Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy

.
Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his
brother Nikolay, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul,
was no more in the wrong than the people who despised
him. He was not to blame for having been born with his
unbridled temperament and his somehow limited
intelligence. But he had always wanted to be good. ‘I will
tell him everything, without reserve, and I will make him
speak without reserve, too, and I’ll show him that I love
him, and so understand him,’ Levin resolved to himself, as,
towards eleven o’clock, he reached the hotel of which he
had the address.
‘At the top, 12 and 13,’ the porter answered Levin’s
inquiry.
‘At home?’
‘Sure to be at home.’
The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out
into the streak of light thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco,
and the sound of a voice, unknown to Levin; but he knew
at once that his brother was there; he heard his cough.
As he went in the door, the unknown voice was
saying:
‘It all depends with how much judgment and
knowledge the thing’s done.’
Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that
the speaker was a young man with an immense shock of
hair, wearing a Russian jerkin, and that a pockmarked
woman in a woolen gown, without collar or cuffs, was
sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to be seen.
Konstantin felt a sharp pang at his heart at the thought of
the strange company in which his brother spent his life.
No one had heard him, and Konstantin, taking off his
galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin was
saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.
‘Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes,’ his
brother’s voice responded, with a cough. ‘Masha! get us
some supper and some wine if there’s any left; or else go
and get some.’
The woman rose, came out from behind the screen,
and saw Konstantin.
‘There’s some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,’ she
said.
‘Whom do you want?’ said the voice of Nikolay Levin,
angrily.
‘It’s I,’ answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward
into the light.
‘Who’s I?’ Nikolay’s voice said again, still more angrily.
He could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against
something, and Levin saw, facing him in the doorway, the
big, scared eyes, and the huge, thin, stooping figure of his
brother, so familiar, and yet astonishing in it weirdness and
sickliness.
He was even thinner than three years before, when
Konstantin Levin had seen him last. He was wearing a
short coat, and his hands and big bones seemed huger than
ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight
mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and
naively at his visitor.
‘Ah, Kostya!’ he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his
brother, and his eyes lit up with joy. But the same second
he looked round at the young man, and gave the nervous
jerk of his head and neck that Konstantin knew so well, as
if his neckband hurt him; and a quite different expression,
wild, suffering, and cruel, rested on his emaciated fact.
‘I wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don’t
know you and don’t want to know you. What is it you
want?’
He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been
fancying him. The worst and most tiresome part of his
character, what made all relations with him so difficult,
had been forgotten by Konstantin Levin when he thought
of him, and now, when he saw his face, and especially that
nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all.
‘I didn’t want to see you for anything,’ he answered
timidly. ‘I’ve simply come to see you.’
His brother’s timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His
lips twitched.
‘Oh, so that’s it?’ he said. ‘Well, come in; sit down.
Like some supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop
a minute. Do you know who this is?’ he said, addressing
his brother, and indicating the gentleman in the jerkin:
‘This is Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a very
remarkable man. He’s persecuted by the police, of course,
because he’s not a scoundrel.’
And he looked round in the way he always did at
everyone in the room. Seeing that the woman standing in
the doorway was moving to go, he shouted to her, ‘Wait a
minute, I said.’ And with the inability to express himself,
the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he began,
with another look round at everyone, to tell his brother
Kritsky’s story: how he had been expelled from the
university for starting a benefit society for the poor
students and Sunday schools; and how he had afterwards
been a teacher in a peasant school, and how he had been
driven out of that too, and had afterwards been
condemned for something.
‘You’re of the Kiev university?’ said Konstantin Levin
to Kritsky, to break the awkward silence that followed.
‘Yes, I was of Kiev,’ Kritsky replied angrily, his face
darkening.
‘And this woman,’ Nikolay Levin interrupted him,
pointing to her, ‘is the partner of my life, Marya
Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad house,’ and he jerked
his neck saying this; ‘but I love her and respect her, and
any one who wants to know me,’ he added, raising his
voice and knitting his brows, ‘I beg to love her and respect
her. She’s just the same as my wife, just the same. So now
you know whom you’ve to do with. And if you think
you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s the floor, there’s the
door.’
And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.
‘Why I should be lowering myself, I don’t understand.’
‘Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three
portions, spirits and wine.... No, wait a minute.... No, it
doesn’t matter.... Go along.’
Chapter 25
‘So you see,’ pursued Nikolay Levin, painfully
wrinkling his forehead and twitching.
It was obviously difficult for him to think of what to
say and do.
‘Here, do you see?’... He pointed to some sort of iron
bars, fastened together with strings, lying in a corner of the
room. ‘Do you see that? That’s the beginning of a new
thing we’re going into. It’s a productive association..’
Konstantin scarcely heard him. He looked into his
sickly, consumptive face, and he was more and more sorry
for him, and he could not force himself to listen to what
his brother was telling him about the association. He saw
that this association was a mere anchor to save him from
self-contempt. Nikolay Levin went on talking:
‘You know that capital oppresses the laborer. The
laborers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor,
and are so placed that however much they work they can’t
escape from their position of beasts of burden. All the
profits of labor, on which they might improve their
position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after that
education, all the surplus values are taken from them by
the capitalists. And society’s so constituted that the harder
they work, the greater the profit of the merchants and
landowners, while they stay beasts of burden to the end.
And that state of things must be changed,’ he finished up,
and he looked questioningly at his brother.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Konstantin, looking at the patch
of red that had come out on his brother’s projecting cheek
bones.
‘And so we’re founding a locksmiths’ association,
where all the production and profit and the chief
instruments of production will be in common.’
‘Where is the association to be?’ asked Konstantin
Levin.
‘In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government.’
‘But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is
plenty of work as it is. Why a locksmiths’ association in a
village?’
‘Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as
they ever were, and that’s why you and Sergey Ivanovitch
don’t like people to try and get them out of their slavery,’
said Nikolay Levin, exasperated by the objection.
Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the
cheerless and dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate
Nikolay still more.
‘I know your and Sergey Ivanovitch’s aristocratic
views. I know that he applies all the power of his intellect
to justify existing evils.’
‘No; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?’
said Levin, smiling.
‘Sergey Ivanovitch? I’ll tell you what for!’ Nikolay
Levin shrieked suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘I’ll tell you what for.... But what’s the use of talking?
There’s only one thing.... What did you come to me for?
You look down on this, and you’re welcome to,—and go
away, in God’s name go away!’ he shrieked, getting up
from his chair. ‘And go away, and go away!’
‘I don’t look down on it at all,’ said Konstantin Levin
timidly. ‘I don’t even dispute it.’
At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolay
Levin looked round angrily at her. She went quickly to
him, and whispered something.
‘I’m not well; I’ve grown irritable,’ said Nikolay Levin,
getting calmer and breathing painfully; ‘and then you talk
to me of Sergey Ivanovitch and his article. It’s such
rubbish, such lying, such self-deception. What can a man
write of justice who knows nothing of it? Have you read
his article?’ he asked Kritsky, sitting down again at the
table, and moving back off half of it the scattered
cigarettes, so as to clear a space.
‘I’ve not read it,’ Kritsky responded gloomily,
obviously not desiring to enter into the conversation.
‘Why not?’ said Nikolay Levin, now turning with
exasperation upon Kritsky.
‘Because I didn’t see the use of wasting my time over
it.’

.’
‘Oh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be
wasting your time? That article’s too deep for many
people—that’s to say it’s over their heads. But with me,
it’s another thing; I see through his ideas, and I know
where its weakness lies.’
Everyone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and
reached his cap.
‘Won’t you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come
round tomorrow with the locksmith.’
Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolay Levin
smiled and winked.
‘He’s no good either,’ he said. ‘I see, of course..’
But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him...
‘What do you want now?’ he said, and went out to
him in the passage. Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna,
Levin turned to her.
‘Have you been long with my brother?’ he said to her.
‘Yes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch’s health
has become very poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a
great deal,’ she said.
‘That is...how does he drink?’
‘Drinks vodka, and it’s bad for him.’
‘And a great deal?’ whispered Levin.
‘Yes,’ she said, looking timidly towards the doorway,
where Nikolay Levin had reappeared.
‘What were you talking about?’ he said, knitting his
brows, and turning his scarred eyes from one to the other.
‘What was it?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ Konstantin answered in confusion.
‘Oh, if you don’t want to say, don’t. Only it’s no good
your talking to her. She’s a wench, and you’re a
gentleman,’ he said with a jerk of the neck. ‘You
understand everything, I see, and have taken stock of
everything, and look with commiseration on my
shortcomings,’ he began again, raising his voice.
‘Nikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,’
whispered Marya Nikolaevna, again going up to him.
‘Oh, very well, very well!... But where’s the supper?
Ah, here it is,’ he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. ‘Here,
set it here,’ he added angrily, and promptly seizing the
vodka, he poured out a glassful and drank it greedily. ‘Like
a drink?’ he turned to his brother, and at once became
better humored.
‘Well, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I’m glad to see
you, anyway. After all’s said and done, we’re not strangers.
Come, have a drink. Tell me what you’re doing,’ he went
on, greedily munching a piece of bread, and pouring out
another glassful. ‘How are you living?’
‘I live alone in the country, as I used to. I’m busy
looking after the land,’ answered Konstantin, watching
with horror the greediness with which his brother ate and
drank, and trying to conceal that he noticed it.
‘Why don’t you get married?’
‘It hasn’t happened so,’ Konstantin answered,
reddening a little.
‘Why not? For me now...everything’s at an end! I’ve
made a mess of my life. But this I’ve said, and I say still,
that if my share had been given me when I needed it, my
whole life would have been different.’
Konstantin made haste to change the conversation.
‘Do you know your little Vanya’s with me, a clerk in
the countinghouse at Pokrovskoe.’
Nikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought.
‘Yes, tell me what’s going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the
house standing still, and the birch trees, and our
schoolroom? And Philip the gardener, is he living? How I
remember the arbor and the seat! Now mind and don’t
alter anything in the house, but make haste and get
married, and make everything as it used to be again. Then
I’ll come and see you, if your wife is nice.’
‘But come to me now,’ said Levin. ‘How nicely we
would arrange it!’
I’d come and see you if I were sure I should not find
Sergey Ivanovitch.’
‘You wouldn’t find him there. I live quite
independently of him.’
‘Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose
between me and him,’ he said, looking timidly into his
brother’s face.
This timidity touch Konstantin.
‘If you want to hear my confession of faith on the
subject, I tell you that in your quarrel with Sergey
Ivanovitch I take neither side. You’re both wrong. You’re
more wrong externally, and he inwardly.’
‘Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!’ Nikolay shouted
joyfully.
‘But I personally value friendly relations with you more
because..’
‘Why, why?’
Konstantin could not say that he valued it more
because Nikolay was unhappy, and needed affection. But
Nikolay knew that this was just what he meant to say, and
scowling he took up the vodka again.
‘Enough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!’ said Marya
Nikolaevna, stretching out her plump, bare arm towards
the decanter.
‘Let it be! Don’t insist! I’ll beat you!’ he shouted.
Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored
smile, which was at once reflected on Nikolay’s face, and
she took the bottle.
‘And do you suppose she understands nothing?’ said
Nikolay. ‘She understands it all better than any of us. Isn’t
it true there’s something good and sweet in her?’
‘Were you never before in Moscow?’ Konstantin said
to her, for the sake of saying something.
‘Only you mustn’t be polite and stiff with her. It
frightens her. No one ever spoke to her so but the justices
of the peace who tried her for trying to get out of a house
of ill-fame. Mercy on us, the senselessness in the world!’
he cried suddenly. ‘These new institutions, these justices
of the peace, rural councils, what hideousness it all is!’
And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the
new institutions.
Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the
sense of all public institutions, which he shared with him,
and often expressed, was distasteful to him now from his
brother’s lips.
‘In another world we shall understand it all,’ he said
lightly.
‘In another world! Ah, I don’t like that other world! I
don’t like it,’ he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his
brother’s eyes. ‘Here one would think that to get out of all
the baseness and the mess, one’s own and other people’s,
would be a good thing, and yet I’m afraid of death,
awfully afraid of death.’ He shuddered. ‘But do drink
something. Would you like some champagne? Or shall we
go somewhere? Let’s go to the Gypsies! Do you know I
have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian songs.’
His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly
from one subject to another. Konstantin with the help of
Masha persuaded him not to go out anywhere, and got
him to bed hopelessly drunk.
Chapter 26
In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and
towards evening he reached home. On the journey in the
train he talked to his neighbors about politics and the new
railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by a
sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself,
shame of something or other. But when he got out at his
own station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat,
with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in the dim
light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own sledge,
his own horses with their tails tied up, in their harness
trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat,
as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the
contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt
that little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the
shame and self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt
this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he
had put on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down
wrapped in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on
the work that lay before him in the village, and staring at
the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse, past his
prime now, but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to
see what had happened to him in quite a different light.
He felt himself, and did not want to be any one else. All
he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first
place he resolved that from that day he would give up
hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage
must have given him, and consequently he would not so
disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never
again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of
which had so tortured him when he had been making up
his mind to make an offer. Then remembering his brother
Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he would never allow
himself to forget him, that he would follow him up, and
not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when
things should go ill with him. And that would be soon, he
felt. Then, too, his brother’s talk of communism, which
he had treated so lightly at the time, now made him think.
He considered a revolution in economic conditions
nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own
abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants,
and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the
right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means
luxuriously before, he would now work still harder, and
would allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed
to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the
whole drive in the pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute
feeling of hope in a new, better life, he reached home
before nine o’clock at night.
The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was
lit up by a light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse,
Agafea Mihalovna, who performed the duties of
housekeeper in his house. She was not yet asleep.
Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out onto
the steps. A setter bitch, Laska, ran out too, almost
upsetting Kouzma, and whining, turned round about
Levin’s knees, jumping up and longing, but not daring, to
put her forepaws on his chest.
‘You’re soon back again, sir,’ said Agafea Mihalovna.
‘I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one
is well; but at home, one is better,’ he answered, and went
into his study.
The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought
in. The familiar details came out: the stag’s horns, the
bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove with its
ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father’s
sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ash
tray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw
all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the
possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been
dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to
clutch him, and to say to him: ‘No, you’re not going to
get away from us, and you’re not going to be different,
but you’re going to be the same as you’ve always been;
with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain
efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a
happiness which you won’t get, and which isn’t possible
for you.’
This the tings said to him, but another voice in his
heart was telling him that he must not fall under the sway
of the past, and that one can do anything with oneself.
And hearing that voice, he went into the corner where
stood his two heavy dumbbells, and began brandishing
them like a gymnast, trying to restore his confident
temper. There was a creak of steps at the door. He hastily
put down the dumbbells.
The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God,
was doing well; but informed him that the buckwheat in
the new drying machine had been a little scorched. This
piece of news irritated Levin. The new drying machine
had been constructed and partly invented by Levin. The
bailiff had always been against the drying machine, and
now it was with suppressed triumph that he announced
that the buckwheat had been scorched. Levin was firmly
convinced that if the buckwheat had been scorched, it was
only because the precautions had not been taken, for
which he had hundreds of times given orders. He was
annoyed, and reprimanded the bailiff. But there had been
an important and joyful event: Pava, his best cow, an
expensive beast, bought at a show, had calved.
‘Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to
take a lantern. I’ll come and look at her,’ he said to the
bailiff.
The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just
behind the house. Walking across the yard, passing a
snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went into the cowhouse.
There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the
frozen door was opened, and the cows, astonished at the
unfamiliar light of the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw.
He caught a glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and
piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the bull, was lying
down with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get up,
but thought better of it, and only gave two snorts as they
passed by him. Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a
hippopotamus, with her back turned to them, prevented
their seeing the calf, as she sniffed her all over.
Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted
the red and spotted calf onto her long, tottering legs. Pava,
uneasy, began lowing, but when Levin put the calf close
to her she was soothed, and, sighing heavily, began licking
her with her rough tongue. The calf, fumbling, poked her
nose under her mother’s udder, and stiffened her tail out
straight.
‘Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way,’ said Levin,
examining the calf. ‘Like the mother! though the color
takes after the father; but that’s nothing. Very good. Long
and broad in the haunch. Vassily Fedorovitch, isn’t she
splendid?’ he said to the bailiff, quite forgiving him for the
buckwheat under the influence of his delight in the calf.
‘How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor
came the day after you left. You must settle with him,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ said the bailiff. ‘I did inform
you about the machine.’
This question was enough to take Levin back to all the
details of his work on the estate, which was on a large
scale, and complicated. He went straight from the
cowhouse to the counting house, and after a little
conversation with the bailiff and Semyon the contractor,
he went back to the house and straight upstairs to the
drawing room.
Chapter 27
The house was big and old-fashioned, and Levin,
though he lived alone, had the whole house heated and
used. He knew that this was stupid, he knew that it was
positively not right, and contrary to his present new plans,
but this house was a whole world to Levin. It was the
world in which his father and mother had lived and died.
They had lived just the life that to Levin seemed the ideal
of perfection, and that he had dreamed of beginning with
his wife, his family.
Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception
of her was for him a sacred memory, and his future wife
was bound to be in his imagination a repetition of that
exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother had been.
He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart
from marriage that he positively pictured to himself first
the family, and only secondarily the woman who would
give him a family. His ideas of marriage were,
consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of
his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of
the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief
affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned. And
now he had to give up that.
When he had gone into the little drawing room, where
he always had tea, and had settled himself in his armchair
with a book , and Agafea Mihalovna had brought him tea,
and with her usual, ‘Well, I’ll stay a while, sir,’ had taken a
chair in the window, he felt that, however strange it might
be, he had not parted from his daydreams, and that he
could not live without them. Whether with her, or with
another, still it would be. He was reading a book, and
thinking of what he was reading, and stopping to listen to
Agafea Mihalovna, who gossiped away without flagging,
and yet with all that, all sorts of pictures of family life and
work in the future rose disconnectedly before his
imagination. He felt that in the depth of his soul
something had been put in its place, settled down, and laid
to rest.
He heard Agafea Mihalovna talking of how Prohor had
forgotten his duty to God, and with the money Levin had
given him to buy a horse, had been drinking without
stopping, and had beaten his wife till he’d half killed her.
He listened, and read his book, and recalled the whole
train of ideas suggested by his reading. It was Tyndall’s
Treatise on Heat. He recalled his own criticisms of
Tyndall of his complacent satisfaction in the cleverness of
his experiments, and for his lack of philosophic insight.
And suddenly there floated into his mind the joyful
thought: ‘In two years’ time I shall have two Dutch cows;
Pava herself will perhaps still be alive, a dozen young
daughters of Berkoot and the three others—how lovely!’
He took up his book again. ‘Very good, electricity and
heat are the same thing; but is it possible to substitute the
one quantity for the other in the equation for the solution
of any problem? No. Well, then what of it? The
connection between all the forces of nature is felt
instinctively.... It’s particulary nice if Pava’s daughter
should be a red-spotted cow, and all the herd will take
after her, and the other three, too! Splendid! To go out
with my wife and visitors to meet the herd.... My wife
says, Kostya and I looked after that calf like a child.’ ‘How
can it interest you so much?’ says a visitor. ‘Everything
that interests him, interests me.’ But who will she be?’
And he remembered what had happened at Moscow....
‘Well, there’s nothing to be done.... It’s not my fault. But
now everything shall go on in a new way. It’s nonsense to
pretend that life won’t let one, that the past won’t let one.
One must struggle to live better, much better.’... He raised
his head, and fell to dreaming. Old Laska, who had not yet
fully digested her delight at his return, and had run out
into the yard to bark, came back wagging her tail, and
crept up to him, bringing in the scent of fresh air, put her
head under his hand, and whined plaintively, asking to be
stroked.
‘There, who’d have thought it?’ said Agafea Mihalovna.
‘The dog now...why, she understands that her master’s
come home, and that he’s low-spirited.’
‘Why low-spirited?’
‘Do you suppose I don’t see it, sir? It’s high time I
should know the gentry. Why, I’ve grown up from a little
thing with them. It’s nothing, sir, so long as there’s health
and a clear conscience.’
Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she
knew his thought.
‘Shall I fetch you another cup?’ said she, and taking his
cup she went out.
Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked
her, and she promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head
on a hindpaw. And in token of all now being well and
satisfactory, she opened her mouth a little, smacked her
lips, and settling her sticky lips more comfortably about
her old teeth, she sank into blissful repose. Levin watched
all her movements attentively.
‘That’s what I’ll do,’ he said to himself; ‘that’s what I’ll
do! Nothing’s amiss.... All’s well.’
Chapter 28

After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna
sent her husband a telegram that she was leaving Moscow
the same day.
‘No, I must go, I must go"; she explained to her sisterin-
law the change in her plans in a tone that suggested that
she had to remember so many things that there was no
enumerating them: ‘no, it had really better be today!’
Stepan Arkadyevitch was not dining at home, but he
promised to come and see his sister off at seven o’clock.
Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a
headache. Dolly and Anna dined alone with the children
and the English governess. Whether it was that the
children were fickle, or that they had acute senses, and felt
that Anna was quite different that day from what she had
been when they had taken such a fancy to her, that she
was not now interested in them,—but they had abruptly
dropped their play with their aunt, and their love for her,
and were quite indifferent that she was going away. Anna
was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her
departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances,
put down her accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly
fancied she was not in a placid state of mind, but in that
worried mood, which Dolly knew well with herself, and
which does not come without cause, and for the most part
covers dissatisfaction with self. After dinner, Anna went up
to her room to dress, and Dolly followed her.
‘How queer you are today!’ Dolly said to her.
‘I? Do you think so? I’m not queer, but I’m nasty. I am
like that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It’s
very stupid, but it’ll pass off,’ said Anna quickly, and she
bent her flushed face over a tiny bag in which she was
packing a nightcap and some cambric handkerchiefs. Her
eyes were particulary bright, and were continually
swimming with tears. ‘In the same way I didn’t want to
leave Petersburg, and now I don’t want to go away from
here.’
‘You came here and did a good deed,’ said Dolly,
looking intently at her.
Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears.
‘Don’t say that, Dolly. I’ve done nothing, and could do
nothing. I often wonder why people are all in league to
spoil me. What have I done, and what could I do? In your
heart there was found love enough to forgive..’
‘If it had not been for you, God knows what would
have happened! How happy you are, Anna!’ said Dolly.
‘Everything is clear and good in your heart.’
‘Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say.’
‘You have no sort of skeleton, have you? Everything is
so clear in you.’
‘I have!’ said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after
her tears, a sly, ironical smile curved her lips.
‘Come, he’s amusing, anyway, your skeleton, and not
depressing,’ said Dolly, smiling.
‘No, he’s depressing. Do you know why I’m going
today instead of tomorrow? It’s a confession that weighs
on me; I want to make it to you,’ said Anna, letting herself
drop definitely into an armchair, and looking straight into
Dolly’s face.
And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing
up to her ears, up to the curly black ringlets on her neck.
‘Yes,’ Anna went on. ‘Do you know why Kitty didn’t
come to dinner? she’s jealous of me. I have spoiled...I’ve
been the cause of that ball being a torture to her instead of
a pleasure. But truly, truly, it’s not my fault, or only my
fault a little bit,’ she said, daintily drawling the words ‘a
little bit.’
‘Oh, how like Stiva you said that!’ said Dolly, laughing.
Anna was hurt.
‘Oh no, oh no! I’m not Stiva,’ she said, knitting her
brows. ‘That’s why I’m telling you, just because I could
never let myself doubt myself for an instant,’ said Anna.
But at the very moment she was uttering the words,
she felt that they were not true. She was not merely
doubting herself, she felt emotion at the thought of
Vronsky, and was going away sooner than she had meant,
simply to avoid meeting him.
‘Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him,
and that he..’
‘You can’t imagine how absurdly it all came about. I
only meant to be matchmaking, and all at once it turned
out quite differently. Possibly against my own will..’
She crimsoned and stopped.
‘Oh, they feel it directly?’ said Dolly.
‘But I should be in despair if there were anything
serious in it on his side,’ Anna interrupted her. ‘And I am
certain it will all be forgotten, and Kitty will leave off
hating me.’
‘All the same, Anna, to tell you the truth, I’m not very
anxious for this marriage for Kitty. And it’s better it should
come to nothing, if he, Vronsky, is capable of falling in
love with you in a single day.’
‘Oh, heavens, that would be too silly!’ said Anna, and
again a deep flush of pleasure came out on her face, when
she heard the idea, that absorbed her, put into words. ‘And
so here I am going away, having made an enemy of Kitty,
whom I liked so much! Ah, how sweet she is! But you’ll
make it right, Dolly? Eh?’
Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna,
but she enjoyed seeing that she too had her weaknesses.
‘An enemy? That can’t be.’
‘I did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you,
and now I care for you more than ever,’ said Anna, with
tears in her eyes. ‘Ah, how silly I am today!’
She passed her handkerchief over her face and began
dressing.
At the very moment of starting Stepan Arkadyevitch
arrived, late, rosy and good-humored, smelling of wine
and cigars.
Anna’s emotionalism infected Dolly, and when she
embraced her sister-in-law for the last time, she
whispered: ‘Remember, Anna, what you’ve done for
me—I shall never forget. And remember that I love you,
and shall always love you as my dearest friend!’
‘I don’t know why,’ said Anna, kissing her and hiding
her tears.
‘You understood me, and you understand. Good-bye,
my darling!’
Chapter 29
‘Come, it’s all over, and thank God!’ was the first
thought that came to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had
said good-bye for the last time to her brother, who had
stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till the third
bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka,
and looked about her in the twilight of the sleepingcarriage.
‘Thank God! tomorrow I shall see Seryozha and
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old
way, all nice and as usual.’
Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been
all that day, Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the
journey with great care. With her little deft hands she
opened and shut her little red bag, took out a cushion, laid
it on her knees, and carefully wrapping up her feet, settled
herself comfortably. An invalid lady had already lain down
to sleep. Two other ladies began talking to Anna, and a
stout elderly lady tucked up her feet, and made
observations about the heating of the train. Anna answered
a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from
the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp,
hooked it onto the arm of her seat, and took from her bag
a paper knife and an English novel. At first her reading
made no progress. The fuss and bustle were disturbing;
then when the train had started, she could not help
listening to the noises; then the snow beating on the left
window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the
muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side,
and the conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging
outside, distracted her attention. Farther on, it was
continually the same again and again: the same shaking
and rattling, the same snow on the window, the same
rapid transitions from steaming heat to cold, and back
again to heat, the same passing glimpses of the same figures
in the twilight, and the same voices, and Anna began to
read and to understand what she read. Annushka was
already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her
broad hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna
Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to
her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other
people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If
she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick
man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the
room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament
making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if
she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds,
and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised
everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the
same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and
twisting the smooth paper knife in her little hands, she
forced herself to read.
The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his
English happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna
was feeling a desire to go with him to the estate, when she
suddenly felt that HE ought to feel ashamed, and that she
was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be
ashamed of? ‘What have I to be ashamed of?’ she asked
herself in injured surprise. She laid down the book and
sank against the back of the chair, tightly gripping the
paper cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She went
over all her Moscow recollections. All were good,
pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky
and his face of slavish adoration, remembered all her
conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all
that, at the same point in her memories, the feeling of
shame was intensified, as though some inner voice, just at
the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to
her, ‘Warm, very warm, hot.’ ‘Well, what is it?’ she said to
herself resolutely, shifting her seat in the lounge. ‘What
does it mean? Am I afraid to look it straight in the face?
Why, what is it? Can it be that between me and this
officer boy there exist, or can exist, any other relations
than such as are common with every acquaintance?’ She
laughed contemptuously and took up her book again; but
now she was definitely unable to follow what she read.
She passed the paper knife over the window pane, then
laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and almost
laughed aloud at the feeling of delight that all at once
without cause came over her. She felt as though her
nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on
some sort of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider
and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously,
something within oppressing her breathing, while all
shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to
strike her with unaccustomed vividness. Moments of
doubt were continually coming upon her, when she was
uncertain whether the train were going forwards or
backwards, or were standing still altogether; whether it
were Annushka at her side or a stranger. ‘What’s that on
the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast? And what
am I myself? Myself or some other woman?’ she was afraid
of giving way to this delirium. But something drew her
towards it, and she could yield to it or resist it at will. She
got up to rouse herself, and slipped off her plaid and the
cape of her warm dress. For a moment she regained her
self-possession, and realized that the thin peasant who had
come in wearing a long overcoat, with buttons missing
from it, was the stoveheater, that he was looking at the
thermometer, that it was the wind and snow bursting in
after him at the door; but then everything grew blurred
again.... That peasant with the long waist seemed to be
gnawing something on the wall, the old lady began
stretching her legs the whole length of the carriage, and
filling it with a black cloud; then there was a fearful
shrieking and banging, as though someone were being
torn to pieces; then there was a blinding dazzle of red fire
before her eyes and a wall seemed to rise up and hide
everything. Anna felt as though she were sinking down.
But it was not terrible, but delightful. The voice of a man
muffled up and covered with snow shouted something in
her ear. She got up and pulled herself together; she
realized that they had reached a station and that this was
the guard. She asked Annushka to hand her the cape she
had taken off and her shawl, put them on and moved
towards the door.
‘Do you wish to get out?’ asked Annushka.
‘Yes, I want a little air. It’s very hot in here.’ And she
opened the door. The driving snow and the wind rushed
to meet her and struggled with her over the door. But she
enjoyed the struggle.
She opened the door and went out. The wind seemed
as though lying in wait for her; with gleeful whistle it tried
to snatch her up and bear her off, but she clung to the
cold door post, and holding her skirt got down onto the
platform and under the shelter of the carriages. The wind
had been powerful on the steps, but on the platform,
under the lee of the carriages, there was a lull. With
enjoyment she drew deep breaths of the frozen, snowy air,
and standing near the carriage looked about the platform
and the lighted station.
Chapter 30
The raging tempest rushed whistling between the
wheels of the carriages, about the scaffolding, and round
the corner of the station. The carriages, posts, people,
everything that was to be seen was covered with snow on
one side, and was getting more and more thickly covered.
For a moment there would come a lull in the storm, but
then it would swoop down again with such onslaughts
that it seemed impossible to stand against it. Meanwhile
men ran to and fro, talking merrily together, their steps
crackling on the platform as they continually opened and
closed the big doors. The bent shadow of a man glided by
at her feet, and she heard sounds of a hammer upon iron.
‘Hand over that telegram!’ came an angry voice out of the
stormy darkness on the other side. ‘This way! No. 28!’
several different voices shouted again, and muffled figures
ran by covered with snow. Two gentleman with lighted
cigarettes passed by her. She drew one more deep breath
of the fresh air, and had just put he hand out of her muff
to take hold of the door post and get back into the
carriage, when another man in a military overcoat, quite
close beside her, stepped between her and the flickering
light of the lamp post. She looked round, and the same
instant recognized Vronsky’s face. Putting his hand to the
peak of his cap, he bowed to her and asked, Was there
anything she wanted? Could he be of any service to her?
She gazed rather a long while at him without answering,
and, in spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she
saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his face and
his eyes. It was again that expression of reverential ecstasy
which had so worked upon her the day before. More than
once she had told herself during the past few days, and
again only a few moments before, that Vronsky was for
her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever
exactly the same, that are met everywhere, that she would
never allow herself to bestow a thought upon him. But
now at the first instant of meeting him, she was seized by a
feeling of joyful pride. She had no need to ask why he had
come. she knew as certainly as if he had told her that he
was here to be where she was.
‘I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming
for?’ she said, letting fall the hand with which she had
grasped the door post. And irrepressible delight and
eagerness shone in her face.
‘What am I coming for?’ he repeated, looking straight
into her eyes. ‘You know that I have come to be where
you are,’ he said; ‘I can’t help it.’
At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all
obstacles, sent the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and
clanked some sheet of iron it had torn off, while the
hoarse whistle of the engine roared in front, plaintively
and gloomily. All the awfulness of the storm seemed to
her more splendid now. He had said what her soul longed
to hear, though she feared it with her reason. She made no
answer, and in her face he saw conflict.
‘Forgive me, if you dislike what I said,’ he said humbly.
He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly,
so stubbornly, that for a long while she could make no
answer.
‘It’s wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you’re a
good man, to forget what you’ve said, as I forget it,’ she
said at last.
‘Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could
I, ever forget..’
‘Enough, enough!’ she cried trying assiduously to give a
stern expression to her face, into which he was gazing
greedily. And clutching at the cold door post, she
clambered up the steps and got rapidly into the corridor of
the carriage. But in the little corridor she paused, going
over in her imagination what had happened. Though she
could not recall her own words or his, she realized
instinctively that the momentary conversation had brought
them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and
blissful at it. After standing still a few seconds, she went
into the carriage and sat down in her place. The
overstrained condition which had tormented her before
did not only come back, but was intensified, and reached
such a pitch that she was afraid every minute that
something would snap within her from the excessive
tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that nervous
tension, and in the visions that filled her imagination,
there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary
there was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating.
Towards morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting in her
place, and when she waked it was daylight and the train
was near Petersburg. At once thoughts of home, of
husband and of son, and the details of that day and the
following came upon her.
At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got
out, the first person that attracted her attention was her
husband. ‘Oh, mercy! why do his ears look like that?’ she
thought, looking at his frigid and imposing figure, and
especially the ears that struck her at the moment as
propping up the brim of his round hat. Catching sight of
her, he came to meet her, his lips falling into their habitual
sarcastic smile, and his big, tired eyes looking straight at
her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she
met his obstinate and weary glance, as though she had
expected to see him different. She was especially struck by
the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she
experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an
intimate, familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy,
which she experienced in her relations with her husband.
But hitherto she had not taken note of the feeling, now
she was clearly and painfully aware of it.
‘Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the
first year after marriage, burned with impatience to see
you,’ he said in his deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in
that tone which he almost always took with her, a tone of
jeering at anyone who should say in earnest what he said.
‘Is Seryozha quite well?’ she asked.
‘And is this all the reward,’ said he, ‘for my ardor? He’s
quite well..’
Chapter 31
Vronsky had not even tried to sleep all that night. He
sat in his armchair, looking straight before him or scanning
the people who got in and out. If he had indeed on
previous occasions struck and impressed people who did
not know him by his air of unhesitating composure, he
seemed now more haughty and self-possessed than ever.
He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous
young man, a clerk in a law court, sitting opposite him,
hated him for that look. The young man asked him for a
light, and entered into conversation with him, and even
pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a
thing, but a person. But Vronsky gazed at him exactly as
he did at the lamp, and the young man made a wry face,
feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the
oppression of this refusal to recognize him as a person.
Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a
king, not because he believed that he had made an
impression on Anna—he did not yet believe that,—but
because the impression she had made on him gave him
happiness and pride.
What would come if it all he did not know, he did not
even think. He felt that all his forces, hitherto dissipated,
wasted, were centered on one thing, and bent with fearful
energy on one blissful goal. And he was happy at it. He
knew only that he had told her the truth, that he had
come where she was, that all the happiness of his life, the
only meaning in life for him, now lay in seeing and
hearing her. And when he got out of the carriage at
Bologova to get some seltzer water, and caught sight of
Anna, involuntarily his first word had told her just what he
thought. And he was glad he had told her it, that she
knew it now and was thinking of it. He did not sleep all
night. When he was back in the carriage, he kept
unceasingly going over every position in which he had
seen her, every word she had uttered, and before his fancy,
making his heart faint with emotion, floated pictures of a
possible future.

.
When he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after
his sleepless night as keen and fresh as after a cold bath. He
paused near his compartment, waiting for her to get out.
‘Once more,’ he said to himself, smiling unconsciously,
‘once more I shall see her walk, her face; she will say
something, turn her head, glance, smile, maybe.’ But
before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom
the station-master was deferentially escorting through the
crowd. ‘Ah, yes! The husband.’ Only now for the first
time did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that there was a
person attached to her, a husband. He knew that she had a
husband, but had hardly believed in his existence, and
only now fully believed in him, with his head and
shoulders, and his legs clad in black trousers; especially
when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a
sense of property.
Seeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face
and severely self-confident figure, in his round hat, with
his rather prominent spine, he believed in him, and was
aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as a man might feel
tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a
dog, a sheep, or a pig, who has drunk of it and muddied
the water. Alexey Alexandrovitch’s manner of walking,
with a swing of the hips and flat feet, particularly annoyed
Vronsky. He could recognize in no one but himself an
indubitable right to love her. But she was still the same,
and the sight of her affected him the same way, physically
reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with
rapture. He told his German valet, who ran up to him
from the second class, to take his things and go on, and he
himself went up to her. He saw the first meeting between
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the husband and wife, and noted with a lover’s insight the
signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her
husband. ‘No, she does not love him and cannot love
him,’ he decided to himself.
At the moment when he was approaching Anna
Arkadyevna he noticed too with joy that she was
conscious of his being near, and looked round, and seeing
him, turned again to her husband.
‘Have you passed a good night?’ he asked, bowing to
her and her husband together, and leaving it up to Alexey
Alexandrovitch to accept the bow on his own account,
and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.
‘Thank you, very good,’ she answered.
Her face looked weary, and there was not that play of
eagerness in it, peeping out in her smile and her eyes; but
for a single instant, as she glanced at him, there was a flash
of something in her eyes, and although the flash died away
at once, he was happy for that moment. She glanced at her
husband to find out whether he knew Vronsky. Alexey
Alexandrovitch looked at Vronsky with displeasure,
vaguely recalling who this was. Vronsky’s composure and
self-confidence have struck, like a scythe against a stone,
upon the cold self-confidence of Alexey Alexandrovitch.
‘Count Vronsky,’ said Anna.
‘Ah! We are acquainted, I believe,’ said Alexey
Alexandrovitch indifferently, giving his hand.
‘You set off with the mother and you return with the
son,’ he said, articulating each syllable, as though each
were a separate favor he was bestowing.
‘You’re back from leave, I suppose?’ he said, and
without waiting for a reply, he turned to his wife in his
jesting tone: ‘Well, were a great many tears shed at
Moscow at parting?’
By addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to
understand that he wished to be left alone, and, turning
slightly towards him, he touched his hat; but Vronsky
turned to Anna Arkadyevna.
‘I hope I may have the honor of calling on you,’ he
said.
Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at
Vronsky.
‘Delighted,’ he said coldly. ‘On Mondays we’re at
home. Most fortunate,’ he said to his wife, dismissing
Vronsky altogether, ‘that I should just have half an hour to
meet you, so that I can prove my devotion,’ he went on
in the same jesting tone.
‘You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to
value it much,’ she responded in the same jesting tone,
involuntarily listening to the sound of Vronsky’s steps
behind them. ‘But what has it to do with me?’ she said to
herself, and she began asking her husband how Seryozha
had got on without her.
‘Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been very good,
And...I must disappoint you...but he has not missed you as
your husband has. But once more merci, my dear, for
giving me a day. Our dear Samovar will be delighted.’ (He
used to call the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well known in
society, a samovar, because she was always bubbling over
with excitement.) ‘She has been continually asking after
you. And, do you know, if I may venture to advise you,
you should go and see her today. You know how she
takes everything to heart. Just now, with all her own cares,
she’s anxious about the Oblonskys being brought
together.’
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her
husband’s, and the center of that one of the coteries of the
Petersburg world with which Anna was, through her
husband, in the closest relations.
‘But you know I wrote to her?’
‘Still she’ll want to hear details. Go and see her, if
you’re not too tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take
you in the carriage, while I go to my committee. I shall
not be alone at dinner again,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch went
on, no longer in a sarcastic tone. ‘You wouldn’t believe
how I’ve missed...’ And with a long pressure of her hand
and a meaning smile, he put her in her carriage.
Chapter 32
The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He
dashed down the stairs to her, in spite of the governess’s
call, and with desperate joy shrieked: ‘Mother! mother!’
Running up to her, he hung on her neck.
‘I told you it was mother!’ he shouted to the governess.
‘I knew!’
And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a
feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him
better than he was in reality. She had to let herself drop
down to the reality to enjoy him as he really was. But
even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, his
blue eyes, and his plump, graceful little legs in tightly
pulled-up stockings. Anna experienced almost physical
pleasure in the sensation of his nearness, and his caresses,
and moral soothing, when she met his simple, confiding,
and loving glance, and heard his naive questions. Anna
took out the presents Dolly’s children had sent him, and
told her son what sort of little girl was Tanya at Moscow,
and how Tanya could read, and even taught the other
children.
‘Why, am I not so nice as she?’ asked Seryozha.
To me you’re nicer than anyone in the world.’
‘I know that,’ said Seryozha, smiling.
Anna had not had time to drink her coffee when the
Countess Lidia Ivanovna was announced. The Countess
Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman, with an
unhealthily sallow face and splendid, pensive black eyes.
Anna liked her, but today she seemed to be seeing her for
the first time with all her defects.
‘Well, my dear, so you took the olive branch?’ inquired
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, as soon as she came into the
room.
‘Yes, it’s all over, but it was all much less serious than
we had supposed,’ answered Anna. ‘My belle-soeur is in
general too hasty.’
But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was
interested in everything that did not concern her, had a
habit of never listening to what interested her; she
interrupted Anna:
‘Yes, there’s plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I
am so worried today.’
‘Oh, why?’ asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.
‘I’m beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing
the truth, and sometimes I’m quite unhinged by it. The
Society of the Little Sisters’ (this was a religiouslyAnna
patriotic, philanthropic institution) ‘was going splendidly,
but with these gentlemen it’s impossible to do anything,’
added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a tone of ironical
submission to destiny. ‘They pounce on the idea, and
distort it, and then work it out so pettily and unworthily.
Two or three people, your husband among them,
understand all the importance of the thing, but the others
simply drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me..’
Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and
Countess Lidia Ivanovna described the purport of his
letter.
Then the countess told her of more disagreements and
intrigues against the work of the unification of the
churches, and departed in haste, as she had that day to be
at the meeting of some society and also at the Slavonic
committee.
‘It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I
didn’t notice it before?’ Anna asked herself. ‘Or has she
been very much irritated today? It’s really ludicrous; her
object is doing good; she a Christian, yet she’s always
angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in
the name of Christianity and doing good.’
After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the
wife of a chief secretary, who told her all the news of the
town. At three o’clock she too went away, promising to
come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at the
ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in
assisting at her son’s dinner (he dined apart from his
parents) and in putting her things in order, and in reading
and answering the notes and letters which had
accumulated on her table.
The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on
the journey, and her excitement, too, had completely
vanished. In the habitual conditions of her life she felt
again resolute and irreproachable.
She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the
previous day. ‘What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said
something silly, which it was easy to put a stop to, and I
answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my
husband would be unnecessary and out of the question.
To speak of it would be to attach importance to what has
no importance.’ She remembered how she had told her
husband of what was almost a declaration made her at
Petersburg by a young man, one of her husband’s
subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had
answered that every woman living in the world was
exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest
confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and
himself by jealousy. ‘So then there’s no reason to speak of
it? And indeed, thank God, there’s nothing to speak of,’
she told herself.
Chapter 33
Alexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of
the ministers at four o’clock, but as often happened, he
had not time no come in to her. He went into his study to
see the people waiting for him with petitions, and to sign
some papers brought him by his chief secretary. At dinner
time (there were always a few people dining with the
Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, the chief secretary of the department and
his wife, and a young man who had been recommended
to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the service. Anna went into
the drawing room to receive these guests. Precisely at five
o’clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had struck
the fifth stroke, Alexey Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a
white tie and evening coat with two stars, as he had to go
out directly after dinner. Every minute of Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s life was portioned out and occupied.
And to make time to get through all that lay before him
every day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality.
‘Unhasting and unresting,’ was his motto. He came into
the dining hall, greeted everyone, and hurriedly sat down,
smiling to his wife.
‘Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn’t believe how
uncomfortable’ (he laid stress on the word uncomfortable)
‘it is to dine alone.’
At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow
matters, and, with a sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan
Arkadyevitch; but the conversation was for the most part
general, dealing with Petersburg official and public news.
After dinner he spent half an hour with his guests, and
again, with a smile, pressed his wife’s hand, withdrew, and
drove off to the council. Anna did not go out that evening
either to the Princess Betsy Tverskaya, who, hearing of
her return, had invited her, nor to the theater, where she
had a box for that evening. She did not go out principally
because the dress she had reckoned upon was not ready.
Altogether, Anna, on turning, after the departure of her
guests, to the consideration of her attire, was very much
annoyed. She was generally a mistress of the art of dressing
well without great expense, and before leaving Moscow
she had given her dressmaker three dresses to transform.
The dresses had to be altered so that they could not be
recognized, and they ought to have been ready three days
before. It appeared that two dresses had not been done at
all, while the other one had not been altered as Anna had
intended. The dressmaker came to explain, declaring that
it would be better as she had done it, and Anna was so
furious that she felt ashamed when she thought of it
afterwards. To regain her serenity completely she went
into the nursery, and spent the whole evening with her
son, put him to bed herself, signed him with the cross, and
tucked him up. She was glad she had not gone out
anywhere, and had spent the evening so well. She felt so
light-hearted and serene, she saw so clearly that all that had
seemed to her so important on her railway journey was
only one of the common trivial incidents of fashionable
life, and that she had no reason to feel ashamed before
anyone else or before herself. Anna sat down at the hearth
with an English novel and waited for her husband. Exactly
at half-past nine she heard his ring, and he came into the
room.
‘Here you are at last!’ she observed, holding out her
hand to him.
He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.
‘Altogether then, I see your visit was a success,’ he said
to her.

.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and she began telling him about
everything from the beginning: her journey with Countess
Vronskaya, her arrival, the accident at the station. Then
she described the pity she had felt, first for her brother,
and afterwards for Dolly.
‘I imagine one cannot exonerate such a man from
blame, though he is your brother,’ said Alexey
Alexandrovitch severely.
Anna smiled. She knew that he said that simply to
show that family considerations could not prevent him
from expressing his genuine opinion. She knew that
characteristic in her husband, and liked it.
‘I am glad it has all ended so satisfactorily, And that you
are back again,’ he went on. ‘Come, what do they say
about the new act I have got passed in the council?’
Anna had heard nothing of this act, And she felt
conscience-stricken at having been able so readily to forget
what was to him of such importance.
‘Here, on the other hand, it has made a great sensation,’
he said, with a complacent smile.
She saw that Alexey Alexandrovitch wanted to tell her
something pleasant to him about it, and she brought him
by questions to telling it. With the same complacent smile
he told her of the ovations he had received in
consequence of the act the had passed.
‘I was very, very glad. It shows that at last a reasonable
and steady view of the matter is becoming prevalent
among us.’
Having drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and
bread, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and was going
towards his study.
‘And you’ve not been anywhere this evening? You’ve
been dull, I expect?’ he said.
‘Oh, no!’ she answered, getting up after him and
accompanying him across the room to his study. ‘What are
you reading now?’ she asked.
‘Just now I’m reading Duc de Likke, Poesie des Enfers,’
he answered. ‘A very remarkable book.’
Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those
they love, and, putting her hand under his, she escorted
him to the door of the study. She knew his habit, that had
grown into a necessity, of reading in the evening. She
knew, too, that in spite of his official duties, which
swallowed up almost the whole of his time, he considered
it his duty to keep up with everything of note that
appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too, that he
was really interested in books dealing with politics,
philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly foreign to
his nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence
of it, Alexey Alexandrovitch never passed over anything in
the world of art, but made it his duty to read everything.
She knew that in politics, in philosophy, in theology,
Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and made
investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and,
above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of
understanding, he had the most distinct and decided
opinions. He was fond of talking about Shakespeare,
Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of
poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with
very conspicuous consistency.
‘Well, God be with you,’ she said at the door of the
study, where a shaded candle and a decanter of water were
already put by his armchair. ‘And I’ll write to Moscow.’
He pressed her hand, and again kissed it.
‘All the same he’s a good man; truthful, good-hearted,
and remarkable in his own line,’ Anna said to herself going
back to her room, as though she were defending him to
someone who had attacked him and said that one could
not love him. ‘But why is it his ears stick out so strangely?
Or has he had his hair cut?’
Precisely at twelve o’clock, when Anna was still sitting
at her writing table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard
the sound of measured steps in slippers, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch, freshly washed and combed, with a book
under his arm, came in to her.
‘It’s time, it’s time,’ said he, with a meaning smile, And
he went into their bedroom.
‘And what right had he to look at him like that?’
thought Anna, recalling Vronsky’s glance at Alexey
Alexandrovitch.
Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face
had none of the eagerness which, during her stay in
Moscow, had fairly flashed from her eyes and her smile;
on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in her,
hidden somewhere far away.
Chapter 34
When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he
had left his large set of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and
favorite comrade Petritsky.
Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly wellconnected,
and not merely not wealthy, but always
hopelessly in debt. Towards evening he was always drunk,
and he had often been locked up after all sorts of ludicrous
and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite both of his
comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve
o’clock from the station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the
outer door, a hired carriage familiar to him. While still
outside his own door, as he rang, he heard masculine
laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and Petritsky’s
voice. ‘If that’s one of the villains, don’t let him in!’
Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and
slipped quietly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a
friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair,
resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole
room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the
round table making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and
the cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably
just come from duty, were sitting each side of her.
‘Bravo! Vronsky!’ shouted Petritsky, jumping up,
scraping his chair. ‘Our host himself! Baroness, some
coffee for him out of the new coffee pot. Why, we didn’t
expect you! Hope you’re satisfied with the ornament of
your study,’ he said, indicating the baroness. ‘You know
each other, of course?’
‘I should think so,’ said Vronsky, with a bright smile,
pressing the baroness’s little hand. ‘What next! I’m an old
friend.’
‘You’re home after a journey,’ said the baroness, ‘so
I’m flying. Oh, I’ll be off this minute, if I’m in the way.’
‘You’re home, wherever you are, baroness,’ said
Vronsky. ‘How do you do, Kamerovsky?’ he added,
coldly shaking hands with Kamerovsky.
‘There, you never know how to say such pretty things,’
said the baroness, turning to Petritsky.
‘No; what’s that for? After dinner I say things quite as
good.’
‘After dinner there’s no credit in them? Well, then, I’ll
make you some coffee, so go and wash and get ready,’ said
the baroness, sitting down again, and anxiously turning the
screw in the new coffee pot. ‘Pierre, give me the coffee,’
she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she called as a
contraction of his surname, making no secret of her
relations with him. ‘I’ll put it in.’
‘You’ll spoil it!’
‘No, I won’t spoil it! Well, and your wife?’ said the
baroness suddenly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation
with his comrade. ‘We’ve been marrying you here. Have
you brought your wife?’
‘No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a
Bohemian I shall die.’
‘So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands
on it.’
And the baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling
him, with many jokes, about her last new plans of life,
asking his advice.
‘He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well,
what am I to do?’ (HE was her husband.) ‘Now I want to
begin a suit against him. What do you advise?
Kamerovsky, look after the coffee; it’s boiling over. You
see, I’m engrossed with business! I want a lawsuit, because
I must have my property. Do you understand the folly of
it, that on the pretext of my being unfaithful to him,’ she
said contemptuously, ‘he wants to get the benefit of my
fortune.’
Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle
of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking
counsel, and altogether dropped at once into the tone
habitual to him in talking to such women. In his
Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly
opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and,
above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband
ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully
married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest,
and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one
ought to bring up one’s children, earn one’s bread, and
pay one’s debts; and various similar absurdities. This was
the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there
was another class of people, the real people. To this class
they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be
elegant, generous, plucky, ---, to abandon oneself without
a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.
For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled after
the impression of a quite different world that he had
brought with him from Moscow. But immediately as
though slipping his feet into old slippers, he dropped back
into the light-hearted, pleasant world he had always lived
in.
The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over
every one, and boiled away, doing just what was required
of it—that is, providing much cause for much noise and
laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the baroness’s
gown.
‘Well now, good-bye, or you’ll never get washed, and
I shall have on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman
can commit. So you would advise a knife to his throat?’
‘To be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far
from his lips. He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end
satisfactorily,’ answered Vronsky.
‘So at the Francais!’ and, with a rustle of her skirts, she
vanished.
Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for
him to go, shook hands and went off to his dressing room.
While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in
brief outlines his position, as far as it had changed since
Vronsky had left Petersburg. No money at all. His father
said he wouldn’t give him any and pay his debts. His tailor
was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow, too,
was threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the
regiment had announced that if these scandals did not
cease he would have to leave. As for the baroness, he was
sick to death of her, especially since she’d taken to offering
continually to lend him money. But he had found a girl—
he’d show her to Vronsky—a marvel, exquisite, in the
strict Oriental style, ‘genre of the slave Rebecca, don’t you
know.’ He’d had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was
going to send seconds to him, but of course it would
come to nothing. Altogether everything was supremely
amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into
further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell
him all the interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky’s
familiar stories in the familiar setting of the rooms he had
spent the last three years in, Vronsky felt a delightful sense
of coming back to the careless Petersburg life that he was
used to.
‘Impossible!’ he cried, letting down the pedal of the
washing basin in which he had been sousing his healthy
red neck. ‘Impossible!’ he cried, at the news that Laura had
flung over Fertinghof and had made up to Mileev. ‘And is
he as stupid and pleased as ever? Well, and how’s
Buzulukov?’
‘Oh, there is a tale about Buzulukov—simply lovely!’
cried Petritsky. ‘You know his weakness for balls, and he
never misses a single court ball. He went to a big ball in a
new helmet. Have you seen the new helmets? Very nice,
lighter. Well, so he’s standing.... No, I say, do listen.’
‘I am listening,’ answered Vronsky, rubbing himself
with a rough towel.
‘Up comes the Grand Duchess with some ambassador
or other, and, as ill-luck would have it, she begins talking
to him about the new helmets. The Grand Duchess
positively wanted to show the new helmet to the
ambassador. They see our friend standing there.’ (Petritsky
mimicked how he was standing with the helmet.) ‘The
Grand Duchess asked him to give her the helmet; he
doesn’t give it to her. What do you think of that? Well,
every one’s winking at him, nodding, frowning—give it
to her, do! He doesn’t give it to her. He’s mute as a fish.
Only picture it!... Well, the...what’s his name, whatever
he was...tries to take the helmet from him...he won’t give
it up!... He pulls it from him, and hands it to the Grand
Duchess. ‘Here, your Highness,’ says he, ‘is the new
helmet.’ She turned the helmet the other side up, And—
just picture it!—plop went a pear and sweetmeats out of it,
two pounds of sweetmeats!...He’d been storing them up,
the darling!’
Vronsky burst into roars of laughter. And long
afterwards, when he was talking of other things, he broke
out into his healthy laugh, showing his strong, close rows
of teeth, when he thought of the helmet.
Having heard all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance
of his valet, got into his uniform, and went off to report
himself. He intended, when he had done that, to drive to
his brother’s and to Betsy’s and to pay several visits with a
view to beginning to go into that society where he might
meet Madame Karenina. As he always did in Petersburg,
he left home not meaning to return till late at night.
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PART TWO
Chapter 1
At the end of the winter, in the Shtcherbatskys’ house,
a consultation was being held, which was to pronounce on
the state of Kitty’s health and the measures to be taken to
restore her failing strength. She had been ill, and as spring
came on she grew worse. The family doctor gave her cod
liver oil, then iron, then nitrate of silver, but as the first
and the second and the third were alike in doing no good,
and as his advice when spring came was to go abroad, a
celebrated physician was called in. The celebrated
physician, a very handsome man, still youngish, asked to
examine the patient. He maintained, with peculiar
satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic
of barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than
for a man still youngish to handle a young girl naked. He
thought it natural because he did it every day, and felt and
thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as he did it and
consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely
as a relic of barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.
There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although
all the doctors had studied in the same school, had read the
same books, and learned the same science, and though
some people said this celebrated doctor was a bad doctor,
in the princess’s household and circle it was for some
reason accepted that this celebrated doctor alone had some
special knowledge, and that he alone could save Kitty.
After a careful examination and sounding of the
bewildered patient, dazed with shame, the celebrated
doctor, having scrupulously washed his hands, was
standing in the drawing room talking to the prince. The
prince frowned and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a
man who had seen something of life, and neither a fool
nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine, and in his
heart was furious at the whole farce, specially as he was
perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause
of Kitty’s illness. ‘Conceited blockhead!’ he thought, as he
listened to the celebrated doctor’s chatter about his
daughter’s symptoms. The doctor was meantime with
difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt for this
old gentleman, and with difficulty condescending to the
level of his intelligence. He perceived that it was no good
talking to the old man, and that the principal person in the
house was the mother. Before her he decided to scatter his
pearls. At that instant the princess came into the drawing
room with the family doctor. The prince withdrew, trying
not to show how ridiculous he thought the whole
performance. The princess was distracted, and did not
know what to do. She felt she had sinned against Kitty.
‘Well, doctor, decide our fate,’ said the princess. ‘Tell
me everything.’
‘Is there hope?’ she meant to say, but her lips quivered,
and she could not utter the question. ‘Well, doctor?’
‘Immediately, princess. I will talk it over with my
colleague, And then I will have the honor of laying my
opinion before you.’
‘So we had better leave you?’
‘As you please.’
The princess went out with a sigh.
When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor
began timidly explaining his opinion, that there was a
commencement of tuberculous trouble, but...and so on.
The celebrated doctor listened to him, and in the middle
of his sentence looked at his big gold watch.
‘Yes,’ said he. ‘But..’
The family doctor respectfully ceased in the middle of
his observations.
‘The commencement of the tuberculous process we are
not, as you are aware, able to define; till there are cavities,
there is nothing definite. But we may suspect it. And there
are indications; malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so
on. The question stands thus: in presence of indications of
tuberculous process, what is to be done to maintain
nutrition?’
‘But, you know, there are always moral, spiritual causes
at the back in these cases,’ the family doctor permitted
himself to interpolate with a subtle smile.
‘Yes, that’s an understood thing,’ responded the
celebrated physician, again glancing at his watch. ‘Beg
pardon, is the Yausky bridge done yet, or shall I have to
drive around?’ he asked. ‘Ah! it is. Oh, well, then I can do
it in twenty minutes. So we were saying the problem may
be put thus: to maintain nutrition and to give tone to the
nerves. The one is in close connection with the other, one
must attack both sides at once.’
‘And how about a tour abroad?’ asked the family
doctor.
‘I’ve no liking for foreign tours. And take note: if there
is an early stage of tuberculous process, of which we
cannot be certain, a foreign tour will be of no use. What is
wanted is means of improving nutrition, and not for
lowering it.’ And the celebrated doctor expounded his
plan of treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously
prescribed primarily on the ground that they could do no
harm.
The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.
‘But in favor of foreign travel I would urge the change
of habits, the removal from conditions calling up
reminiscences. And then the mother wishes it,’ he added.
‘Ah! Well, in that case, to be sure, let them go. Only,
those German quacks are mischievous.... They ought to be
persuaded.... Well, let them go then.’
He glanced once more at his watch.
‘Oh! time’s up already,’ And he went to the door. The
celebrated doctor announced to the princess (a feeling of
what was due from him dictated his doing so) that he
ought to see the patient once more.
‘What! another examination!’ cried the mother, with
horror.
‘Oh, no, only a few details, princess.’
‘Come this way.’
And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into
the drawing room to Kitty. Wasted and flushed, with a
peculiar glitter in her eyes, left there by the agony of
shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in the
middle of the room. When the doctor came in she flushed
crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and
treatment struck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even!
Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together
the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why
would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But she
could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother
considered herself to blame.
‘May I trouble you to sit down, princess?’ the
celebrated doctor said to her.
He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and
again began asker her tiresome questions. She answered
him, and all at once got up, furious.
‘Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this.
This is the third time you’ve asked me the same thing.’
The celebrated doctor did not take offense.
‘Nervous irritability,’ he said to the princess, when
Kitty had left the room. ‘However, I had finished..’
And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the
princess, as an exceptionally intelligent woman, the
condition of the young princess, and concluded by
insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were
certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go
abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation, as
though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision
was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no
faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.
It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had
come to pass after the doctor had gone. The mother was
much more cheerful when she went back to her daughter,
and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had often,
almost always, to be pretending now.
‘Really, I’m quite well, mamma. But if you want to go
abroad, let’s go!’ she said, And trying to appear interested
in the proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations
for the journey.
Chapter 2
Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that
there was to be a consultation that day, and though she
was only just up after her confinement (she had another
baby, a little girl, born at the end of the winter), though
she had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she had
left her tiny baby and a sick child, to come and hear
Kitty’s fate, which was to be decided that day.
‘Well, well?’ she said, coming into the drawing room,
without taking off her hat. ‘You’re all in good spirits.
Good news, then?’
They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it
appeared that though the doctor had talked distinctly
enough and at great length, it was utterly impossible to
report what he had said. The only point of interest was
that it was settled they should go abroad.
Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her
sister, was going away. And her life was not a cheerful
one. Her relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch after their
reconciliation had become humiliating. The union Anna
had cemented turned out to be of no solid character, and
family harmony was breaking down again at the same
point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan
Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was
hardly ever forthcoming, and Dolly was continually
tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to
dismiss, dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been
through already. The first onslaught of jealousy, once lived
through, could never come back again, and even the
discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as it
had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean
breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived,
despising him and still more herself, for the weakness.
Besides this, the care of her large family was a constant
worry to her: first, the nursing of her young baby did not
go well, then the nurse had gone away, now one of the
children had fallen ill.

.
‘Well, how are all of you?’ asked her mother.
‘Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own.
Lili is ill, And I’m afraid it’s scarlatina. I have come here
now to hear about Kitty, And then I shall shut myself up
entirely, if—God forbid—it should be scarlatina.’
The old prince too had come in from his study after
the doctor’s departure, and after presenting his cheek to
Dolly, and saying a few words to her, he turned to his
wife:
‘How have you settled it? you’re going? Well, and
what do you mean to do with me?’
‘I suppose you had better stay here, Alexander,’ said his
wife.
‘That’s as you like.’
‘Mamma, why shouldn’t father come with us?’ said
Kitty. ‘It would be nicer for him and for us too.’
The old prince got up and stroked Kitty’s hair. She
lifted her head and looked at them with a forced smile. It
always seemed to her that he understood her better than
anyone in the family, though he did not say much about
her. Being the youngest, she was her father’s favorite, and
she fancied that his love gave him insight. When now her
glance meet his blue kindly eyes looking intently at her, it
seemed to her that he saw right through her, and
understood all that was not good that was passing within
her. Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting
a kiss, but he only patted her hair and said:
‘These stupid chignons! There’s no getting at the real
daughter. One simply strokes the bristles of dead women.
Well, Dolinka,’ he turned to his elder daughter, ‘what’s
your young buck about, hey?’
‘Nothing, father,’ answered Dolly, understanding that
her husband was meant. ‘He’s always out; I scarcely ever
see him,’ she could not resist adding with a sarcastic smile.
‘Why, hasn’t he gone into the country yet—to see
about selling that forest?’
‘No, he’s still getting ready for the journey.’
‘Oh, that’s it!’ said the prince. ‘And so am I to be
getting ready for a journey too? At your service,’ he said
to his wife, sitting down. ‘And I tell you what, Katia,’ he
went on to his younger daughter, ‘you must wake up one
fine day and say to yourself: Why, I’m quite well, and
merry, and going out again with father for an early
morning walk in the frost. Hey?’
What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at
these words Kitty became confused and overcome like a
detected criminal. ‘Yes, he sees it all, he understands it all,
and in these words he’s telling me that though I’m
ashamed, I must get over my shame.’ She could not pluck
up spirit to make any answer. She tried to begin, and all at
once burst into tears, and rushed out of the room.
‘See what comes of your jokes!’ the princess pounced
down on her husband. ‘You’re always...’ she began a
string of reproaches.
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The prince listened to the princess’s scolding rather a
long while without speaking, but his face was more and
more frowning.
‘She’s so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be
pitied, and you don’t feel how it hurts her to hear the
slightest reference to the cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken
in people!’ said the princess, and by the change in her tone
both Dolly and the prince knew she was speaking of
Vronsky. ‘I don’t know why there aren’t laws against such
base, dishonorable people.’
‘Ah, I can’t bear to hear you!’ said the prince gloomily,
getting up from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get
away, yet stopping in the doorway. ‘There are laws,
madam, and since you’ve challenged me to it, I’ll tell you
who’s to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody
else. Laws against such young gallants there have always
been, and there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that
ought not to have been, old as I am, I’d have called him
out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes, and now you
physic her and call in these quacks.’
The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as
soon as the princess heard his tone she subsided at once,
and became penitent, as she always did on serious
occasions.
‘Alexander, Alexander,’ she whispered, moving to him
and beginning to weep.
As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed
down. He went up to her.
‘There, that’s enough, that’s enough! You’re wretched
too, I know. It can’t be helped. There’s no great harm
done. God is merciful...thanks...’ he said, not knowing
what he was saying, as he responded to the tearful kiss of
the princess that he felt on his hand. And the prince went
out of the room.
Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in
tears, Dolly, with her motherly, family instincts, had
promptly perceived that here a woman’s work lay before
her, and she prepared to do it. She took of her hat, and,
morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for
action. While her mother was attacking her father, she
tried to restrain her mother, so far as filial reverence would
allow. During the prince’s outburst she was silent; she felt
ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her father for
so quickly being kind again. But when her father left them
she made ready for what was the chief thing needful—to
go to Kitty and console her.
‘I’d been meaning to tell you something for a long
while, mamma: did you know that Levin meant to make
Kitty an offer when he was here the last time? He told
Stiva so.’
‘Well, what then? I don’t understand..’
‘So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?... She didn’t tell you
so?’
‘No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the
other; she’s too proud. But I know it’s all on account of
the other.’
‘Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she
wouldn’t have refused him if it hadn’t been for the other,
I know. And then, he has deceived her so horribly.’
It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had
sinned against her daughter, and she broke out angrily.
‘Oh, I really don’t understand! Nowadays they will all
go their own way, and mothers haven’t a word to say in
anything, and then..’
‘Mamma, I’ll go up to her.’
‘Well, do. Did I tell you not to?’ said her mother.
Chapter 3
When she went into Kitty’s little room, a pretty, pink
little room, full of knick-knacks in vieux saxe, as fresh, and
pink, and white, and --- as Kitty herself had been two
months ago, Dolly remembered how they had decorated
the room the year before together, with what love and
gaiety. Her heart turned cold when she saw Kitty sitting
on a low chair near the door, her eyes fixed immovably on
a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister, and the
cold, rather ill-tempered expression of her face did not
change.
‘I’m just going now, and I shall have to keep in and
you won’t be able to come to see me,’ said Dolly, sitting
down beside her. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘What about?’ Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in
dismay.
‘What should it be, but your trouble?’
‘I have no trouble.’
‘Nonsense, Kitty. Do you suppose I could help
knowing? I know all about it. And believe me, it’s of so
little consequence.... We’ve all been through it.’
Kitty did not speak, And her face had a stern
expression.
‘He’s not worth your grieving over him,’ pursued
Darya Alexandrovna, coming straight to the point.
‘No, because he has treated me with contempt,’ said
Kitty, in a breaking voice. ‘Don’t talk of it! Please, don’t
talk of it!’
‘But who can have told you so? No one has said that.
I’m certain he was in love with you, and would still be in
love with you, if it hadn’t...
‘Oh, the most awful thing of all for me is this
sympathizing!’ shrieked Kitty, suddenly flying into a
passion. She turned round on her chair, flushed crimson,
and rapidly moving her fingers, pinched the clasp of her
belt first with one hand and then with the other. Dolly
knew this trick her sister had of clenching her hands when
she was much excited; she knew, too, that in moments of
excitement Kitty was capable of forgetting herself and
saying a great deal too much, and Dolly would have
soothed her, but it was too late.
‘What, what is it you want to make me feel, eh?’ said
Kitty quickly. ‘That I’ve been in love with a man who
didn’t care a straw for me, And that I’m dying of love for
him? And this is said to me by my own sister, who
imagines that...that...that she’s sympathizing with me!...I
don’t want these condolences And his humbug!’
‘Kitty, you’re unjust.’
‘Why are you tormenting me?’
‘But I...quite the contrary...I see you’re unhappy..’
But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.
‘I’ve nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I
am too proud ever to allow myself to care for a man who
does not love me.’
‘Yes, I don’t say so either.... Only one thing. Tell me
the truth,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the
hand: ‘tell me, did Levin speak to you?..’
The mention of Levin’s name seemed to deprive Kitty
of the last vestige of self-control. She leaped up from her
chair, and flinging her clasp on the ground, she
gesticulated rapidly with her hands and said:
‘Why bring Levin in too? I can’t understand what you
want to torment me for. I’ve told you, And I say it again,
that I have some pride, and never, NEVER would I do as
you’re doing—go back to a man who’s deceived you,
who has cared for another woman. I can’t understand it!
You may, but I can’t!’
And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and
seeing that Dolly sat silent, her head mournfully bowed,
Kitty, instead of running out of the room as she had meant
to do, sat down near the door, and hid her face in her
handkerchief.
The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking
of herself. That humiliation of which she was always
conscious came back to her with a peculiar bitterness
when her sister reminded her of it. She had not looked for
such cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her. But
suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the
sound of heart-rending, smothered sobbing, and felt arms
about her neck. Kitty was on her knees before her.
‘Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!’ she whispered
penitently. And the sweet face covered with tears hid itself
in Darya Alexandrovna’s skirt.
As though tears were the indispensable oil, without
which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run
smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their
tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds,
but, though they talked of outside matters, they
understood each other. Kitty knew that the words she had
uttered in anger about her husband’s infidelity and her
humiliating position had cut her poor sister to the heart,
but that she had forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew all
she had wanted to find out. She felt certain that her
surmises were correct; that Kitty’s misery, her inconsolable
misery, was due precisely to the fact that Levin had made
her an offer and she had refused him, and Vronsky had
deceived her, and that she was fully prepared to love Levin
and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a word of that; she
talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.
‘I have nothing to make me miserable,’ she said, getting
calmer; ‘but can you understand that everything has
become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself
most of all? You can’t imagine what loathsome thoughts I
have about everything.’
‘Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?’
asked Dolly, smiling.
‘The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can’t tell
you. It’s not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse.
As though everything that was good in me was all hidden
away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome.
Come, how am I to tell you?’ she went on, seeing the
puzzled look in her sister’s eyes. ‘Father began saying
something to me just now.... It seems to me he thinks all I
want is to be married. Mother takes me to a ball: it seems
to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as
may be, and be rid of me. I know it’s not the truth, but I
can’t drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call
them—I can’t bear to see them. It seems to me they’re
taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go
anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired
myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. And then! The
doctor.... Then...’ Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say
further that ever since this change had taken place in her,
Stepan Arkadyevitch had become insufferably repulsive to
her, and that she could not see him without the grossest
and most hideous conceptions rising before her
imagination.
‘Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the
coarsest, most loathsome light,’ she went on. ‘That’s my
illness. Perhaps it will pass off.’
‘But you mustn’t think about it.’
‘I can’t help it. I’m never happy except with the
children at your house.’
‘What a pity you can’t be with me!’
‘Oh, yes, I’m coming. I’ve had scarlatina, and I’ll
persuade mamma to let me.’
Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at
her sister’s and nursed the children all through the
scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned out to be. The two sisters
brought all the six children successfully through it, but
Kitty was no better in health, and in Lent the
Shtcherbatskys went abroad.
Chapter 4
The highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it
everyone knows everyone else, everyone even visits
everyone else. But this great set has its subdivisions. Anna
Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close ties in three
different circles of this highest society. One circle was her
husband’s government official set, consisting of his
colleagues and subordinates, brought together in the most
various and capricious manner, and belonging to different
social strata. Anna found it difficult now to recall the
feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence which she had at
first entertained for these persons. Now she knew all of
them as people know one another in a country town; she
knew their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe
pinched each one of them. She knew their relations with
one another and with the head authorities, knew who was
for whom, and how each one maintained his position, and
where they agreed and disagreed. But the circle of
political, masculine interests had never interested her, in
spite of countess Kidia Ivanovna’s influence, and she
avoided it.
Another little set with which Anna was in close
relations was the one by means of which Alexey
Alexandrovitch had made his career. The center of this
circle was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It was a set made
up of elderly, ugly, benevolent, and godly women, and
clever, learned, and ambitious men. One of the clever
people belonging to the set had called it ‘the conscience of
Petersburg society.’ Alexey Alexandrovitch had the
highest esteem for this circle, and Anna with her special
gift for getting on with everyone, had in the early days of
her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now,
since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this
set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of
them were insincere, and she fell so bored and ill at ease in
that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia
Ivanovna as little as possible.
The third circle with which Anna had ties was
preeminently the fashionable world—the world of balls, of
dinners, of sumptuous dresses, the world that hung on to
the court with one hand, so as to avoid sinking to the level
of the demi-monde. For the demi-monde the members of
that fashionable world believed that they despised, though
their tastes were not merely similar, but in fact identical.
Her connection with this circle was kept up through
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Princess Betsy Tverskaya, her cousin’s wife, who had an
income of a hundred and twenty thousand roubles, and
who had taken a great fancy to Anna ever since she first
came out, showed her much attention, and drew her into
her set, making fun of Countess Kidia Ivanovna’s coterie.
‘When I’m old and ugly I’ll be the same,’ Betsy used to
say; ‘but for a pretty young woman like you it’s early days
for that house of charity.’
Anna had at first avoided as far as she could Princess
Tverskaya’s world, because it necessitated an expenditure
beyond her means, and besides in her heart she preferred
the first circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had done
quite the contrary. She avoided her serious-minded
friends, and went out into the fashionable world. There
she met Vronsky, and experienced an agitating joy at those
meetings. She met Vronsky specially often at Betsy’s for
Betsy was a Vronsky by birth and his cousin. Vronsky was
everywhere where he had any chance of meeting Anna,
and speaking to her, when he could, of his love. She gave
him no encouragement, but every time she met him there
surged up in her heart that same feeling of quickened life
that had come upon her that day in the railway carriage
when she saw him for the first time. She was conscious
herself that her delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her
lips into a smile, and she could not quench the expression
of this delight.
At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased
with him for daring to pursue her. Soon after her return
from Moscow, on arriving at a soiree where she had
expected to meet him, and not finding him there, she
realized distinctly from the rush of disappointment that she
had been deceiving herself, and that this pursuit was not
merely not distasteful to her, but that it made the whole
interest of her life.
A celebrated singer was singing for the second time,
and all the fashionable world was in the theater. Vronsky,
seeing his cousin from his stall in the front row, did not
wait till the entr’acte, but went to her box.
‘Why didn’t you come to dinner?’ she said to him. ‘I
marvel at the second sight of lovers,’ she added with a
smile, so that no one but he could hear; ‘SHE WASN’T
THERE. But come after the opera.’
Vronsky looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He
thanked her by a smile, and sat down beside her.
‘But how I remember your jeers!’ continued Princess
Betsy, who took a peculiar pleasure in following up this
passion to a successful issue. ‘What’s become of all that?
You’re caught, my dear boy.’
‘That’s my one desire, to be caught,’ answered
Vronsky, with his serene, good-humored smile. ‘If I
complain of anything it’s only that I’m not caught enough,
to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope.’
‘Why, whatever hope can you have?’ said Betsy,
offended on behalf of her friend. ‘Enendons nous....’ But
in her eyes there were gleams of light that betrayed that
she understood perfectly and precisely as he did what hope
he might have.
‘None whatever,’ said Vronsky, laughing and showing
his even rows of teeth. ‘Excuse me,’ he added, taking an
opera glass out of her hand, and proceeding to scrutinize,
over her bare shoulder, the row of boxes facing them. ‘I’m
afraid I’m becoming ridiculous.’
He was very well aware that he ran no risk of being
ridiculous in the eyes of Betsy or any other fashionable
people. He was very well aware that in their eyes the
position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any
woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the
position of a man pursuing a married woman, and,
regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her
into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and
can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and
--- smile under his mustaches that he lowered the opera
glass and looked at his cousin.
‘But why was it you didn’t come to dinner?’ she said,
admiring him.
‘I must tell you about that. I was busily employed, and
doing what, do you suppose? I’ll give you a hundred
guesses, a thousand...you’d never guess. I’ve been
reconciling a husband with a man who’d insulted his wife.
Yes, really!’
‘Well, did you succeed?’
‘Almost.’
‘You really must tell me about it,’ she said, getting up.
‘Come to me in the next entr’acte.’
‘I can’t; I’m going to the French theater.’
‘From Nilsson?’ Betsy queried in horror, though she
could not herself have distinguished Nilsson’s voice from
any chorus girl’s.
‘Can’t help it. I’ve an appointment there, all to do with
my mission of peace.’
’ Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of
heaven,’’ said Betsy, vaguely recollecting she had heard
some similar saying from someone. ‘Very well, then, sit
down, and tell me what it’s all about.’
And she sat down again.
Chapter 5
‘This is rather indiscreet, but it’s so good it’s an awful
temptation to tell the story,’ said Vronsky, looking at her
with his laughing eyes. ‘I’m not going to mention any
names.’
‘But I shall guess, so much the better.’
‘Well, listen: two festive young men were driving-.’
‘Officers of your regiment, of course?’
‘I didn’t say they were officers,—two young men who
had been lunching.’
‘In other words, drinking.’
‘Possibly. They were driving on their way to dinner
with a friend in the most festive state of mind. And they
beheld a pretty woman in a hired sledge; she overtakes
them, looks round at them, and, so they fancy anyway,
nods to them and laughs. They, of course, follow her.
They gallop at full speed. To their amazement, the fair
one alights at the entrance of the very house to which they
were going. The fair one darts upstairs to the top story.
They get a glimpse of red lips under a short veil, and
exquisite little feet.’
‘You describe it with such feeling that I fancy you must
be one of the two.’
‘And after what you said, just now! Well, the young
men go in to their comrade’s; he was giving a farewell
dinner. There they certainly did drink a little too much, as
one always does at farewell dinners. And at dinner they
inquire who lives at the top in that house. No one knows;
only their host’s valet, in answer to their inquiry whether
any ‘young ladies’ are living on the top floor, answered
that there were a great many of them about there. After
dinner the two young men go into their host’s study, and
write a letter to the unknown fair one. They compose an
ardent epistle, a declaration in fact, and they carry the
letter upstairs themselves, so as to elucidate whatever
might appear not perfectly intelligible in the letter.’
‘Why are you telling me these horrible stories? Well?’
‘They ring. A maidservant opens the door, they hand
her the letter, and assure the maid that they’re both so in
love that they’ll die on the spot at the door. The maid,
stupefied, carries in their messages. All at once a gentleman
appears with whiskers like sausages, as red as a lobster,
announces that there is no one living in the flat except his
wife, and sends them both about their business.’
‘How do you know he had whiskers like sausages, as
you say?’
‘Ah, you shall hear. I’ve just been to make peace
between them.’
‘Well, and what then?’
‘That’s the most interesting part of the story. It appears
that it’s a happy couple, a government clerk and his lady.
The government clerk lodges a complaint, and I became a
mediator, and such a mediator!... I assure you Talleyrand
couldn’t hold a candle to me.’
‘Why, where was the difficulty?’
‘Ah, you shall hear.... We apologize in due form: we
are in despair, we entreat forgiveness for the unfortunate
misunderstanding. The government clerk with the
sausages begins to melt, but he, too, desires to express his
sentiments, and as soon as ever he begins to express them,
he begins to get hot and say nasty things, and again I’m
obliged to trot out all my diplomatic talents. I allowed that
their conduct was bad, but I urged him to take into
consideration their heedlessness, their youth; then, too, the
young men had only just been lunching together. ‘You
understand. They regret it deeply, and beg you to
overlook their misbehavior.’ The government clerk was
softened once more. ‘I consent, count, and am ready to
overlook it; but you perceive that my wife—my wife’s a
respectable woman —his been exposed to the persecution,
and insults, and effrontery of young upstarts, scoundrels....’
And you must understand, the young upstarts are present
all the while, and I have to keep the peace between them.
Again I call out all my diplomacy, and again as soon as the
thing was about at an end, our friend the government
clerk gets hot and red, and his sausages stand on end with
wrath, and once more I launch out into diplomatic wiles.’
‘Ah, he must tell you this story!’ said Betsy, laughing,
to a lady to came into her box. ‘He has been making me
laugh so.’
‘Well, bonne chance!’ she added, giving Vronsky one
finger of the hand in which she held her fan, and with a
shrug of her shoulders she twitched down the bodice of
her gown that had worked up, so as to be duly naked as
she moved forward towards the footlights into the light of
the gas, and the sight of all eyes.
Vronsky drove to the French theater, where he really
had to see the colonel of his regiment, who never missed a
single performance there. He wanted to see him, to report
on the result of his mediation, which had occupied and
amused him for the last three days. Petritsky, whom he
liked, was implicated in the affair, and the other culprit
was a capital fellow and first-rate comrade, who had lately
joined the regiment, the young Prince Kedrov. And what
was most important, the interests of the regiment were
involved in it too.
Both the young men were in Vronsky’s company. The
colonel of the regiment was waited upon by the
government clerk, Venden, with a complaint against his
officers, who had insulted his wife. His young wife, so
Venden told the story—he had been married half a year—
was at church with her mother, and suddenly overcome
by indisposition, arising from her interesting condition,
she could not remain standing, she drove home in the first
sledge, a smart-looking one, she came across. On the spot
the officers set off in pursuit of her; she was alarmed, and
feeling still more unwell, ran up the staircase home.
Venden himself, on returning from his office, heard a ring
at their bell and voices, went out, and seeing the
intoxicated officers with a letter, he had turned them out.
He asked for exemplary punishment.
‘Yes, it’s all very well,’ said the colonel to Vronsky,
whom he had invited to come and see him. ‘Petritsky’s
becoming impossible. Not a week goes by without some
scandal. This government clerk won’t let it drop, he’ll go
on with the thing.’
Vronsky saw all the thanklessness of the business, and
that there could be no question of a duel in it, that
everything must be done to soften the government clerk,
and hush the matter up. The colonel had called in
Vronsky just because he knew him to be an honorable and
intelligent man, and, more than all, a man who cared for
the honor of the regiment. They talked it over, and
decided that Petritsky and Kedrov must go with Vronsky
to Venden’s to apologize. The colonel and Vronsky were
both fully aware that Vronsky’s name and rank would be
sure to contribute greatly to softening of the injured
husband’s feelings.
And these two influences were not in fact without
effect; though the result remained, as Vronsky had
described, uncertain.
On reaching the French theater, Vronsky retired to the
foyer with the colonel, and reported to him his success, or
non-success. The colonel, thinking it all over, made up his
mind not to pursue the matter further, but then for his
own satisfaction proceeded to cross-examine Vronsky
about his interview; and it was a long while before he
could restrain his laughter, as Vronsky described how the
government clerk, after subsiding for a while, would
suddenly flare up again, as he recalled the details, and how
Vronsky, at the last half word of conciliation, skillfully
maneuvered a retreat, shoving Petritsky out before him.
‘It’s a disgraceful story, but killing. Kedrov really can’t
fight the gentleman! Was he so awfully hot?’ he
commented, laughing. ‘But what do you say to Claire
today? She’s marvelous,’ he went on, speaking of a new
French actress. ‘However often you see her, every day
she’s different. It’s only the French who can to that.’
Chapter 6
Princess Betsy drove home from the theater, without
waiting for the end of the last act. She had only just time
to go into her dressing room, sprinkle her long, pale face
with powder, rub it, set her dress to rights, and order tea
in the big drawing room, when one after another carriages
drove up to her huge house in Bolshaia Morskaia. Her
guests stepped out at the wide entrance, and the stout
porter, who used to read the newspapers in the mornings
behind the glass door, to the edification of the passers-by,
noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the visitors
pass by him into the house.
Almost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly
arranged coiffure and freshened face, walked in at one
door and her guests at the other door of the drawing
room, a large room with dark walls, downy rugs, and a
brightly lighted table, gleaming with the light of candles,
white cloth, silver samovar, and transparent china tea
things.
; the party settled
itself, divided into two groups: one round the samovar
near the hostess, the other at the opposite end of the
drawing room, round the handsome wife of an
ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined black
eyebrows. In both groups conversation wavered, as it
always does, for the first few minutes, broken up by
meetings, greetings, offers of tea, and as it were, feeling
about for something to rest upon.
‘She’s exceptionally good as an actress; one can see
she’s studied Kaulbach,’ said a diplomatic attache in the
group round the ambassador’s wife. ‘Did you notice how
she fell down?..’
‘Oh, please ,don’t let us talk about Nilsson! No one can
possibly say anything new about her,’ said a fat, red-faced,
flaxen-headed lady, without eyebrows and chignon,
wearing an old silk dress. This was Princess Myakaya,
noted for her simplicity and the roughness of her manners,
and nicknamed enfant terrible. Princess Myakaya, sitting in
the middle between the two groups, and listening to both,
took part in the conversation first of one and then of the
other. ‘Three people have used that very phrase about
Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had
made a compact about it. And I can’t see why they liked
that remark so.’
The conversation was cut short by this observation, and
a new subject had to be thought of again.
‘Do tell me something amusing but not spiteful,’ said
the ambassador’s wife, a great proficient in the art of that
elegant conversation called by the English, small talk. She
addressed the attache, who was at a loss now what to
begin upon.
‘They say that that’s a difficult task, that nothing’s
amusing that isn’t spiteful,’ he began with a smile. ‘But I’ll
try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject’s
given me, it’s easy to spin something round it. I often
think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would
have found it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything
clever is so stale..’
‘That has been said long ago,’ the ambassador’s wife
interrupted him, laughing.
The conversation began amiably, but just because it was
too amiable, it came to a stop again. They had to have
recourse to the sure, never-failing topic—gossip.
‘Don’t you think there’s something Louis Quinze
about Tushkevitch?’ he said, glancing towards a
handsome, fair-haired young man, standing at the table.
‘Oh, yes! He’s in the same style as the drawing room
and that’s why it is he’s so often here.’
This conversation was maintained, since it rested on
allusions to what could not be talked on in that room—
that is to say, of the relations of Tushkevitch with their
hostess.
Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation
had been meanwhile vacillating in just the same way
between three inevitable topics: the latest piece of public
news, the theater, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest
on the last topic, that is, ill-natured gossip.
‘Have you heard the Maltishtcheva woman—the
mother, not the daughter—has ordered a costume in
diable rose color?’
‘Nonsense! No, that’s too lovely!’
‘I wonder that with her sense—for she’s not a fool, you
know— that she doesn’t see how funny she is.’
Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of
the luckless Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation
crackled merrily, like a burning faggot-stack.
The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man,
an ardent collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had
visitors, came into the drawing room before going to his
club. Stepping noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up
to Princess Myakaya.
‘How did you like Nilsson?’ he asked.
‘Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How
you startled me!’ she responded. ‘Please don’t talk to me
about the opera; you know nothing about music. I’d
better meet you on your own ground, and talk about your
majolica and engravings. Come now, what treasure have
yo been buying lately at the old curiosity shops?’
‘Would you like me to show you? But you don’t
understand such things.’
‘Oh, do show me! I’ve been learning about them at
those—what’s their names?...the bankers...they’ve some
splendid engravings. They showed them to us.’
‘Why, have you been at the Schuetzburgs?’ asked the
hostess from the samovar.
‘Yes, ma chere. They asked my husband and me to
dinner, and told us the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred
pounds,’ Princess Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and
conscious everyone was listening; ‘and very nasty sauce it
was, some green mess. We had to ask them, and I made
them sauce for eighteen pence, and everybody was very
much pleased with it. I can’t run to hundred-pound
sauces.’
‘She’s unique!’ said the lady of the house.
‘Marvelous!’ said someone.
The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya’s speeches
was always unique, and the secret of the sensation she
produced lay in the fact that though she spoke not always
appropriately, as now, she said simple things with some
sense in them. In the society in which she lived such plain
statements produced the effect of the wittiest epigram.
Princess Myakaya could never see why it had that effect,
but she knew it had, and took advantage of it.
As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya
spoke, and so the conversation around the ambassador’s
wife had dropped, Princess Betsy tried to bring the whole
party together, and turned to the ambassador’s wife.
‘Will you really not have tea? You should come over
here by us.’

.’
‘No, we’re very happy here,’ the ambassador’s wife
responded with a smile, and she went on with the
conversation that had been begun.
‘It was a very agreeable conversation. They were
criticizing the Karenins, husband and wife.
‘Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow.
There’s something strange about her,’ said her friend.
‘The great change is that she brought back with her the
shadow of Alexey Vronsky,’ said the ambassador’s wife.
‘Well, what of it? There’s a fable of Grimm’s about a
man without a shadow, a man who’s lost his shadow. And
that’s his punishment for something. I never could
understand how it was a punishment. But a woman must
dislike being without a shadow.’
‘Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad
end,’ said Anna’s friend.
‘Bad luck to your tongue!’ said Princess Myakaya
suddenly. ‘Madame Karenina’s a splendid woman. I don’t
like her husband, but I like her very much.’
‘Why don’t you like her husband? He’s such a
remarkable man,’ said the ambassador’s wife. ‘My husband
says there are few statesmen like him in Europe.’
‘And my husband tells me just the same, but I don’t
believe it,’ said Princess Myakaya. ‘If our husbands didn’t
talk to us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexey
Alexandrovitch, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in
a whisper...but doesn’t it really make everything clear?
Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept
looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not
seeing it; but directly I said, he a fool, though only in a
whisper, everything’s explained, isn’t it?’
‘How spiteful you are today!’
‘Not a bit. I’d no other way out of it. One of the two
had to be a fool. And, well, you know one can’t say that
of oneself.’
‘‘No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is
satisfied with his wit.’’ The attache repeated the French
saying.
‘That’s just it, just it,’ Princess Myakaya turned to him.
‘But the point is that I won’t abandon Anna to your
mercies. She’s so nice, so charming. How can she help it if
they’re all in love with her, and follow her about like
shadows?’
‘Oh, I had no idea of blaming her for it,’ Anna’s friend
said in self-defense.
‘If no one follows us about like a shadow, that’s no
proof that we’ve any right to blame her.’
And having duly disposed of Anna’s friend, the Princess
Myakaya got up, and together with the ambassador’s wife,
joined the group at the table, where the conversation was
dealing with the king of Prussia.
‘What wicked gossip were you talking over there?’
asked Betsy.
‘About the Karenins. The princess gave us a sketch of
Alexey Alexandrovitch,’ said the ambassador’s wife with a
smile, as she sat down at the table.
‘Pity we didn’t hear it!’ said Princess Betsy, glancing
towards the door. ‘Ah, here you are at last!’ she said,
turning with a smile to Vronsky, as he came in.
Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons
whom he was meeting here; he saw them all every day;
and so he came in with the quiet manner with which one
enters a room full of people from whom one has only just
parted.
‘Where do I come from?’ he said, in answer to a
question from the ambassador’s wife. ‘Well, there’s no
help for it, I must confess. From the opera bouffe. I do
believe I’ve seen it a hundred times, and always with fresh
enjoyment. It’s exquisite! I know it’s disgraceful, but I go
to sleep at the opera, and I sit out the opera bouffe to the
last minute, and enjoy it. This evening..’
He mentioned a French actress, and was going to tell
something about her; but the ambassador’s wife, with
playful horror, cut him short.
‘Please don’t tell us about that horror.’
‘All right, I won’t especially as everyone knows those
horrors.’
‘And we should all go to see them if it were accepted as
the correct thing, like the opera,’ chimed in Princess
Myakaya.
Chapter 7
Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy,
knowing it was Madame Karenina, glanced at Vronsky.
He was looking towards the door, and his face wore a
strange new expression. Joyfully, intently, and at the same
time timidly, he gazed at the approaching figure, and
slowly he rose to his feet. Anna walked into the drawing
room. Holding herself extremely erect, as always, looking
straight before her, and moving with her swift, resolute,
and light step, that distinguished her from all other society
women, she crossed the short space to her hostess, shook
hands with her, smiled, and with the same smile looked
around at Vronsky. Vronsky bowed low and pushed a
chair up for her.
She acknowledged this only by a slight nod, flushed a
little, and frowned. But immediately, while rapidly
greeting her acquaintances, and shaking the hands
proffered to her, she addressed Princess Betsy:
‘I have been at Countess Lidia’s, and meant to have
come here earlier, but I stayed on. Sir John was there.
He’s very interesting.’
‘Oh, that’s this missionary?’
‘Yes; he told us about the life in India, most interesting
things.’
The conversation, interrupted by her coming in,
flickered up again like the light of a lamp being blown
out.
‘Sir John! Yes, Sir John; I’ve seen him. He speaks well.
The Vlassieva girl’s quite in love with him.’
‘And is it true the younger Vlassieva girl’s to marry
Topov?’
‘Yes, they say it’s quite a settled thing.’
‘I wonder at the parents! They say it’s a marriage for
love.’
‘For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can
one talk of love in these days?’ said the ambassador’s wife.
‘What’s to be done? It’s a foolish old fashion that’s kept
up still,’ said Vronsky.
‘So much the worse for those who keep up the fashion.
The only happy marriages I know are marriages of
prudence.’
‘Yes, but then how often the happiness of these
prudent marriages flies away like dust just because that
passion turns up that they have refused to recognize,’ said
Vronsky.
‘But by marriages of prudence we mean those in which
both parties have sown their wild oats already. That’s like
scarlatina—one has to go through it and get it over.’
‘Then they ought to find out how to vaccinate for
love, like smallpox.’
‘I was in love in my young days with a deacon,’ said
the Princess Myakaya. ‘I don’t know that it did me any
good.’
‘No; I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one
must make mistakes and then correct them,’ said Princess
Betsy.
‘Even after marriage?’ aid the ambassador’s wife
playfully.
‘‘It’s never too late to mend.’’ The attache repeated the
English proverb.
‘Just so,’ Betsy agreed; ‘one must make mistakes and
correct them. What do you think about it?’ she turned to
Anna, who, with a faintly perceptible resolute smile on her
lips, was listening in silence to the conversation.
‘I think,’ said Anna, playing with the glove she had
taken off, ‘I think...if so many men, so many minds,
certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.’
Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a fainting heart
waiting for what she would say. He sighed as after a
danger escaped when she uttered these words.
Anna suddenly turned to him.
‘Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me
that Kitty Shtcherbatskaya’s very ill.’
‘Really?’ said Vronsky, knitting his brows.
Anna looked sternly at him.
‘That doesn’t interest you?’
‘On the contrary, it does, very much. What was it
exactly they told you, if I may know?’ he questioned.
Anna got up and went to Betsy.
‘Give me a cup of tea,’ she said, standing at her table.
While Betsy was pouring out the tea, Vronsky went up
to Anna.
‘What is it they write to you?’ he repeated.
‘I often think men have no understanding of what’s not
honorable though they’re always talking of it,’ said Anna,
without answering him. ‘I’ve wanted to tell you so a long
while,’ she added, and moving a few steps away, she sat
down at a table in a corner covered with albums.
‘I don’t quite understand the meaning of your words,’
he said, handing her the cup.
she glanced towards the sofa beside her, and he
instantly sat down.
‘Yes, I have been wanting to tell you,’ she said, not
looking at him. ‘You behaved wrongly, very wrongly.’
‘Do you suppose I don’t know that I’ve acted wrongly?
But who was the cause of my doing so?’
‘What do you say that to me for?’ she said, glancing
severely at him.
‘You know what for,’ he answered boldly and joyfully,
meeting her glance and not dropping his eyes.
Not he, but she, was confused.
‘That only shows you have no heart,’ she said. But her
eyes said that she knew he had a heat, and that was why
she was afraid of him.
‘What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not
love.’
‘Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that
word, that hateful word,’ said Anna, with a shudder. But
at once she felt that by that very word ‘forbidden’ she had
shown that she acknowledged certain rights over him, and
by that very fact was encouraging him to speak of love. ‘I
have long meant to tell you this,’ she went on, looking
resolutely into his eyes, and hot all over from the burning
flush on her cheeks. ‘I’ve come on purpose this evening,
knowing I should meet you. I have come to tell you that
this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, and
you force me to feel to blame for something.’
He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual
beauty in her face.
‘What do you wish of me?’ he said simply and
seriously.
‘I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty’s
forgiveness,’ she said.
‘You don’t wish that?’ he said.
He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say,
not what she wanted to say.
‘If you love me, as you say,’ she whispered, ‘do so that
I may be at peace.’
His face grew radiant.
‘Don’t you know that you’re all my life to me? But I
know no peace, and I can’t give to you; all myself—and
love...yes. I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I
are one to me. And I see no chance before us of peace for
me or for you. I see a chance of despair, of
wretchedness...or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss!... Can
it be there’s no chance of it?’ he murmured with his lips;
but she heard.
She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought
to be said. But instead of that she let her eyes rest on him,
full of love, and made no answer.
‘It’s come!’ he thought in ecstasy. ‘When I was
beginning to despair, and it seemed there would be no
end—it’s come! she loves me! She owns it!’
‘Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and
let us be friends,’ she said in words; but her eyes spoke
quite differently.
‘Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself.
Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of
people—that’s in your hands.’
She would have said something, but he interrupted her.
‘I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to
suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to
disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my
presence is distasteful to you.’
‘I don’t want to drive you away.’
‘Only don’t change anything, leave everything as it is,’
he said in a shaky voice. ‘Here’s your husband.’
At that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk
into the room with his calm, awkward gait.
Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the
lady of the house, and sitting down for a cup of tea, began
talking in his deliberate, always audible voice, in his
habitual tone of banter, ridiculing someone.
‘Your Rambouillet is in full conclave,’ he said, looking
round at all the party; ‘the graces and the muses.’
But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his—
‘sneering,’ as she called it, using the English word, and like
a skillful hostess she at once brought him into a serious
conversation on the subject of universal conscription.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was immediately interested in the
subject, and began seriously defending the new imperial
decree against Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.
Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.
‘This is getting indecorous,’ whispered one lady, with
an expressive glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and
her husband.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Anna’s friend.
But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room,
even the Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked
several times in the direction of the two who had
withdrawn from the general circle, as though that were a
disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was the only
person who did not once look in that direction, and was
not diverted from the interesting discussion he had entered
upon.
Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being
made on everyone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else
into her place to listen to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and
went up to Anna.
‘I’m always amazed at the clearness and precision of
your husband’s language,’ she said. ‘The most
transcendental ideas seem to be within my grasp when he’s
speaking.’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness,
and not understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She
crossed over to the big table and took part in the general
conversation.
Alexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went
up to his wife and suggested that they should go home
together. But she answered, not looking at him, that she
was staying to supper. Alexey Alexandrovitch made his
bows and withdrew.
The fat old Tatar, Madame Karenina’s coachman, was
with difficulty holding one of her pair of grays, chilled
with the cold and rearing at the entrance. A footman stood
opening the carriage door. The hall porter stood holding
open the great door of the house. Anna Arkadyevna, with
her quick little hand, was unfastening the lace of her
sleeve, caught in the hook of her fur cloak, and with bent
head listening to the words Vronsky murmured as he
escorted her down.
‘You’ve said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing,’ he
was saying; ‘but you know that friendship’s not what I
want: that there’s only one happiness in life for me, that
word that you dislike so...yes, love!..’
‘Love,’ she repeated slowly, in an inner voice, and
suddenly, at the very instant she unhooked the lace, she
added, ‘Why I don’t like the word is that it means too
much to me, far more than you can understand,’ and she
glanced into his face. ‘Au revoir!’
She gave him her hand, and with her rapid, springy
step she passed by the porter and vanished into the
carriage.
Her glance, the touch of her (and, set him aflame. He
kissed the palm of his hand whe2e she had touched it, and
went home, happy in the sense that he had got nearer to
the attainment of his aims that evening than during the last
two months.
Chapter 8
Alexey Alexandrovitch had seen nothing striking or
improper in the fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky
at a table apart, in eager conversation with him about
something. But he noticed that to the rest of the party this
appeared something striking and improper, and for that
reason it seemed to him too to be improper. He made up
his mind that he must speak of it to his wife.
On reaching home Alexey Alexandrovitch went to his
study, as he usually did, seated himself in his low chair,
opened a book on the Papacy at the place where he had
laid the paper-knife in it, and read till one o’clock, just as
he usually did. But from time to time he rubbed his high
forehead and shook his head, as though to drive away
something. At his usual time he got up and made his toilet
for the night. Anna Arkadyevna had not yet come in.
With a book under his arm he went upstairs. But this
evening, instead of his usual thought and meditations upon
official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his wife and
something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to
his usual habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to walking
up and down the rooms with his hands clasped behind his
back. He could not go to bed, feeling that it was
absolutely needful for him first to think thoroughly over
the position that had just arisen.
When Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind
that he must talk to his wife about it, it had seemed a very
easy and simple matter. But now, when he began to think
over the question that had just presented itself, it seemed
to him very complicated and difficult.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy
according to his notions was an insult to one’s wife, and
one ought to have confidence in one’s wife. Why one
ought to have confidence— that is to say, complete
conviction that his young wife would always love him—
he did not ask himself. But he had no experience of lack
of confidence, because he had confidence in her, and told
himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his
conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that
one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he
felt that he was standing face to face with something
illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be
done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face
with life, with the possibility of his wife’s loving someone
other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational
and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life
Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official
spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every
time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away
from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a
man who, wile calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge,
should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and
that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the
bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch
had lived. For the first time the question presented itself to
him of the possibility of his wife’s loving someone else,
and he was horrified at it.
He did not undress, but walked up and down with his
regular tread over the resounding parquet of the dining
room, where one lamp was burning, over the carpet of the
dark drawing room, in which the light was reflected on
the big new portrait of himself handing over the sofa, and
across her boudoir, where two candles burned, lighting up
the portraits of her parents and woman friends, and the
pretty knick-knacks of her writing table, that he knew so
well. He walked across her boudoir to the bedroom door,
and turned back again. At each turn in his walk, especially
at the parquet of the lighted dining room, he halted and
said to himself, ‘Yes, this I must decide and put a stop to; I
must express my view of it and my decision.’ And he
turned back again. ‘But express what—what decision?’ he
said to himself in the drawing room, and he found no
reply. ‘But after all,’ he asked himself before turning into
the boudoir, ‘what has occurred? Nothing. She was talking
a long while with him. But what of that? Surely women in
society can talk to whom they please. And then, jealousy
means lowering both myself and her,’ he told himself as he
went into her boudoir; but this dictum, which had always
had such weight with him before, had now no weight and
no meaning at all. And from the bedroom door he turned
back again; but as he entered the dark drawing room some
inner voice told him that it was not so, and that if others
noticed it that showed that there was something. And he
said to himself again in the dining room, ‘Yes, I must
decide and put a stop to it, and express my view of it...’
And again at the turn in the drawing room he asked
himself, ‘Decide how?’ And again he asked himself, ‘What
had occurred?’ and answered, ‘Nothing,’ and recollected
that jealousy was a feeling insulting to his wife; but again
in the drawing room he was convinced that something
had happened. His thoughts, like his body, went round a
complete circle, without coming upon anything new. He
noticed this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her
boudoir.
There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting
case lying at the top and an unfinished letter, his thoughts
suddenly changed. He began to think of her, of what she
was thinking and feeling. For the first time he pictured
vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas, her desires,
and the idea that she could and should have a separate life
of her own seemed to him so alarming that he made haste
to dispel it. It was the chasm which he was afraid to peep
into. To put himself in thought and feeling in another
person’s place was a spiritual exercise not natural to Alexey
Alexandrovitch. He looked on this spiritual exercise as a
harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.
‘And the worst of it all,’ thought he, ‘is that just now,
at the very moment when my great work is approaching
completion’ (he was thinking of the project he was
bringing forward at the time), ‘when I stand in need of all
my mental peace and all my energies, just now this stupid
worry should fall foul of me. But what’s to be done? I’m
not one of those men who submit to uneasiness and worry
without having the force of character to face them.’
‘I must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out
of my mind,’ he said aloud.
‘The question of her feelings, of what has passed and
may be passing in her soul, that’s not my affair; that’s the
affair of her conscience, and falls under the head of
religion,’ he said to himself, feeling consolation in the
sense that he had found to which division of regulating
principles this new circumstance could be properly
referred.

.
‘And so,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself,
‘questions as to her feelings, and so on, are questions for
her conscience, with which I can have nothing to do. My
duty is clearly defined. As the head of the family, I am a
person bound in duty to guide her, and consequently, in
part the person responsible; I am bound to point out the
danger I perceive, to warn her, even to use my authority. I
ought to speak plainly to her.’ And everything that he
would say tonight to his wife took clear shape in Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s head. Thinking over what he would say,
he somewhat regretted that he should have to use his time
and mental powers for domestic consumption, with so
little to show for it, but, in spite of that, the form and
reference to the unhappiness likely to result to herself.’
And, interlacing his fingers, Alexey Alexandrovitch
stretched them, and the joints of the fingers cracked. This
trick, a bad habit, the cracking of his fingers, always
soothed him, and gave precision to his thoughts, so
needful to him at this juncture.
There was the sound of a carriage driving up to the
front door. Alexey Alexandrovitch halted in the middle of
the room.
A woman’s step was heard mounting the stairs. Alexey
Alexandrovitch, ready for his speech, stood compressing
his crossed fingers, waiting to see if the crack would not
come again. One joint cracked.
Already, from the sound of light steps on the stairs, he
was aware that she was close, and though he was satisfied
with his speech, he felt frightened of the explanation
confronting him...
Chapter 9
Anna came in with hanging head, playing with the
tassels of her hood. Her face was brilliant and glowing; but
this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested the fearful
glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night. On
seeing her husband, Anna raised her head and smiled, as
though she had just waked up.
‘You’re not in bed? What a wonder!’ she said, letting
fall her hood, and without stopping, she went on into the
dressing room. ‘It’s late, Alexey Alexandrovitch,’ she said,
when she had gone through the doorway.
‘Anna, it’s necessary for me to have a talk with you.’
‘With me?’ she said, wonderingly. She came out from
behind the door of the dressing room, and looked at him.
‘Why, what is it? What about?’ she asked, sitting down.
‘Well, let’s talk, if it’s so necessary. But it would be better
to get to sleep.’
Anna said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing
herself, at her own capacity for lying. How simple and
natural were her words, and how likely that she was
simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable
armor of falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had
come to her aid and was supporting her.
‘Anna, I must warn you,’ he began.
‘Warn me?’ she said. ‘Of what?’
She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone
who did not know her as her husband knew her could not
have noticed anything unnatural, either in the sound or
the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her,
knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later
than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the reason; to
him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that
she felt she communicated to him at once; to him, now to
see that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that
she did not care to say a word about herself, meant a great
deal. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had
always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against
him. More than that, he saw from her tone that she was
not even perturbed at that, but as it were said straight out
to him: ‘Yes, it’s shut up, and so it must be, and will be in
future.’ Now he experienced a feeling such as a man
might have, returning home and finding his own house
locked up. ‘But perhaps the key may yet be found,’
thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.
‘I want to warn you,’ he said in a low voice, ‘that
through thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause
yourself to be talked about in society. Your too animated
conversation this evening with Count Vronsky’ (he
enunciated the name firmly and with deliberate emphasis)
‘attracted attention.’
He talked and looked at her laughing eyes, which
frightened him now with their impenetrable look, and, as
he talked, he felt all the uselessness and idleness of his
words.
‘You’re always like that,’ she answered as though
completely misapprehending him, and of all he had said
only taking in the last phrase. ‘One time you don’t like my
being dull, and another time you don’t like my being
lively. I wasn’t dull. Does that offend you?’
Alexey Alexandrovitch shivered, and bent his hands to
make the joints crack.
‘Oh, please, don’t do that, I do so dislike it,’ she said.
‘Anna, is this you?’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch, quietly
making an effort over himself, and restraining the motion
of his fingers.
‘But what is it all about?’ she said, with such genuine
and droll wonder. ‘What do you want of me?’
Alexey Alexandrovitch paused, and rubbed his forehead
and his eyes. He saw that instead of doing as he had
intended—that is to say, warning his wife against a mistake
in the eyes of the world—he had unconsciously become
agitated over what was the affair of her conscience, and
was struggling against the barrier he fancied between
them.
‘This is what I meant to say to you,’ he went on coldly
and composedly, ‘and I beg you to listen to it. I consider
jealousy, as you know, a humiliating and degrading
feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be influenced by
it; but there are certain rules of decorum which cannot be
disregarded with impunity. This evening it was not I
observed it, but judging by the impression made on the
company, everyone observed that your conduct and
deportment were not altogether what could be desired.’
‘I positively don’t understand,’ said Anna, shrugging
her shoulders—‘He doesn’t care,’ she thought. ‘But other
people noticed it, and that’s what upsets him.’—‘You’re
not well, Alexey Alexandrovitch,’ she added, and she got
up, and would have gone towards the door; but he moved
forward as though he would stop her.
His face was ugly and forbidding, as Anna had never
seen him. She stopped, and bending her head back and on
one side, began with her rapid hand taking out her
hairpins.
‘Well, I’m listening to what’s to come,’ she said, calmly
and ironically; ‘and indeed I listened with interest, for I
should like to understand what’s the matter.’
She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and
natural tone in which she was speaking, and the choice of
the words she used.
‘To enter into all the details of your feelings I have no
right, and besides, I regard that as useless and even
harmful,’ began Alexey Alexandrovitch. ‘Ferreting in one’s
soul, one often ferrets out something that might have lain
there unnoticed. Your feelings are an affair of your own
conscience; but I am in duty bound to you, to myself, and
to God, to point out to you your duties. Our life has been
joined, not by man, but by God. That union can only be
severed by a crime, and a crime of that nature brings its
own chastisement.’
‘I don’t understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I
am, unluckily,’ she said, rapidly passing her hand through
her hair, feeling for the remaining hairpins.
‘Anna, for God’s sake don’t speak like that!’ he said
gently. ‘Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say,
I say as much for myself as for you. I am your husband,
and I love you.’
For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in
her eyes died away; but the word love threw her into
revolt again. She thought: ‘Love? Can he love? If he
hadn’t heard there was such a thing as love, he would
never have used the word. He doesn’t even know what
love is.’
‘Alexey Alexandrovitch, really I don’t understand,’ she
said. Define what it is you find..’
‘Pardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I
am not speaking of myself; the most important persons in
this matter are our son and yourself. It may very well be, I
repeat, that my words seem to you utterly unnecessary and
out of place; it may be that they are called forth by my
mistaken impression. In that case, I beg you to forgive me.
But if you are conscious yourself of even the smallest
foundation for them, then I beg you to think a little, and if
your heart prompts you, to speak out to me..’
Alexey Alexandrovitch was unconsciously saying
something utterly unlike what he had prepared.
‘I have nothing to say. And besides,’ she said hurriedly,
with difficulty repressing a smile, ‘it’s really time to be in
bed.’
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, and, without saying
more, went into the bedroom.
When she came into the bedroom, he was already in
bed. His lips were sternly compressed, and his eyes looked
away from her. Anna got into her bed, and lay expecting
every minute that he would begin to speak to her again.
She both feared his speaking and wished for it. But he was
silent. She waited for a long while without moving, and
had forgotten about him. She thought of that other; she
pictured him, and felt how her heart was flooded with
emotion and guilty delight at the thought of him.
Suddenly she heard an even, tranquil snore. For the first
instant Alexey Alexandrovitch seemed, as it were, appalled
at his own snoring, and ceased; but after an interval of two
breathings the snore sounded again, with a new tranquil
rhythm.
‘It’s late, it’s late,’ she whispered with a smile. A long
while she lay, not moving, with open eyes, whose
brilliance she almost fancied she could herself see in the
darkness.
Chapter 10
From that time a new life began for Alexey
Alexandrovitch and for his wife. Nothing special
happened. Anna went out into society, as she had always
done, was particularly often at Princess Betsy’s, and met
Vronsky everywhere. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw this, but
could do nothing. All his efforts to draw her into open
discussion she confronted with a barrier which he could
not penetrate, made up of a sort of amused perplexity.
Outwardly everything was the same, but their inner
relations were completely changed. Alexey
Alexandrovitch, a man of great power in the world of
politics, felt himself helpless in this. Like an ox with head
bent, submissively he awaited the blow which he felt was
lifted over him. Every time he began to think about it, he
felt that he must try once more, that by kindness,
tenderness, and persuasion there was still hope of saving
her, of bringing her back to herself, and every day he
made ready to talk to her. But every time he began talking
to her, he felt that the spirit of evil and deceit, which had
taken possession of her, had possession of him too, and he
talked to her in a tone quite unlike that in which he had
meant to talk. Involuntarily he talked to her in his habitual
tone of jeering at anyone who should say what he was
saying. And in that tone it was impossible to say what
needed to be said to her.
Chapter 11
That which for Vronsky had been almost a whole year
the one absorbing desire of his life, replacing all his old
desires; that which for Anna had been an impossible,
terrible, and even for that reason more entrancing dream
of bliss, that desire had been fulfilled. He stood before her,
pale, his lower jaw quivering, and besought her to be
calm, not knowing how or why.
‘Anna! Anna!’ he said with a choking voice, ‘Anna, for
pity’s sake!..’
But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her
once proud and ---, now shame-stricken head, and she
bowed down and sank from the sofa where she was sitting,
down on the floor, at his feet; she would have fallen on
the carpet if he had not held her.
‘My God! Forgive me!’ she said, sobbing, pressing his
hands to her bosom.
She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but
to humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there
was no one in her life but him, to him she addressed her
prayer for forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a physical
sense of her humiliation, and she could say nothing more.
He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body
he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life,
was their love, the first stage of their love. There was
something awful and revolting in the memory of what had
been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their
spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in
spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his
victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use
what he has gained by his murder.
And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer
falls on the body, and drags it and hacks at it; so he
covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his
hand, and did not stir. ‘Yes, these kisses—that is what has
been bought by this shame. Yes, and one hand, which will
always be mine—the hand of my accomplice.’ She lifted
up that hand and kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried
to see her face; but she hid it, and said nothing. At last, as
though making an effort over herself, she got up and
pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it was
only the more pitiful for that.
‘All is over,’ she said; ‘In have nothing but you.
Remember that.’
‘I can never forget what is my whole life. For one
instant of this happiness..’
‘Happiness!’ she said with horror and loathing and her
horror unconsciously infected him. ‘For pity’s sake, not a
word, not a word more.’
She rose quickly and moved away from him.
‘Not a word more,’ she repeated, and with a look of
chill despair, incomprehensible to him, she parted from
him. She felt that at that moment she could not put into
words the sense of shame, of rapture, and of horror at this
stepping into a new life, and she did not want to speak of
it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words. But
later too, and the next day and the third day, she still
found no words in which she could express the
complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find
thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was
in her soul.
She said to herself: ‘No, just now I can’t think of it,
later on, when I am calmer.’ But this calm for thought
never came; every time the thought rose of what she had
done and what would happen to her, and what she ought
to do, a horror came over her and she drove those
thoughts away.
‘Later, later,’ she said—‘when I am calmer.’
But in dreams, when she had no control over her
thoughts, her position presented itself to her in all its
hideous nakedness. Once dream haunted her almost every
night. She dreamed that both were her husbands at once,
that both were lavishing caresses on her. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was weeping, kissing her hands, and
saying, ‘How happy we are now!’ And Alexey Vronsky
was there too, and he too was her husband. And she was
marveling that it had once seemed impossible to her, was
explaining to them, laughing, that this was ever so much
simpler, and that now both of them were happy and
contented. But this dream weighed on her like a
nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.
Chapter 12
In the early days after his return from Moscow,
whenever Levin shuddered and grew red, remembering
the disgrace of his rejection, he said to himself: ‘This was
just how I used to shudder and blush, thinking myself
utterly lost, when I was plucked in physics and did not get
my remove; and how I thought myself utterly ruined after
I had mismanaged that affair of my sister’s that was
entrusted to me. And yet, now that years have passed, I
recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It
will be the same thing too with this trouble. Time will go
by and I shall not mind about this either.’
But three months had passed and he had not left off
minding about it; and it was as painful for him to think of
it as it had been those first days. He could not be at peace
because after dreaming so long of family life, and feeling
himself so ripe for it, he was still not married, and was
further than ever from marriage. He was painfully
conscious himself, as were all about him, that at his years it
is not well for man to be alone. He remembered how
before starting for Moscow he had once said to his
cowman Nikolay, a simple-hearted peasant, whom he
liked talking to: ‘Well, Nikolay! I mean to get married,’
and how Nikolay had promptly answered, as of a matter
on which there could be no possible doubt: ‘And high
time too, Konstantin Demitrievitch.’ But marriage had
now become further off than ever. The place was taken,
and whenever he tried to imagine any of the girls he knew
in that place, he felt that it was utterly impossible.
Moreover, the recollection of the rejection and the part he
had played in the affair tortured him with shame.
However often he told himself that he was in no wise to
blame in it, that recollection, like other humiliating
reminiscences of a similar kind, made him twinge and
blush. There had been in his past, as in every man’s,
actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his
conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory
of these evil actions was far from causing him so much
suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences.
These wounds never healed. And with these memories
was now ranged his rejection and the pitiful position in
which he must have appeared to others that evening. But
time and work did their part. Bitter memories were more
and more covered up by the incidents—paltry in his eyes,
but really important—of his country life. Every week he
thought less often of Kitty. He was impatiently looking
forward to the news that she was married, or just going to
be married, hoping that such news would, like having a
tooth out, completely cure him.
Meanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly,
without the delays and treacheries of spring,—one of those
rare springs in which plants, beasts, and man rejoice alike.
This lovely spring roused Levin still more, and
strengthened him in his resolution of renouncing all his
past and building up his lonely life firmly and
independently. Though many of the plans with which he
had returned to the country had not been carried out, still
his most important resolution—that of purity—had been
kept by him. He was free from that shame, which had
usually harassed him after a fall; and he could look
everyone straight in the face. In February he had received
a letter from Marya Nikolaevna telling him that his
brother Nikolay’s health was getting worse, but that he
would not take advice, and in consequence of this letter
Levin went to Moscow to his brother’s and succeeded in
persuading him to see a doctor and to go to a wateringplace
abroad. He succeeded so well in persuading his
brother, and in lending him money for the journey
without irritating him, that he was satisfied with himself in
that matter. In addition to his farming, which called for
special attention in spring, and in addition to reading,
Levin had begun that winter a work on agriculture, the
plan of which turned on taking into account the character
of the laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data of
the question, like the climate and the soil, and
consequently deducing all the principles of scientific
culture, not simply from the data of soil and climate, but
from the data of soil, climate, and a certain unalterable
character of the laborer. Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in
consequence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly full.
Only rarely he suffered from an unsatisfied desire to
communicate his stray ideas to someone besides Agafea
Mihalovna. With her indeed he not infrequently fell into
discussion upon physics, the theory of agriculture, and
especially philosophy; philosophy was Agafea Mihalovna’s
favorite subject.
Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it
had been steadily fine frosty weather. In the daytime it
thawed in the sun, but at night there were even seven
degrees of frost. There was such a frozen surface on the
snow that they drove the wagons anywhere off the roads.
Easter came in the snow. Then all of a sudden, on Easter
Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped
down, and for three days and three nights the warm,
driving rain fell in streams. On Thursday the wind
dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land as
though hiding the mysteries of the transformations that
were being wrought in nature. Behind the fog there was
the flowing of water, the cracking and floating of ice, the
swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the
following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the
storm clouds split up into little curling crests of cloud, the
sky cleared, and the real spring had come. In the morning
the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer
of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was
quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened
earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass
thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and
of the currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with
sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden
blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen
above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubbleland;
peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes
flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high
across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in
patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in
the pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round their
bleating mothers. Nimble children ran about the drying
paths, covered with the prints of bare feet. There was a
merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the
pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants
were repairing ploughs and harrows. The real spring had
come.
Chapter 13
Levin put on his big boots, and, for the first time, a
cloth jacket, instead of his fur cloak, and went out to look
after his farm, stepping over streams of water that flashed
in the sunshine and dazzled his eyes, and treading one
minute on ice and the next into sticky mud.
Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he
came out into the farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring
that knows not what form will be taken by the young
shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling buds, hardly
knew what undertakings he was going to begin upon now
in the farm work that was so dear to him. But he felt that
he was full of the most splendid plans and projects. First of
all he went to the cattle. The cows had been let out into
their paddock, and their smooth sides were already shining
with their new, sleek, spring coats; they basked in the
sunshine and lowed to go to the meadow. Levin gazed
admiringly at the cows he knew so intimately to the
minutest detail of their condition, and gave orders for
them to be driven out into the meadow, and the calves to
be let into the paddock. The herdsman ran gaily to get
ready for the meadow. The cowherd girls, picking up
their petticoats, ran splashing through the mud with bare
legs, still white, not yet brown from the sun, waving brush
wood in their hands, chasing the calves that frolicked in
the mirth of spring.
After admiring the young ones of that year, who were
particularly fine—the early calves were the size of a
peasant’s cow, and Pava’s daughter, at three months old,
was a big as a yearling— Levin gave orders for a trough to
be brought out and for them to be fed in the paddock. But
it appeared that as the paddock had not been used during
the winter, the hurdles made in the autumn for it were
broken. He sent for the carpenter, who, according to his
orders, ought to have been at work at the thrashing
machine. But it appeared that the carpenter was repairing
the harrows, which ought to have been repaired before
Lent. This was very annoying to Levin. It was annoying to
come upon that everlasting slovenliness in the farm work
against which he had been striving with all his might for
so many years. The hurdles, as he ascertained, being not
wanted in winter, had been carried to the cart-horses’
stable; and there broken, as they were of light
construction, only meant for folding calves. Moreover, it
was apparent also that the harrows and all the agricultural
implements, which he had directed to be looked over and
repaired in the winter, for which very purpose he had
hired three carpenters, had not been put into repair, and
the harrows were being repaired when they ought to have
been harrowing the field. Levin sent for his bailiff, but
immediately went off himself to look for him. The bailiff,
beaming all over, like everyone that day, in a sheepskin
bordered with astrachan, came out of the barn, twisting a
bit of straw in his hands.
‘Why isn’t the carpenter at the thrashing machine?’
‘Oh, I meant to tell you yesterday, the harrows want
repairing. Here it’s time they got to work in the fields.’
‘But what were they doing in the winter, then?’
‘But what did you want the carpenter for?’
‘Where are the hurdles for the calves’ paddock?’
‘I ordered them to be got ready. What would you have
with those peasants!’ said the bailiff, with a wave of his
hand.
‘It’s not those peasants but this bailiff!’ said Levin,
getting angry. ‘Why, what do I keep you for?’ he cried.
But, bethinking himself that this would not help matters,
he stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and merely
sighed. ‘Well, what do you say? Can sowing begin?’ he
asked, after a pause.
‘Behind Turkin tomorrow or the next day they might
begin.’
‘And the clover?’
‘I’ve sent Vassily and Mishka; they’re sowing. Only I
don’t know if they’ll manage to get through; it’s so
slushy.’
‘How many acres?’
‘About fifteen.’
‘Why not sow all?’ cried Levin.

.
That they were only sowing the clover on fifteen acres,
not on all the forty-five, was still more annoying to him.
Clover, as he knew, both from books and from his own
experience, never did well except when it was sown as
early as possible, almost in the snow. And yet Levin could
never get this done.
‘There’s no one to send. What would you have with
such a set of peasants? Three haven’t turned up. And
there’s Semyon..’
‘Well, you should have taken some men from the
thatching.’
‘And so I have, as it is.’
‘Where are the peasants, then?’
cried.
‘Don’t put yourself out; we shall get it all done in
time.’
Levin waved his hand angrily, went into the granary to
glance at the oats, and then to the stable. The oats were
not yet spoiled. But the peasants were carrying the oats in
spaces when they might simply let the slide down into the
lower granary; and arranging for this to be done, and
taking two workmen from there for sowing clover, Levin
got over his vexation with the bailiff. Indeed, it was such a
lovely day that one could not be angry.
‘Ignat!’ he called to the coachman, who, with his
sleeves tucked up, was washing the carriage wheels, ‘saddle
me..’
‘Which, sir?’
‘Well, let it be Kolpik.’
‘Yes, sir.’
While they were saddling his horse, Levin again called
up the bailiff, who was handing about in sight, to make it
up with him, and began talking to him about the spring
operations before them, and his plans for the farm.
The wagons were to begin carting manure earlier, so as
to get all done before the early mowing. And the
ploughing of the further land to go on without a break so
as to let it ripen lying fallow. And the mowing to be all
done by hired labor, not on half-profits. The bailiff
listened attentively, and obviously made an effort to
approve of his employer’s projects. But still he had that
look Levin knew so well that always irritated him, a look
of hopelessness and despondency. That look said: ‘That’s
all very well, but as God wills.’
Nothing mortified Levin so much as that tone. But it
was the tone common to all the bailiffs he had ever had.
They had all taken up that attitude to his plans, and so
now he was not angered by it, but mortified, and felt all
the more roused to struggle against this, as it seemed,
elemental force continually ranged against him, for which
he could find no other expression than ‘as God wills.’
‘If we can manage it, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ said the
bailiff.
‘Why ever shouldn’t you manage it?’
‘We positively must have another fifteen laborers. And
they don’t turn up. There were some here today asking
seventy roubles for the summer.’
Levin was silent. Again he was brought face to face
with that opposing force. He knew that however much
they tried, they could not hire more than forty—thirtyseven
perhaps or thirty-eight— laborers for a reasonable
sum. Some forty had been taken on, and there were no
more. But still he could not help struggling against it.
‘Send to Sury, to Tchefirovka; if they don’t come we
must look for them.’
‘Oh, I’ll send, to be sure,’ said Vassily Fedorovitch
despondently. ‘But there are the horses, too, they’re not
good for much.’
‘We’ll get some more. I know, of course,’ Levin added
laughing, ‘you always want to do with as little and as poor
quality as possible; but this year I’m not going to let you
have things your own way. I’ll see to everything myself.’
‘Why, I don’t think you take much rest as it is. It
cheers us up to work under the master’s eye..’
‘So they’re sowing clover behind the Birch Dale? I’ll go
and have a look at them,’ he said, getting on to the little
bay cob, Kolpik, who was let up by the coachman.
‘You can’t get across the streams, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch,’ the coachman shouted.
‘All right, I’ll go by the forest.’
And Levin rode through the slush of the farmyard to
the gate and out into the open country, his good little
horse, after his long inactivity, stepping out gallantly,
snorting over the pools, and asking, as it were, for
guidance. If Levin had felt happy before in the cattle pens
and farmyard, he felt happier yet in the open country.
Swaying rhythmically with the ambling paces of his good
little cob, drinking in the warm yet fresh scent of the snow
and the air, as he rode through his forest over the
crumbling, wasted snow, still left in parts, and covered
with dissolving tracks, he rejoiced over every tree, with
the moss reviving on its bark and the buds swelling on its
shoots. When he came out of the forest, in the immense
plain before him, his grass fields stretched in an unbroken
carpet of green, without one bare place or swamp, only
spotted here and there in the hollows with patches of
melting snow. He was not put out of temper even by the
sight of the peasants’ horses and colts trampling down his
young grass (he told a peasant he met to drive them out),
nor by the sarcastic and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat,
whom he met on the way, and asked, ‘Well, Ipat, shall we
soon be sowing?’ ‘We must get the ploughing done first,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ answered Ipat. The further he
rode, the happier he became, and plans for the land rose to
his mind each better than the last; to plant all his fields
with hedges along the southern borders, so that the snow
should not lie under them; to divide them up into six
fields of arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a
cattle yard at the further end of the estate, and to dig a
pond and to construct movable pens for the cattle as a
means of manuring the land. And then eight hundred
acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and four
hundred of clover, and not one acre exhausted.
Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by
the hedges, so as not to trample his young crops, he rode
up to the laborers who had been sent to sow clover. A cart
with the seed in it was standing, not at the edge, but in the
middle of the crop, and the winter corn had been torn up
by the wheels and trampled by the horse. Both the
laborers were sitting in the hedge, probably smoking a
pipe together. The earth in the cart, with which the seed
was mixed, was not crushed to powder, but crusted
together or adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the
laborer, Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set
to work sowing. This was not as it should be, but with the
laborers Levin seldom lost his temper. When Vassily came
up, Levin told him to lead the horse to the hedge.
‘It’s all right, sir, it’ll spring up again,’ responded
Vassily.
‘Please don’t argue,’ said Levin, ‘but do as you’re told.’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Vassily, and he took the horse’s
head. ‘What a sowing, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,’ he said,
hesitating; ‘first rate. Only it’s a work to get about! You
drag a ton of earth on your shoes.’
‘Why is it you have earth that’s not sifted?’ said Levin.
‘Well, we crumble it up,’ answered Vassily, taking up
some seed and rolling the earth in his palms.
Vassily was not to blame for their having filled up his
cart with unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.
Levin had more than once already tried a way he knew
for stifling his anger, and turning all that seemed dark right
again, and he tried that way now. He watched how
Mishka strode along, swinging the huge clods of earth that
clung to each foot; and getting off his horse, he took the
sieve from Vassily and started sowing himself.
‘Where did you stop?’
Vassily pointed to the mark with his foot, and Levin
went forward as best he could, scattering the seed on the
land. Walking was a difficult as on a bog, and by the time
Levin had ended the row he was in a great heat, and he
stopped and gave up the sieve to Vassily.
‘Well, master, when summer’s here, mind you don’t
scold me for these rows,’ said Vassily.
‘Eh?’ said Levin cheerily, already feeling the effect of
his method.
‘Why, you’ll see in the summer time. It’ll look
different. Look you where I sowed last spring. How I did
work at it! I do my best, Konstantin Dmitrievitch, d’ye
see, as I would for my own father. I don’t like bad work
myself, nor would I let another man do it. What’s good
for the master’s good for us too. To look out yonder
now,’ said Vassily, pointing, ‘it does one’s heart good.’
‘It’s a lovely spring, Vassily.’
‘Why, it’s a spring such as the old men don’t remember
the like of. I was up home; an old man up there has sown
wheat too, about an acre of it. He was saying you
wouldn’t know it from rye.’
‘Have yo been sowing wheat long?’
‘Why, sir, it was you taught us the year before last. You
gave me two measures. We sold about eight bushels and
sowed a rood.’
‘Well, mind you crumble up the clods,’ said Levin,
going towards his horse, ‘and keep an eye on Mishka. And
if there’s a good crop you shall have half a rouble for every
acre.’
‘Humbly thankful. We are very well content, sir, as it
is.’
Levin got on his horse and rode towards the field
where was last year’s clover, and the one which was
ploughed ready for the spring corn.
The crop of clover coming up in the stubble was
magnificent. It had survived everything, and stood up
vividly green through the broken stalks of last year’s
wheat. The horse sank in up to the pasterns, and he drew
each hoof with a sucking sound out of the half-thawed
ground. Over the ploughland riding was utterly
impossible; the horse could only keep a foothold where
there was ice, and in the thawing furrows he sank deep in
at each step. The ploughland was in splendid condition; in
a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and sowing.
Everything was capital, everything was cheering. Levin
rode back across the streams, hoping the water would have
gone down. And he did in fact get across, and startled two
ducks. ‘There must be snipe too,’ he thought, and just as
he reached the turning homewards he met the forest
keeper, who confirmed his theory about the snipe.
Levin went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his
dinner and get his gun ready for the evening.
Chapter 14
As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of
mind, Levin heard the bell ring at the side of the principal
entrance of the house.
‘Yes, that’s someone from the railway station,’ he
thought, ‘just the time to be here from the Moscow
train...Who could it be? What if it’s brother Nikolay? He
did say: ‘Maybe I’ll go to the waters, or maybe I’ll come
down to you.’’ He felt dismayed and vexed for the first
minute, that his brother Nikolay’s presence should come
to disturb his happy mood of spring. But he felt ashamed
of the feeling, and at once he opened, as it were, the arms
of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy and
expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that it was
his brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out from
behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from
the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was
not his brother. ‘Oh, if it were only some nice person one
could talk to a little!’ he thought.
‘Ah,’ cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands.
‘Here’s a delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!’
he shouted, recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘In shall find out for certain whether she’s married, or
when she’s going to be married,’ he thought. And on that
delicious spring day he felt that the thought of her did not
hurt him at all.
‘Well, you didn’t expect me, eh?’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud
on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his
eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. ‘I’ve
come to see you in the first place,’ he said, embracing and
kissing him, ‘to have some stand-shooting second, and to
sell the forest at Ergushovo third.’
‘Delightful! What a spring we’re having! How ever did
you get along in a sledge?’
‘In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch,’ answered the driver, who knew him.
‘Well, I’m very, very glad to see you,’ said Levin, with
a genuine smile of childlike delight.
Levin let his friend to the room set apart for visitors,
where Stepan Arkadyevitch’s things were carried also—a
bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there
to wash and change his clothes, Levin went off to the
counting house to speak about the ploughing and clover.
Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of
the house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner.
‘Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible,’
he said, and went to the bailiff.
When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and
combed, came out of his room with a beaming smile, and
they went upstairs together.
‘Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I
shall understand what the mysterious business is that you
are always absorbed in here. No, really, I envy you. What
a house, how nice it all is! So bright, so cheerful!’ said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was not always
spring and fine weather like that day. ‘And your nurse is
simply charming! A pretty maid in an apron might be even
more agreeable, perhaps; but for your severe monastic
style it does very well.’
Stepan Arkadyevitch told him many interesting pieces
of news; especially interesting to Levin was the news that
his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, was intending to pay him a
visit in the summer.
Not one word did Stepan Arkadyevitch say in reference
to Kitty and the Shtcherbatskys; he merely gave him
greetings from his wife. Levin was grateful to him for his
delicacy and was very glad of his visitor. As always
happened with him during his solitude, a mass of ideas and
feelings had been accumulating within him, which he
could not communicate to those about him. And now he
poured out upon Stepan Arkadyevitch his poetic joy in
the spring, and his failures and plans for the land, and his
thoughts and criticisms on the books he had been reading,
and the idea of his own book, the basis of which really
was, though he was unaware of it himself, a criticism of all
the old books on agriculture. Stepan Arkadyevitch, always
charming, understanding everything at the slightest
reference, was particularly charming on this visit, and
Levin noticed in him a special tenderness, as it were, and a
new tone of respect that flattered him.
The efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the
dinner should be particularly good, only ended in two
famished friends attacking the preliminary course, eating a
great deal of bread and butter, salt goose and salted
mushrooms, and in Levin’s finally ordering the soup to be
served without the accompaniment of little pies, with
which the cook had particularly meant to impress their
visitor. But though Stepan Arkadyevitch was accustomed
to very different dinners, he thought everything excellent:
the herb brandy, and the bread, and the butter, and above
all the salt goose and the mushrooms, and the nettle soup,
and the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean
wine— everything was superb and delicious.
‘Splendid, splendid!’ he said, lighting a fat cigar after the
roast. ‘I feel as if, coming to you, I had landed on a
peaceful shore after the noise and jolting of a steamer. And
so you maintain that the laborer himself is an element to
be studied and to regulate the choice of methods in
agriculture. Of course, I’m an ignorant outsider; but I
should fancy theory and its application will have its
influence on the laborer too.’
‘Yes, but wait a bit. I’m not talking of political
economy, I’m talking of the science of agriculture. It
ought to be like the natural sciences, and to observe given
phenomena and the laborer in his economic,
ethnographical..’
At that instant Agafea Mihalovna came in with jam.
‘Oh, Agafea Mihalovna,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
kissing the tips of his plump fingers, ‘what salt goose, what
herb brandy!...What do yo think, isn’t it time to start,
Kostya?’ he added.
Levin looked out of the window at the sun sinking
behind the bare tree-tops of the forest.
‘Yes, it’s time,’ he said. ‘Kouzma, get ready the trap,’
and he ran downstairs.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, going down, carefully took the
canvas cover off his varnished gun case with his own
hands, and opening it, began to get ready his expensive
new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who already scented a big
tip, never left Stepan Arkadyevitch’s side, and put on him
both his stockings and boots, a task which Stepan
Arkadyevitch readily left him.
‘Kostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin
comes...I told him to come today, he’s to be brought in
and to wait for me..’
‘Why, do you mean to say you’re selling the forest to
Ryabinin?’