Resurrection Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc .txt) 📖

of woman had written it in the hall. It was a note from Shoústova’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 Vasílievsky, 5th Line, house No. ⸻. This was very necessary because of Véra Doúkhova. 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 Bogotyréff, a former fellow-officer, aide-de-camp to the Emperor, whom Nekhlúdoff had asked to hand personally to the Emperor his petition on behalf of the sectarians. Bogotyréff 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 Nekhlúdoff first to go and see the person on whom the matter depended.

After the impressions received during the last few days, Nekhlúdoff 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 Bogotyréff, 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 Katerína Ivánovna, who asked him to come up and have a cup of tea with her.

Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff entered the room. He knew it by the way she laughed, and by the way the good-natured Countess Katerína Ivánovna’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, Nekhlúdoff 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?” Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff’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 Selenín.

“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 Selenín in Petersburg society.

“What is his wife like?” Nekhlúdoff 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 Shoústova, 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 Nekhlúdoff was about to say.

“It is revolting⁠—revolting.”

Countess Katerína Ivánovna 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 tomorrow night. Kiesewetter will be there. And you, too,” she said, turning to Mariette. “Il vous a remarqué,” 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 Nekhlúdoff 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,