The first telegram was the announcement of Stremov's appointment to the very post Karenin had coveted.

Alexey Alexandrovitch flung the telegram down, and flushing a little, got up and began to pace up and down the room.

" _Quos vult perdere dementat_," he said, meaning by _quos_ the persons responsible for this appointment.

He was not so much annoyed that he had not received the post, that he had been conspicuously passed over; but it was incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the wordy phrase-monger Stremov was the last man fit for it.

How could they fail to see how they were ruining themselves, lowering their _prestige_ by this appointment? "Something else in the same line," he said to himself bitterly, opening the second telegram.