"Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible," he

said, and went to the bailiff.

When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came

out of his room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs

together.

"Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall

understand what the mysterious business is that you are always

absorbed in here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how

nice it all is! So bright, so cheerful!" said Stepan

Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was not always spring and fine

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weather like that day. "And your nurse is simply charming! A

pretty maid in an apron might be even more agreeable, perhaps;

but for your severe monastic style it does very well."

Stepan Arkadyevitch told him many interesting pieces of news;

especially interesting to Levin was the news that his brother,

Sergey Ivanovitch, was intending to pay him a visit in the

summer.

Not one word did Stepan Arkadyevitch say in reference to Kitty

and the Shtcherbatskys; he merely gave him greetings from his

wife. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy and was very

glad of his visitor. As always happened with him during his

solitude, a mass of ideas and feelings had been accumulating

within him, which he could not communicate to those about him.

And now he poured out upon Stepan Arkadyevitch his poetic joy in

the spring, and his failures and plans for the land, and his

thoughts and criticisms on the books he had been reading, and the

idea of his own book, the basis of which really was, though he

was unaware of it himself, a criticism of all the old books on

agriculture. Stepan Arkadyevitch, always charming, understanding

everything at the slightest reference, was particularly charming

on this visit, and Levin noticed in him a special tenderness, as

it were, and a new tone of respect that flattered him.

The efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the dinner

should be particularly good, only ended in the two famished friends

attacking the preliminary course, eating a great deal of bread

and butter, salt goose and salted mushrooms, and in Levin's

finally ordering the soup to be served without the accompaniment

of little pies, with which the cook had particularly meant to

impress their visitor. But though Stepan Arkadyevitch was

accustomed to very different dinners, he thought everything

excellent: the herb brandy, and the bread, and the butter, and

above all the salt goose and the mushrooms, and the nettle soup,

and the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean wine--

everything was superb and delicious.




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