Resurrection | Page 9

this woman's husband. Seeing his writing and the
postmark, Nekhludoff flushed, and felt his energies awakening, as they
always did when he was facing any kind of danger.
But his excitement passed at once. The marechal do noblesse, of the
district in which his largest estate lay, wrote only to let Nekhludoff
know that there was to be a special meeting towards the end of May,
and that Nekhludoff was to be sure and come to "_donner un coup
d'epaule_," at the important debates concerning the schools and the
roads, as a strong opposition by the reactionary party was expected.
The marechal was a liberal, and was quite engrossed in this fight, not
even noticing the misfortune that had befallen him.
Nekhludoff remembered the dreadful moments he had lived through;
once when he thought that the husband had found him out and was
going to challenge him, and he was making up his mind to fire into the
air; also the terrible scene he had with her when she ran out into the
park, and in her excitement tried to drown herself in the pond.
"Well, I cannot go now, and can do nothing until I get a reply from
her," thought Nekhludoff. A week ago he had written her a decisive
letter, in which he acknowledged his guilt, and his readiness to atone
for it; but at the same time he pronounced their relations to be at an end,
for her own good, as he expressed it. To this letter he had as yet

received no answer. This might prove a good sign, for if she did not
agree to break off their relations, she would have written at once, or
even come herself, as she had done before. Nekhludoff had heard that
there was some officer who was paying her marked attention, and this
tormented him by awakening jealousy, and at the same time
encouraged him with the hope of escape from the deception that was
oppressing him.
The other letter was from his steward. The steward wrote to tell him
that a visit to his estates was necessary in order to enter into possession,
and also to decide about the further management of his lands; whether
it was to continue in the same way as when his mother was alive, or
whether, as he had represented to the late lamented princess, and now
advised the young prince, they had not better increase their stock and
farm all the land now rented by the peasants themselves. The steward
wrote that this would be a far more profitable way of managing the
property; at the same time, he apologised for not having forwarded the
3,000 roubles income due on the 1st. This money would he sent on by
the next mail. The reason for the delay was that he could not get the
money out of the peasants, who had grown so untrustworthy that he
had to appeal to the authorities. This letter was partly disagreeable, and
partly pleasant. It was pleasant to feel that he had power over so large a
property, and yet disagreeable, because Nekhludoff had been an
enthusiastic admirer of Henry George and Herbert Spencer. Being
himself heir to a large property, he was especially struck by the
position taken up by Spencer in Social Statics, that justice forbids
private landholding, and with the straightforward resoluteness of his
age, had not merely spoken to prove that land could not be looked upon
as private property, and written essays on that subject at the university,
but had acted up to his convictions, and, considering it wrong to hold
landed property, had given the small piece of land he had inherited
from his father to the peasants. Inheriting his mother's large estates, and
thus becoming a landed proprietor, he had to choose one of two things:
either to give up his property, as he had given up his father's land ten
years before, or silently to confess that all his former ideas were
mistaken and false.
He could not choose the former because he had no means but the
landed estates (he did not care to serve); moreover, he had formed

luxurious habits which he could not easily give up. Besides, he had no
longer the same inducements; his strong convictions, the resoluteness
of youth, and the ambitious desire to do something unusual were gone.
As to the second course, that of denying those clear and unanswerable
proofs of the injustice of landholding, which he had drawn from
Spencer's Social Statics, and the brilliant corroboration of which he had
at a later period found in the works of Henry George, such a course was
impossible to him.



CHAPTER IV
.
MISSY.
When Nekhludoff had finished his coffee, he went to his study to look
at the