II

1

Late that winter there was a consultation at the Shcherbatsky house to determine the state of Kitty’s health and what should be undertaken to restore her failing strength. She had been ill, and with the approach of spring her health had taken a turn for the worse. The family doctor had given her cod liver oil, then iron, then nitrate of silver; however, neither the one, nor the other, nor the third had helped, and since he had advised them to go abroad to avoid the spring, a renowned doctor had been called in to attend. The renowned doctor, a comparatively young man and quite handsome, asked that he be allowed to examine the patient. He seemed to take special satisfaction in insisting that her maidenly modesty was only a remnant of barbarism and that there was nothing more natural than a comparatively young man touching a young naked girl. He found this natural because he did it every day and felt nothing when he did so and did not think, or so it seemed to him, anything bad, and therefore he considered modesty in a young girl not only a remnant of barbarism but also an insult to himself.

They had to submit since, in spite of the fact that all doctors were trained at the same school and from the very same books and knew the same science, and in spite of the fact that some people said that this renowned doctor was a bad doctor, in the princess’s house and in her set it was generally felt for some reason that this renowned doctor alone had special knowledge and alone could save Kitty. After a careful examination and prodding of the embarrassed and distraught patient, the renowned doctor, having vigorously washed his hands, stood in the drawing room and spoke with the prince. The prince frowned, and coughing, listened to the doctor. As a man who knew something of life and who was neither stupid nor ill, he did not believe in medicine and inwardly raged at the whole farce, especially as he alone perhaps had fully understood the reason for Kitty’s illness. “Isn’t he the windbag,” he thought, listening to his dithering about his daughter’s symptoms. Meanwhile, the doctor was having difficulty restraining an expression of contempt for this laughable old gentleman and difficulty lowering himself to his level of understanding. He realized there was no point talking with the old man and that the mother was the head in this house. He intended to scatter his pearls before her. At that moment the princess walked into the drawing room accompanied by the family doctor. The prince left, trying not to let on how ludicrous he found this whole farce. The princess was upset and did not know what to do. She felt guilty about Kitty.

“Well, doctor, decide our fate,” said the princess. “Tell me everything.” “Is there hope?” is what she wanted to say, but her lips began to tremble, and she could not utter the question. “Well then, doctor?”

“One moment, Princess, I shall talk it over with my colleague and then I shall have the honor of delivering to you my opinion.”

“Shall we leave you alone then?”

“If you would be so kind.”

The princess sighed and went out.

When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor timidly began setting forth his opinion, which consisted in the fact that they had here the beginnings of the tubercular process, however … and so on. The renowned doctor listened to him and in the middle of his speech looked at his large gold watch.

“Yes,” he said. “But …”

The family doctor stopped short respectfully in the middle of his speech.

“As you know, determining the onset of the tubercular process is something we cannot do; until the appearance of cavities, there is nothing definite. We may, however, have our suspicions. And there is indication: poor nourishment, nervous excitement, and so forth. The question stands as follows: given suspicion of the tubercular process, what should be done in order to encourage nutrition?”

“You do know, though, that there are always moral and spiritual causes hidden here,” the family doctor took the liberty of interjecting with a thin smile.

“Yes, that goes without saying,” replied the renowned doctor, glancing again at his watch. “I’m so sorry, but tell me, has the Yauza Bridge been finished, or must one still go around?” he asked. “Ah, it’s finished! Yes, well then I can be there in twenty minutes. So we have said that the matter stands as follows: encourage nutrition and rectify the nerves. One in connection with the other, one must act on both sides of the circle.”

“And the trip abroad?” asked the family doctor.

“I am an enemy of trips abroad. Please note: if this is the onset of the tubercular process, something we cannot know, then a trip abroad will not help. What is essential is a means to encourage rather than discourage nutrition.”

And the renowned doctor laid out his plan of treatment with Soden waters, the principal purpose of which, evidently, consisted in the fact that they could do no harm.

The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.

“In favor of the trip abroad, though, I would put forth the change of habit, and the distance from conditions that give rise to recollections. And then the mother would like it,” he said.

“Ah! Well, in that case, why not, let them go, only those German charlatans will do her harm. … They must obey … Well, then, let them go.”

He glanced again at his watch.

“Oh! It’s time,” and he started for the door.

The renowned doctor announced to the prince (prompted by his sense of decency) that he needed to see the patient once more.

“What! Examine her once more!” the mother exclaimed with horror.

“Oh no, I need a few details, Princess.”

“If you please.”

And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing room to see Kitty. Thin and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes as a result of the shame she had endured, Kitty was standing in the middle of the room. When the doctor walked in, she flushed, and her eyes filled with tears. Her entire illness and treatment seemed to her such a stupid, even ridiculous thing! Her treatment seemed to her just as ridiculous as putting the pieces of a broken vase back together. Her heart was broken. Why did they want to treat her with pills and powders? She could not offend her mother, though, especially since her mother considered herself to blame.

“If you would be so kind as to sit down, Princess,” said the renowned doctor.

He sat down opposite her with a smile, took her pulse, and again began asking tedious questions. She answered him and then suddenly got angry and stood up.

“Excuse me, doctor, but this truly will lead nowhere. You have asked me the same thing three times.”

The renowned doctor was not offended.

“Nervous irritability,” he told the princess when Kitty went out. “Actually, I have finished.”

And the doctor scientifically determined the princess’s condition for the old princess, as he would for an exceptionally clever woman, and concluded with his instruction about the waters she did not need. To the question of whether they should go abroad, the doctor pondered for a moment, as if deciding a difficult question. His decision, at last, was issued: go but do not trust the charlatans and turn to him in everything.

It was as if something cheerful happened after the doctor’s departure. The mother cheered up when she returned to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to cheer up. Often now, almost always, she had to pretend.

“It’s true, Maman, I’m well. But if you want to go, let’s go!” she said, and in an attempt to demonstrate that she was interested in the upcoming trip, she began to discuss the preparations for their departure.

2

Immediately following the doctor, Dolly arrived. She knew there was supposed to be a consultation that day, and although she had only recently risen from her bed since the delivery (she had given birth to a little girl in the late winter), although she had many sorrows and cares of her own, she left her nursing infant and an ill daughter and went to learn of Kitty’s fate, which had today been decided.

“Well, what is it?” she said as she entered the drawing room without removing her hat. “You’re all cheerful. Is it true, is it good?”

They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it turned out that although the doctor had spoken very coherently and at length, they simply could not convey what he had said. The only interesting thing was that it had been decided to go abroad.

Dolly could not help but sigh. Her best friend, her sister, was leaving. And her life was not cheerful. Since the reconciliation, her relations with Stepan Arkadyevich had become humiliating. Anna’s welding had proven unstable, and the family accord had broken again in the same place. Nothing definite had happened, but Stepan Arkadyevich was hardly ever home, there was also hardly ever any money, either, and suspicions of infidelity were a constant torment to Dolly, and she was already trying to drive them away, afraid of the familiar pangs of jealousy. The first outburst of jealousy, once experienced, could no longer return, and even the discovery of infidelity could no longer have the same effect on her as the first time. Such a discovery now would only deprive her of her familial habits, so she allowed herself to be deceived, despising him and herself most of all for this weakness. On top of this, the concerns of a large family were a constant worry: first she had not been able to nurse the baby, then the nurse left, and then, as now, one of the children had fallen ill.

“So, how are yours?” her mother asked.

“Ah, Maman, we have sorrow enough of our own. Lily has fallen ill, and I’m afraid it’s scarlet fever. I’ve come now to learn the news because I may be stuck at home if, God forbid, it is scarlet fever.”

After the doctor’s departure, the old prince had also come out of his study, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly and saying a few words to her, he turned to his wife:

“So, have you decided? Are you going? Well, and what do you want to do with me?”

“I think you should stay here, Alexander,” said his wife.

“As you like.”

“Maman, why doesn’t Papa come with us?” said Kitty. “It would be more cheerful for him and for us.”

The old prince stood up and stroked Kitty’s hair. She raised her face and, forcing a smile, looked at him. It always seemed to her that he, better than anyone else in the family, understood her, although he did not say much to her. As the youngest, she was her father’s pet, and it seemed to her that his love for her gave him insight. Now, when her glance met his kind blue eyes, which were looking at her so intently from his wrinkled face, he seemed to look right through her and understand everything bad that was going on inside her. Blushing, she stretched toward him, expecting a kiss, but he only patted her hair and said:

“These idiotic chignons! You can’t get to your real daughter, you’re petting the hair of dead peasants. Well then, Dolly dear,” he turned to his older daughter, “what is your swell up to?”

“Nothing, Papa,” replied Dolly, understanding that he meant her husband. “He’s always away, I almost never see him,” she could not help but add with a mocking smile.

“What, he hasn’t gone to the country again to sell that wood, has he?”

“No, he’s still making plans.”

“Indeed!” said the prince. “Should I be making plans, too? Yes,” he addressed his wife, sitting down. “But here’s what I have to say to you, Katya,” he added to his youngest daughter. “One day, one fine day, you will wake up and tell yourself: Yes, I am quite well and cheerful, and Papa and I shall once again go out early in the morning to walk through the frost. Eh?”

What her father said seemed so simple, but at these words, Kitty became confused and distraught, like a criminal caught red-handed. “Yes, he knows everything, he understands everything, and with these words he’s telling me that although it is shameful, one must get over one’s shame.” She could not summon the spirit to make any reply. She was about to begin when she suddenly burst into tears and ran from the room.

“You and your jokes!” the princess came down hard on her husband. “You’re always …” and she launched a string of reproaches.

The prince listened for quite some time to the princess’s reproaches without saying anything, but he frowned more and more.

“She’s so pathetic, the poor thing, so pathetic, and you aren’t sensitive to how painful she finds any hint at the reason for this. Ah! To be so wrong about people!” said the princess, and from the change in her tone Dolly and the prince realized that she was speaking about Vronsky. “I don’t understand how there can be no laws against such vile, ignoble men.”

“Oh, I can’t listen to this!” the prince said gloomily, getting up from his armchair as if wishing to go but stopping in the doorway. “There are laws, Mother, and if you have provoked me to this, I will tell you that this is all your fault, yours and yours alone. There have always been laws against blackguards like this! Yes, if there hadn’t been what there never should have been—well, I’m an old man, but I would have shown him the door, that dandy. Yes, and now you’re seeking a cure, bringing around these charlatans.”

The prince apparently had a great deal more to say, but as soon as the princess heard his tone, as always in serious matters, she immediately acquiesced and repented.

“Alexandre, Alexandre,” she whispered, moving toward him, and she began to weep.

As soon as she began to weep, the prince, too, grew quiet. He went over to her.

“There, there! It’s been hard for you, too, I know. What can we do? It’s not such a great calamity. God is merciful … be grateful …” he said, not knowing himself what he was saying, and responding to the princess’s wet kiss, which he felt on his hand. And he left the room.

As soon as Kitty had left the room in tears, Dolly, with her maternal, familial habit, immediately discerned that this was a woman’s job, and she prepared to do it. She removed her hat, and morally rolling up her sleeves, prepared to act. During her mother’s attack on her father she had attempted to restrain her mother, insofar as her daughterly deference would permit her to do so. During the prince’s outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother and tender toward her father for his goodness, which returned immediately; but when her father left, she got ready to do what most needed doing—to go to Kitty and console her.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time, Maman: did you know that Levin meant to propose to Kitty when he was here the last time? He spoke to Stiva.”

“And so? I don’t see …”

“So could it be that Kitty refused him? She didn’t say anything to you?”

“No, she said nothing about one or the other; she is much too proud. But I do know that it is all because of this …”

“Yes, you imagine that if she had not refused Levin—and she would not have refused him if it hadn’t been for that one, I know. … And that one led her on so horribly.”

It was too terrible for the princess to think of how guilty she was before her daughter, so she became furious.

“Oh, I don’t understand anything anymore! These days people insist on living by their own wits, they don’t tell their mothers anything, and then you have …”

“Maman, I’m going to her.”

“Go then. Am I stopping you?” said her mother.

3

Entering Kitty’s sitting room, a pretty little pink room with vieux saxe bric-a-brac, a room as fresh, pink, and cheerful as Kitty herself had been just two months before, Dolly recalled how together they had decorated this room the year before, with what gaiety and love.¹ Her heart went cold when she saw Kitty sitting on the low chair closest to the door, her lifeless eyes fixed on a corner of the carpet. Kitty glanced at her sister, and the cold, rather stern expression of her face did not change.

“I’m leaving now to confine myself at home and you won’t be able to visit me,” said Darya Alexandrovna, sitting beside her. “I’d like to talk with you.”

“What about?” Kitty asked quickly, raising her head in fright.

“What, if not your grief?”

“I have no grief.”

“Enough, Kitty. Do you really think I could fail to know? I know everything. And believe me, this is so insignificant … We’ve all been through this.”

Kitty said nothing, and her face had a stern expression.

“He’s not worth you suffering over him,” Darya Alexandrovna continued, getting right down to business.

“Yes, because he spurned me,” Kitty said in a trembling voice. “Don’t speak! Please, don’t speak!”

“And who told you that? No one said that. I’m certain he was in love with you and still is in love with you, but …”

“Oh, the worst for me are these consolations!” cried Kitty, suddenly furious. She turned in her chair, her face flushed, and she began fidgeting with her fingers, squeezing the buckle of her belt, which she was holding, with one and then the other hand. Dolly knew this habit of her sister’s of clasping and unclasping her hands when her impulsiveness was taking over; she knew that in a heated moment Kitty was capable of forgetting herself and saying many excessive and unpleasant things, and Dolly wanted to calm her down; but it was too late.

“What, what would you have me feel, what?” said Kitty quickly. “That I was in love with a man who wanted to have nothing to do with me and that I’m dying of love for him? And this is my sister telling me this, my sister, who thinks that … that … that she is being sympathetic! … I want nothing of these consolations and pretenses!”

“Kitty, you’re being unfair.”

“Why are you torturing me?”

“Why I, on the contrary … I can see you’re in pain …”

But in her fever Kitty did not hear her.

“I have nothing to grieve or be consoled over. I have enough pride that I would never allow myself to love someone who did not love me.”

“Why, I’m not saying … One thing—tell me the truth,” Darya Alexandrovna said, taking her hand. “Tell me, did Levin speak to you?”

The mention of Levin apparently drained Kitty’s last scrap of self-control. She jumped up from her chair, and throwing the buckle to the ground and making quick gestures with her hands, began to speak:

“What does Levin have to do with this? I don’t understand why you need to torture me. I said and I repeat that I have my pride and I would never, never do what you’re doing—go back to the man who deceived you, who loved another woman. I don’t understand, I don’t understand this! You may, but I can’t!”

And saying these words, she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Dolly was silent, her head bowed mournfully, Kitty, instead of walking out of the room as she had intended, sat down by the door and hiding her face in her handkerchief, bowed her head.

The silence lasted a couple of minutes. Dolly was thinking about herself. Her humiliation, which was always with her, told especially painfully in her when her sister mentioned it. She had not anticipated such cruelty from her sister, and she was angry with her. Suddenly, however, she heard a dress and instead of the sound of sobs that had been held back too long, someone’s hands embracing her around the neck from below. Kitty was kneeling in front of her.

“Dolly dear, I am so very unhappy!” she whispered guiltily.

And her dear, tear-stained face hid in Darya Alexandrovna’s skirts.

As if tears were the essential lubricant without which the machinery of communication between the two sisters would not run properly, the sisters after the tears began talking in earnest not about what was on their minds but, even while talking about extraneous matters, they understood one another. Kitty understood that the words she had spoken in a fit of temper about a husband’s infidelity and about humiliation had stricken her poor sister to the bottom of her heart but that she forgave her. Dolly, for her part, understood everything she had wanted to know; she was convinced that her guesses had been correct, that the grief, Kitty’s inconsolable grief, consisted precisely in the fact that Levin had proposed to her and she had refused him, while Vronsky had led her on, and that she was prepared to love Levin and despise Vronsky. Kitty had not said a word of this; she had spoken only of her emotional state.

“I have no grief of any kind,” she said when she had calmed down, “but can you understand how vile, repulsive, and crude everything has become to me, and myself above all. You can’t imagine what vile thoughts I have had about everything.”

“And what kinds of vile thoughts could you have?” asked Dolly, smiling.

“The very most vile and crude ones; I can’t even tell you. It’s not melancholy or tedium but much worse. It’s as though everything that was good in me, all of it has been hidden away, and only the very vilest remains. Oh, how can I tell you?” she continued, seeing the perplexity in her sister’s eyes. “Papa was talking to me just now. … It seems to me he thinks I only need to marry. Mama takes me to a ball, and it seems to me she’s only taking me to marry me off as soon as possible and be rid of me. I know that’s not true, but I can’t drive these thoughts away. I can’t bear to see any so-called suitors. It seems to me they’re taking my measure. Before, going anywhere in a ball gown was pure pleasure for me, I would admire myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. And as if that weren’t enough! The doctor … Well …”

Kitty hesitated; she was about to say that ever since this change had come over her, Stepan Arkadyevich had become unbearably unpleasant to her and that she could not see him without the crudest and ugliest pictures filling her head.

“Oh yes, everything appears to me in its crudest and vilest form,” she went on. “This is my disease. Perhaps it will pass …”

“But you mustn’t think …”

“I can’t. I only feel good with the children, only at your house.”

“It’s too bad you can’t stay with me.”

“No, I will come. I’ve had scarlet fever, and I’ll beg Maman.”

Kitty insisted and moved in with her sister and all through the scarlet fever, which did in fact come, she nursed the children. Both sisters brought all six children through it successfully, but Kitty’s health did not improve, and at Lent the Shcherbatskys went abroad.

4

The highest circle of Petersburg society was essentially one; everyone knew everyone else, they even visited one another. However, this large circle did have its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close ties in three different circles. One circle was her husband’s official, ministerial circle, which consisted of his fellow officials and subordinates, who were tied and divided in social terms in the most diverse and capricious way. Anna now could scarcely recall the feeling of almost pious admiration she had had for these people at first. Now she knew them all as people know one another in a district town; she knew who had which habits and weaknesses, whose shoes were too tight; she knew their relations with one another and toward the center of power; she knew who stuck by whom and how and why and who agreed and disagreed with whom on what; however, this circle of governmental, masculine interests had never, in spite of Countess Lydia Ivanovna’s admonitions, been able to interest her, and she avoided it.

Another small circle close to Anna was the one through which Alexei Alexandrovich had made his career. At the center of this circle was Countess Lydia Ivanovna. This was a circle of old, unattractive, virtuous, and pious women and clever, cultivated, and ambitious men. One of the clever men belonging to this circle had called it “the conscience of Petersburg society.” Alexei Alexandrovich prized this circle highly, and Anna, who knew how to get along with everyone, made friends in this circle, too, early on in her Petersburg life. Now, since her return from Moscow, this circle had become intolerable for her. She felt that both she and all of them were pretending, and she found it so boring and awkward in this society that she visited Countess Lydia Ivanovna as infrequently as possible.

The third circle where she had ties, finally, was society itself—the society of balls, dinners, brilliant gowns, the society that held on with one hand to the court so as not to descend to the demimonde, which members of this circle thought they despised but whose tastes were not only similar but identical. Her tie with this circle was maintained through Princess Betsy Tverskaya, her cousin’s wife, who had an income of one hundred twenty thousand and who ever since Anna first appeared in society had taken a special liking to her, who looked after her and drew her into her circle, laughing at the circle of Countess Lydia Ivanovna.

“When I am old and ugly I will be exactly like her,” said Betsy, “but for you, for a young, attractive woman, it’s too soon to join that almshouse.”

Anna at first avoided this society of Princess Tverskaya as much as she could, since it entailed expenditures beyond her means, and in her heart of hearts she preferred the first; however, since her trip to Moscow the situation had reversed itself. She avoided her moral friends and went out into high society. There she met Vronsky and experienced a disturbing joy at these meetings. She met Vronsky especially often at Betsy’s, who was born a Vronskaya and was his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere he might meet Anna, and he spoke to her whenever he could of his love. She gave him no encouragement, but each time she and he met, her soul burned with the same feeling of animation that had descended upon her that day in the train car when she had seen him for the first time. She herself could feel the delight shine in her eyes at the sight of him and her lips furrow into a smile, and she could not suppress the expression of this delight.

At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for allowing himself to pursue her; however, soon after her return from Moscow, upon arriving at a party where she thought she might but did not meet him, she distinctly realized from the disappointment that came over her that she had been deceiving herself, that not only did she not find this pursuit unpleasant, but it constituted the entire interest of her life.

A famous singer was singing a second time, and all society was at the theater. Seeing his cousin from his seat in the first row, Vronsky, without waiting for the entr’acte, went to her box.

“Why didn’t you come for dinner?” she said to him. “I’m amazed at lovers’ clairvoyance,” she added with a smile so that he alone could hear: “She wasn’t there. But come after the opera.”

Vronsky looked at her inquiringly. She nodded. He thanked her with a smile and sat down by her side.

“Ah, how well I remember your jeers!” continued Princess Betsy, finding particular satisfaction in following the success of this passion. “What has become of all that! You are caught, my dear.”

“I want nothing more than to be caught,” replied Vronsky with his calm, good-natured smile. “If I have any complaint it is only that I am too little caught, truth be told. I’m beginning to lose hope.”

“And what hope might you have?” said Betsy, offended for her friend. “Entendons nous …”² But tiny flames were flickering in her eyes which said she realized all too well, precisely as well as he did, what kind of hope he might have.

“None whatsoever,” said Vronsky, laughing and showing his close-set teeth. “Excuse me,” he added, taking the opera glass from her hand and undertaking to survey past her naked shoulder the row of boxes opposite. “I fear I’m becoming ridiculous.”

He knew very well that in the eyes of Betsy and all society people he was at no risk of being ridiculous. He knew very well that in the eyes of these people the role of the unlucky lover of a young girl or any free woman might be ridiculous; but the role of a man pursuing a married woman who had staked his life on drawing her into adultery no matter what, that this role had something handsome and grand about it and could never be ridiculous, and therefore with a proud and cheerful smile playing under his mustache, he lowered the opera glass and looked at his cousin.

“And why didn’t you come for dinner?” she said, admiring him.

“That’s something I must tell you. I was busy, and with what? I could give you a hundred, a thousand guesses, you could not guess. I was reconciling a husband with a man who had insulted his wife. Yes, it’s true!”

“Well, and did you?”

“Nearly.”

“You must tell me about it,” she said, standing up. “Come during the next entr’acte.”

“I can’t; I’m on my way to the Français.”

“Because of Nilsson?”³ Betsy asked with horror. Nothing could make her differentiate between Nilsson and any other chorus girl.

“What can I do? I have an appointment there, all on this matter of my peacemaking.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be saved,” said Betsy, recalling something similar she had heard from someone.⁴ “Well, then sit down, and tell me, what is this about?”

And she sat back down.

5

“This is rather indiscreet, but so sweet that I’m dying to tell someone,” said Vronsky, looking at her with laughing eyes. “I’m not going to name names—”

“But I’m going to guess, even better.”

“Listen then. Two merry young men are out riding …”

“Officers from your regiment, naturally?”

“I’m not saying officers, simply two young men who have had lunch together …”

“Translate: had a drink.”

“Perhaps. They’re on their way to a friend’s for dinner and are in the merriest of spirits. And they see a very pretty woman overtake them in a coach, look around, and, so it seems to them at least, nod to them and laugh. Naturally, they take off after her. They’re galloping full tilt. To their amazement, the beauty stops at the entrance to the very house where they are going. The beauty runs up to the top floor. They see only her rosy lips under her short veil and her magnificent little feet.”

“You tell this with such feeling that it makes me think you yourself are one of the two.”

“And what were you just telling me? Well, the young men go into their friend’s home, he’s giving a farewell dinner. Here, to be sure, they do drink, perhaps too much, as always at farewell dinners. And at dinner they ask him who lives upstairs in this house. No one knows, and only the master’s servant says to their question as to whether any mademoiselles live upstairs, he replies, but there are a great many of them. After dinner the young men go into their host’s study and write the stranger a letter. They write a passionate letter, an avowal, and take the letter upstairs themselves in order to clarify anything that might not prove intelligible in the letter.”

“Why are you telling me such loathsome things? Well?”

“They ring. A maid comes out, they give her the letter and assure her that both of them are so in love that they are going to die right there at the door. In disbelief, the girl tries to negotiate. Suddenly a gentleman appears with side whiskers like little sausages, red as a crab, and announces that no one lives in the house but his wife and he chases them both out.”

“Why do you know he had whiskers like sausages, as you put it?”

“Just listen. I’ve just been to make peace between them.”

“Well, and what happened?”

“This is the most interesting part. It turns out that this is a happy couple, a titular councilor and the titular councilor’s wife.⁵ The titular councilor is lodging a complaint, and I’m taking on the part of mediator, and what a mediator! I assure you, Talleyrand has nothing on me.”

“Where does the difficulty lie?”

“Just listen. … We offered a proper apology. ‘We are in despair, we beg you to forgive us the unfortunate misunderstanding.’ The titular councilor with the little sausages starts to melt but wishes to express his feelings, too, and as soon as he begins expressing them, he starts getting angry and speaking crudely, and once again I have to put all my diplomatic talents in motion. ‘I agree that their deed is not very pretty, but I beg you to keep in mind the misunderstanding and their youth; and then the young men had only just had their lunch. You understand. They repent with all their heart and beg you to forgive their transgression.’ Again the titular councilor softens. ‘I agree, Count, and I am prepared to forgive, but you must understand that my wife, my wife, an honest woman, has been subjected to the pursuits, vulgarities, and impudences of these scalawags, these scoun- … ’ And you understand, this scalawag is right there, and I have to make peace between them. Once again I put my diplomacy into motion, and once again, just as the entire matter should be concluded, my titular councilor gets angry, turns red, the little sausages pop up, and once again I’m drowning in diplomatic subtleties.”

“Oh, he must tell you this!” Laughing, Betsy turned to the lady who had entered her box. “He has amused me so.”

“Well, bonne chance,” she added, holding out to Vronsky a finger freed from holding her fan, and with a movement of her shoulders lowering the bodice of her gown, which had come up, in order to be fully and properly naked, when she emerged out front, into the gaslight, and all eyes turned to her.⁶

Vronsky left for the Théâtre Français, where he truly did need to see his regimental commander, who did not miss a single performance at the Théâtre Fran-çais, in order to speak with him about his peacemaking, which had kept him busy and entertained for several days. Mixed up in this matter was Petritsky, of whom he was fond, and another great guy who had recently joined up, an excellent fellow, the young Prince Kedrov. But above all, the regiment’s interests were involved.

Both were in Vronsky’s squadron. The official, titular councilor Wenden, had come to see the regimental commander with a complaint against his officers, who had insulted his wife. His young wife, as Wenden explained—he had been married half a year—had been at church with her mother and, suddenly feeling unwell as a result of her interesting condition, could not stand any longer and went home in the first coach she happened upon. At this the officers took after her, she became frightened, and feeling increasingly unwell, ran up the stairs home. Wenden himself, upon returning from his office, heard the bell and voices, came out, and when he saw the drunken officers with their letter, pushed them out. He was asking for harsh punishment.

“Say what you like,” the regimental commander told Vronsky, whom he had asked to come see him, “Petritsky is becoming impossible. Not a week passes without some incident. This clerk is not about to drop the matter, he will press it.”

Vronsky saw just how unseemly the matter was and that there could be no duel here, that all steps had to be taken to mollify this titular councilor and hush up the incident. The regimental commander had called Vronsky in precisely because he knew him to be a noble and clever man and, most important, a man who cherished the regiment’s honor. They talked it over and decided that Petritsky and Kedrov had to go with Vronsky to see this titular councilor and apologize. The regimental commander and Vronsky both realized that Vronsky’s name and aide-de-camp rank should do much to mollify the titular councilor. And indeed, these two means did prove partly effective; the result of the reconciliation, however, remained in doubt, as Vronsky had recounted.

When he arrived at the Français, Vronsky retired to the foyer with the regimental commander and related to him his success or lack of success. After thinking everything over, the regimental commander decided to leave the matter as it stood, but then for his own satisfaction began questioning Vronsky about the details of his meeting and for a long time could not stop laughing, listening to Vronsky’s story about the titular councilor calming down and then suddenly getting angry again when recalling the details of the incident, and how Vronsky, at the merest hint of reconciliation, maneuvering to withdraw, pushed Petritsky out in front of him.

“It’s a miserable story, but hilarious. Kedrov couldn’t possibly fight this gentleman! Did he get that terribly angry?” he asked again, laughing. “And how do you find Claire today? A marvel!” he said about the new French actress. “No matter how many times you see her, every day she’s new. Only the French are capable of that.”

6

Princess Betsy left the theater without waiting for the final act. No sooner had she entered her dressing room and sprinkled her long, pale face with powder, blotted it, fixed her hair, and ordered tea in the large drawing room, than one carriage after another began pulling up to her enormous house on Bolshaya Morskaya. Her guests emerged at the broad entrance, and the stout porter, who had a habit in the mornings of reading the newspapers out loud from behind the glass door, for the edification of passersby, opened this huge door without a sound and let the new arrivals pass inside.

Entering at nearly the exact same moment were the hostess, with her freshened coiffure and freshened face, through one door, and her guests through the other, into the large drawing room with its dark walls, luxurious carpets, and brightly lit table, where the candles made the white of the tablecloth, the silver of the samovar, and the translucent porcelain of the tea service all sparkle.

The hostess seated herself at the samovar and removed her gloves. Chairs were shifted with the help of discreet footmen, and the company took their seats, dividing into two groups: by the samovar with the hostess and at the far end of the drawing room—around a beautiful woman dressed in black velvet who had sharp black eyebrows, the wife of an ambassador. As always in the first few minutes, the conversation in both groups kept vacillating, interrupted by meetings, greetings, and offers of tea, as if probing where it might come to rest.

“She is exceptionally fine as an actress; you can tell she has studied Kaulbach,” said a diplomat in the circle around the ambassador’s wife.⁷ “You noticed how she fell …”

“Oh, please, let’s not talk about Nilsson! There is nothing new one can say about her,” said a fat, red-faced woman who lacked both eyebrows and chignon, a fair-haired lady wearing an old silk dress. This was Princess Myahkaya, who was famous for the simplicity and bluntness of her statements and was referred to as an enfant terrible. Princess Myahkaya was sitting in the middle, between the two groups, and listening, taking part in first one and then the other. “Three people now have told me the exact same thing about Kaulbach, as if they were in cahoots. They’ve taken such a fancy to it, though I don’t know why.”

The conversation was terminated by this comment, and they had to come up with a new topic again.

“Tell us something entertaining but not malicious,” said the ambassador’s wife, a great master of elegant conversation, what in English is called small talk, turning to the diplomat, who did not know where to begin now, either.⁸

“They say that’s very hard to do, that only the malicious is amusing,” he began with a smile. “But I’ll try. Give me a topic. It’s all a matter of topic. If the topic has been set, then it’s easy to embroider upon it. I often think that the famous talkers of the past century would now be hard pressed to speak cleverly. We are so sick of everything clever.”

“That was said long ago,” the ambassador’s wife interrupted him, laughing.

The conversation began agreeably, but precisely because it was excessively agreeable, it again ground to a halt. There was nothing for it but to resort to the tried and true—malicious gossip.

“Don’t you find that there’s something of Louis XV in Tushkevich?” he said, indicating with his eyes a handsome, fair young man standing by the table.

“Oh, yes! He is in exactly the same taste as the drawing room, which is why he is here so often.”

This conversation was kept up since they were hinting at precisely what could not be spoken of in this drawing room, that is, Tushkevich’s relationship to the hostess.

Around the samovar and hostess, meanwhile, the conversation, which vacillated for some time in exactly the same way among three inevitable topics—the latest civic news, the theater, and condemnation of their neighbor—also settled on the last topic, that is, malicious gossip.

“Have you heard? Maltishcheva—the mother, not the daughter—is having a gown sewn for herself in diable rose.”⁹

“Impossible! No, that’s too marvelous!”

“I’m amazed at how, with her mind—she is, after all, far from stupid—she fails to see how ludicrous she is.”

Everyone had something to say in condemnation and ridicule of the unfortunate Maltishcheva, and the conversation crackled as merrily as a roaring bonfire.

Princess Betsy’s husband, a stout, good-natured man and a passionate collector of engravings, seeing that his wife had guests, stopped into the drawing room on his way to his club. No one heard him walk over the soft carpet to Princess Myahkaya.

“How did you like Nilsson, Princess?” he said.

“Oh, my! How can you sneak up like that? You gave me such a fright!” she replied. “Please, do not speak to me of opera, you understand nothing of music. Better I descend to your level and speak with you of your majolica and engravings. So, what treasure have you bought lately at auction?”

“Would you like me to show you? But you know nothing about it.”

“Show me. I learned from those, what do they call them … bankers … they have marvelous engravings. They used to show us.”

“What, have you been at the Schützbergs’?” the hostess asked from her place at the samovar.

“Yes, ma chère.¹⁰ They invited my husband and myself to dine, and they told me that the sauce at this dinner cost a thousand rubles,” Princess Myahkaya said loudly, sensing that everyone was listening to her, “and a disgusting sauce it was, something green. I had to invite them, and I made a sauce for eighty-five kopeks, and everyone was quite satisfied. I cannot make thousand-ruble sauces.”

“She is one of a kind!” said the ambassador’s wife.

“Amazing!” said someone.

The effect produced by Princess Myahkaya’s speeches was always identical, and the secret of the effect she produced consisted in the fact that she always said simple things that, if not entirely to the point, as now, made sense. In the society in which she lived, such words produced the effect of the wittiest joke. Princess Myahkaya could not understand why this worked so well, but she knew that it did and took advantage of this fact.

Since during Princess Myahkaya’s speech everyone was listening to her and the conversation around the ambassador’s wife stopped, the hostess wanted to unite the entire company and so addressed the ambassador’s wife.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea? You should join us.”

“No, we’re doing quite well here,” the ambassador’s wife replied with a smile, and she resumed their conversation.

The conversation was very pleasant. They were condemning the Karenins, wife and husband.

“Anna is very much changed since her Moscow trip. There’s something odd about her,” said an acquaintance of hers.

“The chief change is the fact that she brought back the shadow of Alexei Vronsky,” said the ambassador’s wife.

“And what if she did? Grimm has a tale about a man without a shadow, a man who loses his shadow. And this is a punishment for something. I could never understand where the punishment lay. But a woman must find it unpleasant to be without a shadow.”

“Yes, but women who have shadows usually end badly,” said Anna’s acquaintance.

“Keep your trap shut,” said Princess Myahkaya suddenly, hearing these words. “Madame Karenina is a marvelous woman. I don’t like her husband, but I like her very much.”

“Why don’t you like her husband? He’s such a remarkable man,” said the ambassador’s wife. “My husband says there are very few men of state like that in Europe.”

“My husband tells me the same thing, but I don’t believe it,” said Princess Myahkaya. “If our husbands didn’t say anything, we would see what really is, and in my opinion Alexei Alexandrovich is simply a fool. I say this in a whisper. … Doesn’t that make everything much clearer? Before, when they told me to find him clever, I kept searching and finding that I was the stupid one for not seeing his cleverness, but as soon as I said, He’s a fool, but in a whisper—everything became so clear, don’t you think?”

“How wicked you are today!”

“Not a bit of it. I have no other solution. One or the other of us is a fool. Well, you know one can never say that about oneself.”

“No one is ever satisfied with his own condition, but everyone is satisfied with his own mind,” the diplomat recited a French verse.

“That’s it precisely,” Princess Myahkaya turned to him hastily. “The problem is, though, that I won’t give Anna up to you. She is so lovely and dear. Is it her fault if everyone is in love with her and they follow her about like shadows?”

“I have no intention of judging her,” Anna’s acquaintance said in self-defense.

“If no one is following us like a shadow, that does not prove that we have the right to judge.”

And, having put Anna’s acquaintance in her proper place, Princess Myahkaya rose and she and the ambassador’s wife joined the group at the table, where a general discussion was in progress about the king of Prussia.

“What were you being so spiteful about?” asked Betsy.

“The Karenins. The princess was giving us her characterization of Alexei Alexandrovich,” replied the ambassador’s wife, smiling as she sat down at the table.

“It’s a pity we could not hear,” said the hostess, glancing periodically at the door. “Ah, there you are, at last!” she said, smiling, to Vronsky as he entered.

Not only did Vronsky know everyone, but he saw everyone he met here every day, and so he entered with the same calm manner with which people enter a room to see people they have only just left.

“Where have I come from?” he replied to the question of the ambassador’s wife. “What’s to be done, I must confess. From the bouffe.¹¹ It must be the hundredth time, and always with fresh pleasure. Charming! I know I should be ashamed, but I sleep through the opera, while at the bouffe I stay in my seat until the very last minute and have such a cheerful time. Today …”

He named a French actress and was about to tell a story about her when the ambassador’s wife interrupted him in mock horror:

“Please, tell us no stories about that horror.”

“I won’t then, especially since everyone knows these horrors.”

“And everyone would go there if only it were as acceptable as the opera,” chimed in Princess Myahkaya.

7

There were steps at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing this was Madame Karenina, glanced at Vronsky. He was watching the door, and his face bore a strange new expression. He joyfully, intently, and at the same time shyly watched the woman entering and slowly rose to his feet. Anna entered the drawing room. Holding herself extremely erect as always, with her quick, firm, and light step, which distinguished hers from the step of other society women, and without changing the direction of her gaze, she took those few steps that separated her from her hostess, pressed her hand, smiled, and with this smile looked around at Vronsky. Vronsky bowed low and offered her a chair.

She responded with a mere inclination of her head, blushed, and frowned. Immediately, however, quickly nodding to friends and shaking extended hands, she turned to her hostess.

“I was at Countess Lydia’s and wanted to come earlier but stayed on. She had Sir John there. A very interesting man.”

“Ah, is that the missionary?”

“Yes, very interesting, he told stories about Indian life.”

The conversation, which had been interrupted by her arrival, again sputtered, like the flame of a lamp being blown out.

“Sir John! Yes, Sir John. I saw him. He speaks well. Vlaseva is thoroughly infatuated with him.”

“Is it true that the younger Vlaseva is marrying Topov?”

“Yes, they say it’s all decided.”

“I’m amazed at the parents. They’re saying it’s a love match.”

“Love? What antediluvian ideas you have! Who nowadays speaks of love?” said the ambassador’s wife.

“What can one do? That foolish old fashion has yet to be dispensed with,” said Vronsky.

“So much the worse for those who cling to this fashion. I know happy marriages only based on convenience.”

“Yes, but then how often does the happiness of convenient marriages scatter like dust, precisely because that very passion they would not admit does turn up,” said Vronsky.

“But what we call marriages of convenience are those when both have already sown their wild oats. It’s like scarlet fever, one must get past that.”

“Then we need to learn how to inoculate artificially against love, like smallpox.”

“In my youth I was in love with a deacon,” said Princess Myahkaya. “I don’t know whether that was any help to me.”

“No, joking aside, I think that in order to recognize love one needs to make a mistake and then correct it,” said Princess Betsy.

“Even after marriage?” said the ambassador’s wife playfully.

“It’s never too late to repent,” the diplomat recited the English saying.

“Precisely,” Betsy chimed in. “One must make a mistake and correct it. What do you say to this?” she turned to Anna, who was listening to the conversation in silence with a barely perceptible but firm smile on her lips.

“I think,” said Anna, playing with the glove she had removed, “I think … there are as many minds as heads and as many kinds of love as hearts.”

Vronsky had been looking at Anna and waiting with a sinking heart for what she would say. He sighed as if a danger had passed when she spoke these words.

Anna suddenly turned to him.

“I have had a letter from Moscow. They write that Kitty Shcherbatskaya is quite ill.”

“Really?” said Vronsky, frowning.

Anna looked at him sternly.

“This doesn’t interest you?”

“On the contrary, it does very much. What exactly do they write, if I may inquire?” he asked.

Anna rose and walked over to Betsy.

“Give me a cup of tea,” she said, stopping behind her chair.

While Princess Betsy was pouring her tea, Vronsky walked over to Anna.

“What have they written?” he repeated.

“I often think that men do not realize what is noble and ignoble, though they are constantly talking about it,” said Anna without answering him. “I’ve long been meaning to tell you,” she added, and taking a few steps, sat down at a corner table with albums.

“I don’t quite understand the meaning of your words,” he said, handing her a cup.

She looked at the sofa beside her and he immediately sat down.

“Yes, I have been meaning to tell you,” she said without looking at him. “You behaved badly, very badly.”

“Do you think I don’t know I behaved badly? But who was the cause of me acting in this way?”

“Why are you saying this to me?” she said, looking at him sternly.

“You know why,” he replied boldly and joyfully, meeting her glance and not looking away.

She, not he, became flustered.

“This proves only that you have no heart,” she said. But her look said that she knew he did have a heart and this was why she was afraid of him.

“What you were just speaking of was a mistake, not love.”

“You remember that I forbade you to speak that word, that vile word,” said Anna, shuddering; but immediately she sensed that with this one word, “forbade,” she had shown that she was asserting certain rights over him and by so doing was encouraging him to speak of love. “I have been meaning to tell you this for a long time,” she continued, looking him square in the eye, her face scorched by a fiery blush, “and today I have come on purpose knowing I would meet you here. I have come to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone before, but you have forced me to feel that I am guilty of something.”

He looked at her and was stunned by the new spiritual beauty of her face.

“What do you want of me?” he said, simply and gravely.

“I want you to go to Moscow and beg Kitty’s forgiveness,” she said, and a light flickered in her eyes.

“That is not what you want,” he said.

He saw that she was saying what she was forcing herself to say, not what she wanted to say.

“If you love me as you say,” she whispered, “then do this to give me peace.”

His face glowed.

“Don’t you know that you are all of life for me; peace is something I do not know, though, and I cannot give it to you. My entire self, love … yes. I cannot think of you and of myself separately. For me, you and I are one. And I do not foresee the possibility of peace either for myself or for you. I see the possibility of despair and unhappiness … or I see the possibility of happiness, what happiness! Can it not be possible?” he added with just his lips, but she heard.

She harnessed all her strength of mind to say what she ought to, but instead of this she rested her gaze on him, a gaze full of love, and said nothing.

“Here it is!” he thought with rapture. “When I had already despaired, when it seemed there would be no end—here it is! She loves me. She is admitting it.”

“Then do this for me, never speak those words to me, and we shall be good friends,” she said with her words, but her gaze said something completely different.

“Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. But whether we are the happiest or unhappiest of people—that is in your power.”

She was about to say something, but he interrupted her.

“You see, I’m asking only one thing, I’m asking for the right to hope, to suffer, as now; but if even this cannot be, then order me to disappear and I will. You will not see me if my presence pains you.”

“I have no wish to drive you away.”

“Then change nothing. Leave everything as it is,” he said in a trembling voice. “Here is your husband.”

And indeed, at that moment Alexei Alexandrovich, with his calm, clumsy walk, was entering the drawing room.

He glanced around at his wife and Vronsky and went over to his hostess, and sitting down over a cup of tea, he began speaking in his unhurried, always audible voice, in his usual joking tone, chaffing at someone.

“Your Rambouillet is in full conclave,” he said, surveying the entire company. “The Graces and the Muses.”¹²

But Princess Betsy could not stand this tone of his, this sneering, as she called it, and as a clever hostess immediately engaged him in a serious discussion of universal military service.¹³ Alexei Alexandrovich was immediately drawn into the discussion and began defending the new decree in earnest to Princess Betsy, who attacked it.

Vronsky and Anna remained sitting at the small table.

“This is becoming indecent,” whispered one lady, her eyes indicating Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband.

“What did I tell you?” replied Anna’s acquaintance.

But it was not only these ladies, who were almost always in the drawing room, even Princess Myahkaya and Betsy herself had cast several glances at the two, who had detached themselves from the general circle, as if it were disturbing them. Only Alexei Alexandrovich never once glanced in that direction and was not distracted from the interest of the newly begun conversation.

Noticing the unpleasant impression being made on everyone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen to Alexei Alexandrovich and she herself went over to Anna.

“I am always amazed at the clarity and precision of your husband’s expressions,” she said. “The most transcendent concepts become accessible to me when he speaks.”

“Oh yes!” said Anna, glowing with a smile of happiness and understanding not one word of what Betsy was saying to her. She moved over to the big table and joined in the general discussion.

Alexei Alexandrovich stayed half an hour, went over to his wife, and suggested that they ride home together; but without looking at him she replied that she would stay for supper. Alexei Alexandrovich bowed and went out.

Madame Karenina’s driver, a fat old Tatar wearing a glossy leather coat, was having trouble holding back the chilled gray horse on the left that had been rearing up by the entrance. A footman was holding the carriage door open. The porter was standing, holding the front door. Anna Arkadyevna was freeing the lace of her sleeve from her coat hook with her small, quick hand, and, head bowed, listening raptly to what Vronsky, who was seeing her out, was saying.

“You have not said anything; let’s just say I am asking nothing,” he said, “but you know very well I have no need of friendship. There is one possible happiness for me in life, this word you dislike so much … yes, love.”

“Love,” she echoed slowly, in an inner voice, and suddenly, just as she freed the lace, she added: “The reason I don’t like that word is that it means too much to me, much more than you could possibly understand.” And she looked him in the face. “Good-bye!”

She gave him her hand and with a quick resilient step walked past the porter and disappeared into the carriage.

Her glance and the touch of her hand had burned right through him. He kissed his palm on the very spot she had touched, and he went home, happy in the awareness that this evening he had come closer to achieving his goal than he had in the past two months.

8

Alexei Alexandrovich found nothing odd or improper in the fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a separate table and discussing something in animated fashion; however, he did notice that to the others in the drawing room this did seem in some way odd and improper, and for this reason it seemed improper to him as well. He decided he had to speak of this to his wife.

Returning home, Alexei Alexandrovich went into his study, as he usually did, and sat down in his reading chair, opening to the place in the book on the papacy that he had marked with his paper knife, and read until one o’clock, as he usually did; only from time to time he rubbed his high brow and gave his head a shake, as if he were chasing something away. At his usual hour, he rose and made his evening toilet. Anna Arkadyevna was still not there. With his book under his arm, he went upstairs; but this evening, instead of his usual thoughts and ideas about official matters, his thoughts were filled with his wife and something unpleasant connected with her. Contrary to habit, he did not go to bed but proceeded to pace back and forth from room to room, his hands clasped behind his back. He could not go to bed, feeling that first he must think through the newly arisen circumstance.

When Alexei Alexandrovich had decided privately that he needed to talk things over with his wife, this seemed like a very easy and simple thing to do; now, though, as he began thinking through this newly arisen circumstance, it seemed to him quite complicated and difficult.

Alexei Alexandrovich was not jealous. According to his conviction, jealousy insulted one’s wife, and one must have trust in one’s wife. Why one must have trust, that is, full confidence, in the fact that his young wife would always love him, he did not ask himself; however, he did not feel mistrust because he did have confidence and told himself he ought to have it. Now, although his conviction that jealousy was a shameful emotion and that one must have confidence was not shattered, he did feel that he was standing face to face with something illogical and incoherent, and he did not know what he should do. Alexei Alexandrovich was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of love in his wife for someone other than himself, and this seemed to him quite incoherent and incomprehensible because this was life itself. All his life, Alexei Alexandrovich had lived and worked in official spheres, dealing with reflections of life. And each time he came into contact with life itself, he shrank away. Now he was experiencing an emotion similar to that which a man would feel who was calmly crossing a chasm by bridge and suddenly saw that the bridge had been dismantled and there was an abyss. This abyss was life itself, and the bridge was that artificial life which Alexei Alexandrovich had lived. For the first time, questions came to him of the possibility of his wife falling in love with someone, and at this he was horrified.

Without undressing, he paced with his even step back and forth over the resonant parquet of the dining room, which was illuminated by a single lamp, across the carpet of the darkened drawing room, where light was reflected only on the large, recently done portrait of him that hung over the sofa, and through her sitting room, where two candles were burning, casting light on the portraits of her relatives and friends, and on the pretty, long intimately familiar bric-a-brac on her writing desk. Through her room he walked as far as the bedroom door and turned around again.

On each stretch of his walk, and mostly on the parquet of the well-lit dining room, he would stop now and again and tell himself: “Yes, I must decide and put a stop to this and express my view of this and my decision.” And he would turn back. “But express what? What decision?” he said to himself in the drawing room, and found no answer. “And when you come right down to it,” he would ask himself before the turn into her sitting room, “what did happen? Nothing. She spoke with him for a long time. And so? Is there any harm in a woman in society speaking with someone? And then, to be jealous is to demean both myself and her,” he told himself as he entered her sitting room; but this reasoning, which previously had held such weight for him, now weighed and meant nothing. And he would again turn away from the bedroom door and go back toward the drawing room; but as soon as he went back into the darkened drawing room, a voice told him that this was not the case and that if others noticed this, then that meant there was something. And once again he told himself in the dining room: “Yes, I must decide and put a stop to this and express my view …” And again in the drawing room before the turn he asked himself, “Decide it how?” And then he asked himself, “What had happened?” And he answered, “Nothing,” and he recalled that jealousy was an emotion that demeans a wife, but again in the drawing room he was convinced that something had happened. His thoughts, like his body, kept coming full circle without landing on anything new. He noticed this, rubbed his brow, and sat down in her sitting room.

Here, looking at her desk with the malachite blotter lying on top and a note she had started, his thoughts suddenly changed. He began thinking about her, about what she thought and felt. For the first time he vividly imagined her private life, her thoughts, her desires, and the thought that she might and must have her own separate life seemed to him so terrible that he hastened to drive it away. This was that abyss into which he was afraid to look. Trying to imagine the thoughts and feelings of another being was an emotional exercise alien to Alexei Alexandrovich. He considered this emotional exercise harmful and dangerous fantasizing.

“What is most horrible of all,” he thought, “is that now, as my work is drawing to its conclusion”—he was thinking about the project he was overseeing now—“when I need all the tranquility and strength I can muster, now I am being inundated with this senseless worry. What else can I do, though? I’m not one of those people who suffers upset and alarm and lacks the strength to look them in the face.”

“I must think this through, come to a decision, and set it aside,” he said out loud.

“Questions of her feelings, of what has and might come to pass in her soul, that is none of my affair, it is the affair of her conscience and falls under religion,” he told himself, feeling relief at the awareness that he had found the set of statutes under which the newly arisen circumstance fell.

“And so,” Alexei Alexandrovich told himself, “questions of her feelings and so forth constitute questions for her own conscience, which is none of my affair. My duty is clearly defined. As head of the family, I am the individual obligated to guide her, and so I am in part the responsible party; I must point out the danger I see, avert it, and even exercise my authority. I must tell her all this.”

And in Alexei Alexandrovich’s mind, everything he would now tell his wife composed itself clearly. Thinking through what he would say, he regretted having to put his time and mental energy to such inconspicuous domestic use, but in spite of that, in his mind the form and sequence of his impending speech was composing itself as clearly and distinctly as a report. “I must say and express the following: first, an explanation of the importance of public opinion and propriety; second, the religious explanation of the significance of marriage; third, if necessary, indication of the possible misfortune that could befall our son; fourth, a pointing out of her own unhappiness.” And interlacing his fingers, palms facing down, Alexei Alexandrovich pushed, and his knuckles cracked.

This gesture, this bad habit of clasping his hands and cracking his knuckles, always calmed him and gave him the sense of precision he so needed now. The sound of a carriage driving up was heard at the front door. Alexei Alexandrovich stopped in the middle of the room.

A woman’s steps started up the stairs. Alexei Alexandrovich, prepared for his speech, stood clasping his folded hands, waiting to see whether the knuckles would crack again. One knuckle did.

From the sound of her light steps on the stairs, he could sense her approach, and although he was satisfied with his speech, he was frightened at the impending explanation.

9

Anna was walking with her head bowed and playing with the tassels of her hood. Her face gave off a vivid glow, but this was not a cheerful glow; it was like the frightful glow of a fire in the midst of a dark night. Seeing her husband, Anna raised her head, and as if waking up, smiled.

“You’re not in bed? There’s a wonder!” she said, and she tossed back her hood and, without stopping, kept walking toward her dressing room. “It’s late, Alexei Alexandrovich,” she said from the other room.

“Anna, I must speak with you.”

“With me?” she said, surprised, and she came out of the room and looked at him. “But what is it? What’s this about?” she asked, sitting down. “All right, let’s talk, if it’s so necessary. But it would be better to sleep.”

Anna was saying whatever came to her lips and was herself surprised, listening to herself, at her ability to lie. How simple, how natural her words were, and how much it seemed as if she were simply sleepy! She felt as if she were wearing an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt as if some invisible power were aiding and abetting her.

“Anna, I must warn you,” he said.

“Warn me?” she said. “Of what?”

Her look was so simple, so cheerful, that anyone who did not know her as her husband did would never have noticed anything unnatural in the sounds or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her, knowing that when he went to bed five minutes later than usual she noticed and asked the reason, to him, knowing that she immediately informed him of any joy, happiness, or grief, to him to see now that she did not want to remark on his state, that she did not want to say a word about herself, meant a great deal. He saw that the depth of her soul, formerly open to him, was now closed. Not only that, from her tone he could see that she was not even embarrassed by this, but might just as well have told him, Yes, it’s closed, and this is how it must and will be from now on. Now he experienced an emotion like that experienced by a man who has returned home and found his house locked. “But perhaps the key will yet be found,” thought Alexei Alexandrovich.

“I want to warn you,” he said in a quiet voice, “that by your indiscreet and careless behavior, you may give society grounds for talking about you. Your excessively animated conversation today with Count Vronsky (he pronounced this name firmly and with deliberate calm) attracted attention.”

He spoke and watched her laughing eyes, whose impenetrability now frightened him, and as he spoke he sensed the utter uselessness and futility of his words.

“You’re always like this,” she replied, as if not understanding him at all, and from all that he said intentionally understanding only the last part. “Either you don’t like it that I’m bored, or you don’t like it that I’m cheerful. I wasn’t bored. Does that offend you?”

Alexei Alexandrovich shuddered and bent his hands to crack his knuckles.

“Oh, please, don’t crack them, I dislike it so,” she said.

“Anna, is this you?” said Alexei Alexandrovich quietly, making an effort to contain himself and the movement of his hands.

“And what is this?” she said with the same sincere and comic surprise. “What do you want of me?”

Alexei Alexandrovich was silent for a moment and rubbed his brow and eyes with his hand. He saw that instead of doing what he had wanted to do, that is, warn his wife against an error in the eyes of society, he had upset himself unintentionally about something that concerned her conscience and had been struggling against a wall of his own imagination.

“This is what I had intended to say,” he continued coldly and calmly, “and I beg of you to hear me out. As you know, I admit jealousy to be an offensive and demeaning emotion and would never allow myself to be guided by this emotion; however, there are well-known laws of propriety that cannot be transgressed with impunity. Today not I, but, judging from the impression that was produced on the company, everyone, remarked that you were acting and behaving not quite as one would desire.”

“I understand absolutely none of this,” said Anna, shrugging her shoulders. “He doesn’t care,” she thought, “but society noticed, and that disturbs him.” “You are unwell, Alexei Alexandrovich,” she added, and she rose and was about to go through the door, but he took a step forward, as if wishing to stop her.

His face was unattractive and dark, such as Anna had never seen it. She stopped, and leaning her head back and tilting it to one side, began pulling out hairpins with a quick hand.

“Well, sir, I’m listening for what comes next,” she said in a calm, amused voice. “I’m listening with interest even, because I wish to understand what is the matter.”

She spoke and wondered at the naturally calm and confident tone in which she spoke, and at the choice of words she used.

“I have no right to go into all the details of your emotions, and generally speaking I consider this useless and even harmful,” Alexei Alexandrovich began. “Digging around in our souls, we often dig up something that would have lain there unremarked. Your emotions are a matter for your own conscience; however, I am obliged to you, to myself, and to God, to point out to you your obligations. Our lives are bound, and bound not by people but by God. Only a crime can sunder this bond, and a crime of this sort would entail grave punishment.”

“I understand nothing. Oh, heavens, how terribly sleepy I am!” she said, quickly combing her hand through her hair and searching for the remaining hairpins.

“Anna, for God’s sake, don’t talk like this,” he said abruptly. “Perhaps I’m wrong, but believe me that what I say I say as much for myself as for you. I am your husband and I love you.”

For an instant her face fell, and the amused spark in her eye was extinguished, but the word “love” roused her indignation again. She thought: “Love? Can he really love? If he’d never heard that there is such a thing as love, he would never use this word. He doesn’t even know what love is.”

“Alexei Alexandrovich, I really do not understand,” she said. “Define for me what it is you find …”

“If you please, allow me to finish speaking. I love you. But I’m not talking about myself; the principal individuals here are our son and you yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my words will seem utterly futile and inappropriate to you; perhaps they are provoked by an error on my part. In that case, I beg you to forgive me. However, if you yourself sense that there is even the slightest foundation, then I beg of you to think and, if your heart speaks, to tell me …”

Without noticing it himself, Alexei Alexandrovich was saying exactly what he had prepared not to say.

“I have nothing to say. Yes and”—she said quickly all of a sudden, restraining a smile with difficulty—“really, it’s time to go to bed.”

Alexei Alexandrovich sighed and, without saying another word, headed for the bedroom.

When she entered the bedroom he was already lying down. His lips were sternly compressed, and his eyes were not looking at her. Anna lay down on the bed and expected him to start speaking to her at any moment. She was both afraid he would start talking and also wanted him to do so. But he was silent. She waited for a long time, motionless, and forgot about him. She was thinking of someone else; she saw him and at this thought felt her heart fill with excitement and an illicit joy. Suddenly she heard an even and calm snoring. For the first minute Alexei Alexandrovich seemed to startle at his own snoring and stopped; but after two more breaths his snoring began again with a calm new evenness.

“It’s late, it’s late, it’s late now,” she whispered with a smile. She lay there motionless for a long time with open eyes whose sparkle she thought even she could see in the darkness.

10

From that evening on, a new life began for Alexei Alexandrovich and for his wife. Nothing special happened. Anna, as always, went into society, was particularly often at Princess Betsy’s, and met Vronsky everywhere. Alexei Alexandrovich saw this but could do nothing. To all his attempts to make her explain she erected an impenetrable wall of some sort of cheerful bewilderment. From the outside, it was the same, but their inner relations changed utterly. Alexei Alexandrovich, such a powerful man in affairs of state, here felt himself powerless. Like a bull meekly lowering his head, he waited for the ax, which, he could feel, had been raised over him. Each time he began thinking about this, he felt he needed to make one more attempt, that with kindness, tenderness, and conviction there was still hope of saving her, of making her come to her senses, and every day he intended to talk to her. But each time he began talking to her, he could feel this spirit of malice and deceit that had seized hold of her seize hold of him as well, and he talked to her in anything but the tone in which he had intended. Without meaning to, he talked to her in his usual tone, which mocked anyone who would speak in that way. And in this tone there was no saying to her what demanded saying.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

That which had constituted for nearly an entire year the one exclusive desire in Vronsky’s life and had replaced for him all former desires; that which for Anna was an impossible, terrible, and thus bewitching dream of happiness—this desire was fulfilled. Pale, his lower jaw trembling, he stood over her and begged her to calm herself, not knowing himself why or how.

“Anna! Anna!” he said in a trembling voice. “Anna, for God’s sake!”

But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud, cheerful, now mortified head, and her entire body crumpled and she fell from the sofa on which she had been sitting, onto the floor, at his feet; she would have fallen on the carpet had he not held her up.

“My God! Forgive me!” she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her breast.

She felt so criminal and guilty that there was nothing left for her but to humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and since in life now, she had no one but him, so it was to him that she addressed her prayer for forgiveness. Looking at him, she felt her humiliation physically and could say nothing more. He felt what a murderer must feel when he sees a body he has deprived of life. This body he had deprived of life was their love, the first period of their love. There was something horrible and loathsome in his memories of what had been paid for at this terrible price of shame. Shame at her spiritual nakedness was crushing her and was being communicated to him. Despite the full horror of the murderer before the dead body, though, this body had to be cut to pieces and hidden, advantage had to be taken of what the murderer had gained by murder.

And with an animosity akin to passion, the murderer throws himself on this body, drags it away, and cuts it up; thus did he cover her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his hand and did not stir. Yes, these kisses were what this shame had bought. Yes, and this one hand, which will always be mine, is the hand of my accomplice. She raised this hand and kissed it. He dropped to his knees, trying to see her face; but she hid it and said nothing. At last, as if making an effort over herself, she rose and pushed him away. Her face was as beautiful as ever, but even more, it was pitiful.

“It’s all over,” she said. “I have nothing but you. Remember that.”

“I can’t help but remember that which is my life. For a moment of this happiness …”

“Happiness!” she said with revulsion and horror, and the horror was unwittingly communicated to him. “For God’s sake, not a word, not another word.”

She rose quickly and moved away from him.

“Not another word,” she repeated, and with an expression of cold despair on her face that he found strange, she parted from him. She felt that at this moment she could not express in words her shame, joy, and horror at this entrance into a new life and did not want to speak of it, to debase this feeling with inexact words. But even after, the next day and the day after that, she not only could not find words in which she might express the full complexity of these feelings, she could not even find the thoughts to think through privately everything that was in her heart.

She kept telling herself, “No, I can’t think about this now; later, when I’m calmer.” But this calm for thinking never came; each time the thought of what she had done, and what would happen to her, and what she ought to do, did come to her, horror would descend upon her and she would drive these thoughts away.

“Later, later,” she would say, “when I’m calmer.”

On the other hand, in her sleep, when she had no power over her thoughts, her situation appeared to her in all its monstrous nakedness. She had the same dream nearly every night. She dreamed that both of them were her husbands, that both were lavishing their caresses on her. Alexei Alexandrovich wept, kissing her hands, and said, “How fine it is now!” And Alexei Vronsky was right there, too, and he was her husband as well. And she, amazed at what had previously seemed impossible, was explaining to them, laughing, that this was much simpler and that they both now were happy and content. But this dream weighed on her like a nightmare, and she would wake up terrified.

12

At first after his return from Moscow, when Levin shuddered and blushed each time he recalled the disgrace of his rejection, he would tell himself: “I blushed and shuddered exactly the same way, counting myself lost, when I received a one in physics and stayed back in my second year; I considered myself just as lost after I spoiled the business my sister had entrusted to me.¹⁴ And so? Now that the years have passed, I recall it and am amazed at how this might have distressed me. The same will happen with this grief as well. Time will pass, and I will grow indifferent to it.”

But three months passed and he did not grow indifferent, and it was just as painful to recall it as it had been in those first few days. He could not be calm because he who had dreamed of family life for so long and who had felt that he had matured for it was nonetheless not married and was farther than ever from marriage. He himself felt keenly, as did everyone around him, that it was not good at his age for a man to be alone.¹⁵ He remembered how before he left for Moscow he once told his cowherd Nikolai, a naïve peasant he liked to talk to: “Well, Nikolai! I mean to marry,” and how Nikolai quickly replied as if it were a matter about which there could be no doubt: “And it’s high time, Konstantin Dmitrievich.” But marriage was now farther out of his reach than ever. The place was taken, and when he now tried to imagine any other of the young women he knew in that place, he felt that this was utterly impossible. Moreover, the memory of his rejection and of the role he had played in it tormented him with shame. No matter how much he told himself that he was not to blame for anything, this memory, on a par with other shameful memories of this kind, made him shudder and blush. In his past, as in any man’s, there were acts he recognized as bad and for which his conscience should have tormented him; but the memory of bad acts did not torment him nearly as much as these insignificant but shameful memories. These wounds would not heal. And on a par with these memories there was now the rejection and that pathetic position in which he must have appeared to others that evening. But time and labor did their work. His difficult memories were becoming more and more obscured for him by the unseen but important events of country life. With each week he thought of Kitty less and less often. He waited impatiently for the news that she had married or would marry soon, hoping that this news, like the extraction of a tooth, would cure him completely.

Meanwhile, spring came, beautiful and friendly, with none of spring’s anticipations and deceptions, one of those rare springs in which plants, animals, and people alike rejoice. This beautiful spring roused Levin even more and confirmed him in his intention to reject everything past so that he could put his solitary life on a firm and independent footing. Although he had not carried out many of the plans with which he had returned to the country, nonetheless he had observed what was most important, the purity of life. He did not experience the shame that usually tormented him after a fall, and he could boldly look people in the eye. In February he had received a letter from Marya Nikolaevna saying that his brother Nikolai’s health was deteriorating but that he did not want to be treated, and as a result of this letter Levin traveled to Moscow to see his brother and was able to convince him to consult with a doctor and to go abroad for the waters. He was so successful at convincing his brother and lending him money for the trip without irritating him, that in this respect he was content with himself. Apart from the farm, which demanded special attention in the spring, apart from reading, Levin had begun this winter as well to compose a work on farming, the plan for which consisted in accepting the characteristics of the worker as an absolute given, like the climate and the soil, in order that, consequently, all the tenets of the science of farming be derived not merely from facts about the soil and climate but from facts about the soil, the climate, and the known, immutable characteristics of the worker. So that, despite his seclusion, or as a consequence of his seclusion, his life was extraordinarily full, and only from time to time did he have an unsatisfied urge to communicate the thoughts roaming around in his mind to someone other than Agafya Mikhailovna, although even with her he often had occasion to discuss physics, agricultural theory, and in particular philosophy, philosophy being Agafya Mikhailovna’s favorite subject.

Spring was a long time coming. The last weeks of Lent the weather was clear and frosty. In the afternoon, there was thawing in the sun, but at night it dropped seven degrees below freezing; the thin crust of ice was such that they traveled in sledges without roads. Easter there was snow. Then suddenly, a week after Easter, a warm wind blew up, the clouds gathered, and for three days and three nights a warm and stormy rain fell. On Thursday the wind died down and a thick gray fog moved in, as if to hide the secrets of the changes that had taken place in nature. Water began to flow in the fog, the sheets of ice cracked and began to drift, the cloudy, foamy streams moved faster and faster, and on Krasnaya Gorka, in the evening, the fog broke, the clouds scattered like lambs, it cleared up, and real spring was revealed.¹⁶ In the morning, the bright sun rose and ate up the thin ice that coated the water, and all the warm air trembled from the exhalations of the reanimated earth that filled it. The old grass was turning green and sending out new shoots, buds had swelled on the guelder rose and currants, the sticky birches were swollen with sap, and a circling bee hummed on the willow sprinkled with gold flowers. Unseen larks trilled above the velvety greenery and the ice-caked stubble field, lapwings sobbed above the bottomland and marshes inundated by a storm of standing water, and cranes and geese flew overhead with their springtime honking. Cows still bald in patches lowed in the pastures, bowlegged lambs gamboled around their bleating mothers that were losing their wool, fleet-footed children ran down the drying paths, leaving prints of their bare feet, peasant women’s cheerful voices chirred over their linen at the pond, and the peasants’ axes rang in every yard as they repaired their plows and harrows. Real spring had arrived.

13

Levin put on his big boots and, for the first time, not his fur coat but a cloth jacket and set out to make a tour of the farm, striding across streams, which hurt his eyes as they glittered in the sun, stepping on a patch of ice one minute and in sticky mud the next.

Spring is the season of plans and intentions. Coming out into the yard, Levin, like a tree in spring that does not yet know where or how its young shoots and branches, contained in rain-swollen buds, will grow, did not know very well which enterprises he would now take up on his beloved farm, but he felt full of the very best plans and intentions. First, he proceeded to the cows. The cows had been let out into the pen, their smooth, newly shed coats shone, and as they warmed up in the sun, they lowed, asking to go into the field. After admiring the cows, which he knew down to their smallest details, Levin ordered them driven into the field and the calves let into the pen. The herder cheerfully ran off to get ready to go to the field. The dairy maids, gathering up their homespun skirts, their bare, still white, not yet browned feet trudging through the mud, chased after the lowing calves, which were crazed with springtime joy, with switches, driving them into the yard.

After admiring the year’s increase, which was exceptionally good—the earlier calves were as big as a peasant’s cow, Pava’s daughter, now three months, was the size of a yearling—Levin ordered the trough brought to them outside and hay thrown over the racks. But it turned out that in the pen, which was not used all winter, the racks made the previous autumn were broken. He sent for the carpenter, who should have been working on the threshing machine. But it turned out that the carpenter was repairing the harrows, which should have been repaired before Lent. Levin found this very annoying. It was annoying to see repeated this perpetually slipshod farming practice, against which he had struggled so hard for so many years. As he found out, the racks, not needed in winter, had been moved into the working stables, where they had broken, since they had been made to be light, for calves. Moreover, because of this, the harrows and all the agricultural implements that he had ordered inspected and repaired during the winter and for which he had purposely hired three carpenters had not been repaired and the harrows repaired haphazardly only when it was time to do the harrowing. Levin sent for his steward, but set out immediately in search of him himself. The steward, glowing just like everything else that day, and wearing a lamb-trimmed sheepskin coat, was walking from the threshing barn, twisting a straw in his hands.

“Why isn’t the carpenter working on the threshing machine?”

“I was going to report to you yesterday. The harrows need repairing. It’s plowing time after all.”

“And what about during the winter?”

“What was that you wanted the carpenter for?”

“Where are the racks from the calf yard?”

“I ordered them put back. You can’t give these people orders!” said the steward, with a wave of his hand.

“Not these people, but this steward!” said Levin, lashing out. “What do I keep you for!” he shouted. Remembering, though, that this would not help, he stopped halfway through his speech and merely sighed. “Well, can we sow?” he asked after a pause.

“Past Turkino we can tomorrow or the day after.”

“And the clover?”

“I sent Vasily and Mishka, they’re sowing. I just don’t know if they’ll make it through: it’s swampy.”

“How many desyatinas?”

“Six.”

“Why not all?” exclaimed Levin.

The fact that they were sowing only six desyatinas in clover and not twenty, this was even more annoying. According to theory and his own experience, sowing clover was good only when it was done as early as possible, nearly in snow. And Levin could never get this done.

“There isn’t anyone. What do you want me to do with these people? Three never came. Then there’s Semyon …”

“Well, you could have taken them away from the thatching.”

“Yes, I already did that.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Five are making compote (he meant compost). Four are turning the oats; so they don’t spoil, Konstantin Dmitrievich.”

Levin well knew that “so they don’t spoil” meant that the English oat seed was already spoiled—once again, they hadn’t done what he had ordered.

“But I told you back at Lent, the pipes!” he shouted.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get it all done in time.”

Levin waved his hand angrily and went to the granaries to take a look at the oats and then returned to the stables. The oats hadn’t spoiled yet. But the workers were using shovels when it could be dumped directly into the lower granary, so having given orders for this and taken two workers to sow the clover, Levin calmed down from his annoyance over the steward. The day was so fine, he couldn’t stay angry.

“Ignat!” he shouted to the driver, who had rolled up his sleeves and was washing the carriage by the well. “Saddle me up …”

“Which do you want?”

“Oh, make it Kolpik.”

“Yes, sir.”

While the horse was being saddled, Levin again called over his steward, who was hovering about to make peace with him, and began telling him about the upcoming spring works and his plans for the farm.

Start carting the manure earlier in order to be finished before the early mowing. Till the far field with plows without a break in order to let it lie fallow. Clear the meadows not for half-shares but with hired workers.

The steward listened closely and was evidently making an effort to approve his employer’s proposals; but nonetheless he had the same hopeless, despondent look that Levin knew so well and that always irritated him so. The look said, “This is all well and good, but as God wills.”

Nothing grieved Levin as much as this tone. But this tone was shared by all stewards, no matter how many he had had. They had all had the same attitude toward his proposals, and so now he no longer got angry but merely grieved and felt even more roused to battle with this somehow elemental force which he could not call otherwise than “as God wills,” and which was constantly ranged against him.

“We’ll see how we manage, Konstantin Dmitrievich,” said the steward.

“Why shouldn’t you manage?”

“We have to hire another fifteen or so workers. You see they don’t come. They were just here, they’re asking seventy rubles for the summer.”

Levin did not reply. Again this force was ranged against him. He knew that no matter how they tried, they could not hire more than forty—thirty-seven, thirty-eight workers more likely—for a real price; forty had been hired, but there weren’t any more. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but struggle.

“Send to Sury and to Chefirovka if they don’t come. We have to look.”

“Sending’s all very well,” said Vasily Fyodorovich dolefully. “But you see the horses are weak.”

“We’ll buy more. I do know,” he added, laughing, “you always say everything’s less and worse, but this year I’m not going to let you have your way. I’ll do everything myself.”

“You don’t seem to get enough sleep as is. We have a better time of it when we’re under the master’s eye.”

“So they’re sowing clover past Birch Dale? I’ll go take a look,” he said, mounting the small sorrel Kolpik, which the driver had led up.

“You won’t get across the stream, Konstantin Dmitrievich,” shouted the driver.

“Then I’ll go by the woods.”

And riding his good, spirited, ambling nag, which had been left standing too long and was snorting over the puddles and begging for the rein, Levin set out through the mud of the yard, past the gates, and into the field.

If Levin enjoyed himself in the cattle and animal yards, he enjoyed himself even more in the field. Swaying rhythmically to the amble of his good little mount, taking in the warm, fresh smell of snow and air as he passed through the woods over the remains of the crumbly snow that lingered here and there in patches, leaving melting tracks, he rejoiced at each of his trees, the moss that had come to life on the bark, and the swollen buds. When he rode out beyond the woods, spread out before him, over an enormous expanse, was an even, velvety carpet of green, without a single bald patch or puddle, only in a few places were there spots of melting snow in the dips. He was not angered by the sight of a peasant horse and foal trampling his young shoots (he told the peasant he met to drive them off) or by the derisive and foolish reply of the peasant Ipat, whom he met and asked: “What about it, Ipat, sowing soon?” “First you have to till, Konstantin Dmitrievich,” Ipat replied. The farther he rode, the more he enjoyed himself, and plans for the farm kept presenting themselves to him, one better than the last: to plant all the fields in willow along the southern edges to keep the snow from lying too long beneath them; to cut it up into six fields of arable and three reserve in fodder; to build a cattle yard at the far end of the field and dig a pond; and for fertilizer, to set up movable barriers for the cattle. And then three hundred desyatinas in wheat, one hundred in potatoes, and one hundred and fifty in clover, and not a single desyatina depleted.

With these dreams, cautiously steering his horse along the verges so as not to trample his own young shoots, he rode up to the workers, who were sowing clover. The cart with the seed stood not on the edge but in the plowed field, and the winter wheat had been rutted by the wheels and dug up by the horse. Both workers were sitting on the verge, probably sharing a pipe. The earth in the cart with which the seed was mixed was not broken up but had clumped together or frozen in clods. Seeing their master, Vasily the worker walked toward the cart, and Mishka set to sowing. This wasn’t good, but Levin rarely got angry at his workers. When Vasily walked up, Levin told him to take the horse to the edge of the field.

“It’s all right, sir, it’ll pop back up,” replied Vasily.

“Please, don’t argue,” said Levin, “and do as you’re told.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Vasily, and he took the horse by the head. “And that sowing, Konstantin Dmitrievich,” he said, trying to ingratiate himself, “it’s first-rate. Only it’s awful to walk on! You drag a pood on each sandal.”

“But why don’t you have the earth sifted?” said Levin.

“Oh, we’re breaking it up,” replied Vasily, gathering up some seed and crushing the earth in his palms.

It was not Vasily’s fault that they were spreading unsifted earth, but it was annoying nonetheless.

Having profitably tested more than once a specific remedy he knew for dampening his frustration and everything he found bad and making it good again, Levin now employed this remedy again. He looked to see where Mishka was stepping, shaking off the great clods of earth that stuck to each foot, dismounted, took Vasily’s seed basket, and began spreading seed.

“Where did you stop?”

Vasily pointed to a spot with his foot, and Levin began, as best he could, to sow the earth with seed. Walking was difficult, like walking through a swamp, and when Levin finished a row he had worked up a sweat and stopping, gave back the basket.

“Well, sir, come summer, mind you don’t scold me for this row,” said Vasily.

“Why is that?” said Levin cheerfully, already feeling the effectiveness of the remedy employed.

“You just take a look come summer. It will be different. You take a look at where I sowed last spring. What a sowing job! You see, Konstantin Dmitrievich, I think I tried as hard as I would for my own father. I don’t like doing a bad job myself and never tell others to. If the master’s happy, so are we. Take a look over there,” said Vasily, pointing to the field. “Makes your heart glad.”

“It’s a fine spring, Vasily.”

“Why, even the old men can’t remember a spring like this. I was home and our old man there sowed three osminniks in wheat, too.¹⁷ He says you can’t tell it from the rye.”

“Has it been long since you started sowing wheat?”

“Why, it’s you taught us year before last. You gave me two measures. We sold a quarter and sowed three osminniks.”

“Well, mind you break up those clods,” said Levin, walking up to his horse, “and keep an eye on Mishka. If the sprouting’s good, you’ll have fifty kopeks a desyatina.”

“Our humble thanks. We’re well content with you as is.”

Levin mounted his horse and rode off to the field where last year’s clover was and to the field the plow had prepared for the spring wheat.

The clover crop in the stubble field was marvelous. It had survived and turned dark green among the broken stalks of last year’s wheat. The horse sank in up to its pasterns, and each foot squelched as it was pulled out of the half-thawed earth. The plowed land was quite impassable: only where there was a patch of ice did it hold, and in the thawed furrows its leg sank above the pastern. The plowing was superb; in a couple of days they could harrow and sow. All was wonderful, all was cheerful. On his way back, Levin crossed the stream, hoping the water had subsided. And indeed, he crossed and startled two ducks. “There should be woodcock as well,” he thought, and at the turn home he met up with the forest keeper, who confirmed his assumption about the woodcocks.

Levin trotted home to be in time for dinner and to ready his gun for that night.

14

Riding up to the house in the most cheerful of spirits, Levin heard a bell coming from the side of the main entrance.

“Why, that’s someone coming from the railroad,” he thought, “it’s just about time for the Moscow train. … Who could it be? What if it’s my brother Nikolai? He did say, ‘Maybe I’ll go away for the waters, or maybe I’ll come visit you. …’” Fear and distaste gripped him in that first minute at the thought of his brother Nikolai’s presence disturbing his happy springtime spirits. But he was ashamed at this feeling, and he immediately opened his spiritual arms, so to speak, and with touching joy awaited and desired now with all his heart that this be his brother. He spurred his horse on, and emerging past the acacias, caught sight of a troika sleigh driving up from the station and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. “Oh, if only it were someone pleasant with whom to converse,” he thought.

“Ah!” Levin let out a cry of joy, raising both hands above his head. “What a welcome guest! Oh, how glad I am to see you!” he exclaimed when he recognized Stepan Arkadyevich.

“Now I’ll find out for certain whether or when she is getting married,” he thought.

And on this beautiful spring day he felt that the memory of her was not at all painful.

“What, you weren’t expecting me?” said Stepan Arkadyevich, climbing out of the sleigh, with a spatter of mud on the bridge of his nose, his cheek, and his brow, but beaming with good cheer and health. “I came to see you, that’s one,” he said, embracing and kissing him, “to do some shooting, that’s two, and to sell the wood at Ergushovo—that’s three.”

“Wonderful! And what a spring! How was your ride in the sleigh?”

“It’s even worse in a wagon, Konstantin Dmitrievich,” replied the driver, whom Levin knew.

“Well, I’m very, very glad to see you,” said Levin, sincerely smiling his delighted, childlike smile.

Levin led his visitor to the guest room, where Stepan Arkadyevich’s things were brought—a bag, a gun in its case, a cigar pouch—and leaving him to wash up and change his clothes, went into his office to give orders about the plowing and clover. Agafya Mikhailovna, who was always very concerned with the honor of the house, met him in the front hall with questions about dinner.

“Do as you please, only make it quick,” he said, and he went off to see the steward.

When he returned, Stepan Arkadyevich, washed, combed, and with a beaming smile, came out his door and together they went upstairs.

“Well, I am very pleased I found my way to you! Now I shall understand what those mysteries you perform here consist of. But no, truly, I envy you. What a house, how glorious it all is! So light and cheerful,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, forgetting that it was not always spring nor the days clear as they were now. “And your old nurse, how charming! A pretty little maid in an apron would be more to my taste; but it goes very well with your monasticism and rigorous style.”

Stepan Arkadyevich recounted all sorts of interesting news and the news particularly interesting for Levin that his brother Sergei Ivanovich was planning to visit him in the country this summer.

Stepan Arkadyevich did not say a single word about Kitty or the Shcherbatskys in general; he only conveyed his wife’s greetings. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy and was very happy to see his guest. As always, in the time of his seclusion, he had accumulated a mass of thoughts and feelings that he could not convey to those around him, and now Stepan Arkadyevich was the recipient of an outpouring on the poetic joy of spring, his failures and plans for the farm, and his thoughts and comments on the books he had read, and in particular the idea of his own writing, the basis of which, although he himself did not remark on this, consisted of a criticism of all the old writing on farming. Stepan Arkadyevich, always kind, understanding everything at the slightest hint, on this visit was especially kind, and Levin noticed in him a flattering new feature of respect and almost tenderness toward himself.

The efforts of Agafya Mikhailovna and the cook to make the dinner especially fine had as their consequence only the fact that both starving friends, sitting down to appetizers, filled themselves on bread and butter, smoked goose and salted mushrooms, and also in Levin instructing that the soup be served without the pirozhki with which the cook had hoped especially to impress their visitor.¹⁸ But Stepan Arkadyevich, although accustomed to other dinners, found everything superb: the herb vodka, the bread, the butter, and especially the smoked goose, the mushrooms, the nettle soup, the chicken in white sauce, and the Crimean white wine—everything was superb, marvelous.

“Excellent, excellent,” he said as he lit a fat cigarette after the roast. “I feel as if I’ve stepped off a steamer, after all the noise and shaking, onto your quiet shore. So you say the very element of the worker must be studied and used to guide in the selection of farming methods. I am a layman when it comes to this, but it seems to me that the theory and its application would have an effect on the worker as well.”

“Yes, but wait. I’m not talking about political economy, I’m talking about the science of farming. It should be like the natural sciences and observe the given phenomena and the worker with his economic and ethnographic …”

At that moment Agafya Mikhailovna came in with preserves.

“Well, Agafya Mikhailovna,” Stepan Arkadyevich said to her, kissing the tips of her chubby fingers. “What smoked goose you have, and what a fine herb vodka! … But now, isn’t it time, Kostya?” he added.

Levin looked out the window at the sun setting behind the wood’s bared treetops.

“It is, it is,” he said. “Kuzma, harness the trap!” And he ran downstairs.

Stepan Arkadyevich, going downstairs, himself neatly removed the canvas cover from a varnished box, and opening it, began assembling his expensive gun, the latest style. Already sensing a large tip, Kuzma would not leave Stepan Arkadyevich’s side and put on his stockings and boots for him, which Stepan Arkadyevich willingly left him to do.

“Give orders, Kostya, if the merchant Ryabinin comes—I told him to come today—to receive him and have him wait. …”

“Are you really selling Ryabinin the wood?”

“Yes, you mean you know him?”

“Of course I know him. I’ve dealt ‘positively and decisively’ with him.”

Stepan Arkadyevich laughed. “Decisively and positively” were the merchant’s favorite words.

“Yes, he does have an amazingly funny way of speaking. She’s figured out where her master is going!” he added, petting Laska, who, whining, was curling around Levin and licking first his hand and then his boots and gun.

The trap was already by the steps when they came out.

“I ordered it harnessed, though it’s not far, or shall we go on foot?”

“No, better we ride,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, walking up to the trap. He got in, wrapped his legs in a tiger-skin rug, and lit a cigar. “How is it you don’t smoke? A cigar is not just a pleasure, but the crown and mark of satisfaction. This is the life! How fine! This is how I would like to live!”

“And who’s keeping you from it?” said Levin, smiling.

“No, you are a lucky man. Everything you love, you have here. You love horses, you have them; dogs, you have them, hunting, you have it, a farm, you have it.”

“Maybe it’s because I take delight in what I do have and don’t grieve over what I don’t,” said Levin, thinking of Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyevich understood, and looked at him, but said nothing.

Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his ever-present tact, that Levin feared a conversation about the Shcherbatskys and so did not mention them; but now Levin was anxious to find out what had tormented him so, but he did not dare speak first.

“So, how are your affairs?” said Levin, thinking that it was wrong on his part to think only of himself.

Stepan Arkadyevich’s eyes twinkled merrily.

“But you don’t admit that one can like buns when one has one’s own ration—according to your lights, that is a crime—but I don’t agree that there is life without love,” he said, understanding Levin’s question in his own way. “What can I do? That’s how I was created. And really, it does so little harm to anyone, and gives so much pleasure.”

“What then, is there something new?” asked Levin.

“There is, brother! Here you see, you know the Ossianic type of woman … the kind of woman you dream of. … Well, one comes across these women in real life as well … and these women are terrible.¹⁹ A woman, you see, is the kind of subject that, no matter how much you study her, she will always be completely new.”

“You’d be better off not studying her at all.”

“No. Some mathematician said that pleasure lies not in discovering the truth but in searching for it.”

Levin listened in silence, but despite all his efforts, he simply could not put himself in his friend’s place and understand his feelings or the charm of studying such women.

15

Their hunting spot was not too far distant, above a stream in a small aspen wood. When they had driven up to the woods, Levin climbed down and led Oblonsky to the corner of a mossy, boggy clearing that was already free of snow. He himself turned toward the other side, toward a twin birch, and leaning his gun against the fork of a dry lower branch, removed his long coat, rebuckled his belt, and tested his arms’ freedom of movement.

Old gray Laska, who had been following behind him, sat down cautiously facing him and pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind the large wood, and in the light of sunset the birches scattered through the aspen wood were distinctly outlined with their hanging branches and swollen buds about to burst.

From the dense woods, where there was still snow, he could just make out the gurgle of the narrow, twisting rivulets of water. Tiny birds twittered and flew past occasionally, from tree to tree.

In the intervals of utter quiet he could hear the rustle of last year’s leaves, stirring with the earth thawing and the grass growing.

“Imagine! I can hear and see the grass growing!” Levin told himself, having noticed a wet aspen leaf the color of slate shifting under a blade of young grass. He stood there listening and looking down at the wet, mossy earth, at sharp-eared Laska, at the sea of bare treetops spread over the slope below, at the dimming sky masked with white bands of clouds. A hawk, lazily flapping its wings, crossed high above the distant woods; another crossed in exactly the same way, in the same direction, and was lost from view. The birds chirped more and more loudly and restlessly in the thicket. Not far away, an owl hooted, and Laska, shuddering, took a few cautious steps, cocked her head to one side, and listened closely. There was a cuckoo beyond the stream. It cuckooed twice with its usual cry but then became raspy, rushed, and tangled.

“Imagine! It’s a cuckoo!” said Stepan Arkadyevich, emerging from behind a bush.

“Yes, I hear it,” replied Levin, displeased to be breaking the quiet of the woods with his own voice, which he himself found unpleasant. “It won’t be long.”

The figure of Stepan Arkadyevich again stepped behind the bush, and Levin saw only the bright flame of a match, followed immediately thereafter by the red ash of a cigarette and dark blue smoke.

Click! Click! Stepan Arkadyevich cocked his trigger.

“What is that cry?” asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin’s attention to a protracted crowing that sounded like a colt neighing, playfully, in a reedy voice.

“Ah, you don’t know that? It’s the male hare. Enough talk! Listen, one’s coming!” Levin nearly shouted, cocking his trigger.

There was a distant, reedy whistle, and after exactly the right interval, so familiar to the hunter, two seconds later, a second, a third, and after the third whistle a guttural cry.

Levin cast his eyes to the right and to the left, and there before him in the cloudy blue sky, above the tender entwining shoots of the aspen treetops, a flying bird appeared. It was coming straight toward him: he heard the close sounds of the guttural cry, like the even tearing of taut fabric, right over his ear; now he could see the bird’s long beak and neck, and at that moment, as Levin was taking aim, behind the bush where Oblonsky was standing, there was a red flash; the bird dropped like an arrow and then shot back up. Another flash followed by a report; and flapping its wings as if trying to stay in the air, the bird stopped, hung there for a moment, and fell with a thud to the boggy earth.

“You mean I missed?” cried Stepan Arkadyevich, who could not see because of the smoke.

“There it is!” said Levin, pointing to Laska, who, one ear straight up and wagging the tip of her fluffy tail high, stepping quietly, as if wishing to prolong the satisfaction, and as if smiling, brought the dead bird to her master. “Well, I’m happy you got it,” said Levin, at the same time though feeling envious that he had not been the one to kill this woodcock.

“A nasty miss from the right barrel,” replied Stepan Arkadyevich, loading his gun. “Ssh. … one’s coming.”

Indeed, there were piercing whistles, following quickly one after the other. Two woodcocks, playing and chasing one another and only whistling, but not crying, were flying right toward the hunters’ heads. Four shots rang out, and like swallows, the woodcocks made a quick turn and disappeared from view.

The flight was wonderful. Stepan Arkadyevich killed two more pieces and Levin two, one of which he could not find. It started growing dark. Clear silver Venus, low in the west, was already shining through the birches with her gentle gleam, and dark Arcturus’s red lights were cascading high in the east.²⁰ Overhead, Levin kept catching and losing the stars of the Great Bear. The woodcocks had stopped flying; but Levin decided to wait a little longer, until Venus, which he could see below a birch branch, rose above it and the stars of the Great Bear were clear everywhere. Venus had risen above the branch, the Great Bear’s chariot and shaft were fully visible in the dark blue sky, but he still waited.

“Isn’t it time?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich.

It was quiet in the wood now, and not a single bird stirred.

“Let’s stay a little longer,” replied Levin.

“As you like.”

They were now standing about fifteen paces apart.

“Stiva!” Levin spoke suddenly. “Won’t you tell me whether your sister-in-law has married already or when she will?”

Levin felt so strong and calm that no answer, he thought, could upset him. But he had never expected what Stepan Arkadyevich said in reply.

“She hasn’t and isn’t contemplating it, and she is quite ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They even fear for her life.”

“What is that you say?” cried Levin. “Quite ill? What’s wrong with her? How did she …”

While they were saying this, Laska, her ears pricked up, was looking up at the sky and then reproachfully at them.

“What a time they’ve found to talk,” she thought. “And it’s coming. … There it is, that’s it. They’re missing it. …” thought Laska.

But at that very instant both men suddenly heard the piercing whistle, which seemed to lash them on the ears, and both suddenly grabbed their guns, and two bursts flashed, and two reports were heard at the exact same instant. The high-flying woodcock instantly folded its wings and fell into the thicket, bending the slender shoots.

“That’s excellent! A share!” shouted Levin, and he and Laska ran into the thicket to find the woodcock. “Oh yes, what was it that was so unpleasant?” he recalled. “Yes, Kitty is ill. … What can I do? I’m very sorry,” he thought.

“Ah, you found it! Good dog,” he said, taking the warm bird out of Laska’s mouth and placing it in his nearly full game bag. “I found it, Stiva!” he exclaimed.

16

Returning home, Levin inquired into all the details of Kitty’s illness and the Shcherbatskys’ plans, and although he would have been ashamed to admit it, what he learned pleased him. It pleased him both because there was still hope and, even more, because she was hurt, she who had hurt him so. But when Stepan Arkadyevich began talking about the reasons for Kitty’s illness and mentioned Vronsky’s name, Levin interrupted him.

“I have no right to know family details, and to tell the truth, I’m not interested, either.”

Stepan Arkadyevich smiled barely perceptibly, catching the instantaneous and so familiar alteration in Levin’s face, which was now as dark as it had been cheerful a moment before.

“Are you completely finished with Ryabinin about the wood?” asked Levin.

“Yes, I am. The price is wonderful, thirty-eight thousand. Eight in advance, and the rest over six years. I’ve been dealing with this for a long time. No one was offering more.”

“That means you gave the wood up for nothing,” said Levin gloomily.

“What do you mean, for nothing?” said Stepan Arkadyevich with a good-natured smile, knowing that now Levin would find something wrong with everything.

“Because the wood is worth at least five hundred rubles a desyatina,” replied Levin.

“I like these farm owners!” said Stepan Arkadyevich jokingly. “This tone of contempt of yours for your city cousin! No matter how a matter is handled, we can always handle it better. Believe me, I’ve calculated it all out,” he said, “and the wood has been sold quite profitably, so that I’m afraid he might even refuse. This is a young wood, after all,” Stepan Arkadyevich said, hoping with the word “young” to convince Levin completely of the unfairness of his doubts, “if it were good timber it would be more. It won’t yield more than thirty sazhens per desyatina, and he gave me two hundred rubles each.”

Levin smiled contemptuously. “I know,” he thought, “this is not just his manner, it’s the same for all city folk who have been in the country twice in ten years and taken note of a few country words, employ them every which way, firmly convinced that they now know everything. ‘Young,’ ‘yield,’ ‘thirty sazhens.’ He says the words but he himself doesn’t understand a thing.”

“I’m not going to try to teach you what to write there in your office,” he said, “but if need be, then I would ask you. But you’re so certain you understand all there is to know about a wood. That’s hard. Have you counted the trees?”

“How can you count the trees?” said Stepan Arkadyevich, laughing, still hoping to bring his friend out of his bad spirits. “‘A higher mind the grains of sand, the planets’ rays might count … ‘”²¹

“Well, Ryabinin’s higher mind could. No merchant would buy without counting unless someone were selling it for nothing, as you are. I know your wood. I’m there every year hunting, and your wood is worth five hundred rubles cash, while he’s given you two hundred in installments. That means you’ve given him a present of about thirty thousand.”

“Enough of this enthusiasm,” said Stepan Arkadyevich piteously. “Why didn’t anyone offer that then?”

“Because he’s in league with the other merchants; he’s bought them off. I’ve done business with them all, I know them. These aren’t merchants, they’re speculators. He would never agree to a deal for ten or fifteen percent, he waits to buy for twenty kopeks on the ruble.”

“Enough! You’re out of sorts.”

“Not a bit,” said Levin gloomily, as they rode up to the house.

Pulled up at the front steps was a buggy fitted in iron and leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed with wide traces. Sitting in the buggy was the blood-engorged, tightly belted steward who served as Ryabinin’s driver. Ryabinin himself was already in the house and met the friends in the front hall. Ryabinin was a tall, gaunt man of middle age with a mustache, a prominent shaved chin, and cloudy bulging eyes. He was dressed in a long-tailed dark blue coat with buttons low on the back and high boots that bunched around the ankles and fit smoothly over the calves, over which he wore big galoshes. He wiped his handkerchief in a circle over his face, and rewrapping his coat around him, though it already hung quite well, greeted the arrivals with a smile, holding his hand out to Stepan Arkadyevich, as if hoping to catch something.

“So you have come,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, shaking his hand. “Wonderful.”

“I dared not fail to abide by Your Excellency’s instructions, although the road was very bad. I went on foot absolutely the entire way, but arrived in time. Konstantin Dmitrievich, my respects,” he turned to Levin, trying to catch his hand as well. But Levin scowled, pretending not to notice his hand, and started taking out the woodcocks. “You have indulged in the pleasures of the hunt? These would be what kind of birds then?” added Ryabinin, contemptuously regarding the woodcocks. “So they must be tasty.” And he shook his head disapprovingly, as if seriously doubting that this game was worth the candle.

“Would you like to go into my study?” said Levin to Stepan Arkadyevich in French, scowling gloomily. “Go on into the study, you can discuss your business there.”

“Very kind, wherever you like,” said Ryabinin with contemptuous dignity, as if wishing to let it be felt that others might have difficulties knowing how to go about things and with whom, but for him there could never be difficulties in anything.

Entering the study, Ryabinin looked around out of habit, as if searching for the icon, but when he found it, he did not cross himself. He surveyed the cabinets and bookshelves and with the same doubt as he had had with regard to the woodcocks, smiled contemptuously and shook his head disapprovingly, unwilling to allow that this game might be worth the candle.

“So, did you bring the money?” asked Oblonsky. “Sit down.”

“We are not going to be held up over money. I came to visit with you and discuss the matter.”

“What is there to discuss? Please, sit down.”

“Very kind,” said Ryabinin, sitting and in for him the most agonized fashion leaning back in his chair. “One must make concessions, Prince. It would be a sin. But the money is entirely ready, down to the last kopek. There will be no delay over the money.”

Levin, having placed his gun back in the cabinet, was walking out the door, but when he heard the merchant’s words he stopped.

“As it is, you’ve got the wood for nothing,” he said. “He came to me too late, or I would have set the price.”

Ryabinin stood up and silently looked Levin up and down, a smile on his face.

“How very stingy you are, Konstantin Dmitrievich,” he said smiling, turning to Stepan Arkadyevich. “One can never buy anything from you. I tried to make a deal for your wheat, I was offering good money.”

“Why should I give you what is mine for nothing? It’s not as if I found it on the ground or stole it.”

“Pardon me, but there is positively no way of stealing nowadays. Everything nowadays finally is a public legal proceeding, everything nowadays is dignified; there’s no question of stealing. We were speaking in all honesty. The price for the wood is too high, the calculations do not come out. I beg you to concede just a little.”

“Is your deal made or isn’t it? If it’s made, there’s no point haggling, but if it’s not,” said Levin, “I’m buying the wood.”

The smile suddenly vanished from Ryabinin’s face. A hawkish, predatory, and cruel expression settled on it. With quick bony fingers he unbuttoned his coat, revealing his shirt, which he wore outside his trousers, the brass buttons of his vest, and his watch chain, and quickly took out an old but thick wallet.

“If you please, the wood is mine,” he pronounced, quickly crossing himself and extending his hand. “Take the money, it’s my wood. This is how Ryabinin deals, not counting coins,” he began, frowning and waving the wallet.

“In your place I wouldn’t be in any hurry,” said Levin.

“Mercy!” said Oblonsky in amazement. “I did give my word.”

Levin left the room, slamming the door. Looking at the door, Ryabinin shook his head, smiling.

“It’s all youth, perfect childishness, nothing more. After all, I am buying it, believe me, on my honor, that is, only for the glory that Ryabinin here, and no one else, has bought a woods from Oblonsky. God grant the accounts work out. Believe in God. If you would be so kind. Sign the title …”

An hour later the merchant, neatly wrapping his overcoat around himself and fastening the hooks, with the title in his pocket, stepped into his snugly fitted buggy and went home.

“Oh, these fine gentlemen!” he said to the steward. “A subject all their own.”

“That’s how it is,” replied the steward, handing him the reins and fastening his leather apron. “And your little purchase, Mikhail Ignatich?”

“Well, well …”

17

Stepan Arkadyevich, his pocket bulging with the notes the merchant had given him for three months, went upstairs. The matter of the forest was concluded, the money was in his pocket, the shooting had been marvelous, and Stepan Arkadyevich was in the best of spirits, and so he especially wanted to dispel the bad mood that had come over Levin. He wanted to end the day at supper just as pleasantly as it had begun.

Indeed, Levin was out of sorts, and notwithstanding all his desire to be kind and gracious with his dear guest, he could not control himself. The tipsiness induced by the news that Kitty had not married gradually began chipping away at him.

Kitty was not married and was unwell, unwell due to her love for someone who had spurned her. It was as if this insult had been inflicted on him. Vronsky had spurned her, and she had spurned him, Levin. Consequently, Vronsky had a right to despise Levin and so was his enemy. However Levin was not thinking all this. He had the vague feeling that there was something insulting in this for him and now he was not angry at what had upset him but rather found fault with everything that presented itself. The foolish sale of the wood, the trap Oblonsky had fallen into and that had transpired in his own home, irritated him.

“Well, have you finished?” he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevich upstairs. “Would you like supper?”

“I won’t say no. What an appetite I have in the country, it’s marvelous! Why didn’t you offer Ryabinin something to eat?”

“Oh, to hell with him!”

“Still, the way you treat him!” said Oblonsky. “You didn’t even shake his hand. Why didn’t you shake his hand?”

“Because I don’t shake hands with a footman, and a footman is a hundred times better.”

“My, what a reactionary you are! What about the merging of the estates?” said Oblonsky.

“Whoever enjoys merging—I wish them well, but I find it loathsome.”

“I see you are definitely a reactionary.”

“You know, I’ve never given a thought to what I was. I’m Konstantin Levin, nothing more.”

“And a Konstantin Levin who is very out of sorts,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling.

“Yes, I am out of sorts, and you know why? Forgive me, but it’s your foolish sale …”

Stepan Arkadyevich frowned good-naturedly, like someone who has been innocently insulted and upset.

“Enough now!” he said. “When has it ever happened that someone sold something without being told immediately after the sale, ‘It’s worth much more’? Though when they’re trying to sell it, no one’s offering. … No, I see you have it in for this unfortunate Ryabinin.”

“Maybe I do. And do you know why? You’ll call me a reactionary again, or some other terrible word; nonetheless, I find it annoying and insulting to see this impoverishment that is happening all around to the nobility, to which I belong, and to which, the merging of the estates notwithstanding, I am quite happy to belong. And this impoverishment is not the result of luxury—that would be all right; living like a lord is for the nobility to do, the way only noblemen know how. Now the peasants around us are buying up land—and that does not offend me. The lord does nothing, and the peasant works and squeezes out the idle man. That is as it should be. I’m very glad for the peasant. What I find offensive, though, is to watch this impoverishment out of some—I don’t know what to call it—innocence. Just over here a Polish tenant bought a marvelous estate for half its worth from a young lady who lives in Nice. Here they’re leasing to a merchant for a ruble a desyatina of land that is worth ten rubles. Here, you, for no reason at all, made this swindler a gift of thirty thousand.”

“So what am I to do? Count every tree?”

“Certainly count them. You see, you didn’t count them, but Ryabinin did. Ryabinin’s children will have means for their livelihood and education, while yours may well not!”

“Well, you must forgive me, but there is something petty in this counting. We have our occupations, they have theirs, and they need their profits. And anyway, the deal is done, and that’s the end. Whereas here we have fried eggs, my very favorite kind. And Agafya Mikhailovna is going to give us this marvelous herb vodka …”

Stepan Arkadyevich sat down at the table and started joking with Agafya Mikhailovna, assuring her that he had not eaten a dinner and supper like this in a long time.

“You at least offer praise,” said Agafya Mikhailovna, “but Konstantin Dmitrievich, no matter what you give him, a crust of bread it could be—he eats it and goes.”

No matter how hard Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and taciturn. He needed to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevich, but he couldn’t make up his mind and couldn’t find the form or the moment, how or when to ask it. Stepan Arkadyevich had already retired to his room downstairs, undressed, washed up again, arrayed himself in a pleated nightshirt, and got into bed, and Levin was still dawdling in his room, talking about all kinds of trifles and unable to ask what he wanted to know.

“How marvelously they make soap,” he said, examining and unwrapping the scented soap that Agafya Mikhailovna had prepared for their guest but that Oblonsky had not used. “You must look, this is really a work of art.”

“Yes, all manner of improvement has affected everything now,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, yawning moistly and blissfully. “The theaters, for instance, and the entertainments … a-aah!” he yawned. “Electric light everywhere … a-aah!”

“Yes, electric light,” said Levin. “Yes. Well, and where is Vronsky now?” he asked, suddenly putting down the soap.

“Vronsky?” said Stepan Arkadyevich, stifling a yawn. “He’s in Petersburg. He left shortly after you did and has not been in Moscow once since. And you know, Kostya, I’ll tell you the truth,” he continued, resting his elbows on the table and in his hand his handsome ruddy face, from which his sensual, good, and sleepy eyes shone like stars, “You have only yourself to blame. You let a rival frighten you off. But as I told you at the time, I don’t know whose side had the greater chance. Why didn’t you persevere, obstacles be damned? I told you at the time that …”—he yawned with just his jaws, not opening his mouth.

“Does he or doesn’t he know that I proposed?” thought Levin, looking at him. “Yes, there is something cunning and diplomatic, in his face,” and feeling himself blush, he looked straight into Stepan Arkadyevich’s eyes, not saying anything.

“If there was anything on her part then, it was an infatuation with appearances,” Oblonsky continued. “That one, you know, is perfect aristocratism and his future position in society influenced not her but her mother.”

Levin scowled. The insult of the rejection he had suffered struck his heart as if it were a fresh, newly incurred wound. He was at home, though, and at home the walls help.

“Hold on, hold on,” he said, interrupting Oblonsky. “You say ‘aristocratism.’ But allow me to ask you what Vronsky’s aristocratism, or anyone else’s for that matter, consists of—the kind of aristocratism that could spurn me? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don’t. A man whose father was an intriguer who crawled out of nothing and whose mother has been linked with God knows who. … No, you must excuse me, but I consider myself and people like me aristocrats, people who in the past can point to three or four honorable generations of family at the highest degree of education (talent and intelligence are another matter), and who have never groveled before anyone, who have never needed anyone, as my father and my grandfather lived. And I know many such men. It seems mean to you that I count the trees in the wood, yet you are making Ryabinin a present of thirty thousand; but you will have rents and I don’t know what else, and I won’t and so I treasure what comes from my family and my labor. … We are aristocrats, not those who can exist only on sops from the powerful of this world and who can be bought for twenty kopeks.”

“But whom are you attacking? I agree with you,” Stepan Arkadyevich said sincerely and cheerfully, although he sensed that by those who could be bought for a coin Levin meant him as well. He sincerely liked Levin’s animation. “Whom are you attacking? Although much of what you say about Vronsky is untrue, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m speaking to you frankly, in your place I would return to Moscow with me and …”

“No, I don’t know whether you know or not but I don’t care. And I’ll tell you—I proposed and was rejected, and Katerina Alexandrovna for me is now a hard and shameful memory.”

“But why? What nonsense!”

“Let’s not talk, though. Forgive me, please, if I’ve been rude to you,” said Levin. Now, having said his piece, he was once again the way he had been that morning. “You’re not angry with me, Stiva? Please, don’t be angry,” he said, and smiling, he took his hand.

“Oh no, not a bit, there’s nothing to be angry about. I’m happy we cleared things up. But you know, a morning shoot can be fine. Shall we go? I wouldn’t sleep at all but go straight from the shoot to the station.”

“Splendid.”

18

Although Vronsky’s entire inner life was filled with his passion, his outward life rolled, relentless and unchanged, down the old familiar tracks of society and regimental connections and interests. Regimental interests held an important place in Vronsky’s life, both because he loved his regiment, and even more because the regiment loved him. The regiment not only loved and respected Vronsky, they took pride in him, took pride in the fact that this man, tremendously wealthy, with a marvelous education and abilities, with an open road to all kinds of success for both his ambition and his vanity, had spurned all this and of all his vital interests had taken closest to heart the interests of his regiment and of fellowship. Vronsky was cognizant of this view of himself on the part of his fellows, and not only did he love this life, he felt obligated to maintain the established view of him.

It goes without saying that he spoke with none of his fellows about his love, did not let it slip even during their most serious drinking parties (actually, he was never so drunk as to lose his self-control), and he shut up any of his careless fellows who tried to hint at his liaison. However, even though his love was known to the whole town—everyone had more or less accurately guessed about his relations with Madame Karenina—the majority of young men envied him for precisely what was most difficult in his love: Karenin’s high position and the consequent high visibility of this liaison for society.

The majority of young women who envied Anna and who had long grown tired of people calling her righteous rejoiced in what they assumed, and awaited only confirmation of the turn in public opinion before crushing her with the full weight of their contempt. They had been readying those clumps of mud they would throw at her when the time came. Most of the older people and highly placed people were ill pleased with this impending public scandal.

Vronsky’s mother, upon learning of his liaison, was at first content—both because nothing, according to her lights, lent a young man such a final polish as a liaison in high society and because Madame Karenina, whom she had liked so much and who had spoken so much about her own son, was after all just like every other beautiful and proper woman, according to Countess Vronskaya’s lights. Of late, however, she had learned that her son had refused a position important for his career merely in order to remain in his regiment, where he could see Madame Karenina, learned that highly placed individuals were ill pleased with him, and she changed her opinion. She also disliked the fact that according to everything she had learned about this liaison, this was not that brilliant, gracious, society liaison of which she could have approved but some desperate, Wertheresque passion, as she was told, that could lead him into foolishness.²² She had not seen him since his abrupt departure from Moscow and through her older son demanded that he come see her.

The older brother was ill pleased with the younger as well. He could not figure out what sort of love this was, great or small, passionate or cool, depraved or not depraved (he himself, while having children, kept a dancer and so was lenient toward this); however, he knew that this was a love that did not please those who needed to be pleased, and so he did not approve of his brother’s conduct.

Apart from the occupations of service and society, Vronsky had one other—horses, for which he was passionately keen.

This year, an officers’ steeplechase had been arranged. Vronsky signed up for the race, bought a blooded English mare, and despite his love, was passionately, although somewhat reservedly, caught up in the upcoming races.

These two passions did not preclude one another. On the contrary, he needed this occupation and distraction, independent of his love, where he could be refreshed and relax from his extremely disturbing impressions.

19

On the day of the Krasnoye Selo races, Vronsky came earlier than usual to eat a steak in the regimental officers’ mess. He did not need to keep himself in strict check, since his weight exactly equaled the correct four and a half poods; but he could not gain any weight either, and so he avoided starches and sweets. He was sitting with his coat unbuttoned over his white vest, with both elbows on the table, and while waiting for the steak he had ordered, was looking at the French novel lying on his plate. He was looking at the book only so as not to get into conversation with the officers coming and going, and he was thinking.

He was thinking about how Anna had promised to give him a rendezvous today after the races. But he had not seen her for three days and, as a result of her husband’s return from abroad, did not know whether this would be possible today or not, and he did not know how to find this out. He had last seen her at his cousin Betsy’s dacha. He went to the Karenins’ dacha as rarely as possible. Now he wanted to go there and was considering how he might accomplish this.

“Of course, I shall say that Betsy sent me to ask whether she was coming to the races. Of course, I shall go,” he decided privately, raising his head from his book. And vividly imagining the happiness of seeing her, his face shone.

“Send around to my house for them to harness the troika as quickly as possible,” he told the waiter who had served him his steak on a sizzling silver platter, and pulling the platter toward himself, he began to eat.

In the adjoining billiards room he heard the balls striking, the talk and laughter. Two officers appeared at the main door: one, quite young, with a weak, delicate face, who had recently joined their regiment from the Corps of Pages; the other, a chubby old officer with a bracelet on his wrist and bloated little eyes.

Vronsky looked at them, frowned, and as if not noticing them, glancing at his book, began to eat and read at the same time.

“What? Fortifying yourself for your work?” said the chubby officer, sitting down beside him.

“You see,” replied Vronsky, frowning, wiping his mouth and not looking at him.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting fat?” said the other, turning a chair around for the fresh-faced officer.

“What?” said Vronsky angrily, grimacing in revulsion and showing his close-set teeth.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting fat?”

“Waiter, some sherry!” said Vronsky without responding, and moving his book to the other side, he continued to read.

The chubby officer took the wine list and turned to the fresh-faced officer.

“You choose what we’ll drink,” he said, giving him the list and looking at him.

“Please, a Rhine wine,” said the young officer, shyly glancing at Vronsky and trying to finger his barely grown mustache. Seeing that Vronsky was not turning around, the young officer stood up.

“Let’s go to the billiards room,” he said. The chubby officer rose obediently, and they headed for the door.

At that moment the tall and stately Captain Yashvin entered, and nodding contemptuously at the two officers, walked over to Vronsky.

“Ah! Here he is!” he exclaimed, thumping Vronsky’s epaulette with his large hand. Vronsky looked around angrily, but immediately his face brightened with his characteristic calm and steady fondness.

“Wisely done, Alyosha,” said the captain in his loud baritone. “Now eat and drink one small glass.”

“I don’t really feel like eating.”

“Look at the inseparables,” added Yashvin, with an amused look at the two officers, who were leaving the room just then. And he sat down beside Vronsky, bending his legs, which were encased in tight riding breeches and which were too long for the height of the chairs, at sharp angles. “Why didn’t you stop by the Krasnoye Selo theater yesterday? Numerova was not at all bad. Where were you?”

“I stayed too long at the Tverskoys’,” replied Vronsky.

“Ah!” Yashvin responded.

Yashvin, a gambler and fast liver not merely without principles but with immoral principles—Yashvin was Vronsky’s best friend in the regiment. Vronsky loved him both for his exceptional physical strength, which he demonstrated mostly by being able to drink like a fish, go without sleep, and not show the effects, and for his great moral influence, which he demonstrated in his relations with his superiors and his fellows, commanding fear and respect, and in his gambling, which he did for tens of thousands and always, despite the wine he had drunk, with such subtlety and assurance that he was considered the ace gambler at the English Club. Vronsky admired and loved him in particular because he sensed that Yashvin loved him not for his name and wealth but for himself. Of all men, with him alone would Vronsky have liked to speak of his love. He sensed that Yashvin alone, even though he seemed to despise all emotion—he alone, it seemed to Vronsky, could appreciate the powerful passion that now filled his entire life. Moreover, he was sure he would certainly find no satisfaction in gossip and scandal but would understand this emotion properly, that is, he would know and believe that this love was not a joke or a game but something more serious and important.

Vronsky had not spoken to him of his love, but he knew that he knew and understood everything properly, and it felt good to see this in his eyes.

“Ah, yes!” he said, in reply to the fact that Vronsky had been at the Tverskoys’, and his black eyes flashed, and he twirled his left mustache and began putting it in his mouth, a bad habit.

“Well, and what did you do yesterday? Did you win?” asked Vronsky.

“Eight thousand. But three don’t count, he’s hardly going to pay.”

“Well then, you can lose for me like that, too,” said Vronsky, laughing. (Yashvin had placed a large bet on Vronsky.)

“I’m not losing for anything.”

“Makhotin is the only threat.”

And the conversation moved on to expectations for the day’s races, which was all Vronsky could think of now.

“Let’s go, I’m finished,” said Vronsky, and standing, he walked toward the door. Yashvin stood also, stretching his tremendously long legs and back.

“It’s too early for me to dine, but I need a drink. I’ll be right there. Hey, some wine!” he shouted in his thick voice famous in the command for making windows rattle. “No, no need,” he shouted again immediately after. “You’re on your way home, so I’ll go with you.”

And he and Vronsky left.