Resurrection

"Katerina Michaelovna, you've lost your shawl!" screamed the

little girl, who was trying to keep up with her.

Katusha stopped, threw back her head, and catching hold of it

with both hands sobbed aloud. "Gone!" she screamed.

"He is sitting in a velvet arm-chair and joking and drinking, in

a brightly lit carriage, and I, out here in the mud, in the

darkness, in the wind and the rain, am standing and weeping," she

thought to herself; and sat down on the ground, sobbing so loud

that the little girl got frightened, and put her arms round her,

wet as she was.

"Come home, dear," she said.

"When a train passes--then under a carriage, and there will be an

end," Katusha was thinking, without heeding the girl.

And she made up her mind to do it, when, as it always happens,

when a moment of quiet follows great excitement, he, the

child--his child--made himself known within her. Suddenly all

that a moment before had been tormenting her, so that it had

seemed impossible to live, all her bitterness towards him, and

the wish to revenge herself, even by dying, passed away; she grew

quieter, got up, put the shawl on her head, and went home.

Wet, muddy, and quite exhausted, she returned, and from that day

the change which brought her where she now was began to operate

in her soul. Beginning from that dreadful night, she ceased

believing in God and in goodness. She had herself believed in

God, and believed that other people also believed in Him; but

after that night she became convinced that no one believed, and

that all that was said about God and His laws was deception and

untruth. He whom she loved, and who had loved her--yes, she knew

that--had thrown her away; had abused her love. Yet he was the

best of all the people she knew. All the rest were still worse.

All that afterwards happened to her strengthened her in this

belief at every step. His aunts, the pious old ladies, turned her

out when she could no longer serve them as she used to. And of

all those she met, the women used her as a means of getting

money, the men, from the old police officer down to the warders

of the prison, looked at her as on an object for pleasure. And no

one in the world cared for aught but pleasure. In this belief the

old author with whom she had come together in the second year of

her life of independence had strengthened her. He had told her

outright that it was this that constituted the happiness of life,

and he called it poetical and aesthetic.

Everybody lived for himself only, for his pleasure, and all the

talk concerning God and righteousness was deception. And if

sometimes doubts arose in her mind and she wondered why

everything was so ill-arranged in the world that all hurt each

other, and made each other suffer, she thought it best not to

dwell on it, and if she felt melancholy she could smoke, or,

better still, drink, and it would pass.