Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/214

 from the premises of soil and climate alone, but from the soil, the climate, and the certain unchangeable character of the laborer.

Thus, notwithstanding his loneliness or in consequence of his loneliness, his life, therefore, was very busy and full; only occasionally he felt the need of some one besides Agafya Mikhaïlovna with whom to communicate the ideas that came into his head. However, he brought himself to discuss with her about physics, the theories of rural economy, and, above all, philosophy. Philosophy was Agafya Mikhaïlovna's favorite subject.

The spring opened late. During the last weeks of Lent the weather was clear but cold. During the day the snow melted in the sun, but at night the mercury went down to seven degrees; the crust on the snow was so thick that carts could go anywhere across the fields.

It snowed on Easter Sunday. Then suddenly, on the following day, a warm wind blew, the clouds drifted over, and for three days and three nights a warm and heavy rain fell ceaselessly. On Thursday the wind went down, and then over the earth was spread a thick gray fog, as if to conceal the mysteries that were accomplishing in nature; under this fog, the fields were covered with water, the ice was melting and disappearing, the brooks ran more swiftly, foaming and muddy. Toward evening the Krasnaya Gorka, or Red Hill, began to show through the fog, the clouds scattered like snipe, and spring in reality was there in all her brilliancy.

The next morning the sun rose bright and quickly melted away the thin sheet of ice that still covered the ponds, and the warm atmosphere grew moist with the vapors rising from the earth; the old grass and the young blades peeping from the sod, with its tiny needles, the buds on the snow-ball trees, the currant bushes, and the sticky sappy birch trees, grew green, swelled, and on their branches, powdered with golden bloom, swarms of honey-bees buzzed in the sun. Invisible larks trilled their songs over the velvet of the green and the prairies freed from snow; the lapwings lamented for their hollows and marshes, submerged by the stormy waters;