Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 26
not to fall foul of them, but to comprehend as fully as he could the question which
was so earnestly and ardently absorbing honest and excellent men whom he respected.
Since his marriage there had been revealed to Levin so many new and
serious aspects of life that had previously, through his frivolous attitude to them,
seemed of no importance, that in the question of the elections too he assumed and
tried to find some serious significance.
Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him the meaning and object of the proposed revolution
at the elections. The marshal of the province in whose hands the law had
placed the control of so many important public functions–the guardianship of wards
(the very department which was giving Levin so much trouble just now), the disposal
of large sums subscribed by the nobility of the province, the high schools,
female, male, and military, and popular instruction on the new model, and finally,
the district council–the marshal of the province, Snetkov, was a nobleman of the old
school,–dissipating an immense fortune, a good-hearted man, honest after his own
fashion, but utterly without any comprehension of the needs of modern days. He
always took, in every question, the side of the nobility; he was positively antagonistic
to the spread of popular education, and he succeeded in giving a purely party
character to the district council which ought by rights to be of such an immense importance.
What was needed was to put in his place a fresh, capable, perfectly modern
man, of contemporary ideas, and to frame their policy so as from the rights conferred
upon the nobles, not as the nobility, but as an element of the district council, to extract
all the powers of self-government that could possibly be derived from them. In the
wealthy Kashinsky province, which always took the lead of other provinces in everything,
there was now such a preponderance of forces that this policy, once carried
through properly there, might serve as a model for other provinces for all Russia.
And hence the whole question was of the greatest importance. It was proposed to
elect as marshal in place of Snetkov either Sviazhsky, or, better still, Nevyedovsky, a
former university professor, a man of remarkable intelligence and a great friend of
Sergey Ivanovitch.
The meeting was opened by the governor, who made a speech to the nobles, urging
them to elect the public functionaries, not from regard for persons, but for the
service and welfare of their fatherland, and hoping that the honorable nobility of the
Kashinsky province would, as at all former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and
vindicate the exalted confidence of the monarch.
When he had finished with his speech, the governor walked out of the hall, and
the noblemen noisily and eagerly–some even enthusiastically–followed him and
thronged round him while he put on his fur coat and conversed amicably with the
marshal of the province. Levin, anxious to see into everything and not to miss anything,
stood there too in the crowd, and heard the governor say: “Please tell Marya
Ivanovna my wife is very sorry she couldn’t come to the Home.” And thereupon
the nobles in high good-humor sorted out their fur coats and all drove off to the
cathedral.
In the cathedral Levin, lifting his hand like the rest and repeating the words of the
archdeacon, swore with most terrible 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
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