The table was covered with a coarse, unbleached cloth and an embroidered towel was laid on it in lieu of a napkin.  A vieux-saxe soup tureen with a broken handle stood on the table, full of potato soup, the stock made of the fowl that had put out and drawn in his black leg, and was now cut, or rather chopped, in pieces, which were here and there covered with hairs.  After the soup more of the same fowl with the hairs was served roasted, and then curd pasties, very greasy, and with a great deal of sugar.  Little appetising as all this was, Nekhludoff hardly noticed what he was eating; he was occupied with the thought which had in a moment dispersed the sadness with which he had returned from the village.

The foreman’s wife kept looking in at the door, whilst the frightened maid with the earrings brought in the dishes; and the foreman smiled more and more joyfully, priding himself on his wife’s culinary skill.  After dinner, Nekhludoff succeeded, with some trouble, in making the foreman sit down.  In order to revise his own thoughts, and to express them to some one, he explained his project of letting the land to the peasants, and asked the foreman for his opinion.  The foreman, smiling as if he had thought all this himself long ago, and was very pleased to hear it, did not really understand it at all.  This was not because Nekhludoff did not express himself clearly, but because according to this project it turned out that Nekhludoff was giving up his own profit for the profit of others, and the thought that every one is only concerned about his own profit, to the harm of others, was so deeply rooted in the foreman’s conceptions that he imagined he did not understand something when Nekhludoff said that all the income from the land must be placed to form the communal capital of the peasants.

“Oh, I see; then you, of course, will receive the percentages from that capital,” said the foreman, brightening up.

“Dear me! no.  Don’t you see, I am giving up the land altogether.”

“But then you will not get any income,” said the foreman, smiling no longer.

“Yes, I am going to give it up.”

The foreman sighed heavily, and then began smiling again.  Now he understood.  He understood that Nekhludoff was not quite normal, and at once began to consider how he himself could profit by Nekhludoff’s project of giving up the land, and tried to see this project in such a way that he might reap some advantage from it.  But when he saw that this was impossible he grew sorrowful, and the project ceased to interest him, and he continued to smile only in order to please the master.

Seeing that the foreman did not understand him, Nekhludoff let him go and sat down by the window-sill, that was all cut about and inked over, and began to put his project down on paper.

The sun went down behind the limes, that were covered with fresh green, and the mosquitoes swarmed in, stinging Nekhludoff.  Just as he finished his notes, he heard the lowing of cattle and the creaking of opening gates from the village, and the voices of the peasants gathering together for the meeting.  He told the foreman not to call the peasants up to the office, as he meant to go into the village himself and meet the men where they would assemble.  Having hurriedly drank a cup of tea offered him by the foreman, Nekhludoff went to the village.