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“To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, ‘positively
and conclusively.’”
Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed. “Positively and conclusively” were
the merchant’s favorite words.
“Yes, it’s wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where her
master’s going!” he added, patting Laska, who hung about Levin, whin-
ing and licking his hands, his boots, and his gun.
The trap was already at the steps when they went out.
“I told them to bring the trap round; or would you rather walk?”
“No, we’d better drive,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting into the
trap. He sat down, tucked the tiger-skin rug round him, and lighted a
cigar. “How is it you don’t smoke? A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly
a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure. Come, this is
life! How splendid it is! This is how In should like to live!”
“Why, who prevents you?” said Levin, smiling.
“No, you’re a lucky man! You’ve got everything you like. You like
horses—and you have them; dogs—you have them; shooting— you
have it; farming—you have it.”
“Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don’t fret for what I
haven’t,” said Levin, thinking of Kitty.
Stepan Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said noth-
ing.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his never-failing
tact, that he dreaded conversation about the Shtcherbatskys, and so
saying nothing about them. But now Levin was longing to find out
what was tormenting him so, yet he had not the courage to begin.
“Come, tell me how things are going with you,” said Levin, be-
thinking himself that it was not nice of him to think only of himself.
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes sparkled merrily.
“You don’t admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when
one has had one’s rations of bread—to your mind it’s a crime; but I
don’t count life as life without love,” he said, taking Levin’s question his
own way. “What am I to do? I’m made that way. And really, one does
so little harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much pleasure...”
“What! is there something new, then?” queried Levin.
“Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of
Ossian’s women.... Women, such as one sees in dreams.... Well, these
women are sometimes to be met in reality...and these women are ter-
rible. Woman, don’t you know, is such a subject that however much you
study it, it’s always perfectly new.”
“Well, then, it would be better not to study it.”
“No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the
search for truth, not in the finding it.”
Levin listened in silence, and in spite of all the efforts he made, he
could not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and under-
stand his sentiments and the charm of studying such women.