Anna Karenina

one but those who were most intimate with Alexey Alexandrovitch knew
that, while on the surface the coldest and most reasonable of men, he
had one weakness quite opposed to the general trend of his character.
Alexey Alexandrovitch could not hear or see a child or woman crying
without being moved. The sight of tears threw him into a state of
nervous agitation, and he utterly lost all power of reflection. The
chief secretary of his department and his private secretary were aware
of this, and used to warn women who came with petitions on no account
to give way to tears, if they did not want to ruin their chances. “He
will get angry, and will not listen to you,” they used to say. And as a
fact, in such cases the emotional disturbance set up in Alexey
Alexandrovitch by the sight of tears found expression in hasty anger.
“I can do nothing. Kindly leave the room!” he would commonly cry in
such cases.

When returning from the races Anna had informed him of her relations
with Vronsky, and immediately afterwards had burst into tears, hiding
her face in her hands, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for all the fury aroused
in him against her, was aware at the same time of a rush of that
emotional disturbance always produced in him by tears. Conscious of it,
and conscious that any expression of his feelings at that minute would
be out of keeping with the position, he tried to suppress every
manifestation of life in himself, and so neither stirred nor looked at
her. This was what had caused that strange expression of deathlike
rigidity in his face which had so impressed Anna.

When they reached the house he helped her to get out of the carriage,
and making an effort to master himself, took leave of her with his
usual urbanity, and uttered that phrase that bound him to nothing; he
said that tomorrow he would let her know his decision.

His wife’s words, confirming his worst suspicions, had sent a cruel
pang to the heart of Alexey Alexandrovitch. That pang was intensified
by the strange feeling of physical pity for her set up by her tears.
But when he was all alone in the carriage Alexey Alexandrovitch, to his
surprise and delight, felt complete relief both from this pity and from
the doubts and agonies of jealousy.

He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out after
suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a sense of
something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn out of his jaw,
the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own good luck, feels all at
once that what has so long poisoned his existence and enchained his
attention, exists no longer, and that he can live and think again, and
take interest in other things besides his tooth. This feeling Alexey
Alexandrovitch was experiencing. The agony had been strange and
terrible, but now it was over; he felt that he could live again and
think of something other than his wife.

“No honor, no heart, no religion; a corrupt woman. I always knew it and
always saw it, though I tried to deceive myself to spare her,” he said
to himself. And it actually seemed to him that he always had seen it:
he recalled incidents of their past life, in which he had never seen
anything wrong before—now these incidents proved clearly that she had
always been a corrupt woman. “I made a mistake in linking my life to
hers; but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be
unhappy. It’s not I that am to blame,” he told himself, “but she. But I
have nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me....”

Everything relating to her and her son, towards whom his sentiments
were as much changed as towards her, ceased to interest him. The only
thing that interested him now was the question of in what way he could
best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and thus with most
justice, extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered
him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable,
and useful existence.

“I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman has
committed a crime. I have only to find the best way out of the
difficult position in which she has placed me. And I shall find it,” he
said to himself, frowning more and more. “I’m not the first nor the
last.” And to say nothing of historical instances dating from the “Fair
Helen” of Menelaus, recently revived in the memory of all, a whole list
of contemporary examples of husbands with unfaithful wives in the
highest society rose before Alexey Alexandrovitch’s imagination.
“Daryalov, Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram.... Yes,
even Dram, such an honest, capable fellow ... Semyonov, Tchagin,
Sigonin,” Alexey Alexandrovitch remembered. “Admitting that a certain
quite irrational ridicule falls to the lot of these men, yet I never
saw anything but a misfortune in it, and always felt sympathy for it,”
Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, though indeed this was not the
fact, and he had never felt sympathy for misfortunes of that kind, but
the more frequently he had heard of instances of unfaithful wives
betraying their husbands, the more highly he had thought of himself.
“It is a misfortune which may befall anyone. And this misfortune has
befallen me. The only thing to be done is to make the best of the
position.”

And he began passing in review the methods of proceeding of men who had
been in the same position that he was in.

“Daryalov fought a duel....”

The duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey
Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a coward,
and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not
without horror contemplate the idea of a pistol aimed at himself, and
had never made use of any weapon in his life. This horror had in his
youth set him pondering on dueling, and picturing himself in a position
in which he would have to expose his life to danger. Having attained
success and an established position in the world, he had long ago
forgotten this feeling; but the habitual bent of feeling reasserted
itself, and dread of his own cowardice proved even now so strong that
Alexey Alexandrovitch spent a long while thinking over the question of
dueling in all its aspects, and hugging the idea of a duel, though he
was fully aware beforehand that he would never under any circumstances
fight one.

“There’s no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it’s not the same
in England) that very many”—and among these were those whose opinion
Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued—“look favorably on the duel;
but what result is attained by it? Suppose I call him out,” Alexey
Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and vividly picturing the night he
would spend after the challenge, and the pistol aimed at him, he
shuddered, and knew that he never would do it—“suppose I call him out.
Suppose I am taught,” he went on musing, “to shoot; I press the
trigger,” he said to himself, closing his eyes, “and it turns out I
have killed him,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook
his head as though to dispel such silly ideas. “What sense is there in
murdering a man in order to define one’s relation to a guilty wife and
son? I should still just as much have to decide what I ought to do with
her. But what is more probable and what would doubtless occur—I should
be killed or wounded. I, the innocent person, should be the
victim—killed or wounded. It’s even more senseless. But apart from
that, a challenge to fight would be an act hardly honest on my side.
Don’t I know perfectly well that my friends would never allow me to
fight a duel—would never allow the life of a statesman, needed by
Russia, to be exposed to danger? Knowing perfectly well beforehand that
the matter would never come to real danger, it would amount to my
simply trying to gain a certain sham reputation by such a challenge.
That would be dishonest, that would be false, that would be deceiving
myself and others. A duel is quite irrational, and no one expects it of
me. My aim is simply to safeguard my reputation, which is essential for
the uninterrupted pursuit of my public duties.” Official duties, which
had always been of great consequence in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s eyes,
seemed of special importance to his mind at this moment. Considering
and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned to divorce—another
solution selected by several of the husbands he remembered. Passing in
mental review all the instances he knew of divorces (there were plenty
of them in the very highest society with which he was very familiar),
Alexey Alexandrovitch could not find a single example in which the
object of divorce was that which he had in view. In all these instances
the husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and the
very party which, being in fault, had not the right to contract a fresh
marriage, had formed counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties with a
self-styled husband. In his own case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a
legal divorce, that is to say, one in which only the guilty wife would
be repudiated, was impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex
conditions of the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife’s
guilt, required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain
refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being brought
forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward such proofs
would damage him in the public estimation more than it would her.

An attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal, which
would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and attacks on
his high position in society. His chief object, to define the position
with the least amount of disturbance possible, would not be attained by
divorce either. Moreover, in the event of divorce, or even of an
attempt to obtain a divorce, it was obvious that the wife broke off all
relations with the husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in
spite of the complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now
felt for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch
still had one feeling left in regard to her—a disinclination to see her
free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime would be to
her advantage. The mere notion of this so exasperated Alexey
Alexandrovitch, that directly it rose to his mind he groaned with
inward agony, and got up and changed his place in the carriage, and for
a long while after, he sat with scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and
bony legs in the fleecy rug.

“Apart from formal divorce, One might still do like Karibanov,
Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram—that is, separate from one’s wife,”
he went on thinking, when he had regained his composure. But this step
too presented the same drawback of public scandal as a divorce, and
what was more, a separation, quite as much as a regular divorce, flung
his wife into the arms of Vronsky. “No, it’s out of the question, out
of the question!” he said again, twisting his rug about him again. “I
cannot be unhappy, but neither she nor he ought to be happy.”

The feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during the period of
uncertainty, had passed away at the instant when the tooth had been
with agony extracted by his wife’s words. But that feeling had been
replaced by another, the desire, not merely that she should not be
triumphant, but that she should get due punishment for her crime. He
did not acknowledge this feeling, but at the bottom of his heart he
longed for her to suffer for having destroyed his peace of mind—his
honor. And going once again over the conditions inseparable from a
duel, a divorce, a separation, and once again rejecting them, Alexey
Alexandrovitch felt convinced that there was only one solution,—to keep
her with him, concealing what had happened from the world, and using
every measure in his power to break off the intrigue, and still
more—though this he did not admit to himself—to punish her. “I must
inform her of my conclusion, that thinking over the terrible position
in which she has placed her family, all other solutions will be worse
for both sides than an external status quo, and that such I agree to
retain, on the strict condition of obedience on her part to my wishes,
that is to say, cessation of all intercourse with her lover.” When this
decision had been finally adopted, another weighty consideration
occurred to Alexey Alexandrovitch in support of it. “By such a course
only shall I be acting in accordance with the dictates of religion,” he
told himself. “In adopting this course, I am not casting off a guilty
wife, but giving her a chance of amendment; and, indeed, difficult as
the task will be to me, I shall devote part of my energies to her
reformation and salvation.”

Though Alexey Alexandrovitch was perfectly aware that he could not
exert any moral influence over his wife, that such an attempt at
reformation could lead to nothing but falsity; though in passing
through these difficult moments he had not once thought of seeking
guidance in religion, yet now, when his conclusion corresponded, as it
seemed to him, with the requirements of religion, this religious
sanction to his decision gave him complete satisfaction, and to some
extent restored his peace of mind. He was pleased to think that, even
in such an important crisis in life, no one would be able to say that
he had not acted in accordance with the principles of that religion
whose banner he had always held aloft amid the general coolness and
indifference. As he pondered over subsequent developments, Alexey
Alexandrovitch did not see, indeed, why his relations with his wife
should not remain practically the same as before. No doubt, she could
never regain his esteem, but there was not, and there could not be, any
sort of reason that his existence should be troubled, and that he
should suffer because she was a bad and faithless wife. “Yes, time will
pass; time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be
reestablished,” Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself; “so far
reestablished, that is, that I shall not be sensible of a break in the
continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to
blame, and so I cannot be unhappy.”