was what he did not like, and he avoided it by leading the conversation to some bright and agreeable topic.
All the impressions of this day, including those which arose from his visit to the old muzhik, and which seemed somehow to give a new basis to his thoughts, troubled Levin profoundly. This genial Sviazhsky who kept his thoughts for general use and evidently had entirely different principles for the conduct of his life, keeping them hidden from Levin, while at the same time he and the majority of men—the throng whose name is legion—seemed to be ruled by the general consensus of opinions by means of ideas strange to him; the testy old proprietor, perfectly right in his judicious views of life, but wrong in despising one entire class in Russia, and that perhaps the best; his own discontent with his activity, and the confused hope of setting things right at last,—all this excited and disturbed him.
Levin retired to his room, and lay down on his springy mattress, which unexpectedly exposed his arms and legs every time he moved; but it was long before he could get to sleep. His conversation with Sviazhsky, though many good things were said, did not interest him; but the old proprietor's arguments haunted him. He involuntarily remembered every word that he said, and his imagination supplied the answer.
"Yes, I ought to have replied to him, 'You say that our management is not succeeding because the muzhik despises all improvements, and that force must be applied to them. But if our estates were not retrograding, even where these improvements are not found, you would be right; but advance is made only where the laborer works in conformity with his own customs, as at the old man's by the roadside. Our general dissatisfaction with our management proves that either we or the laborers are at fault. We have long been losing, both by our own methods and by European methods, by neglecting the qualities of the laboring force. Let us be willing to acknowledge that the laboring force is not ideal as a force, but is the Russian muzhik with his instincts, and we shall then be able to manage our estates
