Page 490 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 33

Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and
this acquaintance, together with her friendship with
Varenka, did not merely exercise a great influence on her,
it also comforted her in her mental distress. She found this
comfort through a completely new world being opened to
her by means of this acquaintance, a world having nothing
in common with her past, an exalted, noble world, from
the height of which she could contemplate her past
calmly. It was revealed to her that besides the instinctive
life to which Kitty had given herself up hitherto there was
a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion, but a
religion having nothing in common with that one which
Kitty had known from childhood, and which found
expression in litanies and all-night services at the Widow’s
Home, where one might meet one’s friends, and in
learning by heart Slavonic texts with the priest. This was a
lofty, mysterious religion connected with a whole series of
noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do more
than merely believe because one was told to, which one
could love.

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