On Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the
2nd of June. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where
the sitting was held, greeted the members and the president, as
usual, and sat down in his place, putting his hand on the papers
laid ready before him. Among these papers lay the necessary
evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make.
But he did not really need these documents. He remembered every
point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory
what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when he
saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an
expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself
better than he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of
his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have
weight. Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the
most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at his white
hands, with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly
stroking the edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at
the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side,
would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words
would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set
the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the
president to call for order. When the report was over, Alexey
Alexandrovitch announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he
had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the
Commission for the Reorganization of the Native Tribes. All
attention was turned upon him. Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his
throat, and not looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he
always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person
sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man, who never
had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound
his views. When he reached the point about the fundamental and
radical law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest.
Stremov, who was also a member of the Commission, and also stung
to the quick, began defending himself, and altogether a stormy
sitting followed; but Alexey Alexandrovitch triumphed, and his
motion was carried, three new commissions were appointed, and the
next day in a certain Petersburg circle nothing else was talked
of but this sitting. Alexey Alexandrovitch's success had been
even greater than he had anticipated.
Next morning, Tuesday, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on waking up,
recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he
could not help smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent,
when the chief secretary of his department, anxious to flatter
him, informed him of the rumors that had reached him concerning
what had happened in the Commission.