Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [377]
After them a whole crowd of landowners, surrounding a fat general, hurriedly came towards Levin. The landowners were obviously looking for a place to talk without being overheard.
‘How dare he say I ordered his trousers stolen! He drank them up, I suppose. I spit on him and his princely rank. He daren’t say that, it’s swinishness!’
‘I beg your pardon! They’re basing it on the article,’ voices came from another group, ‘the wife must be on record as a noblewoman.’
‘The devil I care about the article! I’m speaking from the soul. That’s what makes us nobility. There has to be trust.’
‘Come, your excellency, there’s fine champagne.’cs
Another crowd followed after a nobleman who was loudly shouting something: he was one of the three who had been made drunk.
‘I always advised Marya Semyonovna to lease it, because she can’t make any profit,’ a grey-moustached landowner in the uniform of a colonel of the old general headquarters said in a pleasant voice. This was the landowner Levin had met at Sviyazhsky’s. He recognized him at once. The landowner also looked closer at Levin, and they greeted each other.
‘Delighted! Of course! I remember very well. Last year at Marshal Nikolai Ivanovich’s.’
‘Well, how goes the farming?’ asked Levin.
‘The same - still at a loss,’ the landowner, stopping near Levin, answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of calm conviction that it had to be so. ‘And how have you wound up in our province?’ he asked. ‘Come to take part in our coup d’etat?’he said, pronouncing the French words firmly but poorly. ‘All Russia’s assembled here: gentlemen of the bedchamber and all but ministers.’ He pointed to the impressive figure of Stepan Arkadyich, in white trousers and the uniform of a gentleman of the bedchamber, walking about with a general.
‘I must confess that I have a very poor understanding of the significance of these elections among the nobility,’ said Levin.
The landowner looked at him.
‘What’s there to understand? There is no significance. An obsolete institution that goes on moving only by the force of inertia. Look at the uniforms - even they tell you: this is an assembly of justices of the peace, of permanent members and so on, and not of the nobility.’
‘Then why do you come?’ asked Levin.
‘Out of habit, that’s all. And one must also keep up one’s connections. A moral responsibility in a sense. And then, to tell the truth, there is a certain interest. My son-in-law wants to stand as a permanent member; they’re not well-to-do people and I must help him win. But why do these people come?’ he said, pointing to the venomous gentleman who had spoken at the governor’s table.
‘That’s the new generation of nobility.’
‘New it is. But not nobility. They are landlords, and we are landowners. As nobility, they’re committing suicide.’
‘But you yourself say that it’s an outdated institution.’
‘Outdated it is, but still it ought to be treated more respectfully. Take Snetkov ... Good or not, we’ve been a thousand years growing. You know, when you want to make a garden in front of your house, you have to lay it out, and there’s a hundred-year-old tree growing in that spot ... Though it’s old and gnarled, you still won’t cut the old-timer down for the sake of your flower beds, you’ll lay them out so as to include the tree. It can’t be grown in a year,’ he said cautiously, and immediately changed the subject. ‘Well, and how’s your estate?’
‘Not so good. About five per cent.’
‘Yes, but you’re not counting yourself. You’re also worth something. I’ll tell you about myself. Before I took up farming, I had a salary of three thousand roubles in the service. Now I work more than in the service, and like you I get five per cent, and thank God for that. And my work is done free.’
‘Then why do it, if it’s an outright loss?’
‘You just do! What can I say? A habit, and also knowing that you have to do it. I’ll tell you more,’ the landowner went on, leaning his elbow on the windowsill and warming to the subject. ‘My son has no interest in farming.