Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy

The president, who had to take the chair, had arrived early. The president was a tall, stout man, with long grey whiskers. Though married, he led a very loose life, and his wife did the same, so they did not stand in each other's way. This morning he had received a note from a Swiss girl, who had formerly been a governess in his house, and who was now on her way from South Russia to St. Petersburg. She wrote that she would wait for him between five and six p.m. in the Hotel Itália. This made him wish to begin and get through the sitting as soon as possible, so as to have time to call before six p.m. on the little red-haired Clara Vasílievna, with whom he had begun a romance in the country last summer. He went into a private room, latched the door, took a pair of dumbbells out of a cupboard, moved his arms twenty times upwards, downwards, forwards, and sideways, then holding the dumbbells above his head, lightly bent his knees three times.

"Nothing keeps one going like a cold bath and exercise," he said, feeling the biceps of his right arm with his left hand, on the third finger of which he wore a gold ring. He had still to do the moulinée movement (for he always went through those two exercises before a long sitting), when there was a pull at the door. The president quickly put away the dumbbells and opened the door, saying, "I beg your pardon."