1022 1023
In attending the elections, too, and taking part in them, he tried
now not to judge, 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, fe-
male, 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 de-
rived 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 re-
markable 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 enthusias-
tically —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 af-
fected Levin, and as he uttered the words “I kiss the cross,” and glanced
round at the crowd of young and old men repeating the 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