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,
belonged 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.