In the cathedral Levin, lifting his hand like the rest, and repeating the words of the dean, vowed with the most awesome oaths to do all the governor had hoped they would do. Church services always affected Levin, and as he uttered the words: `I kiss the cross,' and glanced round at the crowd of young and old men repeating the same, he felt touched.
On the second and third days there was business relating to the finances of the nobility, and the high school for girls, of no importance whatever, as Sergei Ivanovich explained, and Levin, busy seeing after his own affairs, did not attend the meetings. On the fourth day the auditing of the marshal's accounts took place at the high table of the marshal of the province. And then there occurred the first skirmish between the new party and the old. The committee which had been deputed to verify the accounts reported to the meeting that all was in order. The marshal of the province got up, thanked the nobility for their confidence, and shed tears. The nobles gave him a loud welcome and shook hands with him. But at that instant a nobleman of Sergei Ivanovich's party said that he had heard that the committee had not verified the accounts, considering such a verification an insult to the marshal of the province. One of the members of the committee incautiously admitted this. Then a small gentleman, very young-looking but very venomous, began to say that it would probably be agreeable to the marshal of the province to give an account of his expenditures of the public moneys, and that the misplaced delicacy of the members of the committee was depriving him of this moral satisfaction. Then the members of the committee tried to withdraw their admission, and Sergei Ivanovich began to prove that they must logically admit either that they had verified the accounts or that they had not, and he developed this dilemma in detail. Sergei Ivanovich was answered by the talker of the opposite party. Then Sviiazhsky spoke, and then the venomous gentleman again. The discussion lasted a long time and ended in nothing. Levin was surprised that they should dispute upon this subject so long, especially as, when he asked Sergei Ivanovich whether he supposed that money had been misappropriated, Sergei Ivanovich answered:
`Oh, no! He's an honest man. But those old-fashioned methods of paternal family arrangements in the management of nobility affairs must be broken down.'
On the fifth day came the elections of the district marshals.
It was rather a stormy day in several districts. In the Selezniovsky district Sviiazhsky was elected unanimously without a ballot, and he gave a dinner that evening.
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 6, Chapter 27[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 27 The sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal of the province.
The rooms, large and small, were full of nobleman in all sorts of uniforms.
Many had come only for that day. Men who had not seen each other for years, some from the Crimea, some from Peterburg, some from abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility. There was much discussion around the province table under the portrait of the Czar.
The nobles, both in the larger and in the smaller rooms, grouped themselves in camps, and from their hostile and suspicious glances, from the silence that fell upon them when outsiders approached a group, and from the way that some, whispering together, retreated to the farther corridor, it was evident that each side had secrets from the other. In appearance the noblemen were sharply divided into two classes: the old and the new.
The old were for the most part either in the old uniform of the nobility, buttoned up closely, with spurs and hats, or in their own special naval, cavalry, infantry uniforms, earned by their former service. The uniforms of the older men were embroidered in the old-fashioned way with small puffs on their shoulders; they were unmistakably tight and short in the waists, as though their wearers had grown out of them. The younger men wore the uniform of the nobility with long waists and broad shoulders, unbuttoned over white waistcoats, or uniforms with black collars and with the embroidered laurel leaves of justices of the peace. To the younger men belonged the Court uniforms that here and there brightened up the crowd.
But the division into young and old did not correspond with the division of parties. Some of the young men, as Levin observed, belonged to the old party; and some of the very oldest noblemen, on the contrary, were whispering with Sviiazhsky, and were evidently ardent partisans of the new party.
Levin stood in the smaller room, where they were smoking and taking light refreshments, close to his own friends, and, listening to what they were saying, he vainly exerted all his intelligence trying to understand what was said. Sergei Ivanovich was the center round which the others grouped themselves. He was listening at that moment to Sviiazhsky and Khliustov, the marshal of another district, who belonged to their party. Khliustov would not agree to go with his district to ask Snetkov to be a candidate, while Sviiazhsky was persuading him to do so, and Sergei Ivanovich was approving of the plan. Levin could not make out why the opposition had to ask the marshal to be a candidate when they wanted to supersede him.
Stepan Arkadyevich, who had just been drinking and taking some snack lunch, came up to them in his uniform of a gentleman of the bedchamber, wiping his lips with a perfumed handkerchief of bordered batiste.
`We are placing our forces,' he said, pulling out his side whiskers, `Sergei Ivanovich!'
And listening to the conversation, he supported Sviiazhsky's contention.
`One district's enough, and Sviiazhsky's obviously of the opposition,'
he said, words evidently intelligible to all except Levin.
`Why, Kostia, you, it seems, get the taste for these affairs too!'