Anna Karenina

particularly charming on this visit, and Levin noticed in him a special
tenderness, as it were, and a new tone of respect that flattered him.
The efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the dinner should be
particularly good, only ended in two famished friends attacking the
preliminary course, eating a great deal of bread and butter, salt goose and
salted mushrooms, and in Levin's finally ordering the soup to be served
without the accompaniment of little pies, with which the cook had
particularly meant to impress their visitor. But though Stepan Arkadyevitch
was accustomed to very different dinners, he thought everything excellent:
the herb brandy, and the bread, and the butter, and above all the salt goose
and the mushrooms, and the nettle soup, and the chicken in white sauce,
and the white Crimean wine-- everything was superb and delicious.
"Splendid, splendid!" he said, lighting a fat cigar after the roast. "I feel as
if, coming to you, I had landed on a peaceful shore after the noise and
jolting of a steamer. And so you maintain that the laborer himself is an
element to be studied and to regulate the choice of methods in agriculture.
Of course, I'm an ignorant outsider; but I should fancy theory and its
application will have its influence on the laborer too."
"Yes, but wait a bit. I'm not talking of political economy, I'm talking of the
science of agriculture. It ought to be like the natural sciences, and to
observe given phenomena and the laborer in his economic,
ethnographical..."
At that instant Agafea Mihalovna came in with jam.
"Oh, Agafea Mihalovna," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, kissing the tips of his
plump fingers, "what salt goose, what herb brandy!...What do yo think, isn't
it time to start, Kostya?" he added.
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Levin looked out of the window at the sun sinking behind the bare tree-tops
of the forest.
"Yes, it's time," he said. "Kouzma, get ready the trap," and he ran
downstairs.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, going down, carefully took the canvas cover off his
varnished gun case with his own hands, and opening it, began to get ready
his expensive new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who already scented a big tip,
never left Stepan Arkadyevitch's side, and put on him both his stockings
and boots, a task which Stepan Arkadyevitch readily left him.
"Kostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin comes...I told him to
come today, he's to be brought in and to wait for me..."
"Why, do you mean to say you're selling the forest to Ryabinin?"
"Yes. Do you know him?"
"To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, 'positively and
conclusively.'"
Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed. "Positively and conclusively" were the
merchant's favorite words.
"Yes, it's wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where her
master's going!" he added, patting Laska, who hung about Levin, whining
and licking his hands, his boots, and his gun.
The trap was already at the steps when they went out.
"I told them to bring the trap round; or would you rather walk?"
"No, we'd better drive," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting into the trap. He
sat down, tucked the tiger-skin rug round him, and lighted a cigar. "How is
it you don't smoke? A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the
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crown and outward sign of pleasure. Come, this is life! How splendid it is!
This is how In should like to live!"
"Why, who prevents you?" said Levin, smiling.
"No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You like
horses--and you have them; dogs--you have them; shooting-- you have it;
farming--you have it."
"Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't,"
said Levin, thinking of Kitty.
Stepan Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his never-failing tact, that
he dreaded conversation about the Shtcherbatskys, and so saying nothing
about them. But now Levin was longing to find out what was tormenting
him so, yet he had not the courage to begin.
"Come, tell me how things are going with you," said Levin, bethinking
himself that it was not nice of him to think only of himself.
Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes sparkled merrily.
"You don't admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when one has
had one's rations of bread--to your mind it's a crime; but I don't count life as
life without love," he said, taking Levin's question his own way. "What am
I to do? I'm made that way. And really, one does so little harm to anyone,
and gives oneself so much pleasure..."
"What! is there something new, then?" queried Levin.
"Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of Ossian's
women.... Women, such as one sees in dreams.... Well, these women are
sometimes to be met in reality...and these women are terrible. Woman,
don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's
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always perfectly new."
"Well, then, it would be better not to study it."
"No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for
truth, not in the finding it."
Levin listened in silence, and in spite of all the efforts he made, he could
not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and understand his
sentiments and the charm of studying such women.
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