“It is, it is, yes! “he said to himself in ecstasy, measuring all his former convictions, all the phenomena of life, with the newly discovered and, as he thought, entirely new truth. “How stupid is all which I have known, and which I have believed in and loved,” he said to himself. “Love, self-sacrifice, — these constitute the only true happiness which is independent of accident! “he repeated, smiling, and waving his hands. He applied this thought to life from every side, and he found its confirmation in life, and in the inner voice which told him, “It is this,” and he experienced a novel feeling of joyful agitation and transport. “And thus, I must do good in order to be happy,” he thought, and all his future was vividly pictured to him, not in the abstract, but in concrete form, in the shape of a landed proprietor.
He saw before him an immense field of action for his whole life, which he would henceforth devote to doing good, and in which he, consequently, would be happy. He would not have to look for a sphere of action : it was there; he had a direct duty, — he had peasants —
What refreshing and grateful labour his imagination evoked :”To act upon this simple, receptive, uncorrupted class of people; to save them from poverty; to give them a sufficiency; to transmit to them the education which I enjoy through good fortune; to reform their vices which are the issue of ignorance and superstition; to develop their morahty; to cause them to love goodness — What a brilliant and happy future! And I, who will be doing it all for my own happiness, shall enjoy their gratitude, and shall see how with every day I come nearer and nearer to the goal which I have set for myself. Enchanting future! How could I have failed to see it before?
“And besides,” he thought at the same time, “who prevents my being happy in my love for a woman, in domestic life?”
And his youthful imagination painted a still more entrancing future to him.
“I and my wife, whom I love as no one in the world has ever loved, will always live amidst this tranquil, poetical country Nature, with our children, perhaps with an old aunt. We have a common love, the love for our children, and both of us know that our destiny is goodness. We help each other to walk toward this goal. I take general measures, furnish general and just assistance, start a farm, savings-banks, factories; but she, with her pretty little head, in a simple white dress, lifted over her dainty foot, walks through the mud to the peasant school, to the hospital, to some unfortunate peasant, who really does not deserve any aid, and everywhere she consoles and helps — The children and the old men and women worship her, and look upon her as upon an angel, a vision. Then she returns home, and she conceals from me that she has gone to see the unfortunate peasant, and has given him money; but I know everything, and I embrace her tightly, and firmly and tenderly kiss her charming eyes, her bashfully blushing cheeks, and her smiling ruddy lips— “
XIX
“WHERE ARE THESE dreams? “now thought the youth, as he approached his house after his visits. “It is now more than a year that I have been seeking happiness upon this road, and what have I found? It is true, at times I feel that I might be satisfied with myself, but it is a kind of dry, mental satisfaction. Yes and no, I am simply dissatisfied with myself! I am dissatisfied because I have found no happiness here, and yet I wish, I passionately wish for happiness. I have not experienced enjoyment, and have already cut off from me everything which gives it. Why? For what? Who has been better off for it? My aunt was right when she said that it is easier to find happiness than to give it to others.
“Have my peasants grown richer? Have they been morally educated and developed? Not in the least. They are not better off, but I feel worse with every day. If I only saw any success in my undertaking, if I saw gratitude — but no, I see the perverted routine, vice, suspicion, helplessness.
“I am wasting in vain the best years of my life,” he thought, and it occurred to him that his nurse had told him that his neighbours called him a “minor”; that there was no money left in his office; that the new threshing-machine, which he had invented, to the common delight of the peasants, only whistled but did not thresh, when it was for the first time set in motion in the threshing-barn, before a large audience; that from day to day he might expect the arrival of the agrarian court in order to take an invoice of the estate, since he had allowed payments on the mortgage to lapse, in his preoccupation with all kinds of new farm undertakings.
And suddenly, just as vividly as before, came to him the picture of his walk through the forest, and the dream of a country life; and just as vividly stood before him his student room in Moscow, in which he used to stay up late at night, by one candle, with his classmate and adored sixteen-year-old friend. They read and recited for hours in succession some tiresome notes of civil law, and, after finishing them, sent for supper, pooled on a bottle of champagne, and talked of the future that was in store for them. How differently the future had presented itself to a young student! Then the future was full of enjoyment, of varied activities, of splendid successes, and incontestably led both of them to the highest good in the world, as it then was understood by them, — to fame!
“He is walking, and rapidly walking, on that road,” thought Nekhlyudov of his friend, “and I— “
At this time he had arrived at the entrance of the house, where ten or more peasants and domestics stood, waiting for the master with all kinds of requests, and he had to turn from his dreams to the reality before him.
Here was a ragged, dishevelled, and blood-stained peasant woman who complained in tears of her father-in-law, who, she said, wanted to kill her; here were two brothers who had been for two years quarrelling about the division of their farm, and who looked upon each other with desperate malice; here was also an unshaven, gray-haired servant, with hands quivering from intoxication, whom his son, the gardener, had brought to the master, to complain of his dissolute conduct; here was a peasant who had driven his wife out of the house because she had not worked all the spring; here was also that sick woman, his wife, who sat, sobbing and saying nothing, on the grass near the entrance, and displayed her inflamed, swollen leg, carelessly wrapped in a dirty rag —
Nekhlyudov listened to all requests and complaints, and he gave his advice to some, and settled the quarrels or made promises to others. He experienced a certain mixed feeling of weariness, shame, helplessness, and remorse, and walked to his room.
XX
IN THE SMALL room which Nekhlyudov occupied, stood an old leather divan studded with brass nails, several chairs of the same description, an open antiquated card-table, with incrustations, indentations, and a brass rim, on which lay papers, and an antiquated, yellow, open English grand, with worn, narrow keys. Between the windows hung a large mirror in an old gilt carved frame. On the floor, near the table, lay stacks of papers, books, and accounts. The room bore altogether a disorderly aspect, and was devoid of character; and this living disorder formed a sharp contrast to the affected, old-fashioned, aristocratic arrangement of the other rooms of the large house.
Upon entering the room Nekhlyudov angrily threw his hat upon the table, and sat down on a chair which stood in front of the grand, and crossed his legs and dropped his head.
“Well, will you have your breakfast, your Grace? “said, upon entering the room, a tall, haggard, wrinkled old woman, in cap, large kerchief, and chintz dress.
Nekhlyudov turned around to take a look at her, and kept’ silent for awhile, as though considering something.
“No, I do not care to, nurse,” he said, and again became pensive.
The nurse angrily shook her head at him, and sighed.
“Oh, Dmitri Nikolaevich, why do you look so sad? There are greater sorrows, and they pass, — really they do— “
“But I am not sad. What makes you think so, Mother Malanya Finogenovna? “answered Nekhlyudov, trying to smile.
“Yes, you are. Don’t I see it? “the nurse began to speak with animation. “You are day in, day out, all alone. And you take everything to heart, and attend to everything yourself. You have even quit eating. Is this right? If you only went to visit the city, or your neighbours, — but this is an unheard-of thing. You are young,
