Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/302

 CHAPTER XXXII

particulars which the princess learned about Varenka's past life, and her relations with Madame Stahl, and about Madame Stahl herself, were as follows:—

Madame Stahl had always been a sickly and excitable woman, who was said by some to have tormented the life out of her husband, and by others to have been tormented by his unnatural behavior. After she was divorced from her husband, she gave birth to her first child, which did not live; and Madame Stahl's parents, knowing her sensitiveness, and fearing that the shock would kill her, substituted for the dead child the daughter of a court cook, born on the same night, and in the same house at Petersburg. This was Varenka. Madame Stahl afterwards learned that the child was not her own, but continued to take charge of her, the more willingly as the true parents shortly after died.

For more than ten years Madame Stahl lived abroad, in the South, never leaving her bed. Some said that she was a woman who had made a public show of her piety and good works; others said that she was at heart the most highly moral of women, and that she lived only for the good of her neighbor, that she was really what she pretended to be.

No one knew whether she was Catholic, Protestant, or orthodox; one thing alone was certain,—that she had friendly relations with the high dignitaries of all the churches and of all communions.

Varenka always lived with Madame Stahl abroad; and all who knew Madame Stahl knew Mademoiselle Varenka also, and loved her. When she had learned all the particulars, the princess found nothing objectionable in her daughter's acquaintance with Varenka; the more because Varenka had the most cultivated manners and a fine education; she spoke French and English admirably, and chief of all she brought from Madame Stahl her regrets that, owing to her illness, she