able 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
conception 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 was a
necessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him
in his humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, however
imaginary, from which, looked down upon by all, he could look
down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to his
delusion of salvation.

Chapter 23

The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and sentimental
girl, been married to a wealthy man of high rank, an extremely
good-natured, jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. Two months
after marriage her husband abandoned her, and her impassioned
protestations of affection he met with a sarcasm and even
hostility that people knowing the count's good heart, and seeing
no defects in the sentimental Lidia, were at a loss to explain.
Though they were divorced and lived apart, yet whenever the
husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to her with the same
malignant irony, the cause of which was incomprehensible.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna had long given up being in love with her
husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love
with someone. She was in love with several people at once, both
men and women; she had been in love with almost everyone who had
been particularly distinguished in any way. She was in love with
all the new princes and princesses who married into the imperial
family; she had been in love with a high dignitary of the Church,
a vicar, and a parish priest; she had been in love with a
journalist, three Slavophiles, with Komissarov, with a minister,
a doctor, an English missionary and Karenin. All these passions
constantly waning or growing more ardent, did not prevent her
from keeping up the most extended and complica