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ered from her silence.
Alexey Alexandrovitch 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. Alexey Alexandrovitch had
disliked this new enthusiastic fervor. He was a believer, who was
interested in religion primarily in its political aspect, and the new doc-
trine which ventured upon several new interpretations, just because it
paved the way to discussion and analysis, was in principle disagree-
able 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 in-
wardly 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 pressed both 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 Seryozha.
Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you.” And she got up and
went out.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha’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 Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s household. But she had not overstated the case when
saying that practical affairs were not her strong point. All her arrange-
ments had to be modified because they could not be carried out, and
they were modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch’s valet, who,
though no one was aware of the fact, now managed Karenin’s house-
hold, and quietly and discreetly reported to his master while he was
dressing all it was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna’s
help was none the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral
support in the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still
more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him
to Christianity—that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she
turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpre-
tation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of late in
Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in this
teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and
others who shared their views, was completely devoid of vividness of
imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions
evoked by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in
harmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw nothing
impossible and inconceivable 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, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing
complete salvation here on earth.
It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this concep-
tion of his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey Alexandrovitch, 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 Alexey Alexandrovitch it