Tanya went away. Yegor Semyonitch sat down on the sofa by Kovrin
and heaved a deep sigh.

"Yes, my boy . . ." he began after a pause. "That's how it is, my
dear lecturer. Here I write articles, and take part in exhibitions,
and receive medals. . . . Pesotsky, they say, has apples the size
of a head, and Pesotsky, they say, has made his fortune with his
garden. In short, 'Kotcheby is rich and glorious.' But one asks
oneself: what is it all for? The garden is certainly fine, a model.
It's not really a garden, but a regular institution, which is of
the greatest public importance because it marks, so to say, a new
era in Russian agriculture and Russian industry. But, what's it
for? What's the object of it?"

"The fact speaks for itself."

"I do not mean in that sense. I meant to ask: what will happen to
the garden when I die? In the condition in which you see it now,
it would not be maintained for one month without me. The whole
secret of success lies not in its being a big garden or a great
number of labourers being employed in it, but in the fact that I
love the work. Do you understand? I love it perhaps more than myself.
Look at me; I do everything myself. I work from morning to night:
I do all the grafting myself, the pruning myself, the planting
myself. I do it all myself: when any one helps me I am jealous and
irritable till I am rude. The whole secret lies in loving it--
that is, in the sharp eye of the master; yes, and in the master's
hands, and in the feeling that makes one, when one goes anywhere
for an hour's visit, sit, ill at ease, with one's heart far away,