Confession before the wedding

The Princess, reckoning that Prince Shcherbatsky's old aunt may die and put the family in mourning, agrees to a wedding before Advent and divides the trousseau in two. Levin agrees to everything — his brother borrows money for him, Oblonsky proposes going abroad — and is surprised to find Kitty has definite wishes: not abroad, but the country, where their home will be and where he has work she does not understand and considers important. Then Oblonsky asks for his communion certificate. Levin has not been in nine years, and as an agnostic who respects others' beliefs he can neither believe nor treat the thing as empty custom, and feels false doing it. At confession he tells the priest his chief sin is doubt, and that he sometimes doubts the existence of God. The priest asks who adorned the vault of heaven, and then what he will tell his own child who asks who made the grass, or what waits beyond the tomb. Levin has no answer. He goes home relieved at not having lied, and suspecting the old man said something that will need looking into later.

The priest asks the one question Levin cannot dismiss — what will you tell your child — and Tolstoy keeps it small, provincial and half-stereotyped so that it arrives as an accident rather than a revelation. The three-rouble note under the velvet cuff sits in the same scene as the absolution. Levin catches himself in Sviyazhsky's position, holding views his life does not match.