The book, and the bloodless revolution

By the end of September the timber is carted and the butter money divided; all that remains before going abroad is to sell the wheat and finish the book, which Levin dreams will not merely revolutionise political economy but abolish it and found a new science of the relation of the people to the land. Then rain sets in, two mills are carried away, the roads become impassable. On the thirtieth the sun appears and he rides round giving final orders, soaked through the neck of his leather coat and thoroughly elated: an old innkeeper approves the plan and offers to join a group to buy cattle. He thinks of a bloodless revolution spreading from his district through the province, through Russia, through the world, and reflects that Franklin probably felt just as insignificant and probably had an Agatha Mikhaylovna to confide in. At home she tells him to stop fretting and marry, which is precisely what he was thinking, and he sits back down at his work with a wry face. At nine a bell sounds and a carriage lurches through the mud.

Tolstoy lets the ambition swell to world revolution and then has an old nurse puncture it with two words about marriage — the arrangement of the whole Levin movement in miniature. The Franklin comparison is exactly as vain and as touching as it sounds. The carriage arriving in the mud is Nicholas, and the chapter's buoyancy is built so the next one can take it away.