Part III   
Chapter XXX   
     
AT the end of September the timber had been carted for building the cattle-yard on the land that had been allotted to the association of peasants, and the butter from the cows was sold and the profits divided. In practice the system worked capitally, or, at least, so it seemed to Levin. In order to work out the whole subject theoretically and to complete his book, which, in Levin’s day-dreams, was not merely to effect a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that science entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the relation of the people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been done in the same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence that all that had been done there was not what was wanted. Levin was only waiting for the delivery of his wheat to receive the money for it and go abroad. But the rains began, preventing the harvesting of the corn and potatoes left in the fields, and putting a stop to all work, even to the delivery of the wheat. The mud was impassable along the roads; two mills were carried away, and the weather got worse and worse.      1   
  On the 30th of September the sun came out in the morning, and hoping for fine weather, Levin began making final preparations for his journey. He gave orders for the wheat to be delivered, sent the bailiff to the merchant to get the money owing him, and went out himself to give some final directions on the estate before setting off.      2   
  Having finished all his business, soaked through with the streams of water which kept running down the leather behind his neck and his gaiters, but in the keenest and most confident temper, Levin returned homewards in the evening. The weather had become worse than ever towards evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so cruelly that she went along sideways, shaking her head and ears; but Levin was all right under his hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the muddy streams running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on every bare twig, at the whiteness of the patch of unmelted hailstones on the planks of the bridge, at the thick layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay heaped up about the stripped elm-tree. In spite of the gloominess of nature around him, he felt peculiarly eager. The talks he had been having with the peasants in the further village had shown that they were beginning to get used to their new position. The old servant to whose hut he had gone to get dry evidently approved of Levin’s plan, and of his own accord proposed to enter the partnership by the purchase of cattle.      3   
  ‘I have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall attain my end,’ thought Levin; ‘and it’s something to work and take trouble for. This is not a matter of myself individually, the question of the public welfare comes into it. The whole system of culture, the chief element in the condition of the people, must be completely transformed. Instead of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility, harmony and unity of interests. In short, a bloodless revolution, but a revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little circle of our district, then the province, then Russia, the whole world. Because a just idea cannot but be fruitful. Yes, it’s an aim worth working for. And its being me, Kostya Levin, who went to a ball in a black tie, and was refused by the Shtcherbatsky girl, and who was intrinsically such a pitiful, worthless creature—that proves nothing; I feel sure Franklin felt just as worthless, and he too had no faith in himself, thinking of himself as a whole. That means nothing. And he too, most likely, had an Agafea Mihalovna to whom he confided his secrets.’      4   
  Musing on such thoughts Levin reached home in the darkness.      5   
  The bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and brought part of the money for the wheat. An agreement had been made with the old servant, and on the road the bailiff had learned that everywhere the corn was still standing in the fields, so that his one hundred and sixty shocks that had not been carried were nothing in comparison with the losses of others.      6   
  After dinner Levin was sitting, as he usually did, in an easy chair with a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the journey before him in connection with his book. To-day all the significance of his book rose before him with special distinctness, and whole periods ranged themselves in his mind in illustration of his theories. ‘I must write that down,’ he thought. ‘That ought to form a brief introduction, which I thought unnecessary before.’ He got up to go to his writing table, and Laska, lying at his feet, got up too, stretching and looking at him as though to inquire where to go. But he had not time to write it down, for the head peasants had come round, and Levin went out into the hall to them.      7   
  After his levee, that is to say, giving directions about the labours of the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had business with him, Levin went back to his study and sat down to work.      8   
  Laska lay under the table; Agafea Mihalovna settled herself in her place with her stocking.      9   
  After writing for a little while, Levin suddenly thought with exceptional vividness of Kitty, her refusal, and their last meeting. He got up and began walking about the room.     10   
  ‘What’s the use of being dreary?’ said Agafea Milhalovna. Come, why do you stay on at home? You ought to go to some warm springs, especially now you’re ready for the journey.’     11   
  ‘Well, I am going away the day after to-morrow, Agafea Mihalovna; I must finish my work.’     12   
  ‘There, there, your work, you say! As if you hadn’t done enough for the peasants! Why, as ’tis, they’re saying, “Your master will be getting some honour from the Tsar for it.” Indeed and it is a strange thing; why need you worry about the peasants?’     13   
  ‘I’m not worrying about them; I’m doing it for my own good.’     14   
  Agafea Mihalovna knew every detail of Levin’s plans for his land. Levin often put his views before her in all their complexity, and not uncommonly he argued with her and did not agree with her comments. But on this occasion she entirely misinterpreted what he had said.     15   
  ‘Of one’s soul’s salvation we all know and must think before all else,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Parfen Denisitch now, for all he was no scholar, he died a death that God grant every one of us the like,’ she said, referring to a servant who had died recently. ‘Took the sacrament and all.’     16   
  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ said he. ‘I mean that I’m acting for my own advantage. It’s all the better for me if the peasants do their work better.’     17   
  ‘Well, whatever you do, if he’s a lazy good-for-nought, everything will be sixes and sevens. If he has a conscience, he’ll work, and if not, there’s no doing anything.’     18   
  ‘Oh, come, you say yourself Ivan has begun looking after the cattle better.’     19   
  ‘All I say is,’ answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking at random, but in strict sequence of ideas, ‘that you ought to get married, that’s what I say.’     20   
  Agafea Mihalovna’s allusion to the very subject he had only just been thinking about, hurt and stung him. Levin scowled, and without answering her, he sat down again to his work, repeating to himself all that he had been thinking of the real significance of that work. Only at intervals he listened in the stillness to the click of Agafea Mihalovna’s needles, and recollecting what he did not want to remember, he frowned again.     21   
  At nine o’clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a carriage over the mud.     22   
  ‘Well, here’s visitors come to us, and you won’t be dull,’ said Agafea Mihalovna, getting up and going to the door. But Levin overtook her. His work was not going well now, and he was glad of a visitor, whoever it might be.

   
Part III   
Chapter XXXI   
     
RUNNING half-way down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he knew, a familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, and now it seemed there was no possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his brother Nikolay.      1   
  Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Just now, when Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that had come to him, and Agafea Mihalovna’s hint, was in a troubled and uncertain humour, the meeting with his brother that he had to face seemed particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain humour, he had to see his brother, who knew him through and through, who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to show himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do.      2   
  Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as soon as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of selfish disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolay had been before in his emaciation and sickliness, now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted. He was a skeleton covered by skin.      3   
  He stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the scarf off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile, submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.      4   
  ‘You see I’ve come to you,’ said Nikolay in a thick voice, never for one second taking his eyes off his brother’s face. ‘I’ve been meaning to a long while, but I’ve been unwell all the time. Now I’m ever so much better,’ he said, rubbing his beard with his big thin hands.      5   
  ‘Yes, yes!’ answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened when, kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his brother’s skin and saw close to him his big eyes, full of a strange light.      6   
  A few weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother that through the sale of the small part of the property, that had remained undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles to come to him as his share.      7   
  Nikolay said that he had come now to take his money and, what was more important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop, and the emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements were as rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his study.      8   
  His brother dressed with particular care—a thing he never used to do—combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs.      9   
  He was in the most affectionate and good-humoured mood, just as Levin often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to Sergey Ivanovitch without rancour. When he saw Agafea Mihalovna, he made jokes with her and asked after the old servants. The news of the death of Parfen Denisitch made a painful impression on him. A look of fear crossed his face, but he regained his serenity immediately.     10   
  ‘Of course he was quite old,’ he said, and changed the subject. ‘Well, I’ll spend a month or two with you, and then I’m off to Moscow. Do you know, Myakov has promised me a place there, and I’m going into service. Now I’m going to arrange my life quite differently,’ he went on. ‘You know I got rid of that woman.’     11   
  ‘Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?’     12   
  ‘Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries.’ But he did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that he had cast off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and, above all, because she would look after him, as though he were an invalid.     13   
  ‘Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I’ve done silly things, of course, like every one else, but money’s the last consideration; I don’t regret it. So long as there’s health, and my health, thank God, is quite restored.’     14   
  Levin listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing to say. Nikolay probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother about his affairs; and Levin was glad to talk about himself, because then he could speak without hypocrisy. He told his brother of his plans and his doings.     15   
  His brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.     16   
  These two men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could be said in words.     17   
  Both of them now had only one thought—the illness of Nikolay and the nearness of his death—which stifled all else. But neither of them dared to speak of it, and so whatever they said—not uttering the one thought that filled their minds—was all falsehood. Never had Levin been so glad when the evening was over and it was time to go to bed. Never with any outside person, never on any official visit had he been so unnatural and false as he was that evening. And the consciousness of this unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made him even more unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly loved brother, and he had to listen and keep on talking of how he meant to live.     18   
  As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated, Levin put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.     19   
  His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, tossed about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his throat clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he said, ‘Oh, my God!’ Sometimes when he was choking he muttered angrily, ‘Ah, the devil!’ Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him. His thoughts were of the most various, but the end of all his thoughts was the same—death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too he felt that. If not to-day, to-morrow, if not to-morrow, in thirty years, wasn’t it all the same! And what was this inevitable death—he did not know, had never thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the courage to think about it.     20   
  ‘I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten—death.’     21   
  He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered.     22   
  But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact—that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it any way. Yes, it was awful, but it was so.     23   
  ‘But I am alive still. Now what’s to be done? what’s to be done?’ he said in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously and went to the looking-glass, and began looking at his face and hair. Yes, there were grey hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of lungs, had had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how they used to go to bed together as children, and how they only waited till Fyodor Bogdanitch was out of the room to fling pillows at each other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly, so that even their awe of Fyodor Bogdanitch could not check the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life and happiness. ‘And now that bent, hollow chest … and I, not knowing what will become of me, or wherefore…’     24   
  ‘K … ha! K … ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why don’t you go to sleep?’ his brother’s voice called to him.     25   
  ‘Oh, I don’t know; I’m not sleepy.’     26   
  ‘I have had a good sleep, I’m not in a sweat now. Just see, feel my shirt; it’s not wet, is it?’     27   
  Levin felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the candle, but for a long while he could not sleep. The question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented itself—death.     28   
  ‘Why, he’s dying—yes, he’ll die in the spring, and how help him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I’d even forgotten that it was at all.’

Part III   
Chapter XXXII   
     
LEVIN had long before made the observation that when one is uncomfortable with people from their being excessively amenable and meek, one is apt very soon after to find things intolerable from their touchiness and irritability. He felt that this was how it would be with his brother. And his brother Nikolay’s gentleness did in fact not last out for long. The very next morning he began to be irritable, and seemed doing his best to find fault with his brother, attacking him on his tenderest points.      1   
  Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart—that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling—they would simply have looked into each other’s faces, and Konstantin could only have said, ‘You’re dying, you’re dying!’ and Nikolay could only have answered, ‘I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid!’ And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it.      2   
  The third day Nikolay induced his brother to explain his plan to him again, and began not merely attacking it, but intentionally confounding it with communism.      3   
  ‘You’ve simply borrowed an idea that’s not your own, but you’ve distorted it, and are trying to apply it where it’s not applicable.’      4   
  ‘But I tell you it’s nothing to do with it. They deny the justice of property, of capital, of inheritance, while I do not deny this chief stimulus.’ (Levin felt disgusted himself at using such expressions, but ever since he had been engrossed by his work, he had unconsciously come more and more frequently to use words not Russian.) ‘All I want is to regulate labour.’      5   
  ‘Which means, you’ve borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that gave it its force, and want to make believe that it’s something new,’ said Nikolay, angrily tugging at his necktie.      6   
  ‘But my idea has nothing in common…’      7   
  ‘That, anyway,’ said Nikolay Levin, with an ironical smile, his eyes flashing malignantly, ‘has the charm of—what’s one to call it?—geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It may be a Utopia. But if once one allows the possibility of making of all the past a tabula rasa—no property, no family—then labour would organise itself. But you gain nothing…’      8   
  ‘Why do you mix things up? I’ve never been a communist.’      9   
  ‘But I have, and I consider it’s premature, but rational, and it has a future, just like Christianity in its first ages.’     10   
  ‘All that I maintain is that the labour force ought to be investigated from the point of view of natural science; that is to say, it ought to be studied, its qualities ascertained…’     11   
  ‘But that’s utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form of activity of itself, according to the stage of its development. There have been slaves first everywhere, then metayers; and we have the half-crop system, rent, and day-labourers. What are you trying to find?’     12   
  Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom of his heart he was afraid that it was true—true that he was trying to hold the balance even between communism and the familiar forms, and that this was hardly possible.     13   
  ‘I am trying to find means of working productively for myself and for the laborers. I want to organise…’ he answered hotly.     14   
  ‘You don’t want to organise anything; it’s simply just as you’ve been all your life, that you want to be original, to pose as not exploiting the peasants simply, but with some idea in view.’     15   
  ‘Oh, all right, that’s what you think—and let me alone!’ answered Levin, feeling the muscles of his left cheek twitching uncontrollably.     16   
  ‘You’ve never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is to please your vanity.’     17   
  ‘Oh, very well; then let me alone!’     18   
  ‘And I will let you alone! and it’s high time I did, and go to the devil with you! and I’m very sorry I ever came!’     19   
  In spite of all Levin’s efforts to soothe his brother afterwards, Nikolay would listen to nothing he said, declaring that it was better to part, and Konstantin saw that it simply was that life was unbearable to him.     20   
  Nikolay was just getting ready to go, when Konstantin went in to him again and begged him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if he had hurt his feelings in any way.     21   
  ‘Ah, generosity!’ said Nikolay, and he smiled. ‘If you want to be right, I can give you that satisfaction. You’re in the right; but I’m going all the same.’     22   
  It was only just at parting that Nikolay kissed him, and said, looking with sudden strangeness and seriousness at his brother—     23   
  ‘Anyway, don’t remember evil against me, Kostya!’ and his voice quivered. These were the only words that had been spoken sincerely between them. Levin knew that those words meant, ‘You see, and you know, that I’m in a bad way, and may be we shall not see each other again.’ Levin knew this, and the tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed his brother once more, but he could not speak, and knew not what to say.     24   
  Three days after his brother’s departure, Levin too set off for his foreign tour. Happening to meet Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in the railway train, Levin greatly astonished him by his depression.     25   
  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Shtcherbatsky asked him.     26   
  ‘Oh, nothing; there’s not much happiness in life.’     27   
  ‘Not much? You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhausen. You shall see how to be happy.’     28   
  ‘No, I’ve done with it all. It’s time I was dead.’     29   
  ‘Well, that’s a good one!’ said Shtcherbatsky, laughing; ‘why, I’m only just getting ready to begin.’     30   
  ‘Yes, I thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall soon be dead.’     31   
  Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything. But his cherished scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had to be got through somehow till death did come. Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.

Part IV   
Chapter I   
     
THE KARENINS, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at home. Vronsky was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house, but Anna saw him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.      1   
  The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a temporary, painful ordeal which would pass over. Alexey Alexandrovitch hoped that this passion would pass, as everything does pass, that every one would forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied. Anna, on whom the position depended, and for whom it was more miserable than for any one, endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly believed, that it would all very soon be settled and come right. She had not the least idea what would settle the position, but she firmly believed, that something would very soon turn up now. Vronsky, against his own will or wishes, following her lead, hoped too that something, apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all difficulties.      2   
  In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week. A foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put under his charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Vronsky was of distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of behaving with respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with such grand personages—that was how he came to be put in charge of the prince. But he felt his duties very irksome. The prince was anxious to miss nothing of which he would be asked at home, had he seen that in Russia? And on his own account he was anxious to enjoy to the utmost all Russian forms of amusement. Vronsky was obliged to be his guide in satisfying both these inclinations. The mornings they spent driving to look at places of interest; the evenings they passed enjoying the national entertainments. The prince rejoiced in health exceptional even among princes. By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excesses in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber. The prince had travelled a great deal, and considered one of the chief advantages of modern facilities of communication was the accessibility of the pleasures of all nations.      3   
  He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had made friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandoline. In Switzerland he had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In Turkey he had got into a harem; in India he had hunted on an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the specially Russian forms of pleasure.      4   
  Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him, was at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements suggested by various persons to the prince. They had race-horses, and Russian pancakes and bearhunts and three-horse sledges, and gypsies and drinking feasts, with the Russian accompaniment of broken crockery. And the prince with surprising ease fell in with the Russian spirit, smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to be asking—what more, and does the whole Russian spirit consist in just this?      5   
  In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked best French actresses and ballet-dancers and whiteseal champagne. Vronsky was used to princes, but, either because he had himself changed of late, or that he was in too close proximity to the prince, that week seemed fearfully wearisome to him. The whole of that week he experienced a sensation such as a man might have set in charge of a dangerous madman, afraid of the madman, and at the same time, from being with him, fearing for his own reason. Vronsky was continually conscious of the necessity of never for a second relaxing the tone of stern official respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted. The prince’s manner of treating the very people who, to Vronsky’s surprise, were ready to descend to any depths to provide him with Russian amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky crimson with indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so particularly disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and nothing else. He was a gentleman—that was true, and Vronsky could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his superiors, was free and ingratiating in his behaviour with his equals, and was contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors. Vronsky was himself the same, and regarded it as a great merit to be so. But for this prince he was an inferior, and his contemptuous and indulgent attitude to him revolted him.      6   
  ‘Brainless beef! can I be like that?’ he thought.      7   
  Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant reflection of himself. He said good-bye to him at the station on their return from a bearhunt, at which they had had a display of Russian prowess kept up all night.

Part IV   
Chapter II   
     
WHEN he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote, ‘I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to the council at seven and will be there till ten.’ Thinking for an instant of the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her husband’s insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.      1   
  Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had left the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having some lunch, he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of the hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were confused together and joined on to a mental image of Anna and of the peasant who had played an important part in the bear-hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep. He waked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste to light a candle. ‘What was it? What? What was the dreadful thing I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with a dishevelled beard was stooping down doing something, and all of a sudden he began saying some strange words in French. Yes, there was nothing else in the dream,’ he said to himself. ‘But why was it so awful?’ He vividly recalled the peasant again and those incomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and a chill of horror ran down his spine.      2   
  ‘What nonsense!’ thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.      3   
  It was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressed in haste, and went out on to the steps, completely forgetting the dream and only worried at being late. As he drove up to the Karenins’ entrance he looked at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine. A high, narrow carriage with a pair of greys was standing at the entrance. He recognised Anna’s carriage. ‘She is coming to me,’ thought Vronsky, ‘and better she should. I don’t like going into that house. But no matter; I can’t hide myself,’ he thought, and with that manner peculiar to him from childhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of his sledge and went to the door. The door opened, and the hall-porter with a rug on his arm called the carriage. Vronsky, though he did not usually notice details, noticed at this moment the amazed expression with which the porter glanced at him. In the very doorway Vronsky almost ran up against Alexey Alexandrovitch. The gas jet threw its full light on the bloodless, sunken face under the black hat and on the white cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin’s fixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky’s face. Vronsky bowed, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, chewing his lips, lifted his hand to his hat and went on. Vronsky saw him without looking round get into the carriage, pick up the rug and the operaglass at the window and disappear. Vronsky went into the hall. His brows were scowling, and his eyes gleamed with a proud and angry light in them.      4   
  ‘What a position!’ he thought. ‘If he would fight, would stand up for his honour, I could act, could express my feelings; but this weakness or baseness … He puts me in the position of playing false, which I never meant and never mean to do.’      5   
  Vronsky’s ideas had changed since the day of his conversation with Anna in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the weakness of Anna—who had surrendered herself up to him utterly, and simply looked to him to decide her fate, ready to submit to anything—he had long ceased to think that their tie might end as he had thought then. His ambitious plans had retreated into the background again, and feeling that he had got out of that circle of activity in which everything was definite, he had given himself entirely to his passion, and that passion was binding him more and more closely to her.      6   
  He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of her retreating footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, had listened for him, and was now going back to the drawing-room.      7   
  ‘No,’ she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice the tears came into her eyes. ‘No; if things are to go on like this, the end will come much, much too soon.’      8   
  ‘What is it, dear one?’      9   
  ‘What? I’ve been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours … No, I won’t … I can’t quarrel with you. Of course you couldn’t come. No, I won’t.’ She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was.

Part IV   
Chapter III   
     
‘YOU met him?’ she asked, when they had sat down at the table in the lamp-light. ‘You’re punished, you see, for being late.’      1   
  ‘Yes; but how was it? Wasn’t he to be at the council?’      2   
  ‘He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again. But that’s no matter. Don’t talk about it. Where have you been? With the prince still?’      3   
  She knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that he had been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at her thrilled and rapturous face, he was ashamed. And he said he had had to go to report on the prince’s departure.      4   
  ‘But it’s over now? He is gone?’      5   
  ‘Thank God it’s over! You wouldn’t believe how insufferable it’s been for me.’      6   
  ‘Why so? Isn’t it the life all of you, all young men, always lead?’ she said, knitting her brows; and taking up the crochet-work that was lying on the table, she began drawing the hook out of it, without looking at Vronsky.      7   
  ‘I gave that life up long ago,’ said he, wondering at the change in her face, and trying to divine its meaning. ‘And I confess,’ he said, with a smile, showing his thick, white teeth, ‘this week I’ve been, as it were, looking at myself in a glass, seeing that life, and I didn’t like it.’      8   
  She held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked at him with strange, shining, and hostile eyes.      9   
  ‘This morning Liza came to see me—they’re not afraid to call on me, in spite of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna,’ she put in—‘and she told me about your Athenian evening. How loathsome!’     10   
  ‘I was just going to say…’     11   
  She interrupted him.     12   
  ‘It was that Thèrése you used to know?’     13   
  I was just saying…’     14   
  ‘How disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can’t understand that a woman can never forget that,’ she said, getting more and more angry, and so letting him see the cause of her irritation, ‘especially a woman who cannot know your life? What do I know? What have I ever known?’ she said, ‘what you tell me. And how do I know whether you tell me the truth?…’     15   
  ‘Anna, you hurt me. Don’t you trust me? Haven’t I told you that I haven’t a thought I wouldn’t lay bare to you?’     16   
  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, evidently trying to suppress her jealous thoughts. ‘But if only you knew how wretched I am! I believe you, I believe you … What were you saying?’     17   
  But he could not at once recall what he had been going to say. These fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent with her, horrified him, and however much he tried to disguise the fact, made him feel cold to her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How often he had told himself that her love was happiness; and now she loved him as a woman can love when love has outweighed for her all the good things of life—and he was much further from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out all over, and in her face at the time when she was speaking of the actress there was an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognising in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now, when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.     18   
  ‘Well, well, what was it you were going to say about the prince? I have driven away the fiend,’ she added. The fiend was the name they had given her jealousy. ‘What did you begin to tell me about the prince? Why did you find it so tiresome?’     19   
  ‘Oh, it was intolerable!’ he said, trying to pick up the thread of his interrupted thought. ‘He does not improve on closer acquaintance. If you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes medals at the cattleshows, and nothing more,’ he said, with a tone of vexation that interested her.     20   
  ‘No; how so?’ she replied. ‘He’s seen a great deal, any way; he’s cultured?’     21   
  ‘It’s an utterly different culture—their culture. He’s cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise everything but animal pleasures.’     22   
  ‘But don’t you all care for these animal pleasures?’ she said, and again he noticed a dark look in her eyes that avoided him.     23   
  ‘How is it you’re defending him?’ he said, smiling.     24   
  ‘I’m not defending him, it’s nothing to me; but I imagine, if you had not cared for those pleasures yourself, you might have got out of them. But if it affords you satisfaction to gaze at Thèrése in the attire of Eve…’     25   
  ‘Again, the devil again,’ Vronsky said, taking the hand she had laid on the table and kissing it.     26   
  ‘Yes; but I can’t help it. You don’t know what I have suffered waiting for you. I believe I’m not jealous. I’m not jealous: I believe you when you’re here; but when you’re away somewhere leading your life, so incomprehensible to me…’     27   
  She turned away from him, pulled the hook at last out of the crochet-work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff.     28   
  ‘How was it, then? Where did you meet Alexey Alexandrovitch?’ Her voice sounded in an unnatural and jarring tone.     29   
  ‘We ran up against each other in the doorway.’     30   
  ‘And he bowed to you like this?’     31   
  She drew a long face, and half-closing her eyes, quickly transformed her expression, folded her hands, and Vronsky suddenly saw in her beautiful face the very expression with which Alexey Alexandrovitch had bowed to him. He smiled, while she laughed gaily, with that sweet, deep laugh, which was one of her greatest charms.     32   
  ‘I don’t understand him in the least,’ said Vronsky. ‘If after your avowal to him at your country house he had broken with you, if he had called me out—but this I can’t understand. How can he put up with such a position? He feels it, that’s evident.’     33   
  ‘He?’ she said sneeringly. ‘He’s perfectly satisfied.’     34   
  ‘What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so happy?’     35   
  ‘Only not he. Don’t I know him, the falsity in which he’s utterly steeped? … Could one, with any feeling, live as he is living with me? He understands nothing, and feels nothing. Could a man of any feeling live in the same house with his unfaithful wife? Could he talk to her, call her “my dear”?’     36   
  And again she could not help mimicking him: ‘“Anna, ma chère; Anna, dear!”’     37   
  ‘He’s not a man, not a human being—he’s a doll! No one knows him; but I know him. Oh, if I’d been in his place, I’d long ago have killed, have torn to pieces a wife like me. I wouldn’t have said, “Anna, ma chère”! He’s not a man, he’s an official machine. He doesn’t understand that I’m your wife, that he’s outside, that he’s superfluous … Don’t let’s talk of him!…’     38   
  ‘You’re unfair, very unfair, dearest,’ said Vronsky, trying to soothe her. ‘But never mind, don’t let’s talk of him. Tell me what you’ve been doing? What is the matter? What has been wrong with you, and what did the doctor say?’     39   
  She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit on other absurd and grotesque aspects in her husband, and was awaiting the moment to give expression to them. But he went on—     40   
  ‘I imagine that it’s not illness, but your condition. When will it be?’     41   
  The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile, a consciousness of something, he did not know what and of quiet melancholy, came over her face.     42   
  ‘Soon, soon. You say that our position is miserable, that we must put an end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me, what I would give to be able to love you freely and boldly! I shall not torture myself and torture you with my jealousy.… And it will come soon, but not as we expect.’     43   
  And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable to herself that tears came into her eyes, and she could not go on. She laid her hand on his sleeve, dazzling and white with its rings in the lamplight.     44   
  ‘It won’t come as we suppose. I didn’t mean to say this to you, but you’ve made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we, shall all, all be at peace, and suffer no more.’     45   
  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, understanding her.     46   
  ‘You asked when? Soon. And I shan’t live through it.     47   
  Don’t interrupt me!’ and she made haste to speak. ‘I know it; I know it for certain. I shall die; and I’m very glad I shall die, and release myself and you.’     48   
  Tears dropped from her eyes; he bent down over her hand and began kissing it, trying to hide his emotion, which, he knew, had no sort of grounds, though he could not control it.     49   
  ‘Yes, it’s better so,’ she said, tightly gripping his hand.     50   
  ‘That’s the only way, the only way left us.’     51   
  He had recovered himself, and lifted his head.     52   
  ‘How absurd! What absurd nonsense you are talking!’     53   
  ‘No, it’s the truth.’     54   
  What, what’s the truth?’     55   
  ‘That I shall die. I have had a dream.’     56   
  ‘A dream?’ repeated Vronsky, and instantly he recalled the peasant of his dream.     57   
  ‘Yes, a dream,’ she said. ‘It’s a long while since I dreamed it. I dreamed that I ran into my bedroom, that I had to get something there, to find out something; you know how it is in dreams,’ she said, her eyes wide with horror; ‘and in the bedroom, in the corner, stood something.’     58   
  ‘Oh, what nonsense! How can you believe…’     59   
  But the would not let him interrupt her. What she was saying was too important to her.     60   
  ‘And the something turned round, and I saw it was a peasant with a dishevelled beard, little, and dreadful-looking. I wanted to run away, but he bent down over a sack, and was fumbling there with his hands…’     61   
  She showed how he had moved his hands. There was terror in her face. And Vronsky, remembering his dream, felt the same terror filling his soul.     62   
  ‘He was fumbling and kept talking quickly, quickly in French, you know: Il faut le battre, le fer, le broyer, le pétrir. … And in my horror I tried to wake up, and woke up … but woke up in the dream. And I began asking myself what it meant. And Korney said to me: “In childbirth you’ll die, ma’am, you’ll die.…” And I woke up.’     63   
  ‘What nonsense, what nonsense!’ said Vronsky; but he felt himself that there was no conviction in his voice.     64   
  ‘But don’t let’s talk of it. Ring the bell, I’ll have tea.     65   
  And stay a little, now; it’s not long I shall…’     66   
  But all at once she stopped. The expression of her face instantaneously changed. Horror and excitement were suddenly replaced by a look of soft, solemn, blissful attention. He could not comprehend the meaning of the change. She was listening to the stirring of the new life within her.

   
Part IV   
Chapter IV   
     
ALEXEY ALEXANDROVITCH, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps, drove, as he had intended, to the Italian opera. He sat through two acts there, and saw every one he had wanted to see. On returning home, he carefully scrutinised the hat-stand, and noticing that there was not a military overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But, contrary to his usual habit, he did not go to bed, he walked up and down his study till three o’clock in the morning. The feeling of furious anger with his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to the one stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her lover in her own house, gave him no peace. She had not complied with his request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his threat—obtain a divorce and take away his son.      1   
  He knew all the difficulties connected with this course, but he had said he would do it, and now he must carry out his threat. Countess Lidia Ivanovna had hinted that this was the best way out of his position, and of late the obtaining of divorces had been brought to such perfection, that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a possibility of overcoming the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never come singly, and the affairs of the reorganisation of the native tribes, and of the irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky province, had brought such official worries upon Alexey Alexandrovitch, that he had been of late in a continual condition of extreme irritability.      2   
  He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury growing in a sort of vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the morning. He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup full of wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath the energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her room directly he heard she was up.      3   
  Anna, who thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at his appearance when he went in to her. His brow was lowering, and his eyes stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was tightly and contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his voice there was a determination and firmness such as his wife had never seen in him. He went into her room, and without greeting her, walked straight up to her writingtable, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.      4   
  ‘What do you want?’ she cried.      5   
  ‘Your lover’s letters,’ he said.      6   
  ‘They’re not here,’ she said, shutting the drawer; but from that action he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her hand, he quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used to put her most important papers. She tried to pull the portfolio away, but he pushed her back.      7   
  ‘Sit down! I have to speak to you,’ he said, putting the portfolio under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his shoulder stood up. Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.      8   
  ‘I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this house.’      9   
  ‘I had to see him to…’     10   
  She stopped, not finding a reason.     11   
  ‘I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her lover.’     12   
  ‘I meant, I only…’ she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his angered her, and gave her courage. ‘Surely you must feel how easy it is for you to insult me?’ she said.     13   
  ‘An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief he’s a thief is simply la constatation d’un fait.’     14   
  ‘This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.’     15   
  ‘You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her the honourable protection of his name, simply on the condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?’     16   
  ‘It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to know!’     17   
  Anna cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.     18   
  ‘No!’ he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her place.     19   
  ‘Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!’     20   
  She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the justice of his words, and only said softly—     21   
  ‘You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself; but what are you saying all this for?’     22   
  ‘What am I saying it for? what for?’ he went on, as angrily. ‘That you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.’     23   
  ‘Soon, very soon, it will end, any way,’ she said; and again at the thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her eyes.     24   
  ‘It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned!     25   
  If you must have the satisfaction of animal passion…’     26   
  ‘Alexey Alexandrovitch! I won’t say it’s not generous, but it’s not like a gentleman to strike any one who’s down.’     27   
  ‘Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was your husband have no interest for you. You don’t care that his whole life is ruined, that he is thuff … thuff…’     28   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and was utterly unable to articulate the word ‘suffering.’ In the end he pronounced it ‘thuffering.’ She wanted to laugh, and was immediately ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a moment. And for the first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasising random words that had no special significance.     29   
  ‘I came to tell you…’ he said.     30   
  She glanced at him. ‘No, it was my fancy,’ she thought, recalling the expression of his face when he stumbled over the word ‘suffering.’ ‘No; can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied complacency, feel anything?’     31   
  ‘I cannot change anything,’ she whispered.     32   
  ‘I have come to tell you that I am going to-morrow to Moscow, and shall not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of what I decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall intrust the task of getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister’s,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch, with an effort recalling what he had meant to say about his son.     33   
  ‘You take Seryozha to hurt me,’ she said, looking at him from under her brows. ‘You do not love him.… Leave me Seryozha!’     34   
  ‘Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take him. Good-bye!’     35   
  And he was going away, but now she detained him.     36   
  ‘Alexey Alexandrovitch, leave me Seryozha!’ she whispered once more. ‘I have nothing else to say. Leave Seryozha till my … I shall soon be confined; leave him!’     37   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch flew into a rage, and, snatching his hand from her, he went out of the room without a word.

Part IV   
Chapter V   
     
THE WAITING-ROOM of the celebrated Petersburg lawyer was full when Alexey Alexandrovitch entered it. Three ladies—an old lady, a young lady, and a merchant’s wife—and three gentlemen—one a German banker with a ring on his finger, the second a merchant with a beard, and the third a wrathful-looking government clerk in official uniform, with a cross on his neck—had obviously been waiting a long while already. Two clerks were writing at tables with scratching pens. The appurtenances of the writing-tables, about which Alexey Alexandrovitch was himself very fastidious, were exceptionally good. He could not help observing this. One of the clerks, without getting up, turned wrathfully to Alexey Alexandrovitch, half closing his eyes.      1   
  ‘What are you wanting?’      2   
  He replied that he had to see the lawyer on some business.      3   
  ‘He is engaged,’ the clerk responded severely, and he pointed with his pen at the persons waiting, and went on writing.      4   
  ‘Can’t he spare time to see me?’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch.      5   
  ‘He has no time free; he is always busy. Kindly wait your turn.’      6   
  ‘Then I must trouble you to give him my card,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch said with dignity, seeing the impossibility of preserving his incognito.      7   
  The clerk took the card and, obviously not approving of what he read on it, went to the door.      8   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch was in principle in favour of the publicity of legal proceedings, though for some higher official considerations he disliked the application of the principle in Russia, and disapproved of it, as far as he could disapprove of anything instituted by authority of the Emperor. His whole life had been spent in administrative work, and consequently, when he did not approve of anything, his disapproval was softened by the recognition of the inevitability of mistakes and the possibility of reform in every department.      9   
  In the new public law-courts he disliked the restrictions laid on the lawyers conducting cases. But till then he had had nothing to do with the law-courts, and so had disapproved of their publicity simply in theory; now his disapprobation was strengthened by the unpleasant impression made on him in the lawyer’s waiting-room.     10   
  ‘Coming immediately,’ said the clerk; and two minutes later there did actually appear in the doorway the large figure of an old solicitor who had been consulting with the lawyer himself.     11   
  The lawyer was a little, squat, bald man, with a dark, reddish beard, light-coloured long eyebrows, and an overhanging brow. He was attired as though for a wedding, from his cravat to his double watch-chain and varnished boots. His face was clever and manly, but his dress was dandified and in bad taste.     12   
  ‘Pray walk in,’ said the lawyer, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch; and, gloomily ushering Karenin in before him, he closed the door.     13   
  ‘Won’t you sit down?’ He indicated an arm-chair at a writing-table covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his little hands with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent his head on one side. But as soon as he was settled in this position a moth flew over the table. The lawyer, with a swiftness that could never have been expected of him, opened his hands, caught the moth, and resumed his former attitude.     14   
  ‘Before beginning to speak of my business,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch, following the lawyer’s movements with wondering eyes, ‘I ought to observe that the business about which I have to speak to you is to be strictly private.’     15   
  The lawyer’s overhanging reddish moustaches were parted in a scarcely perceptible smile.     16   
  ‘I should not be a lawyer if I could not keep the secrets confided to me. But if you would like proof…’     17   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at his face, and saw that the shrewd, grey eyes were laughing, and seemed to know all about it already.     18   
  ‘You know my name?’ Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed.     19   
  ‘I know you and the good’—again he caught a moth—‘work you are doing, like every Russian,’ said the lawyer, bowing.     20   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, plucking up his courage. But having once made up his mind he went on in his shrill voice, without timidity or hesitation, accentuating here and there a word.     21   
  ‘I have the misfortune,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch began, ‘to have been deceived in my married life, and I desire to break off all relations with my wife by legal means—that is, to be divorced, but to do this so that my son may not remain with his mother.’     22   
  The lawyer’s grey eyes tried not to laugh, but they were dancing with irrepressible glee, and Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that it was not simply the delight of a man who has just got a profitable job: there was triumph and joy, there was a gleam like the malignant gleam he saw in his wife’s eyes.     23   
  ‘You desire my assistance in securing a divorce?’     24   
  ‘Yes, precisely so; but I ought to warn you that I may be wasting your time and attention. I have come simply to consult you as a preliminary step. I want a divorce, but the form in which it is possible is of great consequence to me. It is very possible that if that form does not correspond with my requirements I may give up a legal divorce.’     25   
  ‘Oh, that’s always the case,’ said the lawyer, ‘and that’s always for you to decide.’     26   
  He let his eyes rest on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s feet, feeling that he might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible amusement. He looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and moved his hand, but did not catch it from regard for Alexey Alexandrovitch’s position.     27   
  ‘Though in their general features our laws on this subject are known to me,’ pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch, ‘I should be glad to have an idea of the forms in which such things are done in practice.’     28   
  ‘You would be glad,’ the lawyer, without lifting his eyes, responded, adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his client’s remarks, ‘for me to lay before you all the methods by which you could secure what you desire?’     29   
  And on receiving an assenting nod from Alexey Alexandrovitch, he went on, stealing a glance now and then at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face, which was growing red in patches.     30   
  ‘Divorce by our laws,’ he said, with a slight shade of disapprobation of our laws, ‘is possible, as you are aware, in the following cases … Wait a little!’ he called to a clerk who put his head in at the door, but he got up all the same, said a few words to him, and sat down again. ‘….In the following cases: physical defect in the married parties, desertion without communication for five years,’ he said, crooking a short finger covered with hair, ‘adultery’ (this word he pronounced with obvious satisfaction), ‘subdivided as follows’ (he continued to crook his fat fingers, though the three cases and their subdivisions could obviously not be classified together): ‘physical defect of the husband or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of the wife.’ As by now all his fingers were used up, he uncrooked all his fingers and went on: ‘This is the theoretical view; but I imagine you have done me the honour to apply to me in order to learn its application in practice. And therefore, guided by precedents, I must inform you that in practice cases of divorce may all be reduced to the following—there’s no physical defect, I may assume, nor desertion?…’     31   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent.     32   
  ‘—May be reduced to the following: adultery of one of the married parties, and the detection in the fact of the guilty party by mutual agreement, and failing such agreement, accidental detection. It must be admitted that the latter case is rarely met with in practice,’ said the lawyer, and stealing a glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch he paused, as a man selling pistols, after enlarging on the advantages of each weapon, might await his customer’s choice. But Alexey Alexandrovitch said nothing, and therefore the lawyer went on: ‘The most usual and simple, the sensible course, I consider, is adultery by mutual consent. I should not permit myself to express it so, speaking with a man of no education,’ he said, ‘but I imagine that to you this is comprehensible.’     33   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch was, however, so perturbed that he did not immediately comprehend all the good sense of adultery by mutual consent, and his eyes expressed this uncertainty; but the lawyer promptly came to his assistance.     34   
  ‘People cannot go on living together—here you have a fact. And if both are agreed about it, the details and formalities become a matter of no importance. And at the same time this is the simplest and most certain method.’     35   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch fully understood now. But he had religious scruples, which hindered the execution of such a plan.     36   
  ‘That is out of the question in the present case,’ he said.     37   
  ‘Only one alternative is possible: undesigned detection, supported by letters which I have.’     38   
  At the mention of letters the lawyer pursed up his lips, and gave utterance to a thin little compassionate and contemptuous sound.     39   
  ‘Kindly consider,’ he began, ‘cases of that kind are, as you are aware, under ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the reverend fathers are fond of going into the minutest details in cases of the kind,’ he said with a smile, which betrayed his sympathy with the reverend father’s taste. ‘Letters may, of course, be a partial confirmation; but detection in the fact there must be of the most direct kind, that is, by eye-witnesses. In fact, if you do me the honour to intrust your confidence to me, you will do well to leave me the choice of the measures to be employed. If one wants the result, one must admit the means.’     40   
  ‘If it is so…’ Alexey Alexandrovitch began, suddenly turning white; but at that moment the lawyer rose and again went to the door to speak to the intruding clerk.     41   
  ‘Tell her we don’t haggle over fees!’ he said, and returned to Alexey Alexandrovitch.     42   
  On his way back he caught unobserved another moth.     43   
  ‘Nice state my rep curtains will be in by the summer!’ he thought, frowning.     44   
  ‘And so you were saying?…’ he said.     45   
  ‘I will communicate my decision to you by letter,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch, getting up, and he clutched at the table. After standing a moment in silence, he said: ‘From your words I may consequently conclude that a divorce may be obtained? I would ask you to let me know what are your terms.’     46   
  ‘It may be obtained if you give me complete liberty of action,’ said the lawyer, not answering his question. ‘When can I reckon on receiving information from you?’ he asked, moving towards the door, his eyes and his varnished boots shining.     47   
  ‘In a week’s time. Your answer as to whether you will undertake to conduct the case, and on what terms, you will be so good as to communicate to me.’     48   
  ‘Very good.’     49   
  The lawyer bowed respectfully, let his client out of the door, and, left alone, gave himself up to his sense of amusement. He felt so mirthful that, contrary to his rules, he made a reduction in his terms to the haggling lady, and gave up catching moths, finally deciding that next winter he must have the furniture covered with velvet, like Sigonin’s.

   
Part IV   
Chapter VI   
     
ALEXEY ALEXANDROVITCH had gained a brilliant victory at the sitting of the Commission of the 17th of August, but in the sequel this victory cut the ground from under his feet. The new commission for the inquiry into the condition of the native tribes in all its branches had been formed and despatched to its destination with an unusual speed and energy inspired by Alexey Alexandrovitch. Within three months a report was presented. The condition of the native tribes was investigated in its political, administrative, economic, ethnographic, material, and religious aspects. To all these questions there were answers admirably stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt, since they were not a product of human thought, always liable to error, but were all the product of official activity. The answers were all based on official data furnished by governors and heads of churches, and founded on the reports of district magistrates and ecclesiastical superintendents, founded in their turn on the reports of parochial overseers and parish priests; and so all of these answers were unhesitating and certain. All such questions as, for instance, of the cause of failure of crops, of the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient beliefs, etc.—questions which but for the convenient intervention of the official machine, are not, and cannot be solved for ages—received full, unhesitating solution. And this solution was in favour of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s contention. But Stremov, who had felt stung to the quick at the last sitting, had, on the reception of the commission’s report, resorted to tactics which Alexey Alexandrovitch had not anticipated. Stremov, carrying with him several other members, went over to Alexey Alexandrovitch’s side and not contenting himself with warmly defending the measure proposed by Karenin, proposed other more extreme measures in the same direction. These measures still further exaggerated in opposition to what was Alexey Alexandrovitch’s fundamental idea, were passed by the commission, and then the aim of Stremov’s tactics became apparent. Carried to an extreme, the measures seemed at once to be so absurd that the highest authorities, and public opinion, and intellectual ladies, and the newspapers, all at the same time fell foul of them, expressing their indignation both with the measures and their nominal father, Alexey Alexandrovitch. Stremovdrew back, affecting to have blindly followed Karenin, and to be astounded and distressed at what had been done. This meant the defeat of Alexey Alexandrovitch. But in spite of failing health, in spite of his domestic griefs, he did not give in. There was a split in the commission. Some members, with Stremov at their head, justified their mistake on the ground that they had put faith in the commission of revision, instituted by Alexey Alexandrovitch, and maintained that the report of the commission was rubbish, and simply so much waste paper. Alexey Alexandrovitch, with a following of those who saw the danger of so revolutionary an attitude to official documents, persisted in upholding the statements obtained by the revising commission. In consequence of this, in the higher spheres, and even in society, all was chaos, and although every one was interested, no one could tell whether the native tribes really were becoming impoverished and ruined, or whether they were in a flourishing condition. The position of Alexey Alexandrovitch, owing to this, and partly owing to the contempt lavished on him for his wife’s infidelity, became very precarious. And in this position he took an important resolution. To the astonishment of the commission, he announced that he should ask permission to go himself to investigate the question on the spot. And having obtained permission, Alexey Alexandrovitch prepared to set off to these remote provinces.      1   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch’s departure made a great sensation, the more so as just before he started he officially returned the posting-fares allowed him for twelve horses, to drive to his destination.      2   
  ‘I think it very noble,’ Betsy said about this to the Princess Myaky. ‘Why take money for posting-horses when every one knows that there are railways everywhere now?’      3   
  But Princess Myaky did not agree, and the Princess Tverskoy’s opinion annoyed her indeed.      4   
  ‘It’s all very well for you to talk,’ said she, ‘when you have I don’t know how many millions; but I am very glad when my husband goes on a revising tour in the summer. It’s very good for him and pleasant travelling about, and it’s a settled arrangement for me to keep a carriage and coachman on the money.’      5   
  On his way to the remote provinces Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped for three days at Moscow.      6   
  The day after his arrival he was driving back from calling on the governor-general. At the cross-roads by Gazetny Place, where there are always crowds of carriages and sledges, Alexey Alexandrovitch suddenly heard his name called out in such a loud and cheerful voice that he could not help looking round. At the corner of the pavement, in a short, stylish overcoat and a low-crowned fashionable hat, jauntily askew, with a smile that showed a gleam of white teeth and red lips, stood Stepan Arkadyevitch, radiant, young, and beaming. He called him vigorously and urgently, and insisted on his stopping. He had one arm on the window of a carriage that was stopping at the corner, and out of the window were thrust the heads of a lady in a velvet hat, and two children. Stepan Arkadyevitch was smiling and beckoning to his brother-in-law. The lady smiled a kindly smile too, and she too waved her hand to Alexey Alexandrovitch. It was Dolly with her children.      7   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to see any one in Moscow, and least of all his wife’s brother. He raised his hat and would have driven on, but Stepan Arkadyevitch told his coachman to stop, and ran across the snow to him.      8   
  ‘Well, what a shame not to have let us know! Been here long? I was at Dussot’s yesterday and saw “Karenin” on the visitors’ list, but it never entered my head that it was you,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, sticking his head in at the window of the carriage, ‘or I should have looked you up. I am glad to see you!’ he said, knocking one foot against the other to shake the snow off. ‘What a shame of you not to let us know!’ he repeated.      9   
  ‘I had no time; I am very busy,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch responded dryly.     10   
  ‘Come to my wife, she does so want to see you.’     11   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch unfolded the rug in which his frozen feet were wrapped, and getting out of his carriage made his way over the snow to Darya Alexandrovna.     12   
  ‘Why, Alexey Alexandrovitch, what are you cutting us like this for?’ said Dolly, smiling.     13   
  ‘I was very busy. Delighted to see you!’ he said in a tone clearly indicating that he was annoyed by it. ‘How are you?’     14   
  ‘Tell me, how is my darling Anna?’     15   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled something and would have gone on. But Stepan Arkadyevitch stopped him.     16   
  ‘I tell you what we’ll do to-morrow. Dolly, ask him to dinner. We’ll ask Koznishev and Pestsov, so as to entertain him with our Moscow celebrities.’     17   
  ‘Yes, please, do come,’ said Dolly; ‘we will expect you at five, or six o’clock, if you like. How is my darling Anna? How long…’     18   
  ‘She is quite well,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled, frowning. ‘Delighted!’ and he moved away towards his carriage.     19   
  ‘You will come?’ Dolly called after him.     20   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch said something which Dolly could not catch in the noise of the moving carriages.     21   
  ‘I shall come round to-morrow!’ Stepan Arkadyevitch shouted to him.     22   
  Alexey Alexandrovitch got into his carriage, and buried himself in it so as neither to see nor to be seen.     23   
  ‘Queer fish!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch to his wife, and glancing at his watch, he made a motion of his hand before his face, indicating a caress to his wife and children, and walked jauntily along the pavement.     24   
  ‘Stiva! Stiva!’ Dolly called, reddening.     25   
  He turned round.     26   
  ‘I must get coats, you know, for Grisha and Tanya. Give me the money.’     27   
  ‘Never mind; you tell them I’ll pay the bill!’ and he vanished, nodding genially to an acquaintance who drove by.

Part IV   
Chapter VII   
     
THE NEXT day was Sunday. Stepan Arkadyevitch went to the Grand Theatre to a rehearsal of the ballet, and gave Misha Tchibisov, a pretty dancing-girl whom he had just taken under his protection, the coral necklace he had promised her the evening before, and behind the scenes in the dim daylight of the theatre, managed to kiss her pretty little face, radiant over her present. Besides the gift of the necklace, he wanted to arrange with her about meeting after the ballet. After explaining that he could not come at the beginning of the ballet, he promised he would come for the last act and take her to supper. From the theatre Stepan Arkadyevitch drove to Ohotny Row, selected himself the fish and asparagus for dinner, and by twelve o’clock was at Dussot’s, where he had to see three people, luckily all staying at the same hotel: Levin, who had recently come back from abroad and was staying there; the new head of his department, who had just been promoted to that position, and had come on a tour of revision to Moscow; and his brother-in-law, Karenin, whom he must see, so as to be sure of bringing him to dinner.      1   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch liked dining, but still better he liked to give a dinner, small, but very choice, both as regards the food and drink and as regards the selection of guests. He particularly liked the programme of that day’s dinner. There would be fresh perch, asparagus, and la pièce de résistance—first-rate, but quite plain, roast-beef, and wines to suit: so much for the eating and drinking. Kitty and Levin would be of the party, and that this might not be obtrusively evident, there would be a girl cousin too, and young Shtcherbatsky, and la pièce de résistance among the guests—Sergey Koznishev and Alexey Alexandrovitch. Sergey Ivanovitch was a Moscow man, and a philosopher; Alexey Alexandrovitch a Petersburger, and a practical politician. He was asking, too, the well-known eccentric enthusiast, Pestsov, a liberal, a great talker, a musician, an historian, and the most delightfully youthful person of fifty, who would be a sauce or garnish for Koznishev and Karenin. He would provoke them and set them off.      2   
  The second instalment for the forest had been received from the merchant and was not yet exhausted; Dolly had been very amiable and good-humoured of late, and the idea of the dinner pleased Stepan Arkadyevitch from every point of view. He was in the most light-hearted mood. There were two circumstances a little unpleasant, but these two circumstances were drowned in the sea of good-humoured gaiety which flooded the soul of Stepan Arkadyevitch. These two circumstances were: first, that on meeting Alexey Alexandrovitch the day before in the street he had noticed that he was cold and reserved with him, and putting the expression of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face and the fact that he had not come to see them or let them know of his arrival with the rumours he had heard about Anna and Vronsky, Stepan Arkadyevitch guessed that something was wrong between the husband and wife.      3   
  That was one disagreeable thing. The other slightly disagreeable fact was that the new head of his department, like all new heads, had the reputation already of a terrible person, who got up at six o’clock in the morning, worked like a horse, and insisted on his subordinates working in the same way. Moreover, this new head had the further reputation of being a bear in his manners, and was, according to all reports, a man of a class in all respects the opposite of that to which his predecessor had belonged, and to which Stepan Arkadyevitch had hitherto belonged himself. On the previous day Stepan Arkadyevitch had appeared at the office in a uniform, and the new chief had been very affable and had talked to him as to an acquaintance. Consequently Stepan Arkadyevitch deemed it his duty to call upon him in his non- official dress. The thought that the new chief might not give him a warm reception was the other unpleasant thing. But Stepan Arkadyevitch instinctively felt that everything would come round all right. ‘They’re all people, all men, like us poor sinners; why be nasty and quarrelsome?’ he thought as he went into the hotel.      4   
  ‘Good day, Vassily,’ he said, walking into the corridor with his hat cocked on one side, and addressing a footman he knew; ‘why, you’ve let your whiskers grow! Levin, number seven, eh? Take me up, please. And find out whether Count Anitchkin’ (this was the new head) ‘is receiving.’      5   
  ‘Yes, sir,’ Vassily responded, smiling. ‘You’ve not been to see us for a long while.’      6   
  ‘I was here yesterday, but at the other entrance. Is this number seven?’      7   
  Levin was standing with a peasant from Tver in the middle of the room, measuring a fresh bearskin, when Stepan Arkadyevitch went in.      8   
  ‘What! you killed him?’ cried Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘Well done! A she-bear? How are you, Arhip!’      9   
  He shook hands with the peasant and sat down on the edge of a chair, without taking off his coat and hat.     10   
  ‘Come, take off your coat and stay a little,’ said Levin, taking his hat.     11   
  ‘No, I haven’t time; I’ve only looked in for a tiny second,’ answered Stepan Arkadyevitch. He threw open his coat, but afterwards did take it off, and sat on for a whole hour, talking to Levin about hunting and the most intimate subjects.     12   
  ‘Come, tell me, please, what you did abroad? Where have you been?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, when the peasant had gone.     13   
  ‘Oh, I stayed in Germany, in Prussia, in France, and in England—not in the capitals, but in the manufacturing towns, and saw a great deal that was new to me. And I’m glad I went.’     14   
  ‘Yes, I know your idea of the solution of the labour question.’     15   
  ‘Not a bit: in Russia there can be no labour question. In Russia the question is that of the relation of the working people to the land; though the question exists there too—but there it’s a matter of repairing what’s been ruined, while with us…’     16   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch listened attentively to Levin.     17   
  ‘Yes, yes!’ he said, ‘it’s very possible you’re right. But I’m glad you’re in good spirits, and are hunting bears, and working, and interested. Shtcherbatsky told me another story—he met you—that you were in such a depressed state, talking of nothing but death.…’     18   
  ‘Well, what of it? I’ve not given up thinking of death,’ said Levin. ‘It’s true that it’s high time I was dead; and that all this is nonsense. It’s the truth I’m telling you. I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speak of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it’s all dust and ashes.’     19   
  ‘But all that’s as old as the hills, my boy!’     20   
  ‘It is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then somehow everything becomes of no consequence. When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant! And I consider my idea very important, but it turns out really to be as unimportant too, even if it were carried out, as doing for that bear. So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work—anything so as not to think of death!’     21   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled a subtle and affectionate smile as he listened to Levin.     22   
  ‘Well, of course! Here you’ve come round to my point. Do you remember you attacked me for seeking enjoyment in life? Don’t be so severe, O moralist!’     23   
  ‘No; all the same, what’s fine in life is…’ Levin hesitated—‘Oh, I don’t know. All I know is that we shall soon be dead.’     24   
  ‘Why so soon?’     25   
  ‘And do you know, there’s less charm in life, when one thinks of death, but there’s more peace.’     26   
  ‘On the contrary, the finish is always the best. But I must be going,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up for the tenth time.     27   
  ‘Oh no, stay a bit!’ said Levin, keeping him. ‘Now, when shall we see each other again? I’m going to-morrow.’     28   
  ‘I’m a nice person! Why, that’s just what I came for! You simply must come to dinner with us to-day. Your brother’s coming, and Karenin, my brother-in-law.’     29   
  ‘You don’t mean to say he’s here?’ said Levin, and he wanted to inquire about Kitty. He had heard at the beginning of the winter that she was at Petersburg with her sister, the wife of the diplomat, and he did not know whether she had come back or not; but he changed his mind and did not ask. ‘Whether she’s coming or not, I don’t care,’ he said to himself.     30   
  ‘So you’ll come?’     31   
  ‘Of course.’     32   
  ‘At five o’clock, then, and not evening dress.’     33   
  And Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and went down below to the new head of his department. Instinct had not misled Stepan Arkadyevitch. The terrible new head turned out to be an extremely amenable person, and Stepan Arkadyevitch lunched with him and stayed on, so that it was four o’clock before he got to Alexey Alexandrovitch.