Anna Karenina - Part 2

Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and this

acquaintance, together with her friendship with Varenka, did not

merely exercise a great influence on her, it also comforted her

in her mental distress. She found this comfort through a

completely new world being opened to her by means of this

acquaintance, a world having nothing in common with her past, an

exalted, noble world, from the height of which she could

contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides

the instinctive life to which Kitty had given herself up hitherto

there was a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion,

but a religion having nothing in common with that one which Kitty

had known from childhood, and which found expression in litanies

and all-night services at the Widow's Home, where one might meet

one's friends, and in learning by heart Slavonic texts with the

priest. This was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a

whole series of noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do

more than merely believe because one was told to, which one could

love.

Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl talked to

Kitty as to a charming child that one looks on with pleasure as

on the memory of one's youth, and only once she said in passing

that in all human sorrows nothing gives comfort but love and

faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no

sorrow is trifling--and immediately talked of other things. But

in every gesture of Madame Stahl, in every word, in every

heavenly--as Kitty called it--look, and above all in the whole

story of her life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized

that something "that was important," of which, till then, she had

known nothing.

Yet, elevated as Madame Stahl's character was, touching as was

her story, and exalted and moving as was her speech, Kitty could

not help detecting in her some traits which perplexed her. She

noticed that when questioning her about her family, Madame Stahl

had smiled contemptuously, which was not in accord with Christian

meekness. She noticed, too, that when she had found a Catholic

priest with her, Madame Stahl had studiously kept her face in the

shadow of the lamp-shade and had smiled in a peculiar way.

Trivial as these two observations were, they perplexed her, and

she had her doubts as to Madame Stahl. But on the other hand

Varenka, alone in the world, without friends or relations, with a

melancholy disappointment in the past, desiring nothing,

regretting nothing, was just that perfection of which Kitty dared

hardly dream. In Varenka she realized that one has but to forget

oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.

And that was what Kitty longed to be. Seeing now clearly what

was _the most important_, Kitty was not satisfied with being

enthusiastic over it; she at once gave herself up with her whole

soul to the new life that was opening to her. From Varenka's

accounts of the doings of Madame Stahl and other people whom she

mentioned, Kitty had already constructed the plan of her own

future life. She would, like Madame Stahl's niece, Aline, of

whom Varenka had talked to her a great deal, seek out those who

were in trouble, wherever she might be living, help them as far

as she could, give them the Gospel, read the Gospel to the sick,

to criminals, to the dying. The idea of reading the Gospel to

criminals, as Aline did, particularly fascinated Kitty. But all

these were secret dreams, of which Kitty did not talk either to

her mother or to Varenka.