sip and laughter were heard while they were eating; then followed songs and jests again.
No trace of all the long, laborious day was left upon them, except of its happiness. Just before the dawn there was silence everywhere. Nothing could be heard but the nocturnal sounds of the frogs ceaselessly croaking in the marsh, and the horses whinnying as they waited in the mist that rose before the dawn. Coming to himself. Levin got up from the haycock, and, looking at the stars, saw that the night had gone.
"Well! what am I going to do? How am I going to do this?" he asked himself, trying to give a shape to the thoughts and feelings that had occupied him during this short night. All that he had thought and felt had taken three separate directions. First, it seemed to him that he must renounce his former mode of life, which was useful neither to himself nor to any one else. This renunciation seemed to him very attractive and was easy and simple.
The second direction that his thoughts and feelings took referred especially to the new life which he longed to lead. He clearly realized the simplicity, purity, and regularity of this new life, and he was convinced that he should find in it that satisfaction, that calmness and mental freedom, which he now felt the lack of so painfully. The third line of thought brought him to the question how he should effect the transition from the old life to the new, and in this regard nothing clear presented itself to his mind.
"I must have a wife. I must engage in work, and have the absolute necessity of work. Shall I abandon Pokrovskoye? buy land? join the commune? marry a peasant woman? How can I do all this?" he again asked himself, and no answer came. "However," he went on, in his self-communings, "I have not slept all night, and my ideas are not very clear. I shall reduce them to order by and by. One thing is certain; this night has settled my fate. All my former dreams of family existence were rubbish, but this—all this is vastly simpler and better." ....
