bearing on private ownership of land produced a
strong impression on him, especially because he was himself the son of
a landed proprietress. His father was not rich, but his mother
received as her marriage portion ten thousand acres of land. He then
for the first time understood all the injustice of private ownership
of land, and being one of those to whom any sacrifice in the name of
moral duty was a lofty spiritual enjoyment, he forthwith divided the
land he had inherited from his father among the peasants. On this
subject he was then composing a disquisition.

His life on the estate of his aunts was ordered in the following way:
He rose very early, some times at three o'clock, and till sunrise
bathed in the river under a hill, often in the morning mist, and
returned when the dew was yet on the grass and flowers. Some mornings
he would, after partaking of coffee, sit down to write his
composition, or read references bearing on the subject. But, above
all, he loved to ramble in the woods. Before dinner he would lie down
in the woods and sleep; then, at dinner, he made merry, jesting with
his aunts; then went out riding or rowing. In the evening he read
again, or joined his aunts, solving riddles for them. On moonlit
nights he seldom slept, because of the immense joy of life that
pervaded him, and instead of sleeping, he sometimes rambled in the
garden till daylight, absorbed in his thoughts and phantasies.

Thus he lived happily the first month under the roof of his aunts'
dwelling, paying no attention to the half-servant, half-ward, the
black-eyed, nimble-footed Katiousha.

Nekhludoff, raised under the protecting wing of his mother, was at
nineteen a perfectly innocent youth. He dreamed of woman, but only as
wife. All those women who, according to his view, could not be
considered as likely to become his wife, were to him not women, but
people. But it happened on Ascension Day that there was visiting his
aunts a lady from the neighborhood with her two young daughters, her
son and a local artist who was staying with them.

After tea had been served the entire company, as usual, repaired to
the meadow, where they played blind man's buff. Katiousha went with
them. After some exchanges came Nekhludoff's turn to run with
Katiousha. Nekhludoff always liked to see Katiousha, but it had never
occurred to him that their relations could ever be any but the most
formal.

"It will be difficult to catch them now," said the