Thus it was with Eugène. Having settled in the village, his aim and ideal was to restore the form of life that had existed, not in his father’s time⁠—his father had been a bad manager⁠—but in his grandfather’s. And now he tried to resurrect the general spirit of his grandfather’s life⁠—in the house, the garden, and in the estate management⁠—of course with changes suited to the times⁠—everything on a large scale⁠—good order, method, and everybody satisfied. But to do this entailed much work. It was necessary to meet the demands of the creditors and the banks, and for that purpose to sell some land and arrange renewals of credit. It was also necessary to get money to carry on (partly by farming out land, and partly by hiring labour) the immense operations on the Semënov estate, with its four hundred desyatins of ploughland and its sugar factory, and to deal with the garden so that it should not seem to be neglected or in decay.