Anna Karenina - Part 3

On Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the

2nd of June. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where

the sitting was held, greeted the members and the president, as

usual, and sat down in his place, putting his hand on the papers

laid ready before him. Among these papers lay the necessary

evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make.

But he did not really need these documents. He remembered every

point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory

what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when he

saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an

expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself

better than he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of

his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have

weight. Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the

most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at his white

hands, with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly

stroking the edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at

the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side,

would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words

would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set

the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the

president to call for order. When the report was over, Alexey

Alexandrovitch announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he

had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the

Commission for the Reorganization of the Native Tribes. All

attention was turned upon him. Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his

throat, and not looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he

always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person

sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man, who never

had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound

his views. When he reached the point about the fundamental and

radical law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest.

Stremov, who was also a member of the Commission, and also stung

to the quick, began defending himself, and altogether a stormy

sitting followed; but Alexey Alexandrovitch triumphed, and his

motion was carried, three new commissions were appointed, and the

next day in a certain Petersburg circle nothing else was talked

of but this sitting. Alexey Alexandrovitch's success had been

even greater than he had anticipated.

Next morning, Tuesday, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on waking up,

recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he

could not help smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent,

when the chief secretary of his department, anxious to flatter

him, informed him of the rumors that had reached him concerning

what had happened in the Commission.