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 "The devil take the letter of the law! I insist on its spirit. According to that they are genuine nobles, believe me."

"Your excellency, let us come, fine champagne!"

Another group immediately pressed behind a noble who was shouting something at the top of his voice; this was one of the three drunken nobles.

"I always advised Marya Semyonovna to let it on a lease because she gets no profit out of it," a proprietor was saying in a pleasant voice. This man had gray whiskers and wore the uniform of a colonel on the old general's staff. It was the same proprietor whom he had once met at Sviazhsky's house. Levin immediately recognized him. The proprietor also glanced at Levin, and they greeted each other.

"This is very pleasant. How are you? I remember you very well. We met last year at Nikolaï Ivanovitch's, at the marshal's."

"Well, how goes your farming?" asked Levin.

"Everything is going to rack and ruin," said the proprietor, halting near Levin, and looking at him with a submissive smile, but with an expression of calmness and confidence that this was the natural order of things.

"But how does it happen that you are in our part of the world?" he asked. "Did you come to take part in our coup d'état? he went on, pronouncing the French words with confidence, but with a bad accent.

"All Russia is assembled here,—chamberlains, if not ministers."

He pointed to Stepan Arkadyevitch's imposing figure, as in white trousers and chamberlain's uniform he strode along next the general.

"I must confess to you," said Levin, "I don't understand the significance of these noblemen's elections."

The old gentleman looked at him.

"Well! what is there to understand? what significance can they have? It 's a decaying institution which prolongs itself by the force of inertia. Look at all these uniforms; they tell you this is an assemblage of justices