Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 5
“You would be glad,” the lawyer, without lifting his eyes, responded, adopting,
with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his client’s remarks, “for me to lay before you
all the methods by which you could secure what you desire?”
And on receiving an assuring nod from Alexey Alexandrovitch, he went on, stealing
a glance now and then at Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face, which was growing red
in patches.
“Divorce by our laws,” he said, with a slight shade of disapprobation of our laws,
“is possible, as you are aware, in the following cases.... Wait a little!” he called
to a clerk who put his head in at the door, but he got up all the same, said a few
words to him, and sat down again. “...In the following cases: physical defect in the
married parties, desertion without communication for five years,” he said, crooking
a short finger covered with hair, “adultery” (this word he pronounced with obvious
satisfaction), “subdivided as follows” (he continued to crook his fat fingers, though
the three cases and their subdivisions could obviously not be classified together):
“physical defect of the husband or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of the
wife.” As by now all his fingers were used up, he uncrooked all his fingers and
went on: “This is the theoretical view; but I imagine you have done me the honor
to apply to me in order to learn its application in practice. And therefore, guided by
precedents, I must inform you that in practice cases of divorce may all be reduced to
the following– there’s no physical defect, I may assume, nor desertion?...”
Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent.
“–May be reduced to the following: adultery of one of the married parties, and
the detection in the fact of the guilty party by mutual agreement, and failing such
agreement, accidental detection. It must be admitted that the latter case is rarely met
with in practice,” said the lawyer, and stealing a glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch he
paused, as a man selling pistols, after enlarging on the advantages of each weapon,
might await his customer’s choice. But Alexey Alexandrovitch said nothing, and
therefore the lawyer went on: “The most usual and simple, the sensible course, I
consider, is adultery by mutual consent. I should not permit myself to express it so,
speaking with a man of no education,” he said, “but I imagine that to you this is
comprehensible.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch was, however, so perturbed that he did not immediately
comprehend all the good sense of adultery by mutual consent, and his eyes expressed
this uncertainty; but the lawyer promptly came to his assistance.
“People cannot go on living together–here you have a fact. And if both are agreed
about it, the details and formalities become a matter of no importance. And at the
same time this is the simplest and most certain method.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch fully understood now. But he had religious scruples,
which hindered the execution of such a plan.
“That is out of the question in the present case,” he said. “Only one alternative is
possible: undesigned detection, supported by letters which I have.”
At the mention of letters the lawyer pursed up his lips, and gave utterance to a
thin little compassionate and contemptuous sound.
“Kindly consider,” he began, “cases of that kind are, as you are aware, under ecclesiastical
jurisdiction; the reverend fathers are fond of going into the minutest details
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