work, and
that he was coming to see him tomorrow at eleven, and would be
very glad to make Levin's acquaintance.

"You're positively a reformed character, I'm glad to see," said
Katavasov, meeting Levin in the little drawing room. "I heard
the bell and thought: Impossible that it can be he at the exact
time!... Well, what do you say to the Montenegrins now? They're
a race of warriors."

"Why, what's happened?" asked Levin.

Katavasov in a few words told him the last piece of news from the
war, and going into his study, introduced Levin to a short,
thick-set man of pleasant appearance. This was Metrov. The
conversation touched for a brief space on politics and on how
recent events were looked at in the higher spheres in Petersburg.
Metrov repeated a saying that had reached him through a most
trustworthy source, reported as having been uttered on this
subject by the Tsar and one of the ministers. Katavasov had
heard also on excellent authority that the Tsar had said
something quite different. Levin tried to imagine circumstances
in which both sayings might have been uttered, and the
conversation on that topic dropped.

"Yes, here he's written almost a book on the natural conditions
of the laborer in relation to the land," said Katavasov; "I'm not
a specialist, but I, as a natural science man, was pleased at
his not taking mankind as something outside biological laws; but,
on the contrary, seeing his dependence on his surroundings, and
in that dependence seeking the laws of his development."

"That's very interesting," said Metrov.

"What I began precisely was to write a book on agriculture; but
studying the chief instrument of agriculture, the laborer," said
Levin, reddening, "I could not help coming to quite unexpected
results."

And Levin began carefully, as it were, feeling his ground, to
expound his views. He knew Metrov had written an article against
the generally accepted theory of political economy, but to what
extent he could reckon on his sympathy with his own new views he
did not know and could not guess from the clever and serene face
of the learned man.

"But in what do you see the special characteristics of the
Russian laborer?" said Metrov; "in his biological
characteristics, so to speak, or in the condition in which he is
placed?"

Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this question with
which he did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea
that the Russian laborer h