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Levin's conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea

that in the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and

worthless match for the charming Kitty, and that Kitty herself

could not love him. In her family's eyes he had no ordinary,

definite career and position in society, while his contemporaries

by this time, when he was thirty-two, were already, one a

colonel, and another a professor, another director of a bank and

railways, or president of a board like Oblonsky. But he (he knew

very well how he must appear to others) was a country gentleman,

occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game, and building barns;

in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out

well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of the

world, is done by people fit for nothing else.