第120章

`There's no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it's not the same in England) that very many' - and among these were those whose opinion Alexei Alexandrovich particularly valued - `look favorably on the duel; but what result is attained by it? Suppose I call him out,' Alexei Alexandrovich went on to himself, and vividly picturing the night he would spend after the challenge, and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered, and knew that he never would do it - `suppose I call him out. Suppose I am taught,' he went on musing, `I am placed, I press the trigger,' he said to himself, closing his eyes, `and it turns out I have killed him,' Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself, and he shook his head as though to dispel such silly ideas. `What sense is there in murdering a man in order to define one's relation to a guilty wife and son? I should still have to decide what I ought to do with her. But what is more probable, and what would doubtlessly occur - I should be killed or wounded. I, the innocent person, should be the victim - killed or wounded. It's even more senseless. But, apart from that, a challenge to fight would be an act hardly honest on my side. Don't I know beforehand that my friends would never allow me to fight a duel - would never allow the life of a statesman, needed by Russia, to be exposed to danger? What would come of it? It would come of it that, knowing beforehand that the matter would never come to real danger, it would amount to my simply trying to gain a certain sham reputation by such a challenge. That would be dishonest, that would be false, that would be deceiving myself and others. A duel is quite impossible, and no one expects it of me. My aim is simply to safeguard my reputation, which is essential for the uninterrupted pursuit of my public duties.' Official duties, which had always been of great consequence in Alexei Alexandrovich's eyes, seemed of special importance to his mind at this moment.

Considering and rejecting the duel, Alexei Alexandrovich turned to divorce - another solution selected by several of the husbands he remembered.

Passing in mental review all the instances he knew of divorces (there were plenty of them in the very highest society with which he was very familiar), Alexei Alexandrovich could not find a single example in which the object of divorce was that which he had in view. In all these instances the husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and the very party who, being in fault, had not the right to contract a marriage, had formed counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties with a new husband. In his own case, Alexei Alexandrovich saw that a legal divorce, that is to say, one in which only the guilty wife would be repudiated, was impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex conditions of the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife's guilt, required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being brought forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward such proofs would damage him in the public estimation more than it would her.

An attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal, which would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and attacks on his high position in society. His chief object, to define the position with the least amount of disturbance possible, would not be attained by divorce either. Moreover, in the event of divorce, or even of an attempt to obtain a divorce, it was obvious that the wife broke off all relations with the husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And, in spite of the complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now felt for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexei Alexandrovich still had one feeling left in regard to her - a disinclination to see her free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime would be to her advantage. The mere notion of this so exasperated Alexei Alexandrovich, that directly it rose to his mind he groaned with inward agony, and got up and changed his place in the carriage, and for a long while after he sat with scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in the fleecy rug.

`Apart from formal divorce, one might still do as Karibanov, Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram did - that is, separate from one's wife,' he went on thinking, when he had regained his composure. But this step too presented the same drawback of public scandal as a divorce, and, what was more, a separation, quite as much as a regular divorce, flung his wife into the arms of Vronsky. `No, it's out of the question, out of the question!'

he said aloud, twisting his rug about him again. `I cannot be unhappy, but neither she nor he ought to be happy.'