Part V   
Chapter V   
     
IN the church there was all Moscow, all the friends and relations; and during the ceremony of plighting troth, in the brilliantly lighted church, there was an incessant flow of discreetly subdued talk in the circle of gaily dressed women and girls, and men in white ties, frock-coats, and uniforms. The talk was principally kept up by the men, while the women were absorbed in watching every detail of the ceremony, which always means so much to them.      1   
  In the little group nearest to the bride were her two sisters: Dolly and the elder one, the self-possessed beauty, Madame Lvov, who had just arrived from abroad.      2   
  ‘Why is it Marie’s in lilac, as bad as black, at a wedding?’ said Madame Korsunsky.      3   
  ‘With her complexion, it’s the one salvation,’ responded Madame Trubetsky. ‘I wonder why they had the wedding in the evening? It’s like shop-people …’      4   
  ‘So much prettier. I was married in the evening too …’ answered Madame Korsunsky, and she sighed, remembering how charming she had been that day, and how absurdly in love her husband was, and how different it all was now.      5   
  ‘They say if any one’s best man more than ten times, he’ll never be married. I wanted to be for the tenth time, but the post was taken,’ said Count Siniavin to the pretty Princess Tcharsky, who had designs on him.      6   
  Princess Tcharsky only answered with a smile. She looked at Kitty, thinking how and when she would stand with Count Siniavin in Kitty’s place, and how she would remind him then of his joke to-day.      7   
  Shtcherbatsky told the old maid of honour, Madame Nikolaev, that he meant to put the crown on Kitty’s chignon for luck.      8   
  ‘She ought not to have worn a chignon,’ answered Madame Nikolaev, who had long ago made up her mind that if the elderly widower she was angling for married her, the wedding should be of the simplest. ‘I don’t like such grandeur.’      9   
  Sergey Ivanovitch was talking to Darya Dmitrievna, jestingly assuring her that the custom of going away after the wedding was becoming common because newly married people always felt a little ashamed of themselves.     10   
  ‘Your brother may feel proud of himself. She’s a marvel of sweetness. I believe you’re envious.’     11   
  ‘Oh, I’ve got over that, Darya Dmitrievna,’ he answered, and a melancholy and serious expression suddenly came over his face.     12   
  Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling his sister-in-law his joke about divorce.     13   
  ‘The wreath wants setting straight,’ she answered, not hearing him.     14   
  ‘What a pity she’s lost her looks so,’ Countess Nordston said to Madame Lvov. ‘Still he’s not worth her little finger, is he?’     15   
  ‘Oh, I like him so—not because he’s my future beau-frère,’ answered Madame Lvov. ‘And how well he’s behaving! It’s so difficult, too, to look well in such a position, not to be ridiculous. And he’s not ridiculous, and not affected; one can see he’s moved.’     16   
  ‘You expected it, I suppose?’     17   
  ‘Almost. She always cared for him.’     18   
  ‘Well, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I warned Kitty.’     19   
  ‘It will make no difference,’ said Madame Lvov; ‘we’re all obedient wives; it’s in our family.’     20   
  ‘Oh, I stepped on the rug before Vassily on purpose. And you, Dolly?’     21   
  Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer. She was deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes and she could not have spoken without crying. She was rejoicing over Kitty and Levin; going back in thought to her own wedding, she glanced at the radiant figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgot all the present, and remembered only her own innocent love. She recalled not herself only, but all her women-friends and acquaintances. She thought of them on the one day of their triumph, when they had stood like Kitty under the wedding crown, with love and hope and dread in their hearts, renouncing the past, and stepping forward into the mysterious future. Among the brides that came back to her memory, she thought too of her darling Anna, of whose proposed divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood just as innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil. And now? ‘It’s terribly strange,’ she said to herself. It was not merely the sisters, the women-friends and female relations of the bride who were following every detail of the ceremony. Women who were quite strangers, mere spectators, were watching it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear of losing a single movement or expression of the bride and bridegroom, and angrily not answering, often not hearing, the remarks of the callous men, who kept making joking or irrelevant observations.     22   
  ‘Why has she been crying? Is she being married against her will?’     23   
  ‘Against her well to a fine fellow like that? A prince, isn’t he?’     24   
  ‘Is that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the deacon booms out, “and fearing her husband.” ’     25   
  ‘Are the choristers from Tchudovo?’     26   
  ‘No, from the Synod.’     27   
  ‘I asked the footman. He says he’s going to take her home to his country place at once. Awfully rich, they say. That’s why she’s being married to him.’     28   
  ‘No, they’re a well-matched pair.’     29   
  ‘I say, Marya Vassilievna, you were making out those flyaway crinolines were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce dress—an ambassador’s wife they say she is—how her skirt bounces out from side to side!’     30   
  ‘What a pretty dear the bride is—like a lamb decked with flowers! Well, say what you will, we women feel for out sister.’     31   
  Such were the comments in the crowed of gazing women who had succeeded in slipping in at the church doors.

   
Part V   
Chapter VI   
     
WHEN the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the beadle spread before the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink silken stuff, the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psalm, in which the bass and tenor sang responses to one another, and the priest turning round pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk rug. Though both had often heard a great deal about the saying that the one who steps first on the rug will be the head of the house, neither Levin nor Kitty were capable of recollecting it, as they took the few steps towards it. They did not hear the loud remarks and disputes that followed, some maintaining he had stepped on first, and others that both had stepped on together.      1   
  After the customary questions, whether they desired to enter upon matrimony, and whether, they were pledged to any one else, and their answers, which sounded strange to themselves, a new ceremony began. Kitty listened to the words of the prayer, trying to make out their meaning, but she could not. The feeling of triumph and radiant happiness flooded her soul more and more as the ceremony went on, and deprived her of all power of attention.      2   
  They prayed: ‘Endow them with continence and fruitfulness, and vouchsafe that their hearts may rejoice looking upon their sons and daughters.’ They alluded to God’s creation of a wife from Adam’s rib, ‘and for this cause a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh,’ and that ‘this is a great mystery’; they prayed that God would make them fruitful and bless them, like Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph, Moses and Zipporah, and that they might look upon their children’s children. ‘That’s all splendid,’ thought Kitty, catching the words, ‘all that’s just as it should be,’ and a smile of happiness, unconsciously reflected in every one who looked at her, beamed on her radiant face.      3   
  ‘Put it on quite,’ voice were heard urging when the priest had put on the wedding crowns, and Shtcherbatsky, his hand shaking in its three-buttoned glove, held the crown high above her head.      4   
  ‘Put it on!’she whispered smiling.      5   
  Levin looked round at her, and was struck by the joyful radiance on her face, and unconsciously her feeling infected him. He too, like her, felt glad and happy.      6   
  They enjoyed hearing the epistle read, and the roll of the head-deacon’s voice at the last verse, awaited with such impatience by the outside public. They enjoyed drinking out of the shallow cup of warm red wine and water, and they were still more pleased when the priest, flinging back his stole and taking both their hands in his, led them round the lectern to the accompaniment of bass voices chanting ‘Glory to God.’      7   
  Shtcherbatsky and Tchirikov, supporting the crowns and stumbling over the bride’s train, smiling too and seeming delighted at something, were at one moment left behind, at the next treading on the bridal pair as the priest came to a halt. The spark of joy kindled in Kitty seemed to have infected every one in the church. It seemed to Levin that the priest and the deacon too wanted to smile just as he did.      8   
  Taking the crowns off their heads the priest read the last prayer and congratulated the young people. Levin looked at Kitty, and he had never before seen her look as she did. She was charming with the new radiance of happiness in her face. Levin longed to say something to her, but he did not know whether it was all over. The priest got him out of his difficulty. He smiled his kindly smile and said gently, ‘Kiss your wife, and you kiss your husband,’ and took the candles out of their hands.      9   
  Levin kissed her smiling lips with timid care, gave her his arm, and with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the church. He did not believe, he could not believe, that it was true. It was only when their wondering and timid eyes met that he believed in it, because he felt that they were one.     10   
  After supper, the same night, the young people left for the country.

Part V   
Chapter VII   
     
VRONSKY and Anna had been travelling for three months together in Europe. They had visited Venice, Rome, and Naples, and had just arrived at a small Italian town where they meant to stay some time. A hand-some head waiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from the neck upwards, an evening coat, a broad white calabric shirt-front, and a bunch of trinkets hanging above his rounded stomach, stood with his hands in the full curve of his pockets, looking contemptuously from under his eyelids while he gave some frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped him. Catching the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the entry towards the staircase, the head waiter turned round, and seeing the Russian count, who had taken their best rooms, he took his hands out of his pockets deferentially, and with a bow informed him that a courier had been, and that the business about the palazzo had been arranged. The steward was prepared to sign the agreement.      1   
  ‘Ah! I’m glad to hear it,’ said Vronsky. ‘Is madame at home or not?’      2   
  ‘Madame has been out for a walk but has returned now,’ answered the waiter.      3   
  Vronsky took off his soft wide-brimmed hat and passed his handkerchief over his heated brow and hair, which had grown half over his ears, and was brushed back covering the bald patch on his head. And glancing casually at the gentleman, who still stood there gazing intently at him, he would have gone on.      4   
  ‘This gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring after you,’ said the head waiter.      5   
  With mingled feelings of annoyance at never being able to get, away from acquaintances anywhere, and longing to find some sort of diversion from the monotony of his life, Vronsky looked once more at the gentleman, who had retreated and stood still again, and at the same moment a light came into the eyes of both.      6   
  ‘Golenishtchev!’      7   
  ‘Vronsky!’      8   
  It really was Golenishtchev, a comrade of Vronsky’s in the Corps of Pages. In the corps Golenishtchev had belonged to the liberal party; her left the corps without entering the army, and had never taken office under the government. Vronsky and he had gone completely different ways on leaving the corps, and had only met once since.      9   
  At that meeting Vronsky perceived that Golenishtchev had taken up a sort of lofty intellectually liberal line, and was consequently disposed to look down upon Vronsky’s interests and calling in life. Hence Vronsky had met him with the chilling and haughty manner he so well knew how to assume, the meaning of which was: ‘You may like or dislike my way of life, that’s a matter of the most perfect indifference to me; you will have to treat me with respect, if you want to know me.’ Golenishtchev had been contemptuously indifferent to the tone taken by Vronsky. This second meeting might have been expected, one would have supposed, to estrange them still more. But now they beamed and exclaimed with delight on recognising one another. Vronsky would never have expected to be so pleased to see Golenishtchev, but probably he was not himself a ware how bored he was. He forgot the disagreeable impression of their last meeting, and with a face of frank delight held out his hand to his old comrade. The same expression of delight replaced the look of uneasiness on Golenishtchev’s face.     10   
  ‘How glad I am to meet you!’ said Vronsky, showing his strong white teeth in a friendly smile.     11   
  ‘I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn’t know which one. I’m very, very glad!’     12   
  ‘Let’s go in. Come, tell me what you’re doing.’     13   
  ‘I’ve been living here for two years. I’m doing.’     14   
  ‘Ah!’ said Vronsky with sympathy; ‘let’s go in.’ And with the habit common with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he wanted to keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.     15   
  ‘Do you know Madame Karenin? We are travelling together. I am going to see her now,’ he said in French, carefully scrutinising Golenishtchev’s face.     16   
  ‘Ah! I did not know’ (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered carefully. ‘Have you been here long?’ he added.     17   
  ‘Four days,’ Vronsky answered once more, scrutinising his friend’s face intently.     18   
  ‘Yes, he’s a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,’ Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of Golenishtchev’s face and the change of subject. ‘I can introduce him to Anna, he looks at it properly.’     19   
  During those three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with Anna, he had always on meeting new people asked himself how the new person would look at his relations with Anna, and for the most part, in men, he had met with the ‘proper’ way of looking at it. But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it ‘properly’ had been asked, exactly how they did look at it, both he and they would have been greatly puzzled to answer.     20   
  In reality, those who in Vronsky’s opinion had the ‘proper’ view had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for to put all this into words.     21   
  Vronsky at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And in fact, Golenishtchev’s manner to Madame Karenin, when he was taken to call on her, was all that Vronsky could have desired.     22   
  Obviously without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects which might lead to embarrassment.     23   
  He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and still more by the frankness with which she accepted her position. She blushed when Vronsky brought in Golenishtchev, and he was extremely charmed by this childish blush overspreading her candid and handsome face. But what he liked particularly was the way in which at once, as though on purpose that there might be no misunderstanding with an outsider, she called Vronsky simply Alexey, and said they were moving into a house they had just taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev liked this direct and simple attitude to her own position. Looking at Anna’s manner of simple-hearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing Alexey Alexandrovitch and Vronsky, Golenishtchev fancied that he understood her perfectly. He fancied that he understood what she was utterly unable to understand: how it was that, having made her husband wretched, having abandoned him and her son and lost her good name, she yet felt full of spirits, gaiety, and happiness.     24   
  ‘It’s in the guide-book,’ said Golenishtchev, referring to the palazzo Vronsky had taken. ‘There’s a first-rate Tintoretto there. One of his latest period.’     25   
  ‘I tell you what: it’s a lovely day, let’s go and have another look at it,’ said Vronsky, addressing Anna.     26   
  ‘I shall be very glad to; I’ll go and put on my hat. Would you say it’s hot?’ she said, stopping short in the doorway and looking inquiringly at Vronsky. And again a vivid flush overspread her face.     27   
  Vronsky saw from her eyes that she did not know on what terms he cared to be with Golenishtchev, and so was afraid of not behaving as he would wish.     28   
  He looked a long, tender look at her.     29   
  ‘No, not very,’ he said.     30   
  And it seemed to her that she understood everything, most of all, that he was pleased with her; and smiling to him, she walked with her rapid step out at the door.     31   
  The friends glanced at one another, and a look of hesitation came into both faces, as though Golenishtchev, unmistakably admiring her, would have liked to say something about her, and could not find the right thing to say, while Vronsky desired and dreaded his doing so.     32   
  ‘Well then,’ Vronsky began to start a conversation of some sort; ‘so you’re settled here? You’re still at the same work, then?’ he went on, recalling that he had been told Golenishtchev was writing something.     33   
  ‘Yes, I’m writing the second part of the Two Elements,’ said Golenishtchev, colouring with pleasure at the question—‘that is, to be exact, I am not writing it yet; I am preparing, collecting materials. It will be of far wider scope, and will touch on almost all questions. We in Russia refuse to see that we are the heirs of Byzantium,’ and he launched into a long and heated explanation of his views.     34   
  Vronsky at the first moment felt embarrassed at not even knowing of the first part of the Two Elements, of which the author spoke as something well known. But as Golenishtchev began to lay down his opinions and Vronsky was able to follow them even without knowing the Two Elements, he listened to him with some interest, for Golenishtchev spoke well. But Vronsky was startled and annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which Golenishtchev talked of the subject that engrossed him. As he went on talking, his eyes glittered more and more angrily; he was more and more hurried in his replies to imaginary opponents, and his face grew more and more excited and worried. Remembering Golenishtchev, a thin, lively, good-natured and well-bred boy, always at the head of the class, Vronsky could not make out the reason of his irritability, and he did not like it. What he particularly disliked was that Golenishtchev, a man belonging to a good set, should put himself on a level with some scribbling fellows, with whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth it? Vronsky disliked it, yet he felt that Golenishtchev was unhappy, and was sorry for him. Unhappiness, almost mental derangement, was visible on his mobile, rather handsome face, while without even noticing Anna’s coming in, he went on hurriedly and hotly expressing his views.     35   
  When Anna came in in her hat and cape, and her lovely hand rapidly swinging her parasol, and stood beside him, it was with a feeling of relief that Vronsky broke away from the plaintive eyes of Golenishtchev which fastened persistently upon him, and with a fresh rush of love looked at his charming companion, full of life and happiness. Golenishtchev recovered himself with an effort, and at first was dejected and gloomy, but Anna, disposed to feel friendly with every one as she was at that time, soon revived his spirits by her direct and lively manner. After trying various subjects of conversation, she got him upon painting, of which he talked very well, and she listened to him attentively. They walked to the house they had taken, and looked over it.     36   
  ‘I am very glad of one thing,’ said Anna to Golenishtchev when they were on their way back, ‘Alexey will have a capital atelier. You must certainly take that room,’ she said to Vronsky in Russian, using the affectionately familiar form as though she saw that Golenishtchev would become intimate with them in their isolation, and that there was no need of reserve before him.     37   
  ‘Do you paint?’ said Golenishtchev, turning round quickly to Vronsky.     38   
  ‘Yes, I used to study long ago, and now I have begun to do a little,’ said Vronsky, reddening.     39   
  ‘He has great talent,’ said Anna with a delighted smile. I’m no judge, of course. But good judges have said the same.’

Part V   
Chapter VIII   
     
ANNA, in that first period of her emancipation and rapid return to health, felt herself unpardonably happy and full of the joy of life. The thought of her husband’s unhappiness did not poison her happiness. On one side that memory was too awful to be thought of. On the other side her husband’s unhappiness had given her too much happiness to be regretted. The memory of all that had happened after her illness: her reconciliation with her husband, its breakdown, the news of Vronsky’s wound, his visit, the preparations for divorce, the departure from her husband’s house, the parting from her son—all that seemed to her like a delirious dream, from which she had waked up alone with Vronsky abroad. The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful facts.      1   
  One consolatory reflection upon her conduct had occurred to her at the first moment of the final rupture, and when now she recalled all the past, she remembered that one reflection. ‘I have inevitably made that man wretched,’ she thought; ‘but I don’t want to profit by his misery. I too am suffering, and shall suffer; I am losing what I prized above everything—I am losing my good name and my son. I have done wrong, and so I don’t want happiness, I don’t want a divorce, and shall suffer from my shame and the separation from my child.’ But, however sincerely Anna had meant to suffer, she was not suffering. Shame there was not.      2   
  With the tact of which both had such a large share, they had succeeded in avoiding Russian ladies abroad, and so had never placed themselves in a false position, and everywhere they had met people who pretended that they perfectly understood their position, far better indeed than they did themselves. Separation from the son she loved—even that did not cause her anguish in these early days. The baby-girl—his child—was so sweet, and had so won Anna’s heart, since she was all that was left her, that Anna rarely thought of her son.      3   
  The desire for life, waxing stronger with recovered health, was so intense, and the conditions of life were so new and pleasant, that Anna felt unpardonably happy. The more she got to know Vronsky, the more she loved him. She loved him for himself, and for his love for her. Her complete ownership of him was a continual joy to her. His presence was always sweet to her. All the traits of his character, which she learned to know better and better, were unutterably dear to her. His appearance, changed by his civilian dress, was as fascinating to her as though she were some young girl in love. In everything he said, thought, and did, she saw something particularly noble and elevated. Her adoration of him alarmed her indeed; she sought and could not find in him anything not fine. She dared not show him her sense of her own insignificance beside him. It seemed to her that, knowing this, he might sooner cease to love her; and she dreaded nothing now so much as losing his love, though she had no grounds for fearing it. But she could not help being grateful to him for his attitude to her, and showing that she appreciated it. He, who had in her opinion such a marked aptitude for a political career, in which he would have been certain to play a leading part—he had sacrificed his ambition for her sake, and never betrayed the slightest regret. He was more lovingly respectful to her than ever, and the constant care that she should not feel the awkwardness of her position never deserted him for a single instant. He, so manly a man, never opposed her, had indeed, with her, no will of his own, and was anxious, it seemed, for nothing but to anticipate her wishes. And she could not but appreciate this, even though the very intensity of his solicitude for her, the atmosphere of care with which he surrounded her, sometimes weighed upon her.      4   
  Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realisation of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realisation of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realisation of their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general, of which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love,—and he was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire for desires—ennui. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an object. Sixteen hours of the day must be occupied in some way, since they were living abroad in complete freedom, outside the conditions of social life which filled up time in Petersburg. As for the amusements of bachelor existence, which had provided Vronsky with entertainment on previous tours abroad, they could not be thought of, since the sole attempt of the sort had led to a sudden attack of depression in Anna, quite out of proportion with the cause—a late supper with bachelor friends. Relations with the society of the place—foreign and Russian—were equally out of the question owing to the irregularity of their position. The inspection of objects of interest, apart from the fact that everything had been seen already, had not for Vronsky, a Russian and a sensible man, the immense significance Englishmen are able to attach to that pursuit.      5   
  And just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it can get, hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite unconsciously clutched first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures.      6   
  As he had from a child a taste for painting, and as, not knowing what to spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings, he came to a stop at painting, began to take interest in it, and concentrated upon it the unoccupied mass of desires which demanded satisfaction.      7   
  He had a ready appreciation of art, and probably, with a taste for imitating art, he supposed himself to have the real thing essential for an artist, and after hesitating for some time which style of painting to select—religious, historical, realistic, or genre painting—he set to work to paint. He appreciated all kinds, and could have felt inspired by any one of them; but he had no conception of the possibility of knowing nothing at all of any school of painting, and of being inspired directly by what is within the soul, without caring whether what is painted will belong to any recognised school. Since he knew nothing of this, and drew his inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly from life embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly and easily and as quickly and easily came his success in painting something very similar to the sort of painting he was trying to imitate.      8   
  More than any other style he liked the French—graceful and effective—and in that style he began to paint Anna’s portrait in Italian costume, and the portrait seemed to him, and to every one who saw it, extremely successful.

Part V   
Chapter IX   
     
THE OLD neglected palazzo, with its lofty carved ceilings and frescoes on the walls, with its floors of mosaic, with its heavy yellow stuff curtains on the windows, with its vases on pedestals, and its open fireplaces, its carved doors and gloomy reception-rooms, hung with pictures—this palazzo did much, by its very appearance after they had moved into it, to confirm in Vronsky the agreeable illusion that he was not so much a Russian country gentleman, a retired army officer, as an enlightened amateur and patron of the arts, himself a modest artist who had renounced the world, his connections, and his ambition for the sake of the woman he loved.      1   
  The pose chosen by Vronsky with their removal into the palazzo was completely successful, and having, through Golenishtchev, made acquaintance with a few interesting people, for a time he was satisfied. He painted studies from nature under the guidance of an Italian professor of painting, and studied mediæval Italian life. Mediæval Italian life so fascinated Vronsky that he even wore a hat and flung a cloak over his shoulder in the mediæval style, which, indeed, was extremely becoming to him.      2   
  ‘Here we live, and know nothing of what’s going on,’ Vronsky said to Golenishtchev as he came to see him one morning. ‘Have you seen Mihailov’s picture?’ he said, handing him a Russian gazette he had received that morning, and pointing to an article on a Russian artist, living in the very same time, and just finishing a picture which had long been talked about, and had been bought beforehand.      3   
  The article reproached the government and the academy for letting so remarkable an artist be left without encouragement and support.      4   
  ‘I’ve seen it,’ answered Golenishtchev. ‘Of course he’s not without talent, but it’s all in a wrong direction. It’s all the Ivanov-Strauss-Renan attitude to Christ and to religious painting.’      5   
  ‘What is the subject of the picture?’ asked Anna.      6   
  ‘Christ before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all the realism of the new school.’      7   
  And the question of the subject of the picture having brought him to one of his favourite theories, Golenishtchev launched forth into a disquisition on it.      8   
  ‘I can’t understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake. Christ always has His definite embodiment in the art of the great masters. And therefore, if they want to depict, not God, but a revolutionist or a sage, let them take from history a Socrates, a Franklin, a Charlotte Corday, but not Christ. They take the very figure which cannot be taken for their art, and then …      9   
  ‘And is it true that this Mihailov is in such poverty?’ asked Vronsky, thinking that, as a Russian Mæcenas, it was his duty to assist the artist regardless of whether the picture were good or bad.     10   
  ‘I should say not. He’s a remarkable portrait-painter. Have you ever seen his portrait of Madame Vassiltchikov? But I believe he doesn’t care about painting any more portraits, and so very likely he is in want. I maintain that …     11   
  ‘Couldn’t we ask him to paint a portrait of Anna Arkadyevna?’ said Vronsky.     12   
  ‘Why mine?’ said Anna. ‘After yours I don’t want another portrait. Better have one of Annie’ (so she called her baby girl). ‘Here she is,’ she added, looking out of window at the handsome Italian nurse, who was carrying the child out into the garden, and immediately glancing unnoticed at Vronsky. The handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was painting a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna’s life. He painted with her as his model, admired her beauty and mediævalism, and Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly gracious and condescending both to her and her little son. Vronsky, too, glanced out of window and into Anna’s eyes, and, turning at once to Golenishtchev, he said—     13   
  ‘Do you know this Mihailov?’     14   
  ‘I have met him. But he’s a queer fish, and quite without breeding. You know, one of those uncouth new people one’s so often coming across nowadays, one of those free-thinkers, you know, who are reared d’emblée in theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In former days,’ said Golenishtchev, not observing, or not willing to observe, that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, ‘in former days the free-thinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle came to free-thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up without even having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages. Well, he’s of that class. He’s the son, it appears, of some Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he’s no fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of culture—the magazines. In old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself—a Frenchman, for instance—would have set to work to study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and historians and philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation, and he’s ready. And that’s not all—twenty years ago he would have found in that literature traces of conflict with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict that there was something else; but now he comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is nothing else—evolution, natural selection, struggle for existence—and that’s all. In my article I’ve…     15   
  ‘I tell you what,’ said Anna, who had for a long while been exchanging wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the least interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by the idea of assisting him and ordering a portrait of him; ‘I tell you what,’ she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still talking away, ‘let’s go and see him!’     16   
  Golenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed. But as the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to take the carriage.     17   
  An hour later Anna, with Golenishtchev by her side and Vronsky on the front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new ugly house in the remote suburbs. On learning from the porter’s wife, who came out to them, that Mihailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that moment he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her to him with their cards, asking permission to see his picture.

Part V   
Chapter X   
     
THE ARTIST Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the morning he had been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the landlady, who had been asking for money.      1   
  ‘I’ve said it to you twenty times, don’t enter into details. You’re fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian you’re a fool three times as foolish,’ he said, after a long dispute.      2   
  ‘Don’t let it run so long; it’s not my fault. If I had the money …      3   
  ‘Leave me in peace, for God’s sake!’ Mihailov shrieked, with tears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room, the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him. ‘Idiotic woman!’ he said to himself, sat down to the table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervour at a sketch he had begun.      4   
  Never did he work with such fervour and success as when things went ill with him, and especially when he quarrelled with his wife. ‘Oh! damn them all!’ he thought as he went on working. He was making a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it. ‘No, that one was better … where is it?’ He went back to his wife, and scowling, and not looking at her, asked his eldest little girl, where was that piece of paper he had given them? The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it was dirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took the sketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated gleefully.      5   
  ‘That’s it! that’s it!’ he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.      6   
  He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the requirements of the figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered; the hair too might be thrown back. But in making these corrections he was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered it from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought out the whole figure in all its force and vigour, as it had suddenly come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the finishing when the cards were brought him.      7   
  ‘Coming, coming!’      8   
  He went in to his wife.      9   
  ‘Come, Sasha, don’t be cross!’ he said, smiling timidly and affectionately at her. ‘You were to blame. I was to blame. I’ll make it all right.’ And having made peace with his wife he put on an olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went towards his studio. The successful figure he had already forgotten. Now he was delighted and excited at the visit of these people of consequence, Russians, who had come in their carriage.     10   
  Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at the bottom of his heart one conviction—that no one had ever painted a picture like it. He did not believe that his picture was better than all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that what he tried to convey in that picture, no one ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while, ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people’s criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequence in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul. Any remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic saw even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a more profound comprehension than he had himself, and always expected from them something he did not himself see in the picture. And often in their criticisms he fancied that he had found this.     11   
  He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his excitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna’s figure as she stood in the shade of the entrance listening to Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her something, while she evidently wanted to look round at the artist. He was himself unconscious how, as he approached them, he seized on this impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably impressed beforehand by Golenishtchev’s account of the artist, were still less so by his personal appearance. Thick-set and of middle height, with nimble movements, with his brown hat, olive-green coat and narrow trousers—though wide trousers had been a long while in fashion,—most of all, with the ordinariness of his broad face, and the combined expression of timidity and anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov made an unpleasant impression.     12   
  ‘Please step in,’ he said, trying to look indifferent, and going into the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door.

Part V   
Chapter XI   
     
ON entering the studio, Mihailov once more scanned his visitors and noted down in his imagination Vronsky’s expression too, and especially his jaws. Although his artistic sense was unceasingly at work collecting materials, although he felt a continually increasing excitement as the moment of criticising his work drew nearer, he rapidly and subtly formed, from imperceptible signs, a mental image of these three persons.      1   
  That fellow (Golenishtchev) was a Russian living here. Mihailov did not remember his surname nor where he had met him, nor what he had said to him. He only remembered his face as he remembered all the faces he had ever seen; but he remembered, too, that it was one of the faces laid by in his memory in the immense class of the falsely consequential and poor in expression. The abundant hair and very open forehead gave an appearance of consequence to the face, which had only one expression—a petty, childish, peevish expression, concentrated just above the bridge of the narrow nose. Vronsky and Madame Karenin must be, Mihailov supposed, distinguished and wealthy Russians, knowing nothing about art, like all those wealthy Russians, but posing as amateurs and connoisseurs. ‘Most likely they’ve already looked at all the antiques, and now they’re making the round of the studios of the new people, the German humbug, and the cracked Pre-Raphaelite English fellow, and have only come to me to make the point of view complete,’ he thought. He was well acquainted with the way dilettanti have (the cleverer they were the worse he found them) of looking at the works of contemporary artists with the sole object of being in a position to say that art is a thing of the past, and that the more one sees of the new men the more one sees how inimitable the works of the great old masters have remained. He expected all this; he saw it all in their faces, he saw it in the careless indifference with which they talked among themselves, stared at the lay figures and busts, and walked about in leisurely fashion, waiting for him to uncover his picture. But in spite of this, while he was turning over his studies, pulling up the blinds and taking off the sheet, he was in intense excitement, especially as, in spite of his conviction, that all distinguished and wealthy Russians were certain to be beasts and fools, he liked Vronsky, and still more Anna.      2   
  ‘Here, if you please,’ he said, moving on one side with his nimble gait and pointing to his picture, ‘it’s the exhortation to Pilate. Matthew, chapter xxvii.,’ he said, feeling his lips were beginning to tremble with emotion. He moved away and stood behind them.      3   
  For the few seconds during which the visitors were gazing at the picture in silence Mihailov too gazed at it with the indifferent eye of an outsider. For those few seconds he was sure in anticipation that a higher, juster criticism would be uttered by them, by those very visitors whom he had been so despising a moment before. He forgot all he had thought about his picture before during the three years he had been painting it; he forgot all its qualities which had been absolutely certain to him—he saw the picture with their indifferent, new, outside eyes, and saw nothing good in it. He saw in the foreground Pilate’s irritated face and the serene face of Christ, and in the background the figures of Pilate’s retinue and the face of John watching what was happening. Every face that, with such agony, such blunders and corrections had grown up within him with its special character, every face that had given him such torments and such raptures, and all these faces so many times transposed for the sake of the harmony of the whole, all the shades of colour and tones that he had attained with such labour—all of this together seemed to him now, looking at it with their eyes, the merest vulgarity, something that had been done a thousand times over. The face dearest to him, the face of Christ, the centre of the picture, which had given him such ecstasy as it unfolded itself to him, was utterly lost to him when he glanced at the picture with their eyes. He saw a well-painted (no, not even that—he distinctly saw now a mass of defects) repetition of those endless Christs of Titian, Raphael, Rubens, and the same soldiers and Pilate. It was all common, poor, and stale, and positively badly painted—weak and unequal. They would be justified in repeating hypocritically civil speeches in the presence of the painter, and pitying him and laughing at him when they were alone again.      4   
  The silence (though it lasted no more than a minute) became too intolerable to him. To break it, and to show he was not agitated, he made an effort and addressed Golenishtchev.      5   
  ‘I think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you,’ he said, looking uneasily first at Anna, then at Vronsky, in fear of losing any shade of their expression.      6   
  ‘To be sure! We met at Rossi’s, do you remember, at that soirée when that Italian lady recited—the new Rachel?’ Golenishtchev answered easily, removing his eyes without the slightest regret from the picture and turning to the artist.      7   
  Noticing, however, that Mihailov was expecting a criticism of the picture, he said—      8   
  ‘Your picture has got on a great deal since I saw it last time; and what strikes me particularly now, as it did then, is the figure of Pilate. One so knows the man: a good-natured, capital fellow, but an official through and through, who does not know what it is he’s doing. But I fancy …’      9   
  All Mihailov’s mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He tried to say something, but he could not speak for excitement, and pretended to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of Golenishtchev’s capacity for understanding art, trifling as was the true remark upon the fidelity of the expression of Pilate as an official, and offensive as might have seemed the utterance of so unimportant an observation while nothing was said of more serious points, Mihailov was in an ecstasy of delight at this observation. He had himself thought about Pilate’s figure just what Golenishtchev said. The fact that this reflection was but one of millions of reflections, which as Mihailov knew for certain would be true, did not diminish for him the significance of Golenishtchev’s remark. His heart warmed to Golenishtchev for this remark, and from a state of depression he suddenly passed to ecstasy. At once the whole of his picture lived before him in all the indescribable complexity of everything living. Mihailov again tried to say that that was how he understood Pilate, but his lips quivered intractably, and he could not pronounce the words. Vronsky and Anna too said something in that subdued voice in which, partly to avoid hurting the artist’s feelings and partly to avoid saying out loud something silly—so easily said when talking of art—people usually speak at exhibitions of pictures. Mihailov fancied that the picture had made an impression on them too. He went up to them.     10   
  ‘How marvellous Christ’s expression is!’ said Anna. Of all she saw she liked that expression most of all, and she felt that it was the centre of the picture, and so praise of it would be pleasant to the artist. ‘One can see that He is pitying Pilate.’     11   
  This again was one of the million true reflections that could be found in his picture and in the figure of Christ. She said that He was pitying Pilate. In Christ’s expression there ought to be indeed an expression of pity, since there is an expression of love, of heavenly peace, of readiness for death, and of a sense of the vanity of words. Of course there is the expression of an official in Pilate and of pity in Christ, seeing that one is the incarnation of the fleshly and the other of the spiritual life. All this and much more flashed into Mihailov’s thoughts.     12   
  ‘Yes, and how that figure is done—what atmosphere! One can walk round it,’ said Golenishtchev, unmistakably betraying by this remark that he did not approve of the meaning and idea of the figure.     13   
  ‘Yes, there’s a wonderful mastery!’ said Vronsky. ‘How those figures in the background stand out! There you have technique,’ he said, addressing Golenishtchev, alluding to a conversation between them about Vronsky’s despair of attaining this technique.     14   
  ‘Yes, yes, marvellous!’ Golenishtchev and Anna assented. In spite of the excited condition in which he was, the sentence about technique had sent a pang to Mihailov’s heart, and looking angrily at Vronsky he suddenly scowled. He had often heard this word technique, and was utterly unable to understand what was understood by it. He knew that by this term was understood a mechanical facility for painting or drawing, entirely apart from its subject. He had noticed often that even in actual praise technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one could paint well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of attention and care was necessary in taking off the coverings, to avoid injuring the creation itself, and to take off all the coverings; but there was no art of painting—no technique of any sort—about it. If to a little child or to his cook were revealed what he saw, it or she would have been able to peel the wrappings off what was seen. And the most experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical facility paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first. Besides, he saw that if it came to talking about technique, it was impossible to praise him for it. In all he had painted and repainted he saw faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off the wrappings—faults he could not correct now without spoiling the whole. And in almost all the figures and faces he saw, too, remnants of the wrappings not perfectly removed that spoiled the picture.     15   
  ‘One thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark …’ observed Golenishtchev.     16   
  ‘Oh, I shall be delighted, I beg you,’ said Mihailov with a forced smile.     17   
  ‘That is, that you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But I know that was what you meant to do.’     18   
  ‘I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart,’ said Mihailov gloomily.     19   
  ‘Yes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think … Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it, and, besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you it is different. Your very motive is different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that if Christ is brought down to the level of an historical character, it would have been better for Ivanov to select some other historical subject, fresh, untouched.’     20   
  ‘But if this is the greatest subject presented to art?’     21   
  ‘If one looked one would find others. But the point is that art cannot suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of Ivanov the question arises for the believer and the unbeliever alike, “Is it God, or is it not God?” and the unity of the impression is destroyed.’     22   
  ‘Why so? I think that for educated people,’ said Mihailov, ‘the question cannot exist.’     23   
  Golenishtchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mihailov by his support of his first idea of the unity of the impression being essential to art.     24   
  Mihailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in defence of his own idea.     25

Part V   
Chapter XII   
     
ANNA and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting their friend’s flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the artist, walked away to another small picture.      1   
  ‘Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!’ they cried with one voice.      2   
  ‘What is it they’re so pleased with?’ thought Mihailov. He had positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through with that picture when for several months it had been the one thought haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the pictures he had finished. He did not even like to look at it, and had only brought it out because he was expecting an Englishman who wanted to buy it.      3   
  ‘Oh, that’s only an old study,’ he said.      4   
  ‘How fine!’ said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity, falling under the spell of the picture.      5   
  Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elder had just dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue eyes. What was he thinking of?      6   
  The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for things past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he tried to draw his visitors away to a third picture.      7   
  But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale? To Mihailov at that moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of money matters.      8   
  ‘It is put up there to be sold,’ he answered, scowling gloomily.      9   
  When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the picture of Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all importance for him. He began to look at his picture with all his own full artist vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture—a conviction essential to the intensest fervour, excluding all other interests—in which alone he could work.     10   
  Christ’s foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his palette and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had finished the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited for it. He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was too much affected and saw everything too much. There was only one stage in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was possible. To-day he was too much agitated. He would have covered the picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and, smiling blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John. At last, as it were regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped the cloth, and, exhausted but happy, went home.     11   
  Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, were particularly lively and cheerful. They talked of Mihailov and his pictures. The word talent, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an expression for all the artist had gained from life, recurred particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them to sum up what they had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of it. They said that there was no denying his talent, but that his talent could not develop for want of education—the common defect of our Russian artists. But the picture of the boys had imprinted itself on their memories, and they were continually coming back to it. ‘What an exquisite thing! How he has succeeded in it, and how simply! He doesn’t even comprehend how good it is. Yes, I mustn’t let it slip; I must buy it,’ said Vronsky.

   
Part V   
Chapter XIII   
     
MIHAILOV sold Vronsky his picture, and agreed to paint a portrait of Anna. On the day fixed he came and began the work.      1   
  From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed every one, especially Vronsky, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty. It was strange how Mihailov could have discovered just her characteristic beauty. ‘One needs to know and love her as I have loved her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul,’ Vronsky thought, though it was only from this portrait that he had himself learned this sweetest expression of her soul. But the expression was so true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it.      2   
  ‘I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything,’ he said of his own portrait of her, ‘and he just looked and painted it. That’s where technique comes in.’      3   
  ‘That will come,’ was the consoling reassurance given him by Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent, and what was most important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art. Golenishtchev’s faith in Vronsky’s talent was propped up by his own need of Vronsky’s sympathy and approval for his own articles and ideas, and he felt that the praise and support must be mutual.      4   
  In another man’s house, and especially in Vronsky’s palazzo, Mihailov was quite a different man from what he was in his studio. He behaved with hostile courtesy, as though he were afraid of coming closer to people he did not respect. He called Vronsky ‘your excellency,’ and notwithstanding Anna’s and Vronsky’s invitations, he would never stay to dinner, nor come except for the sittings. Anna was even more friendly to him than to other people, and was very grateful for her portrait. Vronsky was more than cordial with him, and was obviously interested to know the artist’s opinion of his picture. Golenishtchev never let slip an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into Mihailov. But Mihailov remained equally chilly to all of them. Anna was aware from his eyes that he liked looking at her, but he avoided conversation with her. Vronsky’s talk about his painting he met with stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent when he was shown Vronsky’s picture. He was unmistakably bored by Golenishtchev’s conversation, and he did not attempt to oppose him.      5   
  Altogether Mihailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, as it were hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to know him better; and they were glad when the sittings were over, and they were left with a magnificent portrait in their possession, and he gave up coming. Golenishtchev was the first to give expression to an idea that had occurred to all of them, which was that Mihailov was simply jealous of Vronsky.      6   
  ‘Not envious, let us say, since he has talent; but it annoys him that a wealthy man of the highest society, and a count, too (you know they all detest a title), can, without any particular trouble, do as well, if not better, than he who has devoted all his life to it. And more than all, it’s a question of culture, which he is without.’      7   
  Vronsky defended Mihailov, but at the bottom of his heart he believed it, because in his view a man of a different, lower world would be sure to be envious.      8   
  Anna’s portrait—the same subject painted from nature both by him and by Mihailov—ought to have shown Vronsky the difference between him and Mihailov; but he did not see it. Only after Mihailov’s portrait was painted he left off painting his portrait of Anna, deciding that it was now not needed. His picture of mediæval life he went on with. And he himself, and Golenishtchev, and still more Anna, thought it very good, because it was far more like the celebrated pictures they knew than Mihailov’s picture.      9   
  Mihailov meanwhile, although Anna’s portrait greatly fascinated him, was even more glad than they were when the sittings were over, and he had no longer to listen to Golenishtchev’s disquisitions upon art, and could forget about Vronsky’s painting. He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and began caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.     10   
  Vronsky’s interest in painting and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had enough taste for painting to be unable to finish his picture. The picture came to a standstill. He was vaguely aware that its defects, inconspicuous at first, would be glaring if he were to go on with it. The same experience befell him as Golenishtchev, who felt that he had nothing to say, and continually deceived himself with the theory that his idea was not yet mature, that he was working it out and collecting materials. This exasperated and tortured Golenishtchev, but Vronsky was incapable of deceiving and torturing himself, and even more incapable of exasperation. With his characteristic decision, without explanation or apology, he simply ceased working at painting.     11   
  But without this occupation, the life of Vronsky and of Anna, who wondered at his loss of interest in it, struck them as intolerably tedious in an Italian town. The palazzo suddenly seemed so obtrusively old and dirty, the spots on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the broken plaster on the cornices became so disagreeably obvious, and the everlasting sameness of Golenishtchev, and the Italian professor and the German traveller became so wearisome, that they had to make some change. They resolved to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg Vronsky intended to arrange a partition of the land with his brother, while Anna meant to see her son. The summer they intended to spend on Vronsky’s great family estate.

   
Part V   
Chapter XIV   
     
LEVIN had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for and instant to forget where one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult.      1   
  As a bachelor, when he had watched other people’s married life, seen the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary importance that it was useless to contend against. And Levin saw that the organisation of all these details was by no means so easy as he had fancied before. Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured domestic life as the happy enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as he conceived the position, to do his work, and to find repose from it in the happiness of love. She ought to be beloved, and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot that she too would want work. And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite Kitty, could not merely in the first weeks, but even in the first days of their married life, think, remember, and busy herself about tablecloths, and furniture, about mattresses for visitors, about a tray, about the cook, and the dinner, and so on. While they were still engaged, he had been struck by the definiteness with which she had declined the tour abroad and decided to go into the country, as though she knew of something she wanted, and could still think of something outside her love. This had jarred upon him then, and now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him several times. But he saw that this was essential for her. And, loving her as he did, though he did not understand the reason of them, and jeered at these domestic pursuits, he could not help admiring them. He jeered at the way in which she arranged the furniture they had brought from Moscow; rearranged their room; hung up curtains; prepared rooms for visitors; a room for Dolly; saw after an abode for her new maid; ordered dinner of the old cook; came into collision with Agafea Mihalovna, taking from her the charge of the stores. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring her, and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders, how mournfully and tenderly Agafea Mihalovna shook her head over the young mistress’s new arrangements. He saw that Kitty was extraordinarily sweet when, laughing and crying, she came to tell him that her maid, Masha, was used to looking upon her as her young lady, and so no one obeyed her. It seemed to him sweet, but strange, and he thought it would have been better without this.      2   
  He did not know how great a sense of change she was experiencing: she, who at home had sometimes wanted some favourite dish, or sweets, without the possibility of getting either, now could order what she liked, buy pounds of sweets, spend as much money as she liked, and order any puddings she pleased.      3   
  She was dreaming with delight now of Dolly’s coming to them with her children, especially because she would order for the children their favourite puddings, and Dolly would appreciate all her new housekeeping. She did not know herself why and wherefore, but the arranging of her house had an irresistible attraction for her. Instinctively feeling the approach of spring, and knowing that there would be days of rough weather too, she built her nest as best she could, and was in haste at the same time to build it and to learn how to do it.      4   
  This care for domestic details in Kitty, so opposed to Levin’s ideal of exalted happiness, was at first one of the disappointments; and this sweet care of her household, the aim of which he did not understand, but could not help loving, was one of the new happy surprises.      5   
  Another disappointment and happy surprise came in their quarrels. Levin could never have conceived that between him and his wife any relations could arise other than tender, respectful, and loving, and all at once in the very early days they quarrelled, so that she said he did not care for her, that he cared for no one but himself, burst into tears, and wrung her hands.      6   
  This first quarrel arose from Levin’s having gone out to a new farmhouse and having been away half an hour too long, because he had tried to get home by a short cut and had lost his way. He drove home thinking of nothing but her, of her love, of his own happiness, and the nearer he drew to home, the warmer was his tenderness for her. He ran into the room with the same feeling, with an even stronger feeling, than he had had when he reached the Shtcherbatskys’ house to make his offer. And suddenly he was met by a lowering expression he had never seen in her. He would have kissed her; she pushed him away.      7   
  ‘What is it?’      8   
  ‘You’ve been enjoying yourself,’ she began, trying to be calm and spiteful. But as soon as she opened her mouth, a stream of reproach, of senseless jealousy, of all that had been torturing her during that half-hour which she had spent sitting motionless at the window, burst from her. It was only then, for the first time, that he clearly understood what he had not understood when he led her out of the church after the wedding. He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. He felt this from the agonising sensation of division that he experienced at that instant. He was offended for the first instant, but the very same second he felt that he could not be offended by her, that she was himself. He felt for the first moment as a man feels when, having suddenly received a violent blow from behind, turns round, angry and eager to avenge himself, to look for his antagonist, and finds that it is he himself who has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry with, and that he must put up with and try to soothe the pain.      9   
  Never afterwards did he feel it with such intensity, but this first time he could not for a long while get over it. His natural feeling urged him to defend himself, to prove to her she was wrong; but to prove her wrong would mean irritating her still more and making the rupture greater that was the cause of all his suffering. One habitual feeling impelled him to get rid of the blame and to pass it on to her. Another feeling, even stronger, impelled him as quickly as possible to smooth over the rupture without letting it grow greater. To remain under such undeserved reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by justifying himself was worse still. Like a man half-awake in an agony of pain, he wanted to tear out, to fling away the aching place, and coming to his senses, he felt that the aching place was himself. He could do nothing but try to help the aching place to bear it, and this he tried to do.     10   
  They made peace. She, recognising that she was wrong, though she did not say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new, redoubled happiness in their love. But that did not prevent such quarrels from happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the most unexpected and trivial grounds. These quarrels frequently arose from the fact that they did not yet know what was of importance to each other, and that all this early period they were both often in a bad temper. When one was in a good temper, and the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken; but when both happened to be in an ill-humour, quarrels sprang up from such incomprehensibly trifling causes, that they could never remember afterwards what they had quarreled about. It is true that when they both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was redoubled. But still this first period of their married life was a difficult time for them.     11   
  During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of tension, as it were a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by which they were bound. Altogether their honeymoon—that is to say, the month after their wedding—from which from tradition Levin expected so much, was not merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the bitterest and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike tried in later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite themselves.     12   
  It was only in the third month of their married life, after their return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their life began to go more smoothly.