PART FOUR
Chapter 1
The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met
every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey
Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the servants
might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at home.
Vronsky was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house, but Anna saw him
away from home, and her husband was aware of it.
The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would
have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had not been
for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a temporary
painful ordeal which would pass over. Alexey Alexandrovitch hoped that
this passion would pass, as everything does pass, that everyone would
forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied. Anna, on whom the
position depended, and for whom it was more miserable than for anyone,
endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly believed, that it would
all very soon be settled and come right. She had not the least idea what
would settle the position, but she firmly believed that something would very
soon turn up now. Vronsky, against his own will or wishes, followed her
lead, hoped too that something, apart from his own action, would be sure to
solve all difficulties.
In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week. A
foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put under his
charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Vronsky was of
distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of behaving with
respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with such grand personages
—that was how he came to be put in charge of the prince. But he felt his
duties very irksome. The prince was anxious to miss nothing of which he
would be asked at home, had he seen that in Russia? And on his own
account he was anxious to enjoy to the utmost all Russian forms of
amusement. Vronsky was obliged to be his guide in satisfying both these
inclinations. The mornings they spent driving to look at places of interest;
the evenings they passed enjoying the national entertainments. The prince
rejoiced in health exceptional even among princes. By gymnastics and
careful attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point that in
spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green
Dutch cucumber. The prince had traveled a great deal, and considered one
of the chief advantages of modern facilities of communication was the
accessibility of the pleasures of all nations.
He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had made
friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he had
killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over hedges and
killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In Turkey he had got into a harem;
in India he had hunted on an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste
all the specially Russian forms of pleasure.
Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him, was
at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements suggested by various
persons to the prince. They had race horses, and Russian pancakes and bear
hunts and three-horse sledges, and gypsies and drinking feasts, with the
Russian accompaniment of broken crockery. And the prince with surprising
ease fell in with the Russian spirit, smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a
gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to be asking—what more, and does the
whole Russian spirit consist in just this?
In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked best French
actresses and ballet dancers and white-seal champagne. Vronsky was used
to princes, but, either because he had himself changed of late, or that he was
in too close proximity to the prince, that week seemed fearfully wearisome
to him. The whole of that week he experienced a sensation such as a man
might have set in charge of a dangerous madman, afraid of the madman,
and at the same time, from being with him, fearing for his own reason.
Vronsky was continually conscious of the necessity of never for a second
relaxing the tone of stern official respectfulness, that he might not himself
be insulted. The prince’s manner of treating the very people who, to
