Anna Karennina

by Leo Tolstoy

PART FIVE

Chapter XI.
On entering the studio, Mikhailov once more scanned his visitors and noted down in his imagination Vronsky's expression too, and especially his jaws. Although his artistic sense was unceasingly at work collecting materials, although he felt a continually increasing excitement as the moment of criticizing his work drew nearer, he rapidly and subtly formed, from imperceptible signs, a mental image of these three persons. That fellow (Golenishchev) was a Russian living here. Mikhailov did not remember his surname nor where he had met him, nor what he had said to him. He only remembered his face as he remembered all the faces he had ever seen; but he remembered, too, that it was one of the faces laid by in his memory in the immense class of the falsely consequential and poor in expression. The abundant hair and very open forehead gave an appearance of consequence to the face, which had only one expression- a petty, childish, peevish expression, concentrated just above the bridge of the narrow nose. Vronsky and Madame Karenina must be, Mikhailov supposed, distinguished and wealthy Russians, knowing nothing about art, like all those wealthy Russians, but posing as amateurs and connoisseurs. "Most likely they've already looked at all the antiques, and now they're making the round of the studios of the new people- the German humbug, and the cracked Pre-Raphaelite English fellow- and have only come to me to make the point of view complete," he thought. He was well acquainted with the way dilettanti have (the cleverer they were the worse he found them) of looking at the works of contemporary artists with the sole object of being in a position to say that art is lost, and the more one sees of the new men the more one sees how inimitable the works of the great old masters have remained. He expected all this; he saw it all in their faces, he saw it in the careless indifference with which they talked among themselves, stared at the lay figures and busts, and walked about in leisurely fashion, waiting for him to uncover his picture. But in spite of this, while he was turning over his studies, pulling up the blinds and taking off the sheet, he was in intense excitement, especially as, in spite of his conviction that all distinguished and wealthy Russians were certain to be beasts and fools, he liked Vronsky, and still more Anna.
"Here, if you please," he said, moving on one side with his nimble gait and pointing to his picture, "it's the exhortation by Pilate. Matthew, chapter 27," he said, feeling his lips were beginning to tremble with emotion. He moved away and stood behind them.
For the few seconds during which the visitors were gazing at the picture in silence, Mikhailov too gazed at it with the indifferent eye of an outsider. For those few seconds he was sure in anticipation that a higher, juster criticism would be uttered by them, by those very visitors whom he had been despising so a moment before. He forgot all he had thought about his picture before, during the three years he had been painting it; he forgot all its qualities, which had been absolutely certain to him- he saw the picture with their indifferent, new, outside eyes, and saw nothing good in it. He saw in the foreground Pilate's irritated face and the serene face of Christ, and in the background the figures of Pilate's retinue and the face of John watching what was happening. Every face that, with such exertion, such blunders and corrections had grown up within him with its special character, every face that had given him such torments and such raptures, and all these faces so many times transposed for the sake of the harmony of the whole, all the shades of color and tones that he had attained with such labor- all of this together seemed to him now, looking at it with their eyes, the merest vulgarity, something that had been done a thousand times over. The face dearest to him, the face of Christ, the center of the picture, which had given him such ecstasy as it unfolded itself to him, was utterly lost to him when he glanced at the picture with their eyes. He saw a well-painted (no, not even that- he distinctly saw now a mass of defects) repetition of those endless Christs of Titian, Raphael, Rubens, and the same soldiers and Pilate. It was all common, poor, and stale, and badly painted- weak and motley. They would be justified in repeating hypocritically courteous speeches in the presence of the painter, and pitying him and laughing at him when they were alone again.
The silence (though it lasted no more than a minute) became too intolerable to him. To break it, and to show he was not agitated, he made an effort and addressed Golenishchev.
"I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you," he said, looking uneasily first at Anna, then at Vronsky, in fear of losing any shade of their expression.
"To be sure! We met at Rossi's; do you remember, at that soiree when that Italian lady recited- the new Rachel?" Golenishchev answered easily, removing his eyes without the slightest regret from the picture and turning to the artist.
Noticing, however, that Mikhailov was expecting a criticism of the picture, he said:
"Your picture has got on a great deal since I saw it last time; and what strikes me particularly now, as it did then, is the figure of Pilate. One so knows the man: a good-natured, capital fellow, but an official through and through, who knows not what he doth. But I fancy..."
All of Mikhailov's mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He tried to say something, but he could not speak for excitement, and pretended to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of Golenishchev's capacity for understanding art, trifling as was the true remark upon the fidelity of the expression of Pilate as an official, and offensive as might have seemed the utterance of so unimportant an observation while nothing was said of more serious points, Mikhailov was in an ecstasy of delight at this observation. He had himself thought about Pilate's figure just what Golenishchev had said. The fact that this reflection was but one of millions of reflections, which, as Mikhailov knew for certain, would be true, did not diminish for him the significance of Golenishchev's remark. His heart warmed to Golenishchev for this remark, and from a state of depression he suddenly passed to ecstasy. At once the whole of his picture lived before him in all the indescribable complexity of everything living. Mikhailov again tried to say that that was how he understood Pilate, but his lips quivered intractably, and he could not pronounce the words. Vronsky and Anna too said something in that subdued voice which (partly to avoid hurting the artist's feelings and partly to avoid giving loud utterance to something silly- so easily done when talking of art) people use at exhibitions of pictures. Mikhailov fancied that the picture had made an impression on them too. He went up to them.
"How marvelous Christ's expression is!" said Anna. Of all she saw she liked that expression most of all, and she felt that it was the center of the picture, and so praise of it would be pleasant to the artist. "One can see that He is pitying Pilate."
This again was one of the million true reflections that could be found in his picture and in the figure of Christ. She said that He was pitying Pilate. In Christ's expression there ought to be indeed an expression of pity, since there is an expression of love, of unearthly peace, of preparedness for death, and a sense of the vanity of words. Of course, there is the expression of an official in Pilate, and of pity in Christ, considering that one is the incarnation of the fleshly, and the other of the spiritual, life. All this and much more flashed into Mikhailov's thoughts. And his face beamed with delight again.
"Yes, and how that figure is done- what atmosphere! One can walk round it," said Golenishchev, unmistakably betraying by this remark that he did not approve of the meaning and idea of the figure.
"Yes, there's a wonderful mastery!" said Vronsky. "How those figures in the background stand out! There you have technique," he said, addressing Golenishchev, alluding to a conversation between them about Vronsky's despair of attaining this technique.
"Yes, yes, marvelous!" Golenishchev and Anna assented.
In spite of the excited condition in which he was, the sentence about technique had sent a pang to Mikhailov's heart, and looking angrily at Vronsky he suddenly scowled. He had often heard this word "technique," and was utterly unable to understand what was meant by it. He knew that by this term was meant a mechanical dexterity for painting or drawing, entirely apart from its subject. He had noticed often that even in actual praise technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one could paint well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of attention and care was necessary in taking off the veils, to avoid injuring the creation itself, and to take off all the veils; but there was no art of painting- no technique of any sort- about it. If to a little child or to his cook were revealed what he saw, either would have been able to peel the veils off what was seen. And the most experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical faculty paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first. Besides, he saw that if it came to talking about technique, it was impossible to praise him for it. In all he had painted he saw faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off the veils- faults he could not correct now without spoiling the whole. And in almost all the figures and faces he saw, too, remnants of the veils not perfectly removed that spoiled the picture.
"One thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark..." observed Golenishchev.
"Oh, I shall be delighted, I beg of you to do so," said Mikhailov with a forced smile.
"That is, you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But I know that was what you meant to do."
"I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart," said Mikhailov morosely.
"Yes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think... Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it, and, besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you it is different. Your very motive is different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that if Christ is brought down to the level of an historical character, it would have been better for Ivanov to select some other historical subject, fresh, untouched."
"But if this is the greatest subject presented to art?"
"If one looked one would find others. But the point is that art cannot suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of Ivanov the question arises for the believer and the unbeliever alike, 'Is it God, or is it not God?' and the unity of the impression is destroyed."
"Why so? I think that, for educated people," said Mikhailov, "the question cannot exist."
Golenishchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mikhailov by his support of his first idea of the unity of the impression being essential to art.
Mikhailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in defense of his own idea.
Chapter XII.
Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting their friend's flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the artist, walked away to another small picture.
"Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!" they cried with one voice.
"What is it they're so pleased with?" thought Mikhailov. He had positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through with that picture when, for several months, it had been the one thought haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the pictures he had finished. He did not even like to look at it, and had only brought it out because he was expecting an Englishman who wanted to buy it.
"Oh, that's only an old study," he said.
"How fine!" said Golenishchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity, falling under the spell of the picture.
Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow tree. The elder had just dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue eyes. What was he thinking of?
The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it in Mikhailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for things past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he tried to draw his visitors away to a third picture.
But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale? To Mikhailov at that moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of money matters.
"It is put up there to be sold," he answered, scowling gloomily.
When the visitors had gone, Mikhailov sat down opposite the picture of Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all importance for him. He began to look at his picture with all his own full, artist's vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture- a conviction essential to the intensest fervor, excluding all other interests- in which alone he could work.
Christ's foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his palette and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had finished the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited for that. He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was too much affected and saw everything too clearly. There was only one stage in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was possible. Today he was too much agitated. He would have covered the picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and, smiling blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John. At last, tearing himself away with evident regret, he dropped the cloth, and, exhausted but happy, went home.
Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishchev, on their way home, were particularly lively and cheerful. They talked of Mikhailov and his pictures. The word talent, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an expression for all the artist had gained from life, recurred particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them to sum up what they had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of it. They said that there was no denying his talent, but that his talent could not develop for want of education- the common defect of our Russian artists. But the picture of the boys had imprinted itself on their memories, and they were continually coming back to it. "What an exquisite thing! How he has succeeded in it, and how simply! He doesn't even comprehend how good it is. Yes, I mustn't let it slip; I must buy it," said Vronsky.
Chapter XIII.
Mikhailov sold Vronsky his picture, and agreed to paint a portrait of Anna. On the day fixed he came and began the work.
From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed everyone, especially Vronsky, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty. It was strange how Mikhailov could have discovered precisely the beauty characteristic of her. "One needs to know and love her as I have loved her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul," Vronsky thought, though it was only from this portrait that he had himself learned this sweetest expression of her soul. But the expression was so true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it.
"I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything," he said of his own portrait of her, "and he just looked and painted it. That's where technique comes in."
"That will come," was the consoling reassurance given him by Golenishchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent, and, what was most important, education, giving him an exalted outlook on art. Golenishchev's faith in Vronsky's talent was propped up by his own need of Vronsky's sympathy and approval for his own essays and ideas, and he felt that the praise and support must be mutual.
In another man's house, and especially in Vronsky's palazzo, Mikhailov was quite a different man from what he was in his studio. He behaved with hostile deference, as though he were afraid of coming closer to people he did not respect. He called Vronsky "Your Excellency," and, notwithstanding Anna's and Vronsky's invitations, he would never stay to dinner, nor come except for the sittings. Anna was even more friendly to him than to other people, and was very grateful for her portrait. Vronsky was more than courteous with him, and was obviously interested to know the artist's opinion of his picture. Golenishchev never let slip an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into Mikhailov. But Mikhailov remained equally chilly to all of these people. Anna was aware from his eyes that he liked to look at her, but he avoided conversation with her. Vronsky's talk about his painting he met with stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent when he was shown Vronsky's picture. He was unmistakably bored by Golenishchev's conversation, and he did not attempt to oppose him.
Altogether Mikhailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, and, apparently, hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to know him better; and they were glad when the sittings were over, and they were left with a magnificent portrait in their possession, and he gave up coming.
Golenishchev was the first to give expression to an idea that had occurred to all of them- which was that Mikhailov was simply envious of Vronsky.
"Not envious, let us say, since he has talent; but it annoys him that a wealthy man of the highest society, and a Count, too (you know these fellows detest all that), can, without any particular trouble, do as well, if not better, than he who has devoted all his life to it. And, more than all, it's a question of education, which he lacks."
Vronsky defended Mikhailov, but at the bottom of his heart he believed this, because in his view a man of a different, lower world would be sure to be envious.
Anna's portrait- the same subject painted from nature both by him and by Mikhailov- ought to have shown Vronsky the difference between him and Mikhailov; but he did not see it. Only after Mikhailov's portrait was painted did he leave off painting his own portrait of Anna, deciding that it was no longer needed. His picture of medieval life he went on with. And he himself, and Golenishchev, and, still more, Anna, thought it very good, because it was far more like the celebrated pictures they knew than Mikhailov's picture.
Mikhailov meanwhile, although Anna's portrait greatly fascinated him, was even more glad than they were when the sittings were over, and he had no longer to listen to Golenishchev's disquisitions upon art, and could forget about Vronsky's painting. He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mikhailov felt at the sight of Vronsky's painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.
Vronsky's interest in painting and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had enough taste for painting to be unable to finish his picture. The picture came to a standstill. He was vaguely aware that its defects, inconspicuous at first, would be glaring if he were to go on with it. The same experience befell him as Golenishchev, who felt that he had nothing to say, and continually deceived himself with the theory that his idea was not yet mature, that he was working it out and collecting material. This exasperated and tortured Golenishchev, but Vronsky was incapable of deceiving and torturing himself, and even more incapable of exasperation. With his characteristic decision, without explanation or apology, he simply ceased work at painting.
But, without this occupation, the life of Vronsky and of Anna, who wondered at his loss of interest in it, struck them as intolerably tedious in an Italian town; the palazzo suddenly seemed so obtrusively old and dirty, the spots on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the broken plaster on the cornices, became so disagreeably obvious, and the everlasting sameness of Golenishchev, and the Italian professor, and the German traveler, became so wearisome, that they had to make some change. They resolved to go to Russia, to the country. In Peterburg Vronsky intended to arrange a partition of the land with his brother, while Anna meant to see her son. The summer they intended to spend on Vronsky's great family estate.
Chapter XIV.
Levin had been married two months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found disenchantment in his former dreams, and new, unexpected enchantment. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, and floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant forgetting where one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only easy to look at; but that doing it, though very delightful was very difficult.
As a bachelor, when he had watched other people's married life, had seen the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary and indisputable importance. And Levin saw that the organization of all these details was by no means so easy as he had fancied before. Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured domestic life only as enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as he conceived the position, to do his work, and to find repose from it in the happiness of love. She ought to be beloved, and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot that she too would want work. And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite Kitty, could not merely in the first weeks, but even in the first days of their married life, think, remember, and busy herself about tablecloths, and furniture, about mattresses for visitors, about a tray, about the cook, and the dinner, and so on. While they were still engaged, he had been struck by the definiteness with which she had declined the tour abroad and decided to go into the country, as though she knew of something she wanted, and could still think of something outside her love. This had jarred upon him then, and now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him several times. But he saw that this was essential for her. And, loving her as he did, though he did not understand the reason for them, and jeered at these domestic pursuits, he could not help admiring them. He jeered at the way in which she arranged the furniture they had brought from Moscow; rearranged their rooms; hung up curtains; prepared rooms for visitors, and for Dolly; saw after an abode for her new maid; ordered dinner of the old cook; came into collision with Agathya Mikhailovna, taking from her the charge of the stores. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring her, and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders; how mournfully and tenderly Agathya Mikhailovna shook her head over the young mistress's new arrangements in the pantry. He saw that Kitty was extraordinarily sweet when, laughing and crying, she came to tell him that her maid, Masha, was used to looking upon her as her young lady, and so no one obeyed her. It seemed to him sweet, but strange, and he thought it would have been better without this.
He did not know how great a sense of change she was experiencing; she, who at home had sometimes wanted some pickled cabbage, or sweets, without the possibility of getting either, now could order what she liked, buy pounds of sweets, spend as much money as she liked, and order any cakes she pleased.
She was dreaming with delight now of Dolly's coming to them with her children, especially because she would order for the children their favorite cakes, and Dolly would appreciate all her new housekeeping. She did not know herself why and wherefore, but the arranging of her house had an irresistible attraction for her. Instinctively feeling the approach of spring, and knowing that there would be days of rough weather too, she built her nest as best she could, and was in haste at the same time to build and to learn how to do it.
This care for domestic details in Kitty, so opposed to Levin's ideal of exalted happiness, was at first one of the disenchantments; and this sweet care of her household, the aim of which he did not understand, but could not help loving, was one of the new enchantments.
Another disenchantment and enchantment consisted of their quarrels. Levin could never have conceived that between him and his wife any relations could arise other than tender, respectful and loving, and all at once, in the very early days, they quarreled, so that she said he did not care for her, that he cared for no one but himself, burst into tears, and waved her hands.
This first quarrel arose from Levin's having gone out to a new grange and having been away half an hour too long, because he had tried to get home by a short cut and had lost his way. He drove home thinking of nothing but her, of her love, of his own happiness, and, the nearer he drew to home, the warmer was his tenderness for her. He ran into the room with the same feeling, with an even stronger feeling, than he had had when he reached the Shcherbatskys' house to propose. And suddenly he was met by a lowering expression he had never seen in her. He would have kissed her, she pushed him away.
"What is it?"
"You've been enjoying yourself..." she began, trying to be calm and spiteful.
But as soon as she opened her mouth, she burst into a stream of reproach, of senseless jealousy, of all that had been torturing her during that half-hour which she had spent sitting motionless at the window. It was only then, for the first time, that he clearly understood what he had not understood when he led her out of the church after the wedding. He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. He felt this from the agonizing sensation of division that he experienced at that instant. He was offended for the first instant, but the very same second he felt that he could not be offended by her, that she was himself. He felt for the first moment as a man feels when, having suddenly received a violent blow from behind, he turns round, angry and eager to avenge himself, to look for his antagonist, and finds that it is he himself who has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry with, and that he must put up with and try to soothe the pain.
Never afterward did he feel it with such intensity, but this first time he could not for a long while get over it. His natural feeling urged him to defend himself, to prove to her she was wrong; but to prove her wrong would mean irritating her still more and making the rupture greater that was the cause of all his suffering. One habitual feeling impelled him to get rid of the blame and to pass it on her; another feeling, even stronger, impelled him as quickly as possible to smooth over the rupture without letting it grow greater. To remain under such undeserved reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by justifying himself was worse still. Like a man half-awake in an agony of pain, he wanted to tear out, to fling away the seat of pain, and, coming to his senses, he felt that the seat of pain was himself. He could do nothing but try to help the seat of pain bear it, and this he tried to do.
They made peace. She, recognizing that she was wrong, though she did not say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new, redoubled happiness in their love. But that did not prevent such quarrels from happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the most unexpected and trivial grounds. These quarrels frequently arose from the fact that they did not yet know what was of importance to each, and that all this early period they were both often in a bad temper. When one was in a good temper, and the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken; but when both happened to be in an ill-humor, quarrels sprang up from such incomprehensibly trifling causes that they could never remember afterward what they had quarreled about. It is true that when they were both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was redoubled. But still this first period of their married life was a difficult time for them.
During all this early period they had a peculiarly vivid sense of tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by which they were bound. Altogether their honeymoon- that is to say, the month after their wedding- from which, through tradition, Levin had expected so much, was not merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the bitterest and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike tried in later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely in a normal frame of mind, when both were rarely quite themselves.
It was only in the third month of their married life, after their return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their life began to go more smoothly.
Chapter XV.
They had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone. He was sitting at the writing table in his study, writing. She, wearing the dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days of their married life, and put on again today- a dress particularly remembered and loved by him- was sitting on the sofa, the same old-fashioned leather sofa which had always stood in the study in Levin's father's and grandfather's days. She was sewing at broderie anglaise. He thought and wrote, never losing the happy consciousness of her presence. His work, both on the land and on the book, in which the principles of the new land system were to be laid down, had not been abandoned; but just as formerly his work and ideas had seemed to him petty and trivial in comparison with the darkness that overspread all life, now they seemed as unimportant and petty in comparison with the life that lay before him suffused with the brilliant light of happiness. He went on with his work, but he felt now that the center of gravity of his attention had passed to something else, and that consequently he looked at his work quite differently and more clearly. Formerly this work had been for him an escape from life. Formerly he had felt that without this work his life would be too gloomy. Now this work was necessary for him so that life might not be too uniformly bright. Taking up his manuscript, reading through what he had written, he found with pleasure that the work was worth his working at. Many of his old ideas seemed to him superfluous and extreme, but many blanks became distinct to him when he reviewed the whole thing in his memory. He was writing now a new chapter on the causes of the present disadvantageous condition of agriculture in Russia. He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises not merely from the anomalous distribution of landed property and from misdirected reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to this result was a civilization from without, abnormally grafted upon Russia- especially facilities of communication such as railways, leading to centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and the consequent development of manufactures, credit, and its accompaniment of speculation- all to the detriment of agriculture. It seemed to him that in a normal development of wealth in a state all these phenomena would arise only when a considerable amount of labor had been put into agriculture, when it had come under regular, or at least definite, conditions; that the wealth of a country ought to increase proportionally, and especially in such a way that other sources of wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that in harmony with a certain stage of agriculture there should be means of communication corresponding to it, and that in our unsettled condition of the land, railways, called into being by political and not by economic needs, were premature, and, instead of promoting agriculture, as was expected of them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting the development of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its progress; and that just as the one-sided and premature development of one organ in an animal would hinder its general development, so in the general development of wealth in Russia, credit, facilities of communication, manufacturing activity, indubitably necessary in Europe, where they had arisen in their proper time, had with us only done harm, by throwing into the background the chief question, next in turn, of the organization of agriculture.
While he was at his writing, she was thinking how unnaturally cordial her husband had been to young Prince Charsky, who had, with great want of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. "He's jealous," she thought. "My God! How sweet and silly he is! He's jealous of me! If he only knew that all others are no more to me than Piotr the cook!" she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a feeling of possession strange to herself. "Though it's a pity to take him from his work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he feel I'm looking at him? I wish he'd turn round.... I'll will him to!" and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence of her gaze.
"Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false resplendence," he muttered, stopped writing, and, feeling that she was looking at him and smiling, he looked round.
"Well?" he queried, smiling, and getting up.
"He looked round," she thought.
"It's nothing; I wanted you to look round," she said, watching him, and trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.
"How happy we are alone together! I am, that is," he said, going up to her with a radiant smile of happiness.
"I'm just as happy. I'll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow."
"And what were you thinking about?"
"I? I was thinking... No, no, go on writing; don't break off," she said, pursing up her lips, "and I must cut out these little holes now, do you see?"
She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.
"No; tell me- what was it?" he said, sitting down beside her and watching the circular motion of the tiny scissors.
"Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the nape of your neck."
"Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It's unnatural. Too good," he said kissing her hand.
"I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it seems to me."
"And you've got a little curl loose," he said, carefully turning her head round. "A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!"
Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready.
"Have they come from town?" Levin asked Kouzma.
"They've just come; they're unpacking the things."
"Come quickly," she said to him as she went out of the study, "or else I shall read the letters without you."
Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the new elegant fittings, which had all made their appearance with her. Levin smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present mode of life. "It's not right to go on like this," he thought. "It'll soon be three months, and I'm doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the first time, I set to work seriously- and what happened? I did nothing but begin and throw it aside. I have almost given up even my ordinary pursuits. I scarcely walk or drive about at all to look after things on my land. Either I am loath to leave her, or I see she's dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing much, somehow didn't count, but that after marriage life began in earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won't do; I must begin. Of course, it's not her fault. She's not to blame in any way. I ought to be firmer myself, to maintain my masculine independence of action; or else I shall get into such ways, and she'll get used to them too.... Of course she's not to blame," he told himself.
But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone else, and especially the person nearest of all to one, for the basis of one's dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Levin's mind that she herself was not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but what was to blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous. ("That fool Charsky: I know she wanted to stop him, but didn't know how to.") "Yes, apart from her interest in the house (that she has), apart from dress and broderie anglaise, she has no serious interests. No interest in my work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music, though she's rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and is perfectly satisfied." Levin, in his heart, censured this, and did not as yet understand that she was preparing for that period of activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the wife of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse, and bring up children. He knew not that she was instinctively aware of this, and preparing herself for this time of terrible toil, did not reproach herself for the moments of carelessness and happiness in her love, which she was enjoying now, while gaily building her nest for the future.
Chapter XVI.
When Levin went upstairs, his wife was sitting near the new silver samovar and the new tea service, and, having settled old Agathya Mikhailovna at a little table with a full cup of tea, was reading a letter from Dolly, with whom they were in continual and frequent correspondence.
"You see, your lady's settled me here, told me to sit a bit with her," said Agathya Mikhailovna, smiling amicably at Kitty.
In these words of Agathya Mikhailovna Levin read the final act of the drama which had been enacted of late between her and Kitty. He saw that, in spite of Agathya Mikhailovna's feelings being hurt by a new mistress taking the reins of government out of her hands, Kitty had yet conquered her and made her love her.
"Here, I opened your letter too," said Kitty, handing him an illiterate letter. "It's from that woman, I think- your brother's..." she said. "I did not read it through. This is from my people and from Dolly. Fancy! Dolly took Tania and Grisha to a children's ball at the Sarmatskys': Tania was a French marquise."
But Levin did not hear her. Flushing, he took the letter from Marya Nikolaevna, his brother's former mistress, and began to read it. This was the second letter he had received from Marya Nikolaevna. In the first letter, Marya Nikolaevna wrote that his brother had sent her packing for no fault of hers, and, with touching simplicity, added that though she was in want again, she asked for nothing, and wished for nothing, but was only tormented by the thought that Nikolai Dmitrievich would come to grief without her, owing to the weak state of his health, and begged his brother to look after him. Now she wrote quite differently. She had found Nikolai Dmitrievich, had again made it up with him in Moscow, and had moved with him to a provincial town, where he had received a post in the government service. But, she wrote, he had quarreled with the head official, and was on his way back to Moscow, only he had been taken so ill on the road that it was doubtful if he would ever leave his bed again. "It's always of you he has talked, and, besides he has no more money left."
"Read this; Dolly writes about you," Kitty was beginning, with a smile; but she stopped suddenly, noticing the changed expression on her husband's face. "What is it? What's the matter?"
"She writes to me that Nikolai, my brother, is at death's door. I shall go to him."
Kitty's face changed at once. Thoughts of Tania as a marquise, of Dolly, all had vanished.
"When are you going?" she said.
"Tomorrow."
"And I will go with you- may I?" she said.
"Kitty! What are you thinking of?" he said reproachfully.
"What am I thinking of?" offended that he should seem to take her suggestion unwillingly and with vexation.
"Why shouldn't I go? I shan't be in your way. I..."
"I'm going because my brother is dying," said Levin. "Why should you..."
"Why? For the same reason as you."
"And, at a moment of such gravity for me, she only thinks of her being dull by herself," thought Levin. And this subterfuge in a matter of such gravity infuriated him.
"It's out of the question," he said sternly.
Agathya Mikhailovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently put down her cup and withdrew. Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in which her husband had said the last words offended her, especially because he evidently did not believe what she had said.
"I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly come," she said hastily and wrathfully. "Why out of the question? Why do you say it's out of the question?"
"Because it'll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to all sorts of hotels.... You would be a hindrance to me," said Levin, trying to be cool.
"Not at all. I don't want anything. Where you can go, I can..."
"Well, for one thing then, because this woman's there whom you can't meet."
"I don't know and don't care to know who's there and what. I know that my husband's brother is dying, and my husband is going to him, and I go with my husband so that..."
"Kitty! Don't get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of such importance that I can't bear to think that you should bring in a feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you'll be dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little."
"There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me," she said with tears of wrath and wounded pride. "I didn't mean anything- it wasn't weakness, it wasn't anything.... I feel that it's my duty to be with my husband when he's in trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to understand...."
"No; this is awful! To be such a slave!" cried Levin, getting up, and unable to restrain his vexation any longer. But at the same second he felt that he was beating himself.
"Then why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you, if you regret it?" she said, getting up and running away into the drawing room.
When he went to her, she was sobbing.
He began to speak, trying to find words not to dissuade but simply to soothe her. But she did not heed him, and would not agree to anything. He bent down to her and took her hand, which resisted him. He kissed her hand, kissed her hair, kissed her hand again- still she was silent. But when he took her face in both his hands, and said "Kitty!" she suddenly collected herself, still shed some tears, and they were reconciled.
It was decided that they should go together the next day. Levin told his wife that he believed she wanted to go simply in order to be of use, agreed that Marya Nikolaevna's being with his brother did not make her going improper, but he set off dissatisfied, at the bottom of his heart, both with her and with himself. He was dissatisfied with her for being unable to make up her mind to let him go when it was necessary (and how strange it was for him to think that he, so lately hardly daring to believe in such happiness as the possibility of her loving him- now was unhappy because she loved him too much!), and he was dissatisfied with himself for not showing more strength of will. Even greater was the feeling of disagreement at the bottom of his heart as to her not needing to consider the woman who was with his brother, and he thought with horror of all the contingencies they might meet with. The mere idea of his wife, his Kitty, being in the same room with a common wench, set him shuddering with horror and loathing.
Chapter XVII.
The hotel of the provincial town where Nikolai Levin was lying ill was one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on the newest model of modern improvements, with the best intentions of cleanliness, comfort, and even elegance, but, owing to the public that patronizes them, are with astounding rapidity transformed into filthy taverns with a pretension of modern improvement and made by the very pretension worse than the old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached that stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry, supposed to stand for a hall porter, and the cast-iron, perforated, somber and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in a filthy dress coat, and the common dining room with a dusty bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust and disorder everywhere, and, at the same time, the sort of modern, up-to-date, self-complacent, railway uneasiness of this hotel, aroused a most painful feeling in Levin after their fresh young life, especially because the impression of falsity made by the hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited them.
As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what price they wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one decent room for them; one decent room had been taken by the inspector of railroads, another by a lawyer from Moscow, a third by Princess Astafieva just arrived from the country. There remained only one filthy room, next to which they promised that another should be empty by the evening. Feeling angry with his wife because what he had expected had come to pass- that at the moment of arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to know how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after her, instead of rushing straight to his brother- Levin conducted her to the room assigned them.
"Go, do go!" she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.
He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over Marya Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared to go in to see him. She was just the same as when he had seen her in Moscow; the same woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the same good-naturedly stupid, pock-marked face, only a little plumper.
"Well, how is he? How is he?"
"Very bad. He can't get up. He has been expecting you all this while. He... Are you... with your wife?"
Levin did not for the first moment understand what confused her, but she immediately enlightened him.
"I'll go away. I'll go down to the kitchen," she brought out. "Nikolai Dmitrievich will be delighted. He heard about it, and knows her, and remembers her abroad."
Levin realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what answer to make.
"Come along, come along to him!" he said.
But, as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty peeped out. Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger at his wife, who had put herself and him in such a difficult position; but Marya Nikolaevna crimsoned still more. She positively shrank together and flushed to the point of tears, and, clutching the ends of her shawl in both hands, twisted them in her red fingers without knowing what to say and what to do.
For the first instant Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity in the eyes with which Kitty looked at this incomprehensible to her, awful woman; but it lasted only a single instant.
"Well! How is he?" she turned to her husband and then to her.
"But one can't go on talking in the passage like this!" Levin said, looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that instant across the corridor, as though about his affairs.
"Well then, come in," said Kitty, turning to Marya Nikolaevna, who had recovered herself- but, noticing her husband's face of dismay- "or go on; go, and then come for me," she said, and went back into the room. Levin went to his brother's room.
He had not in the least expected what he saw and felt in his brother's room. He had expected to find him in the same state of self-deception which he had heard was so frequent with the consumptive, and which had struck him so much during his brother's visit in the autumn. He had expected to find the physical signs of the approach of death more marked- greater weakness, greater emaciation, but still almost the same condition of things. He had expected himself to feel the same distress at the loss of the brother he loved and the same horror in face of death as he had felt then, only in a greater degree. And he had prepared himself for this; but he found something utterly different.
In a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls filthy with spittle; with conversation audible from the next room through the thin partition, in a stifling atmosphere saturated with impurities, on a bedstead moved away from the wall, there lay, covered with a quilt, a body. One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as a rake handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the thin, long bobbin smooth from the beginning to the middle. The head lay sideways on the pillow. Levin could see the scanty locks wet with sweat on the temples and the tensed, seemingly transparent forehead.
"It cannot be that that fearful body was my brother Nikolai?" thought Levin. But he went closer, saw the face, and doubt became impossible. In spite of the terrible change in the face, Levin had only to glance at those eager eyes at his approach, only to catch the faint movement of the mouth under the sticky mustache, to realize the terrible truth that this dead body was his living brother.
The glittering eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at the brother as he drew near. And immediately this glance established a living relationship between living men. Levin immediately felt the reproach in the eyes fixed on him, and felt remorse at his own happiness.
When Konstantin took him by the hand, Nikolai smiled. The smile was faint, scarcely perceptible, and in spite of the smile the stern expression of the eyes was unchanged.
"You did not expect to find me like this," he articulated with effort.
"Yes... no," said Levin, hesitating over his words. "How was it you didn't let me know before- that is, at the time of my wedding? I made inquiries in all directions."
He had to talk so as not to be silent, and he did not know what to say, especially as his brother made no reply, and simply stared without dropping his eyes, and apparently penetrated to the inner meaning of each word. Levin told his brother that his wife had come with him. Nikolai expressed pleasure, but said he was afraid of frightening her by his condition. A silence followed. Suddenly Nikolai stirred, and began to say something. Levin expected something of peculiar gravity and importance from the expression of his face, but Nikolai began speaking of his health. He found fault with the doctor, regretting he had not a celebrated Moscow doctor. Levin saw that he still had hopes.
Seizing the first moment of silence, Levin got up, anxious to escape, if only for an instant, from his agonizing emotion, and said that he would go and fetch his wife.
"Very well, and I'll tell Masha to tidy up here. It's dirty and stinking here, I expect. Masha! Clear up the room," the sick man said with effort. "And when you've cleared up, you go away," he added, looking inquiringly at his brother.
Levin made no answer. Going out into the corridor, he stopped short. He had said he would fetch his wife, but now, taking stock of the emotion he was feeling, he decided that, on the contrary, he would try to persuade her not to go in to the sick man. "Why should she suffer as I am suffering?" he thought.
"Well, how is he?" Kitty asked with a frightened face.
"Oh, it's awful, it's awful! What did you come for?" said Levin.
Kitty was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and ruefully at her husband; then she went up and took him by the elbow with both hands.
"Kostia! Take me to him; it will be easier for us to bear it together. Only take me, take me to him, please, and go away," she said. "You must understand that for me to see you, and not to see him, is far more painful. There I might be a help to you and to him. Please, let me!" she besought her husband, as though the happiness of her life depended on it.
Levin was obliged to agree, and, regaining his composure, and completely forgetting about Marya Nikolaevna by now, he went again in to his brother with Kitty.
Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband, showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sickroom, and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible steps she went quickly to the sick man's bedside, and going up so that he would not have to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young hand the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft eagerness, sympathetic and inoffensive, which is peculiar merely to women.
"We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden," she said. "You never thought I was to be your sister."
"You would not have recognized me?" he said, with a smile which had become radiant at her entrance.
"Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has passed that Kostia has not mentioned you, and been anxious."
But the sick man's interest did not last long.
Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his face the stern, reproachful expression of the dying man's envy of the living.
"I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here," she said, turning away from his fixed stare, and looking about the room. "We must ask about another room," she said to her husband, "so that we might be nearer."
Chapter XVIII.
Levin could not look calmly at his brother; he could not himself be natural and calm in his presence. When he went in to the sick man, his eyes and his attention were unconsciously dimmed, and he did not see and did not distinguish the details of his brother's position. He smelt the awful odor, saw the dirt, disorder, and miserable condition, and heard the groans, and felt that nothing could be done to help. It never entered his head to analyze the details of the sick man's situation, to consider how that body was lying under the quilt, how those emaciated legs and thighs and spine were lying huddled up, and whether they could not be made more comfortable, whether anything could not be done to make things, if not better, at least not so bad. It made his blood run cold when he began to think of all these details. He was absolutely convinced that nothing could be done to prolong his brother's life or to relieve his suffering. But a consciousness of Levin's regarding all aid as out of the question was felt by the sick man, and exasperated him. And this made it still more painful for Levin. To be in the sickroom was agony to him, not to be there was still worse. And he was continually, on various pretexts, going out of the room, and coming in again, because he was unable to remain alone.
But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On seeing the sick man she pitied him. And pity in her womanly heart did not arouse at all that feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her husband, but a desire to act, to find out all the details of his state, and to remedy them. And since she had not the slightest doubt that it was her duty to help him, she had no doubt either that it was possible, and immediately set to work. The very details, the mere thought of which reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention. She sent for the doctor, sent to the chemist's, set the maid who had come with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub; she herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid something under the quilt. Something was by her direction brought into the sickroom, something else was carried out. She herself went several times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor, got out and brought in sheets, pillowcases, towels, and shirts.
The waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the dining hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to her summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Levin did not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be of any good to the patient. Above all, he was afraid the patient would be angry at it. But the sick man, though he seemed to be indifferent about it, was not angry, but only abashed and on the whole seemed interested in what she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty had sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the sick man at the instant when, by Kitty's direction, they were changing his linen. The long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent shoulder blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the nightshirt, and could not get the long, limp arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door after Levin, did not look in that direction, but the sick man groaned, and she moved rapidly toward him.
"Come, a little quicker," she said.
"Oh, don't you come," said the sick man angrily. "I'll do it myself...."
"What did you say?" queried Marya Nikolaevna.
But Kitty heard and saw he was ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.
"I'm not looking, I'm not looking!" she said, putting the arm in. "Marya Nikolaevna, you come this side- you do it," she added.
"Please, run over for me, there's a little bottle in my small bag," she said, turning to her husband, "you know, in the side pocket; bring it, please, and meanwhile they'll finish clearing up here."
Returning with the bottle, Levin found the sick man settled comfortably and everything about him completely changed. The heavy smell was replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which Kitty with pouting lips and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting through a small tube. There was no dust visible anywhere; a rug was laid by the bedside. On the table stood medicine bottles and decanters tidily arranged, and the linen needed was folded up there, and Kitty's broderie anglaise. On the other table by the patient's bed there were candles, and drink, and powders. The sick man himself, washed and combed, lay in clean sheets on high raised pillows, in a clean nightshirt with a white collar about his astoundingly thin neck, and, with a new expression of hope, was looking fixedly at Kitty.
The doctor brought by Levin, and found by him at the club, was not the one who had been attending Nikolai Levin, and whom he disliked. The new doctor took up a stethoscope and sounded the patient, shook his head, prescribed medicine, and with extreme minuteness explained first how to take the medicine and then what diet was to be adhered to. He advised eggs, raw or hardly cooked, and Seltzer water, with new milk at a certain temperature. When the doctor had gone away the sick man said something to his brother, of which Levin could distinguish only the last words: "Your Katia." By the expression with which he gazed at her, Levin saw that he was praising her. He beckoned to him Katia, as he called her.
"I'm much better already," he said. "Why, with you I should have got well long ago. How fine everything is!" He took her hand and drew it toward his lips, but, as though afraid she would dislike it, he changed his mind, let it go, and only stroked it. Kitty took his hand in both of hers and squeezed it.
"Now turn me over on the left side and go to bed," he said.
No one could make out what he said but Kitty; she alone understood. She understood because she was all the while mentally keeping watch on what he needed.
"On the other side," she said to her husband, "he always sleeps on that side. Turn him over- it's so disagreeable calling the servants. I'm not strong enough. Can you?" she said to Marya Nikolaevna.
"I'm afraid...." answered Marya Nikolaevna.
Terrible as it was to Levin to put his arms round that terrible body, to take hold, under the quilt, of that of which he preferred to know nothing, under his wife's influence he made his resolute face that she knew so well, and, putting his arms into the bed took hold of the body, but in spite of his own strength, he was struck by the strange heaviness of those powerless limbs. While he was turning him over, conscious of the huge emaciated arm about his neck, Kitty swiftly and noiselessly turned the pillow, beat it up, and settled in it the sick man's head, smoothing back his hair, which was sticking again to his moist brow.
The sick man kept his brother's hand in his own. Levin felt that he meant to do something with his hand and was pulling it somewhere. Levin yielded with a sinking heart: yes, he drew it to his mouth and kissed it. Levin, shaking with sobs and unable to articulate a word, went out of the room.
Chapter XIX.
"Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." So Levin thought about his wife as he talked to her that evening.
Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself "wise and prudent." He did not consider himself wise and prudent, but he could not help knowing that he had more intellect than his wife and Agathya Mikhailovna, and he could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with all the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agathya Mikhailovna knew about it. Different as those two women were, Agathya Mikhailovna and Katia, as his brother Nikolai had called her, and as Levin particularly liked to call her now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew, without a shade of doubt, what sort of thing life was, and what was death, and though neither of them could have answered, and would not even have understood the questions that presented themselves to Levin, both had no doubt of the significance of this event, and were precisely alike in their way of looking at it, which they shared with millions of people. The proof that they knew for a certainty the nature of death lay in the fact that they knew without a second of hesitation how to deal with the dying, and were not frightened by them. Levin, and other men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death, obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying. If Levin had been alone now with his brother Nikolai, he would have looked at him with terror, and with still greater terror waited, and would not have known what else to do.
More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move. To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible; to talk of death and depressing subjects- also impossible. To be silent was also impossible. "If I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am afraid of him; if I don't look at him, he'll think I'm thinking of other things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I'm ashamed." Kitty evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to think about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew something, and all went well. She even told him about herself and about her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him, and petted him, and talked of cases of recovery, and all went well; therefore, she must know. The proof that her behavior and Agathya Mikhailovna's was not instinctive, animal, irrational, lay in that apart from the physical treatment, the relief of suffering, both Agathya Mikhailovna and Kitty required for the dying man something else more important than the physical treatment, and something which had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agathya Mikhailovna, speaking of a man recently dead, had said: "Well, thank God, he took the sacrament and received Extreme Unction; God grant each one of us such a death." Katia, in just the same way, besides all her care about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving Extreme Unction.
On getting back from the sickroom to their own two rooms for the night, Levin sat with hanging head, not knowing what to do. To say nothing of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on the contrary, was more active than usual. She was even livelier than usual. She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things, and herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle them with Persian insecticide. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection which comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life- those moments when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments.
Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o'clock all their things were arranged tidily and orderly in such a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home, like her rooms: the beds were made, brushes, combs, looking glasses were put out, table napkins were spread.
Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now, and it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing shocking in it.
They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they could not sleep, and did not even go to bed.
"I am very glad I persuaded him to receive Extreme Unction tomorrow," she said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding looking glass, combing her soft, fragrant hair with a small-toothed comb. "I have never seen it, but I know, mamma has told me, there are prayers said for recovery."
"Do you suppose he can possibly recover?" said Levin, watching a slender tress at the back of her round little head that was continually hidden when she passed the comb through the front.
"I asked the doctor; he said he couldn't live more than three days. But can they be sure? I'm very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him," she said, looking askance at her husband through her hair. "Anything is possible," she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was always in her face when she spoke of religion.
Since their conversation about religion during their engagement neither of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on, always with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that he said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as he would say about her broderie anglaise- that good people patch holes but that she cut them out on purpose, and so on.
"Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to manage all this," said Levin. "And... I must own I'm very, very glad you came. You are such purity that..." He took her hand and did not kiss it (to kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him improper); he merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her brightening eyes.
"It would have been miserable for you to be alone," she said, and lifting her hands which hid her cheeks, flushing with pleasure, twisted her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. "No," she went on, "she did not know how.... Luckily, I learned lot at Soden."
"Surely there are no people there so ill?"
"Worse."
"What's so awful to me is that I can't but see him as he was when he was young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did not understand him then."
"I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been friends!" she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked round at her husband, and tears came into her eyes.
"Yes, might have been," he said mournfully. "He's just one of those people of whom they say that they are not for this world."
"But we have many days before us; we must go to bed," said Kitty, glancing at her tiny watch.
Chapter XX.
DEATH.

The next day the sick man received the sacrament and Extreme Unction. During the ceremony Nikolai Levin prayed fervently. His great eyes fastened on the holy icon that was set out on a card table covered with a colored napkin, expressed such passionate prayer and hope that it was awful to Levin to see it. Levin knew that this passionate prayer and hope would only make him feel more bitterly the parting from the life he so loved. Levin knew his brother and the workings of his intellect: he knew that his unbelief came not from life being easier for him without faith, but had grown up because, step by step, the contemporary scientific interpretation of natural phenomena crushed out the possibility of faith; and so he knew that his present return was not a legitimate one, brought about by way of the same working of his intellect, but simply a temporary, interested return to faith in a desperate hope of recovery. Levin knew too that Kitty had strengthened his hope by accounts of the marvelous recoveries she had heard of Levin knew all this; and it was agonizingly painful to him to behold the supplicating, hopeful eyes and the emaciated wrist, lifted with difficulty, making the sign of the cross on the tense brow, and the prominent shoulders and hollow, gasping chest, which one could not feel consistent with the life the sick man was praying for. During the sacrament Levin offered prayers, and did what he, an unbeliever, had done a thousand times. He said, addressing God: "If Thou dost exist, make this man recover" (of course this same thing has been repeated many times), "and Thou wilt save him and me."
After Extreme Unction the sick man became suddenly much better. He did not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Kitty's hand, thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free from pain, and that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised himself when his soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly ill as he was, obvious as it was at the first glance that he could not recover, Levin and Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of excitement, happy, though fearful of being mistaken.
"Is he better?"- "Yes, much."- "It's wonderful."- "There's nothing wonderful in it."- "Anyway, he's better,"- they said in a whisper, smiling to one another.
This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into a quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough. And all at once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself. The reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty, and in the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes.
Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and the same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation of the doctor's words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.
"Isn't Katia here?" he gasped, looking round while Levin reluctantly assented to the doctor's words. "No- then I can say it.... It was for her sake I went through that farce. She's so sweet; but you and I can't deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in," he said, and, squeezing the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it.
At eight o'clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea in their room, when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly. She was pale, and her lips were quivering.- "He is dying!" she whispered. "I'm afraid he will die right away."
Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up, with one elbow on the bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.
"How do you feel?" Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.
"I feel I'm setting off," Nikolai said with difficulty, but with extreme distinctness, deliberately squeezing the words out of himself. He did not raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upward, without their reaching his brother's face. "Katia, go away!" he added.
Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.
"I'm setting off," he said again.
"Why do you think so?" said Levin, so as to say something.
"Because I'm setting off," he repeated, as though he had a liking for the phrase. "It's the end."
Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.
"You had better lie down; you'd be easier," she said.
"I shall lie down soon enough," he pronounced slowly, "when I'm dead," he said sarcastically, wrathfully. "Well, you can put me down if you like."
Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed at his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one thinking deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with him of what it was that was happening to him now, but in spite of all his mental efforts to keep him company, he saw by the expression of that calm, stern face, and by the playing muscle above his brow, that for the dying man there was growing clearer and clearer all that was still as dark as ever for Levin.
"Yes, yes, so," the dying man articulated slowly at intervals. "Wait a little." He was silent again. "Right!" he pronounced all at once reassuringly, as though all were solved for him. "O Lord!" he murmured, and sighed deeply.
Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. "They're getting cold," she whispered.
For a long while, a very long while, it seemed to Levin, the sick man lay motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he sighed. Levin by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that with no mental effort could he understand what it was that was right. He felt that he could not follow the dying man's thinking. He could not even think of the problem of death itself, but, with no will of his own, thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to do next- closing the dead man's eyes, dressing him, ordering the coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother. If he had any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was rather envy for the knowledge the dying man had now, which he could not have.
A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the end. But the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin got up to stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he caught the sound of the dying man stirring.
"Don't go away," said Nikolai and held out his hand. Levin gave him his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away.
With the dying man's hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an hour, another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He wondered what Kitty was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the doctor lived in a house of his own. He longed for food and for sleep. He cautiously drew away his hand and felt the feet. The feet were cold, but the sick man was still breathing. Levin tried once more to move away on tiptoe, but the sick man stirred again and said: "Don't go."
The dawn came; the sick man's condition was unchanged. Levin stealthily withdrew his hand, and, without looking at the dying man, went off to his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead of news of his brother's death which he expected, he learned that the sick man had returned to his earlier condition. He had begun sitting up again, coughing, had begun eating again, talking again, and again had ceased to talk of death, again had begun to express hope of his recovery, and had become more irritable and gloomier than ever. No one, neither his brother nor Kitty, could soothe him. He was angry with everyone, and said nasty things to everyone, reproached everyone for his sufferings, and insisted that they should get him a celebrated doctor from Moscow. To all inquiries made of him as to how he felt, he made the same answer with an expression of vindictive reproachfulness: "I'm suffering horribly, intolerably!" The sick man was suffering more and more, especially from bedsores, which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more and more angry with everyone about him, blaming them for everything, and especially for not having brought him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried in every possible way to relieve him, to soothe him; but it was all in vain, and Levin saw that she herself was exhausted both physically and morally, though she would not admit it. The sense of death, which had been evoked in all by his taking leave of life on the night when he had sent for his brother, was broken up. Everyone knew that he must inevitably die soon, that he was half-dead already. Everyone wished for nothing but that he should die as soon as possible, and everyone, concealing this, gave him medicines, tried to find remedies and doctors, and deceived him, and themselves, and one another. All this was falsehood, disgusting, irreverent deceit. And owing to the bent of his character, and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else did, Levin was most painfully conscious of this deceit.
Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother, Sergei Ivanovich, and having received an answer from him, he read this letter to the sick man. Sergei Ivanovich wrote that he could not come himself, and in touching terms he begged his brother's forgiveness.
The sick man said nothing.
"What am I to write to him?" said Levin. "I hope you are not angry with him?"
"No, not in the least!" Nikolai answered, vexed at the question. "Tell him to send me a doctor."
Three more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the same condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by everyone now who saw him: by the waiters, and the hotelkeeper, and all the people staying in the hotel, and the doctor, and Marya Nikolaevna, and Levin, and Kitty. The sick man alone did not express this feeling, but on the contrary was furious at their not getting him doctors, and went on taking medicine and talking of life. Only at rare moments, when the opium gave him an instant's relief from his never-ceasing pain, he would sometimes, half-asleep, utter what was ever more intense in his heart than in all the others: "Oh, if it were only the end!" or, "When will it be over?"
His sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not in pain, there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of it, not a limb, not a part of his body that did not ache and cause him agony. Even the memories, the impressions, the thoughts of this body awakened in him now the same aversion as the body itself. The sight of other people, their remarks, his own reminiscences- everything was for him a source of agony. Those about him felt this, and instinctively did not allow themselves to move freely, to talk, to express their wishes before him. All his life was merged in the one feeling of suffering and desire to be rid of it.
There was evidently coming over him that revulsion which would make him look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness. Hitherto each individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering received relief, and the effort to relieve them only caused fresh suffering. And so all desires were merged in one- the desire to be rid of all his sufferings and their source, the body. But he had no words to express this desire of deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit asked for the satisfaction of desires which could not now be satisfied. "Turn me over on the other side," he would say, and immediately after he would ask to be turned back again as before. "Give me some broth. Take away the broth. Talk of something: why are you silent?" And directly they began to talk he would close his eyes, and would show weariness, indifference, and loathing.
On the tenth day from their arrival in the town, Kitty was unwell. She suffered from headache and sickness, and she could not get up all the morning.
The doctor opined that the indisposition arose from fatigue and excitement, and prescribed rest.
After dinner, however, Kitty got up and went as with her work to the sick man. He looked at her sternly when she came in, and smiled contemptuously when she said she had been unwell. That day he was continually blowing his nose, and groaning piteously.
"How do you feel?" she asked him.
"Worse," he articulated with difficulty. "In pain!"
"In pain, where?"
"Everywhere."
"It will be over today, you will see," said Marya Nikolaevna. Though it was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing Levin had noticed was very keen, must have heard. Levin said "Hush!" to her, and looked round at the sick man. Nikolai had heard; but these words produced no effect on him. His eyes had still the same intense, reproachful look.
"Why do you think so?" Levin asked her, when she had followed him into the corridor.
"He has begun picking at himself," said Marya Nikolaevna.
"How do you mean?"
"Like this," she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt. Levin noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at himself, as it were, trying to snatch something away.
Marya Nikolaevna's prediction came true. Toward night the sick man was not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with the same intensely concentrated expression in his eyes. Even when his brother or Kitty bent over him, so that he could see them, he looked just the same. Kitty sent for the priest to read the prayer for the dying.
While the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any sign of life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty and Marya Nikolaevna stood at the bedside. The priest had not quite finished reading the prayer when the dying man stretched, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, on finishing the prayer, put the cross to the cold forehead, then slowly returned it to the stand, and, after standing in silence for two minutes more, he touched the huge, bloodless hand that was turning cold.
"He is gone," said the priest, and would have moved away; but suddenly there was a faint stir in the mustaches of the dead man, that seemed glued together, and quite distinctly in the hush they heard from the bottom of the chest the sharply defined sounds:
"Not quite.... Soon."
And a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under the mustaches, and the women who had gathered round began carefully laying out the corpse.
The sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in Levin that sense of horror in the face of the insolvable enigma, together with the nearness and inevitability of death, that had come upon him that autumn evening when his brother had come to him. This feeling was now even stronger than before; even less than before did he feel capable of apprehending the meaning of death, and its inevitability rose up before him more terrible than ever. But now, thanks to his wife's presence, that feeling did not reduce him to despair. In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that his love, under the menace of d