Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The tone in which her husband had said the last words wounded her, especially because he evidently did not believe what she had said. 'I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly come,' she said hastily and wrathfully. 'Why out of the question? Why do you say it's out of the question?' 'Because it'll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to all sorts of hotels. You would be a hindrance to me,' said Levin, trying to be cool. 'Not at all. I don't want anything. Where you can go, I can….' 'Well, for one thing then, because this woman's there whom you can't meet.' 'I don't know and don't care to know who's there and what. I know that my husband's brother is dying and my husband is going to him, and I go with my husband too….' 'Kitty! Don't get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of such importance that I can't bear to think that you should bring in a feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you'll be dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little.' 'There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me,' she said with tears of wounded pride and fury. 'I didn't mean, it wasn't weakness, it wasn't…. I feel that it's my duty to be with my husband when he's in trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to understand….' 'No; this is awful! To be such a slave!' cried Levin, getting up, and unable to restrain his anger any longer. But at the same second he felt that he was beating himself. 'Then why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you, if you regret it?' she said, getting up and running away into the drawing-room. When he went to her, she was sobbing. He began to speak, trying to find words not to dissuade but simply to soothe her. But she did not heed him, and would not agree to anything. He bent down to her and took her hand, which resisted him. He kissed her hand, kissed her hair, kissed her hand again—still she was silent. But when he took her face in both his hands and said, 'Kitty!' she suddenly recovered herself, and began to cry, and they were reconciled. It was decided that they should go together the next day.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But if only one district, Sviazhsky's, did not call upon him to stand, Snetkov would let himself be balloted for. They were even, some of them, going to vote for him, and purposely to let him get a good many votes, so that the enemy might be thrown off the scent, and when a candidate of the other side was put up, they too might give him some votes. Levin understood to some extent, but not fully, and would have put a few more questions, when suddenly everyone began talking and making a noise and they moved towards the big room. 'What is it? eh? whom?' 'No guarantee? whose? what?' 'They won't pass him?' 'No guarantee?' 'They won't let Flerov in?' 'Eh, because of the charge against him?' 'Why, at this rate, they won't admit anyone. It's a swindle!' 'The law!' Levin heard exclamations on all sides, and he moved into the big room together with the others, all hurrying somewhere and afraid of missing something. Squeezed by the crowding noblemen, he drew near the high table where the marshal of the province, Sviazhsky, and the other leaders were hotly disputing about something. XXVIII L EVIN was standing rather far off. A nobleman breathing heavily and hoarsely at his side, and another whose thick boots were creaking, prevented him from hearing distinctly. He could only hear the soft voice of the marshal faintly, then the shrill voice of the malignant gentleman, and then the voice of Sviazhsky. They were disputing, as far as he could make out, as to the interpretation to be put on the act and the exact meaning of the words: 'liable to be called up for trial.' The crowd parted to make way for Sergey Ivanovitch approaching the table. Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till the malignant gentleman had finished speaking, said that he thought the best solution would be to refer to the act itself, and asked the secretary to find the act. The act said that in case of difference of opinion, there must be a ballot. Sergey Ivanovitch read the act and began to explain its meaning, but at that point a tall, stout, round-shouldered landowner, with dyed whiskers, in a tight uniform that cut the back of his neck, interrupted him. He went up to the table, and striking it with his finger-ring, he shouted loudly: 'A ballot! Put it to the vote! No need for more talking!' Then several voices began to talk all at once, and the tall nobleman with the ring, getting more and more exasperated, shouted more and more loudly. But it was impossible to make out what he said. He was shouting for the very course Sergey Ivanovitch had proposed; but it was evident that he hated him and all his party, and this feeling of hatred spread through the whole party and roused in opposition to it the same vindictiveness, though in a more seemly form, on the other side.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'But, I dare say, you don't even know what houses are made of?' Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of raillery that existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against her will. Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from Levin. He obviously attached no significance to Veslovsky's chattering; on the contrary, he encouraged his jests. 'Come now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held together?' 'By cement, of course.' 'Bravo! And what is cement?' 'Oh, some sort of paste . . . no, putty,' said Veslovsky, raising a general laugh. The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect, and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on another, and at times stinging one or the other to the quick. Once Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the quick, and got so hot that she positively flushed and wondered afterwards whether she had said anything extreme or unpleasant. Sviazhsky began talking of Levin, describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its effects on Russian agriculture. 'I have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Levin,' Vronsky said, smiling, 'but most likely he has never seen the machines he condemns; or if he has seen and tried any, it must have been after a queer fashion, some Russian imitation, not a machine from abroad. What sort of views can anyone have on such a subject?' 'Turkish views; in general,' Veslovsky said, turning to Anna with a smile. 'I can't defend his opinions,' Darya Alexandrovna said, firing up; 'but I can say that he's a highly cultivated man, and if he were here he would know very well how to answer you, though I am not capable of doing so.' 'I like him extremely, and we are great friends,' Sviazhsky said, smiling good-naturedly. 'Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toqué; he maintains, for instance, that district councils and arbitration boards are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything.' 'It's our Russian apathy,' said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; 'we've no sense of the duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognise these duties.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Alexey Alexandrovitch had previously felt no liking for Count Anitchkin, and had always differed from him in his opinions. But now, from a feeling readily comprehensible to officials—that hatred felt by one who has suffered a defeat in the service for one who has received a promotion, he could not endure him. 'Well, have you seen him?' said Alexey Alexandrovitch with a malignant smile. 'Of course; he was at our sitting yesterday. He seems to know his work capitally, and to be very energetic.' 'Yes, but what is his energy directed to?' said Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'Is he aiming at doing anything, or simply undoing what's been done? It's the great misfortune of our government—this paper administration, of which he's a worthy representative.' 'Really, I don't know what fault one could find with him. His policy I don't know, but one thing—he's a very nice fellow,' answered Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'I've just been seeing him, and he's really a capital fellow. We lunched together, and I taught him how to make, you know that drink, wine and oranges. It's so cooling. And it's a wonder he didn't know it. He liked it awfully. No, really, he's a capital fellow.' Stepan Arkadyevitch glanced at his watch. 'Why, good heavens, it's four already, and I've still to go to Dol-govushin's! So please come round to dinner. You can't imagine how you will grieve my wife and me.' The way in which Alexey Alexandrovitch saw his brother-in-law out was very different from the manner in which he had met him. 'I've promised, and I'll come,' he answered wearily. Believe me, I appreciate it, and I hope you won't regret it,' answered Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. And, putting on his coat as he went, he patted the footman on the head, chuckled, and went out. 'At five o'clock, and not evening dress, please,' he shouted once more, turning at the door. IX I T was past five, and several guests had already arrived, before the host himself got home. He went in together with Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev and Pestsov, who had reached the street door at the same moment. These were the two leading representatives of the Moscow intellectuals, as Oblonsky had called them. Both were men respected for their character and their intelligence. They respected each other, but were in complete and hopeless disagreement upon almost every subject, not because they belonged to opposite parties, but precisely because they were of the same party (their enemies refused to see any distinction between their views); but, in that party, each had his own special shade of opinion. And since no difference is less easily overcome than difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to jeer without anger, each at the other's incorrigible aberrations. They were just going in at the door, talking of the weather, when Stepan Arkadyevitch overtook them.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.' 'You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her the honourable protection of his name, simply on the condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?' 'It's worse than cruel—it's base, if you want to know!' Anna cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away. 'No!' he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her place. 'Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband's bread!' She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the justice of his words, and only said softly— 'You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself; but what are you saying all this for ?' 'What am I saying it for? what for?' he went on, as angrily. 'That you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.' 'Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway,' she said; and again, at the thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her eyes. 'It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must have the satisfaction of animal passion . . . ' 'Alexey Alexandrovitch! I won't say it's not generous, but it's not like a gentleman to strike anyone who's down.' 'Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was your husband have no interest for you. You don't care that his whole life is ruined, that he is thuff . . . thuff…' Alexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and was utterly unable to articulate the word 'suffering.' In the end he pronounced it 'thuffering.' She wanted to laugh, and was immediately ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a moment. And for the first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasising random words that had no special significance. 'I came to tell you . . . ' he said.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  No, I won't… I can't quarrel with you. Of course you couldn't come. No, I won't.' She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was. III 'Y ou met him?' she asked, when they sat down at the table in the lamp-light. 'You're punished, you see, for being late.' 'Yes; but how was it? Wasn't he to be at the council?' 'He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again. But that's no matter. Don't talk about it. Where have you been? With the prince still?' She knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that he had been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at her thrilled and rapturous face, he was ashamed. And he said he had had to go to report on the prince's departure. 'But it's over now ? He is gone ?' 'Thank God it's over! You wouldn't believe how insufferable it's been for me.' 'Why so? Isn't it the life all of you, all young men, always lead?' she said, knitting her brows; and taking up the crochet-work that was lying on the table, she began drawing the hook out of it, without looking at Vronsky. 'I gave that life up long ago,' said he, wondering at the change in her face, and trying to divine its meaning. 'And I confess,' he said, with a smile, showing his thick, white teeth, 'this week I've been, as it were, looking at myself in a glass, seeing that life, and I didn't like it.' She held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked at him with strange, shining, and hostile eyes. 'This morning Liza came to see me—they're not afraid to call on me, in spite of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna,' she put in—'and she told me about your Athenian evening. How loathsome!' 'I was just going to say . . . ' She interrupted him. 'It was that Thérèse you used to know?' 'I was just saying . . . ' 'How disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can't understand that a woman can never forget that,' she said, getting more and more angry, and so letting him see the cause of her irritation, 'especially a woman who cannot know your life? What do I know? What have I ever known?' she said, 'what you tell me. And how do I know whether you tell me the truth? . . . ' 'Anna, you hurt me. Don't you trust me?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin, who had meanwhile been putting his gun away in the cupboard, was just going out of the door, but catching the merchant's words, he stopped. 'Why, you've got the forest for nothing as it is,' he said. 'He came to me too late, or I'd have fixed the price for him.' Ryabinin got up, and in silence, with a smile, he looked Levin down and up. 'Very close about money is Konstantin Dmitritch,' he said with a smile, turning to Stepan Arkadyevitch; 'there's positively no dealing with him. I was bargaining for some wheat of him, and a pretty price I offered too.' 'Why should I give you my goods for nothing? I didn't pick it up on the ground, nor steal it either.' 'Mercy on us! nowadays there's no chance at all of stealing. With the open courts and everything done in style, nowadays there's no question of stealing. We are just talking things over like gentlemen. His excellency's asking too much for the forest. I can't make both ends meet over it. I must ask for a little concession.' 'But is the thing settled between you or not? If it's settled, it's useless haggling; but if it's not,' said Levin, 'I'll buy the forest.' The smile vanished at once from Ryabinin's face. A hawk-like, greedy, cruel expression was left upon it. With rapid, bony fingers he unbuttoned his coat, revealing a shirt, bronze waistcoat buttons, and a watch-chain, and quickly pulled out a fat old pocket-book. 'Here you are, the forest is mine,' he said, crossing himself quickly, and holding out his hand. Take the money; it's my forest. That's Ryabinin's way of doing business; he doesn't haggle over every halfpenny,' he added, scowling and waving the pocket-book. 'I wouldn't be in a hurry if I were you,' said Levin. 'Come, really,' said Oblonsky in surprise, 'I've given my word, you know.' Levin went out of the room, slamming the door. Ryabinin looked towards the door and shook his head with a smile. 'It's all youthfulness—positively nothing but boyishness. Why, I'm buying it, upon my honour, simply, believe me, for the glory of it, that Ryabinin, and no one else, should have bought the copse of Oblonsky. And as to the profits, why, I must make what God gives. In God's name. If you would kindly sign the title-deed . . . ' Within an hour the merchant, stroking his big overcoat neatly down, and hooking up his jacket, with the agreement in his pocket, seated himself in his tightly covered trap, and drove homewards. 'Ugh, these gentlefolks!' he said to the clerk. 'They—they're a nice lot!' 'That's so,' responded the clerk, handing him the reins and buttoning the leather apron. 'But can I congratulate you on the purchase, Mihail Ignatitch?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  One can hear nothing for them.' 'Frogs or no frogs, I'm not the editor of a paper and I don't want to defend them; but I am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual world,' said Sergey Ivanovitch, addressing his brother. Levin would have answered, but the old prince interrupted him. 'Well, about that unanimity, that's another thing, one may say,' said the prince. 'There's my son-in-law, Stepan Arkadyevitch, you know him. He's got a place now on the committee of a commission and some thing or other, I don't remember. Only there's nothing to do in it— why, Dolly, it's no secret! – and a salary of eight thousand. You try asking him whether his post is of use, he'll prove to you that it's most necessary. And he's a truthful man too, but there's no refusing to believe in the utility of eight thousand roubles.' 'Yes, he asked me to give a message to Darya Alexandrovna about the post,' said Sergey Ivanovitch reluctantly, feeling the prince's remark to be ill-timed. 'So it is with the unanimity of the press. That's been explained to me: as soon as there's war their incomes are doubled. How can they help believing in the destinies of the people and the Slavonic races . . . and all that?' 'I don't care for many of the papers, but that's unjust,' said Sergey Ivanovitch. 'I would only make one condition,' pursued the old prince. 'Alphonse Karr said a capital thing before the war with Prussia: "You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!"' 'A nice lot the editors would make!' said Katavasov, with a loud roar, as he pictured the editors he knew in this picked legion. 'But they'd run,' said Dolly, 'they'd only be in the way.' 'Oh, if they ran away, then we'd have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips behind them,' said the prince. 'But that's a joke, and a poor one too, if you'll excuse me saying so, prince,' said Sergey Ivanovitch. 'I don't see that it was a joke, that . . .' Levin was beginning, but Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him. 'Every member of society is called upon to do his own special work,' said he. 'And men of thought are doing their work when they express public opinion. And the single-hearted and full expression of public opinion is the service of the press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at the same time. Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but now we have heard the voice of the Russian people, which is ready to rise as one man and ready to sacrifice itself for its oppressed brethren; that is a great step and a proof of strength.' 'But it's not only making a sacrifice, but killing Turks,' said Levin timidly.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  It's clearer for him to see. Shall I bring a bit more bread? Give the little lad some more?' he said addressing Darya Alexandrovna and pointing to Grisha, who had finished his crust. 'I don't need to ask,' said Sergey Ivanovitch; 'we have seen and are seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who give up everything to serve a just cause, come from every part of Russia, and directly and clearly express their thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?' 'It means, to my thinking,' said Levin, who was beginning to get warm, 'that among eighty millions of people there can always be found not hundreds, as now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste, ne'er-do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere—to Pogatchev's bands, to Khiva, to Servia . . . ' 'I tell you that it's not a case of hundreds or of ne'er-do-wells, but the best representatives of the people!' said Sergey Ivanovitch, with as much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his fortune. 'And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly expressing their will.' 'That word "people" is so vague,' said Levin. 'Parish clerks, teachers, and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it's all about. The rest of the eighty millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing their will, haven't the faintest idea what there is for them to express their will about. What right have we to say that this is the people's will ?' XVI S ERGEY I VANOVITCH, being practised in argument, did not reply, but at once turned the conversation to another aspect of the subject. 'Oh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical computation, of course it's very difficult to arrive at it. And voting has not been introduced among us and cannot be introduced, for it does not express the will of the people; but there are other ways of reaching that. It is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won't speak of those deep currents which are astir in the still ocean of the people, and which are evident to every unprejudiced man; let us look at society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse sections of the educated public, hostile before, are merged in one. Every division is at an end, all the public organs say the same thing over and over again, all feel the mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is carrying them in one direction.' 'Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,' said the prince. 'That's true. But so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak before a storm.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  XII C ONNECTED with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights of women there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights in marriage improper to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had several times during dinner touched upon these questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch and Stepan Arkadyevitch carefully drew him off them. When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did not follow them, but addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, began to expound the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and the infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and by public opinion. Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar. 'No, I don't smoke,' Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and as though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject, he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile. 'I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of things,' he said, and would have gone on to the drawing-room. But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?' said Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break the silence that had weighed on him. 'Vasya Pryatchnikov,' he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch, 'they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him.' Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch's sore spot. He would again have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself inquired, with curiosity— 'What did Pryatchnikov fight about?' 'His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!' 'Ah!' said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his eyebrows, he went into the drawing-room. 'How glad I am you have come,' Dolly said with a frightened smile, meeting him in the outer drawing-room. 'I must talk to you. Let's sit here.' Alexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference, given him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly. 'It's fortunate,' said he, 'especially as I was meaning to ask you to excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow.' Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna's innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend. 'Alexey Alexandrovitch,' she said, with desperate resolution looking him in the face, 'I asked you about Anna; you made me no answer.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And now what does he do? If he'd killed me, if he'd killed him, I could have borne anything, I could have forgiven anything; but no, he . . . How was it I didn't guess what he would do? He's doing just what's characteristic of his mean character. He'll keep himself in the right, while me, in my ruin, he'll drive still lower to worse ruin yet. . . .' She recalled the words from the letter. 'You can conjecture what awaits you and your son. . . .' 'That's a threat to take away my child, and most likely by their stupid law he can. But I know very well why he says it. He doesn't believe even in my love for my child, or he despises it (just as he always used to ridicule it). He despises that feeling in me, but he knows that I won't abandon my child, that I can't abandon my child, that there could be no life for me without my child, even with him whom I love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that.' She recalled another sentence in the letter. 'Our life must go on as it has done in the past. . . .' 'That life was miserable enough in old days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now? And he knows all that; he knows that I can't repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but lying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know him; I know that he's at home and is happy in deceit, like a fish swimming in the water. No, I won't give him that happiness. I'll break through the spider-web of lies in which he wants to catch me, come what may. Anything's better than lying and deceit.' 'But how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I am? . ..' 'No; I will break through it, I will break through it!' she cried, jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went to the writingtable to write him another letter. But at the bottom of her heart she felt that she was not strong enough to break through anything, that she was not strong enough to get out of her old position, however false and dishonourable it might be. She sat down at the writing-table, but instead of writing she clasped her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them, burst into tears, with sobs and heaving breast like a child crying.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Considering and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned to divorce—another solution selected by several of the husbands he remembered. Passing in mental review all the instances he knew of divorces (there were plenty of them in the very highest society with which he was very familiar), Alexey Alexandrovitch could not find a single example in which the object of divorce was that which he had in view. In all these instances the husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and the very party which, being in fault, had not the right to contract a fresh marriage, had formed counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties with a self- styled husband. In his own case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a legal divorce, that is to say, one in which only the guilty wife would be repudiated, was impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex conditions of the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife's guilt, required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being brought forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward such proofs would damage him in the public estimation more than it would her. An attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal, which would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and attacks on his high position in society. His chief object, to define the position with the least amount of disturbance possible, would not be attained by divorce either. Moreover, in the event of divorce, or even of an attempt to obtain a divorce, it was obvious that the wife broke off all relations with the husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in spite of the complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now felt for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch still had one feeling left in regard to her—a disinclination to see her free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime would be to her advantage. The mere notion of this so exasperated Alexey Alexandrovitch, that directly it rose to his mind he groaned with inward agony, and got up and changed his place in the carriage, and for a long while after he sat with scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in the fleecy rug. 'Apart from formal divorce, one might still do like Karibanov, Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram—that is, separate from one's wife,' he went on thinking, when he had regained his composure. But this step too presented the same drawback of public scandal as a divorce, and what was more, a separation, quite as much as a regular divorce, flung his wife into the arms of Vronsky.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The snipe showed themselves in numbers. They kept flying up from just under the dogs, from under the sportmen's legs, and Levin might have retrieved his ill-luck. But the more he shot, the more he felt disgraced in the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept popping away merrily and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest abashed by his ill-success. Levin, in feverish haste, could not restrain himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended by shooting almost without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed to understand this. She began looking more languidly, and gazed back at the sportsmen, as it were, with perplexity or reproach in her eyes. Shots fol lowed shots in rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung about the sportsmen, while in the great roomy net of the game-bag there were only three light little snipe. And of these one had been killed by Veslovsky alone, and one by both of them together. Meanwhile from the other side of the marsh came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch's shots, not frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after each they heard 'Krak, Krak, apporte !' This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually in the air over the reeds. Their whirring wings close to the earth, and their harsh cries high in the air, could be heard on all sides; the snipe that had risen first and flown up into the air, settled again before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens of them hovering with shrill cries over the marsh. After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky reached the place where the peasants' mowing-grass was divided into long strips reaching to the reeds, marked off in one place by the trampled grass, in another by a path mown through it. Half of these strips had already been mown. Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part as the cut part, Levin had promised Stepan Arkadyevitch to meet him, and so he walked on with his companion through the cut and uncut patches. 'Hi, sportsmen!' shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an unharnessed cart; 'come and have some lunch with us! Have a drop of wine!' Levin looked round. 'Come along, it's all right!' shouted a good-humoured-looking bearded peasant with a red face, showing his white teeth in a grin, and holding up a greenish bottle that flashed in the sunlight. 'Qu'est-ce qu'ils disent? asked Veslovsky. 'They invite you to have some vodka. Most likely they've been dividing the meadow into lots. I should have some,' said Levin, not without some guile, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka, and would go away to them. 'Why do they offer it?' 'Oh, they're merry-making. Really, you should join them.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Anna, forgetting her inward agitation in the work of packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing her travelling-bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle of some carriage driving up. Anna looked out of window and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch's courier on the steps, ringing at the front door bell. 'Run and find out what it is,' she said, and with a calm sense of being prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding her hands on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet directed in Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand. 'The courier has orders to wait for an answer,' he said. 'Very well,' she said, and as soon as he had left the room she tore open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded notes done up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the letter and began reading it at the end. 'Preparations shall be made for your arrival here. . . . I attach particular significance to compliance . . .' she read. She ran on, then back, read it all through, and once more read the letter all though again from the beginning. When she had finished she felt that she was cold all over, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had not expected, had burst upon her. In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken. And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she had wanted. But now this letter seemed to her more awful than anything she had been able to conceive. 'He's right!' she said; 'of course, he's always right; he's a Christian, he's generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one understands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can't explain it. They say he's so religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever; but they don't see what I've seen. They don't know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushed everything that was living in me—he has not once even thought that I'm a live woman who must have love. They don't know how at every step he's humiliated me, and been just as pleased with himself. Haven't I striven, striven with all my strength, to find something to give meaning to my life? Haven't I struggled to love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband? But the time came when I knew that I couldn't cheat myself any longer, that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that God has made me so that I must love and live.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on. . . . I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!' Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud voice— 'Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!' he said, with tones of hatred in his voice. 'Love those that hate you . . .' Darya Alexandrovna whispered timorously. Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but it could not be applied to this case. 'Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is impossible. Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has enough to bear in his own grief!' And regaining his self-possession, Alexey Alexandrovitch quietly took leave and went away. XIII W HEN they rose from table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty into the drawing-room; but he was afraid she might dislike this, as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and without looking at Kitty, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was in the drawing-room. He did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise he had made her—always to think well of all men, and to like everyone always. The conversation fell on the village commune, in which Pestsov saw a sort of special principle, called by him the 'choral' principle. Levin did not agree with Pestsov, nor with his brother, who had a special attitude of his own, both admitting and not admitting the significance of the Russian commune. But he talked to them, simply trying to reconcile and soften their differences. He was not in the least interested in what he said himself, and even less so in what they said; all he wanted was that they and everyone should be happy and contented. He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the drawing-room, and then began moving across and came to a standstill at the door.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'All that I maintain is that the labour force ought to be investigated from the point of view of natural science; that is to say, it ought to be studied, its qualities ascertained . . . ' 'But that's utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form of activity of itself, according to the stage of its development. There have been slaves first everywhere, then metayers; and we have the half-crop system, rent, and day-labourers. What are you trying to find?' Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom of his heart he was afraid that it was true—true that he was trying to hold the balance even between communism and the familiar forms, and that this was hardly possible. 'I am trying to find means of working productively for myself and for the labourers. I want to organise . . .' he answered hotly. 'You don't want to organise anything; it's simply just as you've been all your life, that you want to be original, to pose as not exploiting the peasants simply, but with some idea in view.' 'Oh, all right, that's what you think—and let me alone!' answered Levin, feeling the muscles of his left cheek twitching uncontrollably. 'You've never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is to please your vanity.' 'Oh, very well; then let me alone!' 'And I will let you alone! and it's high time I did, and go to the devil with you! and I'm very sorry I ever came!' In spite of all Levin's efforts to soothe his brother afterwards, Nikolay would listen to nothing he said, declaring that it was better to part, and Konstantin saw that it simply was that life was unbearable to him. Nikolay was just getting ready to go, when Konstantin went in to him again and begged him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if he had hurt his feelings in any way. 'Ah, generosity!' said Nikolay, and he smiled. 'If you want to be right, I can give you that satisfaction. You're in the right; but I'm going all the same.' It was only just at parting that Nikolay kissed him, and said, looking with sudden strangeness and seriousness at his brother— 'Anyway, don't remember evil against me, Kostya!' and his voice quivered. These were the only words that had been spoken sincerely between them. Levin knew that those words meant, 'You see, and you know, that I'm in a bad way, and maybe we shall not see each other again.' Levin knew this, and the tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed his brother once more, but he could not speak, and knew not what to say. Three days after his brother's departure, Levin too set off for his foreign tour. Happening to meet Shtcherbatsky, Kitty's cousin, in the railway train, Levin greatly astonished him by his depression. 'What's the matter with you?' Shtcherbatsky asked him. 'Oh, nothing; there's not much happiness in life.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'The people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices for their soul, but not for murder,' he added, instinctively connecting the conversation with the ideas that had been absorbing his mind. 'For their soul? That's a most puzzling expression for a natural science man, do you understand? What sort of thing is the soul?' said Katavasov, smiling. 'Oh, you know.' 'No, by God, I haven't the faintest idea!' said Katavasov with a loud roar of laughter. ' "I bring not peace, but a sword," says Christ,' Sergey Ivanovitch rejoined for his part, quoting as simply as though it were the easiest thing to understand the very passage that had always puzzled Levin most. 'That's so, no doubt,' the old man repeated again. He was standing near them and responded to a chance glance turned in his direction. 'Ah, my dear fellow, you're defeated, utterly defeated! cried Katavasov good humouredly. Levin reddened with vexation, not at being defeated, but at having failed to control himself and being drawn into argument. 'No, I can't argue with them,' he thought; 'they wear impenetrable armour, while I'm naked.' He saw that it was impossible to convince his brother and Katavasov, and he saw less possibility of himself agreeing with them. What they advocated was the very pride of intellect that had almost been his ruin. He could not admit that some dozens of men, among them his brother, had the right, on the ground of what they were told by some hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the capital, to say that they and the newspapers were expressing the will and feeling of the people, and a feeling which was expressed in vengeance and murder. He could not admit this, because he neither saw the expression of such feelings in the people among whom he was living, nor found them in himself (and he could not but consider himself one of the persons making up the Russian people), and most of all because he, like the people, did not know and could not know what is for the general good, though he knew beyond a doubt that this general good could be attained only by the strict observance of that law of right and wrong which has been revealed to every man, and therefore he could not wish for war or advocate war for any general objects whatever. He said as Mihalitch did and the people, who had expressed their feeling in the traditional invitations of the Varyagi: 'Be princes and rule over us. Gladly we promise complete submission. All the labour, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take upon ourselves; but we will not judge and decide.' And now, according to Sergey Ivanovitch's account, the people had foregone this privilege they had bought at such a costly price.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Well, you've not been dull?' he said, eagerly and good-humouredly, going up to her. 'What a terrible passion it is—gambling!' 'No, I've not been dull; I've learned long ago not to be dull. Stiva has been here and Levin.' 'Yes, they meant to come and see you. Well, how did you like Levin?' he said, sitting down beside her. 'Very much. They have not long been gone. What was Yashvin doing?' 'He was winning—seventeen thousand. I got him away. He had really started home, but he went back again, and now he's losing.' 'Then what did you stay for?' she asked, suddenly lifting her eyes to him. The. expression of her face was cold and ungracious. 'You told Stiva you were saying on to get Yashvin away. And you have left him there.' The same expression of cold readiness for the conflict appeared on his face too. 'In the first place, I did not ask him to give you any message; and secondly, I never tell lies. But what's the chief point, I wanted to stay, and I stayed,' he said, frowning. 'Anna, what is it for, why will you?' he said after a moment's silence, bending over towards her, and he opened his hand, hoping she would lay hers in it. She was glad of this appeal for tenderness. But some strange force of evil would not let her give herself up to her feelings, as though the rules of warfare would not permit her to surrender. 'Of course you wanted to stay, and you stayed. You do everything you want to. But what do you tell me that for? With what object?' she said, getting more and more excited. 'Does anyone contest your rights? But you want to be right, and you're welcome to be right.' His hand closed, he turned away, and his face wore a still more? obstinate expression. 'For you it's a matter of obstinacy,' she said, watching him intently and suddenly finding the right word for that expression that irritated her, 'simply obstinacy. For you it's a question of whether you keep the upper hand of me, while for me . . .' Again she felt sorry for herself, and she almost burst into tears. 'If you knew what it is for me! When I feel as I do now that you are hostile, yes, hostile to me, if you knew what this means for me! If you knew how I feel on the brink of calamity at this instant, how afraid I am of myself!' And she turned away, hiding her sobs. 'But what are you talking about?' he said, horrified at her expression of despair, and again bending over her, he took her hand and kissed it. 'What is it for? Do I seek amusements outside our home? Don't I avoid the society of women?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin said without much interest, for he had wanted to ask her advice, and so was annoyed that he had come at an unlucky moment. 'Grisha and she went into the raspberries, and there . . . I can't tell you really what she did. It's a thousand pities Miss Elliot's not with us. This one sees to nothing—she's a machine . . . Figurez-vous que la petite? …' And Darya Alexandrovna described Masha's crime. 'That proves nothing; it's not a question of evil propensities at all, it's simply mischief,' Levin assured her. 'But you are upset about something? What have you come for?' asked Dolly. 'What's going on there?' And in the tone of her question Levin heard that it would be easy for him to say what he had meant to say. 'I've not been in there, I've been alone in the garden with Kitty. We've had a quarrel for the second time since . . . Stiva came.' Dolly looked at him with her shrewd, comprehending eyes. 'Come, tell me, honour bright, has there been . . . not in Kitty, but in that gentleman's behaviour, a tone which might be unpleasant—not unpleasant, but horrible, offensive to a husband?' 'You mean, how shall I say . . . Stay, stay in the corner!' she said to Masha, who, detecting a faint smile on her mother's face, had been turning round. The opinion of the world would be that he is behaving as young men do behave. Il fait la cour à une jeune et jolie femme, and a husband who's a man of the world should only be flattered by it.' 'Yes, yes,' said Levin gloomily; 'but you noticed it?' 'Not only I, but Stiva noticed it. Just after breakfast he said to me in so many words, "Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour à Kitty."' 'Well, that's all right then; now I'm satisfied. I'll send him away,' said Levin. 'What do you mean! Are you crazy?' Dolly cried in horror; 'nonsense, Kostya, only think!' she said, laughing. 'You can go now to Fanny,' she said to Masha. 'No, if you wish it, I'll speak to Stiva. He'll take him away. He can say you're expecting visitors. Altogether he doesn't fit into the house.' 'No, no, I'll do it myself.' 'But you'll quarrel with him?' 'Not a bit. I shall so enjoy it,' Levin said, his eyes flashing with real enjoyment. 'Come, forgive her, Dolly, she won't do it again,' he said of the little sinner, who had not gone to Fanny, but was standing irresolutely before her mother, waiting and looking up from under her brows to catch her mother's eye. The mother, glanced at her. The child broke into sobs, hid her face on her mother's lap, and Dolly laid her thin, tender hand on her head. 'And what is there in common between us and him?' thought Levin, and he went off to look for Veslovsky.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She knew that to him, although he was the primary cause of her distress, the question of her seeing her son would seem a matter of very little consequence. She knew that he would never be capable of understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his cool tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate him. And she dreaded that more than anything in the world, and so she hid from him everything that related to her son. Spending the whole day at home she considered ways of seeing her son, and had reached a decision to write to her husband. She was just composing this letter when she was handed the letter from Lidia Ivanovna. The countess's silence had subdued and depressed her, but the letter, all that she read between the lines in it, so exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her passionate, legitimate tenderness for her son, that she turned against other people and left off blaming herself. 'This coldness—this pretence of feeling!' she said to herself. 'They must needs insult me and torture the child, and I am to submit to it! Not on any consideration! She is worse than I am. I don't lie, anyway.' And she decided on the spot that next day, Seryozha's birthday, she would go straight to her husband's house, bribe or deceive the servants, but at any cost see her son and overturn the hideous deception with which they were encompassing the unhappy child. She went to a toy-shop, bought toys and thought over a plan of action. She would go early in the morning at eight o'clock, when Alexey Alexandrovitch would be certain not to be up. She would have money in her hand to give the hall-porter and the footman, so that they should let her in, and not raising her veil, she would say that she had come from Seryozha's godfather to congratulate him, and that she had been charged to leave the toys at his bedside. She had prepared everything but the words she should say to her son. Often as she had dreamed of it, she could never think of anything. The next day; at eight o'clock in the morning, Anna got out of a hired sledge and rang at the front entrance of her former home. 'Run and see what's wanted. Some lady,' said Kapitonitch, who, not yet dressed, in his overcoat and goloshes, had peeped out of window and seen a lady in a veil standing close up to the door. His assistant, a lad Anna did not know, had no sooner opened the door to her than she came in, and pulling a three-rouble note out of her muff put it hurriedly into his hand. 'Seryozha—Sergey Alexandrovitch,' she said, and was going on. Scrutinising the note, the porter's assistant stopped her at the second glass-door. 'Whom do you want?' he asked.