The same thing happened with respect to his marriage.  A brilliant match was arranged for him, as it is regarded from the world’s standpoint.  And he married principally because to refuse would have been to offend and cause pain to the bride and those who had arranged the match.  Hence the marriage to a young, pretty, distinguished girl flattered his vanity and gave him pleasure.  But the marriage soon turned out to be “not the thing, you know,” more so even than Court service.  After her first child, his wife did not wish to have any more, and plunged into luxurious social life, in which he was obliged to participate nolens volens.  Although this poisoned the life of her husband, and brought her only exertion and fatigue, she nevertheless diligently pursued it.  All his efforts to change her mode of life could not alter her confidence, supported by all her relatives and acquaintances, that it was quite proper.

The child, a girl with long, golden curls, was an entire stranger to her father, mainly because she was brought up not in accord with his desires.  The result was the customary misunderstanding between the husband and wife, and even in a want of desire to understand each other, and a quiet, silent struggle, hidden from strangers and tempered by propriety, which made Selenin’s life at home very burdensome.  So that his family life turned out to be “not the thing, you know,” in still greater degree than his service or the Court appointment.

These were the reasons why his eyes were always sad.  And this was why, seeing Nekhludoff, whom he had known before all these lies had fastened themselves upon him, he thought of himself as he had been then, and more than ever felt the discord between his character and his surroundings, and he became painfully sad.  The same feeling came over Nekhludoff, after the first impression of joy at meeting an old friend.

That was why, having promised that they would meet each other, neither sought that meeting, nor had they seen each other on this visit of Nekhludoff to St. Petersburg.

CHAPTER XV.

On leaving the Senate, Nekhludoff and his lawyer walked along the sidewalk.  Fanirin told his driver to follow him, and he began to relate to Nekhludoff how the mistress of so-and-so had made millions on ’Change, how so-and-so had sold, and another had bought, his wife.  He also related some stories of swindling and all sorts of crimes committed by well-known people who were not occupying cells in prison, but presidents’ chairs in various institutions.  These stories, of which he seemed to possess an inexhaustible source, afforded the lawyer great pleasure, as showing most conclusively that the means employed by him as a lawyer to make money were perfectly innocent in comparison with those used by the more noted public men of St. Petersburg.  And the lawyer was greatly surprised when Nekhludoff, in the middle of one of these stories,