hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the muddy streams running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on every bare twig, at the whiteness of the patch of unmelted hailstones on the planks of the bridge, at the thick layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay heaped up about the stripped elm-tree.  In spite of the gloominess of nature around him, he felt peculiarly eager.  The talks he had been having with the peasants in the further village had shown that they were beginning to get used to their new position.  The old servant to whose hut he had gone to get dry evidently approved of Levin’s plan, and of his own accord proposed to enter the partnership by the purchase of cattle.

“I have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall attain my end,” thought Levin; “and it’s something to work and take trouble for.  This is not a matter of myself individually; the question of the public welfare comes into it.  The whole system of culture, the chief element in the condition of the people, must be completely transformed.  Instead of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility, harmony and unity of interests.  In short, a bloodless revolution, but a revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little circle of our district, then the province, then Russia, the whole world.  Because a just idea cannot but be fruitful.  Yes, it’s an aim worth working for.  And its being me, Kostya Levin, who went to a ball in a black tie, and was refused by the Shtcherbatskaya girl, and who was intrinsically such a pitiful, worthless creature—­that proves nothing; I feel sure Franklin felt just as worthless, and he too had no faith in himself, thinking of himself as a whole.  That means nothing.  And he too, most likely, had an Agafea Mihalovna to whom he confided his secrets.”

Musing on such thoughts Levin reached home in the darkness.

The bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and brought part of the money for the wheat.  An agreement had been made with the old servant, and on the road the bailiff had learned that everywhere the corn was still standing in the fields, so that his one hundred and sixty shocks that had not been carried were nothing in comparison with the losses of others.

After dinner Levin was sitting, as he usually did, in an easy chair with a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the journey before him in connection with his book.  Today all the significance of his book rose before him with special distinctness, and whole periods ranged themselves in his mind in illustration of his theories.  “I must write that down,” he thought.  “That ought to form a brief introduction, which I thought unnecessary before.”  He got up to go to his writing table, and Laska, lying at his feet, got up too, stretching and looking at him as though to inquire where to go.  But he had not time to write it down, for the head peasants had come round, and Levin went out into the hall to them.