Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 87/119

"Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Levin,

as he came away from the Shtcherbatskys', and walked in the

direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with

other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had

any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position." And

he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, and

self-possessed, certainly never placed in the awful position in

which he had been that evening. "Yes, she was bound to choose

him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or

anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she

would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A

nobody, not wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody." And he

recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the

thought of him. "Isn't he right that everything in the world is

base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment of brother

Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing

him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he's a despicable person. But I

know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like

him. And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to

dinner, and came here." Levin walked up to a lamppost, read his

brother's address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a

sledge. All the long way to his brother's, Levin vividly

recalled all the facts familiar to him of his brother Nikolay's

life. He remembered how his brother, while at the university,

and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers of his

companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious

rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure,

especially women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken

out: he had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed

into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered later the

scandal over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to bring

up, and, in a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that

proceedings were brought against him for unlawfully wounding.

Then he recalled the scandal with a sharper, to whom he had lost

money, and given a promissory note, and against whom he had

himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he had cheated him.

(This was the money Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he

remembered how he had spent a night in the lockup for disorderly

conduct in the street. He remembered the shameful proceedings he

had tried to get up against his brother Sergey Ivanovitch,

accusing him of not having paid him his share of his mother's

fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a western

province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble

for assaulting a village elder.... It was all horribly

disgusting, yet to Levin it appeared not at all in the same

disgusting light as it inevitably would to those who did not know

Nikolay, did not know all his story, did not know his heart.