Resurrection

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.