of civilization, especially the means of communication, the railways, which produced an exaggerated centralization in the cities, the development of luxury, and consequently the creation of new industries at the expense of agriculture, an extraordinary extension of the credit system and its concomitant — stock speculation. It seemed to him that with a normal development of riches in the empire all these signs of exterior civilization would appear only when the cultivation of the land should have attained a proportional development, when it should have at least been established on correct, determining conditions; that the wealth of a country ought to increase at a regular ratio, and in such a way that agriculture should not be outstripped by other branches of wealth; that the means of intercommunication ought to be developed in conformity with the natural development of agriculture, and that in view of our improper use of the land, the railways, constructed not by reason of actual necessity, but from political motives, were premature, and instead of the cooperation which they were expected to give to agriculture, they arrested it by encouraging the spread of manufacturing and the credit system; and that, therefore, just as a one-sided and premature development of one organ in the body would prevent its general development, so for the general development of wealth in Russia, the credit system, the means of intercommunication, the recrudescence of manufacturing industries, however indispensable they may have been in Europe, where they are opportune, have in Russia done nothing but harm by keeping from sight the most important question as to the organization of agriculture.
While Levin was writing, Kitty was thinking how her husband, on the evening before they left Moscow, had watched unnaturally the young Prince Charsky, who, with remarkable lack of tact, had made love to her. "He is jealous," she said to herself. "Bozhe moï! how good and stupid he is! To be jealous of me! If he only knew that for me they are all like Piotr the cook!" And she glanced with a strange feeling of proprietorship at the back of her husband's head and his sunburnt neck.
