Leo Tolstoy: The Complete Novels and Novellas. Leo Tolstoy

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      At that period I thought it incumbent upon me, in virtue of my student’s uniform, to reply in a very “clever and original” manner to every question put to me by people whom I did not know very well, and regarded such short, clear answers as “Yes,” “No,” “I like it,” or “I do not care for it,” as things to be ashamed of. Accordingly, looking down at my new and fashionably-cut trousers and the glittering buttons of my tunic, I replied that I had never read Rob Roy, but that it interested me greatly to hear it, since I preferred to read books from the middle rather than from the beginning.

      “It is twice as interesting,” I added with a self-satisfied smirk; “for then one can guess what has gone before as well as what is to come after.”

      The Princess smiled what I thought was a forced smile, but one which I discovered later to be her only one.

      “Well, perhaps that is true,” she said. “But tell me, Nicolas (you will not be offended if I drop the Monsieur)— tell me, are you going to be in town long? When do you go away?”

      “I do not know quite. Perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps not for some while yet,” I replied for some reason or another, though I knew perfectly well that in reality we were to go to-morrow.

      “I wish you could stop longer, both for your own sake and for Dimitri’s,” she said in a meditative manner. “At your age friendship is a weak thing.”

      I felt that every one was looking at me, and waiting to see what I should say — though certainly Varenika made a pretence of looking at her aunt’s work. I felt, in fact, as though I were being put through an examination, and that it behoved me to figure in it as well as possible.

      “Yes, to ME Dimitri’s friendship is most useful,” I replied, “but to HIM mine cannot be of any use at all, since he is a thousand times better than I.” (Dimitri could not hear what I said, or I should have feared his detecting the insincerity of my words.)

      Again the Princess smiled her unnatural, yet characteristically natural, smile.

      “Just listen to him!” she said. “But it is YOU who are the little monster of perfection.”

      “‘Monster of perfection,’” I thought to myself. “That is splendid. I must make a note of it.”

      “Yet, to dismiss yourself, he has been extraordinarily clever in that quarter,” she went on in a lower tone (which pleased me somehow) as she indicated Lubov Sergievna with her eyes, “since he has discovered in our poor little Auntie” (such was the pet name which they gave Lubov) “all sorts of perfections which I, who have known her and her little dog for twenty years, had never yet suspected. “Varenika, go and tell them to bring me a glass of water,” she added, letting her eyes wander again. Probably she had bethought her that it was too soon, or not entirely necessary, to let me into all the family secrets. “Yet no — let HIM go, for he has nothing to do, while you are reading. Pray go to the door, my friend,” she said to me, “and walk about fifteen steps down the passage. Then halt and call out pretty loudly, “Peter, bring Maria Ivanovna a glass of iced water”— and she smiled her curious smile once more.

      “I expect she wants to say something about me in my absence,” I thought to myself as I left the room. “I expect she wants to remark that she can see very clearly that I am a very, very clever young man.”

      Hardly had I taken a dozen steps when I was overtaken by Sophia Ivanovna, who, though fat and short of breath, trod with surprising lightness and agility.

      “Merci, mon cher,” she said. “I will go and tell them myself.”

Chapter 24 — Love

      Sophia Ivanovna, as I afterwards came to know her, was one of those rare, young-old women who are born for family life, but to whom that happiness has been denied by fate. Consequently all that store of their love which should have been poured out upon a husband and children becomes pent up in their hearts, until they suddenly decide to let it overflow upon a few chosen individuals. Yet so inexhaustible is that store of old maids’ love that, despite the number of individuals so selected, there still remains an abundant surplus of affection which they lavish upon all by whom they are surrounded — upon all, good or bad, whom they may chance to meet in their daily life.

      Of love there are three kinds — love of beauty, the love which denies itself, and practical love.

      Of the desire of a young man for a young woman, as well as of the reverse instance, I am not now speaking, for of such tendresses I am wary, seeing that I have been too unhappy in my life to have been able ever to see in such affection a single spark of truth, but rather a lying pretence in which sensuality, connubial relations, money, and the wish to bind hands or to unloose them have rendered feeling such a complex affair as to defy analysis. Rather am I speaking of that love for a human being which, according to the spiritual strength of its possessor, concentrates itself either upon a single individual, upon a few, or upon many — of love for a mother, a father, a brother, little children, a friend, a compatriot — of love, in short, for one’s neighbour.

      Love of beauty consists in a love of the sense of beauty and of its expression. People who thus love conceive the object of their affection to be desirable only in so far as it arouses in them that pleasurable sensation of which the consciousness and the expression soothes the senses. They change the object of their love frequently, since their principal aim consists in ensuring that the voluptuous feeling of their adoration shall be constantly titillated. To preserve in themselves this sensuous condition, they talk unceasingly, and in the most elegant terms, on the subject of the love which they feel, not only for its immediate object, but also for objects upon which it does not touch at all. This country of ours contains many such individuals — individuals of that well-known class who, cultivating “the beautiful,” not only discourse of their cult to all and sundry, but speak of it pre-eminently in FRENCH. It may seem a strange and ridiculous thing to say, but I am convinced that among us we have had in the past, and still have, a large section of society — notably women — whose love for their friends, husbands, or children would expire to-morrow if they were debarred from dilating upon it in the tongue of France!

      Love of the second kind — renunciatory love — consists in a yearning to undergo self-sacrifice for the object beloved, regardless of any consideration whether such self-sacrifice will benefit or injure the object in question. “There is no evil which I would not endure to show both the world and him or her whom I adore my devotion.” There we have the formula of this kind of love. People who thus love never look for reciprocity of affection, since it is a finer thing to sacrifice yourself for one who does not comprehend you. Also, they are always painfully eager to exaggerate the merits of their sacrifice; usually constant in their love, for the reason that they would find it hard to forego the kudos of the deprivations which they endure for the object beloved; always ready to die, to prove to him or to her the entirety of their devotion; but sparing of such small daily proofs of their love as call for no special effort of self- immolation. They do not much care whether you eat well, sleep well, keep your spirits up, or enjoy good health, nor do they ever do anything to obtain for you those blessings if they have it in their power; but, should you be confronting a bullet, or have fallen into the water, or stand in danger of being burnt, or have had your heart broken in a love affair — well, for all these things they are prepared if the occasion should arise. Moreover, people addicted to love of such a self-sacrificing order are invariably proud of their love, exacting, jealous, distrustful, and — strange to tell — anxious that the object of their adoration should incur perils (so that they may save it from calamity, and console it thereafter) and even be vicious (so that they may purge it of its vice).

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