Page 491 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl
talked to Kitty as to a charming child that one looks on
with pleasure as on the memory of one’s youth, and only
once she said in passing that in all human sorrows nothing

gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of
Christ’s compassion for us no sorrow is trifling—and
immediately talked of other things. But in every gesture of
Madame Stahl, in every word, in every heavenly—as Kitty
called it—look, and above all in the whole story of her
life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized that
something ‘that was important,’ of which, till then, she
had known nothing.
Yet, elevated as Madame Stahl’s character was,
touching as was her story, and exalted and moving as was
her speech, Kitty could not help detecting in her some
traits which perplexed her. She noticed that when
questioning her about her family, Madame Stahl had
smiled contemptuously, which was not in accord with
Christian meekness. She noticed, too, that when she had
found a Catholic priest with her, Madame Stahl had
studiously kept her face in the shadow of the lamp-shade
and had smiled in a peculiar way. Trivial as these two
observations were, they perplexed her, and she had her
doubts as to Madame Stahl. But on the other hand

490 of 1759