Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [166]
Having considered and rejected a duel, Alexei Alexandrovich turned to divorce - another way out chosen by some of the husbands he remembered. Going through all the cases of divorce he could remember (there were a great many in the highest society, which he knew so well), he did not find a single one in which the purpose of the divorce was the same as the one he had in mind. In all these cases the husband had yielded up or sold the unfaithful wife, and the very side which, being guilty, had no right to remarry, had entered into fictional, quasi-legitimate relations with a new consort. And in his own case Alexei Alexandrovich saw that to obtain a legal divorce - that is, one in which the guilty wife would simply be rejected - was impossible. He saw that the complex conditions of life in which he found himself did not allow for the possibility of the coarse proofs the law demanded to establish the wife’s criminality; he saw that there was a certain refinement of that life which also did not allow for the use of such proofs, if there were any, that the use of these proofs would harm him more than it would her in the eyes of society.
An attempt at divorce could only lead to a scandalous court trial, which would be a godsend for his enemies, for the slandering and humiliation of his high position in society. Nor could the chief goal - to define the situation with the least disturbance - be achieved through divorce. Besides that, divorce, or even an attempt at divorce, implied that the wife had broken relations with her husband and joined with her lover. And in Alexei Alexandrovich’s soul, despite what now seemed to him an utter, contemptuous indifference to his wife, there remained one feeling with regard to her - an unwillingness that she be united with Vronsky unhindered, that her crime be profitable for her. This one thought so vexed him that, merely imagining it, he groaned with inner pain, got up, changed his position in the carriage and, frowning, spent a long time after that wrapping his chilled and bony legs in a fluffy rug.
‘Apart from formal divorce, it would also be possible to do what Karibanov, Paskudin, and the good Dram did - that is, to separate from my wife,’ he went on thinking once he had calmed down. But that measure presented the same inconvenience of disgrace as did divorce, and above all, just like formal divorce, it would throw his wife into Vronsky’s arms. ‘No, this is impossible, impossible!’ he spoke aloud, beginning to fuss with his rug again. ‘I cannot be unhappy, but neither should she and he be happy.’
The feeling of jealousy that had tormented him while he did not know, had gone away the moment his tooth was painfully pulled out by his wife’s words. But that feeling had been replaced by another: the wish not only that she not triumph, but that she be paid back for her crime. He did not acknowledge this feeling, but in the depths of his soul he wished her to suffer for disturbing his peace and honour. And again going over the conditions of a duel, a divorce, a separation and again rejecting them, Alexei Alexandrovich became convinced that there was only one solution: to keep her with him, concealing what had happened from society, and taking all possible measures to stop their affair and above all - something he did not admit to himself - to