"I have an idea of it, but it's very vague."
"No, you only say so; you know all this as well as I do. I don't set up to be a professor of social science, but these things interest me; and I assure you, if they interest you, you should go into them."
"But where do they lead you?" ....
"Beg pardon." ....
The two proprietors got up; and Sviazhsky, again arresting Levin in his disagreeable habit of looking into the inner chambers of his mind, went out to bid his guests good-by.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Levin spent the evening with the ladies, and found it unendurably stupid. His mind was stirred, as never before, at the thought that the dissatisfaction he felt in the administration of his estate was not peculiar to himself, but was a general condition into which affairs in Russia had evolved, and that an organization of labor, whereby the work would be carried on in such a manner as he saw at the muzhik's on the highway, was not an illusion, but a problem to be solved. And it seemed to him that he could settle this problem, and that he must attempt to do it.
Levin bade the ladies good-night, promising to go with them the following morning for a ride to visit some interesting spots in the Crown woods. Before going to bed he went to the library, to get some of the books on the labor question which Sviazhsky had recommended.
Sviazhsky's library was an enormous room, lined with book-shelves, and having two tables, one a massive writing-table, standing in the center of the room, and the other a round one, laden with recent numbers of journals and reviews, in different languages, arranged about a lamp. Near the writing-table was a cabinet, stoïka, containing drawers inscribed with gilt lettering for the reception of various documents.
