as if they were lepers, she stood on the platform, trying to
think what she had come here for, and what she meant to
do. Everything that had seemed to her possible before was
now so difficult to consider, especially in this noisy crowd
of hideous people who would not leave her alone. One
moment porters ran up to her proffering their services,
then young men, clacking their heels on the planks of the
platform and talking loudly, stared at her; people meeting
her dodged past on the wrong side. Remembering that she
had meant to go on further if there were no answer, she
stopped a porter and asked if her coachman were not here
with a note from Count Vronsky.
‘Count Vronsky? They sent up here from the Vronskys
just this minute, to meet Princess Sorokina and her
daughter. And what is the coachman like?’
Just as she was talking to the porter, the coachman
Mihail, red and cheerful in his smart blue coat and chain,
evidently proud of having so successfully performed his
commission, came up to her and gave her a letter. She
broke it open, and her heart ached before she had read it.
‘I am very sorry your note did not reach me. I will be
home at ten,’ Vronsky had written carelessly....
‘Yes, that’s what I expected!’ she said to herself with an
evil smile.
‘Very good, you can go home then,’ she said softly,
addressing Mihail. She spoke softly because the rapidity of
her heart’s beating hindered her breathing. ‘No, I won’t
let you make me miserable,’ she thought menacingly,
addressing not him, not herself, but the power that made
her suffer, and she walked along the platform.
Two maidservants walking along the platform turned
their heads, staring at her and making some remarks about
her dress. ‘Real,’ they said of the lace she was wearing.
The young men would not leave her in peace. Again they
passed by, peering into her face, and with a laugh shouting
something in an unnatural voice. The station-master
coming up asked her whether she was going by train. A
boy selling kvas never took his eyes off her. ‘My God!
where am I to go?’ she thought, going farther and farther
along the platform. At the end she stopped. Some ladies
and children, who had come to meet a gentleman in
spectacles, paused in their loud laughter and talking, and
stared at her as she reached them. She quickened her pace
and walked away from them to the edge of the platform.
A luggage train was coming in. The platform began to
sway, and she fancied she was in the train again.
And all at once she thought of the man crushed by the
train the day she had first met Vronsky, and she knew
what she had to do. With a rapid, light step she went
down the steps that led from the tank to the rails and
stopped quite near the approaching train.
She looked at the lower part of the carriages, at the
screws and chains and the tall cast-iron wheel of the first
carriage slowly moving up, and trying to measure the
middle between the front and back wheels, and the very
minute when that middle point would be opposite her.
‘There,’ she said to herself, looking into the shadow of
the carriage, at the sand and coal dust which covered the
sleepers— ‘there, in the very middle, and I will punish
him and escape from everyone and from myself.’
She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first
carriage as it reached her; but the red bag which she tried
to drop out of her hand delayed her, and she was too late;
she missed the moment. She had to wait for the next
carriage. A feeling such as she had known when about to
take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she
crossed herself. That familiar gesture brought back into her
soul a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and
suddenly the darkness that had covered everything for her
was torn apart, and life rose up before her for an instant
with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes
from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the
moment when the space between the wheels came
opposite her, she dropped the red bag, and drawing her
head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the
carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at
once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant
she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. ‘Where am
I? What am I doing? What for?’ she tried to get up, to
drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck
her on the head and rolled her on her back. ‘Lord, forgive
me all!’ she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A peasant
muttering something was working at the iron above her.
And the light by which she had read the book filled with
troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more
brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had
been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was
quenched forever.
PART EIGHT
Chapter 1
Almost two months had passed. The hot summer was
half over, but Sergey Ivanovitch was only just preparing to
leave Moscow.
Sergey Ivanovitch’s life had not been uneventful during
this time. A year ago he had finished his book, the fruit of
six years’ labor, ‘Sketch of a Survey of the Principles and
Forms of Government in Europe and Russia.’ Several
sections of this book and its introduction had appeared in
periodical publications, and other parts had been read by
Sergey Ivanovitch to persons of his circle, so that the
leading ideas of the work could not be completely novel
to the public. But still Sergey Ivanovitch had expected that
on its appearance his book would be sure to make a
serious impression on society, and if it did not cause a
revolution in social science it would, at any rate, make a
great stir in the scientific world.
After the most conscientious revision the book had last
year been published, and had been distributed among the
booksellers.
Though he asked no one about it, reluctantly and with
feigned indifference answered his friends’ inquiries as to
how the book was going, and did not even inquire of the
booksellers how the book was selling, Sergey Ivanovitch
was all on the alert, with strained attention, watching for
the first impression his book would make in the world and
in literature.
But a week passed, a second, a third, and in society no
impression whatever could be detected. His friends who
were specialists and savants, occasionally—unmistakably
from politeness—alluded to it. The rest of his
acquaintances, not interested in a book on a learned
subject, did not talk of it at all. And society generally—just
now especially absorbed in other things—was absolutely
indifferent. In the press, too, for a whole month there was
not a word about his book.
Sergey Ivanovitch had calculated to a nicety the time
necessary for writing a review, but a month passed, and a
second, and still there was silence.
Only in the Northern Beetle, in a comic article on the
singer Drabanti, who had lost his voice, there was a
contemptuous allusion to Koznishev’s book, suggesting
that the book had been long ago seen through by
everyone, and was a subject of general ridicule.
At last in the third month a critical article appeared in a
serious review. Sergey Ivanovitch knew the author of the
article. He had met him once at Golubtsov’s.
The author of the article was a young man, an invalid,
very bold as a writer, but extremely deficient in breeding
and shy in personal relations.
In spite of his absolute contempt for the author, it was
with complete respect that Sergey Ivanovitch set about
reading the article. The article was awful.
The critic had undoubtedly put an interpretation upon
the book which could not possibly be put on it. But he
had selected quotations so adroitly that for people who
had not read the book (and obviously scarcely anyone had
read it) it seemed absolutely clear that the whole book was
nothing but a medley of high-flown phrases, not even—as
suggested by marks of interrogation—used appropriately,
and that the author of the book was a person absolutely
without knowledge of the subject. And all this was so
wittingly done that Sergey Ivanovitch would not have
disowned such wit himself. But that was just what was so
awful.
In spite of the scrupulous conscientiousness with which
Sergey Ivanovitch verified the correctness of the critic’s
arguments, he did not for a minute stop to ponder over
the faults and mistakes which were ridiculed; but
unconsciously he began immediately trying to recall every
detail of his meeting and conversation with the author of
the article.
‘Didn’t I offend him in some way?’ Sergey Ivanovitch
wondered.
And remembering that when they met he had
corrected the young man about something he had said that
betrayed ignorance, Sergey Ivanovitch found the clue to
explain the article.
This article was followed by a deadly silence about the
book both in the press and in conversation, and Sergey
Ivanovitch saw that his six years’ task, toiled at with such
love and labor, had gone, leaving no trace.
Sergey Ivanovitch’s position was still more difficult
from the fact that, since he had finished his book, he had
had no more literary work to do, such as had hitherto
occupied the greater part of his time.
Sergey Ivanovitch was clever, cultivated, healthy, and
energetic, and he did not know what use to make of his
energy. Conversations in drawing rooms, in meetings,
assemblies, and committees—everywhere where talk was
possible—took up part of his time. But being used for
years to town life, he did not waste all his energies in talk,
as his less experienced younger brother did, when he was
in Moscow. He had a great deal of leisure and intellectual
energy still to dispose of.
Fortunately for him, at this period so difficult for him
from the failure of his book, the various public questions
of the dissenting sects, of the American alliance, of the
Samara famine, of exhibitions, and of spiritualism, were
definitely replaced in public interest by the Slavonic
question, which had hitherto rather languidly interested
society, and Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been one of the
first to raise this subject, threw himself into it heart and
soul.
In the circle to which Sergey Ivanovitch belonged,
nothing was talked of or written about just now but the
Servian War. Everything that the idle crowd usually does
to kill time was done now for the benefit of the Slavonic
States. Balls, concerts, dinners, matchboxes, ladies’ dresses,
beer, restaurants— everything testified to sympathy with
the Slavonic peoples.
From much of what was spoken and written on the
subject, Sergey Ivanovitch differed on various points. He
saw that the Slavonic question had become one of those
fashionable distractions which succeed one another in
providing society with an object and an occupation. He
saw, too, that a great many people were taking up the
subject from motives of self-interest and selfadvertisement.
He recognized that the newspapers
published a great deal that was superfluous and
exaggerated, with the sole aim of attracting attention and
outbidding one another. He saw that in this general
movement those who thrust themselves most forward and
shouted the loudest were men who had failed and were
smarting under a sense of injury—generals without armies,
ministers not in the ministry, journalists not on any paper,
party leaders without followers. He saw that there was a
great deal in it that was frivolous and absurd. But he saw
and recognized an unmistakable growing enthusiasm,
uniting all classes, with which it was impossible not to
sympathize. The massacre of men who were fellow
Christians, and of the same Slavonic race, excited
sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against the
oppressors. And the heroism of the Servians and
Montenegrins struggling for a great cause begot in the
whole people a longing to help their brothers not in word
but in deed.
But in this there was another aspect that rejoiced
Sergey Ivanovitch. That was the manifestation of public
opinion. The public had definitely expressed its desire.
The soul of the people had, as Sergey Ivanovitch said,
found expression. And the more he worked in this cause,
the more incontestable it seemed to him that it was a cause
destined to assume vast dimensions, to create an epoch.
He threw himself heart and soul into the service of this
great cause, and forgot to think about his book. His whole
time now was engrossed by it, so that he could scarcely
manage to answer all the letters and appeals addressed to
him. He worked the whole spring and part of the summer,
and it was only in July that he prepared to go away to his
brother’s in the country.
He was going both to rest for a fortnight, and in the
very heart of the people, in the farthest wilds of the
country, to enjoy the sight of that uplifting of the spirit of
the people, of which, like all residents in the capital and
big towns, he was fully persuaded. Katavasov had long
been meaning to carry out his promise to stay with Levin,
and so he was going with him.
Chapter 2
Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had only just reached
the station of the Kursk line, which was particularly busy
and full of people that day, when, looking round for the
groom who was following with their things, they saw a
party of volunteers driving up in four cabs. Ladies met
them with bouquets of flowers, and followed by the
rushing crowd they went into the station.
One of the ladies, who had met the volunteers, came
out of the hall and addressed Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘You too come to see them off?’ she asked in French.
‘No, I’m going away myself, princess. To my brother’s
for a holiday. Do you always see them of?’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch with a hardly perceptible smile.
‘Oh, that would be impossible!’ answered the princess.
‘Is it true that eight hundred have been sent from us
already? Malvinsky wouldn’t believe me.’
‘More than eight hundred. If you reckon those who
have been sent not directly from Moscow, over a
thousand,’ answered Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘There! That’s just what I said!’ exclaimed the lady.
‘And it’s true too, I suppose, that more than a million has
been subscribed?’
‘Yes, princess.’
‘What do you say to today’s telegram? Beaten the
Turks again.’
‘Yes, so I saw,’ answered Sergey Ivanovitch. They were
speaking of the last telegram stating that the Turks had
been for three days in succession beaten at all points and
put to flight, and that tomorrow a decisive engagement
was expected.
‘Ah, by the way, a splendid young fellow has asked
leave to go, and they’ve made some difficulty, I don’t
know why. I meant to ask you; I know him; please write a
note about his case. He’s being sent by Countess Lidia
Ivanovna.’
Sergey Ivanovitch asked for all the details the princess
knew about the young man, and going into the first-class
waiting-room, wrote a note to the person on whom the
granting of leave of absence depended, and handed it to
the princess.
‘You know Count Vronsky, the notorious one...is
going by this train?’ said the princess with a smile full of
triumph and meaning, when he found her again and gave
her the letter.
‘I had heard he was going, but I did not know when.
By this train?’
‘I’ve seen him. He’s here: there’s only his mother
seeing him off. It’s the best thing, anyway, that he could
do.’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’
While they were talking the crowd streamed by them
into the dining room. They went forward too, and heard a
gentleman with a glass in his hand delivering a loud
discourse to the volunteers. ‘In the service of religion,
humanity, and our brothers,’ the gentleman said, his voice
growing louder and louder; ‘to this great cause mother
Moscow dedicates you with her blessing. Jivio!’ he
concluded, loudly and tearfully.
Everyone shouted Jivio! and a fresh crowd dashed into
the hall, almost carrying the princess off her legs.
‘Ah, princess! that was something like!’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, suddenly appearing in the middle of the
crowd and beaming upon them with a delighted smile.
‘Capitally, warmly said, wasn’t it? Bravo! And Sergey
Ivanovitch! Why, you ought to have said something—just
a few words, you know, to encourage them; you do that
so well,’ he added with a soft, respectful, and discreet
smile, moving Sergey Ivanovitch forward a little by the
arm.
‘No, I’m just off.’
‘Where to?’
‘To the country, to my brother’s,’ answered Sergey
Ivanovitch.
‘Then you’ll see my wife. I’ve written to her, but you’ll
see her first. Please tell her that they’ve seen me and that
it’s ‘all right,’ as the English say. She’ll understand. Oh,
and be so good as to tell her I’m appointed secretary of the
committee.... But she’ll understand! You know, les petites
miseres de la vie humaine,’ he said, as it were apologizing
to the princess. ‘And Princess Myakaya—not Liza, but
Bibish—is sending a thousand guns and twelve nurses. Did
I tell you?’
‘Yes, I heard so,’ answered Koznishev indifferently.
‘It’s a pity you’re going away,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch. ‘Tomorrow we’re giving a dinner to two
who’re setting off— Dimer-Bartnyansky from Petersburg
and our Veslovsky, Grisha. They’re both going.
Veslovsky’s only lately married. There’s a fine fellow for
you! Eh, princess?’ he turned to the lady.
The princess looked at Koznishev without replying.
But the fact that Sergey Ivanovitch and the princess
seemed anxious to get rid of him did not in the least
disconcert Stepan Arkadyevitch. Smiling, he stared at the
feather in the princess’s hat, and then about him as though
he were going to pick something up. Seeing a lady
approaching with a collecting box, he beckoned her up
and put in a five-rouble note.
‘I can never see these collecting boxes unmoved while
I’ve money in my pocket,’ he said. ‘And how about
today’s telegram? Fine chaps those Montenegrins!’
‘You don’t say so!’ he cried, when the princess told
him that Vronsky was going by this train. For an instant
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s face looked sad, but a minute later,
when, stroking his mustaches and swinging as he walked,
he went into the hall where Vronsky was, he had
completely forgotten his own despairing sobs over his
sister’s corpse, and he saw in Vronsky only a hero and an
old friend.
‘With all his faults one can’t refuse to do him justice,’
said the princess to Sergey Ivanovitch as soon as Stepan
Arkadyevitch had left them. ‘What a typically Russian,
Slav nature! Only, I’m afraid it won’t be pleasant for
Vronsky to see him. Say what you will, I’m touched by
that man’s fate. Do talk to him a little on the way,’ said
the princess.
‘Yes, perhaps, if it happens so.’
‘I never liked him. But this atones for a great deal. He’s
not merely going himself, he’s taking a squadron at his
own expense.’
‘Yes, so I heard.’
A bell sounded. Everyone crowded to the doors.’Here
he is!’ said the princess, indicating Vronsky, who with his
mother on his arm walked by, wearing a long overcoat
and wide-brimmed black hat. Oblonsky was walking
beside him, talking eagerly of something.
Vronsky was frowning and looking straight before him,
as though he did not hear what Stepan Arkadyevitch was
saying.
Probably on Oblonsky’s pointing them out, he looked
round in the direction where the princess and Sergey
Ivanovitch were standing, and without speaking lifted his
hat. His face, aged and worn by suffering, looked stony.
Going onto the platform, Vronsky left his mother and
disappeared into a compartment.
On the platform there rang out ‘God save the Tsar,’
then shouts of ‘hurrah!’ and ‘jivio!’ One of the volunteers,
a tall, very young man with a hollow chest, was
particularly conspicuous, bowing and waving his felt hat
and a nose--- over his head. Then two officers emerged,
bowing too, and a stout man with a big beard, wearing a
greasy forage cap.
Chapter 3
Saying good-bye to the princess, Sergey Ivanovitch was
joined by Katavasov; together they got into a carriage full
to overflowing, and the train started.
At Tsaritsino station the train was met by a chorus of
young men singing ‘Hail to Thee!’ Again the volunteers
bowed and poked their heads out, but Sergey Ivanovitch
paid no attention to them. He had had so much to do
with the volunteers that the type was familiar to him and
did not interest him. Katavasov, whose scientific work had
prevented his having a chance of observing them hitherto,
was very much interested in them and questioned Sergey
Ivanovitch.
Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to go into the secondclass
and talk to them himself. At the next station
Katavasov acted on this suggestion.
At the first stop he moved into the second-class and
made the acquaintance of the volunteers. They were
sitting in a corner of the carriage, talking loudly and
obviously aware that the attention of the passengers and
Katavasov as he got in was concentrated upon them. More
loudly than all talked the tall, hollow-chested young man.
He was unmistakably tipsy, and was relating some story
that had occurred at his school. Facing him sat a middleaged
officer in the Austrian military jacket of the Guards
uniform. He was listening with a smile to the hollowchested
youth, and occasionally pulling him up. The third,
in an artillery uniform, was sitting on a box beside them.
A fourth was asleep.
Entering into conversation with the youth, Katavasov
learned that he was a wealthy Moscow merchant who had
run through a large fortune before he was two-andtwenty.
Katavasov did not like him, because he was
unmanly and effeminate and sickly. He was obviously
convinced, especially now after drinking, that he was
performing a heroic action, and he bragged of it in the
most unpleasant way.
The second, the retired officer, made an unpleasant
impression too upon Katavasov. He was, it seemed, a man
who had tried everything. He had been on a railway, had
been a land-steward, and had started factories, and he
talked, quite without necessity, of all he had done, and
used learned expressions quite inappropriately.
The third, the artilleryman, on the contrary, struck
Katavasov very favorably. He was a quiet, modest fellow,
unmistakably impressed by the knowledge of the officer
and the heroic self-sacrifice of the merchant and saying
nothing about himself. When Katavasov asked him what
had impelled him to go to Servia, he answered modestly:
‘Oh, well, everyone’s going. The Servians want help,
too. I’m sorry for them.’
‘Yes, you artillerymen especially are scarce there,’ said
Katavasov.
‘Oh, I wasn’t long in the artillery, maybe they’ll put me
into the infantry or the cavalry.’
‘Into the infantry when they need artillery more than
anything?’ said Katavasov, fancying from the artilleryman’s
apparent age that he must have reached a fairly high grade.
‘I wasn’t long in the artillery; I’m a cadet retired,’ he
said, and he began to explain how he had failed in his
examination.
All of this together made a disagreeable impression on
Katavasov, and when the volunteers got out at a station for
a drink, Katavasov would have liked to compare his
unfavorable impression in conversation with someone.
There was an old man in the carriage, wearing a military
overcoat, who had been listening all the while to
Katavasov’s conversation with the volunteers. When they
were left alone, Katavasov addressed him.
‘What different positions they come from, all those
fellows who are going off there,’ Katavasov said vaguely,
not wishing to express his own opinion, and at the same
time anxious to find out the old man’s views.
The old man was an officer who had served on two
campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by
the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the
swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the
journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he
lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how
one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard
and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer. But
knowing by experience that in the present condition of
the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion
opposed to the general one, and especially to criticize the
volunteers unfavorably, he too watched Katavasov without
committing himself.
‘Well, men are wanted there,’ he said, laughing with
his eyes. And they fell to talking of the last war news, and
each concealed from the other his perplexity as to the
engagement expected next day, since the Turks had been
beaten, according to the latest news, at all points. And so
they parted, neither giving expression to his opinion.
Katavasov went back to his own carriage, and with
reluctant hypocrisy reported to Sergey Ivanovitch his
observations of the volunteers, from which it would
appear that they were capital fellows.
At a big station at a town the volunteers were again
greeted with shouts and singing, again men and women
with collecting boxes appeared, and provincial ladies
brought bouquets to the volunteers and followed them
into the refreshment room; but all this was on a much
smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow.
Chapter 4
While the train was stopping at the provincial town,
Sergey Ivanovitch did not go to the refreshment room,
but walked up and down the platform.
The first time he passed Vronsky’s compartment he
noticed that the curtain was drawn over the window; but
as he passed it the second time he saw the old countess at
the window. She beckoned to Koznishev.
‘I’m going, you see, taking him as far as Kursk,’ she
said.
‘Yes, so I heard,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, standing at her
window and peeping in. ‘What a noble act on his part!’ he
added, noticing that Vronsky was not in the compartment.
‘Yes, after his misfortune, what was there for him to
do?’
‘What a terrible thing it was!’ said Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘Ah, what I have been through! But do get in.... Ah,
what I have been through!’ she repeated, when Sergey
Ivanovitch had got in and sat down beside her. ‘You can’t
conceive it! For six weeks he did not speak to anyone, and
would not touch food except when I implored him. And
not for one minute could we leave him alone. We took
away everything he could have used against himself. We
lived on the ground floor, but there was no reckoning on
anything. You know, of course, that he had shot himself
once already on her account,’ she said, and the old lady’s
eyelashes twitched at the recollection. ‘Yes, hers was the
fitting end for such a woman. Even the death she chose
was low and vulgar.’
‘It’s not for us to judge, countess,’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch; ‘but I can understand that it has been very
hard for you.’
‘Ah, don’t speak of it! I was staying on my estate, and
he was with me. A note was brought him. He wrote an
answer and sent it off. We hadn’t an idea that she was
close by at the station. I the evening I had only just gone
to my room, when my Mary told me a lady had thrown
herself under the train. Something seemed to strike me at
once. I knew it was she. The first thing I said was, he was
not to be told. But they’d told him already. His coachman
was there and saw it all. When I ran into his room, he was
beside himself—it was fearful to see him. He didn’t say a
word, but galloped off there. I don’t know to this day
what happened there, but he was brought back at death’s
door. I shouldn’t have known him. Prostration complete,
the doctor said. And that was followed almost by madness.
Oh, why talk of it!’ said the countess with a wave of her
hand. ‘It was an awful time! No, say what you will, she
was a bad woman. Why, what is the meaning of such
desperate passions? It was all to show herself something
out of the way. Well, and that she did do. She brought
herself to ruin and two good men—her husband and my
unhappy son.’
‘And what did her husband do?’ asked Sergey
Ivanovitch.
‘He has taken her daughter. Alexey was ready to agree
to anything at first. Now it worries him terribly that he
should have given his own child away to another man.
But he can’t take back his word. Karenin came to the
funeral. But we tried to prevent his meeting Alexey. For
him, for her husband, it was easier, anyway. She had set
him free. But my poor son was utterly given up to her. He
had thrown up everything, his career, me, and even then
she had no mercy on him, but of set purpose she made his
ruin complete. No, say what you will, her very death was
the death of a vile woman, of no religious feeling. God
forgive me, but I can’t help hating the memory of her,
when I look at my son’s misery!’
‘But how is he now?’
‘It was a blessing from Providence for us—this Servian
war. I’m old, and I don’t understand the rights and wrongs
of it, but it’s come as a providential blessing to him. Of
course for me, as his mother, it’s terrible; and what’s
worse, they say, ce n’est pas tres bien vu a Petersbourg.
But it can’t be helped! It was the one thing that could
rouse him. Yashvin—a friend of his—he had lost all he
had at cards and he was going to Servia. He came to see
him and persuaded him to go. Now it’s an interest for
him. Do please talk to him a little. I want to distract his
mind. He’s so low-spirited. And as bad luck would have
it, he has toothache too. But he’ll be delighted to see you.
Please do talk to him; he’s walking up and down on that
side.’
Sergey Ivanovitch said he would be very glad to, and
crossed over to the other side of the station.
Chapter 5
In the slanting evening shadows cast by the baggage
piled up on the platform, Vronsky in his long overcoat
and slouch hat, with his hands in his pockets, strode up
and down, like a wild beast in a cage, turning sharply after
twenty paces. Sergey Ivanovitch fancied, as he approached
him, that Vronsky saw him but was pretending not to see.
This did not affect Sergey Ivanovitch in the slightest. He
was above all personal considerations with Vronsky.
At that moment Sergey Ivanovitch looked upon
Vronsky as a man taking an important part in a great
cause, and Koznishev thought it his duty to encourage
him and express his approval. He went up to him.
Vronsky stood still, looked intently at him, recognized
him, and going a few steps forward to meet him, shook
hands with him very warmly.
‘Possibly you didn’t wish to see me,’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch, ‘but couldn’t I be of use to you?’
‘There’s no one I should less dislike seeing than you,’
said Vronsky. ‘Excuse me; and there’s nothing in life for
me to like.’
‘I quite understand, and I merely meant to offer you
my services,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, scanning Vronsky’s
face, full of unmistakable suffering. ‘Wouldn’t it be of use
to you to have a letter to Ristitch—to Milan?’
‘Oh, no!’ Vronsky said, seeming to understand him
with difficulty. ‘If you don’t mind, let’s walk on. It’s so
stuffy among the carriages. A letter? No, thank you; to
meet death one needs no letters of introduction. Nor for
the Turks...’ he said, with a smile that was merely of the
lips. His eyes still kept their look of angry suffering.
‘Yes; but you might find it easier to get into relations,
which are after all essential, with anyone prepared to see
you. But that’s as you like. I was very glad to hear of your
intention. There have been so many attacks made on the
volunteers, and a man like you raises them in public
estimation.’
‘My use as a man,’ said Vronsky, ‘is that life’s worth
nothing to me. And that I’ve enough bodily energy to cut
my way into their ranks, and to trample on them or fall—I
know that. I’m glad there’s something to give my life for,
for it’s not simply useless but loathsome to me. Anyone’s
welcome to it.’ And his jaw twitched impatiently from the
incessant gnawing toothache, that prevented him from
even speaking with a natural expression.
‘You will become another man, I predict,’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch, feeling touched. ‘To deliver one’s brothermen
from bondage is an aim worth death and life. God
grant you success outwardly—and inwardly peace,’ he
added, and he held out his hand. Vronsky warmly pressed
his outstretched hand.
‘Yes, as a weapon I may be of some use. But as a man,
I’m a wreck,’ he jerked out.
He could hardly speak for the throbbing ache in his
strong teeth, that were like rows of ivory in his mouth. He
was silent, and his eyes rested on the wheels of the tender,
slowly and smoothly rolling along the rails.
And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an
inner trouble, that set his whole being in anguish, made
him for an instant forget his toothache. As he glanced at
the tender and the rails, under the influence of the
conversation with a friend he had not met since his
misfortune, he suddenly recalled HER—that is, what was
left of her when he had run like one distraught into the
cloak room of the railway station—on the table,
shamelessly sprawling out among strangers, the
bloodstained body so lately full of life; the head unhurt
dropping back with its weight of hair, and the curling
tresses about the temples, and the exquisite face, with red,
half-opened mouth, the strange, fixed expression, piteous
on the lips and awful in the still open eyes, that seemed to
utter that fearful phrase—that he would be sorry for it—
that she had said when they were quarreling.
And he tried to think of her as she was when he met
her the first time, at a railway station too, mysterious,
exquisite, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not
cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on that last
moment. He tried to recall his best moments with her, but
those moments were poisoned forever. He could only
think of her as triumphant, successful in her menace of a
wholly useless remorse never to be effaced. He lost all
consciousness of toothache, and his face worked with sobs.
Passing twice up and down beside the baggage in
silence and regaining his self-possession, he addressed
Sergey Ivanovitch calmly:
‘You have had no telegrams since yesterday’s? Yes,
driven back for a third time, but a decisive engagement
expected for tomorrow.’
And after talking a little more of King Milan’s
proclamation, and the immense effect it might have, they
parted, going to their carriages on hearing the second bell.
Chapter 6
Sergey Ivanovitch had not telegraphed to his brother to
send to meet him, as he did not know when he should be
able to leave Moscow. Levin was not at home when
Katavasov and Sergey Ivanovitch in a fly hired at the
station drove up to the steps of the Pokrovskoe house, as
black as Moors from the dust of the road. Kitty, sitting on
the balcony with her father and sister, recognized her
brother-in-law, and ran down to meet him.
‘What a shame not to have let us know,’ she said,
giving her hand to Sergey Ivanovitch, and putting her
forehead up for him to kiss.
‘We drove here capitally, and have not put you out,’
answered Sergey Ivanovitch. ‘I’m so dirty. I’m afraid to
touch you. I’ve been so busy, I didn’t know when I
should be able to tear myself away. And so you’re still as
ever enjoying your peaceful, quiet happiness,’ he said,
smiling, ‘out of the reach of the current in your peaceful
backwater. Here’s our friend Fyodor Vassilievitch who has
succeeded in getting here at last.’
‘But I’m not a negro, I shall look like a human being
when I wash,’ said Katavasov in his jesting fashion, and he
shook hands and smiled, his teeth flashing white in his
black face.
‘Kostya will be delighted. He has gone to his
settlement. It’s time he should be home.’
‘Busy as ever with his farming. It really is a peaceful
backwater,’ said Katavasov; ‘while we in town think of
nothing but the Servian war. Well, how does our friend
look at it? He’s sure not to think like other people.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, like everybody else,’ Kitty
answered, a little embarrassed, looking round at Sergey
Ivanovitch. ‘I’ll send to fetch him. Papa’s staying with us.
He’s only just come home from abroad.’
And making arrangements to send for Levin and for the
guests to wash, one in his room and the other in what had
been Dolly’s, and giving orders for their luncheon, Kitty
ran out onto the balcony, enjoying the freedom, and
rapidity of movement, of which she had been deprived
during the months of her pregnancy.
‘It’s Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov, a professor,’ she
said.
‘Oh, that’s a bore in this heat,’ said the prince.
‘No, papa, he’s very nice, and Kostya’s very fond of
him,’ Kitty said, with a deprecating smile, noticing the
irony on her father’s face.
‘Oh, I didn’t say anything.’
‘You go to them, darling,’ said Kitty to her sister, ‘and
entertain them. They saw Stiva at the station; he was quite
well. And I must run to Mitya. As ill-luck would have it, I
haven’t fed him since tea. He’s awake now, and sure to be
screaming.’ And feeling a rush of milk, she hurried to the
nursery.
This was not a mere guess; her connection with the
child was still so close, that she could gauge by the flow of
her milk his need of food, and knew for certain he was
hungry.
She knew he was crying before she reached the
nursery. And he was indeed crying. She heard him and
hastened. But the faster she went, the louder he screamed.
It was a fine healthy scream, hungry and impatient.
‘Has he been screaming long, nurse, very long?’ said
Kitty hurriedly, seating herself on a chair, and preparing to
give the baby the breast. ‘But give me him quickly. Oh,
nurse, how tiresome you are! There, tie the cap
afterwards, dol.’
The baby’s greedy scream was passing into sobs.
‘But you can’t manage so, ma’am,’ said Agafea
Mihalovna, who was almost always to be found in the
nursery. ‘He must be put straight. A-oo! a-oo!’ she
chanted over him, paying no attention to the mother.
The nurse brought the baby to his mother. Agafea
Mihalovna followed him with a face dissolving with
tenderness.
‘He knows me, he knows me. In God’s faith, Katerina
Alexandrovna, ma’am, he knew me!’ Agafea Mihalovna
cried above the baby’s screams.
But Kitty did not hear her words. Her impatience kept
growing, like the baby’s.
Their impatience hindered things for a while. The baby
could not get hold of the breast right, and was furious.
At last, after despairing, breathless screaming, and vain
sucking, things went right, and mother and child felt
simultaneously soothed, and both subsided into calm.
‘But poor darling, he’s all in perspiration!’ said Kitty in
a whisper, touching the baby.
‘What makes you think he knows you?’ she added,
with a sidelong glance at the baby’s eyes, that peered
roguishly, as she fancied, from under his cap, at his
rhythmically puffing cheeks, and the little red-palmed
hand he was waving.
‘Impossible! If he knew anyone, he would have known
me,’ said Kitty, in response to Agafea Mihalovna’s
statement, and she smiled.
She smiled because, though she said he could not know
her, in her heart she was sure that he knew not merely
Agafea Mihalovna, but that he knew and understood
everything, and knew and understood a great deal too that
no one else knew, and that she, his mother, had learned
and come to understand only through him. To Agafea
Mihalovna, to the nurse, to his grandfather, to his father
even, Mitya was a living being, requiring only materiel
care, but for his mother he had long been a mortal being,
with whom there had been a whole series of spiritual
relations already.
‘When he wakes up, please God, you shall see for
yourself. Then when I do like this, he simply beams on
me, the darling! Simply beams like a sunny day!’ said
Agafea Mihalovna.
‘Well, well then we shall see,’ whispered Kitty. ‘But
now go away, he’s going to sleep.’
Chapter 7
Agafea Mihalovna went out on tiptoe; the nurse let
down the blind, chased a fly out from under the muslin
canopy of the crib, and a bumblebee struggling on the
window-frame, and sat down waving a faded branch of
birch over the mother and the baby.
‘How hot it is! if God would send a drop of rain,’ she
said.
‘Yes, yes, sh—sh—sh—’ was all Kitty answered,
rocking a little, and tenderly squeezing the plump little
arm, with rolls of fat at the wrist, which Mitya still waved
feebly as he opened and shut his eyes. That hand worried
Kitty; she longed to kiss the little hand, but was afraid to
for fear of waking the baby. At last the little hand ceased
waving, and the eyes closed. Only from time to time, as
he went on sucking, the baby raised his long, curly
eyelashes and peeped at his mother with wet eyes, that
looked black in the twilight. The nurse had left off
fanning, and was dozing. From above came the peals of
the old prince’s voice, and the chuckle of Katavasov.
‘They have got into talk without me,’ thought Kitty,
‘but still it’s vexing that Kostya’s out. He’s sure to have
gone to the bee house again. Though it’s a pity he’s there
so often, still I’m glad. It distracts his mind. He’s become
altogether happier and better now than in the spring. He
used to be so gloomy and worried that I felt frightened for
him. And how absurd he is!’ she whispered, smiling.
She knew what worried her husband. It was his
unbelief. Although, if she had been asked whether she
supposed that in the future life, if he did not believe, he
would be damned, she would have had to admit that he
would be damned, his unbelief did not cause her
unhappiness. And she, confessing that for an unbeliever
there can be no salvation, and loving her husband’s soul
more than anything in the world, thought with a smile of
his unbelief, and told herself that he was absurd.
‘What does he keep reading philosophy of some sort
for all this year?’ she wondered. ‘If it’s all written in those
books, he can understand them. If it’s all wrong, why does
he read them? He says himself that he would like to
believe. Then why is it he doesn’t believe? Surely from his
thinking so much? And he thinks so much from being
solitary. He’s always alone, alone. He can’t talk about it all
to us. I fancy he’ll be glad of these visitors, especially
Katavasov. He likes discussions with them,’ she thought,
and passed instantly to the consideration of where it would
be more convenient to put Katavasov, to sleep alone or to
share Sergey Ivanovitch’s room. And then an idea
suddenly struck her, which made her shudder and even
disturb Mitya, who glanced severely at her. ‘I do believe
the laundress hasn’t sent the washing yet, and all the best
sheets are in use. If I don’t see to it, Agafea Mihalovna will
give Sergey Ivanovitch the wrong sheets,’ and at the very
idea of this the blood rushed to Kitty’s face.
‘Yes, I will arrange it,’ she decided, and going back to
her former thoughts, she remembered that some spiritual
question of importance had been interrupted, and she
began to recall what. ‘Yes, Kostya, an unbeliever,’ she
thought again with a smile.
‘Well, an unbeliever then! Better let him always be one
than like Madame Stahl, or what I tried to be in those days
abroad. No, he won’t ever sham anything.’
And a recent instance of his goodness rose vividly to
her mind. A fortnight ago a penitent letter had come from
Stepan Arkadyevitch to Dolly. He besought her to save his
honor, to sell her estate to pay his debts. Dolly was in
despair, she detested her husband, despised him, pitied
him, resolved on a separation, resolved to refuse, but
ended by agreeing to sell part of her property. After that,
with an irrepressible smile of tenderness, Kitty recalled her
husband’s shamefaced embarrassment, his repeated
awkward efforts to approach the subject, and how at last,
having thought of the one means of helping Dolly without
wounding her pride, he had suggested to Kitty—what had
not occurred to her before—that she should give up her
share of the property.
‘He an unbeliever indeed! With his heart, his dread of
offending anyone, even a child! Everything for others,
nothing for himself. Sergey Ivanovitch simply considers it
as Kostya’s duty to be his steward. And it’s the same with
his sister. Now Dolly and her children are under his
guardianship; all these peasants who come to him every
day, as though he were bound to be at their service.’
‘Yes, only be like your father, only like him,’ she said,
handing Mitya over to the nurse, and putting her lips to
his cheek.
Chapter 8
Ever since, by his beloved brother’s deathbed, Levin
had first glanced into the questions of life and death in the
light of these new convictions, as he called them, which
had during the period from his twentieth to his thirtyfourth
year imperceptibly replaced his childish and
youthful beliefs—he had been stricken with horror, not so
much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of
whence, and why, and how, and what it was. The physical
organization, its decay, the indestructibility of matter, the
law of the conservation of energy, evolution, were the
words which usurped the place of his old belief. These
words and the ideas associated with them were very well
for intellectual purposes. But for life they yielded nothing,
and Levin felt suddenly like a man who has changed his
warm fur cloak for a muslin garment, and going for the
first time into the frost is immediately convinced, not by
reason, but by his whole nature that he is as good as
naked, and that he must infallibly perish miserably.
From that moment, though he did not distinctly face it,
and still went on living as before, Levin had never lost this
sense of terror at his lack of knowledge.
He vaguely felt, too, that what he called his new
convictions were not merely lack of knowledge, but that
they were part of a whole order of ideas, in which no
knowledge of what he needed was possible.
At first, marriage, with the new joys and duties bound
up with it, had completely crowded out these thoughts.
But of late, while he was staying in Moscow after his
wife’s confinement, with nothing to do, the question that
clamored for solution had more and more often, more and
more insistently, haunted Levin’s mind.
The question was summed up for him thus: ‘If I do not
accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of
my life, what answers do I accept?’ And in the whole
arsenal of his convictions, so far from finding any
satisfactory answers, he was utterly unable to find anything
at all like an answer.
He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy
shops and tool shops.
Istinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with
every conversation, with every man he met, he was on the
lookout for light on these questions and their solution.
What puzzled and distracted him above everything was
that the majority of men of his age and circle had, like
him, exchanged their old beliefs for the same new
convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and
were perfectly satisfied and serene. So that, apart from the
principal question, Levin was tortured by other questions
too. Were these people sincere? he asked himself, or were
they playing a part? or was it that they understood the
answers science gave to these problems in some different,
clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied both
these men’s opinions and the books which treated of these
scientific explanations.
One fact he had found out since these questions had
engrossed his mind, was that he had been quite wrong in
supposing from the recollections of the circle of his young
days at college, that religion had outlived its day, and that
it was now practically non-existent. All the people nearest
to him who were good in their lives were believers. The
old prince, and Lvov, whom he liked so much, and Sergey
Ivanovitch, and all the women believed, and his wife
believed as simply as he had believed in his earliest
childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the Russian
people, all the working people for whose life he felt the
deepest respect, believed.
Another fact of which he became convinced, after
reading many scientific books, was that the men who
shared his views had no other construction to put on
them, and that they gave no explanation of the questions
which he felt he could not live without answering, but
simply ignored their existence and attempted to explain
other questions of no possible interest to him, such as the
evolution of organisms, the materialistic theory of
consciousness, and so forth.
Moreover, during his wife’s confinement, something
had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an
unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he
prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he
could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into
the rest of his life.
He could not admit that at that moment he knew the
truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began
thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not
admit that he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition
then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof
of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments.
He was miserably divided against himself, and strained all
his spiritual forces to the utmost to escape from this
condition.
Chapter 9
These doubts fretted and harassed him, growing weaker
or stronger from time to time, but never leaving him. He
read and thought, and the more he read and the more he
thought, the further he felt from the aim he was pursuing.
Of late in Moscow and in the country, since he had
become convinced that he would find no solution in the
materialists, he had read and reread thoroughly Plato,
Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, the
philosophers who gave a non-materialistic explanation of
life.
Their ideas seemed to him fruitful when he was reading
or was himself seeking arguments to refute other theories,
especially those of the materialists; but as soon as he began
to read or sought fat himself a solution of problems, the
same thing always happened. As long as he followed the
fixed definition of obscure words such as SPIRIT, WILL,
FREEDOM, ESSENCE, purposely letting himself go into
the snare of words the philosophers set for him, he seemed
to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the
artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from life itself to
what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with
the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to
pieces at once like a house of cards, and it became clear
that the edifice had been built up out of those transposed
words, apart from anything in life more important than
reason.
At one time, reading Schopenhauer, he put in place of
his will the word love, and for a couple of days this new
philosophy charmed him, till he removed a little away
from it. But then, when he turned from life itself to glance
at it again, it fell away too, and proved to be the same
muslin garment with no warmth in it.
His brother Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to read the
theological works of Homiakov. Levin read the second
volume of Homiakov’s works, and in spite of the elegant,
epigrammatic, argumentative style which at first repelled
him, he was impressed by the doctrine of the church he
found in them. He was struck at first by the idea that the
apprehension of divine truths had not been vouchsafed to
man, but to a corporation of men bound together by
love—to the church. What delighted him was the thought
how much easier it was to believe in a still existing living
church, embracing all the beliefs of men, and having God
at its head, and therefore holy and infallible, and from it to
accept the faith in God, in the creation, the fall, the
redemption, than to begin with God, a mysterious, faraway
God, the creation, etc. But afterwards, on reading a
Catholic writer’s history of the church, and then a Greek
orthodox writer’s history of the church, and seeing that
the two churches, in their very conception infallible, each
deny the authority of the other, Homiakov’s doctrine of
the church lost all its charm for him, and this edifice
crumbled into dust like the philosophers’ edifices.
All that spring he was not himself, and went through
fearful moments of horror.
‘Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life’s
impossible; and that I can’t know, and so I can’t live,’
Levin said to himself.
‘In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is
formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while
and bursts, and that bubble is Me.’
It was an agonizing error, but it was the sole logical
result of ages of human thought in that direction.
This was the ultimate belief on which all the systems
elaborated by human thought in almost all their
ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and
of all other explanations Levin had unconsciously, not
knowing when or how, chosen it, as anyway the clearest,
and made it his own.
But it was not merely a falsehood, it was the cruel jeer
of some wicked power, some evil, hateful power, to
whom one could not submit.
He must escape from this power. And the means of
escape every man had in his own hands. He had but to cut
short this dependence on evil. And there was one means—
death.
And Levin, a happy father and husband, in perfect
health, was several times so near suicide that he hid the
cord that he might not be tempted to hang himself, and
was afraid to go out with his gun for fear of shooting
himself.
But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang
himself; he went on living.
Chapter 10
When Levin thought what he was and what he was
living for, he could find no answer to the questions and
was reduced to despair, but he left off questioning himself
about it. It seemed as though he knew both what he was
and for what he was living, for he acted and lived
resolutely and without hesitation. Indeed, in these latter
days he was far more decided and unhesitating in life than
he had ever been.
When he went back to the country at the beginning of
June, he went back also to his usual pursuits. The
management of the estate, his relations with the peasants
and the neighbors, the care of his household, the
management of his sister’s and brother’s property, of
which he had the direction, his relations with his wife and
kindred, the care of his child, and the new bee-keeping
hobby he had taken up that spring, filled all his time.
These things occupied him now, not because he
justified them to himself by any sort of general principles,
as he had done in former days; on the contrary,
disappointed by the failure of his former efforts for the
general welfare, and too much occupied with his own
thought and the mass of business with which he was
burdened from all sides, he had completely given up
thinking of the general good, and he busied himself with
all this work simply because it seemed to him that he must
do what he was doing—that he could not do otherwise.
In former days—almost from childhood, and increasingly
up to full manhood—when he had tried to do anything
that would be good for all, for humanity, for Russia, for
the whole village, he had noticed that the idea of it had
been pleasant, but the work itself had always been
incoherent, that then he had never had a full conviction of
its absolute necessity, and that the work that had begun by
seeming so great, had grown less and less, till it vanished
into nothing. But now, since his marriage, when he had
begun to confine himself more and more to living for
himself, though he experienced no delight at all at the
thought of the work he was doing, he felt a complete
conviction of its necessity, saw that it succeeded far better
than in old days, and that it kept on growing more and
more.
Now, involuntarily it seemed, he cut more and more
deeply into the soil like a plough, so that he could not be
drawn out without turning aside the furrow.
To live the same family life as his father and
forefathers—that is, in the same condition of culture—and
to bring up his children in the same, was incontestably
necessary. It was as necessary as dining when one was
hungry. And to do this, just as it was necessary to cook
dinner, it was necessary to keep the mechanism of
agriculture at Pokrovskoe going so as to yield an income.
Just as incontestably as it was necessary to repay a debt was
it necessary to keep the property in such a condition that
his son, when he received it as a heritage, would say
‘thank you’ to his father as Levin had said ‘thank you’ to
his grandfather for all he built and planted. And to do this
it was necessary to look after the land himself, not to let it,
and to breed cattle, manure the fields, and plant timber.
It was impossible not to look after the affairs of Sergey
Ivanovitch, of his sister, of the peasants who came to him
for advice and were accustomed to do so—as impossible as
to fling down a child one is carrying in one’s arms. It was
necessary to look after the comfort of his sister-in-law and
her children, and of his wife and baby, and it was
impossible not to spend with them at least a short time
each day.
And all this, together with shooting and his new beekeeping,
filled up the whole of Levin’s life, which had no
meaning at all for him, when he began to think.
But besides knowing thoroughly what he had to do,
Levin knew in just the same way HOW he had to do it
all, and what was more important than the rest.
He knew he must hire laborers as cheaply as possible;
but to hire men under bond, paying them in advance at
less than the current rate of wages, was what he must not
do, even though it was very profitable. Selling straw to the
peasants in times of scarcity of provender was what he
might do, even though he felt sorry for them; but the
tavern and the pothouse must be put down, though they
were a source of income. Felling timber must be punished
as severely as possible, but he could not exact forfeits for
cattle being driven onto his fields; and though it annoyed
the keeper and made the peasants not afraid to graze their
cattle on his land, he could not keep their cattle as a
punishment.
To Pyotr, who was paying a money-lender 10 per cent
a month, he must lend a sum of money to set him free.
But he could not let off peasants who did not pay their
rent, nor let them fall into arrears. It was impossible to
overlook the bailiff’s not having mown the meadows and
letting the hay spoil; and it was equally impossible to mow
those acres where a young copse had been planted. It was
impossible to excuse a laborer who had gone home in the
busy season because his father was dying, however sorry
he might feel for him, and he must subtract from his pay
those costly months of idleness. But it was impossible not
to allow monthly rations to the old servants who were of
no use for anything.
Levin knew that when he got home he must first of all
go to his wife, who was unwell, and that the peasants who
had been waiting for three hours to see him could wait a
little longer. He knew too that, regardless of all the
pleasure he felt in taking a swarm, he must forego that
pleasure, and leave the old man to see to the bees alone,
while he talked to the peasants who had come after him to
the bee-house.
Whether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not
know, and far from trying to prove that he was, nowadays
he avoided all thought or talk about it.
Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented
him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought
not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was
continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in
his soul, determining which of two possible courses of
action was the better and which was the worse, and as
soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.
So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of
knowing what he was and what he was living for, and
harassed at this lack of knowledge to such a point that he
was afraid of suicide, and yet firmly laying down his own
individual definite path in life.
Chapter 11
The day on which Sergey Ivanovitch came to
Pokrovskoe was one of Levin’s most painful days. It was
the very busiest working time, when all the peasantry
show an extraordinary intensity of self-sacrifice in labor,
such as is never shown in any other conditions of life, and
would be highly esteemed if the men who showed these
qualities themselves thought highly of them, and if it were
not repeated every year, and if the results of this intense
labor were not so simple.
To reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to
mow the meadows, turn over the fallows, thrash the seed
and sow the winter corn—all this seems so simple and
ordinary; but to succeed in getting through it all everyone
in the village, from the old man to the young child, must
toil incessantly for three or four weeks, three times as hard
as usual, living on rye-beer, onions, and black bread,
thrashing and carrying the sheaves at night, and not giving
more than two or three hours in the twenty-four to sleep.
And every year this is done all over Russia.
Having lived the greater part of his life in the country
and in the closest relations with the peasants, Levin always
felt in this busy time that he was infected by this general
quickening of energy in the people.
In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of
the rye, and to the oats, which were being carried to the
stacks, and returning home at the time his wife and sisterin-
law were getting up, he drank coffee with them and
walked to the farm, where a new thrashing machine was
to be set working to get ready the seed-corn.
He was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with
the leaves of the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly
peeled aspen beams of the new thatch roof. He gazed
through the open door in which the dry bitter dust of the
thrashing whirled and played, at the grass of the thrashing
floor in the sunlight and the fresh straw that had been
brought in from the barn, then at the speckly-headed,
white-breasted swallows that flew chirping in under the
roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in the crevices of
the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in the dark,
dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts.
‘Why is it all being done?’ he thought. ‘Why am I
standing here, making them work? What are they all so
busy for, trying to show their zeal before me? What is that
old Matrona, my old friend, toiling for? (I doctored her,
when the beam fell on her in the fire)’ he thought,
looking at a thin old woman who was raking up the grain,
moving painfully with her bare, sun-blackened feet over
the uneven, rough floor. ‘Then she recovered, but today
or tomorrow or in ten years she won’t; they’ll bury her,
and nothing will be left either of her or of that smart girl
in the red jacket, who with that skillful, soft action shakes
the ears out of their husks. They’ll bury her and this
piebald horse, and very soon too,’ he thought, gazing at
the heavily moving, panting horse that kept walking up
the wheel that turned under him. ‘And they will bury her
and Fyodor the thrasher with his curly beard full of chaff
and his shirt torn on his white shoulders—they will bury
him. He’s untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and
shouting to the women, and quickly setting straight the
strap on the moving wheel. And what’s more, it’s not
them alone—me they’ll bury too, and nothing will be left.
What for?’
He thought this, and at the same time looked at his
watch to reckon how much they thrashed in an hour. He
wanted to know this so as to judge by it the task to set for
the day.
‘It’ll soon be one, and they’re only beginning the third
sheaf,’ thought Levin. He went up to the man that was
feeding the machine, and shouting over the roar of the
machine he told him to put it in more slowly. ‘You put in
too much at a time, Fyodor. Do you see—it gets choked,
that’s why it isn’t getting on. Do it evenly.’
Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face,
shouted something in response, but still went on doing it
as Levin did not want him to.
Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside,
and began feeding the corn in himself. Working on till the
peasants’ dinner hour, which was not long in coming, he
went out of the barn with Fyodor and fell into talk with
him, stopping beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on the
thrashing floor for seed.
Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the
one in which Levin had once allotted land to his
cooperative association. Now it had been let to a former
house porter.
Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked
whether Platon, a well-to-do peasant of good character
belonging to the same village, would not take the land for
the coming year.
‘It’s a high rent; it wouldn’t pay Platon, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch,’ answered the peasant, picking the ears off
his sweat-drenched shirt.
‘But how does Kirillov make it pay?’
‘Mituh!’ (so the peasant called the house porter, in a
tone of contempt), ‘you may be sure he’ll make it pay,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch! He’ll get his share, however he
has to squeeze to get it! He’s no mercy on a Christian. But
Uncle Fokanitch’ (so he called the old peasant Platon), ‘do
you suppose he’d flay the skin off a man? Where there’s
debt, he’ll let anyone off. And he’ll not wring the last
penny out. He’s a man too.’
‘But why will he let anyone off?’
‘Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives
for his own wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only
thinks of filling his belly, but Fokanitch is a righteous man.
He lives for his soul. He does not forget God.’
‘How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?’
Levin almost shouted.
‘Why, to be sure, in truth, in God’s way. Folks are
different. Take you now, you wouldn’t wrong a man...’
‘Yes, yes, good-bye!’ said Levin, breathless with
excitement, and turning round he took his stick and
walked quickly away towards home. At the peasant’s
words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in God’s
way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as
though they had been locked up, and all striving towards
one goal, they thronged whirling through his head,
blinding him with their light.
Chapter 12
Levin strode along the highroad, absorbed not so much
in his thoughts (he could not yet disentangle them) as in
his spiritual condition, unlike anything he had experienced
before.
The words uttered by the peasant had acted on his soul
like an electric shock, suddenly transforming and
combining into a single whole the whole swarm of
disjointed, impotent, separate thoughts that incessantly
occupied his mind. These thoughts had unconsciously
been in his mind even when he was talking about the
land.
He was aware of something new in his soul, and
joyfully tested this new thing, not yet knowing what it
was.
‘Not living for his own wants, but for God? For what
God? And could one say anything more senseless than
what he said? He said that one must not live for one’s own
wants, that is, that one must not live for what we
understand, what we are attracted by, what we desire, but
must live for something incomprehensible, for God,
whom no one can understand nor even define. What of it?
Didn’t I understand those senseless words of Fyodor’s?
And understanding them, did I doubt of their truth? Did I
think them stupid, obscure, inexact? No, I understood
him, and exactly as he understands the words. I
understood them more fully and clearly than I understand
anything in life, and never in my life have I doubted nor
can I doubt about it. And not only I, but everyone, the
whole world understands nothing fully but this, and about
this only they have no doubt and are always agreed.
‘And I looked out for miracles, complained that I did
not see a miracle which would convince me. A material
miracle would have persuaded me. And here is a miracle,
the sole miracle possible, continually existing, surrounding
me on all sides, and I never noticed it!
‘Fyodor says that Kirillov lives for his belly. That’s
comprehensible and rational. All of us as rational beings
can’t do anything else but live for our belly. And all of a
sudden the same Fyodor says that one mustn’t live for
one’s belly, but must live for truth, for God, and at a hint I
understand him! And I and millions of men, men who
lived ages ago and men living now— peasants, the poor in
spirit and the learned, who have thought and written
about it, in their obscure words saying the same thing—
we are all agreed about this one thing: what we must live
for and what is good. I and all men have only one firm,
incontestable, clear knowledge, and that knowledge
cannot be explained by the reason—it is outside it, and has
no causes and can have no effects.
‘If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has
effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is
outside the chain of cause and effect.
‘And yet I know it, and we all know it.
‘What could be a greater miracle than that?
‘Can I have found the solution of it all? can my
sufferings be over?’ thought Levin, striding along the dusty
road, not noticing the heat nor his weariness, and
experiencing a sense of relief from prolonged suffering.
This feeling was so delicious that it seemed to him
incredible. He was breathless with emotion and incapable
of going farther; he turned off the road into the forest and
lay down in the shade of an aspen on the uncut grass. He
took his hat off his hot head and lay propped on his elbow
in the lush, feathery, woodland grass.
‘Yes, I must make it clear to myself and understand,’ he
thought, looking intently at the untrampled grass before
him, and following the movements of a green beetle,
advancing along a blade of couch-grass and lifting up in its
progress a leaf of goat-weed. ‘What have I discovered?’ he
asked himself, bending aside the leaf of goat-weed out of
the beetle’s way and twisting another blade of grass above
for the beetle to cross over onto it. ‘What is it makes me
glad? What have I discovered?
‘I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what
I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me
life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from
falsity, I have found the Master.
‘Of old I used to say that in my body, that in the body
of this grass and of this beetle (there, she didn’t care for the
grass, she’s opened her wings and flown away), there was
going on a transformation of matter in accordance with
physical, chemical, and physiological laws. And in all of us,
as well as in the aspens and the clouds and the misty
patches, there was a process of evolution. Evolution from
what? into what?—Eternal evolution and struggle.... As
though there could be any sort of tendency and struggle in
the eternal! And I was astonished that in spite of the
utmost effort of thought along that road I could not
discover the meaning of life, the meaning of my impulses
and yearnings. Now I say that I know the meaning of my
life: ‘To live for God, for my soul.’ And this meaning, in
spite of its clearness, is mysterious and marvelous. Such,
indeed, is the meaning of everything existing. Yes, pride,’
he said to himself, turning over on his stomach and
beginning to tie a noose of blades of grass, trying not to
break them.
‘And not merely pride of intellect, but dulness of
intellect. And most of all, the deceitfulness; yes, the
deceitfulness of intellect. The cheating knavishness of
intellect, that’s it,’ he said to himself.
And he briefly went through, mentally, the whole
course of his ideas during the last two years, the beginning
of which was the clear confronting of death at the sight of
his dear brother hopelessly ill.
Then, for the first time, grasping that for every man,
and himself too, there was nothing in store but suffering,
death, and forgetfulness, he had made up his mind that life
was impossible like that, and that he must either interpret
life so that it would not present itself to him as the evil jest
of some devil, or shoot himself.
But he had not done either, but had gone on living,
thinking, and feeling, and had even at that very time
married, and had had many joys and had been happy,
when he was not thinking of the meaning of his life.
What did this mean? It meant that he had been living
rightly, but thinking wrongly.
He had lived (without being aware of it) on those
spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother’s
milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition
of these truths, but studiously ignoring them.
Now it was clear to him that he could only live by
virtue of the beliefs in which he had been brought up.
‘What should I have been, and how should I have
spent my life, if I had not had these beliefs, if I had not
known that I must live for God and not for my own
desires? I should have robbed and lied and killed. Nothing
of what makes the chief happiness of my life would have
existed for me.’ And with the utmost stretch of
imagination he could not conceive the brutal creature he
would have been himself, if he had not known what he
was living for.
‘I looked for an answer to my question. And thought
could not give an answer to my question—it is
incommensurable with my question. The answer has been
given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right
and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at
in any way, it was given to me as to all men, GIVEN,
because I could not have got it from anywhere.
‘Where could I have got it? By reason could I have
arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not
oppress him? I was told that in my childhood, and I
believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my
soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason
discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that
requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our
desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one’s
neighbor reason could never discover, because it’s
irrational.’
Chapter 13
And Levin remembered a scene he had lately witnessed
between Dolly and her children. The children, left to
themselves, had begun cooking raspberries over the
candles and squirting milk into each other’s mouths with a
syringe. Their mother, catching them at these pranks,
began reminding them in Levin’s presence of the trouble
their mischief gave to the grown-up people, and that this
trouble was all for their sake, and that if they smashed the
cups they would have nothing to drink their tea out of,
and that if they wasted the milk, they would have nothing
to eat, and die of hunger.
And Levin had been struck by the passive, weary
incredulity with which the children heard what their
mother said to them. They were simply annoyed that their
amusing play had been interrupted, and did not believe a
word of what their mother was saying. They could not
believe it indeed, for they could not take in the immensity
of all they habitually enjoyed, and so could not conceive
that what they were destroying was the very thing they
lived by.
‘That all comes of itself,’ they thought, ‘and there’s
nothing interesting or important about it because it has
always been so, and always will be so. And it’s all always
the same. We’ve no need to think about that, it’s all ready.
But we want to invent something of our own, and new.
So we thought of putting raspberries in a cup, and
cooking them over a candle, and squirting milk straight
into each other’s mouths. That’s fun, and something new,
and not a bit worse than drinking out of cups.’
‘Isn’t it just the same that we do, that I did, searching
by the aid of reason for the significance of the forces of
nature and the meaning of the life of man?’ he thought.
‘And don’t all the theories of philosophy do the same,
trying by the path of thought, which is strange and not
natural to man, to bring him to a knowledge of what he
has known long ago, and knows so certainly that he could
not live at all without it? Isn’t it distinctly to be seen in the
development of each philosopher’s theory, that he knows
what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as
positively as the peasant Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly
than he, and is simply trying by a dubious intellectual path
to come back to what everyone knows?
‘Now then, leave the children to themselves to get
things alone and make their crockery, get the milk from
the cows, and so on. Would they be naughty then? Why,
they’d die of hunger! Well, then, leave us with our
passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one God,
of the Creator, or without any idea of what is right,
without any idea of moral evil.
‘Just try and build up anything without those ideas!
‘We only try to destroy them, because we’re spiritually
provided for. Exactly like the children!
‘Whence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the
peasant, that alone gives peace to my soul? Whence did I
get it?
‘Brought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my
whole life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity has
given me, full of them, and living on those blessings, like
the children I did not understand them, and destroy, that
is try to destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an
important moment of life comes, like the children when
they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less
than the children when their mother scolds them for their
childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at
wanton madness are reckoned against me.
‘Yes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has
been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my
heart, by faith in the chief thing taught by the church.
‘The church! the church!’ Levin repeated to himself.
He turned over on the other side, and leaning on his
elbow, fell to gazing into the distance at a herd of cattle
crossing over to the river.
‘But can I believe in all the church teaches?’ he
thought, trying himself, and thinking of everything that
could destroy his present peace of mind. Itentionally he
recalled all those doctrines of the church which had always
seemed most strange and had always been a stumbling
block to him.
‘The Creation? But how did I explain existence? By
existence? By nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I
explain evil?... The atonement?...
‘But I know nothing, nothing, and I can know nothing
but what has been told to me and all men.’
And it seemed to him that there was not a single article
of faith of the church which could destroy the chief
thing—faith in God, in goodness, as the one goal of man’s
destiny.
Under every article of faith of the church could be put
the faith in the service of truth instead of one’s desires.
And each doctrine did not simply leave that faith
unshaken, each doctrine seemed essential to complete that
great miracle, continually manifest upon earth, that made
it possible for each man and millions of different sorts of
men, wise men and imbeciles, old men and children—all
men, peasants, Lvov, Kitty, beggars and kings to
understand perfectly the same one thing, and to build up
thereby that life of the soul which alone is worth living,
and which alone is precious to us.
Lying on his back, he gazed up now into the high,
cloudless sky. ‘Do I not know that that is infinite space,
and that it is not a round arch? But, however I screw up
my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not round and
not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite
space, I am incontestably right when I see a solid blue
dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see
beyond it.’
Levin ceased thinking, and only, as it were, listened to
mysterious voices that seemed talking joyfully and
earnestly within him.
‘Can this be faith?’ he thought, afraid to believe in his
happiness. ‘My God, I thank Thee!’ he said, gulping down
his sobs, and with both hands brushing away the tears that
filled his eyes.
Chapter 14
Levin looked before him and saw a herd of cattle, then
he caught sight of his trap with Raven in the shafts, and
the coachman, who, driving up to the herd, said
something to the herdsman. Then he heard the rattle of
the wheels and the snort of the sleek horse close by him.
But he was so buried in his thoughts that he did not even
wonder why the coachman had come for him.
He only thought of that when the coachman had
driven quite up to him and shouted to him. ‘The mistress
sent me. Your brother has come, and some gentleman
with him.’
Levin got into the trap and took the reins. As though
just roused out of sleep, for a long while Levin could not
collect his faculties. He stared at the sleek horse flecked
with lather between his haunches and on his neck, where
the harness rubbed, stared at Ivan the coachman sitting
beside him, and remembered that he was expecting his
brother, thought that his wife was most likely uneasy at his
long absence, and tried to guess who was the visitor who
had come with his brother. And his brother and his wife
and the unknown guest seemed to him now quite
different from before. He fancied that now his relations
with all men would be different.
‘With my brother there will be none of that aloofness
there always used to be between us, there will be no
disputes; with Kitty there shall never be quarrels; with the
visitor, whoever he may be, I will be friendly and nice;
with the servants, with Ivan, it will all be different.’
Pulling the stiff rein and holding in the good horse that
snorted with impatience and seemed begging to be let go,
Levin looked round at Ivan sitting beside him, not
knowing what to do with his unoccupied hand,
continually pressing down his shirt as it puffed out, and he
tried to find something to start a conversation about with
him. He would have said that Ivan had pulled the saddlegirth
up too high, but that was like blame, and he longed
for friendly, warm talk. Nothing else occurred to him.
‘Your honor must keep to the right and mind that
stump,’ said the coachman, pulling the rein Levin held.
‘Please don’t touch and don’t teach me!’ said Levin,
angered by this interference. Now, as always, interference
made him angry, and he felt sorrowfully at once how
mistaken had been his supposition that his spiritual
condition could immediately change him in contact with
reality.
He was not a quarter of a mile from home when he
saw Grisha and Tanya running to meet him.
‘Uncle Kostya! mamma’s coming, and grandfather, and
Sergey Ivanovitch, and someone else,’ they said,
clambering up into the trap.
‘Who is he?’
‘An awfully terrible person! And he does like this with
his arms,’ said Tanya, getting up in the trap and mimicking
Katavasov.
‘Old or young?’ asked Levin, laughing, reminded of
someone, he did not know whom, by Tanya’s
performance.
‘Oh, I hope it’s not a tiresome person!’ thought Levin.
As soon as he turned, at a bend in the road, and saw the
party coming, Levin recognized Katavasov in a straw hat,
walking along swinging his arms just as Tanya had shown
him. Katavasov was very fond of discussing metaphysics,
having derived his notions from natural science writers
who had never studied metaphysics, and in Moscow Levin
had had many arguments with him of late.
And one of these arguments, in which Katavasov had
obviously considered that he came off victorious, was the
first thing Levin thought of as he recognized him.
‘No, whatever I do, I won’t argue and give utterance
to my ideas lightly,’ he thought.
Getting out of the trap and greeting his brother and
Katavasov, Levin asked about his wife.
‘She has taken Mitya to Kolok’ (a copse near the
house). ‘She meant to have him out there because it’s so
hot indoors,’ said Dolly. Levin had always advised his wife
not to take the baby to the wood, thinking it unsafe, and
he was not pleased to hear this.
‘She rushes about from place to place with him,’ said
the prince, smiling. ‘I advised her to try putting him in the
ice cellar.’
‘She meant to come to the bee house. She thought you
would be there. We are going there,’ said Dolly.
‘Well, and what are you doing?’ said Sergey Ivanovitch,
falling back from the rest and walking beside him.
‘Oh, nothing special. Busy as usual with the land,’
answered Levin. ‘Well, and what about you? Come for
long? We have been expecting you for such a long time.’
‘Only for a fortnight. I’ve a great deal to do in
Moscow.’
At these words the brothers’ eyes met, and Levin, in
spite of the desire he always had, stronger than ever just
now, to be on affectionate and still more open terms with
his brother, felt an awkwardness in looking at him. He
dropped his eyes and did not know what to say.
Casting over the subjects of conversation that would be
pleasant to Sergey Ivanovitch, and would keep him off the
subject of the Servian war and the Slavonic question, at
which he had hinted by the allusion to what he had to do
in Moscow, Levin began to talk of Sergey Ivanovitch’s
book.
‘Well, have there been reviews of your book?’ he
asked.
Sergey Ivanovitch smiled at the intentional character of
the question.
‘No one is interested in that now, and I less than
anyone,’ he said. ‘Just look, Darya Alexandrovna, we shall
have a shower,’ he added, pointing with a sunshade at the
white rain clouds that showed above the aspen tree-tops.
And these words were enough to reestablish again
between the brothers that tone—hardly hostile, but
chilly—which Levin had been so longing to avoid.
Levin went up to Katavasov.
‘It was jolly of you to make up your mind to come,’ he
said to him.
‘I’ve been meaning to a long while. Now we shall have
some discussion, we’ll see to that. Have you been reading
Spencer?’
‘No, I’ve not finished reading him,’ said Levin. ‘But I
don’t need him now.’
‘How’s that? that’s interesting. Why so?’
‘I mean that I’m fully convinced that the solution of
the problems that interest me I shall never find in him and
his like. Now..’
But Katavasov’s serene and good-humored expression
suddenly struck him, and he felt such tenderness for his
own happy mood, which he was unmistakably disturbing
by this conversation, that he remembered his resolution
and stopped short.
‘But we’ll talk later on,’ he added. ‘If we’re going to
the bee house, it’s this way, along this little path,’ he said,
addressing them all.
Going along the narrow path to a little uncut meadow
covered on one side with thick clumps of brilliant heart’sease
among which stood up here and there tall, dark green
tufts of hellebore, Levin settled his guests in the dense,
cool shade of the young aspens on a bench and some
stumps purposely put there for visitors to the bee house
who might be afraid of the bees, and he went off himself
to the hut to get bread, cucumbers, and fresh honey, to
regale them with.
Trying to make his movements as deliberate as possible,
and listening to the bees that buzzed more and more
frequently past him, he walked along the little path to the
hut. In the very entry one bee hummed angrily, caught in
his beard, but he carefully extricated it. Going into the
shady outer room, he took down from the wall his veil,
that hung on a peg, and putting it on, and thrusting his
hands into his pockets, he went into the fenced-in beegarden,
where there stood in the midst of a closely mown
space in regular rows, fastened with bast on posts, all the
hives he knew so well, the old stocks, each with its own
history, and along the fences the younger swarms hived
that year. In front of the openings of the hives, it made his
eyes giddy to watch the bees and drones whirling round
and round about the same spot, while among them the
working bees flew in and out with spoils or in search of
them, always in the same direction into the wood to the
flowering lime trees and back to the hives.
His ears were filled with the incessant hum in various
notes, now the busy hum of the working bee flying
quickly off, then the blaring of the lazy drone, and the
excited buzz of the bees on guard protecting their
property from the enemy and preparing to sting. On the
farther side of the fence the old bee-keeper was shaving a
hoop for a tub, and he did not see Levin. Levin stood still
in the midst of the beehives and did not call him.
He was glad of a chance to be alone to recover from
the influence of ordinary actual life, which had already
depressed his happy mood. He thought that he had already
had time to lose his temper with Ivan, to show coolness to
his brother, and to talk flippantly with Katavasov.
‘Can it have been only a momentary mood, and will it
pass and leave no trace?’ he thought. But the same instant,
going back to his mood, he felt with delight that
something new and important had happened to him. Real
life had only for a time overcast the spiritual peace he had
found, but it was still untouched within him.
Just as the bees, whirling round him, now menacing
him and distracting his attention, prevented him from
enjoying complete physical peace, forced him to restrain
his movements to avoid them, so had the petty cares that
had swarmed about him from the moment he got into the
trap restricted his spiritual freedom; but that lasted only so
long as he was among them. Just as his bodily strength was
still unaffected, in spite of the bees, so too was the spiritual
strength that he had just become aware of.
Chapter 15
‘Do you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch
traveled on his way here?’ said Dolly, doling out
cucumbers and honey to the children; ‘with Vronsky! He’s
going to Servia.’
‘And not alone; he’s taking a squadron out with him at
his own expense,’ said Katavasov.
‘That’s the right thing for him,’ said Levin. ‘Are
volunteers still going out then?’ he added, glancing at
Sergey Ivanovitch.
Sergey Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully
with a blunt knife getting a live bee covered with sticky
honey out of a cup full of white honeycomb.
‘I should think sol You should have seen what was
going on at the station yesterday!’ said Katavasov, biting
with a juicy sound into a cucumber.
‘Well, what is one to make of it? For mercy’s sake, do
explain to me, Sergey Ivanovitch, where are all those
volunteers going, whom are they fighting with?’ asked the
old prince, unmistakably taking up a conversation that had
sprung up in Levin’s absence.
‘With the Turks,’ Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling
serenely, as he extricated the bee, dark with honey and
helplessly kicking, and put it with the knife on a stout
aspen leaf.
‘But who has declared war on the Turks?—Ivan
Ivanovitch Ragozov and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, assisted
by Madame Stahl?’
‘No one has declared war, but people sympathize with
their neighbors’ sufferings and are eager to help them,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘But the prince is not speaking of help,’ said Levin,
coming to the assistance of his father-in-law, ‘but of war.
The prince says that private persons cannot take part in
war without the permission of the government.’
‘Kostya, mind, that’s a bee! Really, they’ll sting us!’ said
Dolly, waving away a wasp.
‘But that’s not a bee, it’s a wasp,’ said Levin.
‘Well now, well, what’s your own theory?’ Katavasov
said to Levin with a smile, distinctly challenging him to a
discussion. ‘Why have not private persons the right to do
so?’
‘Oh, my theory’s this: war is on one side such a beastly,
cruel, and awful thing, that no one man, not to speak of a
Christian, can individually take upon himself the
responsibility of beginning wars; that can only be done by
a government, which is called upon to do this, and is
driven inevitably into war. On the other hand, both
political science and common sense teach us that in
matters of state, and especially in the matter of war, private
citizens must forego their personal individual
Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had their replies
ready, and both began speaking at the same time.
‘But the point is, my dear fellow, that there may be
cases when the government does not carry out the will of
the citizens and then the public asserts its will,’ said
Katavasov.
But evidently Sergey Ivanovitch did not approve of this
answer. His brows contracted at Katavasov’s words and he
said something else.
‘You don’t put the matter in its true light. There is no
question here of a declaration of war, but simply the
expression of a human Christian feeling. Our brothers,
one with us in religion and in race, are being massacred.
Even supposing they were not our brothers nor fellow-
Christians, but simply children, women, old people,
feeling is aroused and Russians go eagerly to help in
stopping these atrocities. Fancy, if you were going along
the street and saw drunken men beating a woman or a
child—I imagine you would not stop to inquire whether
war had been declared on the men, but would throw
yourself on them, and protect the victim.’
‘But I should not kill them,’ said Levin.
‘Yes, you would kill them.’
‘I don’t know. If I saw that, I might give way to my
impulse of the moment, but I can’t say beforehand. And
such a momentary impulse there is not, and there cannot
be, in the case of the oppression of the Slavonic peoples.’
‘Possibly for you there is not; but for others there is,’
said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning with displeasure. ‘There
are traditions still extant among the people of Slavs of the
true faith suffering under the yoke of the ‘unclean sons of
Hagar.’ The people have heard of the sufferings of their
brethren and have spoken.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Levin evasively; ‘but I don’t see it.
I’m one of the people myself, and I don’t feel it.’
‘Here am I too,’ said the old prince. ‘I’ve been staying
abroad and reading the papers, and I must own, up to the
time of the Bulgarian atrocities, I couldn’t make out why
it was all the Russians were all of a sudden so fond of their
Slavonic brethren, while I didn’t feel the slightest affection
for them. I was very much upset, thought I was a monster,
or that it was the influence of Carlsbad on me. But since I
have been here, my mind’s been set at rest. I see that there
are people besides me who’re only interested in Russia,
and not in their Slavonic brethren. Here’s Konstantin too.’
‘Personal opinions mean nothing in such a case,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch; ‘it’s not a matter of personal opinions
when all Russia—the whole people—has expressed its
will.’
‘But excuse me, I don’t see that. The people don’t
know anything about it, if you come to that,’ said the old
prince.
‘Oh, papa!...how can you say that? And last Sunday in
church?’ said Dolly, listening to the conversation. ‘Please
give me a cloth,’ she said to the old man, who was looking
at the children with a smile. ‘Why, it’s not possible that
all..’
‘But what was it in church on Sunday? The priest had
been told to read that. He read it. They didn’t understand
a word of it. Then they were told that there was to be a
collection for a pious object in church; well, they pulled
out their halfpence and gave them, but what for they
couldn’t say.’
‘The people cannot help knowing; the sense of their
own destinies is always in the people, and at such
moments as the present that sense finds utterance,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch with conviction, glancing at the old
bee-keeper.
The handsome old man, with black grizzled beard and
thick silvery hair, stood motionless, holding a cup of
honey, looking down from the height of his tall figure
with friendly serenity at the gentlefolk, obviously
understanding nothing of their conversation and not
caring to understand it.
‘That’s so, no doubt,’ he said, with a significant shake
of his head at Sergey Ivanovitch’s words.
‘Here, then, ask him. He knows nothing about it and
thinks nothing,’ said Levin. ‘Have you heard about the
war, Mihalitch?’ he said, turning to him. ‘What they read
in the church? What do you think about it? Ought we to
fight for the Christians?’
‘What should we think? Alexander Nikolaevitch our
Emperor has thought for us; he thinks for us indeed in all
things. It’s clearer for hint to see. Shall I bring a bit more
bread? Give the little lad some more?’ he said addressing
Darya Alexandrovna and pointing to Grisha, who had
finished his crust.
‘I don’t need to ask,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, ‘we have
seen and are seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who
give up everything to sense a just cause, come from every
part of Russia, and directly and clearly express their
thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go
themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?’
‘It means, to my thinking,’ said Levin, who was
beginning to get warm, ‘that among eighty millions of
people there can always be found not hundreds, as now,
but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste, ne’erdo-
wells, who are always ready to go anywhere—to
Pogatchev’s bands, to Khiva, to Serbia..’
‘I tell you that it’s not a case of hundreds or of ne’erdo-
wells, but the best representatives of the people!’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch, with as much irritation as if he were
defending the last penny of his fortune. ‘And what of the
subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly
expressing their will.’
‘That word ‘people’ is so vague,’ said Levin. ‘Parish
clerks, teachers, and one in a thousand of the peasants,
maybe, know what it’s all about. The rest of the eighty
millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing their will,
haven’t the faintest idea what there is for them to express
their will about. What right have we to say that this is the
people’s will?’
Chapter 16
Sergey Ivanovitch, being practiced in argument, did
not reply, but at once turned the conversation to another
aspect of the subject.
‘Oh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by
arithmetical computation, of course it’s very difficult to
arrive at it. And voting has not been introduced among us
and cannot be introduced, for it does not express the will
of the people; but there are other ways of reaching that. It
is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won’t speak of
those deep currents which are astir in the still ocean of the
people, and which are evident to every unprejudiced man;
let us look at society in the narrow sense. All the most
diverse sections of the educated public, hostile before, are
merged in one. Every division is at an end, all the public
organs say the same thing over and over again, all feel the
mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is carrying
them in one direction.’
‘Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,’ said the
prince. ‘That’s true. But so it is the same thing that all the
frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing for
them.’
‘Frogs or no frogs, I’m not the editor of a paper and I
don’t want to defend them; but I am speaking of the
unanimity in the intellectual world,’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch, addressing his brother. Levin would have
answered, but the old prince interrupted him.
‘Well, about that unanimity, that’s another thing, One
may say,’ said the prince. ‘There’s my son-in-law, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, you know him. He’s got a place now on
the committee of a commission and something or other, I
don’t remember. Only there’s nothing to do in it—why,
Dolly, it’s no secret!—and a salary of eight thousand. You
try asking him whether his post is of use, he’ll prove to
you that it’s most necessary. And he’s a truthful man too,
but there’s no refusing to believe in the utility of eight
thousand roubles.’
‘Yes, he asked me to give a message to Darya
Alexandrovna about the post,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch
reluctantly, feeling the prince’s remark to be ill-timed.
‘So it is with the unanimity of the press. That’s been
explained to me: as soon as there’s war their incomes are
doubled. How can they help believing in the destinies of
the people and the Slavonic races...and all that?’
‘I don’t care for many of the papers, but that’s unjust,’
said Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘I would only make one condition,’ pursued the old
prince. ‘Alphonse Karr said a capital thing before the war
with Prussia: ‘You consider war to be inevitable? Very
good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a
special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every
storm, of every attack, to lead them all!’’
‘A nice lot the editors would make!’ said Katavasov,
with a loud roar, as he pictured the editors he knew in this
picked legion.
‘But they’d run,’ said Dolly, ‘they’d only be in the
way.’
‘Oh, if they ran away, then we’d have grape-shot or
Cossacks with whips behind them,’ said the prince.
‘But that’s a joke, and a poor one too, if you’ll excuse
my saying so, prince,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘I don’t see that it was a joke, that...’ Levin was
beginning, but Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.
‘Every member of society is called upon to do his own
special work,’ said he. ‘And men of thought are doing
their work when they express public opinion. And the
single-hearted and full expression of public opinion is the
service of-the press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at the
same time. Twenty years ago we should have been silent,
but now we have heard the voice of the Russian people,
which is ready to rise as one man and ready to sacrifice
itself for its oppressed brethren; that is a great step and a
proof of strength.’
‘But it’s not only making a sacrifice. but killing Turks,’
said Levin timidly. ‘The people make sacrifices and are
ready to make sacrifices for their soul, but not for murder,’
he added, instinctively connecting the conversation with
the ideas that had been absorbing his mind.
‘For their soul? That’s a most puzzling expression for a
natural science man, do you understand? What sort of
thing is the soul?’ said Katavasov, smiling.
‘Oh, you know!’
‘No, by God, I haven’t the faintest idea!’ said Katavasov
with a loud roar of laughter.
‘‘I bring not peace, but a sword,’ says Christ,’ Sergey
Ivanovitch rejoined for his part, quoting as simply as
though it were the easiest thing to understand the very
passage that had always puzzled Levin most.
‘That’s so, no doubt,’ the old man repeated again. He
was standing near them and responded to a chance glance
turned in his direction.
‘Ah, my dear fellow, you’re defeated, utterly defeated!’
cried Katavasov good-humoredly.
Levin reddened with vexation, not at being defeated,
but at having failed to control himself and being drawn
into argument.
‘No, I can’t argue with them,’ he thought; ‘they wear
impenetrable armor, while I’m naked.’
He saw that it was impossible to convince his brother
and Katavasov, and he saw even less possibility of himself
agreeing with them. What they advocated was the very
pride of intellect that had almost been his ruin. He could
not admit that some dozens of men, among them his
brother, had the right, on the ground of what they were
told by some hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the
capital, to say that they and the newspapers were
expressing the will and feeling of the people, and a feeling
which was expressed in vengeance and murder. He could
not admit this, because he neither saw the expression of
such feelings in the people among whom he was living,
nor found them in himself (and he could not but consider
himself one of the persons making up the Russian people),
and most of all because he, like the people, did not know
and could not know what is for the general good, though
he knew beyond a doubt that this general good could be
attained only by the strict observance of that law of right
and wrong which has been revealed to every man, and
therefore he could not wish for war or advocate war for
any general objects whatever. He said as Mihalitch did and
the people, who had expressed their feeling in the
traditional invitations of the Varyagi: ‘Be princes and rule
over us. Gladly we promise complete submission. All the
labor, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take upon
ourselves; but we will not judge and decide.’ And now,
according to Sergey Ivanovitch’s account, the people had
foregone this privilege they had bought at such a costly
price.
He wanted to say too that if public opinion were an
infallible guide, then why were not revolutions and the
commune as lawful as the movement in favor of the
Slavonic peoples? But these were merely thoughts that
could settle nothing. One thing could be seen beyond
doubt—that was that at the actual moment the discussion
was irritating Sergey Ivanovitch, and so it was wrong to
continue it. And Levin ceased speaking and then called the
attention of his guests to the fact that the storm clouds
were gathering, and that they had better be going home
before it rained.
Chapter 17
The old prince and Sergey Ivanovitch got into the trap
and drove off; the rest of the party hastened homewards
on foot.
But the storm-clouds, turning white and then black,
moved down so quickly that they had to quicken their
pace to get home before the rain. The foremost clouds,
lowering and black as soot-laden smoke, rushed with
extraordinary swiftness over the sky. They were still two
hundred paces from home and a gust of wind had already
blown up, and every second the downpour might be
looked for.
The children ran ahead with frightened and gleeful
shrieks. Darya Alexandrovna, struggling painfully with her
skirts that clung round her legs, was not walking, but
running, her eyes fixed on the children. The men of the
party, holding their hats on, strode with long steps beside
her. They were just at the steps when a big drop fell
splashing on the edge of the iron guttering. The children
and their elders after them ran into the shelter of the
house, talking merrily.
‘Katerina Alexandrovna?’ Levin asked of Agafea
Mihalovna, who met them with kerchiefs and rugs in the
hall.
‘We thought she was with you,’ she said.
‘And Mitya?’
‘In the copse, he must be, and the nurse with him.’
Levin snatched up the rugs and ran towards the copse.
In that brief interval of time the storm clouds had
moved on, covering the sun so completely that it was dark
as an eclipse. Stubbornly, as though insisting on its rights,
the wind stopped Levin, and tearing the leaves and flowers
off the lime trees and stripping the white birch branches
into strange unseemly nakedness, it twisted everything on
one side—acacias, flowers, burdocks, long grass, and tall
tree-tops. The peasant girls working in the garden ran
shrieking into shelter in the servants’ quarters. The
streaming rain had already flung its white veil over all the
distant forest and half the fields close by, and was rapidly
swooping down upon the copse. The wet of the rain
spurting up in tiny drops could be smelt in the air.
Holding his head bent down before him, and struggling
with the wind that strove to tear the wraps away from
him, Levin was moving up to the copse and had just
caught sight of something white behind the oak tree,
when there was a sudden flash, the whole earth seemed on
fire, and the vault of heaven seemed crashing overhead.
Opening his blinded eyes, Levin gazed through the thick
veil of rain that separated him now from the copse, and to
his horror the first thing he saw was the green crest of the
familiar oak-tree in the middle of the copse uncannily
changing its position. ‘Can it have been struck?’ Levin
hardly had time to think when, moving more and more
rapidly, the oak tree vanished behind the other trees, and
he heard the crash of the great tree falling upon the others.
The flash of lightning, the crash of thunder, and the
instantaneous chill that ran through him were all merged
for Levin in one sense of terror.
‘My God! my God! not on them!’ he said.
And though he thought at once how senseless was his
prayer that they should not have been killed by the oak
which had fallen now, he repeated it, knowing that he
could do nothing better than utter this senseless prayer.
Running up to the place where they usually went, he
did not find them there.
They were at the other end of the copse under an old
lime-tree; they were calling him. Two figures in dark
dresses (they had been light summer dresses when they
started out) were standing bending over something. It was
Kitty with the nurse. The rain was already ceasing, and it
was beginning to get light when Levin reached them. The
nurse was not wet on the lower part of her dress, but Kitty
was drenched through, and her soaked clothes clung to
her. Though the rain was over, they still stood in the same
position in which they had been standing when the storm
broke. Both stood bending over a perambulator with a
green umbrella.
‘Alive? Unhurt? Thank God!’ he said, splashing with
his soaked boots through the standing water and running
up to them.
Kitty’s rosy wet face was turned towards him, and she
smiled timidly under her shapeless sopped hat.
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I can’t think how you
can be so reckless!’ he said angrily to his wife.
‘It wasn’t my fault, really. We were just meaning to go,
when he made such a to-do that we had to change him.
We were just...’ Kitty began defending herself.
Mitya was unharmed, dry, and still fast asleep.
‘Well, thank God! I don’t know what I’m saying!’
They gathered up the baby’s wet belongings; the nurse
picked up the baby and carried it. Levin walked beside his
wife, and, penitent for having been angry, he squeezed her
hand when the nurse was not looking.
Chapter 18
During the whole of that day, in the extremely
different conversations in which he took part, only as it
were with the top layer of his mind, in spite of the
disappointment of not finding the change he expected in
himself, Levin had been all the while joyfully conscious of
the fulness of his heart.
After the rain it was too wet to go for a walk; besides,
the storm clouds still hung about the horizon, and
gathered here and there, black and thundery. on the rim
of the sky. The whole party spent the rest of the day in the
house.
No more discussions sprang up; on the contrary, after
dinner every one was in the most amiable frame of mind.
At first Katavasov amused the ladies by his original
jokes, which always pleased people on their first
acquaintance with him. Then Sergey Ivanovitch induced
him to tell them about the very interesting observations he
had made on the habits and characteristics of common
houseflies, and their life. Sergey Ivanovitch, too, was in
good spirits, and at tea his brother drew him on to explain
his views of the future of the Eastern question, and he
spoke so simply and so well, that everyone listened
eagerly.
Kitty was the only one who did not hear it all—she was
summoned to give Mitya his bath.
A few minutes after Kitty had left the room she sent for
Levin to come to the nursery.
Leaving his tea, and regretfully interrupting the
interesting conversation, and at the same time uneasily
wondering why he had been sent for, as this only
happened on important occasions, Levin went to the
nursery.
Although he had been much interested by Sergey
Ivanovitch’s views of the new epoch in history that would
be created by the emancipation of forty millions of men of
Slavonic race acting with Russia, a conception quite new
to him, and although he was disturbed by uneasy wonder
at being sent for by Kitty, as soon as he came out of the
drawing room and was alone, his mind reverted at once to
the thoughts of the morning. And all the theories of the
significance of the Slav element in the history of the world
seemed to him so trivial compared with what was passing
in his own soul, that he instantly forgot it all and dropped
back into the same frame of mind that he been in that
morning.
He did not, as he had done at other times, recall the
whole train of thought—that he did not need. He fell
back at once into the feeling which had guided him,
which was connected with those thoughts, and he found
that feeling in his soul even stronger and more definite
than before. He did not, as he had had to do with
previous attempts to find comforting arguments, need to
revive a whole chain of thought to find the feeling. Now,
on the contrary, the feeling of joy and peace was keener
than ever, and thought could not keep pace with feeling.
He walked across the terrace and looked at two stars
that had come out in the darkening sky, and suddenly he
remembered. ‘Yes, looking at the sky, I thought that the
dome that I see is not a deception, and then I thought
something, I shirked facing something,’ he mused. ‘But
whatever it was, there can be no disproving it! I have but
to think, and all will come clear!’
Just as he was going into the nursery he remembered
what it was he had shirked facing. It was that if the chief
proof of the Divinity was His revelation of what is right,
how is it this revelation is confined to the Christian
church alone? What relation to this revelation have the
beliefs of the Buddhists, Mohammedans, who preached
and did good too?
It seemed to him that he had an answer to this
question; but he had not time to formulate it to himself
before he went into the nursery.
Kitty was standing with her sleeves tucked up over the
baby in the bath. Hearing her husband’s footstep, she
turned towards him, summoning him to her with her
smile. With one hand she was supporting the fat baby that
lay floating and sprawling on its back, while with the other
she squeezed the sponge over him.
‘Come, look, look!’ she said, when her husband came
up to her. ‘Agafea Mihalovna’s right. He knows us!’
Mitya had on that day given unmistakable,
incontestable signs of recognizing all his friends.
As soon as Levin approached the bath, the experiment
was tried, and it was completely successful. The cook, sent
for with this object, bent over the baby. He frowned and
shook his head disapprovingly. Kitty bent down to him,
he gave her a beaming smile, propped his little hands on
the sponge and chirruped, making such a queer little
contented sound with his lips, that Kitty and the nurse
were not alone in their admiration. Levin, too, was
surprised and delighted.
The baby was taken out of the bath, drenched with
water, wrapped in towels, dried, and after a piercing
scream, handed to his mother.
‘Well, I am glad you are beginning to love him,’ said
Kitty to her husband, when she had settled herself
comfortably in her usual place, with the baby at her breast.
‘I am so glad! It had begun to distress me. You said you
had no feeling for him.’
‘No; did I say that? I only said I was disappointed.’
‘What! disappointed in him?’
‘Not disappointed in him, but in my own feeling; I had
expected more. I had expected a rush of new delightful
emotion to come as a surprise. And then instead of that—
disgust, pity..’
She listened attentively, looking at him over the baby,
while she put back on her slender fingers the rings she had
taken off while giving Mitya his bath.
‘And most of all, at there being far more apprehension
and pity than pleasure. Today, after that fright during the
storm, I understand how I love him.’
Kitty’s smile was radiant.
‘Were you very much frightened?’ she said. ‘So was I
too, but I feel it more now that it’s over. I’m going to
look at the oak. How nice Katavasov is! And what a happy
day we’ve had altogether. And you’re so nice with Sergey
Ivanovitch, when you care to be.... Well, go back to
them. It’s always so hot and steamy here after the bath.’
Chapter 19
Going out of the nursery and being again alone, Levin
went back at once to the thought, in which there was
something not clear.
Instead of going into the drawing room, where he
heard voices, he stopped on the terrace, and leaning his
elbows on the parapet, he gazed up at the sky.
It was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was
looking, there were no clouds. The storm had drifted on
to the opposite side of the sky, and there were flashes of
lightning and distant thunder from that quarter. Levin
listened to the monotonous drip from the lime trees in the
garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well,
and the Milky Way with its branches that ran through its
midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way, and even
the bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightning died
away, they reappeared in their places as though some hand
had flung them back with careful aim.
‘Well, what is it perplexes me?’ Levin said to himself,
feeling beforehand that the solution of his difficulties was
ready in his soul, though he did not know it yet. ‘Yes, the
one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the
Divinity is the law of right and wrong, which has come
into the world by revelation, and which I feel in myself,
and in the recognition of which—I don’t make myself,
but whether I will or not—I am made one with other
men in one body of believers, which is called the church.
Well, but the Jews, the Mohammedans, the Confucians,
the Buddhists—what of them?’ he put to himself the
question he had feared to face. ‘Can these hundreds of
millions of men be deprived of that highest blessing
without which life has no meaning?’ He pondered a
moment, but immediately corrected himself. ‘But what am
I questioning?’ he said to himself. ‘I am questioning the
relation to Divinity of all the different religions of all
mankind. I am questioning the universal manifestation of
God to all the world with all those misty blurs. What am I
about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed
a knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason,
and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge
in reason and words.
‘Don’t I know that the stars don’t move?’ he asked
himself, gazing at the bright planet which had shifted its
position up to the topmost twig of the birch-tree. ‘But
looking at the movements of the stars, I can’t picture to
myself the rotation of the earth, and I’m right in saying
that the stars move.
‘And could the astronomers have understood and
calculated anything, if they had taken into account all the
complicated and varied motions of the earth? All the
marvelous conclusions they have reached about the
distances, weights, movements, and deflections of the
heavenly bodies are only founded on the apparent motions
of the heavenly bodies about a stationary earth, on that
very motion I see before me now, which has been so for
millions of men during long ages, and was and will be
always alike, and can always be trusted. And just as the
conclusions of the astronomers would have been vain and
uncertain if not founded on observations of the seen
heavens, in relation to a single meridian and a single
horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if
not founded on that conception of right, which has been
and will be always alike for all men, which has been
revealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be
trusted in my soul. The question of other religions and
their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and
no possibility of deciding.’
‘Oh, you haven’t gone in then?’ he heard Kitty’s voice
all at once, as she came by the same way to the drawingroom.
‘What is it? you’re not worried about anything?’ she
said, looking intently at his face in the starlight.
But she could not have seen his face if a flash of
lightning had not hidden the stars and revealed it. In that
flash she saw his face distinctly, and seeing him calm and
happy, she smiled at him.
‘She understands,’ he thought; ‘she knows what I’m
thinking about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I’ll tell her.’
But at the moment he was about to speak, she began
speaking.
‘Kostya! do something for me,’ she said; ‘go into the
corner room and see if they’ve made it all right for Sergey
Ivanovitch. I can’t very well. See if they’ve put the new
wash stand in it.’
‘Very well, I’ll go directly,’ said Levin, standing up and
kissing her.
‘No, I’d better not speak of it,’ he thought, when she
had gone in before him. ‘It is a secret for me alone, of vital
importance for me, and not to be put into words.
‘This new feeling has not changed me, has not made
me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had
dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no
surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know
what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly
through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.
‘I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with
Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions,
expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the
same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other
people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for
my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be
as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I
shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life
apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute
of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the
positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to
put into it
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