Page 344 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘You can’t get across the streams, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch,’ the coachman shouted.
‘All right, I’ll go by the forest.’
And Levin rode through the slush of the farmyard to

the gate and out into the open country, his good little
horse, after his long inactivity, stepping out gallantly,
snorting over the pools, and asking, as it were, for
guidance. If Levin had felt happy before in the cattle pens
and farmyard, he felt happier yet in the open country.
Swaying rhythmically with the ambling paces of his good
little cob, drinking in the warm yet fresh scent of the snow
and the air, as he rode through his forest over the
crumbling, wasted snow, still left in parts, and covered
with dissolving tracks, he rejoiced over every tree, with
the moss reviving on its bark and the buds swelling on its
shoots. When he came out of the forest, in the immense
plain before him, his grass fields stretched in an unbroken
carpet of green, without one bare place or swamp, only
spotted here and there in the hollows with patches of
melting snow. He was not put out of temper even by the
sight of the peasants’ horses and colts trampling down his
young grass (he told a peasant he met to drive them out),
nor by the sarcastic and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat,
whom he met on the way, and asked, ‘Well, Ipat, shall we

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