Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/450

 cause Sviazhsky was unquestionably an honorable, excellent, sensible man, who was always doing his work cheerfully and alertly, and had apparently never intentionally done anything wrong or could do anything wrong.

Levin tried to comprehend and could not understand him and always looked at him and his life as a living enigma.

He and Levin had been friends and therefore Levin allowed himself to study Sviazhsky, and tried to trace his view of life to the very source. But this was always an idle task. Every time Levin made the effort to penetrate a little farther into the hidden chambers of Sviazhsky's mind he discovered that the man was somewhat confused; a sort of terror showed itself in his eyes, as if he feared that Levin was going to entrap him; and he would give him a good-natured and jolly rebuff.

Now, after his disenchantment on the subject of farm management. Levin was especially glad to be at Sviazhsky's. To say nothing of the fact that he was always pleasantly impressed by the sight of these doves so contented with themselves and all they possessed, and their comfortable nest, he had a great longing, now that he was so dissatisfied with his own life, to discover the secret of his having such clear, decided, and cheerful views of life. Moreover, Levin knew that he should meet at Sviazhsky's the proprietors of the neighborhood, and he was especially desirous to talk with them, to hear about their experiences in farm management, about their crops, their ways of hiring service, and the like, which, as Levin knew well, it was the fashion to regard as very trifling topics of conversation, but which seemed to him more important than anything else.

"Perhaps these things were not important during the days of serfdom or in England. In both those cases conditions are definitely fixed; but with us at the present time when everything has been overturned and the new order is only just begun, the question how to regulate these conditions is the only important one in Russia." Such was Levin's conviction.