134 135
Chapter 24.
“Yes, there is something in be hatful, 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? Whom am I and what am I? A
nobody, not wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody.” And he re-
called 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 plea-
sure, 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.
Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout
stage, the period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was
seeking in religion a support and a curb for his passionate tempera-
ment, everyone, far from encouraging him, had jeered at him, and he,
too, with the others. They had teased him, called him Noah and Monk;
and, when he had broken out, no one had helped him, but everyone
had turned away from him with horror and disgust.
Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother