Anna Karenina

he house was big and old-fashioned, and Levin, though he lived alone,
had the whole house heated and used. He knew that this was stupid, he
knew that it was positively not right, and contrary to his present new
plans, but this house was a whole world to Levin. It was the world in
which his father and mother had lived and died. They had lived just the
life that to Levin seemed the ideal of perfection, and that he had
dreamed of beginning with his wife, his family.

Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was for him
a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in his imagination
a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother
had been.

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage
that he positively pictured to himself first the family, and only
secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His ideas of
marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority
of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous
facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on
which its whole happiness turned. And now he had to give up that.

When he had gone into the little drawing-room, where he always had tea,
and had settled himself in his armchair with a book, and Agafea
Mihalovna had brought him tea, and with her usual, “Well, I’ll stay a
while, sir,” had taken a chair in the window, he felt that, however
strange it might be, he had not parted from his daydreams, and that he
could not live without them. Whether with her, or with another, still
it would be. He was reading a book, and thinking of what he was
reading, and stopping to listen to Agafea Mihalovna, who gossiped away
without flagging, and yet with all that, all sorts of pictures of
family life and work in the future rose disconnectedly before his
imagination. He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been
put in its place, settled down, and laid to rest.

He heard Agafea Mihalovna talking of how Prohor had forgotten his duty
to God, and with the money Levin had given him to buy a horse, had been
drinking without stopping, and had beaten his wife till he’d half
killed her. He listened, and read his book, and recalled the whole
train of ideas suggested by his reading. It was Tyndall’s Treatise on
Heat. He recalled his own criticisms of Tyndall of his complacent
satisfaction in the cleverness of his experiments, and for his lack of
philosophic insight. And suddenly there floated into his mind the
joyful thought: “In two years’ time I shall have two Dutch cows; Pava
herself will perhaps still be alive, a dozen young daughters of Berkoot
and the three others—how lovely!”

He took up his book again. “Very good, electricity and heat are the
same thing; but is it possible to substitute the one quantity for the
other in the equation for the solution of any problem? No. Well, then
what of it? The connection between all the forces of nature is felt
instinctively.... It’s particulary nice if Pava’s daughter should be a
red-spotted cow, and all the herd will take after her, and the other
three, too! Splendid! To go out with my wife and visitors to meet the
herd.... My wife says, ‘Kostya and I looked after that calf like a
child.’ ‘How can it interest you so much?’ says a visitor. ‘Everything
that interests him, interests me.’ But who will she be?” And he
remembered what had happened at Moscow.... “Well, there’s nothing to be
done.... It’s not my fault. But now everything shall go on in a new
way. It’s nonsense to pretend that life won’t let one, that the past
won’t let one. One must struggle to live better, much better.”... He
raised his head, and fell to dreaming. Old Laska, who had not yet fully
digested her delight at his return, and had run out into the yard to
bark, came back wagging her tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the
scent of fresh air, put her head under his hand, and whined
plaintively, asking to be stroked.

“There, who’d have thought it?” said Agafea Mihalovna. “The dog now ...
why, she understands that her master’s come home, and that he’s
low-spirited.”

“Why low-spirited?”

“Do you suppose I don’t see it, sir? It’s high time I should know the
gentry. Why, I’ve grown up from a little thing with them. It’s nothing,
sir, so long as there’s health and a clear conscience.”

Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she knew his
thought.

“Shall I fetch you another cup?” said she, and taking his cup she went
out.

Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and she
promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head on a hindpaw. And in
token of all now being well and satisfactory, she opened her mouth a
little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky lips more comfortably
about her old teeth, she sank into blissful repose. Levin watched all
her movements attentively.

“That’s what I’ll do,” he said to himself; “that’s what I’ll do!
Nothing’s amiss.... All’s well.”