Pagina 774 de 2288

All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness

of heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to be

heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in the

marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the

meadow before the morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up from the

haycock, and looking at the stars, he saw that the night was

over.

"Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?" he said

to himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts and

feelings he had passed through in that brief night. All the

thoughts and feelings he had passed through fell into three

separate trains of thought. One was the renunciation of his old

life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave

him satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another series of

thoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to live

now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt

clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content,

the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so

miserably conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the

question how to effect this transition from the old life to the

new. And there nothing took clear shape for him. "Have a wife?

Have work and the necessity of work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy land?

Become a member of a peasant community?