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“I can’t say.”
“Well, but I can tell you: your receiving some five thousand, let’s
say, for your work on the land, while our host, the peasant here, how-
ever hard he works, can never get more than fifty roubles, is just as
dishonest as my earning more than my chief clerk, and Malthus getting
more than a station-master. No, quite the contrary; I see that society
takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these people, which is utterly
baseless, and I fancy there’s envy at the bottom of it....”
“No, that’s unfair,” said Veslovsky; “how could envy come in? There
is something not nice about that sort of business.”
“You say,” Levin went on, “that it’s unjust for me to receive five
thousand, while the peasant has fifty; that’s true. It is unfair, and I feel
it, but...”
“It really is. Why is it we spend our time riding, drinking, shooting,
doing nothing, while they are forever at work?” said Vassenka Veslovsky,
obviously for the first time in his life reflecting on the question, and
consequently considering it with perfect sincerity.
“Yes, you feel it, but you don’t give him your property,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, intentionally, as it seemed, provoking Levin.
There had arisen of late something like a secret antagonism be-
tween the two brothers-in-law; as though, since they had married
sisters, a kind of rivalry had sprung up between them as to which was
ordering his life best, and now this hostility showed itself in the conver-
sation, as it began to take a personal note.
“I don’t give it away, because no one demands that from me, and if
I wanted to, I could not give it away,” answered Levin, “and have no
one to give it to.”
“Give it to this peasant, he would not refuse it.”
“Yes, but how am I to give it up? Am I to go to him and make a
deed of conveyance?”
“I don’t know; but if you are convinced that you have no right...”
“I’m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel I have no right to
give it up, that I have duties both to the land and to my family.”
“No, excuse me, but if you consider this inequality is unjust, why is
it you don’t act accordingly?...”
“Well, I do act negatively on that idea, so far as not trying to in-
crease the difference of position existing between him and me.”
“No, excuse me, that’s a paradox.”
“Yes, there’s something of a sophistry about that,” Veslovsky agreed.
“Ah! our host; so you’re not asleep yet?” he said to the peasant who
came into the barn, opening the creaking door. “How is it you’re not
asleep?”
“No, how’s one to sleep! I thought our gentlemen would be asleep,
but I heard them chattering. I want to get a hook from here. She won’t
bite?” he added, stepping cautiously with his bare feet.
“And where are you going to sleep?”
“We are going out for the night with the beasts.”
“Ah, what a night!” said Veslovsky, looking out at the edge of the
hut and the unharnessed wagonette that could be seen in the faint
light of the evening glow in the great frame of the open doors. “But
listen, there are women’s voices singing, and, on my word, not badly too.
Who’s that singing, my friend?”
“That’s the maids from hard by here.”
“Let’s go, let’s have a walk! We shan’t go to sleep, you know.
Oblonsky, come along!”
“If one could only do both, lie here and go,” answered Oblonsky,
stretching. “It’s capital lying here.”
“Well, I shall go by myself,” said Veslovsky, getting up eagerly, and