only proves that either I am a poor manager, or I sink my capital to increase the revenue."
"Oh! revenue!" cried Levin, with horror. "Maybe there is such a thing as revenue in Europe, where the land is better for the labor spent on it; but with us, the more labor spent on it, the worse it is—that is because it exhausts it—so there is no revenue."
"How, no revenue? It is a law."
"Then we are no exceptions to the law. The word renta, revenue, has no clearness for us, and explains nothing, but rather confuses. No; tell me how the doctrine of revenue can be ....
"Won't you have some curds?—Masha, send us some curds or some raspberries," said Sviazhsky to his wife. "Raspberries have lasted unusually late this year."
And, with his usual jovial disposition of soul, Sviazhsky got up and went out, evidently assuming that the discussion was ended, while for Levin it seemed that it had only just begun.
Levin was now left with the old proprietor, and continued to talk with him, endeavoring to prove to him that all the trouble arose from the fact that we did not try to understand our laborers' habits and peculiarities. But the old proprietor, like all people accustomed to think alone and for himself, found it difficult to enter into the thought of another, and clung firmly to his own opinions. He declared that the Russian muzhik was a pig, and loved swinishness, and that it needed force or else a stick to drive him out of his swinishness; but we are such liberals that we have suddenly swapped off the thousand-year-old stick for these lawyers and jails, where the good-for-nothing, stinking muzhik gets fed on good soup, and has his pure air by the cubic foot.
"Why," asked Levin, wishing to get back to the question, "do you think that it is impossible to reach an equilibrium which will utilize the forces of the laborer, and render them productive?"
"That will never come about with the Russian people; there is no force," replied the proprietor.
"Why could not new conditions be found?" asked
