Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 13
wasted snow, still left in parts, and covered with dissolving 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 unbroken 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 movable
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 laborer, 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 as difficult as on a bog, and by the time
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