Anna Karenina - Part 1 - Page 26/119

When the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch turned to his

brother.

"Delighted that you've come. For some time, is it? How's your

farming getting on?"

Levin knew that his elder brother took little interest in

farming, and only put the question in deference to him, and so he

only told him about the sale of his wheat and money matters.

Levin had meant to tell his brother of his determination to get

married, and to ask his advice; he had indeed firmly resolved to

do so. But after seeing his brother, listening to his

conversation with the professor, hearing afterwards the

unconsciously patronizing tone in which his brother questioned

him about agricultural matters (their mother's property had not

been divided, and Levin took charge of both their shares), Levin

felt that he could not for some reason begin to talk to him of

his intention of marrying. He felt that his brother would not

look at it as he would have wished him to.

"Well, how is your district council doing?" asked Sergey

Ivanovitch, who was greatly interested in these local boards and

attached great importance to them.

"I really don't know."

"What! Why, surely you're a member of the board?"

"No, I'm not a member now; I've resigned," answered Levin, "and I

no longer attend the meetings."

"What a pity!" commented Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.

Levin in self-defense began to describe what took place in the

meetings in his district.

"That's how it always is!" Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.

"We Russians are always like that. Perhaps it's our strong

point, really, the faculty of seeing our own shortcomings; but we

overdo it, we comfort ourselves with irony which we always have

on the tip of our tongues. All I say is, give such rights as our

local self-government to any other European people--why, the

Germans or the English would have worked their way to freedom

from them, while we simply turn them into ridicule."

"But how can it be helped?" said Levin penitently. "It was my

last effort. And I did try with all my soul. I can't. I'm no

good at it."

"It's not that you're no good at it," said Sergey Ivanovitch; "it

is that you don't look at it as you should."

"Perhaps not," Levin answered dejectedly.

"Oh! do you know brother Nikolay's turned up again?"

This brother Nikolay was the elder brother of Konstantin Levin,

and half-brother of Sergey Ivanovitch; a man utterly ruined, who

had dissipated the greater part of his fortune, was living in the

strangest and lowest company, and had quarreled with his

brothers.