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out into the open country, his good little horse, after his long inactivity,
stepping out gallantly, snorting over the pools, and asking, as it were, for
guidance. If Levin had felt happy before in the cattle pens and farm-
yard, he felt happier yet in the open country. Swaying rhythmically
with the ambling paces of his good little cob, drinking in the warm yet
fresh scent of the snow and the air, as he rode through his forest over
the crumbling, wasted snow, still left in parts, and covered with dissolv-
ing tracks, he rejoiced over every tree, with the moss reviving on its bark
and the buds swelling on its shoots. When he came out of the forest, in
the immense plain before him, his grass fields stretched in an unbro-
ken carpet of green, without one bare place or swamp, only spotted
here and there in the hollows with patches of melting snow. He was
not put out of temper even by the sight of the peasants’ horses and
colts trampling down his young grass (he told a peasant he met to drive
them out), nor by the sarcastic and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat,
whom he met on the way, and asked, “Well, Ipat, shall we soon be
sowing?” “We must get the ploughing done first, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch,” answered Ipat. The further he rode, the happier he
became, and plans for the land rose to his mind each better than the
last; to plant all his fields with hedges along the southern borders, so
that the snow should not lie under them; to divide them up into six
fields of arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a cattle yard at
the further end of the estate, and to dig a pond and to construct mov-
able pens for the cattle as a means of manuring the land. And then
eight hundred acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and four
hundred of clover, and not one acre exhausted.
Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the hedges,
so as not to trample his young crops, he rode up to the laborers who had
been sent to sow clover. A cart with the seed in it was standing, not at
the edge, but in the middle of the crop, and the winter corn had been
torn up by the wheels and trampled by the horse. Both the laborers
were sitting in the hedge, probably smoking a pipe together. The earth
in the cart, with which the seed was mixed, was not crushed to powder,
but crusted together or adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the la-
borer, Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set to work sowing.
This was not as it should be, but with the laborers Levin seldom lost
his temper. When Vassily came up, Levin told him to lead the horse to
the hedge.
“It’s all right, sir, it’ll spring up again,” responded Vassily.
“Please don’t argue,” said Levin, “but do as you’re told.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Vassily, and he took the horse’s head. “What a
sowing, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” he said, hesitating; “first rate. Only
it’s a work to get about! You drag a ton of earth on your shoes.”
“Why is it you have earth that’s not sifted?” said Levin.
“Well, we crumble it up,” answered Vassily, taking up some seed
and rolling the earth in his palms.
Vassily was not to blame for their having filled up his cart with
unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.
Levin had more than once already tried a way he knew for stifling
his anger, and turning all that seemed dark right again, and he tried
that way now. He watched how Mishka strode along, swinging the
huge clods of earth that clung to each foot; and getting off his horse, he
took the sieve from Vassily and started sowing himself.
“Where did you stop?”
Vassily pointed to the mark with his foot, and Levin went forward
as best he could, scattering the seed on the land. Walking was a
difficult as on a bog, and by the time Levin had ended the row he was
in a great heat, and he stopped and gave up the sieve to Vassily.