Page 724 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 27

‘If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set
going...such a lot of trouble wasted...I’d turn my back on
the whole business, sell up, go off like Nikolay
Ivanovitch...to hear La Belle Helene,’ said the landowner,
a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.
‘But you see you don’t throw it up,’ said Nikolay
Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; ‘so there must be something
gained.’
‘The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither
bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people
will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you’d never
believe it—the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep
chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a
horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but just go
and take him on as a laborer, he’ll do his best to do you a
mischief, and then bring you up before the justice of the
peace.’
‘But then you make complaints to the justice too,’ said
Sviazhsky.
‘I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world!
Such a talking, and such a to-do, that one would have

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