at result is attained by it? Suppose
I call him out," Alexey Alexandrovitch 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, "to shoot; I press the trigger," he said to
himself, closing his eyes, "and it turns out I have killed him,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch 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 just as much have to decide what I
ought to do with her. But what is more probable and what would
doubtless 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 perfectly
well 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? Knowing perfectly well 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
irrational, 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 Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes, seemed
of special importance to his mind at this moment. Considering
and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch 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), Alexey Alexandrovitch
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 which, being in fault, had not the right to
contract a fresh marriage, had formed counterfeit,
pseudo-matrimonial ties with a self-styled husband. In his own
case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a legal divorce, that is