News of brother Nicholas

With the professor gone, Koznyshev asks after the farming out of politeness and after the Zemstvo out of real interest. Levin admits he has resigned, and his brother tells him the Russian failing is to jeer at institutions other nations would have used to win their freedom. Levin can only say he tried with his whole soul and is incapable of it. He means to ask advice about marrying, but his brother's patronising tone stops him; the estate they inherited jointly from their mother is undivided and Levin manages all of it. Koznyshev then says their brother Nicholas is in Moscow — a ruined man who has squandered his fortune and quarrelled with them both — and produces his reply to a paid-off note of hand: 'I humbly beg you to leave me alone.' Levin says he will go to him. He puts the visit off until evening and drives to the Zoological Gardens.

Nicholas is introduced by letter, at one remove, which is how the novel will keep handling him: a brother who exists mainly as a summons Levin postpones. The chapter's structure is postponement itself — Levin means to speak of marriage and doesn't, then means to go to Nicholas and doesn't, and goes to the skating lake instead.