Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 26
same, he felt touched.
On the second and third days there was business relating to the finances of the nobility
and the female high school, of no importance whatever, as Sergey Ivanovitch
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 who 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
Sergey Ivanovitch’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 malignant, 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 Sergey Ivanovitch 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. Sergey Ivanovitch was answered
by the spokesman of the opposite party. Then Sviazhsky spoke, and then the malignant
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 Sergey Ivanovitch whether he supposed that money had been
misappropriated, Sergey Ivanovitch answered:
“Oh, no! He’s an honest man. But those old-fashioned methods of paternal family
arrangements in the management of provincial 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 Seleznevsky district Sviazhsky was elected unanimously
without a ballot, and he gave a dinner that evening.
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