engthen 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 possible, with the living fact, and his economy. It
happened that the famous Commission of the 2nd of June had set on
foot an inquiry into the irrigation of lands in the Zaraisky
province, which fell under Alexey Alexandrovitch's department,
and was a glaring example of fruitless expenditure and paper
reforms. Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of the truth of this.
The irrigation of these lands in the Zaraisky province had been
initiated by the predecessor of Alexey Alexandrovitch's
predecessor. And vast sums of money had actually been spent and
were still being spent on this business, and utterly
unproductively, and the whole business could obviously lead to
nothing whatever. Alexey Alexandrovitch had perceived this at
once on entering office, and would have liked to lay hands on the
Board of Irrigation. But at first, when he did not yet feel
secure in his position, he knew it would affect too many
interests, and would be injudicious. Later on he had been
engrossed in other questions, and had simply forgotten the Board
of Irrigation. It went of itself, like all such boards, by the
mere force of inertia. (Many people gained their livelihood by
the Board of Irrigation, especially one highly conscientious and
musical family: all the daughters played on stringed instruments,
and Alexey Alexandrovitch knew the family and had stood godfather
to one of the elder daughters.) The raising of this question by a
hostile department was in Alexey Alexandrovitch's opinion a
dishonorable proceeding, seeing that in every department there
were things similar and worse,