Alexei Alexandrovich listened to her now, and those expressions which had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at least exaggerated, now seemed to him natural and consolatory. Alexei Alexandrovich had disliked this new enthusiastic fervor. He was a believer, who was interested in religion primarily in its political aspect, and the new doctrine which ventured upon several new interpretations, just because it paved the way to discussion and analysis, was in principle disagreeable to him. He had hitherto taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude to this new doctrine, and with Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who had been carried away by it, he had never argued, but by silence had assiduously parried her attempts to provoke him into argument. Now for the first time he heard her words with pleasure, and did not inwardly oppose them.
`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 squeezed both of 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 Seriozha.
Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you.' And she got up and went out.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seriozha'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 Alexei Alexandrovich'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 Kornei, Alexei Alexandrovich'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 the latter was dressing, all it was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna's help was none the less real; she gave Alexei Alexandrovich moral support in the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more (as it was soothing to her to believe) by having almost turned him to Christianity - that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she had turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of late in Peterburg. It was easy for Alexei Alexandrovich to believe in this teaching. Alexei Alexandrovich, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared their views, was completely devoid of profundity of imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the ideas evoked by the imagination become so actual that they must needs be in harmony with other ideas, and with reality itself. He saw nothing impossible and absurd 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, there was therefore 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 Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 Alexei Alexandrovich 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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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 5, Chapter 23[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 23 The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and enthusiastic girl, been married to a wealthy man of high rank, a very good-natured, jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. One month after marriage her husband abandoned her, and her enthusiastic protestations of affection he met with an irony and even hostility which people, knowing the Count's good heart, and seeing no defects in the enthusiastic Lidia, were at a loss to explain. Though they were divorced and lived apart, yet whenever the husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to her with the same malignant irony, the cause of which was incomprehensible.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna had long given up being in love with her husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love with someone.
