Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

and have grown embittered,” she finished, with a smile.

Shoustova’s mother came in at the door through which her daughter

had gone out, and said that Lydia was very much upset, and would

not come in again.

“And what has this young life been ruined for?” said the aunt.

“What is especially painful to me is that I am the involuntary

cause of it.”

“She will recover in the country, with God’s help,” said the

mother. “We shall send her to her father.”

“Yes, if it were not for you she would have perished altogether,”

said the aunt. “Thank you. But what I wished to see you for is

this: I wished to ask you to take a letter to Vera Doukhova,” and

she got the letter out of her pocket.

“The letter is not closed; you may read and tear it up, or hand

it to her, according to how far it coincides with your

principles,” she said. “It contains nothing compromising.”

Nekhludoff took the letter, and, having promised to give it to

Vera Doukhova, he took his leave and went away. He scaled the

letter without reading it, meaning to take it to its destination.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE STATE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.

The last thing that kept Nekhludoff in Petersburg was the case of

the sectarians, whose petition he intended to get his former

fellow-officer, Aide-de-camp Bogatyreff, to hand to the Tsar. He

came to Bogatyreff in the morning, and found him about to go out,

though still at breakfast. Bogatyreff was not tall, but firmly

built and wonderfully strong (he could bend a horseshoe), a kind,

honest, straight, and even liberal man. In spite of these

qualities, he was intimate at Court, and very fond of the Tsar

and his family, and by some strange method he managed, while

living in that highest circle, to see nothing but the good in it

and to take no part in the evil and corruption. He never

condemned anybody nor any measure, and either kept silent or

spoke in a bold, loud voice, almost shouting what he had to say,

and often laughing in the same boisterous manner. And he did not

do it for diplomatic reasons, but because such was his character.

“Ah, that’s right that you have come. Would you like some

breakfast? Sit down, the beefsteaks are fine! I always begin with

something substantial—begin and finish, too. Ha! ha! ha! Well,

then, have a glass of wine,” he shouted, pointing to a decanter

of claret. “I have been thinking of you. I will hand on the

petition. I shall put it into his own hands. You may count on

that, only it occurred to me that it would be best for you to

call on Toporoff.”

Nekhludoff made a wry face at the mention of Toporoff.

“It all depends on him. He will be consulted, anyhow. And perhaps

he may himself meet your wishes.”

“If you advise it I shall go.”

“That’s right. Well, and how does Petersburg agree with you?”

shouted Bogatyreff. “Tell me. Eh?”

“I feel myself getting hypnotised,” replied Nekhludoff.

“Hypnotised!” Bogatyreff repeated, and burst out laughing. “You

won’t have anything? Well, just as you please,” and he wiped his

moustaches with his napkin. “Then you’ll go? Eh? If he does not

do it, give the petition to me, and I shall hand it on

tomorrow.” Shouting these words, he rose, crossed himself just

as naturally as he had wiped his mouth, and began buckling on his

sword.

“And now goodbye; I must go. We are both going out,” said

Nekhludoff, and shaking Bogatyreff’s strong, broad hand, and with

the sense of pleasure which the impression of something healthy

and unconsciously fresh always gave him, Nekhludoff parted from

Bogatyreff on the doorsteps.

Though he expected no good result from his visit, still

Nekhludoff, following Bogatyreff’s advice, went to see Toporoff,

on whom the sectarians’ fate depended.

The position occupied by Toporoff, involving as it did an

incongruity of purpose, could only be held by a dull man devoid

of moral sensibility. Toporoff possessed both these negative

qualities. The incongruity of the position he occupied was this.

It was his duty to keep up and to defend, by external measures,

not excluding violence, that Church which, by its own

declaration, was established by God Himself and could not be

shaken by the gates of hell nor by anything human. This divine

and immutable God-established institution had to be sustained and

defended by a human institution—the Holy Synod, managed by

Toporoff and his officials. Toporoff did not see this

contradiction, nor did he wish to see it, and he was therefore

much concerned lest some Romish priest, some pastor, or some

sectarian should destroy that Church which the gates of hell

could not conquer.

Toporoff, like all those who are quite destitute of the

fundamental religious feeling that recognises the equality and

brotherhood of men, was fully convinced that the common people

were creatures entirely different from himself, and that the

people needed what he could very well do without, for at the

bottom of his heart he believed in nothing, and found such a

state very convenient and pleasant. Yet he feared lest the people

might also come to such a state, and looked upon it as his sacred

duty, as he called it, to save the people therefrom.

A certain cookery book declares that some crabs like to be boiled

alive. In the same way he thought and spoke as if the people

liked being kept in superstition; only he meant this in a literal

sense, whereas the cookery book did not mean its words literally.

His feelings towards the religion he was keeping up were the same

as those of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his

fowls on. Carrion was very disgusting, but the fowls liked it;

therefore it was right to feed the fowls on carrion. Of course

all this worship of the images of the Iberian, Kasan and Smolensk

Mothers of God was a gross superstition, but the people liked it

and believed in it, and therefore the superstition must be kept

up.

Thus thought Toporoff, not considering that the people only liked

superstition because there always have been, and still are, men

like himself who, being enlightened, instead of using their light

to help others to struggle out of their dark ignorance, use it to

plunge them still deeper into it.

When Nekhludoff entered the reception-room Toporoff was in his

study talking with an abbess, a lively and aristocratic lady, who

was spreading the Greek orthodox faith in Western Russia among

the Uniates (who acknowledge the Pope of Rome), and who have the

Greek religion enforced on them. An official who was in the

reception-room inquired what Nekhludoff wanted, and when he heard

that Nekhludoff meant to hand in a petition to the Emperor, he

asked him if he would allow the petition to be read first.

Nekhludoff gave it him, and the official took it into the study.

The abbess, with her hood and flowing veil and her long train

trailing behind, left the study and went out, her white hands

(with their well-tended nails) holding a topaz rosary. Nekhludoff

was not immediately asked to come in. Toporoff was reading the

petition and shaking his head. He was unpleasantly surprised by

the clear and emphatic wording of it.

“If it gets into the hands of the Emperor it may cause

misunderstandings, and unpleasant questions may be asked,” he

thought as he read. Then he put the petition on the table, rang,

and ordered Nekhludoff to be asked in.

He remembered the case of the sectarians; he had had a petition

from them before. The case was this: These Christians, fallen

away from the Greek Orthodox Church, were first exhorted and then

tried by law, but were acquitted. Then the Archdeacon and the

Governor arranged, on the plea that their marriages were illegal,

to exile these sectarians, separating the husbands, wives, and

children. These fathers and wives were now petitioning that they

should not he parted. Toporoff recollected the first time the

case came to his notice: he had at that time hesitated whether he

had not better put a stop to it. But then he thought no harm

could result from his confirming the decision to separate and

exile the different members of the sectarian families, whereas

allowing the peasant sect to remain where it was might have a bad

effect on the rest of the inhabitants of the place and cause them

to fall away from Orthodoxy. And then the affair also proved the

zeal of the Archdeacon, and so he let the case proceed along the

lines it had taken. But now that they had a defender such as

Nekhludoff, who had some influence in Petersburg, the case might

be specially pointed out to the Emperor as something cruel, or it

might get into the foreign papers. Therefore he at once took an

unexpected decision.

“How do you do?” he said, with the air of a very busy man,

receiving Nekhludoff standing, and at once starting on the

business. “I know this case. As soon as I saw the names I

recollected this unfortunate business,” he said, taking up the

petition and showing it to Nekhludoff. “And I am much indebted to

you for reminding me of it. It is the over-zealousness of the

provincial authorities.”

Nekhludoff stood silent, looking with no kindly feelings at the

immovable, pale mask of a face before him.

“And I shall give orders that these measures should he revoked

and the people reinstated in their homes.”

“So that I need not make use of this petition?”

“I promise you most assuredly,” answered Toporoff, laying a

stress on the word I, as if quite convinced that his honesty, his

word was the best guarantee. “It will be best if I write at once.

Take a seat, please.”

He went up to the table and began to write. As Nekhludoff sat

down he looked at the narrow, bald skull, at the fat, blue-veined

hand that was swiftly guiding the pen, and wondered why this

evidently indifferent man was doing what he did and why he was

doing it with such care.

“Well, here you are,” said Toporoff, sealing the envelope; “you

may let your clients know,” and he stretched his lips to imitate

a smile.

“Then what did these people suffer for?” Nekhludoff asked, as he

took the envelope.

Toporoff raised his head and smiled, as if Nekhludoff’s question

gave him pleasure. “That I cannot tell. All I can say is that the

interests of the people guarded by us are so important that too

great a zeal in matters of religion is not so dangerous or so

harmful as the indifference which is now spreading—”

“But how is it that in the name of religion the very first

demands of righteousness are violated—families are separated?”

Toporoff continued to smile patronisingly, evidently thinking

what Nekhludoff said very pretty. Anything that Nekhludoff could

say he would have considered very pretty and very one-sided, from

the height of what he considered his far-reaching office in the

State.

“It may seem so from the point of view of a private individual,”

he said, “but from an administrative point of view it appears in

a rather different light. However, I must bid you goodbye, now,”

said Toporoff, bowing his head and holding out his hand, which

Nekhludoff pressed.

“The interests of the people! Your interests is what you mean!”

thought Nekhludoff as he went out. And he ran over in his mind

the people in whom is manifested the activity of the institutions

that uphold religion and educate the people. He began