"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.