ition in which she has placed me. And I shall
find it," he said to himself, frowning more and more. "I'm not
the first nor the last." And to say nothing of historical
instances dating from the "Fair Helen" of Menelaus, recently
revived in the memory of all, a whole list of contemporary
examples of husbands with unfaithful wives in the highest society
rose before Alexey Alexandrovitch's imagination. "Daryalov,
Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram.... Yes, even
Dram, such an honest, capable fellow...Semyonov, Tchagin,
Sigonin," Alexey Alexandrovitch remembered. "Admitting that a
certain quite irrational _ridicule_ falls to the lot of these men,
yet I never saw anything but a misfortune in it, and always felt
sympathy for it," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, though
indeed this was not the fact, and he had never felt sympathy for
misfortunes of that kind, but the more frequently he had heard of
instances of unfaithful wives betraying their husbands, the more
highly he had thought of himself. "It is a misfortune which may
befall anyone. And this misfortune has befallen me. The only
thing to be done is to make the best of the position."

And he began passing in review the methods of proceeding of men
who had been in the same position that he was in.

"Daryalov fought a duel...."

The duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey
Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a
coward, and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey
Alexandrovitch could not without horror contemplate the idea of a
pistol aimed at himself, and had never made use of any weapon in his
life. This horror had in his youth set him pondering on dueling,
and picturing himself in a position in which he would have to
expose his life to danger. Having attained success and an
established position in the world, he had long ago forgotten this
feeling; but the habitual bent of feeling reasserted itself, and
dread of his own cowardice proved even now so strong that Alexey
Alexandrovitch spent a long while thinking over the question of
dueling in all its aspects, and hugging the idea of a duel,
though he was fully aware beforehand that he would never under
any circumstances fight one.

"There's no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it's not the
same in England) that very many"--and among these were those
whose opinion Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued--"look
favorably on the duel; but wh