Part One: Chapter 6

by Leo Tolstoy

　　When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levinblushed, and was furious with himself for blushing, because hecould not answer, "I have come to make your sister-in-law anoffer," though that was precisely what he had come for.

　　The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were old, nobleMoscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendlyterms. This intimacy had grown still closer during Levin'sstudent days. He had both prepared for the university with theyoung Prince Shtcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and Dolly, andhad entered at the same time with him. In those days Levin usedoften to be in the Shtcherbatskys' house, and he was in love withthe Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it waswith the household, the family, that Konstantin Levin was inlove, especially with the feminine half of the household. Levindid not remember his own mother, and his only sister was olderthan he was, so that it was in the Shtcherbatskys' house that hesaw for the first time that inner life of an old, noble,cultivated, and honorable family of which he had been deprived bythe death of his father and mother. All the members of thatfamily, especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, asit were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and henot only perceived no defects whatever in them, but under thepoetical veil that shrouded them he assumed the existence of theloftiest sentiments and every possible perfection. Why it wasthe three young ladies had one day to speak French, and the nextEnglish; why it was that at certain hours they played by turns onthe piano, the sounds of which were audible in their brother'sroom above, where the students used to work; why they werevisited by those professors of French literature, of music, ofdrawing, of dancing; why at certain hours all the three youngladies, with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the coach to theTversky boulevard, dressed in their satin cloaks, Dolly in a longone, Natalia in a half-long one, and Kitty in one so short thather shapely legs in tightly-drawn red stockings were visible toall beholders; why it was they had to walk about the Tverskyboulevard escorted by a footman with a gold cockade in hishat--all this and much more that was done in their mysteriousworld he did not understand, but he was sure that everything thatwas done there was very good, and he was in love precisely withthe mystery of the proceedings.

　　In his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest,Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began beingin love with the second. He felt, as it were, that he had to bein love with one of the sisters, only he could not quite make outwhich. But Natalia, too, had hardly made her appearance in theworld when she married the diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still achild when Levin left the university. Young Shtcherbatsky wentinto the navy, was drowned in the Baltic, and Levin's relationswith the Shtcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship withOblonsky, became less intimate. But when early in the winter ofthis year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the country, andsaw the Shtcherbatskys, he realized which of the three sisters hewas indeed destined to love.

　　One would have thought that nothing could be simpler than forhim, a man of good family, rather rich than poor, and thirty-twoyears old, to make the young Princess Shtcherbatskaya an offer ofmarriage; in all likelihood he would at once have been lookedupon as a good match. But Levin was in love, and so it seemed tohim that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was acreature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creatureso low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived thatother people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her.

　　After spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment,seeing Kitty almost every day in society, into which he went soas to meet her, he abruptly decided that it could not be, andwent back to the country.

　　Levin's conviction that it could not be was founded on the ideathat in the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous andworthless match for the charming Kitty, and that Kitty herselfcould not love him. In her family's eyes he had no ordinary,definite career and position in society, while his contemporariesby this time, when he was thirty-two, were already, one acolonel, and another a professor, another director of a bank andrailways, or president of a board like Oblonsky. But he (he knewvery well how he must appear to others) was a country gentleman,occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game, and building barns;in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned outwell, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of theworld, is done by people fit for nothing else.

　　The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such anugly person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, suchan ordinary, in no way striking person. Moreover, his attitudeto Kitty in the past--the attitude of a grown-up person to achild, arising from his friendship with her brother--seemed tohim yet another obstacle to love. An ugly, good-natured man, ashe considered himself, might, he supposed, be liked as a friend;but to be loved with such a love as that with which he lovedKitty, one would need to be a handsome and, still more, adistinguished man.

　　He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men,but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he couldnot himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, andexceptional women.

　　But after spending two months alone in the country, he wasconvinced that this was not one of those passions of which he hadhad experience in his early youth; that this feeling gave him notan instant's rest; that he could not live without deciding thequestion, would she or would she not be his wife, and that hisdespair had arisen only from his own imaginings, that he had nosort of proof that he would be rejected. And he had now come toMoscow with a firm determination to make an offer, and getmarried if he were accepted. Or...he could not conceive whatwould become of him if he were rejected.