especially as his brother made no reply, and simply stared without

dropping his eyes, and evidently penetrated to the inner meaning of

each word. Levin told his brother that his wife had come with him.

Nikolay expressed pleasure, but said he was afraid of frightening her

by his condition. A silence followed. Suddenly Nikolay stirred, and

began to say something. Levin expected something of peculiar gravity

and importance from the expression of his face, but Nikolay began

speaking of his health. He found fault with the doctor, regretting he

had not a celebrated Moscow doctor. Levin saw that he still hoped.

Seizing the first moment of silence, Levin got up, anxious to escape,

if only for an instant, from his agonizing emotion, and said that he

would go and fetch his wife.

“Very well, and I’ll tell her to tidy up here. It’s dirty and stinking

here, I expect. Marya! clear up the room,” the sick man said with

effort. “Oh, and when you’ve cleared up, go away yourself,” he added,

looking inquiringly at his brother.

Levin made no answer. Going out into the corridor, he stopped short. He

had said he would fetch his wife, but now, taking stock of the emotion

he was feeling, he decided that he would try on the contrary to

persuade her not to go in to the sick man. “Why should she suffer as I

am suffering?” he thought.

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

“Oh, it’s awful, it’s awful! What did you come for?” said Levin.

Kitty was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and ruefully at her

husband; then she went up and took him by the elbow with both hands.

“Kostya! take me to him; it will be easier for us to bear it together.

You only take me, take me to him, please, and go away,” she said. “You

must understand that for me to see you, and not to see him, is far more

painful. There I might be a help to you and to him. Please, let me!”

she besought her husband, as though the happiness of her life depended

on it.

Levin was obliged to agree, and regaining his composure, and completely

forgetting about Marya Nikolaevna by now, he went again in to his

brother with Kitty.

Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband, showing him

a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sick-room, and,

turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible

steps she went quickly to the sick man’s bedside, and going up so that

he had not to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young

hand the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with

that soft eagerness, sympathetic and not jarring, which is peculiar to

women.

“We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden,” she said. “You

never thought I was to be your sister?”

“You would not have recognized me?” he said, with a radiant smile at

her entrance.

“Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has passed

that Kostya has not mentioned you, and been anxious.”

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

Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his face the

stern, reproachful expression of the dying man’s envy of the living.

“I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here,” she said, turning

away from his fixed stare, and looking about the room. “We must ask

about another room,” she said to her husband, “so that we might be

nearer.”

Chapter 18

Levin could not look calmly at his brother; he could not himself be

natural and calm in his presence. When he went in to the sick man, his

eyes and his attention were unconsciously dimmed, and he did not see

and did not distinguish the details of his brother’s position. He smelt

the awful odor, saw the dirt, disorder, and miserable condition, and

heard the groans, and felt that nothing could be done to help. It never

entered his head to analyze the details of the sick man’s situation, to

consider how that body was lying under the quilt, how those emaciated

legs and thighs and spine were lying huddled up, and whether they could

not be made more comfortable, whether anything could not be done to

make things, if not better, at least less bad. It made his blood run

cold when he began to think of all these details. He was absolutely

convinced that nothing could be done to prolong his brother’s life or

to relieve his suffering. But a sense of his regarding all aid as out

of the question was felt by the sick man, and exasperated him. And this

made it still more painful for Levin. To be in the sick-room was agony

to him, not to be there still worse. And he was continually, on various

pretexts, going out of the room, and coming in again, because he was

unable to remain alone.

But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On seeing the

sick man, she pitied him. And pity in her womanly heart did not arouse

at all that feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her

husband, but a desire to act, to find out all the details of his state,

and to remedy them. And since she had not the slightest doubt that it

was her duty to help him, she had no doubt either that it was possible,

and immediately set to work. The very details, the mere thought of

which reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention.

She sent for the doctor, sent to the chemist’s, set the maid who had

come with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub; she

herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid something

under the quilt. Something was by her directions brought into the

sick-room, something else was carried out. She herself went several

times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor, got

out and brought in sheets, pillow cases, towels, and shirts.

The waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the dining

hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to her

summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them

with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Levin did

not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be of any good to

the patient. Above all, he feared the patient would be angry at it. But

the sick man, though he seemed and was indifferent about it, was not

angry, but only abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what

she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty had

sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the sick man at the

instant when, by Kitty’s directions, they were changing his linen. The

long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent shoulder blades

and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the

waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the night shirt, and could

not get the long, limp arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door

after Levin, was not looking that way; but the sick man groaned, and

she moved rapidly towards him.

“Make haste,” she said.

“Oh, don’t you come,” said the sick man angrily. “I’ll do it my

myself....”

“What say?” queried Marya Nikolaevna. But Kitty heard and saw he was

ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.

“I’m not looking, I’m not looking!” she said, putting the arm in.

“Marya Nikolaevna, you come this side, you do it,” she added.

“Please go for me, there’s a little bottle in my small bag,” she said,

turning to her husband, “you know, in the side pocket; bring it,

please, and meanwhile they’ll finish clearing up here.”

Returning with the bottle, Levin found the sick man settled comfortably

and everything about him completely changed. The heavy smell was

replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which Kitty with pouting

lips and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting through a little pipe.

There was no dust visible anywhere, a rug was laid by the bedside. On

the table stood medicine bottles and decanters tidily arranged, and the

linen needed was folded up there, and Kitty’s _broderie anglaise_. On

the other table by the patient’s bed there were candles and drink and

powders. The sick man himself, washed and combed, lay in clean sheets

on high raised pillows, in a clean night-shirt with a white collar

about his astoundingly thin neck, and with a new expression of hope

looked fixedly at Kitty.

The doctor brought by Levin, and found by him at the club, was not the

one who had been attending Nikolay Levin, as the patient was

dissatisfied with him. The new doctor took up a stethoscope and sounded

the patient, shook his head, prescribed medicine, and with extreme

minuteness explained first how to take the medicine and then what diet

was to be kept to. He advised eggs, raw or hardly cooked, and seltzer

water, with warm milk at a certain temperature. When the doctor had

gone away the sick man said something to his brother, of which Levin

could distinguish only the last words: “Your Katya.” By the expression

with which he gazed at her, Levin saw that he was praising her. He

called indeed to Katya, as he called her.

“I’m much better already,” he said. “Why, with you I should have got

well long ago. How nice it is!” he took her hand and drew it towards

his lips, but as though afraid she would dislike it he changed his

mind, let it go, and only stroked it. Kitty took his hand in both hers

and pressed it.

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

No one could make out what he said but Kitty; she alone understood. She

understood because she was all the while mentally keeping watch on what

he needed.

“On the other side,” she said to her husband, “he always sleeps on that

side. Turn him over, it’s so disagreeable calling the servants. I’m not

strong enough. Can you?” she said to Marya Nikolaevna.

“I’m afraid not,” answered Marya Nikolaevna.

Terrible as it was to Levin to put his arms round that terrible body,

to take hold of that under the quilt, of which he preferred to know

nothing, under his wife’s influence he made his resolute face that she

knew so well, and putting his arms into the bed took hold of the body,

but in spite of his own strength he was struck by the strange heaviness

of those powerless limbs. While he was turning him over, conscious of

the huge emaciated arm about his neck, Kitty swiftly and noiselessly

turned the pillow, beat it up and settled in it the sick man’s head,

smoothing back his hair, which was sticking again to his moist brow.

The sick man kept his brother’s hand in his own. Levin felt that he

meant to do something with his hand and was pulling it somewhere. Levin

yielded with a sinking heart: yes, he drew it to his mouth and kissed

it. Levin, shaking with sobs and unable to articulate a word, went out

of the room.

Chapter 19

“Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast

revealed them unto babes.” So Levin thought about his wife as he talked

to her that evening.

Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself “wise and

prudent.” He did not so consider himself, but he could not help knowing

that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he

could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with

all the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many

great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet

knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew

about it. Different as those two women were, Agafea Mihalovna and

Katya, as his brother Nikolay had called her, and as Levin particularly

liked to call her now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew,

without a shade of doubt, what sort of thing life was and what was

death, and though neither of them could have answered, and would even

not have understood the questions that presented themselves to Levin,

both had no doubt of the significance of this event, and were precisely

alike in their way of looking at it, which they shared with millions of

people. The proof that they knew for a certainty the nature of death

lay in the fact that they knew without a second of hesitation how to

deal with the dying, and were not frightened of them. Levin and other

men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death,

obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were

absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying. If Levin had

been alone now with his brother Nikolay, he would have looked at him

with terror, and with still greater terror waited, and would not have

known what else to do.

More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move.

To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible, to talk

of death and depressing subjects—also impossible. To be silent, also

impossible. “If I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am

afraid; if I don’t look at him, he’ll think I’m thinking of other

things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I’m

ashamed.” Kitty evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to

think about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew

something, and all went well. She told him about herself even and about

her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him and petted him, and

talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so then she must know.

The proof that her behavior and Agafea Mihalovna’s was not instinctive,

animal, irrational, was that apart from the physical treatment, the

relief of suffering, both Agafea Mihalovna and Kitty required for the

dying man something else more important than the physical treatment,

and something which had nothing in common with physical conditions.

Agafea Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: “Well, thank

God, he took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one

of us such a death.” Katya in just the same way, besides all her care

about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade

the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving

absolution.

On getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the

night, Levin sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to speak

of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to

do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on

the contrary, was more active than usual. She was even livelier than

usual. She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things,

and herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to

sprinkle them with Persian powder. She showed that alertness, that

swiftness of reflection which comes out in men before a battle, in

conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life—those moments

when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has

not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments.

Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o’clock

all their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such

a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the beds were made,

brushes, combs, looking-glasses were put out, table napkins were

spread.

Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now,

and it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She

arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing

shocking in it.

They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they

could not sleep, and did not even go to bed.

“I am very glad I persuaded him to receive extreme unction tomorrow,”

she said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding

looking-glass, combing her soft, fragrant hair with a fine comb. “I

have never seen it, but I know, mamma has told me, there are prayers

said for recovery.”

“Do you suppose he can possibly recover?” said Levin, watching a

slender tress at the back of her round little head that was continually

hidden when she passed the comb through the front.

“I asked the doctor; he said he couldn’t live more than three days. But

can they be sure? I’m very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him,” she

said, looking askance at her husband through her hair. “Anything is

possible,” she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was

always in her face when she spoke of religion.

Since their conversation about religion when they were engaged neither

of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed

all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on,

always with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite

of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was

as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that

he said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as

he would say about her _broderie anglaise_ that good people patch

holes, but that she cut them on purpose, and so on.

“Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to manage

all this,” said Levin. “And ... I must own I’m very, very glad you

came. You are such purity that....” He took her hand and did not kiss

it (to kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him

improper); he merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her

brightening eyes.

“It would have been miserable for you to be alone,” she said, and

lifting her hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure, twisted

her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. “No,” she

went on, “she did not know how.... Luckily, I learned a lot at Soden.”

“Surely there are not people there so ill?”

“Worse.”

“What’s so awful to me is that I can’t see him as he was when he was

young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did

not understand him then.”

“I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been

friends!” she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked

round at her husband, and tears came into her eyes.

“Yes, _might have been_,” he said mournfully. “He’s just one of those

people of whom they say they’re not for this world.”

“But we have many days before us; we must go to bed,” said Kitty,

glancing at her tiny watch.

Chapter 20

The next day the sick man received the sacrament and extreme unction.

During the ceremony Nikolay Levin prayed fervently. His great eyes,

fastened on the holy image that was set out on a card-table covered

with a colored napkin, expressed such passionate prayer and hope that

it was awful to Levin to see it. Levin knew that this passionate prayer

and hope would only make him feel more bitterly parting from the life

he so loved. Levin knew his brother and the workings of his intellect:

he knew that his unbelief came not from life being easier for him

without faith, but had grown up because step by step the contemporary

scientific interpretation of natural phenomena crushed out the

possibility of faith; and so he knew that his present return was not a

legitimate one, brought about by way of the same working of his

intellect, but simply a temporary, interested return to faith in a

desperate hope of recovery. Levin knew too that Kitty had strengthened

his hope by accounts of the marvelous recoveries she had heard of.

Levin knew all this; and it was agonizingly painful to him to behold

the supplicating, hopeful eyes and the emaciated wrist, lifted with

difficulty, making the sign of the cross on the tense brow, and the

prominent shoulders and hollow, gasping chest, which one could not feel

consistent with the life the sick man was praying for. During the

sacrament Levin did what he, an unbeliever, had done a thousand times.

He said, addressing God, “If Thou dost exist, make this man to recover”

(of course this same thing has been repeated many times), “and Thou

wilt save him and me.”

After extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better. He did

not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Kitty’s hand,

thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free from pain,

and that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised himself

when his soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly

ill as he was, obvious as it was at the first glance that he could not

recover, Levin and Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of

excitement, happy, though fearful of being mistaken.

“Is he better?”

“Yes, much.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“There’s nothing wonderful in it.”

“Anyway, he’s better,” they said in a whisper, smiling to one another.

This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into a

quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough. And

all at once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself. The

reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty and in

the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes.

Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as

though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a

bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and

the same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament

was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation of

the doctor’s words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.

“Is Katya not here?” he gasped, looking round while Levin reluctantly

assented to the doctor’s words. “No; so I can say it.... It was for her

sake I went through that farce. She’s so sweet; but you and I can’t

deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in,” he said, and, squeezing

the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it.

At eight o’clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea in

their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly. She was

pale, and her lips were quivering. “He is dying!” she whispered. “I’m

afraid will die this minute.”

Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow on the

bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.

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

“I feel I’m setting off,” Nikolay said with difficulty, but with

extreme distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did not

raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without their

reaching his brother’s face. “Katya, go away!” he added.

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

“I’m setting off,” he said again.

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

“Because I’m setting off,” he repeated, as though he had a liking for

the phrase. “It’s the end.”

Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.

“You had better lie down; you’d be easier,” she said.

“I shall lie down soon enough,” he pronounced slowly, “when I’m dead,”

he said sarcastically, wrathfully. “Well, you can lay me down if you

like.”

Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed at

his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but

the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one

thinking deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with him of

what it was that was happening to him now, but in spite of all his

mental efforts to go along with him he saw by the expression of that

calm, stern face that for the dying man all was growing clearer and

clearer that was still as dark as ever for Levin.

“Yes, yes, so,” the dying man articulated slowly at intervals. “Wait a

little.” He was silent. “Right!” he pronounced all at once

reassuringly, as though all were solved for him. “O Lord!” he murmured,

and sighed deeply.

Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. “They’re getting cold,” she whispered.

For a long while, a very long while it seemed to Levin, the sick man

lay motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he

sighed. Levin by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that,

with no mental effort, could he understand what it was that was

_right_. He could not even think of the problem of death itself, but

with no will of his own thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to

do next; closing the dead man’s eyes, dressing him, ordering the

coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly cold, and was not

conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother. If

he had any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was envy for the

knowledge the dying man had now that he could not have.

A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the end. But

the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin got up

to stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he caught the sound

of the dying man stirring.

“Don’t go away,” said Nikolay and held out his hand. Levin gave him

his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away.

With the dying man’s hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an

hour, another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He wondered

what Kitty was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the doctor

lived in a house of his own. He longed for food and for sleep. He

cautiously drew away his hand and felt the feet. The feet were cold,

but the sick man was still breathing. Levin tried again to move away on

tiptoe, but the sick man stirred again and said: “Don’t go.”

The dawn came; the sick man’s condition was unchanged. Levin stealthily

withdrew his hand, and without looking at the dying man, went off to

his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead of news of his

brother’s death which he expected, he learned that the sick man had

returned to his earlier condition. He had begun sitting up again,

coughing, had begun eating again, talking again, and again had ceased

to talk of death, again had begun to express hope of his recovery, and

had become more irritable and more gloomy than ever. No one, neither

his brother nor Kitty, could soothe him. He was angry with everyone,

and said nasty things to everyone, reproached everyone for his

sufferings, and insisted that they should get him a celebrated doctor

from Moscow. To all inquiries made him as to how he felt, he made the

same answer with an expression of vindictive reproachfulness, “I’m

suffering horribly, intolerably!”

The sick man was suffering more and more, especially from bedsores,

which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more and more angry

with everyone about him, blaming them for everything, and especially

for not having brought him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried in every

possible way to relieve him, to soothe him; but it was all in vain, and

Levin saw that she herself was exhausted both physically and morally,

though she would not admit it. The sense of death, which had been

evoked in all by his taking leave of life on the night when he had sent

for his brother, was broken up. Everyone knew that he must inevitably

die soon, that he was half dead already. Everyone wished for nothing

but that he should die as soon as possible, and everyone, concealing

this, gave him medicines, tried to find remedies and doctors, and

deceived him and themselves and each other. All this was falsehood,

disgusting, irreverent deceit. And owing to the bent of his character,

and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else did, Levin was

most painfully conscious of this deceit.

Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his

brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother, Sergey

Ivanovitch, and having received an answer from him, he read this letter

to the sick man. Sergey Ivanovitch wrote that he could not come

himself, and in touching terms he begged his brother’s forgiveness.

The sick man said nothing.

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

him?”

“No, not the least!” Nikolay answered, vexed at the question. “Tell him

to send me a doctor.”

Three more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the same

condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by everyone now

at the mere sight of him, by the waiters and the hotel-keeper and all

the people staying in the hotel, and the doctor and Marya Nikolaevna

and Levin and Kitty. The sick man alone did not express this feeling,

but on the contrary was furious at their not getting him doctors, and

went on taking medicine and talking of life. Only at rare moments, when

the opium gave him an instant’s relief from the never-ceasing pain, he

would sometimes, half asleep, utter what was ever more intense in his

heart than in all the others: “Oh, if it were only the end!” or: “When

will it be over?”

His sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and

prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not in

pain, there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of it, not a

limb, not a part of his body that did not ache and cause him agony.

Even the memories, the impressions, the thoughts of this body awakened

in him now the same aversion as the body itself. The sight of other

people, their remarks, his own reminiscences, everything was for him a

source of agony. Those about him felt this, and instinctively did not

allow themselves to move freely, to talk, to express their wishes

before him. All his life was merged in the one feeling of suffering and

desire to be rid of it.

There was evidently coming over him that revulsion that would make him

look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness. Hitherto each

individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger,

fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving

pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering received relief, and

the effort to relieve them only caused fresh suffering. And so all

desires were merged in one—the desire to be rid of all his sufferings

and their source, the body. But he had no words to express this desire

of deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit asked for

the satisfaction of desires which could not now be satisfied. “Turn me

over on the other side,” he would say, and immediately after he would

ask to be turned back again as before. “Give me some broth. Take away

the broth. Talk of something: why are you silent?” And directly they

began to talk he would close his eyes, and would show weariness,

indifference, and loathing.

On the tenth day from their arrival at the town, Kitty was unwell. She

suffered from headache and sickness, and she could not get up all the

morning.

The doctor opined that the indisposition arose from fatigue and

excitement, and prescribed rest.

After dinner, however, Kitty got up and went as usual with her work to

the sick man. He looked at her sternly when she came in, and smiled

contemptuously when she said she had been unwell. That day he was

continually blowing his nose, and groaning piteously.

“How do you feel?” she asked him.

“Worse,” he articulated with difficulty. “In pain!”

“In pain, where?”

“Everywhere.”

“It will be over today, you will see,” said Marya Nikolaevna. Though it

was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing Levin had noticed

was very keen, must have heard. Levin said hush to her, and looked

round at the sick man. Nikolay had heard; but these words produced no

effect on him. His eyes had still the same intense, reproachful look.

“Why do you think so?” Levin asked her, when she had followed him into

the corridor.

“He has begun picking at himself,” said Marya Nikolaevna.

“How do you mean?”

“Like this,” she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt. Levin

noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at himself, as it

were, trying to snatch something away.

Marya Nikolaevna’s prediction came true. Towards night the sick man was

not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with the

same intensely concentrated expression in his eyes. Even when his

brother or Kitty bent over him, so that he could see them, he looked

just the same. Kitty sent for the priest to read the prayer for the

dying.

While the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any sign of

life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Marya Nikolaevna stood at

the bedside. The priest had not quite finished reading the prayer when

the dying man stretched, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, on

finishing the prayer, put the cross to the cold forehead, then slowly

returned it to the stand, and after standing for two minutes more in

silence, he touched the huge, bloodless hand that was turning cold.

“He is gone,” said the priest, and would have moved away; but suddenly

there was a faint stir in the mustaches of the dead man that seemed

glued together, and quite distinctly in the hush they heard from the

bottom of the chest the sharply defined sounds:

“Not quite ... soon.”

And a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under the

mustaches, and the women who had gathered round began carefully laying

out the corpse.

The sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in Levin

that sense of horror in face of the insoluble enigma, together with the

nearness and inevitability of death, that had come upon him that autumn

evening when his brother had come to him. This feeling was now even

stronger than before; even less than before did he feel capable of

apprehending the meaning of death, and its inevitability rose up before

him more terrible than ever. But now, thanks to his wife’s presence,

that feeling did not reduce him to despair. In spite of death, he felt

the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair,

and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still

stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had

scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as

insoluble, urging him to love and to life.

The doctor confirmed his suppositions in regard to Kitty. Her

indisposition was a symptom that she was with child.

Chapter 21

From the moment when Alexey Alexandrovitch understood from his

interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that was

expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her

with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so

distraught that he could come to no decision of himself; he did not

know himself what he wanted now, and putting himself in the hands of

those who were so pleased to interest themselves in his affairs, he met

everything with unqualified assent. It was only when Anna had left his

house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether she should

dine with him or separately, that for the first time he clearly

comprehended his position, and was appalled by it. Most difficult of

all in this position was the fact that he could not in any way connect

and reconcile his past with what was now. It was not the past when he

had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition from

that past to a knowledge of his wife’s unfaithfulness he had lived

through miserably already; that state was painful, but he could

understand it. If his wife had then, on declaring to him her

unfaithfulness, left him, he would have been wounded, unhappy, but he

would not have been in the hopeless position—incomprehensible to

himself—in which he felt himself now. He could not now reconcile his

immediate past, his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the

other man’s child with what was now the case, that is with the fact

that, as it were, in return for all this he now found himself alone,

put to shame, a laughing-stock, needed by no one, and despised by

everyone.

For the first two days after his wife’s departure Alexey Alexandrovitch

received applicants for assistance and his chief secretary, drove to

the committee, and went down to dinner in the dining-room as usual.

Without giving himself a reason for what he was doing, he strained

every nerve of his being for those two days, simply to preserve an

appearance of composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries

about the disposition of Anna Arkadyevna’s rooms and belongings, he had

exercised immense self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what

had occurred was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of

events, and he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him

signs of despair. But on the second day after her departure, when

Korney gave him a bill from a fashionable draper’s shop, which Anna had

forgotten to pay, and announced that the clerk from the shop was

waiting, Alexey Alexandrovitch told him to show the clerk up.

“Excuse me, your excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if you

direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously oblige us

with her address?”

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all at

once, turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting his head sink

into his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, several times

attempted to speak and stopped short. Korney, perceiving his master’s

emotion, asked the clerk to call another time. Left alone, Alexey

Alexandrovitch recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the

line of firmness and composure any longer. He gave orders for the

carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be

admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.

He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt and

exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the clerk and

of Korney, and of everyone, without exception, whom he had met during

those two days. He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the

hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in

that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being

shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very

fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to

him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog

yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against

people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to

do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the

unequal struggle.

His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was

utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human

being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for

him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as

a suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole world.

Alexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan. There were two brothers. They

did not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexey

Alexandrovitch was ten years old. The property was a small one. Their

uncle, Karenin, a government official of high standing, at one time a

favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up.

On completing his high school and university courses with medals,

Alexey Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle’s aid, immediately started in

a prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had

devoted himself exclusively to political ambition. In the high school

and the university, and afterwards in the service, Alexey

Alexandrovitch had never formed a close friendship with anyone. His

brother had been the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had

died shortly after Alexey Alexandrovitch’s marriage.

While he was governor of a province, Anna’s aunt, a wealthy provincial

lady, had thrown him—middle-aged as he was, though young for a

governor—with her niece, and had succeeded in putting him in such a

position that he had either to declare himself or to leave the town.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was not long in hesitation. There were at the

time as many reasons for the step as against it, and there was no

overbalancing consideration to outweigh his invariable rule of

abstaining when in doubt. But Anna’s aunt had through a common

acquaintance insinuated that he had already compromised the girl, and

that he was in honor bound to make her an offer. He made the offer, and

concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he

was capable.

The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need of

intimate relations with others. And now among all his acquaintances he

had not one friend. He had plenty of so-called connections, but no

friendships. Alexey Alexandrovitch had plenty of people whom he could

invite to dinner, to whose sympathy he could appeal in any public

affair he was concerned about, whose interest he could reckon upon for

anyone he wished to help, with whom he could candidly discuss other

people’s business and affairs of state. But his relations with these

people were confined to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain

routine from which it was impossible to depart. There was one man, a

comrade of his at the university, with whom he had made friends later,

and with whom he could have spoken of a personal sorrow; but this

friend had a post in the Department of Education in a remote part of

Russia. Of the people in Petersburg the most intimate and most possible

were his chief secretary and his doctor.

Mihail Vassilievitch Sludin, the chief secretary, was a

straightforward, intelligent, good-hearted, and conscientious man, and

Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of his personal goodwill. But their

five years of official work together seemed to have put a barrier

between them that cut off warmer relations.

After signing the papers brought him, Alexey Alexandrovitch had sat for

a long while in silence, glancing at Mihail Vassilievitch, and several

times he attempted to speak, but could not. He had already prepared the

phrase: “You have heard of my trouble?” But he ended by saying, as

usual: “So you’ll get this ready for me?” and with that dismissed him.

The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for him;

but there had long existed a taciturn understanding between them that

both were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.

Of his women friends, foremost amongst them Countess Lidia Ivanovna,

Alexey Alexandrovitch never thought. All women, simply as women, were

terrible and distasteful to him.

Chapter 22

Alexey Alexandrovitch had forgotten the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, but

she had not forgotten him. At the bitterest moment of his lonely

despair she came to him, and without waiting to be announced, walked

straight into his study. She found him as he was sitting with his head

in both hands.

“_J’ai forcé la consigne_,” she said, walking in with rapid steps and

breathing hard with excitement and rapid exercise. “I have heard all!

Alexey Alexandrovitch! Dear friend!” she went on, warmly squeezing his

hand in both of hers and gazing with her fine pensive eyes into his.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, frowning, got up, and disengaging his hand,

moved her a chair.

“Won’t you sit down, countess? I’m seeing no one because I’m unwell,

countess,” he said, and his lips twitched.

“Dear friend!” repeated Countess Lidia Ivanovna, never taking her eyes

off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the inner corners,

describing a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellow face became

still uglier, but Alexey Alexandrovitch felt that she was sorry for him

and was preparing to cry. And he too was softened; he snatched her

plump hand and proceeded to kiss it.

“Dear friend!” she said in a voice breaking with emotion. “You ought

not to give way to grief. Your sorrow is a great one, but you ought to

find consolation.”

“I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!” said Alexey

Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into her brimming

eyes. “My position is so awful because I can find nowhere, I cannot

find within me strength to support me.”

“You will find support; seek it—not in me, though I beseech you to

believe in my friendship,” she said, with a sigh. “Our support is love,

that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is light,” she said,

with the look of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. “He will

be your support and your succor.”

Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental emotion

at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which had

lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey

Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear

this now.

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

nothing.”

“Dear friend,” repeated Lidia Ivanovna.

“It’s not the loss of what I have not now, it’s not that!” pursued

Alexey Alexandrovitch. “I do not grieve for that. But I cannot help

feeling humiliated before other people for the position I am placed in.

It is wrong, but I can’t help it, I can’t help it.”

“Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which I was

moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working within your

heart,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her eyes rapturously,

“and so you cannot be ashamed of your act.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands, he

cracked his fingers.

“One must know all the facts,” he said in his thin voice. “A man’s

strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my limits. The

whole day I have had to be making arrangements, arrangements about

household matters arising” (he emphasized the word _arising_) “from my

new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the accounts....

These pinpricks have stabbed me to the heart, and I have not the

strength to bear it. At dinner ... yesterday, I was almost getting up

from the dinner-table. I could not bear the way my son looked at me. He

did not ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could

not bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is

not all....” Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to the bill that

had been brought him, but his voice shook, and he stopped. That bill on

blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he could not recall without a rush

of self-pity.

“I understand, dear friend,” said Lidia Ivanovna. “I understand it all.

Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though I have come only to

aid you if I can. If I could take from off you all these petty,

humiliating cares ... I understand that a woman’s word, a woman’s

superintendence is needed. You will intrust it to me?”

Silently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed her hand.

“Together we will take care of Seryozha. Practical affairs are not my

strong point. But I will set to work. I will be your housekeeper. Don’t

thank me. I do it not from myself....”

“I cannot help thanking you.”

“But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which you

spoke—being ashamed of what is the Christian’s highest glory: _he who

humbles himself shall be exalted_. And you cannot thank me. You must

thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him alone we find peace,

consolation, salvation, and love,” she said, and turning her eyes

heavenwards, she began praying, as Alexey Alexandrovitch gathered from

her silence.

Alexey Alexandrovitch listened to her now, and those expressions which

had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at least exaggerated, now seemed

to him natural and consolatory. Alexey Alexandrovitch had disliked this

new enthusiastic fervor. He was a believer, who was interested in

religion primarily in its political aspect, and the new doctrine which

ventured upon several new interpretations, just because it paved the

way to discussion and analysis, was in principle disagreeable to him.

He had hitherto taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude to this

new doctrine, and with Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who had been carried

away by it, he had never argued, but by silence had assiduously parried

her attempts to provoke him into argument. Now for the first time he

heard her words with pleasure, and did not inwardly oppose them.

“I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for your

words,” he said, when she had finished praying.

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

“Now I will enter upon my duties,” she said with a smile after a pause,

as she wiped away the traces of tears. “I am going to Seryozha. Only in

the last extremity shall I apply to you.” And she got up and went out.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha’s part of the house, and

dropping tears on the scared child’s cheeks, she told him that his

father was a saint and his mother was dead.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually take upon

herself the care of the organization and management of Alexey

Alexandrovitch’s household. But she had not overstated the case when

saying that practical affairs were not her strong point. All her

arrangements had to be modified because they could not be carried out,

and they were modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch’s valet, who,

though no one was aware of the fact, now managed Karenin’s household,

and quietly and discreetly reported to his master while he was dressing

all it was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna’s help was

none the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral support in the

consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more, as it

was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him to

Christianity—that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she

turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new

interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of

late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in

this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and

others who shared their views, was completely devoid of vividness of

imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions

evoked by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in

harmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw nothing

impossible and inconceivable in the idea that death, though existing

for unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that, as he was possessed

of the most perfect faith, of the measure of which he was himself the

judge, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing

complete salvation here on earth.

It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this conception of

his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and he knew

that when, without the slightest idea that his forgiveness was the

action of a higher power, he had surrendered directly to the feeling of

forgiveness, he had felt more happiness than now when he was thinking

every instant that Christ was in his heart, and that in signing

official papers he was doing His will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it

was a necessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him

in his humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, however imaginary,

from which, looked down upon by all, he could look down on others, that

he clung, as to his one salvation, to his delusion of salvation.

Chapter 23

The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and sentimental girl,

been married to a wealthy man of high rank, an extremely good-natured,

jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. Two months after marriage her

husband abandoned her, and her impassioned protestations of affection

he met with a sarcasm and even hostility that people knowing the

count’s good heart, and seeing no defects in the sentimental Lidia,

were at a loss to explain. Though they were divorced and lived apart,

yet whenever the husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to her

with the same malignant irony, the cause of which was incomprehensible.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna had long given up being in love with her

husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love with

someone. She was in love with several people at once, both men and

women; she had been in love with almost everyone who had been

particularly distinguished in any way. She was in love with all the new

princes and princesses who married into the imperial family; she had

been in love with a high dignitary of the Church, a vicar, and a parish

priest; she had been in love with a journalist, three Slavophiles, with

Komissarov, with a minister, a doctor, an English missionary and

Karenin. All these passions constantly waning or growing more ardent,

did not prevent her from keeping up the most extended and complicated

relations with the court and fashionable society. But from the time

that after Karenin’s trouble she took him under her special protection,

from the time that she set to work in Karenin’s household looking after

his welfare, she felt that all her other attachments were not the real

thing, and that she was now genuinely in love, and with no one but

Karenin. The feeling she now experienced for him seemed to her stronger

than any of her former feelings. Analyzing her feeling, and comparing

it with former passions, she distinctly perceived that she would not

have been in love with Komissarov if he had not saved the life of the

Tsar, that she would not have been in love with Ristitch-Kudzhitsky if

there had been no Slavonic question, but that she loved Karenin for

himself, for his lofty, uncomprehended soul, for the sweet—to her—high

notes of his voice, for his drawling intonation, his weary eyes, his

character, and his soft white hands with their swollen veins. She was

not simply overjoyed at meeting him, but she sought in his face signs

of the impression she was making on him. She tried to please him, not

by her words only, but in her whole person. For his sake it was that

she now lavished more care on her dress than before. She caught herself

in reveries on what might have been, if she had not been married and he

had been free. She blushed with emotion when he came into the room, she

could not repress a smile of rapture when he said anything amiable to

her.

For several days now Countess Lidia Ivanovna had been in a state of

intense excitement. She had learned that Anna and Vronsky were in

Petersburg. Alexey Alexandrovitch must be saved from seeing her, he

must be saved even from the torturing knowledge that that awful woman

was in the same town with him, and that he might meet her any minute.

Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to what those

_infamous people_, as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended doing, and

she endeavored so to guide every movement of her friend during those

days that he could not come across them. The young adjutant, an

acquaintance of Vronsky, through whom she obtained her information, and

who hoped through Countess Lidia Ivanovna to obtain a concession, told

her that they had finished their business and were going away next day.

Lidia Ivanovna had already begun to calm down, when the next morning a

note was brought her, the handwriting of which she recognized with

horror. It was the handwriting of Anna Karenina. The envelope was of

paper as thick as bark; on the oblong yellow paper there was a huge

monogram, and the letter smelt of agreeable scent.

“Who brought it?”

“A commissionaire from the hotel.”

It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could sit down to read

the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma, to which she

was subject. When she had recovered her composure, she read the

following letter in French:

“Madame la Comtesse,

“The Christian feelings with which your heart is filled give me the, I

feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I am miserable at being

separated from my son. I entreat permission to see him once before my

departure. Forgive me for recalling myself to your memory. I apply to

you and not to Alexey Alexandrovitch, simply because I do not wish to

cause that generous man to suffer in remembering me. Knowing your

friendship for him, I know you will understand me. Could you send

Seryozha to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed hour, or

will you let me know when and where I could see him away from home? I

do not anticipate a refusal, knowing the magnanimity of him with whom

it rests. You cannot conceive the craving I have to see him, and so

cannot conceive the gratitude your help will arouse in me.

“Anna.”

Everything in this letter exasperated Countess Lidia Ivanovna: its

contents and the allusion to magnanimity, and especially its free and

easy—as she considered—tone.

“Say that there is no answer,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, and

immediately opening her blotting-book, she wrote to Alexey

Alexandrovitch that she hoped to see him at one o’clock at the levee.

“I must talk with you of a grave and painful subject. There we will

arrange where to meet. Best of all at my house, where I will order tea

_as you like it_. Urgent. He lays the cross, but He gives the strength

to bear it,” she added, so as to give him some slight preparation.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna usually wrote some two or three letters a day

to Alexey Alexandrovitch. She enjoyed that form of communication, which

gave opportunity for a refinement and air of mystery not afforded by

their personal interviews.

Chapter 24

The levee was drawing to a close. People met as they were going away,

and gossiped of the latest news, of the newly bestowed honors and the

changes in the positions of the higher functionaries.

“If only Countess Marya Borissovna were Minister of War, and Princess

Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-Chief,” said a gray-headed, little old

man in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall, handsome maid of

honor who had questioned him about the new appointments.

“And me among the adjutants,” said the maid of honor, smiling.

“You have an appointment already. You’re over the ecclesiastical

department. And your assistant’s Karenin.”

“Good-day, prince!” said the little old man to a man who came up to

him.

“What were you saying of Karenin?” said the prince.

“He and Putyatov have received the Alexander Nevsky.”

“I thought he had it already.”

“No. Just look at him,” said the little old man, pointing with his

embroidered hat to Karenin in a court uniform with the new red ribbon

across his shoulders, standing in the doorway of the hall with an

influential member of the Imperial Council. “Pleased and happy as a

brass farthing,” he added, stopping to shake hands with a handsome

gentleman of the bedchamber of colossal proportions.

“No; he’s looking older,” said the gentleman of the bedchamber.

“From overwork. He’s always drawing up projects nowadays. He won’t let

a poor devil go nowadays till he’s explained it all to him under

heads.”

“Looking older, did you say? _Il fait des passions_. I believe Countess

Lidia Ivanovna’s jealous now of his wife.”

“Oh, come now, please don’t say any harm of Countess Lidia Ivanovna.”

“Why, is there any harm in her being in love with Karenin?”

“But is it true Madame Karenina’s here?”

“Well, not here in the palace, but in Petersburg. I met her yesterday

with Alexey Vronsky, _bras dessous, bras dessous_, in the Morsky.”

“_C’est un homme qui n’a pas_,...” the gentleman of the bedchamber was

beginning, but he stopped to make room, bowing, for a member of the

Imperial family to pass.

Thus people talked incessantly of Alexey Alexandrovitch, finding fault

with him and laughing at him, while he, blocking up the way of the

member of the Imperial Council he had captured, was explaining to him

point by point his new financial project, never interrupting his

discourse for an instant for fear he should escape.

Almost at the same time that his wife left Alexey Alexandrovitch there

had come to him that bitterest moment in the life of an official—the

moment when his upward career comes to a full stop. This full stop had

arrived and everyone perceived it, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself

was not yet aware that his career was over. Whether it was due to his

feud with Stremov, or his misfortune with his wife, or simply that

Alexey Alexandrovitch had reached his destined limits, it had become

evident to everyone in the course of that year that his career was at

an end. He still filled a position of consequence, he sat on many

commissions and committees, but he was a man whose day was over, and

from whom nothing was expected. Whatever he said, whatever he proposed,

was heard as though it were something long familiar, and the very thing

that was not needed. But Alexey Alexandrovitch was not aware of this,

and, on the contrary, being cut off from direct participation in

governmental activity, he saw more clearly than ever the errors and

defects in the action of others, and thought it his duty to point out

means for their correction. Shortly after his separation from his wife,

he began writing his first note on the new judicial procedure, the

first of the endless series of notes he was destined to write in the

future.

Alexey Alexandrovitch did not merely fail to observe his hopeless

position in the official world, he was not merely free from anxiety on

this head, he was positively more satisfied than ever with his own

activity.

“He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord,

how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the

things that are of the world, how he may please his wife,” says the

Apostle Paul, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, who was now guided in every

action by Scripture, often recalled this text. It seemed to him that

ever since he had been left without a wife, he had in these very

projects of reform been serving the Lord more zealously than before.

The unmistakable impatience of the member of the Council trying to get

away from him did not trouble Alexey Alexandrovitch; he gave up his

exposition only when the member of the Council, seizing his chance when

one of the Imperial family was passing, slipped away from him.

Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch looked down, collecting his thoughts,

then looked casually about him and walked towards the door, where he

hoped to meet Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

“And how strong they all are, how sound physically,” thought Alexey

Alexandrovitch, looking at the powerfully built gentleman of the

bedchamber with his well-combed, perfumed whiskers, and at the red neck

of the prince, pinched by his tight uniform. He had to pass them on his

way. “Truly is it said that all the world is evil,” he thought, with

another sidelong glance at the calves of the gentleman of the

bedchamber.

Moving forward deliberately, Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed with his

customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had been

talking about him, and looking towards the door, his eyes sought

Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

“Ah! Alexey Alexandrovitch!” said the little old man, with a malicious

light in his eyes, at the moment when Karenin was on a level with them,

and was nodding with a frigid gesture, “I haven’t congratulated you

yet,” said the old man, pointing to his newly received ribbon.

“Thank you,” answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. “What an _exquisite_ day

today,” he added, laying emphasis in his peculiar way on the word

_exquisite_.

That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did not expect

anything but hostility from them; he was used to that by now.

Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia Ivanovna jutting out

above her corset, and her fine pensive eyes bidding him to her, Alexey

Alexandrovitch smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and went

towards her.

Lidia Ivanovna’s dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all her

dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the reverse of

that she had pursued thirty years before. Then her desire had been to

adorn herself with something, and the more adorned the better. Now, on

the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so inconsistent with

her age and her figure, that her one anxiety was to contrive that the

contrast between these adornments and her own exterior should not be

too appalling. And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was concerned she

succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive. For him she was the one

island not only of goodwill to him, but of love in the midst of the sea

of hostility and jeering that surrounded him.

Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally to her

loving glance as a plant to the sun.

“I congratulate you,” she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.

Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders, closing his

eyes, as though to say that that could not be a source of joy to him.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well aware that it was one of his

chief sources of satisfaction, though he never admitted it.

“How is our angel?” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, meaning Seryozha.

“I can’t say I was quite pleased with him,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch,

raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. “And Sitnikov is not

satisfied with him.” (Sitnikov was the tutor to whom Seryozha’s secular

education had been intrusted.) “As I have mentioned to you, there’s a

sort of coldness in him towards the most important questions which

ought to touch the heart of every man and every child....” Alexey

Alexandrovitch began expounding his views on the sole question that

interested him besides the service—the education of his son.

When Alexey Alexandrovitch with Lidia Ivanovna’s help had been brought

back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to undertake the

education of the son left on his hands. Having never before taken any

interest in educational questions, Alexey Alexandrovitch devoted some

time to the theoretical study of the subject. After reading several

books on anthropology, education, and didactics, Alexey Alexandrovitch

drew up a plan of education, and engaging the best tutor in Petersburg

to superintend it, he set to work, and the subject continually absorbed

him.

“Yes, but the heart. I see in him his father’s heart, and with such a

heart a child cannot go far wrong,” said Lidia Ivanovna with

enthusiasm.

“Yes, perhaps.... As for me, I do my duty. It’s all I can do.”

“You’re coming to me,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, after a pause; “we

have to speak of a subject painful for you. I would give anything to

have spared you certain memories, but others are not of the same mind.

I have received a letter from _her_. _She_ is here in Petersburg.”

Alexey Alexandrovitch shuddered at the allusion to his wife, but

immediately his face assumed the deathlike rigidity which expressed

utter helplessness in the matter.

“I was expecting it,” he said.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna looked at him ecstatically, and tears of

rapture at the greatness of his soul came into her eyes.

Chapter 25

When Alexey Alexandrovitch came into the Countess Lidia Ivanovna’s snug

little boudoir, decorated with old china and hung with portraits, the

lady herself had not yet made her appearance.

She was changing her dress.

A cloth was laid on a round table, and on it stood a china tea service

and a silver spirit-lamp and tea kettle. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked

idly about at the endless familiar portraits which adorned the room,

and sitting down to the table, he opened a New Testament lying upon it.

The rustle of the countess’s silk skirt drew his attention off.

“Well now, we can sit quietly,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, slipping

hurriedly with an agitated smile between the table and the sofa, “and

talk over our tea.”

After some words of preparation, Countess Lidia Ivanovna, breathing

hard and flushing crimson, gave into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s hands the

letter she had received.

After reading the letter, he sat a long while in silence.

“I don’t think I have the right to refuse her,” he said, timidly

lifting his eyes.

“Dear friend, you never see evil in anyone!”

“On the contrary, I see that all is evil. But whether it is just....”

His face showed irresolution, and a seeking for counsel, support, and

guidance in a matter he did not understand.

“No,” Countess Lidia Ivanovna interrupted him; “there are limits to

everything. I can understand immorality,” she said, not quite

truthfully, since she never could understand that which leads women to

immorality; “but I don’t understand cruelty: to whom? to you! How can

she stay in the town where you are? No, the longer one lives the more

one learns. And I’m learning to understand your loftiness and her

baseness.”

“Who is to throw a stone?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, unmistakably

pleased with the part he had to play. “I have forgiven all, and so I

cannot deprive her of what is exacted by love in her—by her love for

her son....”

“But is that love, my friend? Is it sincere? Admitting that you have

forgiven—that you forgive—have we the right to work on the feelings of

that angel? He looks on her as dead. He prays for her, and beseeches

God to have mercy on her sins. And it is better so. But now what will

he think?”

“I had not thought of that,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, evidently

agreeing.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna hid her face in her hands and was silent. She

was praying.

“If you ask my advice,” she said, having finished her prayer and

uncovered her face, “I do not advise you to do this. Do you suppose I

don’t see how you are suffering, how this has torn open your wounds?

But supposing that, as always, you don’t think of yourself, what can it

lead to?—to fresh suffering for you, to torture for the child. If there

were a trace of humanity left in her, she ought not to wish for it

herself. No, I have no hesitation in saying I advise not, and if you

will intrust it to me, I will write to her.”

And Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna sent

the following letter in French:

“Dear Madame,

“To be reminded of you might have results for your son in leading to

questions on his part which could not be answered without implanting in

the child’s soul a spirit of censure towards what should be for him

sacred, and therefore I beg you to interpret your husband’s refusal in

the spirit of Christian love. I pray to Almighty God to have mercy on

you.

“Countess Lidia.”

This letter attained the secret object which Countess Lidia Ivanovna

had concealed from herself. It wounded Anna to the quick.

For his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning home from Lidia

Ivanovna’s, could not all that day concentrate himself on his usual

pursuits, and find that spiritual peace of one saved and believing

which he had felt of late.

The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him, and

towards whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia Ivanovna had so

justly told him, ought not to have troubled him; but he was not easy;

he could not understand the book he was reading; he could not drive

away harassing recollections of his relations with her, of the mistake

which, as it now seemed, he had made in regard to her. The memory of

how he had received her confession of infidelity on their way home from

the races (especially that he had insisted only on the observance of

external decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like a

remorse. He was tortured too by the thought of the letter he had

written her; and most of all, his forgiveness, which nobody wanted, and

his care of the other man’s child made his heart burn with shame and

remorse.

And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he

reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in which,

after long wavering, he had made her an offer.

“But how have I been to blame?” he said to himself. And this question

always excited another question in him—whether they felt differently,

did their loving and marrying differently, these Vronskys and Oblonskys

... these gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine calves. And

there passed before his mind a whole series of these mettlesome,

vigorous, self-confident men, who always and everywhere drew his

inquisitive attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel these

thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this

transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was peace

and love in his heart.

But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it

seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the

eternal salvation in which he believed had no existence. But this

temptation did not last long, and soon there was reestablished once

more in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s soul the peace and the elevation by

virtue of which he could forget what he did not want to remember.

Chapter 26

“Well, Kapitonitch?” said Seryozha, coming back rosy and good-humored

from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his overcoat to

the tall old hall-porter, who smiled down at the little person from the

height of his long figure. “Well, has the bandaged clerk been here

today? Did papa see him?”

“He saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out, I announced him,”

said the hall-porter with a good-humored wink. “Here, I’ll take it

off.”

“Seryozha!” said the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to the

inner rooms. “Take it off yourself.” But Seryozha, though he heard his

tutor’s feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He stood keeping

hold of the hall-porter’s belt, and gazing into his face.

“Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?”

The hall-porter nodded his head affirmatively. The clerk with his face

tied up, who had already been seven times to ask some favor of Alexey

Alexandrovitch, interested both Seryozha and the hall-porter. Seryozha

had come upon him in the hall, and had heard him plaintively beg the

hall-porter to announce him, saying that he and his children had death

staring them in the face.

Since then Seryozha, having met him a second time in the hall, took

great interest in him.

“Well, was he very glad?” he asked.

“Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away.”

“And has anything been left?” asked Seryozha, after a pause.

“Come, sir,” said the hall-porter; then with a shake of his head he

whispered, “Something from the countess.”

Seryozha understood at once that what the hall-porter was speaking of

was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his birthday.

“What do you say? Where?”

“Korney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be too!”

“How big? Like this?”

“Rather small, but a fine thing.”

“A book.”

“No, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling you,”

said the porter, hearing the tutor’s steps approaching, and carefully

taking away from his belt the little hand in the glove half pulled off,

he signed with his head towards the tutor.

“Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!” answered Seryozha with that gay

and loving smile which always won over the conscientious Vassily

Lukitch.

Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to be

able to help sharing with his friend the porter the family good fortune

of which he had heard during his walk in the public gardens from Lidia

Ivanovna’s niece. This piece of good news seemed to him particularly

important from its coming at the same time with the gladness of the

bandaged clerk and his own gladness at toys having come for him. It

seemed to Seryozha that this was a day on which everyone ought to be

glad and happy.

“You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky today?”

“To be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him.”

“And is he glad?”

“Glad at the Tsar’s gracious favor! I should think so! It’s a proof

he’s deserved it,” said the porter severely and seriously.

Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter, which

he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the chin that

hung down between the gray whiskers, never seen by anyone but Seryozha,

who saw him only from below.

“Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?”

The porter’s daughter was a ballet dancer.

“When is she to come on week-days? They’ve their lessons to learn too.

And you’ve your lesson, sir; run along.”

On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his

lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been brought

him must be a machine. “What do you think?” he inquired.

But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of

learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two.

“No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch,” he asked suddenly, when he was

seated at their work table with the book in his hands, “what is greater

than the Alexander Nevsky? You know papa’s received the Alexander

Nevsky?”

Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the

Alexander Nevsky.

“And higher still?”

“Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny.”

“And higher than the Andrey?”

“I don’t know.”

“What, you don’t know?” and Seryozha, leaning on his elbows, sank into

deep meditation.

His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character. He

imagined his father’s having suddenly been presented with both the

Vladimir and the Andrey today, and in consequence being much better

tempered at his lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown up, he would

himself receive all the orders, and what they might invent higher than

the Andrey. Directly any higher order were invented, he would win it.

They would make a higher one still, and he would immediately win that

too.

The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came, the

lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of action was not

ready, and the teacher was not only displeased, but hurt. This touched

Seryozha. He felt he was not to blame for not having learned the

lesson; however much he tried, he was utterly unable to do that. As

long as the teacher was explaining to him, he believed him and seemed

to comprehend, but as soon as he was left alone, he was positively

unable to recollect and to understand that the short and familiar word

“suddenly” is an adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he

had disappointed the teacher.

He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the book.

“Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?” he asked all, of a sudden.

“You’d much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of no

importance to a rational being. It’s a day like any other on which one

has to do one’s work.”

Seryozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at his

spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his nose, and

fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of what the teacher

was explaining to him. He knew that the teacher did not think what he

said; he felt it from the tone in which it was said. “But why have they

all agreed to speak just in the same manner always the dreariest and

most useless stuff? Why does he keep me off; why doesn’t he love me?”

he asked himself mournfully, and could not think of an answer.

Chapter 27

After the lesson with the grammar teacher came his father’s lesson.

While waiting for his father, Seryozha sat at the table playing with a

penknife, and fell to dreaming. Among Seryozha’s favorite occupations

was searching for his mother during his walks. He did not believe in

death generally, and in her death in particular, in spite of what Lidia

Ivanovna had told him and his father had confirmed, and it was just

because of that, and after he had been told she was dead, that he had

begun looking for her when out for a walk. Every woman of full,

graceful figure with dark hair was his mother. At the sight of such a

woman such a feeling of tenderness was stirred within him that his

breath failed him, and tears came into his eyes. And he was on the

tiptoe of expectation that she would come up to him, would lift her

veil. All her face would be visible, she would smile, she would hug

him, he would sniff her fragrance, feel the softness of her arms, and

cry with happiness, just as he had one evening lain on her lap while

she tickled him, and he laughed and bit her white, ring-covered

fingers. Later, when he accidentally learned from his old nurse that

his mother was not dead, and his father and Lidia Ivanovna had

explained to him that she was dead to him because she was wicked (which

he could not possibly believe, because he loved her), he went on

seeking her and expecting her in the same way. That day in the public

gardens there had been a lady in a lilac veil, whom he had watched with

a throbbing heart, believing it to be she as she came towards them

along the path. The lady had not come up to them, but had disappeared

somewhere. That day, more intensely than ever, Seryozha felt a rush of

love for her, and now, waiting for his father, he forgot everything,

and cut all round the edge of the table with his penknife, staring

straight before him with sparkling eyes and dreaming of her.

“Here is your papa!” said Vassily Lukitch, rousing him.

Seryozha jumped up and went up to his father, and kissing his hand,

looked at him intently, trying to discover signs of his joy at

receiving the Alexander Nevsky.

“Did you have a nice walk?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, sitting down in

his easy chair, pulling the volume of the Old Testament to him and

opening it. Although Alexey Alexandrovitch had more than once told

Seryozha that every Christian ought to know Scripture history

thoroughly, he often referred to the Bible himself during the lesson,

and Seryozha observed this.

“Yes, it was very nice indeed, papa,” said Seryozha, sitting sideways

on his chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. “I saw Nadinka”

(Nadinka was a niece of Lidia Ivanovna’s who was being brought up in

her house). “She told me you’d been given a new star. Are you glad,

papa?”