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Chapter 17.
Unconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that
had taken place during and after dinner, Alexey Alexandrovitch re-
turned to his solitary room. Darya Alexandrovna’s words about for-
giveness had aroused in him nothing but annoyance. The applicability
or non-applicability of the Christian precept to his own case was too
difficult a question to be discussed lightly, and this question had long
ago been answered by Alexey Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all
that had been said, what stuck most in his memory was the phrase of
stupid, good-natured Turovtsin—”ACTED LIKE A MAN, HE DID!
CALLED HIM OUT AND SHOT HIM!” Everyone had appar-
ently shared this feeling, though from politeness they had not ex-
pressed it.
“But the matter is settled, it’s useless thinking about it,” Alexey
Alexandrovitch told himself. And thinking of nothing but the journey
before him, and the revision work he had to do, he went into his room
and asked the porter who escorted him where his man was. The porter
said that the man had only just gone out. Alexey Alexandrovitch
ordered tea to be sent him, sat down to the table, and taking the
guidebook, began considering the route of his journey.
“Two telegrams,” said his manservant, coming into the room. “I
beg your pardon, your excellency; I’d only just that minute gone out.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them. The
first telegram was the announcement of Stremov’s appointment to the
very post Karenin had coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung the tele-
gram down, and flushing a little, got up and began to pace up and
down the room. “Quos vult perdere dementat,” he said, meaning by
quos the persons responsible for this appointment. He was not so
much annoyed that he had not received the post, that he had been
conspicuously passed over; but it was incomprehensible, amazing to
him that they did not see that the wordy phrase-monger Stremov was
the last man fit for it. How could they fail to see how they were ruining
themselves, lowering their prestige by this appointment?
“Something else in the same line,” he said to himself bitterly, open-
ing the second telegram. The telegram was from his wife. Her name,
written in blue pencil, “Anna,” was the first thing that caught his eye.
“I am dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I shall die easier with your
forgiveness,” he read. He smiled contemptuously, and flung down the
telegram. That this was a trick and a fraud, of that, he thought for the
first minute, there could be no doubt.
“There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her confine-
ment. Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be their aim? To
legitimize the child, to compromise me, and prevent a divorce,” he
thought. “But something was said in it: I am dying....” He read the
telegram again, and suddenly the plain meaning of what was said in it
struck him.
“And if it is true?” he said to himself. “If it is true that in the
moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely penitent, and
I, taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would not only be cruel, and
everyone would blame me, but it would be stupid on my part.”
“Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg,” he said to his servant.