"Daryalov fought a duel...."
The duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey
Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a
coward, and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey
Alexandrovitch could not without horror contemplate the idea of a
pistol aimed at himself, and had never made use of any weapon in his
life. This horror had in his youth set him pondering on dueling,
and picturing himself in a position in which he would have to
expose his life to danger. Having attained success and an
established position in the world, he had long ago forgotten this
feeling; but the habitual bent of feeling reasserted itself, and
dread of his own cowardice proved even now so strong that Alexey
Alexandrovitch spent a long while thinking over the question of
dueling in all its aspects, and hugging the idea of a duel,
though he was fully aware beforehand that he would never under
any circumstances fight one.
"There's no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it's not the
same in England) that very many"--and among these were those
whose opinion Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued--"look
favorably on the duel; but what result is attained by it? Suppose
I call him out," Alexey Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and
vividly picturing the night he would spend after the challenge,
and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered, and knew that he never
would do it--"suppose I call him out. Suppose I am taught," he
went on musing, "to shoot; I press the trigger," he said to
himself, closing his eyes, "and it turns out I have killed him,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook his head as
though to dispel such silly ideas. "What sense is there in
murdering a man in order to define one's relation to a guilty
wife and son? I should still just as much have to decide what I
ought to do with her. But what is more probable and what would
doubtless occur--I should be killed or wounded. I, the
innocent person, should be the victim--killed or wounded. It's
even more senseless. But apart from that, a challenge to fight
would be an act hardly honest on my side. Don't I know perfectly
well that my friends would never allow me to fight a duel--would
never allow the life of a statesman, needed by Russia, to be
exposed to danger? Knowing perfectly well beforehand that the
matter would never come to real danger, it would amount to my
simply trying to gain a certain sham reputation by such a
challenge. That would be dishonest, that would be false, that
would be deceiving myself and others. A duel is quite
irrational, and no one expects it of me. My aim is simply to
safeguard my reputation, which is essential for the uninterrupted
pursuit of my public duties." Official duties, which had always
been of great consequence in Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes, seemed
of special importance to his mind at this moment. Considering
and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned to
divorce--another solution selected by several of the husbands he
remembered. Passing in mental review all the instances he knew
of divorces (there were plenty of them in the very highest
society with which he was very familiar), Alexey Alexandrovitch
could not find a single example in which the object of divorce
was that which he had in view. In all these instances the
husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and
the very party which, being in fault, had not the right to
contract a fresh marriage, had formed counterfeit,
pseudo-matrimonial ties with a self-styled husband. In his own
case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a legal divorce, that is to
say, one in which only the guilty wife would be repudiated, was
impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex conditions of
the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife's guilt,
required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain
refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being
brought forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward
such proofs would damage him in the public estimation more than
it would her.