" Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them.

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.