The night Levin spent on the haystack was not wasted on him: the farming he had been engaged in he now came to loathe, and it lost all interest for him. Despite excellent crops, there had never been, or at least it seemed to him that there had never been, so many failures and so much animosity between him and the muzhiks as that year, and the cause of the failures and the animosity was now clear to him. The delight he had experienced in the work itself, the closeness with the muzhiks that had come from it, the envy of them and of their life that he had experienced, the wish to go over to that life, which that night had no longer been a dream for him but an intention, the fulfilment of which he had been thinking over in detail - all this had so changed his view of farming that he could no longer find any of his former interest in it and could not help seeing his own unpleasant attitude towards his workers, which was at the bottom of the whole thing. The herds of improved cows, the same as Pava, the earth all ploughed and fertilized, the nine equal fields planted round with willows, the three hundred acres of deeply ploughed-under dung, the seed drills and so on - all that would have been wonderful if it had been done by him alone, or with friends, people sympathetic to him. But he now saw clearly (his work on the book about agriculture, in which the fundamental element had to be the worker, had helped him greatly in this) - he saw clearly now that the farming he was engaged in was merely a cruel and persistent struggle between him and his workers, in which on the one side, his own, there was a constant, intense striving to remake everything after the best-considered fashion, and on the other there was the natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw that with the greatest straining of forces on his part and with no effort or even intention on the other, all that was achieved was that the farming did not go in any direction and that beautiful machines, beautiful cattle and soil were ruined for nothing. And above all - not only was the energy directed towards it completely wasted, but he could not help feeling, now that the meaning of this work had been laid bare for him, that the goal of his energy was a most unworthy one. What essentially did the struggle consist in? He stood for every penny he had (and could not do otherwise, because as soon as he slackened his energy, he would not have enough money to pay the workers), and they stood only for working quietly and pleasantly, that is, as they were accustomed to do. It was in his interest that each worker should do as much as possible, that he should keep his wits about him at the same time, that he should try not to break the winnowing machine, the horse-rake, the thresher, that he should try to think about whatever he was doing. The worker, however, wanted to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all -carelessly, obliviously, thoughtlessly. That summer Levin saw it at every step. He sent people to mow clover for hay, choosing the worst acres, overgrown with grass and wormwood, unfit for seed - they went and mowed down his best seeding acres, justifying themselves by shifting it on to the steward and comforting him with the excellence of the hay; but he knew the reason was that those acres were easier to mow. He sent out the hay-maker - it broke down in the first row, because the muzhik got bored sitting on the box under the turning blades. And they told him: ‘Never fear, sir, the women will do it in a trice.’ The ploughs were no good, because it did not occur to the worker to lower the raised shear and, resorting to force, he wore out the horses and ruined the soil; and they asked him not to worry. Horses were let into the wheat fields, because not one worker wanted to be night-watchman, and, despite orders to the contrary, the workers took turns looking after the horses at night, and some Vanka, after working all day, would fall asleep and then confess his sin, saying: ‘Do as you like, sir.’ The three best calves died from overfeeding, having been let out into a regrown clover field without being watered, and in no way would they believe that they became bloated by the clover, but told him in consolation how a neighbour had lost a hundred and twelve head in three days. All this was done not because anyone wished evil to Levin or his farming; on the contrary, he knew he was loved and considered a simple master (which was the highest praise); it was done only because of the wish to work merrily and carelessly, and his interests were not only foreign and incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their own most just interests. For a long time Levin had felt displeased with his attitude towards farming. He had seen that his boat was leaking, but he could not find and did not look for the leak, perhaps deceiving himself on purpose. But now he could no longer deceive himself. The farming he had been engaged in not only ceased to interest him but disgusted him, and he could no longer be occupied with it.
