Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 13
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.
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