Part 3 - Chapter 14 - Page 2

letter and smoothing it with a massive ivory knife,
and putting it in an envelope with the money, he rang the bell
with the gratification it always afforded him to use the
well arranged appointments of his writing-table.

"Give this to the courier to be delivered to Anna Arkadyevna
tomorrow at the summer villa," he said, getting up.

"Certainly, your excellency; tea to be served in the study?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be brought to the study, and
playing with the massive paper-knife, he moved to his easy chair,
near which there had been placed ready for him a lamp and the
French work on Egyptian hieroglyphics that he had begun. Over
the easy chair there hung in a gold frame an oval portrait of
Anna, a fine painting by a celebrated artist. Alexey
Alexandrovitch glanced at it. The unfathomable eyes gazed
ironically and insolently at him. Insufferably insolent and
challenging was the effect in Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes of the
black lace about the head, admirably touched in by the painter,
the black hair and handsome white hand with one finger lifted,
covered with rings. After looking at the portrait for a minute,
Alexey Alexandrovitch shuddered so that his lips quivered and he
uttered the sound "brrr," and turned away. He made haste to sit
down in his easy chair and opened the book. He tried to read,
but he could not revive the very vivid interest he had felt
before in Egyptian hieroglyphics. He looked at the book and
thought of something else. He thought not of his wife, but of a
complication that had arisen in his official life, which at the
time constituted the chief interest of it. He felt that he had
penetrated more deeply than ever before into this intricate
affair, and that he had originated a leading idea--he could say
it without self-flattery--calculated to clear up the whole
business, to strengthen him in his official career, to discomfit
his enemies, and thereby to be of the greatest benefit to the
government. Directly the servant had set the tea and left the
room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up and went to the writing-table.
Moving into the middle of the table a portfolio of papers, with a
scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took a pencil
from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report
relating to the present complication. The complication was of
this nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a
politician, that special individual qualification that every
rising functionary possesses, the qualification that with his
unflagging ambition, his reserve, his honesty, and with his
self-confidence had made his career, was his contempt for red
tape, his cutting down of correspondence, his direct contact,
wherever