Book 2 Chapter 10 Nekhludoff Returns to Town

The town struck Nekhludoff in a new and peculiar light on his
return. He came back in the evening, when the gas was lit, and
drove from the railway station to his house, where the rooms
still smelt of naphthaline. Agraphena Petrovna and Corney were
both feeling tired and dissatisfied, and had even had a quarrel
over those things that seemed made only to be aired and packed
away. Nekhludoff's room was empty, but not in order, and the way
to it was blocked up with boxes, so that his arrival evidently
hindered the business which, owing to a curious kind of inertia,
was going on in this house. The evident folly of these
proceedings, in which he had once taken part, was so distasteful
to Nekhludoff after the impressions the misery of the life of the
peasants had made on him, that he decided to go to a hotel the
next day, leaving Agraphena Petrovna to put away the things as
she thought fit until his sister should come and finally dispose
of everything in the house.

Nekhludoff left home early and chose a couple of rooms in a very
modest and not particularly clean lodging-house within easy reach
of the prison, and, having given orders that some of his things
should be sent there, he went to see the advocate. It was cold
out of doors. After some rainy and stormy weather it had turned
out cold, as it often does in spring. It was so cold that
Nekhludoff felt quite chilly in his light overcoat, and walked
fast hoping to get warmer. His mind was filled with thoughts of
the peasants, the women, children, old men, and all the poverty
and weariness which he seemed to have seen for the first time,
especially the smiling, old-faced infant writhing with his
calfless little legs, and he could not help contrasting what was
going on in the town. Passing by the butchers', fishmongers', and
clothiers' shops, he was struck, as if he saw them for the first
time, by the appearance of the clean, well-fed shopkeepers, like
whom you could not find one peasant in the country. These men
were apparently convinced that the pains they took to deceive the
people who did not know much about their goods was not a useless
but rather an important business. The coachmen with their broad
hips and rows of buttons down their sides, and the door-keepers
with gold cords on their caps, the servant-girls with their
aprons and curly fringes, and especially the smart isvostchiks
with the nape of their necks clean shaved, as they sat lolling
back in their traps, and examined the passers-by with dissolute
and contemptuous air, looked well fed. In all these people
Nekhludoff could not now help seeing some of these very peasants
who had been driven into the town by lack of land. Some of the
peasants driven to the town had found means of profiting by the
conditions of town life and had become like the gentlefolk and
were pleased with their position; others were in a worse position
than they had been in the country and were more to be pitied than
the country people.