Page 1708 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

felt in this busy time that he was infected by this general
quickening of energy in the people.
In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of
the rye, and to the oats, which were being carried to the

stacks, and returning home at the time his wife and sister-
in-law were getting up, he drank coffee with them and
walked to the farm, where a new thrashing machine was
to be set working to get ready the seed-corn.
He was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with
the leaves of the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly
peeled aspen beams of the new thatch roof. He gazed
through the open door in which the dry bitter dust of the
thrashing whirled and played, at the grass of the thrashing
floor in the sunlight and the fresh straw that had been
brought in from the barn, then at the speckly-headed,
white-breasted swallows that flew chirping in under the
roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in the crevices of
the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in the dark,
dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts.
‘Why is it all being done?’ he thought. ‘Why am I
standing here, making them work? What are they all so
busy for, trying to show their zeal before me? What is that
old Matrona, my old friend, toiling for? (I doctored her,
when the beam fell on her in the fire)’ he thought,

1707 of 1759