Anna Karenina - Part 7

Levin had on this visit to town seen a great deal of his old

friend at the university, Professor Katavasov, whom he had not

seen since his marriage. He liked in Katavasov the clearness and

simplicity of his conception of life. Levin thought that the

clearness of Katavasov's conception of life was due to the

poverty of his nature; Katavasov thought that the

disconnectedness of Levin's ideas was due to his lack of

intellectual discipline; but Levin enjoyed Katavasov's clearness,

and Katavasov enjoyed the abundance of Levin's untrained ideas,

and they liked to meet and to discuss.

Levin had read Katavasov some parts of his book, and he had liked

them. On the previous day Katavasov had met Levin at a public

lecture and told him that the celebrated Metrov, whose article

Levin had so much liked, was in Moscow, that he had been much

interested by what Katavasov had told him about Levin's work, and

that he was coming to see him tomorrow at eleven, and would be

very glad to make Levin's acquaintance.

"You're positively a reformed character, I'm glad to see," said

Katavasov, meeting Levin in the little drawing room. "I heard

the bell and thought: Impossible that it can be he at the exact

time!... Well, what do you say to the Montenegrins now? They're

a race of warriors."

"Why, what's happened?" asked Levin.

Katavasov in a few words told him the last piece of news from the

war, and going into his study, introduced Levin to a short,

thick-set man of pleasant appearance. This was Metrov. The

conversation touched for a brief space on politics and on how

recent events were looked at in the higher spheres in Petersburg.

Metrov repeated a saying that had reached him through a most

trustworthy source, reported as having been uttered on this

subject by the Tsar and one of the ministers. Katavasov had

heard also on excellent authority that the Tsar had said

something quite different. Levin tried to imagine circumstances

in which both sayings might have been uttered, and the

conversation on that topic dropped.

"Yes, here he's written almost a book on the natural conditions

of the laborer in relation to the land," said Katavasov; "I'm not

a specialist, but I, as a natural science man, was pleased at

his not taking mankind as something outside biological laws; but,

on the contrary, seeing his dependence on his surroundings, and

in that dependence seeking the laws of his development."

"That's very interesting," said Metrov.

"What I began precisely was to write a book on agriculture; but

studying the chief instrument of agriculture, the laborer," said

Levin, reddening, "I could not help coming to quite unexpected

results."