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Graf Tolstoy Leo. 4.875 (8 Reviews). This book is available for free download in a number of formats - including epub, pdf, azw. Anna Karenina is a popular book by Leo Tolstoy. Read Anna Karenina, free online version of the book by Leo Tolstoy, on ReadCentral.com. Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina consists of 238 parts for ease of reading. Choose the part of Anna Karenina. Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by Project Gutenberg. Menu About About Project Gutenberg. Anna Karenina Language: English: LoC Class: PG: Language and Literatures: Slavic. ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy - Part 1 - FULL AudioBook Greatest AudioBooks 🌟SPECIAL OFFER🌟 try Audiobooks.com 🎧for FREE!: http://affiliates.audioboo.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy inits own way.
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wifehad discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue witha French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and shehad announced to her husband that she could not go on living inthe same house with him. This position of affairs had now lastedthree days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but allthe members of their family and household, were painfullyconscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there wasso sense in their living together, and that the stray peoplebrought together by chance in any inn had more in common with oneanother than they, the members of the family and household of theOblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband hadnot been at home for three days. The children ran wild all overthe house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper,and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situationfor her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just atdinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had givenwarning.
Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan ArkadyevitchOblonsky--Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world--woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in themorning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-coveredsofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-forperson on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a longsleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other sideand buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat upon the sofa, and opened his eyes.
'Yes, yes, how was it now?' he thought, going over his dream.'Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner atDarmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, butthen, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinneron glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro--not Il miotesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort oflittle decanters on the table, and they were women, too,' heremembered.
Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with asmile. 'Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great dealmore that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words,or even expressing it in one's thoughts awake.' And noticing agleam of light peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, hecheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and feltabout with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday,worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as hehad done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out hishand, without getting up, towards the place where hisdressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon hesuddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife's room,but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, heknitted his brows.
'Ah, ah, ah! Oo!...' he muttered, recalling everything that hadhappened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wifewas present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of hisposition, and worst of all, his own fault.
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'Yes, she won't forgive me, and she can't forgive me. And themost awful thing about it is that it's all my fault--all myfault, though I'm not to blame. That's the point of the wholesituation,' he reflected. 'Oh, oh, oh!' he kept repeating indespair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations causedhim by this quarrel.
Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming,happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in hishand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room,to his surprise had not found her in the study either, and sawher at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealedeverything in her hand.
She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over householddetails, and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sittingperfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking at him withan expression of horror, despair, and indignation.
'What's this? this?' she asked, pointing to the letter.
And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often thecase, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way inwhich he had met his wife's words.
There happened to him at that instant what does happen to peoplewhen they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful.He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in whichhe was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault.Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, beggingforgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even--anythingwould have been better than what he did do--his face utterlyinvoluntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected StepanArkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)--utterly involuntarilyassumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.
This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sightof that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, brokeout with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, andrushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see herhusband.
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'It's that idiotic smile that's to blame for it all,' thoughtStepan Arkadyevitch.
'But what's to be done? What's to be done?' he said to himselfin despair, and found no answer.
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