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The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were old, noble

Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly

terms. This intimacy had grown still closer during Levin's

student days. He had both prepared for the university with the

young Prince Shtcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and Dolly, and

had entered at the same time with him. In those days Levin used

often to be in the Shtcherbatskys' house, and he was in love with

the Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was

with the household, the family, that Konstantin Levin was in

love, especially with the feminine half of the household. Levin

did not remember his own mother, and his only sister was older

than he was, so that it was in the Shtcherbatskys' house that he

saw for the first time that inner life of an old, noble,

cultivated, and honorable family of which he had been deprived by

the death of his father and mother.