Anna Karenina

Chapter 27
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
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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.
"We are placing our forces," he said, pulling out his whiskers, "Sergey
Ivanovitch!"
And listening to the conversation, he supported Sviazhsky's contention.
"One district's enough, and Sviazhsky's obviously of the opposition," he
said, words evidently intelligible to all except Levin.
"Why, Kostya, you here too! I suppose you're converted, eh?" he added,
turning to Levin and drawing his arm through his. Levin would have been
glad indeed to be converted, but could not make out what the point was,
and retreating a few steps from the speakers, he explained to Stepan
Arkadyevitch his inability to understand why the marshal of the province
should be asked to stand.
"O sancta simplicitas!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and briefly and clearly
he explained it to Levin. If, as at previous elections, all the districts asked
the marshal of the province to stand, then he would be elected without a
ballot. That must not be. Now eight districts had agreed to call upon him: if
two refused to do so, Snetkov might decline to stand at all; and then the old