Everything was still, and the counting of the balls was heard.
Then a single voice rose and proclaimed the numbers for and
against. The marshal had been voted for by a considerable
majority. All was noise and eager movement towards the doors.
Snetkov came in, and the nobles thronged round him,
congratulating him.
"Well, now is it over?" Levin asked Sergey Ivanovitch.
"It's only just beginning," Sviazhsky said, replying for Sergey
Ivanovitch with a smile. "Some other candidate may receive more
votes than the marshal."
Levin had quite forgotten about that. Now he could only remember
that there was some sort of trickery in it, but he was too bored
to think what it was exactly. He felt depressed, and longed to
get out of the crowd.
As no one was paying any attention to him, and no one apparently
needed him, he quietly slipped away into the little room where
the refreshments were, and again had a great sense of comfort
when he saw the waiters. The little old waiter pressed him to
have something, and Levin agreed. After eating a cutlet with
beans and talking to the waiters of their former masters, Levin,
not wishing to go back to the hall, where it was all so
distasteful to him, proceeded to walk through the galleries. The
galleries were full of fashionably dressed ladies, leaning over
the balustrade and trying not to lose a single word of what was
being said below. With the ladies were sitting and standing
smart lawyers, high school teachers in spectacles, and officers.
Everywhere they were talking of the election, and of how worried
the marshal was, and how splendid the discussions had been. In
one group Levin heard his brother's praises. One lady was
telling a lawyer: "How glad I am I heard Koznishev! It's worth losing one's
dinner. He's exquisite! So clear and distinct all of it!
There's not one of you in the law courts that speaks like that.
The only one is Meidel, and he's not so eloquent by a long way."
Finding a free place, Levin leaned over the balustrade and began
looking and listening.
All the noblemen were sitting railed off behind barriers
according to their districts. In the middle of the room stood a
man in a uniform, who shouted in a loud, high voice: "As a candidate for the marshalship of the nobility of the
province we call upon staff-captain Yevgeney Ivanovitch Apuhtin!"
A dead silence followed, and then a weak old voice was heard:
"Declined!"
"We call upon the privy councilor Pyotr Petrovitch Bol," the
voice began again.