“Ah!” said the general, approvingly, closing his eyes.  “But how will one recognize another when all have the same light?” he asked, and again crossing his fingers with those of the artist, seated himself at the table.

* * * * *

Nekhludoff’s driver drove up to the gate.

“It is very dull here, sir,” he said, turning to Nekhludoff.  “It was very tiresome, and I was about to drive away.”

“Yes, tiresome,” assented Nekhludoff with a deep sigh, resting his eyes on the clouds and the Neva, dotted with variegated boats and steamers.

CHAPTER XI.

With a note from Prince Ivan Michaelovitch, Nekhludoff went to Senator Wolf—­un homme tres comme il faut, as the Prince had described him.

Wolf had just breakfasted and, as usual, was smoking a cigar, to aid his digestion, when Nekhludoff arrived.  Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was really un homme tres comme il faut, and this quality he placed above all else; from the height of it he looked upon all other people, and could not help valuing this quality, because, thanks to it, he had gained a brilliant career—­the same career he strove for; that is to say, through marriage he obtained a fortune, which brought him a yearly income of eighteen thousand rubles, and by his own efforts he obtained a senatorship.  He considered himself not only un homme tres comme il faut, but a man of chivalric honesty.  By honesty he understood the refusal to take bribes from private people.  But to do everything in his power to obtain all sorts of traveling expenses, rents and disbursements he did not consider dishonest.  Nor did he consider it dishonest to rob his wife and sister-in-law of their fortunes.  On the contrary, he considered that a wise arrangement of his family affairs.

The home circle of Vladimir Vasilievitch consisted of his characterless wife, her sister, whose fortune he managed to get into his own hands by selling her property and depositing the money in his own name, and his gentle, scared, homely daughter, who was leading a solitary, hard life, and whose only diversion consisted in visiting the religious meetings at Aline’s and Countess Catherine Ivanovna’s.

The son of Vladimir Vasilievitch, a good-natured, bearded boy of fifteen, who at that age had already commenced to drink and lead a depraved life which lasted till he was twenty years old, was driven from the house for the reason that he did not pass examinations in any school, and keeping bad company, and, running into debt, he had compromised his father.  The father paid once for his son two hundred and thirty rubles, and paid six hundred rubles a second time, but declared that that was the last time, and if the son did not reform he would drive him from the house and have nothing to do with him.  Not only did the son not reform, but contracted another debt of a thousand rubles, and told his father that he did not care if he was driven from the house, since life at home was torture to him.  Then Vladimir Vasilievitch told his son that he could go where he pleased; that he was no longer his son.  Since then no one in the house dared to speak of his son to him.  And Vladimir Vasilievitch was quite certain that he had arranged his family affairs in the best possible manner.