Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 25
the child. If there were a trace of humanity left in her, she ought not to wish for it
herself. No, I have no hesitation in saying I advise not, and if you will intrust it to
me, I will write to her.”
And Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna sent the following
letter in French:
“Dear Madame,
“To be reminded of you might have results for your son in leading to questions
on his part which could not be answered without implanting in the child’s soul a
spirit of censure towards what should be for him sacred, and therefore I beg you to
interpret your husband’s refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I pray to Almighty
God to have mercy on you. Countess Lidia”
This letter attained the secret object which Countess Lidia Ivanovna had concealed
from herself. It wounded Anna to the quick.
For his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning home from Lidia Ivanovna’s,
could not all that day concentrate himself on his usual pursuits, and find that spiritual
peace of one saved and believing which he had felt of late.
The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him, and towards
whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia Ivanovna had so justly told him,
ought not to have troubled him; but he was not easy; he could not understand the
book he was reading; he could not drive away harassing recollections of his relations
with her, of the mistake which, as it now seemed, he had made in regard to her. The
memory of how he had received her confession of infidelity on their way home from
the races (especially that he had insisted only on the observance of external decorum,
and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like a remorse. He was tortured too by
the thought of the letter he had written her; and most of all, his forgiveness, which
nobody wanted, and his care of the other man’s child made his heart burn with
shame and remorse.
And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he reviewed all his
past with her, recalling the awkward words in which, after long wavering, he had
made her an offer.
“But how have I been to blame?” he said to himself. And this question always
excited another question in him–whether they felt differently, did their loving and
marrying differently, these Vronskys and Oblonskys...these gentlemen of the bedchamber,
with their fine calves. And there passed before his mind a whole series of
these mettlesome, vigorous, self- confident men, who always and everywhere drew
his inquisitive attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel these thoughts, he
tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this transient life, but for the life
of eternity, and that there was peace and love in his heart.
But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to him,
a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the eternal salvation in which he believed
had no existence. But this temptation did not last long, and soon there was
reestablished once more in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s soul the peace and the elevation
by virtue of which he could forget what he did not want to remember.
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