The book contains one incident the credibility of which has sometimes been questioned. It is said that Vronsky could not have broken his horse’s back in the way depicted in the steeplechase, but I am informed by a very competent authority that just such accidents have actually occurred. A rider by sitting back when jumping a ditch may jerk up his horse’s head and so cause it to drop its hind legs into the ditch, thus breaking its back. It is, moreover, just at narrow ditches, as in Tolstoy’s description, that this is most likely to occur.
Readers of Tolstoy’s books often wish to know something of the author’s life. I may therefore perhaps be allowed to mention that Messrs. Methuen are just publishing a short life of Leo Tolstoy , condensed from the two-volume Life of him which I wrote just before he died.
As English readers are sometimes in doubt where to place the accent on Russian names, a list of characters with the names accentuated is supplied, as also is a list of the Russian words, weights and measures mentioned in the book.
The translators desire to express their thanks to the friends who have assisted them with advice and information during the preparation of this work, and in particular to thank Mr. Benjamin Grad for his kind cooperation.
AYLMER MAUDE
26 January 1918
Vengeance is mine; I will repay.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
ALL happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Everything was upset in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered an intrigue between her husband and their former French governess, and declared that she would not continue to live under the same roof with him. This state of things had now lasted for three days, and not only the husband and wife but the rest of the family and the whole household suffered from it. They all felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that any group of people who had met together by chance at an inn would have had more in common than they. The wife kept to her own rooms; the husband stopped away from home all day; the children ran about all over the house uneasily; the English governess quarrelled with the housekeeper and wrote to a friend asking if she could find her another situation; the cook had gone out just at dinnertime the day before and had not returned; and the kitchen-maid and coachman had given notice.
On the third day after his quarrel with his wife, Prince Stephen Arkadyevich Oblonsky — Stiva, as he was called in his set in Society — woke up at his usual time, eight o’clock, not in his wife’s bedroom but on the morocco leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned his plump, well-kept body over on the springy sofa as if he wished to have another long sleep, and tightly embracing one of the pillows leant his cheek against it; but then suddenly opened his eyes and sat up.
‘Let me see — what was it?’ he thought, trying to recall his dream. ‘What was it? O yes