Book 2 Chapter 16 An Up-To-Date Senator

When Nekhludoff remembered the smiles that had passed between him
and Mariette, he shook his head.

"You have hardly time to turn round before you are again drawn
into this life," he thought, feeling that discord and those
doubts which the necessity to curry favour from people he did not
esteem caused.

After considering where to go first, so as not to have to retrace
his steps, Nekhludoff set off for the Senate. There he was shown
into the office where he found a great many very polite and very
clean officials in the midst of a magnificent apartment.
Maslova's petition was received and handed on to that Wolf, to
whom Nekhludoff had a letter from his uncle, to be examined and
reported on.

"There will be a meeting of the Senate this week," the official
said to Nekhludoff, "but Maslova's case will hardly come before
that meeting."

"It might come before the meeting on Wednesday, by special
request," one of the officials remarked.

During the time Nekhludoff waited in the office, while some
information was being taken, he heard that the conversation in
the Senate was all about the duel, and he heard a detailed
account of how a young man, Kaminski, had been killed. It was
here he first heard all the facts of the case which was exciting
the interest of all Petersburg. The story was this: Some officers
were eating oysters and, as usual, drinking very much, when one
of them said something ill-natured about the regiment to which
Kaminski belonged, and Kaminski called him a liar. The other hit
Kaminski. The next day they fought. Kaminski was wounded in the
stomach and died two hours later. The murderer and the seconds
were arrested, but it was said that though they were arrested and
in the guardhouse they would be set free in a fortnight.