• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

‘How happy I’ll be when I find out you’ve fallen in love!’ said Levin. ‘Kindly invite me to your wedding.’

‘I’m already in love.’

‘Yes, with the cuttlefish. You know,’ Levin turned to his brother, ‘Mikhail Semyonych is writing a work on the feeding and...’

‘Well, don’t go muddling things! It makes no difference what it’s about. The point is that I really do love the cuttlefish.’

‘But that won’t prevent you loving a wife!’

‘That won’t prevent me, but the wife will.’

‘Why so?’

‘You’ll find out. You, for instance, love farming and hunting - well, wait and see!’

‘Arkhip came today and said there’s no end of elk in Prudnoye, and two bears,’ said Chirikov.

‘Well, you’ll have to bag them without me.’

‘You see, it’s true,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘And from now on it’s good-bye to bear hunting - your wife won’t allow it!’

Levin smiled. The idea of his wife not allowing him pleased him so much that he was ready to renounce for ever the pleasure of seeing bears.

‘Still, it’s a pity those two bears will get bagged without you. Do you remember the last time in Khapilovo? We’d have great hunting,’ said Chirikov.

Levin did not want to deprive him of the illusion that there could be anything good anywhere without her, and so he said nothing.

‘This custom of bidding farewell to bachelor life was not established in vain,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘However happy one may be, one still regrets one’s freedom.’

‘Confess, you do have that feeling of wanting to jump out of the window like the suitor in Gogol?’4

‘Certainly he does, but he won’t confess it!’ Katavasov said and laughed loudly.

‘Well, the window’s open ... Let’s set off for Tver right now! One is a she-bear, so we can get to the den. Really, let’s take the five o’clock train! And they can do as they like here,’ said Chirikov, smiling.

‘I’ll tell you, by God,’ Levin said, smiling, ‘in my heart I can’t find any feeling of regret for my freedom!’

‘Ah, there’s such chaos in your heart now that you couldn’t find anything there,’ Katavasov said. ‘Wait till you sort things out, then you’ll find it!’

‘No, otherwise I’d have at least some slight sense that, besides my feeling’ (he did not want to say ‘of love’ in front of him) ‘... and happiness, I was still sorry to lose my freedom ... On the contrary, I’m glad precisely of this loss of freedom.’

‘Bad! A hopeless specimen!’ said Katavasov. ‘Well, let’s drink to his recovery, or else wish him that only a hundredth part of his dreams comes true. And that would already be such happiness as has never been on earth!’

The guests left soon after dinner so as to have time to change for the wedding.

Remaining alone and recalling the conversation of these bachelors, Levin once again asked himself: did he really feel in his heart this regret for his freedom that they had spoken of? He smiled at the question. ‘Freedom? Why freedom? Happiness is only in loving and desiring, thinking her desires, her thoughts - that is, no freedom at all - that’s what happiness is!’

‘But do I know her thoughts, her desires, her feelings?’ some voice suddenly whispered to him. The smile vanished from his face and he fell to thinking. And suddenly a strange sensation came over him. He was possessed by fear and doubt, doubt of everything.

‘What if she doesn’t love me? What if she’s marrying me only so as to get married? What if she herself doesn’t know what she’s doing?’ he asked himself. ‘She may come to her senses and understand only after marrying that she does not and cannot love me.’ And strange thoughts about her, of the very worst sort, began coming into his head. He was jealous of Vronsky, as he had been a year ago, as if that evening when he had seen her with Vronsky were yesterday. He suspected that she had not told him everything.

He quickly jumped up. ‘No, it’s impossible like this!’ he said to himself in despair. ‘I’ll go to her, ask her, tell her for the last time: we’re free, hadn’t we better stop? Anything’s better than eternal unhappiness, disgrace, infidelity!!’ With