After unearthing one or two modern works
on agriculture, therefore, he, two weeks later, found himself in
the neighbourhood of the home where his boyhood had been spent, and
approaching the spot which never failed to enthral the visitor or guest.
And in the young man's breast there was beginning to palpitate a
new feeling--in the young man's soul there were reawakening old,
long-concealed impressions; with the result that many a spot which had
long been faded from his memory now filled him with interest, and the
beautiful views on the estate found him gazing at them like a newcomer,
and with a beating heart. Yes, as the road wound through a narrow
ravine, and became engulfed in a forest where, both above and below, he
saw three-centuries-old oaks which three men could not have spanned,
and where Siberian firs and elms overtopped even the poplars, and as
he asked the peasants to tell him to whom the forest belonged, and
they replied, "To Tientietnikov," and he issued from the forest, and
proceeded on his way through meadows, and past spinneys of elder, and
of old and young willows, and arrived in sight of the distant range of
hills, and, crossing by two different bridges the winding river (which
he left successively to right and to left of him as he did so), he again
questioned some peasants concerning the ownership of the meadows and
the flooded lands, and was again informed that they all belonged to
Tientietnikov, and then, ascending a rise, reached a tableland where, on
one side, lay ungarnered fields of wheat and rye and barley, and, on the
other, the country already traversed (but which now showed in shortened
perspective), and then plunged into the shade of some forked, umbrageous
trees which stood scattered over turf and extended to the manor-house
itself, and caught glimpses of the carved huts of the peasants, and of
the red roofs of the stone manorial outbuildings, and of the glittering
pinnacles of the church, and felt his heart beating, and knew, without
being told by any one, whither he had at length arrived--well, then the
feeling which had been growing within his soul burst forth, and he cried
in ecstasy:

"Why have I been a fool so long? Why, seeing that fate has appointed
me to be ruler of an earthly paradise, did I prefer to bind myself in
servitude as a scribe of lifeless documents? To think that, after I had
been nurtured and schooled and stored with all the knowledge necessary
for the diffusion of go