Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [169]
as it touched on too many interests; later, occupied with other cases, he simply forgot it. Like other cases, it went on by itself, by the force of inertia. (Many people lived off this case, in particular one very moral and musical family: all the daughters played stringed instruments. Alexei Alexandrovich knew this family and had given away the bride at the oldest daughter’s wedding.) To bring up the case was, in his opinion, unfair on the part of a hostile ministry, because in every ministry there were even worse cases which, according to a certain official decency, no one brought up. Now, since the gauntlet had been thrown down before him, he boldly picked it up and demanded that a special commission be appointed to study and inspect the work of the commission on the irrigation of the fields in Zaraysk province; but in return he would give those gentlemen no quarter. He also demanded that a special commission be appointed in the case of the settling of racial minorities.15 The case of the settling of racial minorities had been brought up accidentally in the committee of June 2nd, and had been vigorously supported by Alexei Alexandrovich as brooking no delay owing to the lamentable situation of the minorities. In the committee this matter had served as a pretext for wrangling among several ministries. The ministry hostile to Alexei Alexandrovich had argued that the situation of the minorities was quite prosperous and the proposed reorganization might ruin their prosperity; and if there was anything wrong, it came from the failure of Alexei Alexandrovich’s ministry to carry out the measures prescribed by law. Now Alexei Alexandrovich intended to demand: first, that a new commission be set up which would be charged with investigating the conditions of the minorities on the spot; second, if it should turn out that the situation of the minorities was indeed as it appeared from official data available in the hands of the committee, another new expert commission should be appointed to investigate the causes of the dismal situation of the minorities from the (a) political, (b) administrative, (c) economic, (d) ethnographic, (e) material and (f) religious points of view; third, the hostile ministry should be required to supply information about the measures taken by that ministry over the last decade to prevent those unfavourable conditions in which the minorities now found themselves; fourth, and finally, the ministry should be required to explain why, as could be seen from the information in files No. 17015 and 18308, of 5 December 1863 and 7 June 1864, it had acted in a sense directly contrary to the meaning of the fundamental and organic law, Vol. — , art. 18 and note to art. 36. A flush of animation covered Alexei Alexandrovich’s face as he quickly noted down these thoughts for himself. Having covered a sheet of paper with writing, he got up, rang and sent a little note to his office manager about providing him with the necessary references. Getting up and pacing the room, he again glanced at the portrait, frowned and smiled contemptuously. After reading a bit more in the book on the Eugubine Tables and reviving his interest in them, Alexei Alexandrovich went to bed at eleven o‘clock, and when, lying in bed, he recalled the incident with his wife, it no longer presented itself to him in the same gloomy light.
XV
Though Anna had stubbornly and bitterly persisted in contradicting Vronsky when he told her that her situation was impossible and tried to persuade her to reveal everything to her husband, in the depths of her soul she considered her situation false, dishonest, and wished with all her soul to change it. Coming home from the races with her husband, in a moment of agitation she had told him everything; despite the pain she had felt in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband left, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything would be definite and at least there would be no falsehood and deceit. It seemed unquestionable to her that now her situation would be defined for ever. It might be bad,