Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 22
Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha’s part of the house, and dropping
tears on the scared child’s cheeks, she told him that his father was a saint and his
mother was dead.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually take upon herself the
care of the organization and management of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s household.
But she had not overstated the case when saying that practical affairs were not her
strong point. All her arrangements had to be modified because they could not be
carried out, and they were modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch’s valet, who,
though no one was aware of the fact, now managed Karenin’s household, and quietly
and discreetly reported to his master while he was dressing all it was necessary
for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna’s help was none the less real; she gave Alexey
Alexandrovitch moral support in the consciousness of her love and respect for him,
and still more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him to
Christianity–that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she turned him into
an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine,
which had been gaining ground of late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch
to believe in this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna
indeed, and others who shared their views, was completely devoid of vividness of
imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked by the
imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in harmony with other conceptions,
and with actual fact. He saw nothing impossible and inconceivable in the
idea that death, though existing for unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that, as
he was possessed of the most perfect faith, of the measure of which he was himself
the judge, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing complete
salvation here on earth.
It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this conception of his faith
was dimly perceptible to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and he knew that when, without
the slightest idea that his forgiveness was the action of a higher power, he had surrendered
directly to the feeling of forgiveness, he had felt more happiness than now
when he was thinking every instant that Christ was in his heart, and that in signing
official papers he was doing His will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a necessity
to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him in his humiliation to have
some elevated standpoint, however imaginary, from which, looked down upon by
all, he could look down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to his delusion
of salvation.
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