gone away, but Levin stopped him. This servant, Yegor, whom Levin had noticed before, struck him as a very intelligent, excellent, and, above all, good-hearted man.
“Well, Yegor, it’s hard work not sleeping, isn’t it?”
“One’s got to put up with it! It’s part of our work, you see. In a gentleman’s house it’s easier; but then here one makes more.”
It appeared that Yegor had a family, three boys and a daughter, a sempstress, whom he wanted to marry to a cashier in a saddler’s shop.
Levin, on hearing this, informed Yegor that, in his opinion, in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.
Yegor listened attentively, and obviously quite took in Levin’s idea, but by way of assent to it he enunciated, greatly to Levin’s surprise, the observation that when he had lived with good masters he had always been satisfied with his masters, and now was perfectly satisfied with his employer, though he was a Frenchman.