“Quite satisfied. We cut the whole meadow. And such a splendid old man I made friends with there! You can’t fancy how delightful he was!”

“Well, so you’re content with your day. And so am I. First, I solved two chess problems, and one a very pretty one⁠—a pawn opening. I’ll show it you. And then⁠—I thought over our conversation yesterday.”

“Eh! our conversation yesterday?” said Levin, blissfully dropping his eyelids and drawing deep breaths after finishing his dinner, and absolutely incapable of recalling what their conversation yesterday was about.

“I think you are partly right. Our difference of opinion amounts to this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain degree of advancement. Possibly you are right too, that action founded on material interest would be more desirable. You are altogether, as the French say, too primesautière a nature; you must have intense, energetic action, or nothing.”