Page 1422 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

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, it’s

rather strange,’ he went on. ‘So we live without making
anything, as though we were ancient vestals set to keep in
a fire.’
The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.
‘There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay
Ivanovitch, or Count Vronsky, that’s settled here lately,
who try to carry on their husbandry as though it were a
factory; but so far it leads to nothing but making away
with capital on it.’
‘But why is it we don’t do like the merchants? Why
don’t we cut down our parks for timber?’ said Levin,
returning to a thought that had struck him.
‘Why, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides that’s not
work for a nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn’t
done here at the elections, but yonder, each in our corner.
There’s a class instinct, too, of what one ought and
oughtn’t to do. There’s 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
return too. At a simple loss.’

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