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
enthusiastically--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 affected 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 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."