Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 11
some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions and the counsels of Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin’s soul.
“I’ll come some day,” he said. “But women, my boy, they’re the pivot everything
turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it’s all through women.
Tell me frankly now,” he pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his
glass; “give me your advice.”
“Why, what is it?”
“I’ll tell you. Suppose you’re married, you love your wife, but you’re fascinated
by another woman...”
“Excuse me, but I’m absolutely unable to comprehend how...just as I can’t comprehend
how I could now, after my dinner, go straight to a baker’s shop and steal a
roll.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled more than usual.
“Why not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can’t resist it.”
“Himmlisch ist’s, wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn’s
nich gelungen Hatt’ ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!”
As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin, too, could not help
smiling.
“Yes, but joking apart,” resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, “you must understand that
the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature, poor and lonely, and has sacrificed
everything. Now, when the thing’s done, don’t you see, can one possibly cast her
off? Even supposing one parts from her, so as not to break up one’s family life, still,
can one help feeling for her, setting her on her feet, softening her lot?”
“Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided into
two classes...at least no...truer to say: there are women and there are...I’ve never seen
exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted
Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen
women are the same.”
“But the Magdalen?”
“Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how
they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered.
However, I’m not saying so much what I think, as what I feel. I have a loathing for
fallen women. You’re afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you’ve not
made a study of spiders and don’t know their character; and so it is with me.”
“It’s very well for you to talk like that; it’s very much like that gentleman in Dickens
who used to fling all difficult questions over his right shoulder. But to deny the
facts is no answer. What’s to be done–you tell me that, what’s to be done? Your wife
gets older, while you’re full of life. Before you’ve time to look round, you feel that
you can’t love your wife with love, however much you may esteem her. And then
all at once love turns up, and you’re done for, done for,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said
with weary despair.
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