"Shall we go on, your excellency, _fine champagne?_"

Another group was following a nobleman, who was shouting

something in a loud voice; it was one of the three intoxicated

gentlemen.

"I always advised Marya Semyonovna to let for a fair rent, for

she can never save a profit," he heard a pleasant voice say. The

speaker was a country gentleman with gray whiskers, wearing the

regimental uniform of an old general staff-officer. It was the

very landowner Levin had met at Sviazhsky's. He knew him at

once. The landowner too stared at Levin, and they exchanged

greetings.

"Very glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well.

Last year at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitch's."

"Well, and how is your land doing?" asked Levin.

"Oh, still just the same, always at a loss," the landowner

answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of

serenity and conviction that so it must be. "And how do you come

to be in our province?" he asked. "Come to take part in our _coup

d'etat?_" he said, confidently pronouncing the French words with a

bad accent. "All Russia's here--gentlemen of the bedchamber,

and everything short of the ministry." He pointed to the

imposing figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch in white trousers and his

court uniform, walking by with a general.

"I ought to own that I don't very well understand the drift of

the provincial elections," said Levin.

The landowner looked at him.

"Why, what is there to understand? There's no meaning in it at

all. It's a decaying institution that goes on running only by

the force of inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that

it's an assembly of justices of the peace, permanent members of

the court, and so on, but not of noblemen."

"Then why do you come?" asked Levin.

"From habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep up

connections. It's a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to

tell the truth, there's one's own interests. My son-in-law wants

to stand as a permanent member; they're not rich people, and he

must be brought forward. These gentlemen, now, what do they come

for?" he said, pointing to the malignant gentleman, who was

talking at the high table.

"That's the new generation of nobility."

"New it may be, but nobility it isn't. They're proprietors of a

sort, but we're the landowners. As noblemen, they're cutting

their own throats."

"But you say it's an institution that's served its time."




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