1026 1027
Chapter 27.
The sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal of the
province.
The rooms, large and small, were full of noblemen in all sorts of
uniforms. Many had come only for that day. Men who had not seen
each other for years, some from the Crimea, some from Petersburg,
some from abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility. There was
much discussion around the governor’s table under the portrait of the
Tsar.
The nobles, both in the larger and the smaller rooms, grouped
themselves in camps, and from their hostile and suspicious glances,
from the silence that fell upon them when outsiders approached a
group, and from the way that some, whispering together, retreated to
the farther corridor, it was evident that each side had secrets from the
other. In appearance the noblemen were sharply divided into two
classes: the old and the new. The old were for the most part either in
old uniforms of the nobility, buttoned up closely, with spurs and hats, or
in their own special naval, cavalry, infantry, or official uniforms. The
uniforms of the older men were embroidered in the old-fashioned way
with epaulets on their shoulders; they were unmistakably tight and
short in the waist, as though their wearers had grown out of them. The
younger men wore the uniform of the nobility with long waists and
broad shoulders, unbuttoned over white waistcoats, or uniforms with
black collars and with the embroidered badges of justices of the peace.
To the younger men belonged the court uniforms that here and there
brightened up the crowd.
But the division into young and old did not correspond with the
division of parties. Some of the young men, as Levin observed, be-
longed to the old party; and some of the very oldest noblemen, on the
contrary, were whispering with Sviazhsky, and were evidently ardent
partisans of the new party.
Levin stood in the smaller room, where they were smoking and
taking light refreshments, close to his own friends, and listening to
what they were saying, he conscientiously exerted all his intelligence
trying to understand what was said. Sergey Ivanovitch was the center
round which the others grouped themselves. He was listening at that
moment to Sviazhsky and Hliustov, the marshal of another district,
who belonged to their party. Hliustov would not agree to go with his
district to ask Snetkov to stand, while Sviazhsky was persuading him to
do so, and Sergey Ivanovitch was approving of the plan. Levin could
not make out why the opposition was to ask the marshal to stand
whom they wanted to supersede.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just been drinking and taking some
lunch, came up to them in his uniform of a gentleman of the bedchamber,
wiping his lips with a perfumed handkerchief of bordered batiste.
“We are placing our forces,” he said, pulling out his whiskers,
“Sergey Ivanovitch!”
And listening to the conversation, he supported Sviazhsky’s con-
tention.
“One district’s enough, and Sviazhsky’s obviously of the opposi-
tion,” he said, words evidently intelligible to all except Levin.