The vote on Flerov, and Snetkov's tears

The dispute is over the words 'against whom legal proceedings were taken'. A landowner with a dyed moustache strikes his ring on the table demanding the very ballot Koznyshev has just proposed, and the hall fills with implacable hatred over a question Levin cannot follow — having forgotten the chain by which unseating the Marshal requires a majority, which requires Flerov's vote, which requires a reading of the law. Sickened by seeing men he respects in that state, he goes to the refreshment-room and is relieved by the waiters, especially an old man with grey whiskers teaching the young ones to fold napkins. Called back to vote, he asks aloud where he is to put his ball and is told severely that it depends on each man's convictions. Flerov is qualified, 126 to 98, with a button and two nuts found in the box. Snetkov, asked to stand, thanks the Nobility for twenty years and breaks down in tears; passing Levin in the doorway he looks like a hunted animal. The new party fetch a uniform for one nobleman and souse another back into fitness to vote.

Two men shouting for the same thing out of hatred is Tolstoy's account of party politics; the button and two nuts in the ballot-box are his estimate of the result. Levin's honest question — where do I put it — is the only unrehearsed thing said all day. Snetkov, a kind family man yesterday and a hunted animal now, is the cost the machinery does not record.