Anna Karenina - Part 6

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.