Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/238

 "What a retrograde you are! And how about the fusion of classes?" said Oblonsky.

"Let those who like it, enjoy it! It is disgusting to me."

"You, I see, are a retrograde."

"To tell the truth, I never asked myself what I am. I am Konstantin Levin—nothing more."

"And Konstantin Levin in a very bad humor," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.

"Yes, I am in bad humor, and do you know why? Because .... excuse me .... because of your stupid barg.... "

Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-naturedly, like a man who is unreasonably scolded and blamed.

"There! that'll do!" he said. "After any one has sold anything, they come saying, 'You might have sold this at a higher price;' but no one thinks of offering this fine price before the sale. .... No; I see you have a grudge against this unfortunate Rabinin."

"Maybe I have. And do you know why? You will call me retrograde or some worse name, but it is so vexatious and disgusting to me to see what is going on everywhere—the nobility which I belong to, and in spite of your fusion of classes, am very glad to belong to, always getting poorer and poorer. .... And this growing poverty is not in consequence of luxurious living. That would be nothing. To live like lords is proper for the nobles; the nobles only can do this. Now the muzhiks are buying up our lands; that does not trouble me; the proprietor does nothing, the muzhik is industrious, and supplants the lazy man. So it ought to be. And I am very glad for the muzhik. But what vexes me, and stirs my soul, is to see the proprietor robbed by .... I don't know how to express it .... by his own innocence. Here is a Polish leaseholder, who has bought, at half price, a superb estate of a lady who lives at Nice. Yonder is a merchant who has hired a farm for a ruble an acre, and it is worth ten rubles an acre. And this very day, without the slightest reason, you have given this rascal a present of thirty thousand."

"But what can I do? Count my trees one by one?"