Lvov on bringing up children

Lvov, married to Kitty's sister Nataly, left the diplomatic service for the Moscow Court Ministry so as to educate his boys, and has become Levin's close friend that winter despite their differences. Levin finds him in morocco shoes and blue-glass pince-nez over Buslaev's Grammar, refreshing his own memory for Misha's lessons, and confessing quite sincerely how badly educated he is: masters are not enough, a supervisor is needed, as an estate needs an overseer as well as labourers. Levin says he has never seen better brought-up children and watches Lvov to learn what awaits him. Lvov answers that the difficulty is moral training, where one fault gives way to another, and that no father can do it without the support of religion. Nataly comes in dressed to go out, cheerfully interrupting a conversation she has long been weary of, and the afternoon's carriages are arranged. She observes that children were once kept in the attic and parents now in the lumber-room. Levin remembers his commission about Oblonsky on the stairs, and Lvov blushingly declines it.

Levin comes from a scientific meeting that gave him nothing to a man relearning grammar for a ten-year-old, and it is the second conversation that matters. Lvov's claim that no father can manage moral training without religion is planted here for the last chapters. Tolstoy lets Nataly's weariness with a conversation Levin finds absorbing stand without comment, which is the chapter's honesty.