envy, and there is something unfair in this state of things."
"Excuse me," persisted Levin. "You say it is unfair for me to receive five thousand while the muzhik gets only fifty; you're right. It is unfair. I feel it, but...."
"The distinction holds throughout. Why do we eat, drink, hunt, waste our time, while he is forever and ever at work?" said Vasenka Veslovsky, who was evidently for the first time in his life thinking clearly on this question, and therefore was willing to be frank.
"Yes, you feel so, but you don't give your estate up to the muzhik," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, not sorry of a chance to tease Levin.
Of late there had arisen between the two brothers-in-law a secretly hostile relationship; since they had married sisters, a sort of rivalry existed between them as to which of them had the best way of living, and now this hostility expressed itself by the conversation taking a personal turn.
"I do not give it because no one demands this of me, and even if I wanted to, I could not," replied Levin.
"Give it to this muzhik; he would not refuse it."
"But how could I give it to him? Should I come with him and sign the deed?"
"I don't know; but if you are convinced that you have not the right...."
"I am not altogether convinced. On the contrary I feel that I have no right to give it away, that I have certain obligations both to the land and to my family."
"No, excuse me; if you consider that this inequality is unjust, then why don't you do so?"
"I do it, only in a negative way, in the sense that I do not try to increase the discrepancy that exists between him and me."
"No, but that is a paradox, if you will allow me to say so."
"Yes, that is a sort of sophistical statement," averred Veslovsky.—"Ho! friend,"[1] he exclaimed, addressing
- ↑ Khozaïn.
