"I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for

your words," he said, when she had finished praying.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna once more pressed both her friend's

hands.

"Now I will enter upon my duties," she said with a smile after a

pause, as she wiped away the traces of tears. "I am going to

Seryozha. Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you." And

she got up and went out.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha's part of the house,

and dropping tears on the scared child's cheeks, she told him

that his father was a saint and his mother was dead.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually take

upon herself the care of the organization and management of

Alexey Alexandrovitch's household. But she had not overstated

the case when saying that practical affairs were not her strong

point. All her arrangements had to be modified because they

could not be carried out, and they were modified by Korney,

Alexey Alexandrovitch's valet, who, though no one was aware of

the fact, now managed Karenin's household, and quietly and

discreetly reported to his master while he was dressing all it

was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna's help was

none the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral support

in the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still

more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost

turned him to Christianity--that is, from an indifferent and

apathetic believer she turned him into an ardent and steadfast

adherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which

had been gaining ground of late in Petersburg. It was easy for

Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in this teaching. Alexey

Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared

their views, was completely devoid of vividness of imagination,

that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked

by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in

harmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw

nothing impossible and inconceivable in the idea that death,

though existing for unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that,

as he was possessed of the most perfect faith, of the measure of

which he was himself the judge, therefore there was no sin in his

soul, and he was experiencing complete salvation here on earth.

It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this

conception of his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey

Alexandrovitch, and he knew that when, without the slightest idea

that his forgiveness was the action of a higher power, he had

surrendered directly to the feeling of forgiveness, he had felt

more happiness than now when he was thinking every instant that

Christ was in his heart, and that in signing official papers he

was doing His will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a

necessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him

in his humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, however

imaginary, from which, looked down upon by all, he could look

down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to his

delusion of salvation.




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