I

1

All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.¹

The Oblonsky home was all confusion. The wife had found out about her husband’s affair with the French governess formerly in their home and had informed her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This had been the state of affairs for three days now, and it was keenly felt not only by the spouses themselves but by all the members of the family and the servants as well. All the members of the family and the servants felt that there was no sense in their living together and that travelers chancing to meet in any inn had more in common than did they, the Oblonsky family members and servants. The wife would not leave her rooms, and the husband had not stayed home for three days. The children raced through the house like lost souls; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper and wrote a note to a friend asking to find her a new position; the cook had walked off the premises the day before, during the midday meal; the scullery maid and the coachman had given notice.²

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky—or Stiva, as he was called in society—awoke at his usual hour, that is, at eight o’clock in the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom but in his study, on his morocco sofa.³ He rolled his plump, pampered body over on the sofa springs, as if hoping to fall back into a long sleep, while vigorously hugging the pillow tight and pressing it to his cheek; but then he jumped up, sat on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

“Ah yes, now how did that go?” he thought, trying to recall his dream. “Ah yes, how did that go? Yes! Alabin was giving a dinner in Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, something American. Yes, but then Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, yes—and the tables were singing Il mio tesoro—no, not Il mio tesoro, something even better, and there were tiny decanters, and they were women, too,” he recalled.⁴

Stepan Arkadyevich’s eyes twinkled, and he lapsed into reverie, smiling. “Yes, that was fine, very fine. And there were so many more excellent things to it, even awake you could never put it all into words and ideas.” Noticing the strip of light coming through alongside one of the curtains, he gaily swung his legs off the sofa and felt with his feet for the slippers his wife had embroidered on gold morocco (a gift for his birthday last year), and out of old habit of nine years, still seated, he reached for where his dressing gown hung in the bedroom. Only then did he suddenly remember how and why he came to be sleeping not in his wife’s bedroom but in his study. The smile vanished from his face, and his brow furrowed.

“Oh, oh! Oh!” he groaned, recalling all that had transpired. His mind called up once again each and every detail of the quarrel with his wife, the full desperation of his position, and most agonizing of all, his own guilt.

“No, she will never—can never—forgive me. And what is even more horrible is that it is all my fault—all my fault, yet I am not to blame. That is the whole tragedy,” he thought. “Oh, oh!” he moaned in despair as he recalled the impressions from this quarrel that were the hardest to bear.

Most unpleasant of all was that first moment when, returned from the theater, cheerful and content, carrying an enormous pear for his wife, he failed to find his wife in the drawing room; to his surprise, he did not find her in her sitting room, either, but at last did see her in her bedroom holding the unlucky note, which revealed all.

She, Dolly, in his eyes a fretful, fussy, and far from bright woman, was sitting perfectly still, clutching the note, and giving him a look of horror, despair, and anger.⁵

“What is this? This?” she asked, pointing to the note.

And at that memory, as often happens, what pained Stepan Arkadyevich most was not so much the event itself as how he had responded to these words of his wife.

In that moment something happened to him that tends to happen to people caught out in something that is altogether too shameful. He had no time to prepare his face for the position in which he now stood before his wife upon the discovery of his guilt. Instead of taking offense, disavowing it, justifying himself, begging forgiveness, even feigning indifference—anything would have been better than what he did do!—his face, quite involuntarily (“the reflexes of the brain,” thought Stepan Arkadyevich, who was fond of physiology), suddenly, and quite involuntarily, broke into his usual good-natured, and thus foolish, smile.⁶

That foolish smile he could not forgive himself. When she saw this smile, Dolly shuddered, as though from physical pain, and with her characteristic temper unleashed a torrent of harsh words and ran from the room. She had refused to see her husband ever since.

“That foolish smile of mine is to blame for everything,” thought Stepan Arkadyevich.

“What am I to do, though? What am I to do?” he mumbled to himself in despair, but found no answer.

2

Stepan Arkadyevich was always truthful with himself. He was incapable of lying, of persuading himself that he repented of his deed. He could not now repent that he, a handsome, amorous man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, who was only a year younger than he. He repented only that he had not done a better job of concealing this fact from his wife. Nonetheless, he was sensible of the full gravity of his position and felt sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Perhaps he could have done a better job of concealing his sins from his wife if he had anticipated this news affecting her in this way. Clearly he had never thought the matter through, but he had vaguely imagined that his wife had suspected long ago that he was unfaithful to her and that she was simply turning a blind eye. It had even seemed to him that she, a worn-out, aging, no longer beautiful woman who was in no way remarkable, the simple, merely good-natured mother of his family, ought to have indulged him, simply out of a sense of fairness. It had turned out just the opposite.

“Oh, it’s awful! Oh, my! Simply awful!” Stepan Arkadyevich repeated over and over to himself, but he could conceive of no remedy. “And how fine everything was before this, how well we lived! She was content and happy with the children, and I never interfered in the slightest way, I left her to manage the children and the household as she pleased. True, it was not good that she had been a governess in our own house. Not good at all! There is something common, vulgar even, about making love to one’s own governess. But what a governess! (He enthusiastically recalled Mademoiselle Roland’s mischievous black eyes, and her smile.) It is true, though, that as long as she was in our house, I never took any liberties. Worst of all, she’s already … You’d think it was all on purpose! Oh my, oh my! But what, what am I to do?”

There was no answer other than the general answer that life offers to all the most complicated and insoluble problems. That answer is that one must live for, that is, lose oneself in, the demands of the day. He could not lose himself in sleep now, or at least not until the night, and he could not return to the music sung by the decanter-women; consequently, he would have to lose himself in the dream of life.

“Then we shall see,” Stepan Arkadyevich told himself, and rising, he put on his gray dressing gown with the blue silk lining and tied the tassels in a knot, filling his broad chest with air. His turned-out feet bore his plump body as effortlessly and confidently as ever to the window; he raised the blind and rang loudly. At his ring, his old friend and valet Matvei entered, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a telegram. The barber followed Matvei in with his shaving kit.

“Any papers from the office?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich, picking up the telegram and seating himself at the mirror.

“On the table,” replied Matvei, looking solicitously at his master, and after a brief pause, added with a cunning smile: “They’ve come from the stable owner.”

Stepan Arkadyevich said nothing in reply, only glanced at Matvei in the mirror, but from the glance in which their eyes met in the mirror it was obvious how well they understood each other. Stepan Arkadyevich’s glance seemed to ask: “Why are you saying this? Don’t you know?”

Matvei put his hands in his jacket pockets, drew one foot to the side, and regarded his master silently and good-naturedly, barely smiling.

“I told them to come this Sunday and not to disturb you or themselves for no reason before then.” It was a statement he had evidently prepared in advance.

Stepan Arkadyevich realized that Matvei was trying to be funny and attract attention. Ripping open the telegram, he read it, trying to piece together the typically garbled words, and his face brightened.

“Matvei, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow,” he said, momentarily halting the sleek, plump hand of the barber, who had cleared a pink pathway between his long, curly whiskers.

“Praise God,” said Matvei, showing by this response that, like his master, he appreciated the significance of this arrival, that is, that Anna Arkadyevna, Stepan Arkadyevich’s beloved sister, might be able to effect a reconciliation between husband and wife.

“Alone or with her husband?” inquired Matvei.

Stepan Arkadyevich could not say because the barber was working on his upper lip, so he raised one finger. Matvei nodded into the mirror.

“Alone. Ready the room upstairs?”

“Inform Darya Alexandrovna. Wherever she instructs.”

“Darya Alexandrovna?” Matvei echoed, as if dubious.

“Yes, inform her. And here, take the telegram, give it to her, and do as she says.”

“You mean to give it a try,” Matvei thought, but he said only: “Yes, sir.”

Stepan Arkadyevich was already washed and combed and was preparing to dress when Matvei, stepping slowly in his creaky boots, returned to the room with telegram in hand. The barber had left.

“Darya Alexandrovna instructed me to inform you that she is going away. ‘He’—that is, you—‘may do whatever he pleases,’” he said, laughing only with his eyes, and putting his hands in his pockets and cocking his head to one side, he fixed his eyes on his master.

Stepan Arkadyevich did not respond immediately. Then a good-natured and rather pathetic smile appeared on his handsome face.

“Eh, Matvei?” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s all right, sir, things will shapify,” said Matvei.

“Shapify?”

“I’m certain of it, sir.”

“You think so? Who’s there?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich, hearing the rustle of a woman’s dress outside his door.

“It’s me, sir,” said a woman’s firm and pleasant voice, and from behind the door poked the stern, pockmarked face of Matryona Filimonovna, the nurse.

“Well, what is it, Matryona?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich, walking toward her.

Even though Stepan Arkadyevich was wholly to blame before his wife and was himself sensible of that fact, nearly everyone in the household, even the nurse, Darya Alexandrovna’s principal ally, was on his side.

“Well, what is it?” he said dolefully.

“You must go to her, sir, and apologize again. Perhaps God will see to it. She’s in agony, it’s a real shame to look at her, and you know very well the whole household is a shambles. You must take pity on the children, sir. Apologize, sir. What can you do! It’s time to pay the piper.”

“But she won’t see me.”

“You have to do your part. God is merciful, pray to God, sir, pray to God.”

“All right, run along then,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, suddenly blushing. “Well, let’s get dressed, shall we?” he said to Matvei, and he flung off his dressing gown.

Matvei, puffing at an invisible speck, was already holding the readied shirt like a horse collar, and with obvious satisfaction he slipped it over his master’s pampered body.

3

Once dressed, Stepan Arkadyevich sprayed himself with eau de cologne, tugged at the sleeves of his shirt, and in an accustomed gesture deposited his cigarettes, wallet, matches, and watch with the double chain and seals into his various pockets, gave his handkerchief a quick snap, and feeling clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically cheerful, despite his misfortune, and with a slight spring in his step, went into the dining room, where waiting for him was his coffee and, next to the coffee, the letters and papers from his office.

Stepan Arkadyevich sat down and read the letters. One was quite unpleasant—from the merchant who was buying a wood on his wife’s estate. The wood had to be sold; but now, until he and his wife were reconciled, there could be no question of this. Even more unpleasant here was the fact that this interjected his financial interest in the pending transaction into the reconciliation with his wife. The thought that he might be guided by this interest, that for the sake of selling this wood he might seek a reconciliation with his wife—the very idea was offensive.

When he had finished with the letters, Stepan Arkadyevich drew the papers from his office closer, read rapidly through two files, made several comments with a large pencil, and pushing the files aside, began drinking his coffee; over his coffee he unfolded the still damp morning newspaper and began to read it.

Stepan Arkadyevich took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science nor art nor politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him.

Stepan Arkadyevich had chosen neither his own viewpoint nor his own opinions; rather these viewpoints and opinions came to him on their own, just as he did not choose the style of his hat or coat but chose those which were being worn. For him, living as he did in a certain society, and given his need for some mental activity, such as develops ordinarily in one’s mature years, possessing opinions was just as essential to him as possessing a hat. If he had any reason for preferring the liberal to the conservative viewpoint, to which many others of his circle held, then that happened not because he found the liberal viewpoint more sensible but because it was a better fit with his way of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything was bad, and indeed, Stepan Arkadyevich did have many debts, and money was decidedly in short supply. The liberal party said that marriage was an outmoded institution in need of restructuring, and indeed, family life afforded Stepan Arkadyevich little pleasure and forced him into lies and hypocrisy, which were so repellent to his nature. The liberal party said, or, rather, implied, that religion was merely a check on the barbarous segment of the populace, and indeed, Stepan Arkadyevich could not stand through even a short service without his legs aching, and he failed to comprehend what purpose all those terrifying high-flown words about the other world served when it could be so very cheerful to live in this one. At the same time, Stepan Arkadyevich, who loved a good joke, occasionally enjoyed confounding a humble soul by pointing out that if one was going to take pride in one’s lineage, one should not stop at Rurik and deny our very first ancestor—the ape.⁷ And so this liberal viewpoint had become habit for Stepan Arkadyevich, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the light haze it produced in his head. He read the lead article, which explained that in our day it was utterly pointless to raise a hue and cry about radicalism supposedly threatening to swallow up all conservative elements and the government supposedly being obliged to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra, that quite to the contrary: “In our opinion, the danger lies not in any imaginary revolutionary hydra but in hide-bound tradition, which impedes progress,” etc. He read another article, too, a financial article that alluded to Bentham and Mill and made some insinuations about the ministry.⁸ With his characteristic quick mind, he caught the implications of each and every insinuation: by whom, at whom, and on what occasion it had been aimed, and this, as always, afforded him a certain satisfaction. Today, however, this satisfaction was poisoned by the memory of Matryona Filimonovna’s advice and by the fact that his household was in such a bad way. He also read about Count Beust, who was rumored to have traveled to Wiesbaden, and about the fact that gray hair was a thing of the past, and about the sale of a light carriage, and about a certain young person seeking a position; however this information did not afford him his usual understated, ironical satisfaction.⁹

Having finished his newspaper, his second cup of coffee, and his buttered roll, he stood up, brushed the crumbs off his waistcoat, and squaring his broad chest, smiled radiantly, though not because he had anything particularly pleasant in his heart—his radiant smile was evoked by his excellent digestion.

This radiant smile immediately reminded him of everything, though, and he lapsed into thought.

Two children’s voices (Stepan Arkadyevich recognized the voices of Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) could be heard outside his doors. They had been pulling something that had tipped over.

“I told you not to put passengers on the roof!” the girl scolded him in English. “Now pick them up!”

“All confusion,” thought Stepan Arkadyevich. “There the children go racing about unsupervised.” He went to the door and called to them. They abandoned the box that had been serving as a train and went to their father.

The girl, her father’s pet, ran up boldly, threw her arms around him, and dangled from his neck, laughing, as always, and reveling in the familiar scent of cologne that came from his whiskers. Kissing him, finally, on his face, which was flushed from his bent posture and which beamed with tenderness, the girl let go and tried to run off, but her father detained her.

“How is Mama?” he asked, passing his hand over his daughter’s soft, smooth neck. “Hello there,” he said, smiling at the little boy’s greeting.

He was conscious of loving the boy less and so always endeavored to be evenhanded, but the boy sensed this and did not respond to his father’s cold smile with a smile of his own.

“Mama? She’s up,” replied the girl.

Stepan Arkadyevich sighed. “Which means she didn’t sleep again all night,” he thought.

“Well, is she cheerful?”

The little girl knew that there had been a quarrel between her father and mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father must know this, and that he was pretending, inquiring about this so lightly. She blushed for her father. He realized this straightaway and blushed as well.

“I don’t know,” she said. “She didn’t tell us to study our lessons, but she did tell us to take a walk with Miss Hull to Grandmama’s.”

“Well then, run along, my little Tanya. Oh yes, just a moment,” he said, detaining her nonetheless and stroking her soft little hand.

He took a box of candies from the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, and gave her two, selecting her favorites, a chocolate and a fondant.

“For Grisha?” said the girl, pointing to the chocolate.

“Yes, yes.” And stroking her little shoulder one more time, he kissed the roots of her hair and her nape and let her go.

“Your carriage is ready,” said Matvei. “And there is a lady petitioner,” he added.

“Has she been here long?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich.

“About half an hour.”

“How many times have I instructed you to inform me at once!”

“I had to let you finish your coffee,” said Matvei in that amiably gruff tone at which it was impossible to be angry.

“Well, show her in quickly,” said Oblonsky, frowning with annoyance.

The petitioner, the widow of Staff Captain Kalinin, was asking for something not only impossible but incoherent; nonetheless, Stepan Arkadyevich, as was his custom, had her sit down and paid close attention to all she had to say, without interrupting, and then gave her detailed advice about whom she should apply to and how, and readily and coherently even dashed off a note for her in his handsome, sprawling, and precise hand to someone who might be of assistance. After dismissing the captain’s widow, Stepan Arkadyevich picked up his hat and stopped to think whether he had forgotten anything. It turned out that he had forgotten nothing except the one thing he would have liked to forget—his wife.

“Ah, yes!” He bowed his head, and a miserable expression came over his handsome face. “Should I go or not?” he said to himself. An inner voice told him that there was no point in going, that this could only mean hypocrisy, that fixing, mending their relations was impossible because it was impossible to make her attractive and desirable once more or to make him an old man incapable of love. Other than hypocrisy and lies, nothing could come of it now; and hypocrisy and lies were repellent to his nature.

“But I have to do it sometime; after all, things cannot go on as they are,” he said, trying to bolster his courage. He squared his chest, took out a cigarette, lit it, took two puffs, dropped it into a mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with quick steps passed through the dark drawing room and opened the other door, to his wife’s bedroom.

4

Darya Alexandrovna, wearing a bed jacket and with the braids of her now thin but once thick and magnificent hair pinned to the nape of her neck, and with a pinched face so gaunt as to make her large, frightened eyes start out, was standing in front of an open chest of drawers amid items of clothing strewn about the room, from which she was trying to choose. When she heard her husband’s footsteps, she stopped, looked toward the door, and attempted in vain to give her face a stern and scornful expression. She sensed that she was afraid of him and afraid of the impending interview. She had just been attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times these past three days: make a selection of the children’s things and her own to take to her mother’s—and once again she had not been able to bring herself to do it; even now, as on previous occasions, she kept telling herself that things could not go on this way, that she had to undertake something, punish him, put him to shame, take revenge for at least a small portion of the pain he had caused her. She was still telling herself she would leave him, but sensed that this was impossible; impossible because she could not break herself of the habit of considering him her husband and loving him. Besides, she sensed that if here, in her own home, she was barely managing to look after her five children, then it would be all the worse for them wherever she might go with them all. Just in the past three days, the youngest had taken ill after being fed spoiled broth, and the rest had almost gone without their dinner yesterday. She sensed that leaving was impossible, but in an attempt to deceive herself, she kept selecting things and pretending she would leave.

When she saw her husband, she put her hands in a dresser drawer, as if searching for something, and looked around at him only when he was standing right next to her. But her face, which she had wanted to give a stern and determined expression, expressed just how lost she felt and how she had suffered.

“Dolly!” he said in a quiet, timid voice. He drew his head into his shoulders and tried to look pathetic and meek, but he exuded freshness and health.

With a quick glance she surveyed from head to foot this figure which radiated so much freshness and health. “Yes, he is happy and content!” she thought, “while I? … And this repulsive good nature that makes everyone love and praise him so: I detest this good nature of his,” she thought. Her mouth pursed, and a muscle in her cheek twitched on the right side of her pale, nervous face.

“What do you want?” she said in a brisk, husky voice unlike her own.

“Dolly!” he repeated with a quiver in his voice. “Anna is arriving today.”

“So, and what is that to me? I can’t see her!” she cried.

“But you must, still, Dolly …”

“Get out, get out. Get out!” she cried, not looking at him, as if this cry had been provoked by physical pain.

Stepan Arkadyevich could be perfectly calm when he thought of his wife, he could hope that everything would shapify, as Matvei put it, and he could go calmly about reading his newspaper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her agonized, exhausted face, heard this sound of her voice, resigned to fate and desperate, it took his breath away, a lump rose in his throat, and his eyes glittered with tears.

“My God, what have I done! Dolly! For the love of God! After all …” But he could not continue for the sobs which caught in his throat.

She slammed the drawer shut and looked at him.

“Dolly, what can I say? Just one thing: forgive me, forgive me. Think back. Can’t nine years of life redeem a moment, a moment …”

She lowered her eyes and listened, waiting for what he would say, as if imploring him, somehow, to dissuade her.

“A moment … a moment of passion …” he began and would have continued, but at that word, as if from physical pain, she again pursed her lips and the muscle in her right cheek again twitched.

“Get out! Get out of here!” she cried even more shrilly. “And don’t talk to me about your passions and your abominations!”

She meant to walk out, but she tottered and grabbed onto the back of a chair to steady herself. His face went slack, his lips puffed out, and his eyes filled with tears.

“Dolly!” he said, sobbing now. “For the love of God, think of the children, they aren’t to blame. I’m to blame, so punish me, order me to redeem my guilt. Whatever I can do, I’m prepared to do anything! I’m to blame, words cannot say how much I’m to blame! But Dolly, forgive me!”

She sat down. He listened to her hard, labored breathing, and he felt inexpressibly sorry for her. Several times she attempted to speak but couldn’t. He waited.

“You think about the children when it comes time to play with them, but I think about them and know that they are done for,” she said, this being evidently one of the sentences she had repeated to herself more than once over the past three days.

She had used the familiar “you” with him, and he gave her a look of gratitude and would have taken her hand, but she shrank back in revulsion.¹⁰

“I think about the children and therefore would do anything in the world to save them; but I myself don’t know how to save them: whether by taking them away from their father or by leaving them with a depraved father—yes, a depraved father. Well, you tell me, after what … after what has happened, can we go on living together? Is that possible? Tell me, is that possible?” she repeated, raising her voice. “After my husband, the father of my children, has taken his own children’s governess as his mistress?”

“But what am I to do? What am I to do?” he said in a pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, his head dropping lower and lower.

“I find you repulsive, revolting!” she cried, now more and more heatedly. “Your tears are water! You never loved me; you have neither heart nor honor! You are vile to me, repulsive, a stranger—yes, a stranger!” It was with pain and hatred that she uttered this word which so horrified her: “stranger.”

He looked at her, and the rage expressed in her eyes frightened and shocked him. He had no idea how much his pity infuriated her. She saw sympathy for herself in him, but not love. “No, she despises me. She will never forgive me,” he thought.

“This is awful! Awful!” he said.

At that moment, in another room, a child cried out, most likely having fallen; Darya Alexandrovna listened closely, and all at once her face softened.

It evidently took her several seconds to pull herself together, as if she did not know where she was or what she was to do, but then rising quickly, she moved toward the door.

“She does love my child,” he thought, noticing the alteration in her face at the child’s cry. “My child. How then could she hate me?”

“Dolly, one more word,” he said, following her.

“If you follow me I’ll call the servants and the children! I’ll let everyone know what a scoundrel you are! I’m going away presently, and you may live here with your mistress!”

And she walked out, slamming the door.

Stepan Arkadyevich heaved a sigh, wiped his face, and with quiet steps walked out of the room. “Matvei says everything will shapify, but how? I don’t see even a possibility. Oh, oh, what horror! And how vulgarly she shouted,” he told himself, recalling her cry and her words: “scoundrel” and “mistress.” “The maids might well have heard! Horribly vulgar. Horribly!” Stepan Arkadyevich stood there alone for several seconds, wiped his eyes, sighed, and squaring his chest, left the room.

It was Friday, and the German clockmaker was winding the clock in the dining room. Stepan Arkadyevich recalled his own joke about this punctual, bald clockmaker, that the German “had been wound up to wind clocks his whole life,” and he smiled. Stepan Arkadyevich liked a good joke. “And perhaps things will shapify! A fine turn of phrase: shapify,” he thought. “I must repeat that one.”

“Matvei!” he shouted. “You and Marya get everything ready in the sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna,” he said when Matvei appeared.

“Yes, sir.”

Stepan Arkadyevich put on his fur coat and went out on the front steps.

“You won’t be dining at home?” asked Matvei, seeing him out.

“That depends. Here, take this for housekeeping,” he said, giving him ten rubles from his wallet. “Will that suffice?”

“Whether it will or no, evidently we’ll have to make do,” said Matvei, shutting the door and climbing back up the steps.

Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile had calmed the child, and realizing from the sound of the carriage door that her husband had left, she returned to her bedroom. This was her sole refuge from the domestic cares that besieged her the moment she emerged. Even now, in the brief time she had gone out to the nursery, the English governess and Matryona Filimonovna had managed to put several questions to her that would not suffer delay and to which she alone could respond: What shall I have the children wear for their walk? Shall I give them milk? Shouldn’t I send for another cook?

“Oh, leave me. Leave me alone!” she said, and returning to her bedroom she sat back down exactly where she had spoken with her husband, and wringing her hands, so thin her rings slipped down her bony fingers, she began going over their entire conversation in her mind. “He’s gone! But has he ended it with her?” she thought. “Can he be seeing her still? Why didn’t I ask him? No, no, we cannot reconcile. And if we do remain in the same house—we will be strangers. Strangers for all time!” she repeated, with special emphasis on this word she found so terrible. “And how I loved him, my God, how I loved him! How I loved him! And now, have I truly ceased to love him? Don’t I love him more now than ever? Most terrible of all …” She began but did not complete her thought because Matryona Filimonovna poked her head in at the door.

“You’ll want me to send for my brother,” she said. “He can get dinner ready. Or it will be like yesterday and six o’clock before the children eat.”

“All right then, I’ll come out presently and give instructions. Have you sent for fresh milk?”

So Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the cares of the day and drowned her grief in them for a time.

5

In school, Stepan Arkadyevich had been a good student thanks to his fine abilities, but he was lazy and naughty and so had come out among the last. But in spite of his always dissolute life, though, as well as his inferior rank and his relative youth, he held an esteemed position with a good salary as an official in a Moscow office. He had obtained this position through the husband of his sister Anna, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, who held one of the most important positions in the ministry to which the office belonged; however, had Karenin not got his wife’s brother this position, Stiva Oblonsky, through any of a hundred other people—brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts—would have obtained this position or another just like it and the six thousand in salary he needed, since his affairs, despite his wife’s substantial property, were in disarray.

Half of Moscow and Petersburg were family or friends of Stepan Arkadyevich. He was born among those people who were and are the powerful of this world. One third of the men of state, the older men, had been friends of his father and had known him in a gown; another third were on familiar terms with him; and the third third were close acquaintances; consequently, the dispensers of earthly goods in the form of positions, rents, concessions, and the like were all his friends and could not have overlooked one of their own. Oblonsky did not have to make any special effort to obtain a lucrative post; he needed only not to refuse, envy, quarrel, or take offense, something he, due to his inherent good nature, could never have done. He would have thought it ridiculous had he been told he would not get a position with the salary he required, particularly since he had not demanded anything excessive; all he wanted was to be given what his peers had been given, and he was no less capable of filling a post of this type than anyone else.

Stepan Arkadyevich was loved by all who knew him not only for his good and cheerful temperament and unquestioned honesty but also because in him, in his handsome, fair appearance, shining eyes, black brows and hair, in the whiteness of his face and the pink of his cheeks, there was something that had a friendly and cheerful physical effect on the people who came into contact with him. “Aha! Stiva! Oblonsky! Here he is!” was what people almost always said with a delighted smile whenever they met him. If it also happened occasionally that after a conversation with him it turned out that nothing particularly delightful had occurred, still the next day, or the day after that, everyone delighted in precisely the same way again at meeting him.

In the more than two years since he had taken up his post as head of one of the offices in Moscow, Stepan Arkadyevich had gained, in addition to their love, the respect of his colleagues, subordinates, superiors, and everyone who had business with him. The principal qualities of Stepan Arkadyevich which had earned him this general respect in service were, first, his extraordinary indulgence toward people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, his perfect liberalism, not the kind he read about in the newspapers but the kind that was in his blood and that made him treat all men perfectly equally and identically, regardless of their estate or calling; and third—and this was the most important—his perfect disinterest in the business at hand, as a consequence of which he never got carried away or made mistakes.

Upon arriving at his place of service, Stepan Arkadyevich, escorted by the deferential hall porter carrying his briefcase, walked into his small private office, put on his uniform coat, and walked into the central room. The clerks and attendants all rose, bowing cheerfully and deferentially. Stepan Arkadyevich walked quickly to his seat, as always, shook his colleagues’ hands, and sat down. He joked and chatted exactly as much as was polite, and then the work began. No one knew better than Stepan Arkadyevich where the line ran between freedom, simplicity, and the official tone required for the pleasant conduct of his affairs. Cheerfully and deferentially, like everyone in Stepan Arkadyevich’s office, a secretary approached carrying the papers and spoke in the easy liberal tone that had been introduced by Stepan Arkadyevich.

“We have obtained information from the Penza provincial administration. Here, would it not do well—”

“Received at last?” said Stepan Arkadyevich, placing a finger on the paper. “Well then, gentlemen.” And so the business of the day began.

“If only they knew what a naughty boy their chairman was just half an hour ago!” he thought, tilting his head with a significant look as he listened to the report. His eyes laughed as the report was read. Business was supposed to continue until two o’clock without interruption, and at two o’clock there would be a break and lunch.

It was not yet two o’clock when the large glass doors of the office’s waiting room suddenly opened and someone walked in. All the officials under the portrait and behind the looking glass, delighted at the distraction, looked around at the door; however, the attendant standing by the door immediately chased out the intruder and closed the glass door behind him.¹¹

When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevich stood up, stretched, and giving the liberal tone of the day its due, took out a cigarette right there and went into his private office. Two of his colleagues, Nikitin, an old hand, and Chamberlain-Junker Grinevich, joined him.

“We should be able to finish up after lunch,” said Stepan Arkadyevich.

“Indeed we should!” said Nikitin.

“This Fomin must be a proper rogue,” said Grinevich about one of the individuals involved in the case they were examining.

Stepan Arkadyevich frowned at Grinevich’s words, in this way letting him feel that it was improper to form an opinion prematurely, and did not respond.

“Who was that who came in?” he asked the attendant.

“Someone slipped in without permission, Your Excellency, the moment I turned my back. He was asking for you. I said, ‘When the members come out, then—’”

“Where is he?”

“Maybe he went back to the front hall, but here he comes. That’s the one,” said the attendant, pointing to a strongly built, broad-shouldered man with a curly beard who was running up the worn steps of the stone staircase quickly and lightly, still wearing his sheepskin cap. One of the scrawny officials going downstairs with a portfolio stopped, looked with disapproval at the running man’s feet, and then shot a questioning glance at Oblonsky.

Stepan Arkadyevich was standing at the top of the stairs. His good-natured face, beaming above the embroidered collar of his uniform, beamed even more when he recognized who had run up.

“Why, here he is! Levin, at last!” he said with an amiable, amused smile as he surveyed Levin approaching. “How is it you did not disdain looking for me in this den?” said Stepan Arkadyevich, and not content with a handshake, he kissed his friend. “Have you been here long?”

“I only just arrived and I very much wanted to see you,” replied Levin shyly, at the same time looking around angrily and uneasily.

“Well, let’s go into my office,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, who knew his friend’s prideful and resentful shyness, and taking his arm, he pulled him along as if he were steering him through hazards.

Stepan Arkadyevich used the familiar “you” with nearly everyone he knew, from old men of sixty to boys of twenty, with actors, ministers, merchants, and adjutants general, so that very many of those who were on familiar terms with him were at the two extreme ends of the social ladder and would have been very surprised to learn they had something in common through Oblonsky. He was on familiar terms with everyone he drank Champagne with, and he drank Champagne with everyone, and therefore, in the presence of his subordinates, whenever he met up with his disreputable “familiars,” as he called many of his friends in jest, he could, with his characteristic tact, diminish the distastefulness of this impression for his subordinates. Levin was not a disreputable familiar, but Oblonsky, with his innate tact, sensed that Levin thought that in front of subordinates he might not wish to reveal their intimacy and so he swept him into his office.

Levin was practically the same age as Oblonsky and was on familiar terms with him not due to Champagne alone. Levin had been his friend and companion since their early youth. They loved each other, despite the difference in their characters and tastes, as only men who have been friends since early youth sometimes do. However, despite this, as often happens between men who have chosen different sorts of occupations, although each of them, in discussion, would defend the other’s occupation, in his heart of hearts he despised it. Each felt that the life he himself was leading was the only true life and that the life his friend was leading was but a phantom. Oblonsky could not refrain from a slight smile of amusement at the sight of Levin. Countless times he had seen him newly arrived in Moscow from the country, where he did something, but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevich had never been able to understand very well, not that he took any real interest. Levin always arrived in Moscow in a state of agitation and haste, the least bit embarrassed and irritated at this embarrassment and for the most part with an absolutely new and unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyevich both laughed at and liked this. In exactly the same way Levin in his heart of hearts despised his friend’s city way of life and his service, which he considered trivial, and laughed at it. The difference, however, was that in doing what everyone else did, Oblonsky laughed with confidence and good nature, whereas Levin laughed without confidence and at times in anger.

“We’ve long been expecting you,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, entering his office and dropping Levin’s arm, as if to demonstrate that there were no more hazards. “I’m very very glad to see you,” he continued. “Well, what have you been up to? How have you been? When did you arrive?”

Levin said nothing as he looked at the unfamiliar faces of Oblonsky’s two colleagues and in particular at the hand of the elegant Grinevich, with its slender and very white fingers, very long yellow nails that curved under at the tip, and very large shiny cuff links; for these hands were evidently consuming all his attention and would not allow him to think. Oblonsky noticed this at once and smiled.

“Ah yes, allow me to introduce you,” he said. “My colleagues: Filipp Ivanovich Nikitin and Mikhail Stanislavovich Grinevich”—and turning to Levin: “a member of the district council, a new zemstvo member, a gymnast who can lift five poods with one hand, a cattle breeder and a hunter, and my friend, Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin, the brother of Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev.”¹²

“A pleasure,” said the old man.

“I have the honor of being acquainted with your brother, Sergei Ivanovich,” said Grinevich, extending his slender hand with the long fingernails.

Levin frowned, shook the hand coldly, and turned immediately to Oblonsky. Although he had great respect for the man with whom he shared a mother, a writer known throughout Russia, he could not bear being addressed as the brother of the celebrated Koznyshev rather than as Konstantin Levin.

“No, I am no longer a district councilor. I quarreled with them all and no longer attend meetings,” he said, addressing Oblonsky.

“So quickly!” said Oblonsky with a smile. “But how did this happen? And why?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you someday,” said Levin, but he began telling him immediately. “Well, to make it short, I became convinced that there cannot be any proper business for a district council,” he began, as if someone had just insulted him. “On one hand, it’s a toy, they’re playing at parliament, but I’m not young enough, or old enough, to be entertained by toys. And on the other”—he stammered—“hand, it’s a way for the district coterie to add to their gains. In the past we had trustees and courts, and now we have the district council … not in the form of bribes, but in the form of an undeserved salary,” he said so heatedly you would have thought someone present was disputing his opinion.

“Oho! I can see you’re in a new phase again, a conservative phase,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “Though, later about this.”

“Yes, later. But I had to see you,” said Levin, staring with hatred at Grinevich’s hand.

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled barely perceptibly.

“What was that you said about never putting on European clothes again?” he said, surveying his friend’s new garment, obviously from a French tailor. “So! I see: a new phase.”

Levin suddenly blushed, not the way adults blush—lightly, himself unaware of it—but the way boys blush when they sense that they are ridiculous in their shyness, and as a consequence are even shyer and blush even more, nearly to the point of tears. So strange was it to see this intelligent, manly face in this childish state that Oblonsky stopped looking at it.

“Yes, where can we meet? You see I must, simply must speak with you,” said Levin.

Oblonsky appeared to ponder:

“Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go to Gurin’s for lunch and we can talk there. I’m free until three.”

“No,” answered Levin after considering it. “I need to go somewhere else first.”

“Fine, then, we’ll have dinner together.”

“Dinner? But you see I don’t have anything special, just a few words to say, to ask, and we can have a talk later.”

“So say your few words now, and we’ll have our conversation over dinner.”

“Here are my few words,” said Levin; “actually, it’s nothing special.”

His face suddenly took on an angry expression that stemmed from his effort to overcome his shyness.

“What are the Shcherbatskys doing? Is everything as it was?” he said.

Having known for a long time that Levin was in love with his sister-in-law, Kitty, Stepan Arkadyevich smiled barely perceptibly, and his eyes began to dance.¹³

“You said ‘a few words,’ but I can’t answer in a few words because … Excuse me for a minute.”

In came his secretary; with that accustomed deference and certain modest awareness, common to all secretaries, of his superiority to the official in his knowledge of matters, he walked up to Oblonsky with the papers and began explaining, in the guise of a question, a certain complication. Without hearing him out, Stepan Arkadyevich gently put his hand on the secretary’s sleeve.

“No, do it the way I told you,” he said, softening his remark with a smile, and after briefly explaining how he understood the case, pushed the papers away and said, “So do it that way, please. Please, that way, Zakhar Nikitich.”

The flustered secretary retreated. Having recovered fully from his embarrassment during the consultation with the secretary, Levin stood with both elbows resting on the chair, and on his face was a look of bemused attention.

“I don’t understand. I don’t,” he said.

“What don’t you understand?” said Oblonsky, smiling as gaily as ever and taking out a cigarette. He was expecting some strange outburst from Levin.

“I don’t understand what it is you do,” said Levin, shrugging. “How can you take this seriously?”

“Why ever not?”

“Well, because there’s nothing to it.”

“That’s what you think, but we’re flooded with work.”

“Paperwork. Well yes, you do have a gift for that,” added Levin.

“That is, you think I’m lacking in some way?”

“Maybe I do,” said Levin. “Still, I admire your grandeur and I’m proud to have such a great man for a friend. You haven’t answered my question, though,” he added making a desperate effort to look straight into Oblonsky’s eyes.

“Well, all right, all right. Just wait a bit and you’ll get to this, too. It’s wonderful the way you have three thousand desyatinas in Karazin District, and those muscles, and the freshness of a girl of twelve—but you’ll soon be joining us as well.¹⁴ Now, as to what you were asking about: there has been no change, but it’s a shame you’ve been away so long.”

“What’s happened?” Levin asked in fright.

“Oh, nothing,” replied Oblonsky. “We’ll talk. So why in fact have you come?”

“Oh, we can talk about that later as well,” said Levin, again blushing to his ears.

“Well, all right. I understand,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “You see how it is: I would invite you to my house, but my wife is not entirely well. Here’s the thing, though: if you want to see them, they’re more than likely at the Zoological Garden today, from four to five. Kitty is ice skating. You go there, and I’ll drive by for you, and then we’ll go somewhere together to dine.”

“Marvelous. Good-bye then.”

“Watch out, though. You see, I know you. You’ll forget all about it and suddenly go back to the country!” Stepan Arkadyevich called out, laughing.

“No, that’s certain.”

And not remembering until he was already in the doorway that he had forgotten to bow to Oblonsky’s companions, Levin left the office.

“He must be a very energetic gentleman,” said Grinevich when Levin had gone.

“Yes, old man,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, shaking his head, “there you see a lucky man! Three thousand desyatinas in Karazin District, everything ahead of him, and so much freshness! Not like our kind.”

“Why ever should you complain, Stepan Arkadyevich?”

“Yes, things are nasty, very bad,” said Stepan Arkadyevich with a heavy sigh.

6

When Oblonsky asked Levin why in fact he had come, Levin had blushed and raged at himself for blushing because he couldn’t say to him: “I’ve come to propose marriage to your sister-in-law,” though he had come for this and this alone.

The Levin and Shcherbatsky families were old, noble Moscow families and had always had close and friendly relations. This connection had become even stronger during Levin’s student years. He had prepared for and matriculated at the university with young Prince Shcherbatsky, Dolly and Kitty’s brother. In those days Levin was often a guest in the Shcherbatsky house, and he had fallen in love with the Shcherbatsky family. Strange though it may seem, it was the family that Konstantin Levin fell in love with, particularly the feminine half of it. Levin himself could not remember his own mother, and his only sister was older than he, so it was in the Shcherbatsky house that he saw for the first time the milieu of an old, noble, cultivated, and honorable family, the family he had been cheated of by the death of his father and mother. All the members of this family, especially the feminine half, seemed to him shrouded by a mysterious, poetic veil, and not only did he see no shortcomings in them whatsoever, but he inferred under this veil covering them the loftiest emotions and every conceivable perfection. Why exactly these three young ladies needed to speak French and English on alternate days; why they took turns at certain times playing the piano, whose sounds could always be heard in their brother’s room upstairs, where the students studied; why these teachers of French literature, music, drawing, and dancing came to the house; why at certain times all three young ladies went for a drive in the carriage with Mademoiselle Linon to Tverskaya Boulevard wearing their satin pelisses—Dolly a long, Natalie a midlength, and Kitty one so short that her shapely little legs in their tightly stretched red stockings were in full view; why, accompanied by a footman with a gold cockade in his hat, they had to walk down Tverskaya Boulevard—all this and much else that was done in their mysterious world he did not understand, but he knew that everything done there was wonderful, and he was in love specifically with the mysteriousness of what transpired.

During his student years he nearly fell in love with the eldest, Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began to fall in love with the second. It was as if he sensed that he needed to fall in love with one of the sisters, he simply could not figure out precisely which one. No sooner had she appeared in society, though, than Natalie, too, was married, to the diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin left the university. Young Shcherbatsky joined the navy and drowned in the Baltic Sea, and Levin’s dealings with the Shcherbatskys, despite his friendship with Oblonsky, became increasingly rare. However, when this year, early in the winter, Levin had come to Moscow after a year in the country and seen the Shcherbatskys, he had realized with which of the three he was indeed destined to fall in love.

One would think nothing could be simpler than for him, a man of good family, richer rather than poorer, thirty-two years old, to propose marriage to Princess Shcherbatskaya; there was every likelihood he would have been immediately deemed a good match. Except that Levin was in love, and therefore Kitty seemed to him perfection in every respect, a creature so far above all that was earthly—and he was just such an earthly and vile creature—that there could be no thought that others or indeed she herself might deem him worthy of her.

After spending two months in Moscow in a kind of daze, seeing Kitty nearly every day in society, where he went in order to meet her, Levin suddenly decided that this could never be and left for the country.

Levin’s conviction that this could never be was based on the fact that in his own eyes he was an undesirable, unworthy match for the lovely Kitty, and so Kitty could not possibly love him. In her family’s eyes he had no regular, definite career or position in society, whereas his companions, now that he was thirty-two years old, had already made something of themselves. One was a colonel and aide-de-camp, another a professor, yet another a respected bank and railroad director or president of a board, like Oblonsky; he, on the other hand (he knew very well what he must seem like to others) was a landowner busy with his cattle breeding, his snipe shooting, and his building projects, that is, a talentless fellow nothing ever had come of who, in society’s lights, was doing exactly what people do who never amount to anything.

The mysterious and lovely Kitty herself could not love someone as ugly as he felt himself to be and, above all, someone so ordinary, who had never distinguished himself in any way. Moreover, his previous attitude toward Kitty, the attitude of an adult toward a child, as a consequence of his friendship with her brother, seemed to him yet another barrier to love. A good but ugly man such as he considered himself to be might be loved as a friend, he thought, but to be loved with the same love he himself felt for Kitty he would have had to be a handsome and, most important, special man.

He had heard that women often do love ugly, ordinary men, but he did not believe this because he judged on his own example, since he himself could love only beautiful, mysterious, and special women.

After spending two months alone in the country, however, he was convinced that this was not one of those infatuations he had experienced as a young man; that this emotion had not given him a moment’s peace; that he could not live without resolving the issue of whether or not she would be his wife; and that his despair stemmed only from his imagination, that he had no proof whatsoever that he would be rejected. So he had come to Moscow now with the firm resolve to propose and to marry, if they would accept him. Or … He could not think what would become of him if he were rejected.

7

Levin had arrived in Moscow by the morning train and was staying with Koznyshev, his older brother on his mother’s side, and after changing clothes he went into his brother’s study, intending to tell him immediately why he had come and to ask his advice; however, his brother was not alone. Sitting in his study was a famous professor of philosophy who had come from Kharkov expressly to clarify a misunderstanding that had arisen between them on a philosophical problem of the utmost importance. The professor had been waging a heated polemic against the materialists, and Sergei Koznyshev had been following this polemic with interest, and after reading the professor’s latest article, he had written him a letter stating his own ideas; he had reproached the professor for excessive concessions to the materialists. So the professor had come immediately in order to talk this over. Under discussion was a fashionable question: is there a boundary between psychological and physiological phenomena in human action, and if so, where does it lie?

Sergei Ivanovich greeted his brother with the same kind but cool smile he had for everyone and, after introducing him to the professor, resumed the conversation.

The little yellow man with the spectacles and the narrow brow tore himself away from the discussion for a moment to exchange greetings with Levin and then resumed his speech, paying Levin no attention. Levin sat down to wait for the professor to leave, but he soon got caught up in the subject of their discussion.

Levin had encountered in journals the articles they were discussing, and he had read them, taking an interest in them as a development of the foundations of natural science with which he was familiar, having studied the natural sciences at the university, but he had never connected these scientific conclusions on the animal origins of man, on reflexes, on biology and sociology, to questions of the meaning of life and death for himself personally, questions that had been occurring to him more and more often of late.¹⁵

Listening to the discussion between his brother and the professor, he noticed that they were connecting scientific to spiritual questions, and several times they came very close to these questions, but each time, as soon as they came close to what seemed to him the crux of the matter, they retreated in haste and again delved into the sphere of subtle distinctions, qualifications, citations, allusions, and references to authorities, and he had a hard time understanding what they meant.

“I cannot allow,” said Sergei Ivanovich, with his usual clarity and precision of expression and his elegant diction, “I cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my entire concept of the external world derives from my sense impressions. The most fundamental concept of being has not come to me through sensation, for there is no special organ for conveying such a concept.”

“Yes, but Wurst, Knaust, and Pripasov, they would all tell you that your consciousness of being stems from the totality of your sensations, that this consciousness of being is the result of sensations.¹⁶ Wurst even says so outright, that if there is no sensation then there is no concept of being.”

“I would argue to the contrary,” began Sergei Ivanovich.

At this, however, Levin again thought that, having come close to the crux of the matter, they were again backing away, so he resolved to pose a question to the professor.

“If so, then, if my senses are destroyed, if my body dies, then there can be no existence of any kind, correct?” he asked.

With annoyance and apparent mental anguish at the interruption, the professor looked around at the odd inquirer, who resembled a bargeman more than a philosopher, and shifted his eyes to Sergei Ivanovich, as if to ask, “What can one say?” But Sergei Ivanovich, who was speaking with far from the same ardor and one-sidedness as the professor and who had enough breadth of mind to be able to answer the professor and at the same time understand the simple and natural point of view from which the question had been asked, smiled and said:

“We do not yet have the right to address that question.”

“We do not have the data,” confirmed the professor, and he continued with his arguments. “No,” he said, “I would point out that if, as Pripasov explicitly states, perception is based on sensation, then we must distinguish strictly between these two concepts.”

Levin did not listen anymore and waited for the professor to leave.

8

Once the professor had left, Sergei Ivanovich turned to his brother.

“I’m very pleased you’ve come. For long? How is farming?”

Levin knew farming was of little interest to his older brother and so, aware that he was only making a concession to him by inquiring, he answered only about wheat sales and money.

Levin had meant to tell his brother of his intention to marry and to ask his advice, he had even resolved firmly to do so; but when he saw his brother, listened to his discussion with the professor, and when he then caught the unintentionally patronizing tone with which his brother questioned him about farm matters (their maternal estate was undivided, and Levin had taken charge of both shares), Levin felt for some reason that he could not begin to speak with his brother about his decision to marry. He sensed that his brother would not look on this in the way in which he would have liked.

“Well, and how’s that council of yours doing?” asked Sergei Ivanovich, who took an active interest in the district council and ascribed great significance to it.

“To be honest, I don’t know.”

“How’s that? Aren’t you a member of the board?”

“No, not anymore. I resigned,” replied Konstantin Levin, “and I don’t attend meetings anymore.”

“Pity!” Sergei Ivanovich intoned, frowning.

Levin, to justify himself, began recounting what went on at the meetings in his district.

“There, it’s always that way!” Sergei Ivanovich interrupted him. “We Russians are always that way. This may even be a good trait of ours—the ability to see our shortcomings—but we go too far, we console ourselves with irony, which is always on the tip of our tongue. All I can tell you is that if you were to give rights like our council institutions to another European nation, the Germans and English would extract their freedom from them, whereas all we can do is ridicule.”

“But what can be done?” said Levin guiltily. “This was my last effort. I gave it my best effort, but I can’t. I’m incapable of it.”

“Not incapable,” said Sergei Ivanovich, “you’re not looking at the matter properly.”

“That could be,” responded Levin dolefully.

“But you know, our brother Nikolai is here again.”

Nikolai was Konstantin Levin’s full older brother and Sergei Ivanovich’s half-brother, a ruined man who had squandered the greater part of his inheritance, who circulated in the strangest and worst society, and who had quarreled with his brothers.

“What did you say?” cried Levin in horror. “How do you know?”

“Prokofy saw him on the street.”

“Here, in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?” Levin rose from his chair as if prepared to go immediately.

“I regret having told you this,” said Sergei Ivanovich, shaking his head at his younger brother’s agitation. “I sent to find out where he is staying and sent him his promissory note to Trubin, which I paid. Here is what he replied.”

And Sergei Ivanovich handed his brother a note that had been under a paperweight.

Levin read what had been written in the strange but to him dear handwriting: “I humbly beg you to leave me in peace. This is the one thing I ask of my gracious brothers. Nikolai Levin.”

Levin read this and, without raising his head, holding the note, stood in front of Sergei Ivanovich.

The desire to forget his unlucky brother now and the awareness that doing so would be base contended in his heart.

“He obviously means to insult me,” Sergei Ivanovich continued, “but he can’t, and I would wish with all my heart to help him, but I know this can’t be done.”

“Yes, yes,” echoed Levin. “I understand and appreciate your attitude toward him, but I’m going to see him.”

“Go ahead, if you like, but I don’t advise it,” said Sergei Ivanovich. “That is, as far as I’m concerned, I’m not afraid of it, because he can’t set you against me; however, for your sake, I would advise you not to go. You can’t help. But do as you please.”

“Perhaps I can’t, but I have the feeling, especially at this moment—well, yes, that’s something else—I have the feeling that I could not be at peace.”

“Well, that I don’t understand,” said Sergei Ivanovich. “The one thing I do understand,” he added, “is that this is a lesson in humility. I have begun to view what is called baseness otherwise and more compassionately since our brother Nikolai has become what he is. You know what he did—”

“Oh, it’s horrible. Horrible!” echoed Levin.

After obtaining his brother’s address from Sergei Ivanovich’s footman, Levin prepared to leave immediately, but after thinking it over he decided to put off his visit until the evening. First of all, if he was to have any peace of mind, he needed to resolve the matter that had brought him to Moscow. Levin left his brother and went to Oblonsky’s office, and having received news of the Shcherbatskys, he went where he had been told he might find Kitty.

9

At four o’clock, feeling his heart pounding, Levin got down from the cab at the Zoological Garden and followed the path toward the ice hills and skating rink, knowing for certain that he would find her there because he had seen the Shcherbatskys’ carriage by the entrance.

The day was clear and frosty. Carriages, sleighs, cabbies, and policemen were lined up at the entrance. A well–turned out crowd, their hats gleaming in the bright sunshine, was teeming near the gate and along the swept paths, among the Russian cottages with their gingerbread trim; the shaggy old birches of the garden, all their branches bowed under snow, looked as if they had been decked out in new holiday vestments.

He took the path to the rink and told himself over and over: “Don’t get excited, calm down. What are you doing? What’s wrong with you? Be quiet, silly,” he addressed his heart. The more he tried to calm himself, the harder it was to breathe. He met an acquaintance, who called out to him, but Levin didn’t even recognize him. He approached the “Russian hill,” where the toboggans’ chains clanked going down and up and the sleds rumbled downhill and jolly voices rang out. He walked a few more steps and saw the rink before him, and immediately among the skaters he recognized her.

He recognized she was there by the joy and terror that gripped his heart. She was standing, talking with a lady, at the far end of the rink. Seemingly, there was nothing particular about her clothing or her pose; but Levin recognized her in that crowd as easily as a rose among nettles. She lit up everything. She was a smile shining on everything around her. “Can I really go down there, onto the ice, and approach her?” he thought. The spot where she stood seemed to him an unapproachable shrine, and there was a moment when he nearly left, so frightened was he. He needed to master himself and to reason that all kinds of people were walking near her, that he too could come here and skate. He walked down, avoiding looking at her for as long as he could, as he would the sun, but he saw her, as he would the sun, without looking.

On that day of the week and at that time of day, people of a certain set, all of whom knew one another, gathered on the ice. There were master skaters here showing off their art, learners holding onto chairs, making timid, clumsy movements, little boys, and old people skating for health purposes; to Levin they all seemed the happy select because they were here, close to her.¹⁷ All those skating seemed to chase and overtake her with perfect indifference; they even spoke with her and amused themselves completely independently of her, enjoying the excellent ice and fine weather.

Nikolai Shcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, wearing a short jacket and narrow trousers, was sitting on a bench with his skates on, and catching sight of Levin called out to him:

“Hey, Russia’s ace skater! Been here long? Excellent ice. Put on your skates.”

“I don’t have my skates,” replied Levin, marveling at this daring and familiarity in her presence and not losing sight of her for a second, though he wasn’t looking at her. He could feel the sun drawing closer. She was in the corner, and after awkwardly putting down her slender feet in their high boots, clearly visibly shy, she skated toward him. A boy wearing a Russian shirt, desperately swinging his arms and bent low, overtook her. She did not skate quite steadily; taking her hands out of her small muff, which hung on a cord, she held them at the ready, and looking at Levin, whom she had recognized, she smiled at him and at her own fright. When she had made the turn, she gave herself a push with a resilient foot and skated straight toward Shcherbatsky; grabbing onto him with one hand, and smiling, she nodded at Levin. She was even more beautiful than he had pictured her.

When he had thought of her, he could vividly imagine her in her entirety and in particular the charm of her small curly blond head, with its expression of childlike clarity and goodness, set so freely on her shapely girlish shoulders. The childishness of the expression on her face in combination with the delicate beauty of her figure made up her special charm, which he well remembered; however, as always, what caught him by surprise was the expression of her eyes, timid, serene, and truthful, and in particular her smile, which always transported Levin to a magical world where he felt moved and filled with tenderness, such as he could recall himself on rare days in his early childhood.

“Have you been here long?” she said, giving him her hand. “Thank you,” she added when he picked up the handkerchief that had fallen from her muff.

“I? I only just arrived, yesterday, I … that is, today,” replied Levin, suddenly failing to understand her question, he was so agitated. “I wanted to see you,” he said, and immediately recalling his intention in seeking her out he grew embarrassed and blushed. “I didn’t know you skated, and you skate beautifully.”

She looked at him closely, as if wishing to penetrate the cause of his embarrassment.

“Your praise is worth a great deal. There’s a legend maintained here that you’re the very best skater,” she said, brushing off with her little hand the needles of frost that had fallen on her muff.

“Yes, there was a time when I skated with a passion; I wanted to reach perfection.”

“It seems you do everything with passion,” she said, smiling. “I would like so very much to see you skate. Put on skates and let’s skate together.”

“Skate together! Is that really possible?” thought Levin, looking at her.

“I’ll put them on at once,” he said.

And he went to put on skates.

“You haven’t been to see us in a long time, sir,” said the rink attendant, supporting Levin’s foot and screwing on the heel. “Since you, there’s not an ace among the gentlemen. Will that be all right?” he said, tightening the strap.

“Fine, fine, quickly, please,” replied Levin, barely restraining a smile of happiness from coming over his face. “Yes,” he thought, “this is life, this is happiness! Together, she said. Let’s skate together. Speak to her now? But that’s exactly why I’m afraid of saying I’m happy now, happy at least with the hope. … But then? … I must, though! I must, must! Weakness begone!”

Levin got to his feet, took off his coat, and scampering across the rough ice by the changing shed, ran out onto the smooth ice and skated effortlessly, as if by will alone speeding up, slowing down, and veering. He approached her shyly, but once again her smile reassured him.

She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, quickening their pace, and the faster they went, the harder she pressed his hand.

“I would learn faster from you because I have confidence in you,” she told him.

“And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,” he said, but immediately took fright at what he had said and blushed. Indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words than suddenly, like the sun going behind the clouds, her face lost all its kindness, and Levin recognized the familiar play of her face that signified an effort at thought: a tiny wrinkle furrowed her smooth brow.

“Nothing unpleasant has happened to you, has it? Not that I have the right to ask,” he said quickly.

“Why do you ask? No, nothing unpleasant has happened,” she replied coolly and added immediately, “You haven’t seen Mademoiselle Linon, have you?”

“Not yet.”

“Go over to her, she loves you so.”

“What’s this? I must have grieved her. Lord, help me!” thought Levin, and he raced toward the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old friend.

“Yes, you see we are growing up,” she told him, indicating Kitty with her eyes, “and growing old. Tiny Bear is big now!” continued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of the joke about the three young ladies, whom he used to call the three bears, from the English fairy tale. “Do you remember how you sometimes used to say that?”

He definitely did not remember this, but she had been laughing at that joke for ten years and liked it.

“Well go on, go skate. Our Kitty skates well now, doesn’t she?”

When Levin raced back to Kitty, her face was no longer stern, and her eyes watched him just as truthfully and tenderly, but it seemed to Levin that her tenderness had a special, purposely serene tone about it. And that made him sad. After talking about her old governess and her quirks, Kitty asked him about his life.

“You really aren’t bored in the country in winter?” she said.

“No, I’m not bored, I’m very busy,” he said, feeling her subduing him with her serene tone, which he was powerless to fight, just as he had been early in the winter.

“Have you come for long?” Kitty asked him.

“I don’t know,” he replied, not thinking about what he was saying. The thought occurred to him that if he submitted to this tone of calm friendship of hers then he would go away again without having decided anything, and he resolved to rebel.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know. It depends on you,” he said, and was immediately horrified at his own words.

Whether she had not heard his words, or had not wanted to hear them, she stumbled a little, tapped her foot twice, and quickly skated away from him. She skated up to Mademoiselle Linon, told her something, and headed for the changing shed, where the ladies were taking off their skates.

“My God, what have I done! Lord God of mine! Help me, teach me!” said Levin, praying and, at the same time, feeling a need for vigorous movement, racing off and tracing inner and outer circles.

At that moment one of the young men, the best of the new skaters, a cigarette in his mouth, skates on, came out of the coffeehouse and raced down the steps, picking up speed as he went, clattering and leaping. He flew down and skated across the ice without even altering the relaxed position of his hands.

“Ah, that’s a new trick!” said Levin, and he immediately ran up the stairs to try this new trick.

“Don’t kill yourself. It takes practice!” Nikolai Shcherbatsky shouted to him.

Levin went up the steps, took a running start, and raced down, maintaining his balance in this unaccustomed movement with his arms. On the last step he tripped and grazed the ice with his hand before giving a vigorous push, straightening up, and skating off, laughing.

“So wonderful and dear,” thought Kitty at that moment, as she emerged from the changing shed with Mademoiselle Linon, and she gazed at him with a smile of quiet tenderness, as she would at a favorite brother. “Am I really to blame? Have I really done anything so awful? They say it’s flirting. I know it’s not him I love, but I still have such fun with him, and he’s so wonderful. Only why did he say that?” she thought.

Catching sight of Kitty leaving, and her mother, who had met her on the steps, Levin, flushed after the rapid movement, stopped and thought. He removed his skates and caught up with mother and daughter at the garden entrance.

“I’m very happy to see you,” said the princess. “Thursdays, as always, we are at home.”

“Today then?”

“We shall be very happy to see you,” said the princess dryly.

This dryness distressed Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to smooth over her mother’s coldness. She turned her head and said with a smile:

“Until we meet again.”

At that moment, Stepan Arkadyevich, his hat cocked and his face and eyes shining, entered the garden like a cheerful conqueror. Approaching his mother-in-law, however, he answered her questions about Dolly’s health with a mournful, guilty face. After speaking softly and sadly with his mother-in-law, he threw back his shoulders and took Levin by the arm.

“Well then, shall we go?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking about you the entire time, and I’m very glad you’ve come,” he said, giving him a significant look.

“We shall, we shall,” responded a happy Levin, who had not ceased to hear the sound of the voice that had said, “Until we meet again,” or to see the smile with which it had been said.

“To the Anglia or the Hermitage?”

“It’s all the same to me.”

“Well, how about the Anglia,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, who chose the Anglia because he owed more there, at the Anglia, than at the Hermitage. Which was why he felt it improper to avoid this hotel. “Do you have a cab? Well, that’s fine, since I let my carriage go.”

The friends were silent all the way there. Levin was thinking about what the change of expression on Kitty’s face meant and vacillated between reassuring himself that there was hope to despairing and clearly seeing that his hope was insane, but meanwhile he felt like a completely different man, unlike the man he had been before her smile and her “until we meet again.”

Stepan Arkadyevich spent the ride composing their menu.

“You are fond of turbot, aren’t you?” he asked Levin as they drew up.

“What?” Levin queried. “Turbot? Yes, I’m awfully fond of turbot.”

10

When Levin walked into the hotel with Oblonsky, he could not help but notice the certain peculiarity of expression, like a restrained glow, on the face and entire figure of Stepan Arkadyevich. Oblonsky removed his overcoat and proceeded to the dining room with his hat tilted to one side, giving orders to the attentive Tatars with their tailcoats and napkins over their arms. Bowing to the right and left at familiar faces who here, as everywhere, greeted him with delight, he walked up to the buffet, took a sip of vodka and a bite of fish, and said something to the painted Frenchwoman, all ribbons, lace, and ringlets, who was sitting behind the counter that made even this Frenchwoman laugh sincerely. Levin refused the vodka only because he found this Frenchwoman—all composed, it seemed to him, of false hair, poudre de riz, and vinaigre de toilette—loathsome.¹⁸ He hurried to get away from her as he would from somewhere dirty. His heart was overflowing with the memory of Kitty, and a smile of triumph and happiness shone in his eyes.

“This way, Your Excellency, if you please. You will not be disturbed here, Your Excellency,” said a white-haired old Tatar who was especially attentive and whose very broad hips made his coattails gap. “If you please, your hat, Your Excellency,” he said to Levin, as a sign of respect for Stepan Arkadyevich, looking after his guest as well.

Whipping a fresh tablecloth over the tablecloth that already covered the round table under the bronze sconce, he pushed in their velvet chairs and stood in front of Stepan Arkadyevich with a napkin over his arm and a menu in his hands, awaiting instructions.

“If you so instruct, Your Excellency, a private room will be free very soon. Prince Golitsyn and a lady. Fresh oysters have come in.”

“Ah! Oysters.”

Stepan Arkadyevich pondered:

“Shouldn’t we change our plan, Levin?” he said, resting his finger on the menu. His face expressed serious perplexity. “Are the oysters good? Take care!”

“Flensburg oysters, Your Excellency. None from Ostend.”

“Flensburg it will have to be then, but are they fresh?”

“They came in yesterday, sir.”

“What do you think, how about we begin with oysters and then we’ll change our entire plan? Eh?”

“It’s all the same to me. I’d prefer cabbage soup and kasha, but I can’t have that here, of course.”¹⁹

“Kasha à la russe for you, sir?” said the Tatar, like a nanny to a child, leaning over Levin.

“No, joking aside, whatever you choose, that will be fine. I had a good run on my skates, and I’m hungry. And don’t think,” he added, noticing the dissatisfied expression on Oblonsky’s face, “that I don’t appreciate your selection. It would be a pleasure to eat well.”

“But of course! I don’t care what anyone says, it is one of life’s pleasures,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “Well then, my good man, give us a couple—no wait, that’s not enough—make that three dozen oysters, then a soup with vegetables—”

“Printanière?” the Tatar chimed in. But Stepan Arkadyevich clearly did not want to give him the satisfaction of calling the dishes by their French names.

“With root vegetables, you know? Then turbot with a thick sauce, and then … roast beef, and make sure it’s good. And then capon perhaps and fruit compote.”

Recalling Stepan Arkadyevich’s way of not naming dishes from the French menu, and rather than repeating after him, the Tatar gave himself the satisfaction of repeating the entire order according to the menu: “Soupe printanière, turbot sauce Beaumarchais, poulard à l’estragon, macédoine de fruits …” And then instantly, as if on springs, he put down one bound menu and picked up another, the wine list, and offered it to Stepan Arkadyevich.

“What shall we drink?”

“Whatever you like, only just a little, Champagne,” said Levin.

“What? To start? Though actually, you’re probably right. Do you like the white seal?”

“Cachet blanc,” the Tatar chimed in.

“Well, then give us that brand with the oysters, and then we’ll see.”

“Yes, sir. What table wine will you take?”

“Give us the Nuits. No, better the classic Chablis.”

“Yes, sir. Will you have your cheese?”

“Oh yes, Parmesan. Or do you prefer something else?”

“No, it’s all the same to me,” said Levin, no longer able to suppress a smile.

And with his tails flapping over his broad hips, the Tatar ran off and five minutes later flew back with a platter of opened oysters in their mother-of-pearl shells and a bottle between his fingers.

Stepan Arkadyevich rumpled his starched napkin, tucked it into his waistcoat, and resting his hands calmly on the table, set to the oysters.

“Not bad,” he said as he stripped the slippery oysters from their mother-of-pearl shells with a tiny silver fork and swallowed one after the other. “Not bad,” he repeated, casting his moist and shining eyes first at Levin and then at the Tatar.

Levin ate the oysters as well, though he would have found white bread and cheese more to his liking. Nonetheless, he admired Oblonsky. Even the Tatar, after he had removed the cork and poured the sparkling wine into the delicate shallow glasses, and with a perceptible smile of pleasure straightening his white tie, looked at Stepan Arkadyevich.

“Aren’t you very fond of oysters?” said Stepan Arkadyevich, draining from his glass. “Or are you worried? Eh?”

He wanted Levin to be cheerful, and it wasn’t that Levin wasn’t cheerful, rather he was ill at ease. With what he had in his heart, he found it painful and awkward to be in a restaurant, amid private rooms where men were dining with ladies, in the midst of this rushing about and fuss; this setting of bronzes, mirrors, gaslight, and Tatars—he found all of it offensive. He was afraid of sullying that which had filled his heart to overflowing.

“I? Yes, I’m worried, but besides, all this makes me ill at ease,” he said. “You can’t imagine how it is for me, a country dweller, all this is as savage as the fingernails of the gentlemen I saw in your office.”

“Yes, I saw how intrigued you were by poor Grinevich’s nails,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, laughing.

“I can’t help it,” replied Levin. “You should try, just imagine you’re me and take a country dweller’s point of view. In the country, we try to keep our hands in a state that makes them handy to work with; so we trim our nails and sometimes roll up our sleeves. But here people let their fingernails grow as long as they can stand it on purpose, and they wear cuff links like saucers so that they can’t do anything with their hands.”

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled gaily.

“Yes, it’s a sign that he doesn’t need to do rough labor. His mind does the work.”

“Perhaps. But I still find it savage, just as I find it savage now that we country dwellers try to eat our fill as quickly as we can so that we can go about our business, while you and I try to take as long as we can to eat our fill, and for that reason we eat oysters.”

“Well, naturally,” chimed in Stepan Arkadyevich. “That’s the whole point of cultivation, though: to make everything a pleasure.”

“Well, if that is the point, then I prefer to be savage.”

“And savage you are. All you Levins are savages.”

Levin sighed. He thought of his brother Nikolai, and he felt guilty and pained, and he frowned; but Oblonsky started talking about a subject that distracted him immediately.

“Well then, will you be coming this evening to see us, the Shcherbatskys, that is?” he said, pushing away the rough empty shells and bringing the cheese closer, his eyes flashing significantly.

“Yes, I shall go, certainly,” replied Levin. “Though the princess seemed reluctant to invite me.”

“What are you talking about! Such nonsense! That’s just her manner. … Well, let’s have at it, my friend, the soup! It’s just her manner, the grande dame,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “I’d come, too, except that I must go to Countess Banina’s for a rehearsal. Don’t you see what a savage you are? How do you explain the fact that you vanished so suddenly from Moscow? The Shcherbatskys kept asking me about you, as if I should know. But I only know one thing: that you always do what no one else does.”

“Yes,” said Levin slowly and with emotion. “You’re right, I am a savage. Only what makes me savage is not the fact that I left but that I’ve come now. I’ve come now …”

“Oh, and what a lucky man you are!” Stepan Arkadyevich chimed in, looking Levin in the eye.

“Why is that?”

“A spirited steed I can tell by its brand, and a young man in love by his eyes,” declaimed Stepan Arkadyevich.²⁰ “You have everything before you.”

“And do you really have everything behind?”

“No, perhaps not behind, but you have a future, whereas I have a present, and the present is, well, spotty.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, things could be better. But I don’t want to talk about myself, and anyway I can’t explain it all,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “So, why did you come to Moscow? … Hey, take this!” he called to the Tatar.

“Can you guess?” replied Levin, not taking his eyes, which glowed from deep within, off Stepan Arkadyevich.

“I can, but I can’t be the one to bring it up, and for just this reason you can see whether or not I have guessed correctly,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, looking at Levin with a faint smile.

“Well, then what would you tell me?” said Levin in a trembling voice, and feeling all the muscles on his face trembling. “What’s your view of it?”

Stepan Arkadyevich slowly drained his glass of Chablis, not taking his eyes off Levin.

“I?” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “I could wish for nothing else. Nothing. It’s the best thing that could happen.”

“But mightn’t you be mistaken? Do you know what we’re talking about?” said Levin, drilling his eyes into his companion. “Do you think it’s possible?”

“I do. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No, do you really think it’s possible? No, tell me everything you’re thinking! Well, and what if, what if a refusal awaits me? I’m even certain—”

“Why would you think that?” said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling at his emotion.

“That’s how it seems to me sometimes. After all, that would be horrible for me and for her.”

“Well, in any case, there’s nothing horrible in it for a young woman. Any young woman takes pride in a proposal.”

“Yes, any young woman, but not she.”

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled. He well knew this feeling of Levin’s, he knew that for him all the young women in the world were divided up into two sorts: one sort was all the young women in the world save her, and these young women had every human weakness and were very ordinary; the other sort was she alone, who had no weaknesses of any kind and was superior to everything human.

“Stop, take some sauce,” he said, restraining Levin’s hand, which was pushing the sauce away.

Levin obediently took some sauce but would not let Stepan Arkadyevich eat.

“No, stop. Stop,” he said. “You must understand that for me this is a matter of life and death. I’ve never spoken to anyone about this. Nor could I ever speak to anyone about it the way I do with you. You see, you and I are different in every possible way: different tastes, opinions, everything; but I know you love me and understand me, and for that reason I love you very much. But for God’s sake, be perfectly frank.”

“I’m telling you what I think,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling. “But I’ll tell you something else: my wife is the most amazing woman.” Stepan Arkadyevich sighed when he recalled his relations with his wife, and after a moment’s pause he continued. “She has the gift of prophecy. She can see straight through people; but that’s not all, she knows what’s going to happen, especially when it comes to marriages. For instance, she predicted that Shakhovskaya would marry Brenteln. No one would believe it, but that is what happened. And she is on your side.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that not only does she love you, she says that Kitty is certain to be your wife.”

At these words Levin’s face beamed with a smile that was close to tears of emotion.

“She says that!” exclaimed Levin. “I’ve always said she was lovely, your wife. Well, but that’s enough, enough talk of this,” he said, rising from his chair.

“Fine, but sit down. Here is the soup.”

Levin could not sit, though. He trod firmly around the cage of a room twice, blinking to hide his tears, and only then sat back down at the table.

“You must understand,” he said, “that this isn’t love. I’ve been in love, but that’s not what this is. This isn’t my emotion but an outside force of some kind that has taken hold of me. I did go away, you see, because I’d decided this could never be, you understand, this is a happiness the likes of which does not happen on earth, but I’ve struggled with myself and can see that without this there is no life. So it must be decided.”

“Then why did you ever leave?”

“Oh, stop! I have so many thoughts! So much I need to ask! Listen to me. You know, you can’t imagine what you’ve done for me by what you said. I’m so happy I’m even disgusting; I’ve forgotten everything. … I only just learned that my brother Nikolai … he’s here, you know … I’d even forgotten about him. I think he too is happy. It’s like a madness. One thing is horrible, though. … Here, you’re married, you know this feeling. … What’s horrible is that we are old and already have a past … not of love, but of sins … and all of a sudden we come so close to a pure, innocent creature; it’s loathsome, and this is why I can’t help but feel myself unworthy.”

“Well, your sins are very few.”

“Ah, but still,” said Levin, “still, ‘reading with disgust the life I’ve led, I tremble and I curse, and I bitterly complain.’²¹ Yes.”

“What can you do? That is how the world is made,” said Stepan Arkadyevich.

“My one consolation is like that prayer I’ve always loved, asking forgiveness ‘not according to my deserts but according to Thy loving-kindness.’²² That is the only way she can ever forgive me.”

11

Levin drained his glass and they sat in silence.

“There is one more thing I ought to tell you. Do you know Vronsky?” Stepan Arkadyevich asked Levin.

“No, I don’t. Why do you ask?”

“Give us another,” Stepan Arkadyevich instructed the Tatar, who had refilled their glasses and was circling around them at exactly the moment he was not needed.

“Why should I know Vronsky?”

“You should know Vronsky because he is one of your rivals.”

“Who is this Vronsky?” said Levin, and his face, which had worn a childishly ecstatic expression that Oblonsky could only admire, suddenly became angry and unpleasant.

“Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovich Vronsky and one of the finest examples of Petersburg’s gilded youth. I first met him in Tver, when I was on official business there, and he came for the levy of recruits. Terribly rich, handsome, first-rate connections, an aide-de-camp and yet—a very sweet and decent fellow. But much more than simply a decent fellow. As I’ve come to know him better here, he is both cultivated and quite clever; this is a man who will go far.”

Levin frowned but remained silent.

“Well, he showed up here soon after you left, and as I understand it, he’s head over heels in love with Kitty, and you realize that her mother …”

“Excuse me, but I don’t understand any of this,” said Levin, frowning grimly. Then he remembered his brother Nikolai and how vile he, Levin, was for forgetting him.

“Wait, wait,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling and touching his arm. “I’ve told you what I know and I repeat that, as far as I can tell, in this delicate and tender matter, I think the odds are in your favor.”

Levin leaned back in his chair; his face was pale.

“I would advise you, however, to decide the matter as soon as possible,” continued Oblonsky, topping off his glass.

“No, thank you very much, I can’t drink any more,” said Levin, pushing away his glass. “I’ll be drunk. … So, how are you getting on?” he continued, evidently wishing to change the topic.

“One more word: no matter what, I advise you to decide the matter as quickly as possible. I don’t advise you to speak today,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “Go there tomorrow morning, in the classic manner, and make your proposal, and may God bless you.”

“Haven’t you been wanting to visit me and go hunting? Why don’t you come this spring?” said Levin.

Now he regretted with all his heart that he had ever broached this topic with Stepan Arkadyevich. His special feeling had been sullied by this discussion of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer and Stepan Arkadyevich’s assumptions and advice.

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled. He understood what was going on in Levin’s heart.

“I’ll come one day,” he said. “Yes, my friend, women are the pivot upon which everything turns. My case, too, is bad, you see, very bad. And all because of women. You must tell me frankly,” he continued, taking out a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass. “You must give me your advice.”

“But what is the matter?”

“Just this. Suppose you’re married, and you love your wife, but you’re attracted to another woman.”

“Excuse me, but I definitely do not understand this, it’s as if … I don’t understand this any more than how now, after eating my fill, I could walk by a bread shop and steal a bun.”

Stepan Arkadyevich’s eyes glittered more than usual.

“Why not? Sometimes a bun smells so good, you can’t help yourself.”

Himmlisch ist’s, wenn ich bezwungen

Meine irdische Begier;

Aber noch wenn’s nicht gelungen,

Hatt’ich auch recht hubsch Plaisir!²³

Saying this, Stepan Arkadyevich smiled faintly. Levin could not help smiling, either.

“Yes, but joking aside,” Oblonsky continued. “You must understand that the woman is a dear, meek, loving creature, poor and lonely, and she has sacrificed everything. Now that the deed is done—you understand me—how can I abandon her? Let’s say we do part for the sake of my family life. How can I not take pity on her, see that she is properly settled and her situation eased?”

“Well, you must excuse me. You know, for me all women are divided up into two sorts … I mean, no … rather: there are women and there are … I have never seen lovely fallen creatures, nor shall I, and those like the painted French-woman at the counter, with the ringlets—to me, they are vipers, and all fallen women are exactly the same.”²⁴

“What about the one in the Gospels?”

“Oh, stop it! Christ would never have spoken those words had he known how people would abuse them.²⁵ Out of all the Gospels, all anyone remembers are these words. Actually, I’m saying what I feel, not what I think. I have a loathing for fallen women. You’re afraid of spiders, and I of those vipers. You see, you’ve probably never studied spiders and don’t know their ways. It’s the same with me.”

“It’s fine for you to talk this way: it’s just like that gentleman in Dickens who tosses all the difficult questions over his right shoulder with his left hand.²⁶ But denying a fact is not an answer. What am I to do, tell me that. What am I to do? Your wife is aging, but you are full of life. Before you can even look around you feel you cannot love your wife with that kind of love, no matter how much you respect her. And then, suddenly, love comes your way and you’re lost. Lost!” Stepan Arkadyevich said with melancholy despair.

Levin grinned.

“Yes, I’m lost,” Oblonsky continued. “But what am I to do?”

“Don’t steal buns.”

Stepan Arkadyevich burst out laughing.

“Oh, you moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one is merely insisting on her rights, and these rights are your love, which you can’t give her; whereas the other is sacrificing everything for you and asking for nothing in return. What should you do? How should you act? There is a terrible tragedy in this.”

“If you want my confession about this, then I’ll tell you that I don’t believe there is any tragedy here, and here’s why. In my opinion, love … both loves—which Plato defined, as you remember, in his Symposium—both loves serve as a touchstone for men.²⁷ Some men understand only one, others the other, and those who understand only non-Platonic love speak of tragedy in vain. That kind of love admits of no tragedy. ‘I humbly thank you for the pleasure, my respects’—there’s the whole tragedy. But with Platonic love there can be no tragedy because in that kind of love everything is clear and pure, because …”

At that moment Levin recalled his own sins and the inner struggle he had endured, and out of the blue he added, “Actually, though, you may be right. You may well be right. But I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

“There, you see,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “You’re all of a piece. That is your strength and your shortcoming. Your nature is all of a piece, and you want all of life to be composed of phenomena that are of a piece, too, but that doesn’t happen. Here you go looking with contempt on a career in public service because you would like the deed to correspond consistently to the goal, but that doesn’t happen. You also want a man’s career always to have a purpose, for love and family life always to be one. But that doesn’t happen. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is composed of shadow and light.”

Levin sighed and said nothing in reply. He was thinking his own thoughts and not listening to Oblonsky.

And suddenly both men felt that, though they were friends, and though they had dined together and drunk wine, which ought to have brought them even closer, each was thinking only of himself and neither had a thought for the other. Oblonsky had experienced this extreme divergence occurring, rather than a greater closeness, after a meal before, and he knew what needed to be done in these instances.

“The bill!” he exclaimed, and he went into the next room, where he immediately ran into an aide-de-camp he knew and fell into conversation with him about an actress and her protector. This conversation with the aide-de-camp immediately gave Oblonsky a sense of relief and relaxation after his conversation with Levin, who always roused him to excessive mental and emotional tension.

When the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six rubles and change and with an added tip, Levin, who at any other time, as a country dweller, would have been horrified by his share of the bill of fourteen rubles, now paid no attention to this, settled, and went home in order to change his clothes and go to the Shcherbatskys’, where his fate would be decided.

12

Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya was eighteen years old. She had come out this winter. Her successes in society had been greater than both her older sisters’ and greater than even her mother the princess had anticipated. Not only were nearly all the young men dancing at Moscow’s balls in love with Kitty, but that first winter two serious matches had presented themselves: Levin and, immediately after his departure, Count Vronsky.

Levin’s appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits and obvious love for Kitty, led to the first serious conversation between Kitty’s parents about her future and to arguments between the prince and princess. The prince was on Levin’s side; he said that he could wish nothing better for Kitty. The princess, however, with her feminine habit of skirting an issue, said that Kitty was too young, that Levin had done nothing to demonstrate his serious intentions, that Kitty felt no attachment to him, and other points; but she did not say what was uppermost in her mind, that she was anticipating a better match for her daughter, she did not find Levin likable, and she did not understand him. When Levin had left precipitously, the princess was pleased and told her husband in triumph: “You see, I was right.” When Vronsky appeared, she was even more pleased, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty should make not simply a good but a brilliant match.

For the mother there could be no comparison between Vronsky and Levin. The mother did not like in Levin either his strange and harsh judgments or his social awkwardness, which was founded, as she believed, on pride, or what she took to be his rather savage life in the country, where he dealt with his livestock and peasants; nor did she have much of a liking for the fact that he, while being in love with her daughter, called at their home for six weeks as if he were waiting for something, scrutinizing them, as if he were afraid he would be doing them too great an honor by making a proposal of marriage and did not understand that by calling at the home of an eligible young girl he was under an obligation to clarify his intentions, and then, suddenly, he left, without clarifying anything. “It’s a good thing he is so unattractive that Kitty never fell in love with him,” thought the mother.

Vronsky satisfied the mother’s every desire. He was wealthy, clever, and high-born, a charming man on his way to a brilliant career in the military and at court. She could have wished for nothing better.

At balls, Vronsky openly courted Kitty, danced with her, and called on her at home, and there appeared to be no reason to doubt the seriousness of his intentions. Despite this, however, the mother had spent the entire winter in a state of terrible unease and agitation.

The princess herself had married thirty years before, through the matchmaking efforts of an aunt. Her suitor, about whom everything was known in advance, arrived, got a look at his future bride, and they at him; her matchmaking aunt ascertained and conveyed their mutual impressions; their impressions were good; then on the appointed day the anticipated proposal of marriage was made to her parents and received the anticipated acceptance. Everything had come about quite easily and simply. At least so it had seemed to the princess. With her own daughters, however, she had felt just how far from easy and simple this seemingly ordinary matter of marrying off daughters could be. So many frights suffered and thoughts weighed, so much money spent, so many clashes with her husband over marrying off their two older daughters, Darya and Natalia! Now, as she brought out her youngest, she had suffered the very same frights, the very same doubts, and even more quarrels with her husband than over the older girls. Like all fathers, the old prince was especially scrupulous when it came to the honor and purity of his daughters; he was unreasonably jealous over his daughters, and especially Kitty, who was his favorite, and he made a scene with the princess at every step for compromising his daughter. The princess was used to this from their first two daughters, but now she had the feeling that the prince’s scrupulousness had more grounds. She saw that much had changed of late in the ways of society and that a mother’s obligations had become even more difficult. She saw that Kitty’s contemporaries formed certain clubs, attended certain courses, spoke freely with men, rode unescorted through the streets, many did not curtsey and, above all, they were all firmly convinced that the choice of a husband was their business, and not their parents’.²⁸ “Nowadays they don’t give you away like they used to,” all these young women thought and said, as did all their elders. But how people did marry their daughters off, the princess could not learn from anyone. The French custom—when the parents decide their children’s fate—was no longer accepted, it was condemned. The English custom—complete freedom for the young girl—was also not accepted and impossible in Russian society. The Russian custom of matchmaking was considered disgraceful in some way, and everyone mocked it, including the princess herself. But how a girl was to come out and be married, no one knew. Everyone the princess had occasion to discuss this with told her the same thing: “For goodness’ sake! In our day it’s time to leave that old world behind. It’s the young people who are entering into marriage, after all, not their parents; so we should leave the young people to arrange their lives as they see fit.” It was fine for those who had no daughters to talk like that; but the princess realized that given close enough contact her daughter could fall in love, and, what’s more, fall in love with someone who would not want to marry her, or someone who would not make a good husband. No matter how they reassured the princess that in our day the young people ought to arrange their own fate, she could not bring herself to believe this, just as she could not bring herself to believe that loaded pistols were ever the best toys for children five years old, no matter what the era. And so the princess was more anxious over Kitty than she had been over her older daughters.

Now she was afraid that Vronsky would confine himself simply to flirting with her daughter. She could see that her daughter was already in love with him, but she consoled herself with the fact that he was an honorable man and so would not do this. At the same time, though, she knew how easy it was, given the freedom of manners of the day, to turn a girl’s head and how lightly men regarded this crime in general. The week before, Kitty had related to her mother her conversation with Vronsky during the mazurka. This conversation had reassured the princess in part, but she could not be completely reassured. Vronsky had told Kitty that they, both brothers, were so accustomed to obeying their mother in everything that they would never undertake anything important without consulting her. “And now, as a special happiness, I’m awaiting my dear mother’s arrival from Petersburg,” he had said.

Kitty related this without attaching any significance to these words. But her mother understood them otherwise. She knew the old lady was expected any day, and she knew that the old lady would be pleased by her son’s choice, and it was strange that he, fearful of offending his mother, had not made a proposal; however, she so wanted not only the marriage itself but, more than anything, reassurance for her anxieties, that she believed this. However bitter it was for the princess to see the unhappiness of her eldest daughter Dolly, who was about to leave her husband, the princess’s agitation over her youngest daughter’s as yet undecided fate had consumed all her emotions. This day, with Levin’s appearance, had only added new anxiety. She was afraid that her daughter, who seemed to have harbored feelings for Levin at one time, out of excessive honesty, might refuse Vronsky, and in general that Levin’s arrival would spoil everything—delay the matter so near to its conclusion.

“Did he arrive long ago?” said the princess about Levin when they had returned home.

“Today, Maman.”

“I want to say one thing,” the princess began, and from her grave and animated face Kitty guessed what it would be.

“Mama,” she said blushing and turning quickly toward her, “please, please, don’t say anything about that. I know, I know everything.”

She wanted exactly what her mother wanted, but the motives behind her mother’s desire hurt her.

“I only want to say that, having given one man hope—”

“Mama, darling, for the love of God, don’t say anything. It frightens me so to talk about that.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” said her mother, seeing the tears in her daughter’s eyes. “Just one thing, my precious: you promised you would have no secrets from me. You won’t, will you?”

“Never, Mama, none,” answered Kitty, who turned red and looked directly into her mother’s face. “But I don’t have anything to say now. I … I … if I wanted to, I don’t know what to say or how … I don’t know.”

“No, she could never tell me a falsehood with those eyes,” thought the mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess was smiling at how tremendous and significant what was going on in her soul now seemed to the poor girl.

13

Between dinner and dusk, Kitty experienced an emotion similar to what a young man experiences before battle. Her heart was beating hard, and her thoughts could not fix on anything.

She sensed that this evening, when the two met for the first time, must decide her fate. She kept picturing them over and over, first each separately, then both together. When she thought about the past, she dwelt with pleasure and tenderness on the memory of her relations with Levin. Memories of her childhood and memories of Levin’s friendship with her dead brother lent a special poetic charm to her relations with him. His love for her, of which she was sure, was both flattering and delightful. It was easy for her to think of Levin. Her memory of Vronsky, on the contrary, was mixed with something awkward, though he was sophisticated and poised to the highest degree; as if whatever was false lay—no, not in him, he was very simple and nice—but in her, while with Levin she felt perfectly simple and clear. On the other hand, as soon as she thought about a future with Vronsky, a brilliant and happy prospect rose up before her; with Levin her future seemed cloudy.

As she went upstairs to dress for the evening and looked in the mirror, she noted with pleasure that she was having one of her good days and was in full possession of her powers, and this was what she needed so for what was to come: she had a sense of her composure and the free grace of her movements.

At half past seven, just as she came down to the drawing room, the footman announced: “Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin.” The princess was still in her room, and the prince had not yet emerged. “So this is it,” thought Kitty, and all the blood rushed to her heart. She was horrified at her pallor when she looked in the mirror.

Now she knew for certain that he had come early in order to find her alone and to make his proposal of marriage. Only now, for the first time, did she see the entire matter from a completely different and new perspective. Only now did she realize that the matter affected not her alone—whom she would be happy with and whom she loved—but that this very minute she was going to have to hurt a man she loved. And hurt him cruelly. And why? Because he, the dear man, loved her, was in love with her. There was nothing to be done for it, though, it was what she needed and had to do.

“My God, is it really I who must tell him?” she thought. “And what am I going to tell him? Am I really going to say I don’t love him? That would be untrue. What shall I tell him? Shall I tell him I love another? No, that is impossible. I’m leaving, leaving.”

When she reached the doors she heard his steps. “No! That is dishonest. What am I afraid of? I’ve done nothing wrong. What will be, will be! I shall tell the truth. For nothing could be awkward with him. Here he is,” she told herself when she saw his entire powerful and shy figure and his shining eyes aimed directly at her. She looked him straight in the face, as if imploring him for mercy, and gave him her hand.

“This isn’t the right time, I guess, I’m early,” he said, looking around the empty drawing room. When he saw that his hopes had come to pass, that nothing was preventing him from speaking up, his face became grim.

“Oh no,” said Kitty, and she sat down at the table.

“But this is exactly what I wanted, to find you alone,” he began, not sitting down and not looking at her, so as not to lose his nerve.

“Mama will be out in a moment. She was very tired yesterday. Yesterday …”

She was talking, herself not knowing what her lips were saying and not taking her imploring and caressing gaze off him.

He looked at her; she blushed and fell silent.

“I told you I didn’t know whether I’d come for long … that this depended on you.”

She bowed her head lower and lower, not knowing herself what she would reply to what was at hand.

“That this depended on you,” he repeated. “I meant to say … I meant to say … I came for this … for … Be my wife!” he blurted out, not knowing what he was saying, but feeling that the most terrifying thing had been said, and he stopped and looked at her.

She was breathing hard but not looking at him. She was ecstatic. Her heart was overflowing with happiness. She had never anticipated that his declared love would make such a strong impression on her. This lasted only a moment, though. She remembered Vronsky. She raised her light, truthful eyes to Levin, and when she saw his desperate face, she quickly replied:

“It cannot be … forgive me.”

How close she had been to him a moment before, how important for his life! And how alien and distant she was to him now!

“It could not have been otherwise,” he said without looking at her.

He bowed and started to leave.

14

At that very moment, though, the princess came out. Her face expressed horror when she saw them alone and their distraught faces. Levin bowed to her and said nothing. Kitty was silent and would not raise her eyes. “Thank God, she refused him,” thought the mother, and her face beamed with the usual smile she used to greet her guests on her Thursdays. She sat down and began to question Levin about his life in the country. He sat down again, awaiting the arrival of the guests in order to slip away.

Five minutes later Kitty’s friend, who had married the previous winter, the Countess Nordston, walked in.

She was a sallow, plain woman with flashing black eyes, sickly and nervous. She loved Kitty, and her love for her, as always with married women’s love for unmarried girls, was expressed in her desire to marry Kitty off according to her own ideal of happiness, and so she wished to marry her off to Vronsky. Levin, whom she had met here often early that winter, she had always found distasteful. Her constant and favorite occupation when she met him consisted in making fun of him.

“I love it when he looks down on me from the height of his magnificence. Either he ends his intelligent conversation with me because I am stupid or else he condescends. I’m very fond of that: he condescends to me! I’m very glad he can’t stand me,” she said about him.

She was correct, for indeed Levin could not stand her and despised her for what she took pride in and counted as her merit—her nerves and her refined contempt and indifference for everything coarse and earthy.

Between Nordston and Levin there came to be a relationship encountered not infrequently in society, when two people, while remaining outwardly on friendly terms, despise each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously or even insult each other.

Countess Nordston pounced upon Levin immediately.

“Ah! Konstantin Dmitrievich! You’ve returned to our degenerate Babylon,” she said, extending her tiny, sallow hand and recalling his words, uttered sometime in early winter, about Moscow being Babylon. “What, has Babylon turned over a new leaf, or have you turned rotten?” she added, looking around at Kitty with a grin.

“I’m very flattered, Countess, that you remember my words so well,” replied Levin, who managed to recover and entered straightaway, out of habit, into his hostile joking attitude toward Countess Nordston. “They must have a powerful effect on you.”

“Oh, they do! I write it all down. Well then, Kitty, have you been skating again?”

And she began talking with Kitty. Awkward though it was for Levin to leave now, it was easier than staying for the entire evening and seeing Kitty, who glanced at him from time to time and avoided his gaze. He was about to get up when the princess, noticing his silence, turned to him.

“Have you come to Moscow for long? You’re involved with the district council, I thought, so you can’t be away for very long.”

“No, Princess, I’m not involved with the council any longer,” he said. “I’ve come for a few days.”

“There’s something odd about him,” thought Countess Nordston, searching his stern, grave face. “He’s not getting drawn into his usual arguments. I’ll bring him out, though. It’s such fun making a fool of him in front of Kitty, and I will.”

“Konstantin Dmitrievich,” she said to him, “explain to me, if you would, what this means—you know all this—in our Kaluga countryside all our peasants and all their women have drunk up everything they had and now they aren’t paying us. What does this mean? You are always praising the peasants so.”

At that moment another lady entered the room and Levin stood up.

“Forgive me, Countess, but truly, I know nothing and have nothing to tell you,” he said, and he looked around at the officer entering behind the lady.

“This must be Vronsky,” thought Levin, and to convince himself of this, he glanced at Kitty. She managed to look at Vronsky and looked around at Levin. From just this look in her eyes, which could not keep from shining, Levin realized that she loved this man, realized it as surely as if she had told him in so many words. But what sort of man was he?

Now, for good or ill, Levin had no choice but to stay; he had to find out what the man she loved was like.

There are people who, upon meeting their lucky rival in whatever it is, are ready to turn their back immediately on everything good in him and see only the bad; there are people who, on the contrary, want nothing more than to find in this lucky rival the qualities he used to conquer and so find in him, with an ache in their heart, only the good. Levin was one of these people. Not that it was hard for him to find what was good and attractive in Vronsky. It struck him right away. Vronsky was a sturdily built, dark-haired man, not very tall, with a good-natured and handsome, extremely calm and resolute face. Everything about his face and figure, from his close-cropped black hair and freshly shaven chin to his loosely fitting, brand-new uniform, was simple but elegant. Allowing the lady entering to pass, Vronsky went over to the princess and then to Kitty.

As he walked toward her, his handsome eyes sparkled with a special tenderness, and bowing to her with a barely noticeable, happy, and modestly triumphant smile (or so it seemed to Levin), respectfully and cautiously, he held out his own small but broad hand.

Having greeted and said a few words to everyone, he sat down without once looking at Levin, who did not take his eyes off him.

“Allow me to introduce you,” said the princess, indicating Levin. “Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin. Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky.”

Vronsky rose and, looking Levin amiably in the eye, shook his hand.

“I was supposed to have dined with you this winter, I believe,” he said, smiling his simple and open smile, “but you left unexpectedly for the country.”

“Konstantin Dmitrievich despises and detests the city and us, its inhabitants,” said Countess Nordston.

“My words must have a powerful effect on you for you to remember them so well,” said Levin, and recalling that he had said this before, he blushed.

Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordston and smiled.

“And are you always in the country?” he asked. “I should think it’s boring in winter?”

“It’s not boring if you have something to do, and it’s never boring being by yourself,” replied Levin brusquely.

“I love the country,” said Vronsky, noticing and pretending not to notice Levin’s tone of voice.

“I do hope, however, Count, that you would never agree to live in the country all the time,” said Countess Nordston.

“I don’t know, I’ve never tried it for very long. I did experience a strange feeling,” he continued. “I’ve never longed for the countryside, the Russian countryside, complete with bast sandals and peasants, anywhere the way I did when I spent a winter in Nice with my dear mother. Nice itself is quite boring, you know. And Naples and Sorrento, they’re only good for a short time. It’s there that one recalls Russia especially vividly, and the countryside in particular. They are just like—”

He spoke, addressing both Kitty and Levin and shifting his calm and amiable gaze from one to the other. He obviously was saying whatever came to mind.

Noticing that Countess Nordston was about to say something, he stopped without completing what he had begun and listened attentively to her.

The conversation did not subside for a minute, so that the old princess, who always had two big guns—classical versus modern education and universal military service—in reserve in the event of a want of topic, had no occasion to bring them out, and Countess Nordston had no occasion to taunt Levin.

Levin wanted to enter into the general conversation but could not; he kept telling himself, “Leave now,” but he didn’t, as though he were waiting for something.

The conversation turned to table rapping and spirits, and Countess Nordston, who believed in spiritualism, began recounting the miracles she had seen.²⁹

“Oh, Countess, you simply must take me, for goodness’ sake, take me to see them! I’ve never seen anything extraordinary, though I’ve searched everywhere,” said Vronsky, smiling.

“Fine, next Saturday,” replied Countess Nordston. “But what about you, Konstantin Dmitrievich, do you believe in it?” she asked Levin.

“Why do you ask me? You know what I’ll say.”

“But I want to hear your opinion.”

“My opinion,” Levin replied, “is just that this table rapping proves that so-called educated society is not superior to the peasants. They believe in the evil eye, and the wasting disease, and love spells, whereas we—”

“You mean you don’t believe in it?”

“I cannot believe in it, Countess.”

“But what if I’ve seen it myself?”

“The peasant women talk about seeing house spirits themselves, too.”

“So you think I’m telling an untruth?”

And she gave a mirthless laugh.

“Oh no, Masha, Konstantin Dmitrievich is saying he can’t believe in it,” said Kitty, blushing for Levin, and Levin saw this and, even more irritated, was about to reply, but Vronsky with his open and cheerful smile rushed to the aid of the conversation, which was threatening to become unpleasant.

“Do you rule out the possibility entirely?” he asked. “Why is it we allow for the existence of electricity, which we don’t know? Why can’t there be a new force as yet unknown to us that—”

“When electricity was discovered,” Levin quickly interrupted, “it was only the phenomenon that was discovered, and what we didn’t know was where it came from or what it produced, and centuries passed before people devised an application for it. The spiritualists, on the other hand, started with tables writing to them and spirits coming to them and only then did people start saying this was an unknown force.”

Vronsky was listening attentively to Levin, as he always listened, obviously interested in what he was saying.

“Yes, but the spiritualists say that now we don’t know what kind of force this is but there is a force, and here are the conditions under which it operates. Let the scientists sort out what the force consists of. No, I don’t see why this can’t be a new force if it—”

“It can’t,” Levin interrupted again, “because with electricity, every time you rub resin on wool, a known phenomenon occurs, but here it does not happen every time, so it’s not a natural phenomenon.”

Sensing, probably, that the conversation was taking an excessively serious turn for a drawing room, Vronsky did not object, but trying to change the subject, he smiled cheerfully and turned to the ladies.

“Let us try it out now, Countess,” he began, but Levin wanted to finish saying what he was thinking.

“I think,” he continued, “that this attempt by spiritualists to explain their miracles by some new force could not be more futile. They speak directly about the power of spirits and want to subject it to material experiment.”

Everyone was waiting for him to finish, and he could sense this.

“And I think that you would be an excellent medium,” said Countess Nordston. “There is something ecstatic about you.”

Levin opened his mouth and was about to say something, but he turned red and did not.

“Please, let’s try out the tables now,” said Vronsky. “Princess, with your permission?”

Vronsky rose, looking around for a small table.

Kitty rose from her table, and as she walked by, her eyes met Levin’s. She pitied him with all her heart, especially since she pitied him an unhappiness of which she herself was the cause. “If you can forgive me, then do,” her look said. “I am so happy.”

“I hate everyone, and you, and myself,” his look replied, and he picked up his hat. But it was not his fate to leave. No sooner had they decided to arrange themselves around the table, and Levin to leave, than the old prince walked in, and after greeting the ladies, turned to Levin.

“Ah!” he began delightedly. “Been here long? I didn’t know you were here. I’m very glad to see you.”

With Levin, the old prince went back and forth between the familiar and the formal “you.” He embraced Levin, and speaking with him failed to notice Vronsky, who had stood up and was calmly waiting for the prince to address him.

Kitty sensed how, after what had happened, her father’s kindness was hard on Levin. She noticed as well how coldly her father responded, at last, to Vronsky’s bow and how Vronsky with amiable perplexity looked at her father, trying to understand, but not understanding, how and why he might be ill disposed toward him, and she turned red.

“Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitrievich,” said Countess Nordston. “We want to perform an experiment.”

“What kind of an experiment? Table rapping? Well, you’ll excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but in my opinion it’s more fun to play the ring game,” said the old prince, looking at Vronsky and guessing that he was behind this.³⁰ “At least the ring game makes sense.”

Vronsky’s resolute eyes looked at the prince with astonishment. Smiling faintly, Vronsky immediately began talking with Countess Nordston about the grand ball coming up the next week.

“I hope you will be there?” he turned to Kitty.

As soon as the old prince turned away, Levin slipped out, and the final impression he took away from this evening was the smiling, happy face of Kitty answering Vronsky’s question about the ball.

15

When the evening had ended, Kitty recounted for her mother her conversation with Levin, and despite all the pity she felt for Levin, she rejoiced in the thought that she had received a proposal. She had no doubt that she had acted properly. In bed, though, she could not fall asleep for a long time. One impression pursued her relentlessly. This was Levin’s face, with his furrowed brow and his kind eyes looking at her in grim dejection, and how he stood listening to her father while looking at her and Vronsky. She felt so sorry for him that tears welled up in her eyes. But immediately she thought about the man she had chosen instead. She vividly recalled that courageous, resolute face, the noble calm and the goodness toward everyone that illuminated everything; she recalled the love for her of the man she loved, and once again she felt joy in her heart, and with a smile of happiness she lay her head upon her pillow. “It’s too bad, it is, but what can I do? I’m not to blame,” she told herself, but an inner voice told her otherwise. Whether she regretted having misled Levin or having refused him she didn’t know. But her happiness was poisoned by doubts. “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!” she repeated to herself until she fell asleep.

Meanwhile, downstairs, in the prince’s small study, the parents were playing out one of those oft-repeated scenes over their beloved daughter.

“What? Here’s what!” shouted the prince, waving his arms about and then rewrapping his squirrel-lined robe. “The fact that you have no pride, no dignity, that you are sullying, ruining our daughter with your vulgar, idiotic matchmaking!”

“Have mercy, for the love of God himself, Prince. What have I done?” said the princess, nearly in tears.

Happy and content after her conversation with her daughter, she had gone to the prince to say good night as usual, and although she had not intended to speak to him of Levin’s proposal and Kitty’s refusal, nonetheless she did hint to her husband that she thought the matter with Vronsky quite settled and that it would be decided as soon as his mother arrived. At that, at these words, the prince exploded and started shouting abuse.

“What have you done? Here’s what. First of all, you’ve been trying to lure a suitor, and all Moscow is going to be talking, and for good reason. If you’re going to have parties, then invite everyone, not just select suitors. Invite all those young pups (which is what the prince called Moscow’s young men), engage a piano player, and let them dance. Don’t do it the way you are now, with the suitors and the matching up. I find it vile, vile to watch, and you’ve succeeded, you’ve turned the girl’s head. Levin is a thousand times the better man. And that Petersburg dandy, they’re made by machine, all from the same pattern, and they’re all good for nothing. A prince of the blood he may be, but my daughter doesn’t need anyone!”

“But what have I done?”

“Why you’ve …” the prince shouted angrily.

“I do know that if I listen to you,” the princess interrupted, “we will never marry off our daughter. If that is the case, then we should leave for the country.”

“Better we do.”

“Wait just a minute. Have I really been trying to ingratiate myself? Not one bit. But a young man, and a very fine young man at that, has fallen in love, and I think she—”

“Yes, you do think! But what if she has in fact fallen in love and he has as much a need to marry as I do? Oh! I wish I’d never seen it! ‘Ah, spiritualism. Ah, Nice. Ah, the ball … ‘” And the prince, imagining himself to be imitating his wife, curtseyed at each word. “But what we’re going to do is bring misery upon our Katya, and she is in fact going to get ideas.”

“And what makes you think so?”

“I don’t think, I know; we have eyes in our head for that and women don’t. I see a man who has serious intentions, that’s Levin; and I see a peacock, like this featherhead who is only out to entertain himself.”

“Well, now it’s you who’s getting ideas.”

“You just remember this when it’s too late, like with our Dasha.”³¹

“Fine then, fine. We won’t talk about it,” the princess stopped him, recalling her unfortunate Dolly.

“That’s just marvelous. Good night!”

Making the sign of the cross over one another and exchanging a kiss, but sensing that each had been unmoved, the spouses parted.

The princess had at first been firmly convinced that this evening had decided Kitty’s fate and that there could be no doubt of Vronsky’s intentions, but her husband’s words had disturbed her. Returning to her room, facing the unknown of the future with dread, she, like Kitty, repeated several times in her soul: “Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy!”