Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 12
see a doctor and to go to a watering-place abroad. He succeeded so well in persuading
his brother, and in lending him money for the journey without irritating him,
that he was satisfied with himself in that matter. In addition to his farming, which
called for special attention in spring, and in addition to reading, Levin had begun
that winter a work on agriculture, the plan of which turned on taking into account
the character of the laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data of the question,
like the climate and the soil, and consequently deducing all the principles of
scientific culture, not simply from the data of soil and climate, but from the data of
soil, climate, and a certain unalterable character of the laborer. Thus, in spite of his
solitude, or in consequence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly full. Only rarely
he suffered from an unsatisfied desire to communicate his stray ideas to someone
besides Agafea Mihalovna. With her indeed he not infrequently fell into discussion
upon physics, the theory of agriculture, and especially philosophy; philosophy was
Agafea Mihalovna’s favorite subject.
Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it had been steadily fine
frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night there were even
seven degrees of frost. There was such a frozen surface on the snow that they drove
the wagons anywhere off the roads. Easter came in the snow. Then all of a sudden,
on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for
three days and three nights the warm, driving rain fell in streams. On Thursday
the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land as though hiding
the mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in nature. Behind the
fog there was the flowing of water, the cracking and floating of ice, the swift rush
of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the following Monday, in the evening, the fog
parted, the storm clouds split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared,
and the real spring had come. In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore
away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering
with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener,
and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the
currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was
humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen
above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble-land; peewits wailed over
the low lands and marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high
across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new
hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round
their bleating mothers. Nimble children ran about the drying paths, covered with
the prints of bare feet. There was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen
at the pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing
ploughs and harrows. The real spring had come.
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