Anna Karenina

‘If they run, get them from behind with canister-shot or Cossacks with whips,’ said the prince.

‘That’s a joke, and not a very nice joke, if you’ll forgive me, Prince,’ said Sergei Ivanovich.

‘I don’t see it as a joke, it’s ...’ Levin began, but Sergei Ivanovich interrupted him.

‘Each member of society is called upon to do what is proper to him,’ he said. ‘Thinking people do their work by expressing public opinion. And the unanimity and full expression of public opinion is the merit of the press, and at the same time a joyous fact. Twenty years ago we would have been silent, but now we hear the voice of the Russian people, ready to rise as one man and sacrifice themselves for their oppressed brothers. That is a great step and a pledge of strength.’

‘But it’s not just to sacrifice themselves, it’s also to kill Turks,’ Levin said timidly. ‘The people sacrifice and are always prepared to sacrifice themselves for their soul, not for murder,’ he added, involuntarily connecting the conversation with the thoughts that occupied him so much.

‘How, for the soul? You understand that for a natural scientist that is a troublesome expression. What is this soul?’ Katavasov said, smiling.

‘Ah, you know!’

‘By God, I haven’t the slightest idea!’ Katavasov said with a loud laugh.

‘ “I have brought not peace but a sword,” says Christ,’¹² Sergei Ivanovich objected on his side, simply quoting, as if it were the most understandable thing, the very passage of the Gospel that had always disturbed Levin most of all.

‘That’s quite so,’ the old man, who was standing near them, again repeated, responding to the accidental glance cast at him.

‘No, my dear, you’re demolished, demolished, completely demolished! ’ Katavasov cried merrily.

Levin flushed with vexation, not because he was demolished, but because he had not restrained himself and had begun to argue.

‘No, I can’t argue with them,’ he thought, ‘they’re wearing impenetrable armour, and I am naked.’

He saw that his brother and Katavasov were not to be persuaded, and still less did he find it possible for himself to agree with them. What they preached was that very pride of reason which had nearly ruined him. He could not agree with the idea that dozens of people, his brother among them, had the right, on the basis of what was told them by some hundreds of fine-talking volunteers coming to the capitals, to say that they and the newspapers expressed the will and thought of the people, a thought that expressed itself in revenge and murder. He could not agree with it, because he did not see the expression of these thoughts in the people among whom he lived, nor did he find these thoughts in himself (and he could not consider himself anything else but one of those persons who made up the Russian people), and above all because, while neither he nor the people knew or could know what the common good consisted in, he knew firmly that it was only possible to attain that common good by strictly fulfilling the law of the good that was open to every man, and therefore he could not desire war and preach it for any common purposes whatsoever. He said, together with Mikhailych and the people, who expressed their thought in the legend about the calling of the Varangians:¹³ ‘Be our princes and rule over us. We joyfully promise full obedience. All labours, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take upon ourselves, but we will not judge or decide.’ And now, according to Sergei Ivanovich’s words, the people had renounced this right purchased at so dear a cost.

He also wanted to say that if public opinion is an infallible judge, then why was a revolution or a commune not as legitimate as the movement in defence of the Slavs? But these were all thoughts that could not decide anything. Only one thing could unquestionably be seen - that in that present moment the argument irritated Sergei Ivanovich and therefore it was bad to argue; and Levin fell silent and drew his visitors’ attention to the fact that clouds were gathering and that they had better go home before it rained.

XVII

The prince and Sergei Ivanovich got into the gig and drove; the rest of the company, quickening their pace, went home on foot.

But the storm clouds, now white, now black, came on so quickly that they had to walk still faster to get home ahead of the rain. The advancing clouds, low and dark as sooty smoke, raced across the sky with extraordinary speed. They were still about two hundred paces from the house, but the wind had already risen, and a downpour could be expected at any moment.

The children ran ahead with frightened, joyful shrieks. Darya Alexandrovna, struggling hard with the skirts that clung to her legs, no longer walked but ran, not taking her eyes off the children. The men, holding on to their hats, walked with long strides. They were just at the porch when a big drop struck and broke up on the edge of the iron gutter. The children, and the grown-ups after them, ran under the cover of the roof with merry chatter.