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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 re-
mark 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 advance-guards, 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.
“But that’s a joke, and a poor one too, if you’ll excuse my saying so,
prince,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“I don’t see that it was a joke, that...” Levin was beginning, but