How was he to break off his relations with Mary Vasilievna and
her husband in such a way as to be able to look him and his
children in the eyes? How disentangle himself from Missy? How
choose between the two opposites--the recognition that holding
land was unjust and the heritage from his mother? How atone for
his sin against Katusha? This last, at any rate, could not be
left as it was. He could not abandon a woman he had loved, and
satisfy himself by paying money to an advocate to save her from
hard labour in Siberia. She had not even deserved hard labour.
Atone for a fault by paying money? Had he not then, when he gave
her the money, thought he was atoning for his fault?
And he clearly recalled to mind that moment when, having caught
her up in the passage, he thrust the money into her bib and ran
away. "Oh, that money!" he thought with the same horror and
disgust he had then felt. "Oh, dear! oh, dear! how disgusting,"
he cried aloud as he had done then. "Only a scoundrel, a knave,
could do such a thing. And I am that knave, that scoundrel!" He
went on aloud: "But is it possible?"--he stopped and stood
still--"is it possible that I am really a scoundrel? . . .
Well, who but I?" he answered himself. "And then, is this the
only thing?" he went on, convicting himself. "Was not my conduct
towards Mary Vasilievna and her husband base and disgusting? And
my position with regard to money? To use riches considered by me
unlawful on the plea that they are inherited from my mother? And
the whole of my idle, detestable life? And my conduct towards
Katusha to crown all? Knave and scoundrel! Let men judge me as
they like, I can deceive them; but myself I cannot deceive."
And, suddenly, he understood that the aversion he had lately, and
particularly to-day, felt for everybody--the Prince and Sophia
Vasilievna and Corney and Missy--was an aversion for himself.
And, strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness
there was something painful yet joyful and quieting.
More than once in Nekhludoff's life there had been what he called
a "cleansing of the soul." By "cleansing of the soul" he meant a
state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner
life, a total cessation of its activity, he began to clear out
all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul, and was the
cause of the cessation of the true life. His soul needed
cleansing as a watch does. After such an awakening Nekhludoff
always made some rules for himself which he meant to follow
forever after, wrote his diary, and began afresh a life which he
hoped never to change again. "Turning over a new leaf," he called
it to himself in English. But each time the temptations of the
world entrapped him, and without noticing it he fell again, often
lower than before.