Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy

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      ‘Yes, your Excellency! Shall tea be served in the study?’

      Karenin assented, and, toying with his paper-knife, went to his armchair, beside which a lamp was burning, and a French book about the Eugubine Tables was lying ready. Above the armchair hung a beautifully painted portrait of Anna by a celebrated artist. To Karenin the splendidly painted black lace on the head, the black hair, and the beautiful white hand with many rings on the third finger, suggested something intolerably bold and provocative. After looking at the portrait for about a minute he shuddered and his lips trembled and made a sound like ‘brr’ as he turned away. He sat down hurriedly and opened his book. He tried to read but could not awaken in himself the lively interest he had felt for the Eugubine Tables. His eyes were on the book but he was thinking about something else. He was not thinking of his wife but of a complication that had recently arisen in his official activity and at present constituted the chief interest of his work. He felt that he now saw more deeply than ever into that complication, and that a capital idea (he might say that without flattering himself) had occurred to him, which would disentangle the whole business, raise him in his official career, upset his enemies, and therefore be of the greatest value to the State. As soon as the footman, who had brought in the tea, had left the room, Karenin rose and went to the writing-table. Drawing toward himself the portfolio of current affairs, with a scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took a pencil from the stand and became absorbed in reading some intricate papers he had sent for, relating to the impending complication. The complication was this: Karenin’s official peculiarity, his characteristic trait (every successful official has his special trait), which together with his determined ambition, self-restraint, honesty, and self-confidence, had made him successful, consisted in a contempt for red-tape, a curtailment of correspondence, economy, and (as far as possible) a direct relation with real facts. It so happened that the important Committee of June 2nd had had brought before it the question of irrigation in the Zaraysk Province, which belonged to Karenin’s Department, and presented a striking example of unproductive expenditure and useless red-tape methods. Karenin knew that this was really so. The field-irrigation of the Zaraysk Province had been started by the predecessor of Karenin’s predecessor. A great deal of money had been and was being spent quite unproductively on that business, and it was evident that the scheme would lead to nothing. When Karenin had first taken up his present post he had at once realized this and had wished to stop it; but, till he felt himself firmly seated, he knew that it would not be wise to do so as too many interests were involved. Afterwards, being occupied with other matters, he had simply forgotten the business. Like all such matters it went on of itself, by inertia. (Many people lived by it, especially one very moral and musical family in which the daughters all played stringed instruments. Karenin was acquainted with that family and gave away one of the daughters at her marriage.) The raising of this question by a hostile Department was, in Karenin’s opinion, dishonest, because in every Ministry there were still graver matters which, out of recognized official decency, no one ever questioned. But since the gauntlet had been thrown down, he would take it up boldly and would demand the appointment of a special Committee to investigate and report upon the work of the Committee of Irrigation in the Zaraysk Province, but at the same time he would not yield an inch to those gentlemen who had raised the question. He would demand the appointment of a special Committee to inquire into the case of the subject races in that province. The case of the subject races had been accidentally raised at the Committee of June 2nd and had been energetically insisted on by Karenin, as a matter of urgency in view of their wretched condition. At the Committee this question had caused conflict between several Ministries. The Ministry opposed to Karenin had argued that the condition of the subject races was most flourishing and that the projected rearrangement might destroy their prosperity, while, if there was really anything unsatisfactory, it all resulted from the neglect by Karenin’s Department of the measures prescribed by the law. Now Karenin meant to demand, first, that a new Commission should be formed to investigate locally the conditions of the subject races; secondly, should those conditions prove to be such as they appeared to be from the official reports already received, that another scientific Commission should be appointed to study the causes of this deplorable condition of the subject races, in the following aspects: (a) Political, (b) Administrative, (c) Economic, (d) Ethnographic, (e) Material, and (f) Religious; thirdly, that information should be demanded from the hostile Department concerning the measures it had taken during the last ten years to avert the unfavourable conditions to which the subject races were now exposed; and fourthly, that the Department in question should be required to explain why it had acted in direct contradiction to the meaning of the fundamental and organic law (Vol. — , Article 18, and footnote to Article 36), as appeared from the statements submitted to the Committee and numbered 17015 and 18308, of 5th December 1863 and 7th June 1864. A flush of animation suffused Karenin’s face as he rapidly wrote out a summary of these ideas. Having covered a sheet of foolscap he rose, rang, and sent off a note to his Chief Secretary, asking for some necessary references that had to be looked up.

      After walking up and down the room he again looked at the portrait, frowned, and smiled contemptuously. He once more took up the book on the Eugubine Tables, and, having reawakened an interest in them, at eleven o’clock went to bed, and when as he lay there he remembered what had occurred with his wife, it no longer appeared to him in such gloomy colours.