Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all at once, turning round, he sat down at the table.  Letting his head sink into his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, several times attempted to speak and stopped short.  Korney, perceiving his master’s emotion, asked the clerk to call another time.  Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the line of firmness and composure any longer.  He gave orders for the carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.

He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt and exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the clerk and of Korney, and of everyone, without exception, whom he had met during those two days.  He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy.  He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him.  He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain.  He knew that his sole means of security against people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the unequal struggle.

His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was utterly alone in his sorrow.  In all Petersburg there was not a human being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole world.

Alexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan.  There were two brothers.  They did not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexey Alexandrovitch was ten years old.  The property was a small one.  Their uncle, Karenin, a government official of high standing, at one time a favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up.

On completing his high school and university courses with medals, Alexey Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle’s aid, immediately started in a prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had devoted himself exclusively to political ambition.  In the high school and the university, and afterwards in the service, Alexey Alexandrovitch had never formed a close friendship with anyone.  His brother had been the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had died shortly after Alexey Alexandrovitch’s marriage.