Page 1400 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Levin, anxious to see into everything and not to miss
anything, stood there too in the crowd, and heard the
governor say: ‘Please tell Marya Ivanovna my wife is very
sorry she couldn’t come to the Home.’ And thereupon the

nobles in high good-humor sorted out their fur coats and
all drove off to the cathedral.
In the cathedral Levin, lifting his hand like the rest and
repeating the words of the archdeacon, swore with most
terrible oaths to do all the governor had hoped they would
do. Church services always affected Levin, and as he
uttered the words ‘I kiss the cross,’ and glanced round at
the crowd of young and old men repeating the same, he
felt touched.
On the second and third days there was business
relating to the finances of the nobility and the female high
school, of no importance whatever, as Sergey Ivanovitch
explained, and Levin, busy seeing after his own affairs, did
not attend the meetings. On the fourth day the auditing of
the marshal’s accounts took place at the high table of the
marshal of the province. And then there occurred the first
skirmish between the new party and the old. The
committee who had been deputed to verify the accounts
reported to the meeting that all was in order. The marshal
of the province got up, thanked the nobility for their

1399 of 1759