Anna Karenina (Annotated Maude Translation). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 6

      WHEN Oblonsky asked Levin his reason for coming to town, Levin had blushed and been angry with himself for blushing, because he could not answer: ‘I have come to propose to your sister-in-law,’ although he really had come solely for that purpose.

      The Levins and the Shcherbatskys were two old aristocratic Moscow families that had always been on intimate and friendly terms. Their ties were drawn still closer during Levin’s University days. He had prepared for and entered the University together with young Prince Shcherbatsky, Dolly’s and Kitty’s brother. At that time Levin often visited the Shcherbatskys, and fell in love with the family. Strange as it may seem, it was the whole Shcherbatsky family — especially the feminine half of it — that Levin was in love with. He could not remember his mother, and his sister was much his senior, so that in the Shcherbatskys’ house he saw for the first time the family life of a well-educated and honourable family of the old aristocracy — a life such as he had been deprived of by the death of his own father and mother. All the members of that family, especially the women, appeared to him as though wrapped in some mystic poetic veil, and he not only saw no defects in them, but imagined behind that poetic veil the loftiest feelings and every possible perfection. Why these three young ladies had to speak French and English on alternate days; why at a given time they played, each in her turn, on the piano (the sound of which reached their brother’s room where the students were at work); why those masters of French literature, music, drawing, and dancing came to the house; why at certain hours the three young ladies accompanied by Mademoiselle Linon were driven in a calèche [a light carriage with a folding top] to the Tverskoy Boulevard, wearing satin cloaks (Dolly a long one; Nataly a somewhat shorter one; and Kitty so short a cloak that her shapely little legs in their tight red stockings were quite exposed); why they had to walk up and down the Tverskoy Boulevard accompanied by a footman with a gilt cockade in his hat, — all this and much more that happened in this mystic world he did not understand; but he knew that everything done there was beautiful and he was in love with the very mystery of it all.

      In his student days he very nearly fell in love with the eldest daughter, Dolly; but a marriage was soon after arranged between her and Oblonsky. Then he began falling in love with the second daughter. He seemed to feel that he must fall in love with one of the sisters, but he was not sure with which. But Nataly too, as soon as she came out, married the diplomat, Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin finished at the University. Young Shcherbatsky who entered the navy was drowned in the Baltic; and after that, in spite of his friendship with Oblonsky, Levin’s intercourse with the Shcherbatskys became less frequent. But when he had come to Moscow early in the winter of this year and met them, he knew at last which of the three sisters he was really fated to love.

      It would seem that nothing could be simpler than for him, a man of good family, rich rather than poor, and thirty-two years of age, to propose to the Princess Shcherbatskaya. In all likelihood he would have been considered quite a suitable match. But Levin was in love, and therefore Kitty seemed to him so perfect in every respect, so transcending everything earthly, and he seemed to himself so very earthly and insignificant a creature, that the possibility of his being considered worthy of her by others or by herself was to him unimaginable.

      Having spent two months in Moscow, living as in a fog, meeting Kitty almost every day in Society which he began to frequent in order to meet her, he suddenly made up his mind that it was impossible, and returned to the country.

      Levin’s conviction that it was impossible rested on the idea that from her relatives’ point of view he was not a good or suitable match for the delightful Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him. From her parents’ standpoint (it seemed to him) he had no settled occupation or position in the world. He was thirty-two, and while his former comrades were already colonels, aides-de-camp, Bank and Railway Directors, or Heads of Government Boards like Oblonsky, he (he knew very well what others must think of him) was merely a country squire, spending his time breeding cows, shooting snipe, and erecting buildings — that is to say, a fellow without talent, who had come to no good and was only doing what in the opinion of Society good-for-nothing people always do. Of course the mysterious, enchanting Kitty could not love a plain fellow, such as he considered himself to be, a man so ordinary and undistinguished. Moreover, his former relation to Kitty had been that of a grown-up man toward a child whose brother’s friend he was, and this seemed an additional obstacle in love’s path. He thought a plain kindly fellow like himself might be loved as a friend, but to be loved with the kind of love he felt for Kitty, a man must be handsome, and above all remarkable.

      He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women.

      But after spending two months alone in the country, he became convinced that this time he was not in love as he had been when quite young — for his present feelings gave him not a moment’s rest — and that he could not live unless the question whether she was to be his wife or not were decided; also that his despair had been the outcome of his own fancy, and that he had no proof that he would be rejected. So he had now come to Moscow determined to propose to her, and to marry her if he was accepted. Or … but he dared not think what would happen if she refused him.