Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/448

 CHAPTER XXVI

was predvodityel or marshal of the nobility in his district. He was five years older than Levin, and had been married some time. His sister-in-law was an inmate of his family, and to Levin she was a very attractive young lady; and Levin knew that Sviazhsky and his wife would be very glad for him to marry her. He knew this infallibly, as marriageable young men usually know such things, and he knew also that though he dreamed of marriage, and was sure that this fascinating young lady would make a charming wife, he would sooner have been able to fly to heaven than to marry her, even if he had not been in love with Kitty Shcherbatsky. And this knowledge poisoned his pleasure in his prospective visit.

On receiving Sviazhsky's letter, with its invitation to go hunting, Levin had immediately thought about this; but in spite of it, decided that such views in regard to him on the part of Sviazhsky were entirely gratuitous, and he decided to accept the invitation. Moreover he had in the depths of his soul a strong curiosity to see this girl once more, and experiment on the effect that she would produce on him.

Sviazhsky's domestic life was in the highest degree pleasant, and Sviazhsky himself was the very best type of the proprietor devoted to the affairs of the province, and this fact always interested Levin.

He was one of those men that always excited Levin's amazement, whose opinions, very logical, although never self-formed, take one direction, while their lives, perfectly defined and confident in their course, take another, absolutely independent of each other and almost always in opposition. Sviazhsky was a thorough-going liberal. He despised the nobility, charged the majority of the nobles with secretly, and from motives of cowardice, opposing emancipation; and he regarded Russia as a rotten country like Turkey, and its government so wretched that he did not permit himself seriously to criticize its acts; and