Anna Karenina — Chapter 142 in French
By Leo Tolstoy
« Il a caché aux sages ce qu’il a révélé aux enfants et aux simples d’esprit », pensa Lévine, quand ce soir-là, il causa avec sa femme. "He has hidden it from the wise, and revealed it unto children and fools;" thus thought Levin about his wife as he was talking with her a little while later.
Il ne prétendait pas se comparer à un homme sage en citant ainsi l'Évangile. He did not mean to compare himself to a wise man in thus quoting the Gospel. Lévine se remémorait cette phrase de l’Évangile, non parce qu’il se croyait sage, mais il ne pouvait ignorer qu’il était plus intelligent que sa femme ou qu’Agafia Mikhaïlovna et qu’il pensait à la mort avec toutes les forces de son âme. He did not call himself wise; but he could not help feeling that he was more intellectual than his wife and Agafya Mikhaïlovna, that he employed all the powers of his soul, when he thought about death. Il savait aussi que plusieurs grands esprits avaient sondé cette question ; il avait lu leurs écrits, et eux aussi semblaient ne pas savoir la centième partie de ce que savaient sur cette question sa femme et Agafia Mikhaïlovna. He knew also that many great and manly minds whose thoughts on this subject he had read had tried to fathom this mystery, but they had not seemed to know one hundredth part as much as his wife and his old nurse. Si dissemblables que fussent ces deux femmes, Agafia Mikhaïlovna et Katia, comme l’appelait son frère Nicolas et comme Lévine aimait maintenant à l’appeler, sous ce rapport leur ressemblance était parfaite. Agafya Mikhaïlovna and Katya—as his brother called her, and he also now began to take pleasure in doing—had, in this respect, a perfect sympathy, though otherwise they were entirely opposite.
Toutes deux savaient, indubitablement, ce qu’est la vie et la mort, et, quoique certainement incapables de répondre aux questions que se posait Lévine, et même de les comprendre, toutes deux ne doutaient point de l’importance de ce phénomène, elles l’envisageaient également et de la même façon que des millions d’êtres humains. Both unquestionably knew what life meant and what death meant, and though they were of course incapable of answering or understanding the questions that presented themselves to Levin's mind, they not only had their own way of explaining these great facts of human existence, but they also shared their belief in this regard with millions of human beings. La preuve qu’elles n’ignoraient point ce qu’était la mort, c’est qu’elles savaient approcher les mourants et ne les craignaient pas, tandis que Lévine et ceux qui pouvaient, comme lui, longtemps discourir sur la mort, évidemment ne le savaient pas, car ils avaient peur de la mort et ne savaient que faire en présence d’un moribond. As a proof of their well-grounded knowledge of what death was, they without a second of doubt knew what to do for those who were dying, and felt no fear of them. it et n'avaient aucune notion de ce qu'il fallait faire auprès des mourants. While Levin and others, who could talk much about death, evidently knew nothing about it because they were afraid of it and actually had no notion what to do when men were dying. S’il eût été seul auprès de son frère Nicolas, il se fut contenté de le regarder avec épouvante, d’attendre sa fin avec plus d’épouvante encore, incapable de le soulager. If Konstantin Levin had been alone now with his brother Nikolaï, he would have gazed with terror into his face, and with growing terror awaited his end with fear, and been able to think of nothing to do for him.
En outre, il ne savait que dire, comment regarder, comment marcher. What was more, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to walk. Parler de choses indifférentes lui semblait blessant ; parler de mort, de choses tristes, impossible ; se taire, était également impossible. To speak of indifferent things seemed unworthy, impossible; to speak of melancholy things, of death, was likewise impossible; to be silent was even worse.