Anna Karenina

rincess Shtcherbatskaya considered that it was out of the question for
the wedding to take place before Lent, just five weeks off, since not
half the trousseau could possibly be ready by that time. But she could
not but agree with Levin that to fix it for after Lent would be putting
it off too late, as an old aunt of Prince Shtcherbatsky’s was seriously
ill and might die, and then the mourning would delay the wedding still
longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two
parts—a larger and smaller trousseau—the princess consented to have the
wedding before Lent. She determined that she would get the smaller part
of the trousseau all ready now, and the larger part should be made
later, and she was much vexed with Levin because he was incapable of
giving her a serious answer to the question whether he agreed to this
arrangement or not. The arrangement was the more suitable as,
immediately after the wedding, the young people were to go to the
country, where the more important part of the trousseau would not be
wanted.

Levin still continued in the same delirious condition in which it
seemed to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and sole
aim of all existence, and that he need not now think or care about
anything, that everything was being done and would be done for him by
others. He had not even plans and aims for the future, he left its
arrangement to others, knowing that everything would be delightful. His
brother Sergey Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, and the princess guided
him in doing what he had to do. All he did was to agree entirely with
everything suggested to him. His brother raised money for him, the
princess advised him to leave Moscow after the wedding. Stepan
Arkadyevitch advised him to go abroad. He agreed to everything. “Do
what you choose, if it amuses you. I’m happy, and my happiness can be
no greater and no less for anything you do,” he thought. When he told
Kitty of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s advice that they should go abroad, he
was much surprised that she did not agree to this, and had some
definite requirements of her own in regard to their future. She knew
Levin had work he loved in the country. She did not, as he saw,
understand this work, she did not even care to understand it. But that
did not prevent her from regarding it as a matter of great importance.
And then she knew their home would be in the country, and she wanted to
go, not abroad where she was not going to live, but to the place where
their home would be. This definitely expressed purpose astonished
Levin. But since he did not care either way, he immediately asked
Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though it were his duty, to go down to the
country and to arrange everything there to the best of his ability with
the taste of which he had so much.

“But I say,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him one day after he had come
back from the country, where he had got everything ready for the young
people’s arrival, “have you a certificate of having been at
confession?”

“No. But what of it?”

“You can’t be married without it.”

“Aïe, aïe, aïe!” cried Levin. “Why, I believe it’s nine years since
I’ve taken the sacrament! I never thought of it.”

“You’re a pretty fellow!” said Stepan Arkadyevitch laughing, “and you
call me a Nihilist! But this won’t do, you know. You must take the
sacrament.”

“When? There are four days left now.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch arranged this also, and Levin had to go to
confession. To Levin, as to any unbeliever who respects the beliefs of
others, it was exceedingly disagreeable to be present at and take part
in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his present softened state of
feeling, sensitive to everything, this inevitable act of hypocrisy was
not merely painful to Levin, it seemed to him utterly impossible. Now,
in the heyday of his highest glory, his fullest flower, he would have
to be a liar or a scoffer. He felt incapable of being either. But
though he repeatedly plied Stepan Arkadyevitch with questions as to the
possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually communicating,
Stepan Arkadyevitch maintained that it was out of the question.

“Besides, what is it to you—two days? And he’s an awfully nice clever
old fellow. He’ll pull the tooth out for you so gently, you won’t
notice it.”

Standing at the first litany, Levin attempted to revive in himself his
youthful recollections of the intense religious emotion he had passed
through between the ages of sixteen and seventeen.

But he was at once convinced that it was utterly impossible to him. He
attempted to look at it all as an empty custom, having no sort of
meaning, like the custom of paying calls. But he felt that he could not
do that either. Levin found himself, like the majority of his
contemporaries, in the vaguest position in regard to religion. Believe
he could not, and at the same time he had no firm conviction that it
was all wrong. And consequently, not being able to believe in the
significance of what he was doing nor to regard it with indifference as
an empty formality, during the whole period of preparing for the
sacrament he was conscious of a feeling of discomfort and shame at
doing what he did not himself understand, and what, as an inner voice
told him, was therefore false and wrong.

During the service he would first listen to the prayers, trying to
attach some meaning to them not discordant with his own views; then
feeling that he could not understand and must condemn them, he tried
not to listen to them, but to attend to the thoughts, observations, and
memories which floated through his brain with extreme vividness during
this idle time of standing in church.

He had stood through the litany, the evening service and the midnight
service, and the next day he got up earlier than usual, and without
having tea went at eight o’clock in the morning to the church for the
morning service and the confession.

There was no one in the church but a beggar soldier, two old women, and
the church officials. A young deacon, whose long back showed in two
distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met him, and at once
going to a little table at the wall read the exhortation. During the
reading, especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same
words, “Lord, have mercy on us!” which resounded with an echo, Levin
felt that thought was shut and sealed up, and that it must not be
touched or stirred now or confusion would be the result; and so
standing behind the deacon he went on thinking of his own affairs,
neither listening nor examining what was said. “It’s wonderful what
expression there is in her hand,” he thought, remembering how they had
been sitting the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk
about, as was almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand
on the table she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed herself as
she watched her action. He remembered how he had kissed it and then had
examined the lines on the pink palm. “Have mercy on us again!” thought
Levin, crossing himself, bowing, and looking at the supple spring of
the deacon’s back bowing before him. “She took my hand then and
examined the lines. ‘You’ve got a splendid hand,’ she said.” And he
looked at his own hand and the short hand of the deacon. “Yes, now it
will soon be over,” he thought. “No, it seems to be beginning again,”
he thought, listening to the prayers. “No, it’s just ending: there he
is bowing down to the ground. That’s always at the end.”

The deacon’s hand in a plush cuff accepted a three-rouble note
unobtrusively, and the deacon said he would put it down in the
register, and his new boots creaking jauntily over the flagstones of
the empty church, he went to the altar. A moment later he peeped out
thence and beckoned to Levin. Thought, till then locked up, began to
stir in Levin’s head, but he made haste to drive it away. “It will come
right somehow,” he thought, and went towards the altar-rails. He went
up the steps, and turning to the right saw the priest. The priest, a
little old man with a scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured
eyes, was standing at the altar-rails, turning over the pages of a
missal. With a slight bow to Levin he began immediately reading prayers
in the official voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the
ground and turned, facing Levin.

“Christ is present here unseen, receiving your confession,” he said,
pointing to the crucifix. “Do you believe in all the doctrines of the
Holy Apostolic Church?” the priest went on, turning his eyes away from
Levin’s face and folding his hands under his stole.

“I have doubted, I doubt everything,” said Levin in a voice that jarred
on himself, and he ceased speaking.

The priest waited a few seconds to see if he would not say more, and
closing his eyes he said quickly, with a broad, Vladimirsky accent:

“Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind, but we must pray that God
in His mercy will strengthen us. What are your special sins?” he added,
without the slightest interval, as though anxious not to waste time.

“My chief sin is doubt. I have doubts of everything, and for the most
part I am in doubt.”

“Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind,” the priest repeated the
same words. “What do you doubt about principally?”

“I doubt of everything. I sometimes even have doubts of the existence
of God,” Levin could not help saying, and he was horrified at the
impropriety of what he was saying. But Levin’s words did not, it
seemed, make much impression on the priest.

“What sort of doubt can there be of the existence of God?” he said
hurriedly, with a just perceptible smile.

Levin did not speak.

“What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?”
the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. “Who has decked the
heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its
beauty? How explain it without the Creator?” he said, looking
inquiringly at Levin.

Levin felt that it would be improper to enter upon a metaphysical
discussion with the priest, and so he said in reply merely what was a
direct answer to the question.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know! Then how can you doubt that God created all?” the
priest said, with good-humored perplexity.

“I don’t understand it at all,” said Levin, blushing, and feeling that
his words were stupid, and that they could not be anything but stupid
in such a position.

“Pray to God and beseech Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts, and
prayed to God to strengthen their faith. The devil has great power, and
we must resist him. Pray to God, beseech Him. Pray to God,” he repeated
hurriedly.

The priest paused for some time, as though meditating.

“You’re about, I hear, to marry the daughter of my parishioner and son
in the spirit, Prince Shtcherbatsky?” he resumed, with a smile. “An
excellent young lady.”

“Yes,” answered Levin, blushing for the priest. “What does he want to
ask me about this at confession for?” he thought.

And, as though answering his thought, the priest said to him:

“You are about to enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless you with
offspring. Well, what sort of bringing-up can you give your babes if
you do not overcome the temptation of the devil, enticing you to
infidelity?” he said, with gentle reproachfulness. “If you love your
child as a good father, you will not desire only wealth, luxury, honor
for your infant; you will be anxious for his salvation, his spiritual
enlightenment with the light of truth. Eh? What answer will you make
him when the innocent babe asks you: ‘Papa! who made all that enchants
me in this world—the earth, the waters, the sun, the flowers, the
grass?’ Can you say to him: ‘I don’t know’? You cannot but know, since
the Lord God in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us. Or your child
will ask you: ‘What awaits me in the life beyond the tomb?’ What will
you say to him when you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you
leave him to the allurements of the world and the devil? That’s not
right,” he said, and he stopped, putting his head on one side and
looking at Levin with his kindly, gentle eyes.

Levin made no answer this time, not because he did not want to enter
upon a discussion with the priest, but because, so far, no one had ever
asked him such questions, and when his babes did ask him those
questions, it would be time enough to think about answering them.

“You are entering upon a time of life,” pursued the priest, “when you
must choose your path and keep to it. Pray to God that He may in His
mercy aid you and have mercy on you!” he concluded. “Our Lord and God,
Jesus Christ, in the abundance and riches of His loving-kindness,
forgives this child....” and, finishing the prayer of absolution, the
priest blessed him and dismissed him.

On getting home that day, Levin had a delightful sense of relief at the
awkward position being over and having been got through without his
having to tell a lie. Apart from this, there remained a vague memory
that what the kind, nice old fellow had said had not been at all so
stupid as he had fancied at first, and that there was something in it
that must be cleared up.

“Of course, not now,” thought Levin, “but some day later on.” Levin
felt more than ever now that there was something not clear and not
clean in his soul, and that, in regard to religion, he was in the same
position which he perceived so clearly and disliked in others, and for
which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky.

Levin spent that evening with his betrothed at Dolly’s, and was in very
high spirits. To explain to Stepan Arkadyevitch the state of excitement
in which he found himself, he said that he was happy like a dog being
trained to jump through a hoop, who, having at last caught the idea,
and done what was required of him, whines and wags its tail, and jumps
up to the table and the windows in its delight.