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working in the same way. Moreover, this new head had the further
reputation of being a bear in his manners, and was, according to all
reports, a man of a class in all respects the opposite of that to which his
predecessor had belonged, and to which Stepan Arkadyevitch had
hitherto belonged himself. On the previous day Stepan Arkadyevitch
had appeared at the office in a uniform, and the new chief had been
very affable and had talked to him as to an acquaintance. Conse-
quently Stepan Arkadyevitch deemed it his duty to call upon him in
his non-official dress. The thought that the new chief might not tender
him a warm reception was the other unpleasant thing. But Stepan
Arkadyevitch instinctively felt that everything would come round all
right. “They’re all people, all men, like us poor sinners; why be nasty
and quarrelsome?” he thought as he went into the hotel.
“Good-day, Vassily,” he said, walking into the corridor with his hat
cocked on one side, and addressing a footman he knew; “why, you’ve
let your whiskers grow! Levin, number seven, eh? Take me up, please.
And find out whether Count Anitchkin” (this was the new head) “is
receiving.”
“Yes, sir,” Vassily responded, smiling. “You’ve not been to see us
for a long while.”
“I was here yesterday, but at the other entrance. Is this number
seven?”
Levin was standing with a peasant from Tver in the middle of the
room, measuring a fresh bearskin, when Stepan Arkadyevitch went in.
“What! you killed him?” cried Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Well done!
A she-bear? How are you, Arhip!”
He shook hands with the peasant and sat down on the edge of a
chair, without taking off his coat and hat.
“Come, take off your coat and stay a little,” said Levin, taking his
hat.
“No, I haven’t time; I’ve only looked in for a tiny second,” answered
Stepan Arkadyevitch. He threw open his coat, but afterwards did take
it off, and sat on for a whole hour, talking to Levin about hunting and
the most intimate subjects.
“Come, tell me, please, what you did abroad? Where have you
been?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, when the peasant had gone.
“Oh, I stayed in Germany, in Prussia, in France, and in England—
not in the capitals, but in the manufacturing towns, and saw a great
deal that was new to me. And I’m glad I went.”
“Yes, I knew your idea of the solution of the labor question.”
“Not a bit: in Russia there can be no labor question. In Russia the
question is that of the relation of the working people to the land;
though the question exists there too—but there it’s a matter of repair-
ing what’s been ruined, while with us...”
Stepan Arkadyevitch listened attentively to Levin.
“Yes, yes!” he said, “it’s very possible you’re right. But I’m glad
you’re in good spirits, and are hunting bears, and working, and inter-
ested. Shtcherbatsky told me another story—he met you—that you
were in such a depressed state, talking of nothing but death....”
“Well, what of it? I’ve not given up thinking of death,” said Levin.
“It’s true that it’s high time I was dead; and that all this is nonsense.
It’s the truth I’m telling you. I do value my idea and my work awfully;
but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a
speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to
suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it’s all dust and
ashes.”
“But all that’s as old as the hills, my boy!”
“It is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then some-