(Who would ever have thought that this boy would get married, and that he’d marry well? Timid, indecisive—a pusillanimous pushover—beneficiary of a meager inheritance he had to share with his sister, whom his father adopted when Vronsky gave him custody after Anna killed herself, and whose paternal grandmother left her trinkets and kept the valuables for herself, holding on to every single penny both in revenge against the woman who was the downfall of her son and out of greed, because, as she said, “In the end, Karenin adopted her.” As a child, Anya was the spitting image of Vronsky—so much so that Anna couldn’t bear to look at her—but even this likeness to her own flesh and blood didn’t temper the Countess Vronskaya’s vengeance; so much for a grandmother’s love…. Sergei’s father’s fortune dwindled toward the end of his life as his status in the government declined, partly because of ill management by an unscrupulous lawyer who took advantage of the fact that Karenin wished to stay out of the public eye and pulled the wool over his eyes. Aggrieved and diminished, he took refuge in the company of the Countess Lydia Ivanovna [an unbearable woman], his one and only emotional and religious support. But the old countess deserves some credit; she stood by him throughout the ordeal, unwavering. His Christianity isolated him even further, because after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II—who emancipated the serfs—his son, Alexander III, didn’t look kindly on anyone who was not pure Orthodox. Old Karenin played all his cards wrong…. When his firstborn came of age, there was no one to look out for him. His uncle, Prince Stefan Oblonski, had also fallen out of favor because of an administrative error that might have been overlooked were it not for the pressure Tolstoy was putting on the new tsar to pardon Alexander II’s assassins and spare them the death penalty … which was just as impossible as salvaging Sergei’s family name: who’d want to take it? Any woman who married him would take a name besmirched by that wealthy beauty who threw herself onto the tracks in a fit of rage and jealousy, in front of all the other travelers. There was no apparent reason for her suicide. Her jealousy was unfounded; the mere mention of a woman’s name, or of some place where he might run into one, especially if it was the Princess Sorokina, made her wild. She convinced herself that Vronsky was about to abandon her, that his mother was urging him to make a more favorable match, so she took one step, and it was all over. She asked God’s pardon at the last second, but not Sergei’s—a huge mistake, because God has so very much whereas she was the only thing poor Sergei had.)