Page 603 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

envious of this health and mirthfulness; he longed to take
part in the expression of this joy of life. But he could do
nothing, and had to lie and look on and listen. When the
peasants, with their singing, had vanished out of sight and

hearing, a weary feeling of despondency at his own
isolation, his physical inactivity, his alienation from this
world, came over Levin.
Some of the very peasants who had been most active in
wrangling with him over the hay, some whom he had
treated with contumely, and who had tried to cheat him,
those very peasants had greeted him goodhumoredly, and
evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of
rancor against him, any regret, any recollection even of
having tried to deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea
of merry common labor. God gave the day, God gave the
strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated
to labor, and that labor was its own reward. For whom the
labor? What would be its fruits? These were idle
considerations— beside the point.
Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense
of envy of the men who led this life; but today for the first
time, especially under the influence of what he had seen in
the attitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea
presented itself definitely to his mind that it was in his

602 of 1759