Pagina 255 van 2288

"Only you mustn't be polite and stiff with her. It frightens her.

No one ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace who

tried her for trying to get out of a house of ill-fame. Mercy on

us, the senselessness in the world!" he cried suddenly. "These

new institutions, these justices of the peace, rural councils,

what hideousness it all is!"

And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new

institutions.

Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of all

public institutions, which he shared with him, and often

expressed, was distasteful to him now from his brother's lips.

"In another world we shall understand it all," he said lightly.