Pagina 922 van 2288

Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to

Levin, whose convictions, very logical though never original, go

one way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and

firm in its direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always

in direct contradiction to their convictions. Sviazhsky was an

extremely advanced man. He despised the nobility, and believed

the mass of the nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and

only concealing their views from cowardice. He regarded Russia as

a ruined country, rather after the style of Turkey, and the

government of Russia as so bad that he never permitted himself to

criticize its doings seriously, and yet he was a functionary of

that government and a model marshal of nobility, and when he

drove about he always wore the cockade of office and the cap with

the red band.