"You're married, I've heard?" said the landowner.
"Yes," Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. "Yes, it's
rather strange," he went on. "So we live without making
anything, as though we were ancient vestals set to keep in a
fire."
The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.
"There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay
Ivanovitch, or Count Vronsky, that's settled here lately, who try
to carry on their husbandry as though it were a factory; but so
far it leads to nothing but making away with capital on it."
"But why is it we don't do like the merchants? Why don't we cut
down our parks for timber?" said Levin, returning to a thought
that had struck him.
"Why, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides that's not work
for a nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn't done here at the
elections, but yonder, each in our corner. There's a class
instinct, too, of what one ought and oughtn't to do. There's the
peasants, too, I wonder at them sometimes; any good peasant tries
to take all the land he can. However bad the land is, he'll work
it. Without a return too. At a simple loss."
"Just as we do," said Levin. "Very, very glad to have met you,"
he added, seeing Sviazhsky approaching him.
"And here we've met for the first time since we met at your
place," said the landowner to Sviazhsky, "and we've had a good
talk too."
"Well, have you been attacking the new order of things?" said
Sviazhsky with a smile.
"That we're bound to do."
"You've relieved your feelings?"