Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 7
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.
Consequently 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 repairing 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 interested. 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
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