`And with what he made he'd buy up livestock, or buy some land for a trifle, and let it out to the peasants,' Levin added, smiling. He had evidently more than once come across those commercial calculations. `And he'd make his fortune. But you and I must thank God if we keep what we've got and leave it to our children.'

`You're married, I've heard?' said the landowner.

`Yes,' Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. `Yes, all this is rather strange,' he went on. `So we live on without any reckoning, as though we were the vestals of antiquity, set to guard a sacred fire or something.'

The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.

`There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolai Ivanovich, or Count Vronsky, who's settled here lately - they try to set up an agronomic industry; but so far it leads to nothing but making away with capital.'

`But why is it we don't do like the merchants? Why don't we cut down our parks for bast?' said Levin, returning to a thought that had struck him.

`Why, as you said, to guard the fire. Besides, that's not work for a nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn't done here at the elections, but yonder, each in his own nook. There's a class instinct, too, of what one ought and oughtn't to do. There are 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 reckoning too. At a simple loss.'

`Just as we do,' said Levin. `Very, very glad to have met you,' he added, seeing Sviiazhsky approaching him.

`And here we've met for the first time since we met at your place,' said the landowner to Sviiazhsky, `and we've had a good talk, too.'

`Well, have you been attacking the new order of things?' said Sviiazhsky with a smile.

`That we're bound to do.'

`You've been relieving your feelings.'