The other letter was from the steward in charge of his estates.  Nekhludoff was requested to return and establish his right to the inheritance and also to decide on the future management of the estates; whether the same system of letting out to the peasants, which prevailed during the lifetime of his mother, was to be continued, or, as the steward had strongly advised the deceased Princess, and now advised the young Prince, to augment the stock and work all the land himself.  The steward wrote that the land could thus best be exploited.  He also apologized for his failure to send the three thousand rubles due on the first of the month, which he would send by the next mail, explaining it by the difficulty of collecting the rents from the peasants whose bad faith had reached a point where it became necessary to resort to the courts to collect them.  This letter was partly agreeable and partly disagreeable to Nekhludoff.  It was agreeable to feel the power of authority over so vast an estate, and it was disagreeable, because in his youth he was an enthusiastic adherent of Herbert Spencer, and being himself a large land owner, was struck by the proposition in Social Statics that private ownership of land is contrary to the dictates of justice.  With the frankness and boldness of youth, he not only then spoke of the injustice of private ownership of land; not only did he compose theses in the university on the subject, but he actually distributed among the peasants the few hundred acres of land left him by his father, not desiring to own land contrary to his convictions.  Now that he found himself the owner of vast estates, he was confronted by two alternatives:  either to waive his ownership in favor of the peasants, as he did ten years ago with the two hundred acres, or, by tacit acquiescence, confess that all his former ideas were erroneous and false.

He could not carry out the first, because he possessed no resources outside of the land.  He did not wish to go into service, and yet he had luxurious habits of life which he thought he could not abandon.  Indeed, there was no necessity of abandoning these habits, since he had lost the strength of conviction as well as the resolution, the vanity and the desire to astonish people that he had possessed in his youth.  The other alternative—­to reject all the arguments against private ownership of land which he gathered from Spencer’s Social Statics, and of which he found confirmation in the works of Henry George—­he could follow even less.

For this reason the steward’s letter was disagreeable to him.

CHAPTER IV.

Having breakfasted, Nekhludoff went to the cabinet to see for what hour he was summoned to appear at court, and to answer the Princess’ note.  In the work-room stood an easel with a half-finished painting turned face downward, and on the wall hung studies in drawing.  On seeing that painting, on which he had worked two years, and those drawings, he called to mind the feeling of impotence, which he experienced of late with greatest force, to make further advance in the art.  He explained this feeling by the development of a fine aesthetic taste, and yet this consciousness caused him unpleasant sensations.