he knew them thoroughly. Such relations with the people displeased Konstantin Levin. For him the peasantry was only the chief factor in associated labor; and though he respected the muzhik, and, as he himself said, drew in with the milk of the woman who nursed him a genuine love for them, still he, as a factor associated with them in the general labors, while sometimes admiring their strength, their good nature, their sense of justice, very often when in the general work of the estate other qualities were needed, flew into a passion with the peasantry for their carelessness, slovenliness, drunkenness, untruthfulness. If he had been asked whether he liked the people, he would really have not known what reply to make. He liked and he did not like the people as the majority of men did. Of course as a good man he liked men more than he disliked them; and so it was with the peasantry. But to like or not to like the peasantry, as something out of the common, was an impossibility to him, because he not only lived with the peasantry, because not only were his interests bound up with those of the peasantry, but also he looked on himself as a part of the people, saw no qualities or faults in the people that he did not himself possess, and could not take his stand contrary to the people. Moreover, although he had long lived in the closest relationship with his muzhiks as their landlord, their mediator, and, what was more, their adviser, — for the muzhiks had faith in him, and came to him from forty versts around to ask his advice, — he passed no definite judgment on them; and to the question, did he know the people, he would have found it as hard to find an answer as to the question, did he like the people.
But to say that he knew the peasantry would have meant in his opinion the same as to say that he knew men. He was constantly admiring and studying all kinds of men, and among them, men from among the peasantry whom he considered to be fine and interesting specimens of humanity, and he was all the time discovering in them new characteristics, and chang-
