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He was continually watching and getting to know people of all

sorts, and among them peasants, whom he regarded as good and

interesting people, and he was continually observing new points

in them, altering his former views of them and forming new ones.

With Sergey Ivanovitch it was quite the contrary. Just as he

liked and praised a country life in comparison with the life he

did not like, so too he liked the peasantry in contradistinction

to the class of men he did not like, and so too he knew the

peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to men

generally. In his methodical brain there were distinctly

formulated certain aspects of peasant life, deduced partly from

that life itself, but chiefly from contrast with other modes of

life. He never changed his opinion of the peasantry and his

sympathetic attitude towards them.