Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART EIGHT CHAPTER 16
Chapter 16
SERGEY Ivanovitch, being practiced in argument, did not reply, but at once turned
the conversation to another aspect of the subject.
“Oh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical computation, of
course it’s very difficult to arrive at it. And voting has not been introduced among
us and cannot be introduced, for it does not express the will of the people; but there
are other ways of reaching that. It is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won’t speak
of those deep currents which are astir in the still ocean of the people, and which are
evident to every unprejudiced man; let us look at society in the narrow sense. All
the most diverse sections of the educated public, hostile before, are merged in one.
Every division is at an end, all the public organs say the same thing over and over
again, all feel the mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is carrying them in one
direction.”
“Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,” said the prince. “That’s true. But
so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing
for them.”
“Frogs or no frogs, I’m not the editor of a paper and I don’t want to defend them;
but I am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual world,” said Sergey Ivanovitch,
addressing his brother. Levin would have answered, but the old prince interrupted
him.
“Well, about that unanimity, that’s another thing, one may say,” said the prince.
“There’s my son-in-law, Stepan Arkadyevitch, you know him. He’s got a place now
on the committee of a commission and something or other, I don’t remember. Only
there’s nothing to do in it–why, Dolly, it’s no secret!–and a salary of eight thousand.
You try asking him whether his post is of use, he’ll prove to you that it’s most necessary.
And he’s a truthful man too, but there’s no refusing to believe in the utility of
eight thousand roubles.”
“Yes, he asked me to give a message to Darya Alexandrovna about the post,” said
Sergey Ivanovitch reluctantly, feeling the prince’s remark to be ill-timed.
“So it is with the unanimity of the press. That’s been explained to me: as soon as
there’s war their incomes are doubled. How can they help believing in the destinies
of the people and the Slavonic races...and all that?”
“I don’t care for many of the papers, but that’s unjust,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“I would only make one condition,” pursued the old prince. “Alphonse Karr said
a capital thing before the war with Prussia: ‘You consider war to be inevitable? Very
good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advanceguards,
for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!”’
“A nice lot the editors would make!” said Katavasov, with a loud roar, as he
pictured the editors he knew in this picked legion.
“But they’d run,” said Dolly, “they’d only be in the way.”
“Oh, if they ran away, then we’d have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips behind
them,” said the prince.
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