Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy [top 5 books to read .txt] 📗

“And supposing I have invented all this, and am unable to live it through⁠—supposing I repent of having acted right,” he thought; and unable to answer he was seized with such anguish and despair as he had long not felt. Unable to free himself from his perplexity, he fell into a heavy sleep, such as he had slept after a heavy loss at cards.

Nekhlúdoff awoke next morning feeling as if he had been guilty of some iniquity the day before. He began considering. He could not remember having done anything wrong; he had committed no evil act, but he had had evil thoughts. He had thought that all his present resolutions to marry Katúsha and to give up his land were unachievable dreams; that he should be unable to bear it; that it was artificial, unnatural; and that he would have to go on living as he lived.

He had committed no evil action, but, what was far worse than an evil action, he had entertained evil thoughts whence all evil actions proceed. An evil action may not be repeated, and can be repented of; but evil thoughts generate all evil actions.

An evil action only smooths the path for other evil acts; evil thoughts uncontrollably drag one along that path.

When Nekhlúdoff repeated in his mind the thoughts of the day before, he was surprised that he could for a moment have believed these thoughts. However new and difficult that which he had decided to do might be, he knew that it was the only possible way of life for him now, and however easy and natural it might have been to return to his former state, he knew that state to be death.

Yesterday’s temptation seemed like the feeling when one awakes from deep sleep, and, without feeling sleepy, wants to lie comfortably in bed a little longer, yet knows that it is time to rise and commence the glad and important work that awaits one.

On that, his last day in Petersburg, he went in the morning to the Vasílievski Óstrov to see Shoústova. Shoústova lived on the second floor, and having been shown the back stairs, Nekhlúdoff entered straight into the hot kitchen, which smelt strongly of food. An elderly woman, with turned-up sleeves, with an apron and spectacles, stood by the fire stirring something in a steaming pan.

“Whom do you want?” she asked severely, looking at him over her spectacles.

Before Nekhlúdoff had time to answer, an expression of fright and joy appeared on her face.

“Oh, Prince!” she exclaimed, wiping her hands on her apron. “But why have you come the back way? Our benefactor! I am her mother. They have nearly killed my little girl. You have saved us,” she said, catching hold of Nekhlúdoff’s hand and trying to kiss it.

“I went to see you yesterday. My sister asked me to. She is here. This way, this way, please,” said Shoústova’s mother, as she led the way through a narrow door, and a dark passage, arranging her hair and pulling at her tucked-up skirt. “My sister’s name is Kornílova. You must have heard of her,” she added, stopping before a closed door. “She was mixed up in a political affair. An extremely clever woman!”

Shoústova’s mother opened the door and showed Nekhlúdoff into a little room where on a sofa with a table before it sat a plump, short girl with fair hair that curled round her pale, round face, which was very like her mother’s. She had a striped cotton blouse on.

Opposite her, in an armchair, leaning forward, so that he was nearly bent double, sat a young fellow with a slight, black beard and moustaches.

“Lydia, Prince Nekhlúdoff!” he said.

The pale girl jumped up, nervously pushing back a lock of hair behind her ear, and gazing at the newcomer with a frightened look in her large, grey eyes.

“So you are that dangerous woman whom Véra Doúkhova wished me to intercede for?” Nekhlúdoff asked, with a smile.

“Yes, I am,” said Lydia Shoústova, her broad, kind, childlike smile disclosing a row of beautiful teeth. “It was aunt who was so anxious to see you. Aunt!” she called out, in a pleasant, tender voice through a door.

“Your imprisonment grieved Véra Doúkhova very much,” said Nekhlúdoff.

“Take a seat here, or better here,” said Shoústova, pointing to the battered easy-chair from which the young man had just risen.

“My cousin, Zakhárov,” she said, noticing that Nekhlúdoff looked at the young man.

The young man greeted the visitor with a smile as kindly as Shoústova’s, and when Nekhlúdoff sat down he brought himself another chair, and sat by his side. A fair-haired schoolboy of about sixteen also came into the room and silently sat down on the windowsill.

“Véra Doúkhova is a great friend of my aunt’s, but I hardly know her,” said Shoústova.

Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather belt, came in from the next room.

“How do you do? Thanks for coming,” she began as soon as she had taken the place next Shoústova’s on the sofa.

“Well, and how is Véra. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?”

“She does not complain,” said Nekhlúdoff. “She says she feels perfectly happy.”

“Ah, that’s like Véra. I know her,” said the aunt, smiling and shaking her head. “One must know her. She has a fine character. Everything for others; nothing for herself.”

“No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece was imprisoned for nothing.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said the aunt. “It is a dreadful business. She suffered, in reality, because of me.”

“Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the same.”

“Allow me to know better,” said the aunt. “You see,” she went on to Nekhlúdoff, “it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep his papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them to her. And that very night