Anna Karenina - Part 3

"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.