village convinced him that they were beginning to get used to his new arrangements; and an old dvornik, at whose house he stopped to dry himself, evidently approved of his plan, and wanted to join the association for the purchase of cattle.
"What is required is to go straight to my goal, and I shall succeed," thought Levin; "but the labor and the pains have an object. I am not working for myself alone, but the question concerns the good of all. The whole way of managing our estates, the condition of all the people, must be absolutely changed. Instead of poverty, universal well-being, contentment; instead of enmity, agreement and union of interests; in a word, a bloodless revolution, but a mighty revolution, beginning in the little circuit of our district, then reaching the province, Russia, the whole world! The conception is so just that it cannot help being fruitful. Yes, indeed, this goal is worth working for. And there is absolutely no significance in the fact that I, Kostia Levin, my own self, a man who went to a ball in a black necktie, and was rejected by a Shcherbatsky, am a stupid and a good-for-nothing; that is neither here nor there. I believe that Franklin felt that he was just such a good-for-nothing, and had just as little faith in himself, when he took everything into account. And, probably, he had his Agafya Mikhaïlovna also, to whom he confided his secrets."
With such thoughts. Levin reached home in the dark. The overseer, who had been to the merchant, came and handed him a part of the money from the wheat. The agreement with the dvornik was drawn up; and then the overseer told how he had seen wheat still standing in the field by the road, while his one hundred and sixty stacks, not yet brought in, were nothing in comparison to what others had.
After supper Levin sat down in his chair, as usual, with a book; and as he read he began to think of his projected journey, especially in connection with his book. That evening the whole significance of his undertaking presented itself to him with remarkable clear-
