Anna Karenina - Part 3

"Well, that's what the land banks are for."

"To get what's left me sold by auction? No, thank you."

"I don't agree that it's necessary or possible to raise the level

of agriculture still higher," said Levin. "I devote myself to

it, and I have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I

don't know to whom they're any good. For my part, anyway,

whatever I've spent money on in the way of husbandry, it has been

a loss: stock--a loss, machinery--a loss."

"That's true enough," the gentleman with the gray whiskers chimed

in, positively laughing with satisfaction.

"And I'm not the only one," pursued Levin. "I mix with all the

neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a

rational system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at

a loss. Come, tell us how does your land do--does it pay?" said

Levin, and at once in Sviazhsky's eyes he detected that fleeting

expression of alarm which he had noticed whenever he had tried to

penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviazhsky's mind.

Moreover, this question on Levin's part was not quite in good

faith. Madame Sviazhskaya had just told him at tea that they had

that summer invited a German expert in bookkeeping from Moscow,

who for a consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated

the management of their property, and found that it was costing

them a loss of three thousand odd roubles. She did not remember

the precise sum, but it appeared that the German had worked it

out to the fraction of a farthing.

The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profits

of Sviazhsky's famling, obviously aware how much gain his

neighbor and marshal was likely to be making.

"Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviazhsky. "That merely

proves either that I'm a bad manager, or that I've sunk my

capital for the increase of my rents."

"Oh, rent!" Levin cried with horror. "Rent there may be in

Europe, where land has been improved by the labor put into it,

but with us all the land is deteriorating from the labor put into

it--in other words they're working it out; so there's no

question of rent."

"How no rent? It's a law."

"Then we're outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but

simply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of

rent?..."

"Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket or

raspberries." He turned to his wife. "Extraordinarily late the

raspberries are lasting this year."