Page 716 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

himself to the test in regard to this girl. The Sviazhskys’
home-life was exceedingly pleasant, and Sviazhsky himself,
the best type of man taking part in local affairs that Levin
knew, was very interesting to him.

Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of
wonder to Levin, whose convictions, very logical though
never original, go one way by themselves, while their life,
exceedingly definite and firm in its direction, goes its way
quite apart and almost always in direct contradiction to
their convictions. Sviazhsky was an extremely advanced
man. He despised the nobility, and believed the mass of
the nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and only
concealing their views from cowardice. He regarded
Russia as a ruined country, rather after the style of Turkey,
and the government of Russia as so bad that he never
permitted himself to criticize its doings seriously, and yet
he was a functionary of that government and a model
marshal of nobility, and when he drove about he always
wore the cockade of office and the cap with the red band.
He considered human life only tolerable abroad, and went
abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the same time
he carried on a complex and improved system of
agriculture in Russia, and with extreme interest followed
everything and knew everything that was being done in

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