After saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to stay the whole of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback with them to see an interesting ruin in the crown forest, Levin went, before going to bed, into his host's study to get the books on the labor question that Sviazhsky had offered him.

Sviazhsky's study was a huge room, surrounded by bookcases and with two tables in it--one a massive writing table, standing in the middle of the room, and the other a round table, covered with recent numbers of reviews and journals in different languages, ranged like the rays of a star round the lamp.

On the writing table was a stand of drawers marked with gold lettering, and full of papers of various sorts.