saying that practical affairs were not her strong point. All her arrangements
had to be modified because they could not be carried out, and they were
modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch’s valet, who, though no one
was aware of the fact, now managed Karenin’s household, and quietly and
discreetly reported to his master while he was dressing all it was necessary
for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna’s help was none the less real; she gave
Alexey Alexandrovitch moral support in the consciousness of her love and
respect for him, and still more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that
she almost turned him to Christianity—that is, from an indifferent and
apathetic believer she turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of
the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground
of late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in
this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and
others who shared their views, was completely devoid of vividness of
imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked
by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in harmony
with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw nothing impossible and
inconceivable in the idea that death, though existing for unbelievers, did not
exist for him, and that, as he was possessed of the most perfect faith, of the
measure of which he was himself the judge, therefore there was no sin in
his soul, and he was experiencing complete salvation here on earth.
It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this conception of his
faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and he knew that
when, without the slightest idea that his forgiveness was the action of a
higher power, he had surrendered directly to the feeling of forgiveness, he
had felt more happiness than now when he was thinking every instant that
Christ was in his heart, and that in signing official papers he was doing His
will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a necessity to think in that way;
it was such a necessity for him in his humiliation to have some elevated
standpoint, however imaginary, from which, looked down upon by all, he
could look down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to his
delusion of salvation.
Chapter 23
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and sentimental girl,
been married to a wealthy man of high rank, an extremely good-natured,
jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. Two months after marriage her
husband abandoned her, and her impassioned protestations of affection he
met with a sarcasm and even hostility that people knowing the count’s good
heart, and seeing no defects in the sentimental Lidia, were at a loss to
explain. Though they were divorced and lived apart, yet whenever the
husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to her with the same malignant
irony, the cause of which was incomprehensible.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna had long given up being in love with her
husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love with
someone. She was in love with several people at once, both men and
women; she had been in love with almost everyone who had been
particularly distinguished in any way. She was in love with all the new
princes and princesses who married into the imperial family; she had been
in love with a high dignitary of the Church, a vicar, and a parish priest; she
had been in love with a journalist, three Slavophiles, with Komissarov, with
a minister, a doctor, an English missionary and Karenin. All these passions
constantly waning or growing more ardent, did not prevent her from
keeping up the most extended and complicated relations with the court and
fashionable society. But from the time that after Karenin’s trouble she took
him under her special protection, from the time that she set to work in
Karenin’s household looking after his welfare, she felt that all her other
attachments were not the real thing, and that she was now genuinely in love,
and with no one but Karenin. The feeling she now experienced for him
seemed to her stronger than any of her former feelings. Analyzing her
feeling, and comparing it with former passions, she distinctly perceived that
she would not have been in love with Komissarov if he had not saved the
life of the Tsar, that she would not have been in love with Ristitch-
Kudzhitsky if there had been no Slavonic question, but that she loved
Karenin for himself, for his lofty, uncomprehended soul, for the sweet—to
her—high notes of his voice, for his drawling intonation, his weary eyes,
his character, and his soft white hands with their swollen veins. She was not
simply overjoyed at meeting him, but she sought in his face signs of the
impression she was making on him. She tried to please him, not by her
words only, but in her whole person. For his sake it was that she now
lavished more care on her dress than before. She caught herself in reveries
on what might have been, if she had not been married and he had been free.
She blushed with emotion when he came into the room, she could not
repress a smile of rapture when he said anything amiable to her.
For several days now Countess Lidia Ivanovna had been in a state of
intense excitement. She had learned that Anna and Vronsky were in
Petersburg. Alexey Alexandrovitch must be saved from seeing her, he must
be saved even from the torturing knowledge that that awful woman was in
the same town with him, and that he might meet her any minute.
Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to what those
infamous people, as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended doing, and she
endeavored so to guide every movement of her friend during those days that
he could not come across them. The young adjutant, an acquaintance of
Vronsky, through whom she obtained her information, and who hoped
through Countess Lidia Ivanovna to obtain a concession, told her that they
had finished their business and were going away next day. Lidia Ivanovna
had already begun to calm down, when the next morning a note was
brought her, the handwriting of which she recognized with horror. It was the
handwriting of Anna Karenina. The envelope was of paper as thick as bark;
on the oblong yellow paper there was a huge monogram, and the letter
smelt of agreeable scent.
“Who brought it?”
“A commissionaire from the hotel.”
It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could sit down to read
the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma, to which she was
subject. When she had recovered her composure, she read the following
letter in French:
“Madame la Comtesse,
“The Christian feelings with which your heart is filled give me the, I
feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I am miserable at being
separated from my son. I entreat permission to see him once before my
departure. Forgive me for recalling myself to your memory. I apply to
you and not to Alexey Alexandrovitch, simply because I do not wish to
cause that generous man to suffer in remembering me. Knowing your
friendship for him, I know you will understand me. Could you send
Seryozha to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed hour, or
