Joy

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)

  'But I'll say more: my wife is a wonderful woman . . .' Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, remembering his position with his wife, and, after a moment's silence, resumed—'She has a gift of foreseeing things. She sees right through people; but that's not all, she knows what will come to pass, especially in the way of marriages. She foretold, for instance, that Princess Shahovskoy would marry Brenteln. No one would believe it, but it came to pass. And she's on your side.' 'How do you mean?' 'It's not only that she likes you—she says that Kitty is certain to be your wife.' At these words Levin's face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a smile not far from tears of emotion. 'She says that!' cried Levin. 'I always said she was exquisite, your wife. There, that's enough, enough said about it,' he said, getting up from his seat. 'All right, but do sit down.' But Levin could not sit down. He walked with his firm tread twice up and down the little cage of a room, blinked his eyelids that his tears might not fall, and only then sat down to the table. 'You must understand,' said he, 'it's not love. I've been in love, but it's not that. It's not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has taken possession of me. I went away, you see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness that does not come on earth; but I've struggled with myself, I see there's no living without it. And it must be settled.' 'What did you go away for?' 'Ah, stop a minute! Ah, the thoughts that come crowding on one! The questions one must ask oneself! Listen. You can't imagine what you've done for me by what you said. I'm so happy that I've become positively hateful; I've forgotten everything. I heard today that my brother Nikolay . . . you know, he's here . . . I had even forgotten him. It seems to me that he's happy too. It's a sort of madness. But one thing's awful…. Here, you've been married, you know the feeling . . . it's awful that we—old—with a past . . . not of love, but of sins . . . are brought all at once so near to a creature pure and innocent; it's loathsome, and that's why one can't help feeling oneself unworthy.' 'Oh, well, you've not many sins on your conscience.' 'Alas! all the same,' said Levin, 'when with loathing I go over my life, I shudder and curse and bitterly regret it….Yes.' 'What would you have? The world's made so,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: "Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy loving-kindness." That's the only way she can forgive me.' XI L EVIN emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He supported this view by the fact that no family can get on without women to help; that in every family, poor or rich, there are and must be nurses, either relations or hired. 'No,' said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes; 'a girl may be so circumstanced that she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she herself…' At the hint he understood her. 'Oh yes,' he said. 'Yes, yes, yes—you're right; you're right!' And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner of the liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of an old maid's existence and its humiliation in Kitty's heart; and loving her, he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave up his arguments. A silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the table. Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness. 'Ah! I've scribbled all over the table!' she said, and, laying down the chalk, she made a movement as though to get up. 'What! shall I be left alone—without her?' he thought with horror, and took the chalk. 'Wait a minute,' he said, sitting down to the table. 'I've long wanted to ask you one thing.' He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes. 'Please, ask it.' 'Here,' he said; and he wrote the initial letters, w, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant, 'When you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?' There seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, 'Is it what I think?' 'I understand,' she said, flushing a little. 'What is this word?' he said, pointing to the n that stood for never. 'It means never,' she said; 'but that's not true!' He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk, and stood up. She wrote, t, i, c, n, a, d. Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when she caught sight of the two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy smile looking upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant, 'Then I could not answer differently.' He glanced at her questioningly, timidly. 'Only then?' 'Yes,' her smile answered.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  What deep meaning in those words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this moment,' thought Levin. 'Is she feeling the same as I?' And looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the words of the service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could not listen to them and take them in, so strong was the one feeling that filled her breast and grew stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the completion of the process that for the last month and a half had been going on in her soul, and had during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her. On the day when in the drawing-room of the house in Arbaty Street she had gone up to him in her brown dress, and given herself to him without a word—on that day, at that hour, there took place in her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, while the old life was actually going on as before. Those six weeks had for her been a time of the utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she had loved, who loved her—to her mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father, till then dearer than all the world. At one moment she was horrified at this indifference, at another she rejoiced at what had brought her to this indifference. She could not frame a thought, not a wish apart from life with this man; but this new life was not yet, and she could not even picture it clearly to herself. There was only anticipation, the dread and joy of the new and the unknown. And now behold—anticipation and uncertainty and remorse at the abandonment of the old life—all was ending, and the new was beginning. This new life could not but have terrors for her inexperience; but, terrible or not, the change had been wrought six weeks before in her soul, and this was merely the final sanction of what had long been completed in her heart. Turning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty took Kitty's little ring, and asking Levin for his hand, put it on the first joint of his finger.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the lady of the house, and sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his deliberate, always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter, ridiculing someone. 'Your Rambouillet is in full conclave,' he said, looking round at all the party; 'the graces and the muses.' But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his—'sneering', as she called it, using the English word, and like a skilful hostess she at once brought him into a serious conversation on the subject of universal conscription. Alexey Alexandrovitch was immediately interested in the subject, and began seriously defending the new imperial decree against Princess Betsy, who had attacked it. Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table. 'This is getting indecorous,' whispered one lady, with an expressive glance at Madame Karenin, Vronsky, and her husband. 'What did I tell you?' said Anna's friend. But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room, even the Princess Myaky and Betsy herself, looked several times in the direction of the two who had withdrawn from the general circle, as though that were a disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was the only person who did not once look in that direction, and was not diverted from the interesting discussion he had entered upon. Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on every one, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and went up to Anna. 'I'm always amazed at the clearness and precision of your husband's language,' she said. 'The most transcendental ideas seem to be within my grasp when he's speaking.' 'Oh yes!' said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She crossed over to the big table and took part in the general conversation. Alexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went up to his wife and suggested that they should go home together. But she answered, not looking at him, that she was staying to supper. Alexey Alexandrovitch made his bows and withdrew. The fat old Tatar, Madame Karenin's coachman, was with difficulty holding one of her pair of greys, chilled with the cold and rearing at the entrance. A footman stood opening the carriage door. The hall-porter stood holding open the great door of the house.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He put his arms round her and pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss. She too had not slept all night, and had been expecting him all the morning. Her mother and father had consented without demur, and were happy in her happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to be the first to tell him her happiness and his. She had got ready to see him alone, and had been delighted at the idea, and had been shy and ashamed, and did not know herself what she was doing. She had heard his steps and voice, and had waited at the door for Mademoiselle Linon to go. Mademoiselle Linon had gone away. Without thinking, without asking herself how and what, she had gone up to him, and did as she was doing. 'Let us go to mamma!' she said, taking him by the hand. For a long while he could say nothing, not so much because he was afraid of desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as that every time he tried to say something, instead of words he felt that tears of happiness were welling up. He took her hand and kissed it. 'Can it be true?' he said at last in a choked voice. 'I can't believe you love me, dear!' She smiled at that 'dear,' and at the timidity with which he glanced at her. 'Yes!' she said significantly, deliberately. 'I am so happy!' Not letting go his hands, she went into the drawing-room. The princess, seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to cry and then immediately began to laugh, and with a vigorous step Levin had not expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head, kissed him, wetting his cheeks with her tears. 'So it is all settled! I am glad. Love her. I am glad . . . Kitty!' 'You've not been long settling things,' said the old prince trying to seem unmoved; but Levin noticed that his eyes were wet when he turned to him. 'I've long, always wished for this!' said the prince, taking Levin by the arm and drawing him towards himself. 'Even when this little featherhead fancied…' 'Papa!' shrieked Kitty, and shut his mouth with her hands. 'Well, I won't!' he said. 'I'm very, very . . . plea . . . Oh, what a fool I am .. .' He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again, and made the sign of the cross over her. And there came over Levin a new feeling of love for this man, till then so little known to him, when he saw how slowly and tenderly Kitty kissed his muscular hand.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  When everything had been put right, and the carriage had been brought back to the road, Levin had the lunch served. 'Bon appétit — bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu'au fond de mes bottes,' Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the French saying as he finished his second chicken. 'Well, now our troubles are over, now everything's going to go well. Only, to atone for my sins, I'm bound to sit on the box. That's so? eh? No, no! I'll be your Automedon. You shall see how I'll get you along,' he answered, not letting go the rein, when Levin begged him to let the coachman drive. 'No, I must atone for my sins, and I'm very comfortable on the box.' And he drove. Levin was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially the chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in; but unconsciously he fell under the influence of his gaiety and listened to the songs he sang all the way on the box, or the descriptions and representations he gave of driving in the English fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the very best of spirits that after lunch they drove to the Gvozdyov marsh. X V ASSENKA drove the horses so smartly that they reached the marsh too early, while it was still hot. As they drew near this more important marsh, the chief aim of their expedition, Levin could not help considering how he could get rid of Vassenka and be free in his movements. Stepan Arkadyevitch evidently had the same desire, and on his face Levin saw the look of anxiety always present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting, together with a certain good-humoured slyness peculiar to him. 'How shall we go? It's a splendid marsh, I see, and there are hawks,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing to two great birds hovering over the reeds. 'Where there are hawks, there is sure to be game.' 'Now, gentlemen,' said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the lock of his gun with rather a gloomy expression, 'do you see those reeds?' He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. 'The marsh begins here, straight in front of us, do you see—where it is greener? From here it runs to the right where the horses are; there are breeding-places there, and grouse, and all round those reeds as far as that alder, and right up to the mill. Over there, do you see, where the pools are? That's the best place. There I once shot seventeen snipe. We'll separate with the dogs and go in different directions, and then meet over there at the mill.' 'Well, which shall go to left and which to right?' asked Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'It's wider to the right; you two go that way and I'll take the left,' he said with apparent carelessness.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The marsh-birds twittered and swarmed about the brook and upon the bushes that glittered with dew and cast long shadows. A hawk woke up and settled on a haycock, turning its head from side to side and looking discontentedly at the marsh. Crows were flying about the field, and a bare-legged boy was driving the horses to an old man, who had got up from under his long coat and was combing his hair. The smoke from the gun was white as milk over the green of the grass. One of the boys ran up to Levin. 'Uncle, there were ducks here yesterday!' he shouted to him, and he walked a little way off behind him. And Levin was doubly pleased, in sight of the boy, who expressed his approval, at killing three snipe, one after another, straight off. XIII T HE sportsman's saying, that if the first beast or the first bird is not missed, the day will be lucky, turned out correct. At ten o'clock Levin, weary, hungry, and happy after a tramp of twenty miles, returned to his night's lodging with nineteen head of fine game and one duck, which he tied to his belt, as it would not go into the game-bag. His companions had long been awake, and had had time to get hungry and have breakfast. 'Wait a bit, wait a bit, I know there are nineteen,' said Levin, counting a second time over the grouse and snipe, that looked so much less important now bent and dry and bloodstained, with heads crooked aside, than they did when they were flying. The number was verified, and Stepan Arkadyevitch's envy pleased Levin. He was pleased too on returning to find the man sent by Kitty with a note was already there. 'I am perfectly well and happy. If you were uneasy about me, you can feel easier than ever. I've a new bodyguard, Marya Vlasyevna,'— this was the midwife, a new and important personage in Levin's domestic life. 'She has come to have a look at me. She found me perfectly well, and we have kept her till you are back. All are happy and well, and please, don't be in a hurry to come back, but, if the sport is good, stay another day.' These two pleasures, his lucky shooting and the letter from his wife, were so great that two slightly disagreeable incidents passed lightly over Levin. One was that the chestnut trace-horse, who had been unmistakably overworked on the previous day, was off his feed and out of sorts. The coachman said he was 'Overdriven yesterday, Konstantin Dmitritch,' he said. 'Yes, indeed! driving ten miles with no sense!' The other unpleasant incident, which for the first minute destroyed his good-humour, thought later he laughed at it a great deal, was to find that of all the provisions Kitty had provided in such abundance that one would have thought there was enough for a week, nothing was left.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Vronsky disliked it, yet he felt that Golenishtchev was unhappy, and was sorry for him. Unhappiness, almost mental derangement, was visible on his mobile, rather handsome face, while without even noticing Anna's coming in, he went on hurriedly and hotly expressing his views. When Anna came in in her hat and cape, and her lovely hand rapidly swinging her parasol, and stood beside him, it was with a feeling of relief that Vronsky broke away from the plaintive eyes of Golenishtchev which fastened persistently upon him, and with a fresh rush of love looked at his charming companion, full of life and happiness. Golenishtchev recovered himself with an effort, and at first was dejected and gloomy, but Anna, disposed to feel friendly with every one as she was at that time, soon revived his spirits by her direct and lively manner. After trying various subjects of conversation, she got him upon painting, of which he talked very well, and she listened to him attentively. They walked to the house they had taken, and looked over it. 'I am very glad of one thing,' said Anna to Golenishtchev when they were on their way back, 'Alexey will have a capital atelier. You must certainty take that room,' she said to Vronsky in Russian, using the affectionately familiar form as though she saw that Golenishtchev would become intimate with them in their isolation, and that there was no need of reserve before him. 'Do you paint?' said Golenishtchev, turning round quickly to Vronsky. 'Yes, I used to study long ago, and now I have begun to do a little,' said Vronsky, reddening. 'He has great talent,' said Anna with a delighted smile. 'I'm no judge, of course. But good judges have said the same.' VIII A NNA , in that first period of her emancipation and rapid return to health, felt herself unpardonably happy, and full of the joy of life. The thought of her husband's unhappiness did not poison her happiness. On one side that memory was too awful to be thought of. On the other side her husband's unhappiness had given her too much happiness to be regretted. The memory of all that had happened after her illness: her reconciliation with her husband, its breakdown, the news of Vronsky's wound, his visit, the preparations for divorce, the departure from her husband's house, the parting from her son—all that seemed to her like a delirious dream, from which she had waked up alone with Vronsky abroad. The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'There must be snipe too,' he thought, and just as he reached the turning homewards he met the forest keeper, who confirmed his theory about the snipe. Levin went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his dinner and get his gun ready for the evening. XIV As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin heard the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house. 'Yes, that's someone from the railway station,' he thought, 'just the time to be here from the Moscow train….Who could it be? What if it's brother Nikolay? He did say: 'Maybe I'll go to the waters, or may- be I'll come down to you." ' He felt dismayed and vexed for the first minute that his brother Nikolay's presence should come to disturb his happy mood of spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that it was his brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out from behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. 'Oh, if it were only some nice person one could talk to a little !' he thought. 'Ah !' cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. 'Here's a delightful visitor ! Ah, how glad I am to see you !' he shouted, recognising Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'I shall find out for certain whether she's married, or when she's going to be married,' he thought. And on that delicious spring day he felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at all. 'Well, you didn't expect me, eh?' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. 'I've come to see you in the first place,' he said, embracing and kissing him, 'to have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third.' Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get along in a sledge?' 'In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitritch,' answered the driver, who knew him. 'Well, I'm very, very glad to see you,' said Levin, with a genuine smile of childlike delight. Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan Arkadyevitch's things were carried also—a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for cigars.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Except for the slight quiver of her lips and the moisture in her eyes that made them brighter, her smile was almost calm as she said— 'How long it is since we've seen each other!' and with desperate determination she pressed his hand with her cold hand. 'You've not seen me, but I've seen you,' said Levin, with a radiant smile of happiness, 'I saw you when you were driving from the railway station to Ergushovo.' 'When?' she asked, wondering. 'You were driving to Ergushovo,' said Levin, feeling as if he would sob with the rapture that was flooding his heart. 'And how dared I associate a thought of anything not innocent with this touching creature? And, yes, I do believe it's true what Darya Alexandrovna told me,' he thought. Stepan Arkadyevitch took him by the arm and led him away to Karenin. 'Let me introduce you.' He mentioned their names. 'Very glad to meet you again,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch coldly, shaking hands with Levin. 'You are acquainted?' Stepan Arkadyevitch asked in surprise. 'We spent three hours together in the train,' said Levin smiling, 'but got out, just as in a masquerade, quite mystified—at least I was.' 'Nonsense! Come along, please,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing in the direction of the dining-room. The men went into the dining-room and went up to a table, laid with six sorts of spirits and as many kinds of cheese, some with little silver spades and some without, caviare herrings, preserves of various kinds, and plates with slices of French bread. The men stood round the strong-smelling spirits and salt delicacies, and the discussion of the Russification of Poland between Koznishev, Karenin, and Pestsov died down in anticipation of dinner. Sergey Ivanovitch was unequalled in his skill in winding up the most heated and serious argument by some unexpected pinch of Attic salt that changed the disposition of his opponent. He did this now. Alexey Alexandrovitch had been maintaining that the Russification of Poland could only be accomplished as a result of larger measures which ought to be introduced by the Russian government. Pestsov insisted that one country can only absorb another when it is the more densely populated. Koznishev admitted both points, but with limitations. As they were going out of the drawing-room to conclude the argument, Koznishev said smiling— 'So, then, for the Russification of our foreign populations there is but one method—to bring up as many children as one can. My brother and I are terribly in fault, I see. You married men, especially you, Stepan Arkadyevitch, are the real patriots: what number have you reached?' he said, smiling genially at their host and holding out a tiny wine-glass to him. Everyone laughed, and Stepan Arkadyevitch with particular good-humour. 'Oh yes, that's the best method!' he said, munching cheese and filling the wine-glass with a special sort of spirit. The conversation dropped at the jest.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Tanya! Grisha!' said their mother, trying to save the frock, but, with tears in her eyes, smiling a blissful, rapturous smile. The new frocks were taken off, and orders were given for the little girls to have their blouses put on, and the boys their old jackets, and the wagonette to be harnessed, with Brownie, to the bailiff's annoyance, again in the shafts; to drive out for mushroom-picking and bathing. A roar of delighted shrieks arose in the nursery, and never ceased till they had set off for the bathing-place. They gathered a whole basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found a birch-mushroom. It had always happened before that Miss Hoole found them and pointed them out to her; but this time she found a big one quite of herself, and there was a general scream of delight, 'Lily has found a mushroom!' Then they reached the river, put the horses under the birch-trees, and went to the bathing-place. The coachman, Terenty, fastened the horses, who kept whisking away the flies, to a tree, and, treading down the grass, lay down in the shade of a birch and smoked his shag, while the never-ceasing shrieks of delight of the children floated across to him from the bathing-place. Though it was hard work to look after all the children and restrain their wild pranks, though it was difficult too to keep in one's head and not mix up all the stockings, little breeches, and shoes for the different legs, and to undo and to do up again all the tapes and buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who had always liked bathing herself, and believed it to be very good for the children, enjoyed nothing so much as bathing with all the children. To go over all those fat little legs, pulling on their stockings, to take in her arms and dip those little naked bodies, and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all her splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her. When half the children had been dressed, some peasant women in holiday dress, out picking herbs, came up to the bathing-shed and stopped shyly. Marya Filimonovna called one of them and handed her a sheet and a shirt that had dropped into the water for her to dry them, and Darya Alexandrovna began to talk to the women. At first they laughed behind their hands and did not understand her questions, but soon they grew bolder and began to talk, winning Darya Alexandrovna's heart at once by the genuine admiration of the children that they showed. 'My, what a beauty! as white as sugar,' said one, admiring Tan-itchka, and shaking her head; 'but thin…' 'Yes, she has been ill.' 'And so they've been bathing you too,' said another to the baby. 'No; he's only three months old,' answered Darya Alexandrovna with pride.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin, on hearing this, informed Yegor that, in his opinion, in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself. Yegor listened attentively, and obviously quite took in Levin's idea, but by way of assent to it he enunciated, greatly to Levin's surprise, the observation that when he had lived with good masters he had always been satisfied with his masters, and now was perfectly satisfied with his employer, though he was a Frenchman. 'Wonderfully good-hearted fellow!' thought Levin. 'Well, but you yourself, Yegor, when you got married, did you love your wife?' 'Ay! and why not?' responded Yegor. And Levin saw that Yegor too was in an excited state and intending to express all his most heartfelt emotions. 'My life, too, has been a wonderful one. From a child up . . .' he was beginning with flashing eyes, apparently catching Levin's enthusiasm, just as people catch yawning. But at that moment a ring was heard. Yegor departed, and Levin was left alone. He had eaten scarcely anything at dinner, had refused tea and supper at Sviazhsky's, but he was incapable of thinking of supper. He had not slept the previous night, but was incapable of thinking of sleep either. His room was cool, but he was oppressed by heat. He opened both the movable panes in his window and sat down to the table opposite the open panes. Over the snow-covered roofs could be seen a decorated cross with chains, and above it the rising triangle of Charles's Wain with the yellowish light of Capella. He gazed at the cross, then at the stars, drank in the fresh freezing air that flowed evenly into the room, and followed as though in a dream the images and memories that rose in his imagination. At four o'clock he heard steps in the passage and peeped out at the door. It was the gambler Myaskin, whom he knew, coming from the club. He walked gloomily, frowning and coughing. 'Poor, unlucky fellow!' thought Levin, and tears came into his eyes from love and pity for this man. He would have talked with him, and tried to comfort him, but remembering that he had nothing but his shirt on, he changed his mind and sat down again at the open pane to bathe in the cold air and gaze at the exquisite lines of the cross, silent, but full of meaning for him, and the mounting lurid yellow star. At seven o'clock there was a noise of people polishing the floors, and bells ringing in some servants' department, and Levin felt that he was beginning to get frozen. He closed the pane, washed, dressed, and went out into the street. XV T HE streets were still empty.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She recognised him, and her face lighted up with wondering delight. He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world that could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty. He understood that she was driving to Ergushovo from the railway station. And everything that had been stirring Levin during that sleepless night, all the resolutions he had made, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror his dreams of marrying a peasant girl. There only, in the carriage that had crossed over to the other side of the road, and was rapidly disappearing, there only could he find the solution of the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonisingly upon him of late. She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs was no longer audible,'the bells could scarcely be heard. The barking of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, and all that was left was the empty fields all round, the village in front, and he himself isolated and apart from it all, wandering lonely along the deserted high-road. He glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud-shell he had been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas and feelings of that night. There was nothing in the sky in the least like a shell. There, in the remote heights above, a mysterious change had been accomplished. There was no trace of shell, and there was stretched over fully half the sky an even cover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets. The sky had grown blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same remoteness, it met his questioning gaze. 'No,' he said to himself, 'however good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love her.' XIII N ONE but those who were most intimate with Alexey Alexandrovitch knew that, while on the surface the coldest and most reasonable of men, he had one weakness quite opposed to the general trend of his character. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not hear or see a child or woman crying without being moved. The sight of tears threw him into a state of nervous agitation, and he utterly lost all power of reflection. The chief secretary of his department and his private secretary were aware of this, and used to warn women who came with petitions on no account to give way to tears, if they did not want to ruin their chances. 'He will get angry, and will not listen to you,' they used to say. And as a fact, in such cases the emotional disturbance set up in Alexey Alexandrovitch by the sight of tears found expression in hasty anger. 'I can do nothing. Kindly leave the room!' he would commonly cry in such cases.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'I'll put them on directly,' he said. And he went off to get skates. 'It's a long while since we've seen you here, sir,' said the attendant, supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of the skate. 'Except you, there's none of the gentlemen first-rate skaters. Will that be all right?' said he, tightening the strap. 'Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please,' answered Levin, with difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his face. 'Yes,' he thought, 'this now is life, this is happiness! Together, she said; let us skate together! Speak to her now? But that's just why I'm afraid to speak—because I'm happy now, happy in hope, anyway…. And then? . . . But I must! I must! I must! Away with weakness!' Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and scurrying over the rough ice round the hut, came out on the smooth ice and skated without effort, as it were by simple exercise of will increasing and slackening speed and turning his course. He approached with timidity, but again her smile reassured him. She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster and faster, and the more rapidly they moved the more tightly she grasped his hand. 'With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,' she said to him. 'And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,' he said, but was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, when all at once, like the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and Levin detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted the working of thought; a crease showed on her smooth brow. 'Is there anything troubling you?—though I've no right to ask such a question,' he said hurriedly. 'Oh, why so? . . . No, I have nothing to trouble me,' she responded coldly; and she asked immediately: 'You haven't seen Mlle. Linon, have you?? 'Not yet.' 'Go and speak to her, she likes you so much.' 'What's wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!' thought Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the grey ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old friend. 'Yes, you see we're growing up,' she said to him, glancing towards Kitty, 'and growing old. Tiny bear has grown big now!' pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the three young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the English nursery-tale. 'Do you remember that's what you used to call them?' He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke for ten years now, and was fond of it. 'Now, go and skate, go and skate.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile. Vronsky stepped into the carriage. His mother, a dried-up old lady with black eyes and ringlets, screwed up her eyes, scanning her son, and smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and handing her maid a bag, she gave her little wrinkled hand to her son to kiss, and lifting his head from her hand kissed him on the cheek. 'You got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God.' 'You had a good journey?' said her son, sitting down beside her, and involuntarily listening to a woman's voice outside the door. He knew it was the voice of the lady he had met at the door. 'All the same I don't agree with you,' said the lady's voice. 'It's the Petersburg view, madame.' 'Not Petersburg, but simply feminine,' she responded. 'Well, well, allow me to kiss your hand.' 'Good-bye, Ivan Petrovitch. And would you see if my brother is here, and send him to me?' said the lady in the doorway, and stepped back again into the compartment. 'Well, have you found your brother?' said Countess Vronsky, addressing the lady. Vronsky understood now that this was Madame Karenin. 'Your brother is here," he said, standing up. 'Excuse me, I did not know you, and, indeed, our acquaintance was so slight,' said Vronsky bowing, 'that no doubt you do not remember me.' 'Oh no,' said she, 'I should have known you because your mother and I have been talking, I think, of nothing but you all the way.' As she spoke she let the eagerness that would insist on coming out show itself in her smile. 'And still no sign of my brother.' 'Do call him Alexey,' said the old countess. Vronsky stepped out on to the platform and shouted— 'Oblonsky! Here!' Madame Karenin, however, did not wait for her brother, but catching sight of him she stepped out with her light, resolute step. And as soon as her brother had reached her, with a gesture that struck Vronsky by its decision and its grace, she flung her left arm round his neck, drew him rapidly to her, and kissed him warmly. Vronsky gazed, never taking his eyes from her, and smiled, he could not have said why. But recollecting that his mother was waiting for him, he went back again into the carriage. 'She's very sweet, isn't she?' said the countess of Madame Karenin. 'Her husband put her with me, and I was delighted to have her. We've been talking all the way. And so you, I hear . . . vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux.' 'I don't know what you are referring to, maman,' he answered coldly. 'Come, maman, let us go.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'I think the big balcony room.' 'Oh no, that's too far off! Better in the corner room, we shall see each other more. Come, let's go up,' said Anna, as she gave her favourite horse the sugar the footman had brought her. 'Et vous oubliez votre devoir,' she said to Veslovsky, who came out too on the steps. 'Pardon, j'en at tout pléin les poches,' he answered, smiling, putting his fingers in his waistcoat pocket. 'Mais vous venez trop tard,' she said, rubbing her handkerchief on her hand, which the horse had made wet in taking the sugar. Anna turned to Dolly. 'You can stay some time? For one day only? That's impossible!' 'I promised to be back, and the children . . .' said Dolly, feeling embarrassed both because she had to get her bag out of the carriage, and because she knew her face must be covered with dust. 'No, Dolly, darling! . . . Well, we'll see. Come along, come along!' and Anna led Dolly to her room. That room was not the smart guest-chamber Vronsky had suggested, but the one of which Anna had said that Dolly would excuse it. And this room, for which excuse was needed, was more full of luxury than any in which Dolly had ever stayed, a luxury that reminded her of the best hotels abroad. 'Well, darling, how happy I am!' Anna said, sitting down in her riding-habit for a moment beside Dolly. Tell me about all of you. Stiva I had only a glimpse of, and he cannot tell one about the children. How is my favourite, Tanya? Quite a big girl, I expect?' 'Yes, she's very tall,' Darya Alexandrovna answered shortly, surprised herself that she should respond so coolly about her children. 'We are having a delightful stay at the Levins',' she added. 'Oh, if I had known,' said Anna, 'that you do not despise me! . . . You might have all come to us. Stiva's an old friend and a great friend of Alexey's, you know,' she added, and suddenly she blushed. 'Yes, but we are all . . . ' Dolly answered in confusion. 'But in my delight I'm talking nonsense. The one thing, darling, is that I am so glad to have you!' said Anna, kissing her again. 'You haven't told me yet how and what you think about me, and I keep wanting to know. But I'm glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing I shouldn't like would be for people to imagine I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I? But it is a big subject, and we'll talk over everything properly later. Now I'll go and dress and send a maid to you.' XIX L EFT alone, Darya Alexandrovna, with a good housewife's eye, scanned her room.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  What delighted him particularly was that now he knew he would be able to hold out. His pleasure was only disturbed by his row not being well cut. 'I will swing less with my arm and more with my whole body,' he thought, comparing Tit's row, which looked as if it had been cut with a line, with his own unevenly and irregularly lying grass. The first row, as Levin noticed, Tit had mown specially quickly, probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the row happened to be a long one. The next rows were easier, but still Levin had to strain every nerve not to drop behind the peasants. He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing but the swish of the scythes, and saw before him Tit's upright figure mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the row, where would come the rest. Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it was or whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on his hot, moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval for whetting the scythes. A heavy, lowering storm-cloud had blown up, and big raindrops were falling. Some of the peasants went to their coats and put them on; others—just like Levin himself—merely shrugged their shoulders, enjoying the pleasant coolness of it. Another row, and yet another row, followed—long rows and short rows, with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row was almost as smooth and well cut as Tit's. But so soon as he recollected what he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly mown. On finishing yet another row he would have gone back to the top of the meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going up to the old man said something in a low voice to him. They both looked at the sun. 'What are they talking about, and why doesn't he go back?' thought Levin, not guessing that the peasants had been mowing no less than four hours without stopping, and it was time for their lunch. 'Lunch, sir,' said the old man.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He did not, as he had had to do with previous attempts to find comforting arguments, need to revive a whole chain of thought to find the feeling. Now, on the contrary, the feeling of joy and peace was keener than ever, and thought could not keep pace with feeling. He walked across the terrace and looked at two stars that had come out in the darkening sky, and suddenly he remembered. 'Yes, looking at the sky, I thought that the dome that I see is not a deception, and then I thought something, I shirked facing something,' he mused. 'But whatever it was, there can be no disproving it! I have but to think, and all will come clear!' Just as he was going into the nursery he remembered what it was he had shirked facing. It was that if the chief proof of the Divinity was His revelation of what is right, how is it this revelation is confined to the Christian church alone? What relation to this revelation have the beliefs of the Buddhists, Mohammedans, who preached and did good too? It seemed to him that he had an answer to this question; but he had not time to formulate it to himself before he went into the nursery. Kity was standing with her sleeves tucked up over the baby in the bath. Hearing her husband's footsteps, she turned towards him, summoning him to her with her smile. With one hand she was supporting the fat baby that lay floating and sprawling on its back, while with the other she squeezed the sponge over him. 'Come, look, look!' she said, when her husband came up to her. 'Agafea Mihalovna's right. He knows us!' Mitya had on that day given unmistakable, incontestable signs of recognising all his friends. As soon as Levin approached the bath, the experiment was tried, and it was completely successful. The cook, sent for with this object, bent over the baby. He frowned and shook his head disapprovingly. Kitty bent down to him, he gave her a beaming smile, propped his little hands on the sponge and chirruped, making such a queer little contented sound with his lips, that Kitty and the nurse were not alone in their admiration. Levin, too, was surprised and delighted. The baby was taken out of the bath, drenched with water, wrapped in towels, dried, and after a piercing scream, handed to his mother. 'Well, I am glad you are beginning to love him,' said Kitty to her husband, when she had settled herself comfortably in her usual place, with the baby at her breast. 'I am so glad i It had begun to distress me. You said you had no feeling for him.' 'No; did I say that? I only said I was disappointed.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it 'properly' had been asked, exactly how they did look at it, both he and they would have been greatly puzzled to answer. In reality, those who in Vronsky's opinion had the 'proper' view had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which life is encompassed on all. sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for to put all this into words. Vronsky at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And in fact, Golenishtchev's manner to Madame Karenin, when he was taken to call on her, was all that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects which might lead to embarrassment. He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and still more by the frankness with which she accepted her position. She blushed when Vronsky brought in Golenishtchev, and he was extremely charmed by this childish blush overspreading her candid and handsome face. But what he liked particularly was the way in which at once, as though on purpose that there might be no misunderstanding with an outsider, she called Vronsky simply Alexey, and said they were moving into a house they had just taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev liked this direct and simple attitude to her own position. Look-ink at Anna's manner of simple-hearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing Alexey Alexandrovitch and Vronsky, Golenishtchev fancied that he understood her perfectly. He fancied that he understood what she was utterly unable to understand: how it was that, having made her husband wretched, having abandoned him and her son and lost her good name, she yet felt full of spirits, gaiety, and happiness. 'It's in the guide-book,' said Golenishtchev, referring to the palazzo Vronsky had taken. 'There's a first-rate Tintoretto there. One of his latest period.' 'I tell you what: it's a lovely day, let's go and have another look at it,' said Vronsky, addressing Anna. 'I shall be very glad to; I'll go and put on my hat. Would you say it's hot?' she said, stopping short in the doorway and looking inquiringly at Vronsky. And again a vivid flush overspread her face. Vronsky saw from her eyes that she did not know on what terms he cared to be with Golenishtchev, and so was afraid of not behaving as he would wish.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!' answered Seryozha with that gay and loving smile which always won over the conscientious Vassily Lukitch. Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to be able to help sharing with his friend the porter the family good fortune of which he had heard during his walk in the public gardens from Lidia Ivanovna's niece. This piece of good news seemed to him particularly important from its coming at the same time with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his own gladness at toys having come for him. It seemed to Seryozha that this was a day on which everyone ought to be glad and happy. 'You know papa's received the Alexander Nevsky today?' 'To be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him.' 'And is he glad?' 'Glad at the Tsar's gracious favour! I should think so! It's a proof he's deserved it,' said the porter severely and seriously. Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter, which he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the chin that hung down between the grey whiskers, never seen by anyone but Seryozha, who saw him only from below. 'Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately ?' The porter's daughter was a ballet-dancer. 'When is she to come on weekdays? They've their lessons to learn too. And you've your lesson, sir; run along.' On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been brought him must be a machine. 'What do you think?' he inquired. But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two. 'No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch,' he asked suddenly, when he was seated at their work-table with the book in his hands, 'what is greater than the Alexander Nevsky? You know papa's received the Alexander Nevsky?' Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the Alexander Nevsky. And higher still?' 'Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny.' 'And higher than the Andrey?' 'I don't know.' 'What, you don't know?' and Seryozha, leaning on his elbows sank into deep meditation. His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character. He imagined his father's having suddenly been presented with both the Vladimir and the Andrey today, and in consequence being much better tempered at his lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown up, he would himself receive all the orders, and what they might invent higher than the Andrey. Directly any higher order were invented, he would win it. They would make a higher one still, and he would immediately win that too.