Nekhludoff arrived at Kusminskoie about noon.  In everything simplifying his life, he did not wire from the station of his arrival, but hired a two-horse country coach.  The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen regulation coat, belted below the waist, sitting sidewise on the box.  He was the more willing to carry on a conversation because the broken-down, lame, emaciated, foaming shaft-horse could then walk, which these horses always preferred.

The driver spoke about the manager of the Kusminskoie estate, not knowing that he was carrying its master, Nekhludoff purposely refrained from enlightening him.

“A dandy German,” he said, turning half around, cracking his long whip now over the heads, now under the horses.  “There is nothing here to compare with his fine team of three bay horses.  You ought to see him driving out with his wife!  I took some guests to his house last Christmas—­he had a fine tree.  You couldn’t find the like of it in the whole district!  He robbed everybody, right and left.  But what does he care?  He is bossing everybody.  They say he bought a fine estate.”

Nekhludoff thought that he was indifferent to the manner of the German’s management, and to the way he was profiting by it.  But the story of the driver with the long waist was unpleasant to him.  He was enchanted with the fine weather; the darkening clouds, sometimes obscuring the sun; the fields over which the larks soared; the woods, just covering up the top and bottom with green; the meadows on which the flocks and horses browsed, and the fields on which plowmen were already seen—­but a feeling of dissatisfaction crept over him.  And when he asked himself the reason for it, he recalled the driver’s account of the German’s management.

But by the time he was busying himself with the affairs of Kusminskoie he had forgotten it.

After an examination of the books and his conversation with the clerk, who artlessly set forth the advantages of the peasants having small holdings and the fact that they were hemmed in by the master’s land, Nekhludoff grew only more determined to put an end to his ownership, and give the land to the peasants.  From the books and his conversations with the clerk he learned that, as before, two-thirds of the best arable land was cultivated by his own men, and the rest by peasants who were paid five rubles per acre—­that is to say, for five rubles the peasant undertook to plow, harrow and sow an acre of land three times, then mow it, bind or press it, and carry it to the barn.  In other words, he was paid five rubles for what hired, cheap labor would cost at least ten rubles.  Again, the prices paid by the peasants to the office for necessaries were enormous.  They worked for meadow, for wood, for potatoe seed, and they were almost all in debt to the office.  Thus, the rent charged the peasants for lands beyond the fields was four times as great as it could bring on a five per cent. basis.