Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 21
everyone, without exception, whom he had met during those two days. He felt that
he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not
come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his
being shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact
that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men
would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He knew that his
sole means of security against people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively
he tried to do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up
the unequal struggle.
His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was utterly alone in
his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human being to whom he could express
what he was feeling, who would feel for him, not as a high official, not as a member
of society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole
world.
Alexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan. There were two brothers. They did
not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexey Alexandrovitch was
ten years old. The property was a small one. Their uncle, Karenin, a government
official of high standing, at one time a favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up.
On completing his high school and university courses with medals, Alexey
Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle’s aid, immediately started in a prominent position
in the service, and from that time forward he had devoted himself exclusively
to political ambition. In the high school and the university, and afterwards in the service,
Alexey Alexandrovitch had never formed a close friendship with anyone. His
brother had been the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had died shortly after Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s marriage.
While he was governor of a province, Anna’s aunt, a wealthy provincial lady, had
thrown him–middle-aged as he was, though young for a governor–with her niece,
and had succeeded in putting him in such a position that he had either to declare
himself or to leave the town. Alexey Alexandrovitch was not long in hesitation.
There were at the time as many reasons for the step as against it, and there was no
overbalancing consideration to outweigh his invariable rule of abstaining when in
doubt. But Anna’s aunt had through a common acquaintance insinuated that he had
already compromised the girl, and that he was in honor bound to make her an offer.
He made the offer, and concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of
which he was capable.
The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need of intimate relations
with others. And now among all his acquaintances he had not one friend.
He had plenty of so-called connections, but no friendships. Alexey Alexandrovitch
had plenty of people whom he could invite to dinner, to whose sympathy he could
appeal in any public affair he was concerned about, whose interest he could reckon
upon for anyone he wished to help, with whom he could candidly discuss other people’s
business and affairs of state. But his relations with these people were confined
to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain routine from which it was impossible
to depart. There was one man, a comrade of his at the university, with whom he
had made friends later, and with whom he could have spoken of a personal sorrow;
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