Levin could not fall asleep for a long time. He heard his horses munching hay, then the host and his older son getting ready and going out to the night pasture; then he heard the soldier settling down to sleep at the other end of the barn with his nephew, the host’s smaller son; he heard the boy telling his uncle in a thin little voice his impression of the dogs, who seemed huge and fearsome to him; then the boy asking him what the dogs would catch, and the soldier telling him in a hoarse and sleepy voice that the hunters would go to the marsh tomorrow and shoot off their guns, and after that, to have done with the boy’s questions, he said: ‘Sleep, Vaska, sleep or else!’ and soon he was snoring, and everything quieted down; the only sounds were the neighing of horses and the croaking of snipe. ‘Can it be only negative?’ he repeated to himself. ‘Well, and what then? It’s not my fault.’ And he started thinking about the next day.
‘Tomorrow I’ll go early in the morning and make it a point not to get excited. There’s no end of snipe. And great snipe, too. I’ll come back and there’ll be a note from Kitty. Yes, maybe Stiva’s right: I’m not manly enough with her, I’ve gone soft... But what’s to be done! Negative again!’
Through sleep he heard Veslovsky’s and Stepan Arkadyich’s laughter and merry talk. He opened his eyes for an instant: the moon had risen, and in the open doorway, in the bright light of the moon, they stood talking. Stepan Arkadyich was saying something about the girl’s freshness, comparing it to a fresh, just-shelled nut, and Veslovsky, laughing his infectious laugh, repeated something, probably what the muzhik had said to him: ‘You get yourself one of your own!’ Levin murmured drowsily:
‘Tomorrow at daybreak, gentlemen!’ and fell asleep.
XII
Waking up in the early dawn, Levin tried to rouse his comrades. Vasenka, lying on his stomach, one stockinged foot thrust out, was so fast asleep that he could get no response from him. Oblonsky refused through his sleep to go so early. Even Laska, who slept curled up at the edge of the hay, got up reluctantly, lazily straightening and stretching her hind legs, first one and then the other. Levin put on his boots, took his gun and, carefully opening the creaking barn door, went out. The coachmen were sleeping by their carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily eating oats, scattering them all over the trough with its muzzle. It was still grey outside.
‘What are you doing up so early, dearie?’ the muzhik’s old woman, stepping out of the cottage, addressed him amicably as a good old acquaintance.
‘Going hunting, auntie. Is this the way to the marsh?’
‘Straight through the back yards, past our threshing floor, my dear man, and then the hemp field - there’s a footpath.’
Stepping carefully with her tanned bare feet, the old woman showed him to the fence of the threshing floor and opened it for him.
‘Straight on and you’ll hit the marsh. Our boys took the horses there last night.’
