"Do you know, I've been thinking about you," said Sergey

Ivanovitch. "It's beyond everything what's being done in the

district, according to what this doctor tells me. He's a very

intelligent fellow. And as I've told you before, I tell you

again: it's not right for you not to go to the meetings, and

altogether to keep out of the district business. If decent

people won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong.

We pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no

schools, nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drugstores--

nothing."

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"Well, I did try, you know," Levin said slowly and unwillingly.

"I can't! and so there's no help for it."

"But why can't you? I must own I can't make it out.

Indifference, incapacity--I won't admit; surely it's not simply

laziness?"

"None of those things. I've tried, and I see I can do nothing,"

said Levin.

He had hardly grasped what his brother was saying. Looking

towards the plough land across the river, he made out something

black, but he could not distinguish whether it was a horse or the

bailiff on horseback.

"Why is it you can do nothing? You made an attempt and didn't

succeed, as you think, and you give in. How can you have so

little self-respect?"

"Self-respect!" said Levin, stung to the quick by his brother's

words; "I don't understand. If they'd told me at college that

other people understood the integral calculus, and I didn't,

then pride would have come in. But in this case one wants first

to be convinced that one has certain qualifications for this sort

of business, and especially that all this business is of great

importance."

"What! do you mean to say it's not of importance?" said Sergey

Ivanovitch, stung to the quick too at his brother's considering

anything of no importance that interested him, and still more at

his obviously paying little attention to what he was saying.

"I don't think it important; it does not take hold of me, I

can't help it," answered Levin, making out that what he saw was

the bailiff, and that the bailiff seemed to be letting the

peasants go off the ploughed land. They were turning the plough

over. "Can they have finished ploughing?" he wondered.

"Come, really though," said the elder brother, with a frown on

his handsome, clever face, "there's a limit to everything. It's

very well to be original and genuine, and to dislike everything

conventional--I know all about that; but really, what you're

saying either has no meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning.

How can you think it a matter of no importance whether the

peasant, whom you love as you assert..."




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