Part Five: Chapter 22

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Alexey Alexandrovitch had forgotten the Countess Lidia Ivanovna,but she had not forgotten him. At the bitterest moment of hislonely despair she came to him, and without waiting to beannounced, walked straight into his study. She found him as hewas sitting with his head in both hands.

　　"J'ai force la consigne," she said, walking in with rapid stepsand breathing hard with excitement and rapid exercise. "I haveheard all! Alexey Alexandrovitch! Dear friend!" she went on,warmly squeezing his hand in both of hers and gazing with herfine pensive eyes into his.

　　Alexey Alexandrovitch, frowning, got up, and disengaging hishand, moved her a chair.

　　"Won't you sit down, countess? I'm seeing no one because I'munwell, countess," he said, and his lips twitched.

　　"Dear friend!" repeated Countess Lidia Ivanovna, never taking hereyes off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the innercorners, describing a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellowface became still uglier, but Alexey Alexandrovitch felt that shewas sorry for him and was preparing to cry. And he too wassoftened; he snatched her plump hand and proceeded to kiss it.

　　"Dear friend!" she said in a voice breaking with emotion. "Youought not to give way to grief. Your sorrow is a great one, butyou ought to find consolation."

　　"I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!" saidAlexey Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing intoher brimming eyes. "My position is so awful because I can findnowhere, I cannot find within me strength to support me."

　　"You will find support; seek it--not in me, though I beseech youto believe in my friendship," she said, with a sigh. "Oursupport is love, that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burdenis light," she said, with the look of ecstasy AlexeyAlexandrovitch knew so well. "He will be your support and yoursuccor."

　　Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimentalemotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervorwhich had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed toAlexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant tohim to hear this now.

　　"I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now Iunderstand nothing."

　　"Dear friend," repeated Lidia Ivanovna.

　　"It's not the loss of what I have not now, it's not that!"pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch. "I do not grieve for that. ButI cannot help feeling humiliated before other people for theposition I am placed in. It is wrong, but I can't help it, Ican't help it."

　　"Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at whichI was moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, workingwithin your heart," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising hereyes rapturously, "and so you cannot be ashamed of your act."

　　Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands,he cracked his fingers.

　　"One must know all the facts," he said in his thin voice. "Aman's strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached mylimits. The whole day I have had to be making arrangements,arrangements about household matters arising" (he emphasized theword arising) "from my new, solitary position. The servants, thegoverness, the accounts.... These pinpricks have stabbed me tothe heart, and I have not the strength to bear it. At dinner...yesterday, I was almost getting up from the dinner table. Icould not bear the way my son looked at me. He did not ask methe meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could not bearthe look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that isnot all...." Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to thebill that had been brought him, but his voice shook, and hestopped. That bill on blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, hecould not recall without a rush of self-pity.

　　"I understand, dear friend," said Lidia Ivanovna. "I understandit all. Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though Ihave come only to aid you if I can. If I could take from off youall these petty, humiliating cares...I understand that a woman'sword, a woman's superintendence is needed. You will intrust itto me?"

　　Silently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed her hand.

　　"Together we will take care of Seryozha. Practical affairs arenot my strong point. But I will set to work. I will be yourhousekeeper. Don't thank me. I do it not from myself..."

　　"I cannot help thanking you."

　　"But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which youspoke--being ashamed of what is the Christian's highest glory:*he who humbles himself shall be exalted*. And you cannot thankme. You must thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Himalone we find peace, consolation, salvation, and love," she said,and turning her eyes heavenwards, she began praying, as AlexeyAlexandrovitch gathered from her silence.

　　Alexey Alexandrovitch listened to her now, and those expressionswhich had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at leastexaggerated, now seemed to him natural and consolatory. AlexeyAlexandrovitch had disliked this new enthusiastic fervor. He wasa believer, who was interested in religion primarily in itspolitical aspect, and the new doctrine which ventured uponseveral new interpretations, just because it paved the way todiscussion and analysis, was in principle disagreeable to him.He had hitherto taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude tothis new doctrine, and with Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who had beencarried away by it, he had never argued, but by silence hadassiduously parried her attempts to provoke him into argument.Now for the first time he heard her words with pleasure, and didnot inwardly oppose them.

　　"I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and foryour words," he said, when she had finished praying.

　　Countess Lidia Ivanovna once more pressed both her friend'shands.

　　"Now I will enter upon my duties," she said with a smile after apause, as she wiped away the traces of tears. "I am going toSeryozha. Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you." Andshe got up and went out.

　　Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha's part of the house,and dropping tears on the scared child's cheeks, she told himthat his father was a saint and his mother was dead.

　　Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually takeupon herself the care of the organization and management ofAlexey Alexandrovitch's household. But she had not overstatedthe case when saying that practical affairs were not her strongpoint. All her arrangements had to be modified because theycould not be carried out, and they were modified by Korney,Alexey Alexandrovitch's valet, who, though no one was aware ofthe fact, now managed Karenin's household, and quietly anddiscreetly reported to his master while he was dressing all itwas necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna's help wasnone the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral supportin the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and stillmore, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almostturned him to Christianity--that is, from an indifferent andapathetic believer she turned him into an ardent and steadfastadherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, whichhad been gaining ground of late in Petersburg. It was easy forAlexey Alexandrovitch to believe in this teaching. AlexeyAlexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who sharedtheir views, was completely devoid of vividness of imagination,that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evokedby the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be inharmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He sawnothing 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 ofwhich he was himself the judge, therefore there was no sin in hissoul, and he was experiencing complete salvation here on earth.

　　It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of thisconception of his faith was dimly perceptible to AlexeyAlexandrovitch, and he knew that when, without the slightest ideathat his forgiveness was the action of a higher power, he hadsurrendered directly to the feeling of forgiveness, he had feltmore happiness than now when he was thinking every instant thatChrist was in his heart, and that in signing official papers hewas doing His will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was anecessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for himin his humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, howeverimaginary, from which, looked down upon by all, he could lookdown on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to hisdelusion of salvation.