and innocent; it’s loathsome, and that’s why one can’t help feeling oneself
unworthy.”
“Oh, well, you’ve not many sins on your conscience.”
“Alas! all the same,” said Levin, “when with loathing I go over my life, I
shudder and curse and bitterly regret it…. Yes.”
“What would you have? The world’s made so,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
“The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: ‘Forgive me
not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy loving-kindness.’
That’s the only way she can forgive me.”
Chapter 11
Levin emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.
“There’s one other thing I ought to tell you. Do you know Vronsky?”
Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Levin.
“No, I don’t. Why do you ask?”
“Give us another bottle,” Stepan Arkadyevitch directed the Tatar, who
was filling up their glasses and fidgeting round them just when he was not
wanted.
“Why you ought to know Vronsky is that he’s one of your rivals.”
“Who’s Vronsky?” said Levin, and his face was suddenly transformed
from the look of childlike ecstasy which Oblonsky had just been admiring
to an angry and unpleasant expression.
“Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one
of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. I made his
acquaintance in Tver when I was there on official business, and he came
there for the levy of recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome, great connections,
an aide-de-camp, and with all that a very nice, good-natured fellow. But
he’s more than simply a good-natured fellow, as I’ve found out here—he’s a
cultivated man, too, and very intelligent; he’s a man who’ll make his mark.”
Levin scowled and was dumb.
“Well, he turned up here soon after you’d gone, and as I can see, he’s
over head and ears in love with Kitty, and you know that her mother….”
“Excuse me, but I know nothing,” said Levin, frowning gloomily. And
immediately he recollected his brother Nikolay and how hateful he was to
have been able to forget him.
“You wait a bit, wait a bit,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling and
touching his hand. “I’ve told you what I know, and I repeat that in this
delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the
chances are in your favor.”
Levin dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.
“But I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as may be,” pursued
Oblonsky, filling up his glass.
“No, thanks, I can’t drink any more,” said Levin, pushing away his glass.
“I shall be drunk…. Come, tell me how are you getting on?” he went on,
obviously anxious to change the conversation.
“One word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question soon.
Tonight I don’t advise you to speak,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Go round
tomorrow morning, make an offer in due form, and God bless you….”
“Oh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come next
spring, do,” said Levin.
Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this
conversation with Stepan Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was profaned
by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions and the
counsels of Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin’s soul.
“I’ll come some day,” he said. “But women, my boy, they’re the pivot
everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it’s
all through women. Tell me frankly now,” he pursued, picking up a cigar
and keeping one hand on his glass; “give me your advice.”
“Why, what is it?”
“I’ll tell you. Suppose you’re married, you love your wife, but you’re
fascinated by another woman….”
“Excuse me, but I’m absolutely unable to comprehend how … just as I
can’t comprehend how I could now, after my dinner, go straight to a baker’s
shop and steal a roll.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled more than usual.
“Why not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can’t resist it.”
“Himmlisch ist’s, wenn ich bezwungen
Meine irdische Begier;
Aber doch wenn’s nich gelungen
Hatt’ ich auch recht hübsch Plaisir!”
As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin, too, could not
help smiling.
“Yes, but joking apart,” resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “you must
understand that the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature, poor and
lonely, and has sacrificed everything. Now, when the thing’s done, don’t
you see, can one possibly cast her off? Even supposing one parts from her,
so as not to break up one’s family life, still, can one help feeling for her,
setting her on her feet, softening her lot?”
“Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided
into two classes … at least no … truer to say: there are women and there are
… I’ve never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but
such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets
are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same.”
“But the Magdalen?”
“Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had
known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the
only ones remembered. However, I’m not saying so much what I think, as
what I feel. I have a loathing for fallen women. You’re afraid of spiders, and
I of these vermin. Most likely you’ve not made a study of spiders and don’t
know their character; and so it is with me.”
“It’s very well for you to talk like that; it’s very much like that gentleman
in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over his right shoulder.
But to deny the facts is no answer. What’s to be done—you tell me that,
what’s to be done? Your wife gets older, while you’re full of life. Before
you’ve time to look round, you feel that you can’t love your wife with love,
however much you may esteem her. And then all at once love turns up, and
you’re done for, done for,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said with weary despair.
Levin half smiled.
“Yes, you’re done for,” resumed Oblonsky. “But what’s to be done?”
“Don’t steal rolls.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright.
“Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one
insists only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which you can’t
give her; and the other sacrifices everything for you and asks for nothing.
What are you to do? How are you to act? There’s a fearful tragedy in it.”
“If you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I’ll tell you that I
don’t believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why. To my mind,
love … both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines in his
Banquet, served as the test of men. Some men only understand one sort, and
some only the other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have
no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy. ‘I’m
much obliged for the gratification, my humble respects’—that’s all the
tragedy. And in platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love
all is clear and pure, because….”
At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner conflict he
had lived through. And he added unexpectedly:
“But perhaps you are right. Very likely … I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“It’s this, don’t you see,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, “you’re very much
all of a piece. That’s your strong point and your failing. You have a
character that’s all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a
piece too—but that’s not how it is. You despise public official work because
you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the while with the
aim—and that’s not how it is. You want a man’s work, too, always to have a
defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided—and that’s
not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up
of light and shadow.”
Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own affairs, and
did not hear Oblonsky.
And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though
they had been dining and drinking together, which should have drawn them
closer, yet each was thinking only of his own affairs, and they had nothing
to do with one another. Oblonsky had more than once experienced this
