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Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

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PART THREE CHAPTER 11<br />

Chapter 11<br />

IN the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin’s sister’s estate, about fifteen<br />

miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Levin to report on how things were going<br />

there and on the hay. The chief source of income on his sister’s estate was from the<br />

riverside meadows. In former years the hay had been bought by the peasants for<br />

twenty roubles the three acres. When Levin took over the management of the estate,<br />

he thought on examining the grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed<br />

the price at twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would not give that<br />

price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other purchasers. Then Levin had driven<br />

over himself, and arranged to have the grass cut, partly by hired labor, partly at a<br />

payment of a certain proportion of the crop. His own peasants put every hindrance<br />

they could in the way of this new arrangement, but it was carried out, and the first<br />

year the meadows had yielded a profit almost double. The previous year–which<br />

was the third year–the peasants had maintained the same opposition to the arrangement,<br />

and the hay had been cut on the same system. This year the peasants were<br />

doing all the mowing for a third of the hay crop, and the village elder had come<br />

now to announce that the hay had been cut, and that, fearing rain, they had invited<br />

the counting-house clerk over, had divided the crop in his presence, and had raked<br />

together eleven stacks as the owner’s share. From the vague answers to his question<br />

how much hay had been cut on the principal meadow, from the hurry of the village<br />

elder who had made the division, not asking leave, from the whole tone of the peasant,<br />

Levin perceived that there was something wrong in the division of the hay, and<br />

made up his mind to drive over himself to look into the matter.<br />

Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the cottage of an old<br />

friend of his, the husband of his brother’s wet-nurse, Levin went to see the old man<br />

in his bee-house, wanting to find out from him the truth about the hay. Parmenitch,<br />

a talkative, comely old man, gave Levin a very warm welcome, showed him all he<br />

was doing, told him everything about his bees and the swarms of that year; but<br />

gave vague and unwilling answers to Levin’s inquiries about the mowing. This<br />

confirmed Levin still more in his suspicions. He went to the hay fields and examined<br />

the stacks. The haystacks could not possibly contain fifty wagon-loads each, and<br />

to convict the peasants Levin ordered the wagons that had carried the hay to be<br />

brought up directly, to lift one stack, and carry it into the barn. There turned out<br />

to be only thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the village elder’s assertions<br />

about the compressibility of hay, and its having settled down in the stacks, and his<br />

swearing that everything had been done in the fear of God, Levin stuck to his point<br />

that the hay had been divided without his orders, and that, therefore, he would not<br />

accept that hay as fifty loads to a stack. After a prolonged dispute the matter was<br />

decided by the peasants taking these eleven stacks, reckoning them as fifty loads<br />

each. The arguments and the division of the haycocks lasted the whole afternoon.<br />

When the last of the hay had been divided, Levin, intrusting the superintendence of<br />

the rest to the counting-house clerk, sat down on a haycock marked off by a stake of<br />

willow, and looked admiringly at the meadow swarming with peasants.<br />

In front of him, in the bend of the river beyond the marsh, moved a bright-colored<br />

line of peasant women, and the scattered hay was being rapidly formed into gray<br />

257

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