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ELLEN had accompanied the court on its return from Vilna to Petersburg, and
there found herself in a difficult position.
In Petersburg Ellen had enjoyed the special patronage of a great personage,
who occupied one of the highest positions in the government. In Vilna she had
formed a liaison with a young foreign prince.
When she returned to Petersburg the prince and the great dignitary were both
in that town; both claimed their rights, and Ellen was confronted with a problem
that had not previously arisen in her career—the preservation of the closest
relations with both, without giving offence to either.
What might have seemed to any other woman a difficult or impossible task
never cost a moment's thought to Countess Bezuhov, who plainly deserved the
reputation she enjoyed of being a most intelligent woman. Had she attempted
concealment; had she allowed herself to get out of her awkward position by
subterfuges, she would have spoilt her own case by acknowledging herself the
guilty party. But like a truly great man, who can always do everything he
chooses, Ellen at once assumed the rectitude of her own position, of which she
was indeed genuinely convinced, and the guilty responsibility of every one else
concerned.
The first time the young foreign prince ventured to reproach her, she lifted
her beautiful head, and, with a haughty tone towards him, said firmly:
“This is the egoism and the cruelty of men. I expected nothing else. Woman
sacrifices herself for you; she suffers, and this is her reward. What right have
you, your highness, to call me to account for my friendships, my affections? He
is a man who has been more than a father to me!”
The prince would have said something. Ellen interrupted him.
“Well, yes, perhaps he has sentiments for me other than those of a father,
but that is not a reason I should shut my door on him. I am not a person to be
ungrateful. Know, your highness, that in all that relates to my private
sentiments I will account only to God and to my conscience!” she concluded,
laying her hand on her beautiful, heaving bosom, and looking up to heaven.
“But listen to me, in God's name!”…
“Marry me, and I will be your slave!”
“But it is impossible.”
“You do not deign to stoop to me, you…” Ellen burst into tears.
The prince attempted to console her. Ellen, as though utterly distraught,
declared through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying; that
there were precedents (they were but few at that time, but Ellen quoted the case
of Napoleon and some other persons of exalted rank); that she had never been a
real wife to her husband; that she had been dragged an unwilling victim into the
marriage.
“But the law, religion …” murmured the prince, on the point of
yielding.
“Religion, laws … what can they have been invented for, if they are unable to
manage that?” said Ellen.
The prince was astonished that so simple a reflection had never occurred to
him, and applied to the council of the brotherhood of the Society of Jesus, with
which he was in close relations.
A few days later, at one of the fascinating fêtes Ellen used to give at her
summer villa at Kamenny Ostrov, a certain fascinating M. Jobert was presented to
her; a man no longer young, with snow-white hair and brilliant black eyes, un
Fésuite à robe courte, who walked for a long while with Ellen among the
illuminations in the garden to the strains of music, conversing with her of the
love of God, of Christ, of the heart of the Holy Mother, and of the consolations
afforded in this life and the next by the one true Catholic faith. Ellen was
touched, and several times tears stood both in her eyes and in M. Jobert's, and
their voices trembled. A dance, to which her partner fetched Ellen away, cut
short her conversation with the future “director of her conscience,” but the
next evening M. Jobert came alone to see Ellen, and from that day he was a
frequent visitor.
One day he took the countess into a Catholic church, where she fell on her
knees before the altar, up to which she was conducted. The fascinating,
middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on her head, and as she herself afterwards
described it, she felt something like a breath of fresh air, which seemed wafted
into her soul. It was explained to her that this was the “grace of God.”
Then an abbé à robe longue was brought to her; he confessed her, and
absolved her from her sins. Next day a box was brought containing the Sacred
Host, and left for her to partake of at her house. Several days later Ellen
learned to her satisfaction that she had now been admitted into the true
Catholic Church, and that in a few days the Pope himself would hear of her case,
and send her a document of some sort.
All that was done with her and around her at this period, the attention paid
her by so many clever men, and expressed in such agreeable and subtle forms, and
her dovelike purity during her conversion (she wore nothing but white dresses
and white ribbons all the time)—all afforded her gratification. But this
gratification never led her for one instant to lose sight of her object. And, as
always happens in contests of cunning, the stupid person gains more than the
cleverer; Ellen, fully grasping that the motive of all these words and all this
manœuvring was by her conversion to Catholicism to get a round sum from her for
the benefit of the Jesuit order (this was hinted at, indeed), held back the
money, while insisting steadily on the various operations that would set her
free from her conjugal bonds. To her notions, the real object of every religion
was to provide recognised forms of propriety for the satisfaction of human
desires. And with this end in view, she insisted, in one of her conversations
with her spiritual adviser, on demanding an answer to the question how far her
marriage was binding.
They were sitting in the drawing-room window. It was dusk. There was a scent
of flowers from the window. Ellen wore a white dress, transparent over the bosom
and shoulders. The sleek, well-fed abbé, with his plump, clean-shaven chin, his
amiable, strong mouth, and his white hands, clasped mildly on his knees, was
sitting close by Ellen. With a subtle smile on his lips, and a look of discreet
admiration in his eyes, he gazed from time to time at her face, as he expounded
his views on the subject. Ellen, with a restless smile, stared at his curly hair
and his smooth-shaven, blackish cheeks, and seemed every minute to be expecting
the conversation to take a new turn. But the abbé, though unmistakably aware of
the beauty of his companion, was also interested in his own skilful handling of
the question. The spiritual adviser adopted the following chain of
reasoning:—
“In ignorance,” said he, “of the significance of your promise, you took a vow
of conjugal fidelity to a man who, on his side, was guilty of sacrilege in
entering on the sacrament of matrimony with no faith in its religious
significance. That marriage had not the dual binding force it should have had.
But in spite of that, your vow was binding upon you. You broke it. What did you
commit? Venial sin or mortal sin? A venial sin, because you committed it with no
intention of acting wrongly. If now, with the object of bearing children, you
should enter into a new marriage, your sin might be forgiven. But the question
again falls into two divisions. First …”
“But, I imagine,” Ellen, who was getting bored, said suddenly, with her
fascinating smile, “that after being converted to the true religion, cannot be
bound by any obligations laid upon me by a false religion.”
Her spiritual adviser was astounded at the simplicity of this solution, as
simple as the solution of Columbus's egg. He was enchanted at the unexpected
rapidity of his pupil's progress, but could not abandon the edifice of subtle
argument that had cost him mental effort.
“Let us understand each other,” he said, with a smile; and began to find
arguments to refute his spiritual daughter's contention.
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