The other letter was from his steward.  The steward wrote to tell him that a visit to his estates was necessary in order to enter into possession, and also to decide about the further management of his lands; whether it was to continue in the same way as when his mother was alive, or whether, as he had represented to the late lamented princess, and now advised the young prince, they had not better increase their stock and farm all the land now rented by the peasants themselves.  The steward wrote that this would be a far more profitable way of managing the property; at the same time, he apologised for not having forwarded the 3,000 roubles income due on the 1st.  This money would be sent on by the next mail.  The reason for the delay was that he could not get the money out of the peasants, who had grown so untrustworthy that he had to appeal to the authorities.  This letter was partly disagreeable, and partly pleasant.  It was pleasant to feel that he had power over so large a property, and yet disagreeable, because Nekhludoff had been an enthusiastic admirer of Henry George and Herbert Spencer.  Being himself heir to a large property, he was especially struck by the position taken up by Spencer in Social Statics, that justice forbids private landholding, and with the straightforward resoluteness of his age, had not merely spoken to prove that land could not be looked upon as private property, and written essays on that subject at the university, but had acted up to his convictions, and, considering it wrong to hold landed property, had given the small piece of land he had inherited from his father to the peasants.  Inheriting his mother’s large estates, and thus becoming a landed proprietor, he had to choose one of two things:  either to give up his property, as he had given up his father’s land ten years before, or silently to confess that all his former ideas were mistaken and false.

He could not choose the former because he had no means but the landed estates (he did not care to serve); moreover, he had formed luxurious habits which he could not easily give up.  Besides, he had no longer the same inducements; his strong convictions, the resoluteness of youth, and the ambitious desire to do something unusual were gone.  As to the second course, that of denying those clear and unanswerable proofs of the injustice of landholding, which he had drawn from Spencer’s Social Statics, and the brilliant corroboration of which he had at a later period found in the works of Henry George, such a course was impossible to him.

CHAPTER IV.

Missy.