Anna Karenina - Part 6 - Page 102/121

The sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal of the

province.

The rooms, large and small, were full of noblemen 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 Petersburg,

some from abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility.

There was much discussion around the governor's table under the

portrait of the Tsar.

The nobles, both in the larger and 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 old uniforms of the

nobility, buttoned up closely, with spurs and hats, or in their

own special naval, cavalry, infantry, or official uniforms. The

uniforms of the older men were embroidered in the old-fashioned

way with epaulets on their shoulders; they were unmistakably

tight and short in the waist, 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 badges 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 Sviazhsky, 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 conscientiously exerted

all his intelligence trying to understand what was said. Sergey

Ivanovitch was the center round which the others grouped

themselves. He was listening at that moment to Sviazhsky and

Hliustov, the marshal of another district, who belonged to their

party. Hliustov would not agree to go with his district to ask

Snetkov to stand, while Sviazhsky was persuading him to do so,

and Sergey Ivanovitch was approving of the plan. Levin could not

make out why the opposition was to ask the marshal to stand whom

they wanted to supersede.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just been drinking and taking some

lunch, came up to them in his uniform of a gentleman of the

bedchamber, wiping his lips with a perfumed handkerchief of

bordered batiste.