When they left the Senate, Nekhludoff and the advocate walked on together, the advocate having given the driver of his carriage orders to follow them. The advocate told Nekhludoff the story of the chief of a Government department, about whom the Senators had been talking: how the thing was found out, and how the man, who according to law should have been sent to the mines, had been appointed Governor of a town in Siberia. Then he related with particular pleasure how several high-placed persons stole a lot of money collected for the erection of the still unfinished monument which they had passed that morning; also, how the mistress of So-and-so got a lot of money at the Stock Exchange, and how So-and-so agreed with So-and-so to sell him his wife. The advocate began another story about a swindle, and all sorts of crimes committed by persons in high places, who, instead of being in prison, sat on presidential chairs in all sorts of Government institutions. These tales, of which the advocate seemed to have an unending supply, gave him much pleasure, showing as they did, with perfect clearness, that his means of getting money were quite just and innocent compared to the means which the highest officials in Petersburg made use of. The advocate was therefore surprised when Nekhludoff took an isvostchik before hearing the end of the story, said good-bye, and left him. Nekhludoff felt very sad. It was chiefly the rejection of the appeal by the Senate, confirming the senseless torments that the innocent Maslova was enduring, that saddened him, and also the fact that this rejection made it still harder for him to unite his fate with hers. The stories about existing evils, which the advocate recounted with such relish, heightened his sadness, and so did the cold, unkind look that the once sweet-natured, frank, noble Selenin had given him, and which kept recurring to his mind.
On his return the doorkeeper handed him a note, and said, rather scornfully, that some kind of woman had written it in the hall. It was a note from Shoustova’s mother. She wrote that she had come to thank her daughter’s benefactor and saviour, and to implore him to come to see them on the Vasilievsky, 5th Line, house No. —. This was very necessary because of Vera Doukhova. He need not be afraid that they would weary him with expressions of gratitude. They would not speak their gratitude, but be simply glad to see him. Would he not come next morning, if he could?
There was another note from Bogotyreff, a former fellow-officer, aide-de-camp to the Emperor, whom Nekhludoff had asked to hand personally to the Emperor his petition on behalf of the sectarians. Bogotyreff wrote, in his large, firm hand, that he would put the petition into the Emperor’s own hands, as he had promised; but that it had occurred to him that it might be better for Nekhludoff first to go and see the person on whom the matter depended.
After the impressions received during the last few days, Nekhludoff felt perfectly hopeless of getting anything done. The plans he had formed in Moscow seemed now something like the dreams of youth, which are inevitably followed by disillusion when life comes to be faced. Still, being now in Petersburg, he considered it his duty to do all he had intended, and he resolved next day, after consulting Bogotyreff, to act on his advice and see the person on whom the case of the sectarians depended.
He got out the sectarians’ petition from his portfolio, and began reading it over, when there was a knock at his door, and a footman came in with a message from the Countess Katerina Ivanovna, who asked him to come up and have a cup of tea with her.
Nekhludoff said he would come at once, and having put the papers back into the portfolio, he went up to his aunt’s. He looked out of a window on his way, and saw Mariette’s pair of bays standing in front of the house, and he suddenly brightened and felt inclined to smile.
Mariette, with a hat on her head, not in black but with a light dress of many shades, sat with a cup in her hand beside the Countess’s easy chair, prattling about something while her beautiful, laughing eyes glistened. She had said something funny—something indecently funny—just as Nekhludoff entered the room. He knew it by the way she laughed, and by the way the good-natured Countess Katerina Ivanovna’s fat body was shaking with laughter; while Mariette, her smiling mouth slightly drawn to one side, her head a little bent, a peculiarly mischievous expression in her merry, energetic face, sat silently looking at her companion. From a few words which he overheard, Nekhludoff guessed that they were talking of the second piece of Petersburg news, the episode of the Siberian Governor, and that it was in reference to this subject that Mariette had said something so funny that the Countess could not control herself for a long time.
“You will kill me,” she said, coughing.
After saying “How d’you do?” Nekhludoff sat down. He was about to censure Mariette in his mind for her levity when, noticing the serious and even slightly dissatisfied look in his eyes, she suddenly, to please him, changed not only the expression of her face, but also the attitude of her mind; for she felt the wish to please him as soon as she looked at him. She suddenly turned serious, dissatisfied with her life, as if seeking and striving after something; it was not that she pretended, but she really reproduced in herself the very same state of mind that he was in, although it would have been impossible for her to express in words what was the state of Nekhludoff’s mind at that moment.
She asked him how he had accomplished his tasks. He told her about his failure in the Senate and his meeting Selenin.
“Oh, what a pure soul! He is, indeed, a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. A pure soul!” said both ladies, using the epithet commonly applied to Selenin in Petersburg society.
“What is his wife like?” Nekhludoff asked.
“His wife? Well, I do not wish to judge, but she does not understand him.”
“Is it possible that he, too, was for rejecting the appeal?” Mariette asked with real sympathy. “It is dreadful. How sorry I am for her,” she added with a sigh.
He frowned, and in order to change the subject began to speak about Shoustova, who had been imprisoned in the fortress and was now set free through the influence of Mariette’s husband. He thanked her for her trouble, and was going on to say how dreadful he thought it, that this woman and the whole of her family had suffered merely, because no one had reminded the authorities about them, but Mariette interrupted him and expressed her own indignation.
“Say nothing about it to me,” she said. “When my husband told me she could be set free, it was this that struck me, ‘What was she kept in prison for if she is innocent?’” She went on expressing what Nekhludoff was about to say.
“It is revolting—revolting.”
Countess Katerina Ivanovna noticed that Mariette was coquetting with her nephew, and this amused her. “What do you think?” she said, when they were silent. “Supposing you come to Aline’s to-morrow night. Kiesewetter will be there. And you, too,” she said, turning to Mariette. “Il vous a remarque,” she went on to her nephew. “He told me that what you say (I repeated it all to him) is a very good sign, and that you will certainly come to Christ. You must come absolutely. Tell him to, Mariette, and come yourself.”
“Countess, in the first place, I have no right whatever to give any kind of advice to the Prince,” said Mariette, and gave Nekhludoff a look that somehow established a full comprehension between them of their attitude in relation to the Countess’s words and evangelicalism in general. “Secondly, I do not much care, you know.”
“Yes, I know you always do things the wrong way round, and according to your own ideas.”
“My own ideas? I have faith like the most simple peasant woman,” said Mariette with a smile. “And, thirdly, I am going to the French Theatre to-morrow night.”
“Ah! And have you seen that—What’s her name?” asked Countess Katerina Ivanovna. Mariette gave the name of a celebrated French actress.
“You must go, most decidedly; she is wonderful.”
“Whom am I to see first, ma tante—the actress or the preacher?” Nekhludoff said with a smile.
“Please don’t catch at my words.”
“I should think the preacher first and then the actress, or else the desire for the sermon might vanish altogether,” said Nekhludoff.
“No; better begin with the French Theatre, and do penance afterwards.”
“Now, then, you are not to hold me up for ridicule. The preacher is the preacher and the theatre is the theatre. One need not weep in order to be saved. One must have faith, and then one is sure to be gay.”
“You, ma tante, preach better than any preacher.”
“Do you know what?” said Mariette. “Come into my box to-morrow.”
“I am afraid I shall not be able to.”
The footman interrupted the conversation by announcing a visitor. It was the secretary of a philanthropic society of which the Countess was president.
“Oh, that is the dullest of men. I think I shall receive him out there, and return to you later on. Mariette, give him his tea,” said the Countess, and left the room, with her quick, wriggling walk.
Mariette took the glove off her firm, rather flat hand, the fourth finger of which was covered with rings.
“Want any?” she said, taking hold of the silver teapot, under which a spirit lamp was burning, and extending her little finger curiously. Her face looked sad and serious.
“It is always terribly painful to me to notice that people whose opinion I value confound me with the position I am placed in.” She seemed ready to cry as she said these last words. And though these words had no meaning, or at any rate a very indefinite meaning, they seemed to be of exceptional depth, meaning, or goodness to Nekhludoff, so much was he attracted by the look of the bright eyes which accompanied the words of this young, beautiful, and well-dressed woman.
Nekhludoff looked at her in silence, and could not take his eyes from her face.
“You think I do not understand you and all that goes on in you. Why, everybody knows what you are doing.C’est le secret de polichinelle. And I am delighted with your work, and think highly of you.”
“Really, there is nothing to be delighted with; and I have done so little as Yet.”
“No matter. I understand your feelings, and I understand her. All right, all right. I will say nothing more about it,” she said, noticing displeasure on his face. “But I also understand that after seeing all the suffering and the horror in the prisons,” Mariette went on, her only desire that of attracting him, and guessing with her woman’s instinct what was dear and important to him, “you wish to help the sufferers, those who are made to suffer so terribly by other men, and their cruelty and indifference. I understand the willingness to give one’s life, and could give mine in such a cause, but we each have our own fate.”
“Are you, then, dissatisfied with your fate?”
“I?” she asked, as if struck with surprise that such a question could be put to her. “I have to be satisfied, and am satisfied. But there is a worm that wakes up—”
“And he must not be allowed to fall asleep again. It is a voice that must be obeyed,” Nekhludoff said, falling into the trap.
Many a time later on Nekhludoff remembered with shame his talk with her. He remembered her words, which were not so much lies as imitations of his own, and her face, which seemed looking at him with sympathetic attention when he told her about the terrors of the prison and of his impressions in the country.
When the Countess returned they were talking not merely like old, but like exclusive friends who alone understood one another. They were talking about the injustice of power, of the sufferings of the unfortunate, the poverty of the people, yet in reality in the midst of the sound of their talk their eyes, gazing at each other, kept asking, “Can you love me?” and answering, “I can,” and the sex-feeling, taking the most unexpected and brightest forms, drew them to each other. As she was going away she told him that she would always be willing to serve him in any way she could, and asked him to come and see her, if only for a moment, in the theatre next day, as she had a very important thing to tell him about.
“Yes, and when shall I see you again?” she added, with a sigh, carefully drawing the glove over her jewelled hand.
“Say you will come.”
Nekhludoff promised.
That night, when Nekhludoff was alone in his room, and lay down after putting out his candle, he could not sleep. He thought of Maslova, of the decision of the Senate, of his resolve to follow her in any case, of his having given up the land. The face of Mariette appeared to him as if in answer to those thoughts—her look, her sigh, her words, “When shall I see you again?” and her smile seemed vivid as if he really saw her, and he also smiled. “Shall I be doing right in going to Siberia? And have I done right in divesting myself of my wealth?” And the answers to the questions on this Petersburg night, on which the daylight streamed into the window from under the blind, were quite indefinite. All seemed mixed in his head. He recalled his former state of mind, and the former sequence of his thoughts, but they had no longer their former power or validity.
“And supposing I have invented all this, and am unable to live it through—supposing I repent of having acted right,” he thought; and unable to answer he was seized with such anguish and despair as he had long not felt. Unable to free himself from his perplexity, he fell into a heavy sleep, such as he had slept after a heavy loss at cards.
Nekhludoff awoke next morning feeling as if he had been guilty of some iniquity the day before. He began considering. He could not remember having done anything wrong; he had committed no evil act, but he had had evil thoughts. He had thought that all his present resolutions to marry Katusha and to give up his land were unachievable dreams; that he should be unable to bear it; that it was artificial, unnatural; and that he would have to go on living as he lived.
He had committed no evil action, but, what was far worse than an evil action, he had entertained evil thoughts whence all evil actions proceed. An evil action may not be repeated, and can be repented of; but evil thoughts generate all evil actions.
An evil action only smooths the path for other evil acts; evil thoughts uncontrollably drag one along that path.
When Nekhludoff repeated in his mind the thoughts of the day before, he was surprised that he could for a moment have believed these thoughts. However new and difficult that which he had decided to do might be, he knew that it was the only possible way of life for him now, and however easy and natural it might have been to return to his former state, he knew that state to be death.
Yesterday’s temptation seemed like the feeling when one awakes from deep sleep, and, without feeling sleepy, wants to lie comfortably in bed a little longer, yet knows that it is time to rise and commence the glad and important work that awaits one.
On that, his last day in Petersburg, he went in the morning to the Vasilievski Ostrov to see Shoustova. Shoustova lived on the second floor, and having been shown the back stairs, Nekhludoff entered straight into the hot kitchen, which smelt strongly of food. An elderly woman, with turned-up sleeves, with an apron and spectacles, stood by the fire stirring something in a steaming pan.
“Whom do you want?” she asked severely, looking at him over her spectacles.
Before Nekhludoff had time to answer, an expression of fright and joy appeared on her face.
“Oh, Prince!” she exclaimed, wiping her hands on her apron. “But why have you come the back way? Our Benefactor! I am her mother. They have nearly killed my little girl. You have saved us,” she said, catching hold of Nekhludoff’s hand and trying to kiss it.
“I went to see you yesterday. My sister asked me to. She is here. This way, this way, please,” said Shoustova’s mother, as she led the way through a narrow door, and a dark passage, arranging her hair and pulling at her tucked-up skirt. “My sister’s name is Kornilova. You must have heard of her,” she added, stopping before a closed door. “She was mixed up in a political affair. An extremely clever woman!”
Shoustova’s mother opened the door and showed Nekhludoff into a little room where on a sofa with a table before it sat a plump, short girl with fair hair that curled round her pale, round face, which was very like her mother’s. She had a striped cotton blouse on.
Opposite her, in an armchair, leaning forward, so that he was nearly bent double, sat a young fellow with a slight, black beard and moustaches.
“Lydia, Prince Nekhludoff!” he said.
The pale girl jumped up, nervously pushing back a lock of hair behind her ear, and gazing at the newcomer with a frightened look in her large, grey eyes.
“So you are that dangerous woman whom Vera Doukhova wished me to intercede for?” Nekhludoff asked, with a smile.
“Yes, I am,” said Lydia Shoustova, her broad, kind, child-like smile disclosing a row of beautiful teeth. “It was aunt who was so anxious to see you. Aunt!” she called out, in a pleasant, tender voice through a door.
“Your imprisonment grieved Vera Doukhova very much,” said Nekhludoff.
“Take a seat here, or better here,” said Shoustova, pointing to the battered easy-chair from which the young man had just risen.
“My cousin, Zakharov,” she said, noticing that Nekhludoff looked at the young man.
The young man greeted the visitor with a smile as kindly as Shoustova’s, and when Nekhludoff sat down he brought himself another chair, and sat by his side. A fair-haired schoolboy of about 10 also came into the room and silently sat down on the window-sill.
“Vera Doukhova is a great friend of my aunt’s, but I hardly know her,” said Shoustova.
Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather belt, came in from the next room.
“How do you do? Thanks for coming,” she began as soon as she had taken the place next Shoustova’s on the sofa.
“Well, and how is Vera. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?”
“She does not complain,” said Nekhludoff. “She says she feels perfectly happy.”’
“Ah, that’s like Vera. I know her,” said the aunt, smiling and shaking her head. “One must know her. She has a fine character. Everything for others; nothing for herself.”
“No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece was imprisoned for nothing.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said the aunt. “It is a dreadful business. She suffered, in reality, because of me.”
“Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the same.”
“Allow me to know better,” said the aunt. “You see,” she went on to Nekhludoff, “it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep his papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them to her. And that very night the police searched her room and took her and the papers, and have kept her up to now, demanding that she should say from whom she had them.”
“But I never told them,” said Shoustova quickly, pulling nervously at a lock that was not even out of place.
“I never said you did,” answered the aunt.
“If they took Mitin up it was certainly not through me,” said Shoustova, blushing, and looking round uneasily.
“Don’t speak about it, Lydia dear,” said her mother.
“Why not? I should like to relate it,” said Shoustova, no longer smiling nor pulling her lock, but twisting it round her finger and getting redder.
“Don’t forget what happened yesterday when you began talking about it.”
“Not at all—-Leave me alone, mamma. I did not tell, I only kept quiet. When he examined me about Mitin and about aunt, I said nothing, and told him I would not answer.”
“Then this—Petrov—”
“Petrov is a spy, a gendarme, and a blackguard,” put in the aunt, to explain her niece’s words to Nekhludoff.
“Then he began persuading,” continued Shoustova, excitedly and hurriedly. “‘Anything you tell me,’ he said, ‘can harm no one; on the contrary, if you tell me, we may be able to set free innocent people whom we may be uselessly tormenting.’ Well, I still said I would not tell. Then he said, ‘All right, don’t tell, but do not deny what I am going to say.’ And he named Mitin.”
“Don’t talk about it,” said the aunt.
“Oh, aunt, don’t interrupt,” and she went on pulling the lock of hair and looking round. “And then, only fancy, the next day I hear—they let me know by knocking at the wall—that Mitin is arrested. Well, I think I have betrayed him, and this tormented me so—it tormented me so that I nearly went mad.”
“And it turned out that it was not at all because of you he was taken up?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know. I think, ‘There, now, I have betrayed him.’ I walk and walk up and down from wall to wall, and cannot help thinking. I think, ‘I have betrayed him.’ I lie down and cover myself up, and hear something whispering, ‘Betrayed! betrayed Mitin! Mitin betrayed!’ I know it is an hallucination, but cannot help listening. I wish to fall asleep, I cannot. I wish not to think, and cannot cease. That is terrible!” and as Shoustova spoke she got more and more excited, and twisted and untwisted the lock of hair round her finger.
“Lydia, dear, be calm,” the mother said, touching her shoulder.
But Shoustova could not stop herself.
“It is all the more terrible—” she began again, but did not finish, and jumping up with a cry rushed out of the room.
Her mother turned to follow her.
“They ought to be hanged, the rascals!” said the schoolboy who was sitting on the window-sill.
“What’s that?” said the mother.
“I only said—Oh, it’s nothing,” the schoolboy answered, and taking a cigarette that lay on the table, he began to smoke.
“Yes, that solitary confinement is terrible for the young,” said the aunt, shaking her head and also lighting a cigarette.
“I should say for every one,” Nekhludoff replied.
“No, not for all,” answered the aunt. “For the real revolutionists, I have been told, it is rest and quiet. A man who is wanted by the police lives in continual anxiety, material want, and fear for himself and others, and for his cause, and at last, when he is taken up and it is all over, and all responsibility is off his shoulders, he can sit and rest. I have been told they actually feel joyful when taken up. But the young and innocent (they always first arrest the innocent, like Lydia), for them the first shock is terrible. It is not that they deprive you of freedom; and the bad food and bad air—all that is nothing. Three times as many privations would be easily borne if it were not for the moral shock when one is first taken.”
“Have you experienced it?”
“I? I was twice in prison,” she answered, with a sad, gentle smile. “When I was arrested for the first time I had done nothing. I was 22, had a child, and was expecting another. Though the loss of freedom and the parting with my child and husband were hard, they were nothing when compared with what I felt when I found out that I had ceased being a human creature and had become a thing. I wished to say good-bye to my little daughter. I was told to go and get into the trap. I asked where I was being taken to. The answer was that I should know when I got there. I asked what I was accused of, but got no reply. After I had been examined, and after they had undressed me and put numbered prison clothes on me, they led me to a vault, opened a door, pushed me in, and left me alone; a sentinel, with a loaded gun, paced up and down in front of my door, and every now and then looked in through a crack—I felt terribly depressed. What struck me most at the time was that the gendarme officer who examined me offered me a cigarette. So he knew that people liked smoking, and must know that they liked freedom and light; and that mothers love their children, and children their mothers. Then how could they tear me pitilessly from all that was dear to me, and lock me up in prison like a wild animal? That sort of thing could not be borne without evil effects. Any one who believes in God and men, and believes that men love one another, will cease to believe it after all that. I have ceased to believe in humanity since then, and have grown embittered,” she finished, with a smile.
Shoustova’s mother came in at the door through which her daughter had gone out, and said that Lydia was very much upset, and would not come in again.
“And what has this young life been ruined for?” said the aunt. “What is especially painful to me is that I am the involuntary cause of it.”
“She will recover in the country, with God’s help,” said the mother. “We shall send her to her father.”
“Yes, if it were not for you she would have perished altogether,” said the aunt. “Thank you. But what I wished to see you for is this: I wished to ask you to take a letter to Vera Doukhova,” and she got the letter out of her pocket.
“The letter is not closed; you may read and tear it up, or hand it to her, according to how far it coincides with your principles,” she said. “It contains nothing compromising.”
Nekhludoff took the letter, and, having promised to give it to Vera Doukhova, he took his leave and went away. He sealed the letter without reading it, meaning to take it to its destination.
The last thing that kept Nekhludoff in Petersburg was the case of the sectarians, whose petition he intended to get his former fellow-officer, Aide-de-camp Bogatyreff, to hand to the Tsar. He came to Bogatyreff in the morning, and found him about to go out, though still at breakfast. Bogatyreff was not tall, but firmly built and wonderfully strong (he could bend a horseshoe), a kind, honest, straight, and even liberal man. In spite of these qualities, he was intimate at Court, and very fond of the Tsar and his family, and by some strange method he managed, while living in that highest circle, to see nothing but the good in it and to take no part in the evil and corruption. He never condemned anybody nor any measure, and either kept silent or spoke in a bold, loud voice, almost shouting what he had to say, and often laughing in the same boisterous manner. And he did not do it for diplomatic reasons, but because such was his character.
“Ah, that’s right that you have come. Would you like some breakfast? Sit down, the beefsteaks are fine! I always begin with something substantial—begin and finish, too. Ha! ha! ha! Well, then, have a glass of wine,” he shouted, pointing to a decanter of claret. “I have been thinking of you. I will hand on the petition. I shall put it into his own hands. You may count on that, only it occurred to me that it would be best for you to call on Toporoff.”
Nekhludoff made a wry face at the mention of Toporoff.
“It all depends on him. He will be consulted, anyhow. And perhaps he may himself meet your wishes.”
“If you advise it I shall go.”
“That’s right. Well, and how does Petersburg agree with you?” shouted Bogatyreff. “Tell me. Eh?”
“I feel myself getting hypnotised,” replied Nekhludoff.
“Hypnotised!” Bogatyreff repeated, and burst out laughing. “You won’t have anything? Well, just as you please,” and he wiped his moustaches with his napkin. “Then you’ll go? Eh? If he does not do it, give the petition to me, and I shall hand it on to-morrow.” Shouting these words, he rose, crossed himself just as naturally as he had wiped his mouth, and began buckling on his sword.
“And now good-bye; I must go. We are both going out,” said Nekhludoff, and shaking Bogatyreff’s strong, broad hand, and with the sense of pleasure which the impression of something healthy and unconsciously fresh always gave him, Nekhludoff parted from Bogatyreff on the door-steps.
Though he expected no good result from his visit, still Nekhludoff, following Bogatyreff’s advice, went to see Toporoff, on whom the sectarians’ fate depended.
The position occupied by Toporoff, involving as it did an incongruity of purpose, could only be held by a dull man devoid of moral sensibility. Toporoff possessed both these negative qualities. The incongruity of the position he occupied was this. It was his duty to keep up and to defend, by external measures, not excluding violence, that Church which, by its own declaration, was established by God Himself and could not be shaken by the gates of hell nor by anything human. This divine and immutable God-established institution had to be sustained and defended by a human institution—the Holy Synod, managed by Toporoff and his officials. Toporoff did not see this contradiction, nor did he wish to see it, and he was therefore much concerned lest some Romish priest, some pastor, or some sectarian should destroy that Church which the gates of hell could not conquer.
Toporoff, like all those who are quite destitute of the fundamental religious feeling that recognises the equality and brotherhood of men, was fully convinced that the common people were creatures entirely different from himself, and that the people needed what he could very well do without, for at the bottom of his heart he believed in nothing, and found such a state very convenient and pleasant. Yet he feared lest the people might also come to such a state, and looked upon it as his sacred duty, as he called it, to save the people therefrom.
A certain cookery book declares that some crabs like to be boiled alive. In the same way he thought and spoke as if the people liked being kept in superstition; only he meant this in a literal sense, whereas the cookery book did not mean its words literally.
His feelings towards the religion he was keeping up were the same as those of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his fowls on. Carrion was very disgusting, but the fowls liked it; therefore it was right to feed the fowls on carrion. Of course all this worship of the images of the Iberian, Kasan and Smolensk Mothers of God was a gross superstition, but the people liked it and believed in it, and therefore the superstition must be kept up.
Thus thought Toporoff, not considering that the people only liked superstition because there always have been, and still are, men like himself who, being enlightened, instead of using their light to help others to struggle out of their dark ignorance, use it to plunge them still deeper into it.
When Nekhludoff entered the reception-room Toporoff was in his study talking with an abbess, a lively and aristocratic lady, who was spreading the Greek orthodox faith in Western Russia among the Uniates (who acknowledge the Pope of Rome), and who have the Greek religion enforced on them. An official who was in the reception-room inquired what Nekhludoff wanted, and when he heard that Nekhludoff meant to hand in a petition to the Emperor, he asked him if he would allow the petition to be read first. Nekhludoff gave it him, and the official took it into the study. The abbess, with her hood and flowing veil and her long train trailing behind, left the study and went out, her white hands (with their well-tended nails) holding a topaz rosary. Nekhludoff was not immediately asked to come in. Toporoff was reading the petition and shaking his head. He was unpleasantly surprised by the clear and emphatic wording of it.
“If it gets into the hands of the Emperor it may cause misunderstandings, and unpleasant questions may be asked,” he thought as he read. Then he put the petition on the table, rang, and ordered Nekhludoff to be asked in.
He remembered the case of the sectarians; he had had a petition from them before. The case was this: These Christians, fallen away from the Greek Orthodox Church, were first exhorted and then tried by law, but were acquitted. Then the Archdeacon and the Governor arranged, on the plea that their marriages were illegal, to exile these sectarians, separating the husbands, wives, and children. These fathers and wives were now petitioning that they should not be parted. Toporoff recollected the first time the case came to his notice: he had at that time hesitated whether he had not better put a stop to it. But then he thought no harm could result from his confirming the decision to separate and exile the different members of the sectarian families, whereas allowing the peasant sect to remain where it was might have a bad effect on the rest of the inhabitants of the place and cause them to fall away from Orthodoxy. And then the affair also proved the zeal of the Archdeacon, and so he let the case proceed along the lines it had taken. But now that they had a defender such as Nekhludoff, who had some influence in Petersburg, the case might be specially pointed out to the Emperor as something cruel, or it might get into the foreign papers. Therefore he at once took an unexpected decision.
“How do you do?” he said, with the air of a very busy man, receiving Nekhludoff standing, and at once starting on the business. “I know this case. As soon as I saw the names I recollected this unfortunate business,” he said, taking up the petition and showing it to Nekhludoff. “And I am much indebted to you for reminding me of it. It is the over-zealousness of the provincial authorities.”
Nekhludoff stood silent, looking with no kindly feelings at the immovable, pale mask of a face before him.
“And I shall give orders that these measures should be revoked and the people reinstated in their homes.”
“So that I need not make use of this petition?”
“I promise you most assuredly,” answered Toporoff, laying a stress on the word I, as if quite convinced that his honesty, his word was the best guarantee. “It will be best if I write at once. Take a seat, please.”
He went up to the table and began to write. As Nekhludoff sat down he looked at the narrow, bald skull, at the fat, blue-veined hand that was swiftly guiding the pen, and wondered why this evidently indifferent man was doing what he did and why he was doing it with such care.
“Well, here you are,” said Toporoff, sealing the envelope; “you may let your clients know,” and he stretched his lips to imitate a smile.
“Then what did these people suffer for?” Nekhludoff asked, as he took the envelope.
Toporoff raised his head and smiled, as if Nekhludoff’s question gave him pleasure. “That I cannot tell. All I can say is that the interests of the people guarded by us are so important that too great a zeal in matters of religion is not so dangerous or so harmful as the indifference which is now spreading—”
“But how is it that in the name of religion the very first demands of righteousness are violated—families are separated?”
Toporoff continued to smile patronisingly, evidently thinking what Nekhludoff said very pretty. Anything that Nekhludoff could say he would have considered very pretty and very one-sided, from the height of what he considered his far-reaching office in the State.
“It may seem so from the point of view of a private individual,” he said, “but from an administrative point of view it appears in a rather different light. However, I must bid you good-bye, now,” said Toporoff, bowing his head and holding out his hand, which Nekhludoff pressed.
“The interests of the people! Your interests is what you mean!” thought Nekhludoff as he went out. And he ran over in his mind the people in whom is manifested the activity of the institutions that uphold religion and educate the people. He began with the woman punished for the illicit sale of spirits, the boy for theft, the tramp for tramping, the incendiary for setting a house on fire, the banker for fraud, and that unfortunate Lydia Shoustova imprisoned only because they hoped to get such information as they required from her. Then he thought of the sectarians punished for violating Orthodoxy, and Gourkevitch for wanting constitutional government, and Nekhludoff clearly saw that all these people were arrested, locked up, exiled, not really because they transgressed against justice or behaved unlawfully, but only because they were an obstacle hindering the officials and the rich from enjoying the property they had taken away from the people. And the woman who sold wine without having a license, and the thief knocking about the town, and Lydia Shoustova hiding proclamations, and the sectarians upsetting superstitions, and Gourkevitch desiring a constitution, were a real hindrance. It seemed perfectly clear to Nekhludoff that all these officials, beginning with his aunt’s husband, the Senators, and Toporoff, down to those clean and correct gentlemen who sat at the tables in the Ministry Office, were not at all troubled by the fact that that in such a state of things the innocent had to suffer, but were only concerned how to get rid of the really dangerous, so that the rule that ten guilty should escape rather than that one innocent should be condemned was not observed, but, on the contrary, for the sake of getting rid of one really dangerous person, ten who seemed dangerous were punished, as, when cutting a rotten piece out of anything, one has to cut away some that is good.
This explanation seemed very simple and clear to Nekhludoff; but its very simplicity and clearness made him hesitate to accept it. Was it possible that so complicated a phenomenon could have so simple and terrible an explanation? Was it possible that all these words about justice, law, religion, and God, and so on, were mere words, hiding the coarsest cupidity and cruelty?
Nekhludoff would have left Petersburg on the evening of the same day, but he had promised Mariette to meet her at the theatre, and though he knew that he ought not to keep that promise, he deceived himself into the belief that it would not be right to break his word.
“Am I capable of withstanding these temptations?” he asked himself not quite honestly. “I shall try for the last time.”
He dressed in his evening clothes, and arrived at the theatre during the second act of the eternal Dame aux Camelias, in which a foreign actress once again, and in a novel manner, showed how women die of consumption.
The theatre was quite full. Mariette’s box was at once, and with great deference, shown to Nekhludoff at his request. A liveried servant stood in the corridor outside; he bowed to Nekhludoff as to one whom he knew, and opened the door of the box.
All the people who sat and stood in the boxes on the opposite side, those who sat near and those who were in the parterre, with their grey, grizzly, bald, or curly heads—all were absorbed in watching the thin, bony actress who, dressed in silks and laces, was wriggling before them, and speaking in an unnatural voice.
Some one called “Hush!” when the door opened, and two streams, one of cool, the other of hot, air touched Nekhludoff’s face.
Mariette and a lady whom he did not know, with a red cape and a big, heavy head-dress, were in the box, and two men also, Mariette’s husband, the General, a tall, handsome man with a severe, inscrutable countenance, a Roman nose, and a uniform padded round the chest, and a fair man, with a bit of shaved chin between pompous whiskers.
Mariette, graceful, slight, elegant, her low-necked dress showing her firm, shapely, slanting shoulders, with a little black mole where they joined her neck, immediately turned, and pointed with her face to a chair behind her in an engaging manner, and smiled a smile that seemed full of meaning to Nekhludoff.
The husband looked at him in the quiet way in which he did everything, and bowed. In the look he exchanged with his wife, the master, the owner of a beautiful woman, was to be seen at once.
When the monologue was over the theatre resounded with the clapping of hands. Mariette rose, and holding up her rustling silk skirt, went into the back of the box and introduced Nekhludoff to her husband.
The General, without ceasing to smile with his eyes, said he was very pleased, and then sat inscrutably silent.
“I ought to have left to-day, had I not promised,” said Nekhludoff to Mariette.
“If you do not care to see me,” said Mariette, in answer to what his words implied, “you will see a wonderful actress. Was she not splendid in the last scene?” she asked, turning to her husband.
The husband bowed his head.
“This sort of thing does not touch me,” said Nekhludoff. “I have seen so much real suffering lately that—”
“Yes, sit down and tell me.”
The husband listened, his eyes smiling more and more ironically. “I have been to see that woman whom they have set free, and who has been kept in prison for so long; she is quite broken down.”
“That is the woman I spoke to you about,” Mariette said to her husband.
“Oh, yes, I was very pleased that she could be set free,” said the husband quietly, nodding and smiling under his moustache with evident irony, so it seemed to Nekhludoff. “I shall go and have a smoke.”
Nekhludoff sat waiting to hear what the something was that Mariette had to tell him. She said nothing, and did not even try to say anything, but joked and spoke about the performance, which she thought ought to touch Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff saw that she had nothing to tell, but only wished to show herself to him in all the splendour of her evening toilet, with her shoulders and little mole; and this was pleasant and yet repulsive to him.
The charm that had veiled all this sort of thing from Nekhludoff was not removed, but it was as if he could see what lay beneath. Looking at Mariette, he admired her, and yet he knew that she was a liar, living with a husband who was making his career by means of the tears and lives of hundreds and hundreds of people, and that she was quite indifferent about it, and that all she had said the day before was untrue. What she wanted—neither he nor she knew why—was to make him fall in love with her. This both attracted and disgusted him. Several times, on the point of going away, he took up his hat, and then stayed on.
But at last, when the husband returned with a strong smell of tobacco in his thick moustache, and looked at Nekhludoff with a patronising, contemptuous air, as if not recognising him, Nekhludoff left the box before the door was closed again, found his overcoat, and went out of the theatre. As he was walking home along the Nevski, he could not help noticing a well-shaped and aggressively finely-dressed woman, who was quietly walking in front of him along the broad asphalt pavement. The consciousness of her detestable power was noticeable in her face and the whole of her figure. All who met or passed that woman looked at her. Nekhludoff walked faster than she did and, involuntarily, also looked her in the face. The face, which was probably painted, was handsome, and the woman looked at him with a smile and her eyes sparkled. And, curiously enough, Nekhludoff was suddenly reminded of Mariette, because he again felt both attracted and disgusted just as when in the theatre.
Having hurriedly passed her, Nekhludoff turned off on to the Morskaya, and passed on to the embankment, where, to the surprise of a policeman, he began pacing up and down the pavement.
“The other one gave me just such a smile when I entered the theatre,” he thought, “and the meaning of the smile was the same. The only difference is, that this one said plainly, ‘If you want me, take me; if not, go your way,’ and the other one pretended that she was not thinking of this, but living in some high and refined state, while this was really at the root. Besides, this one was driven to it by necessity, while the other amused herself by playing with that enchanting, disgusting, frightful passion. This woman of the street was like stagnant, smelling water offered to those whose thirst was greater than their disgust; that other one in the theatre was like the poison which, unnoticed, poisons everything it gets into.”
Nekhludoff recalled his liaison with the Marechal’s wife, and shameful memories rose before him.
“The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting,” thought he, “but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and—whether one has fallen or resisted—one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship—then we are swallowed up by it completely, and worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful.”
Nekhludoff perceived all this now as clearly as he saw the palace, the sentinels, the fortress, the river, the boats, and the Stock Exchange. And just as on this northern summer night there was no restful darkness on the earth, but only a dismal, dull light coming from an invisible source, so in Nekhludoff’s soul there was no longer the restful darkness, ignorance. Everything seemed clear. It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all the glamour and luxury hid the old, well-known crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the splendour which men were capable of inventing.
Nekhludoff wished to forget all this, not to see it, but he could no longer help seeing it. Though he could not see the source of the light which revealed it to him any more than he could see the source of the light which lay over Petersburg; and though the light appeared to him dull, dismal, and unnatural, yet he could not help seeing what it revealed, and he felt both joyful and anxious.