Meanwhile spring had come, beautiful, harmonious, without spring’s anticipations and deceptions, one of those rare springs that bring joy to plants, animals and people alike. This beautiful spring aroused Levin still more and strengthened him in the intention to renounce all former things, in order to arrange his solitary life firmly and independently. Though many of those plans with which he had returned to the country had not been carried out, he had observed the main thing - purity of life. He did not experience the shame that usually tormented him after a fall and was able to look people boldly in the eye. Already in February he had received a letter from Marya Nikolaevna saying that his brother Nikolai’s health had worsened but that he did not want to be treated, and as a result of this letter Levin had gone to see his brother in Moscow and had succeeded in persuading him to consult a doctor and go to a watering-place abroad. He had succeeded so well in persuading his brother and in lending him money for the trip without vexing him, that in this respect he was pleased with himself. Apart from managing the estate, which required special attention in the spring, apart from reading, Levin had also begun that winter to write a work on farming, the basis of which was that the character of the worker had to be taken as an absolute given in farming, like climate and soil, and that, consequently, all propositions in the science of farming ought to be deduced not from the givens of soil and climate alone, but also from the known, immutable character of the worker. So that, in spite of his solitude, or else owing to it, his life was extremely full, and only once in a while did he feel an unsatisfied desire to tell the thoughts that wandered through his head to someone besides Agafya Mikhailovna, though with her, too, he often happened to discuss physics, the theory of farming, and especially philosophy. Philosophy was Agafya Mikhailovna’s favourite subject.
Spring was a long time unfolding. During the last weeks of Lent the weather was clear and frosty. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night it went down to seven below;15 there was such a crust that carts could go over it where there was no road. There was still snow at Easter. Then suddenly, on Easter Monday, a warm wind began to blow, dark clouds gathered, and for three days and three nights warm, heavy rain poured down. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick grey mist gathered, as if concealing the mysteries of the changes taking place in nature. Under the mist waters flowed, ice blocks cracked and moved off, the muddy, foaming streams ran quicker, and on the eve of Krasnaya Gorka16 the mist scattered, the dark clouds broke up into fleecy white ones, the sky cleared, and real spring unfolded. In the morning the bright sun rose and quickly ate up the thin ice covering the water, and the warm air was all atremble, filled with the vapours of the reviving earth. The old grass and the sprouting needles of new grass greened, the buds on the guelder-rose, the currants and the sticky, spiritous birches swelled, and on the willow, all sprinkled with golden catkins, the flitting, newly hatched bee buzzed. Invisible larks poured trills over the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble, the peewit wept over the hollows and marshes still filled with brown water; high up the cranes and geese flew with their spring honking. Cattle, patchy, moulted in all but a few places, lowed in the meadows, bow-legged lambs played around their bleating, shedding mothers, fleet-footed children ran over the drying paths covered with the prints of bare feet, the merry voices of women with their linen chattered by the pond, and from the yards came the knock of the peasants’ axes, repairing ploughs and harrows.17 The real spring had come.
XIII
Levin put on big boots and, for the first time, a cloth jacket instead of his fur coat, and went about the farm, striding across streams that dazzled the eyes with their shining in the sun, stepping now on ice, now in sticky mud.
