greetings.

"Very glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well.
Last year at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitch's."

"Well, and how is your land doing?" asked Levin.

"Oh, still just the same, always at a loss," the landowner
answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of
serenity and conviction that so it must be. "And how do you come
to be in our province?" he asked. "Come to take part in our _coup
d'etat?_" he said, confidently pronouncing the French words with a
bad accent. "All Russia's here--gentlemen of the bedchamber,
and everything short of the ministry." He pointed to the
imposing figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch in white trousers and his
court uniform, walking by with a general.

"I ought to own that I don't very well understand the drift of
the provincial elections," said Levin.

The landowner looked at him.

"Why, what is there to understand? There's no meaning in it at
all. It's a decaying institution that goes on running only by
the force of inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that
it's an assembly of justices of the peace, permanent members of
the court, and so on, but not of noblemen."

"Then why do you come?" asked Levin.

"From habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep up
connections. It's a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to
tell the truth, there's one's own interests. My son-in-law wants
to stand as a permanent member; they're not rich people, and he
must be brought forward. These gentlemen, now, what do they come
for?" he said, pointing to the malignant gentleman, who was
talking at the high table.

"That's the new generation of nobility."

"New it may be, but nobility it isn't. They're proprietors of a
sort, but we're the landowners. As noblemen, they're cutting
their own throats."

"But you say it's an institution that's served its time."

"That it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little more
respectfully. Snetkov, now...We may be of use, or we may not,
but we're the growth of a thousand years. If we're laying out a
garden, planning one before the house, you know, and there you've
a tree that's stood for centuries in the very spot.... Old and
gnarled it may be, and yet you don't cut down the old fellow to
make room for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take
advantage of the tree. You won't grow him again in a year," he
said cautiously, and he immediately changed the conversation.
"Well, and h