After considering where to go first, so as not to have to retrace his steps, Nekhludoff set off for the Senate.  There he was shown into the office where he found a great many very polite and very clean officials in the midst of a magnificent apartment.  Maslova’s petition was received and handed on to that Wolf, to whom Nekhludoff had a letter from his uncle, to be examined and reported on.

“There will be a meeting of the Senate this week,” the official said to Nekhludoff, “but Maslova’s case will hardly come before that meeting.”

“It might come before the meeting on Wednesday, by special request,” one of the officials remarked.

During the time Nekhludoff waited in the office, while some information was being taken, he heard that the conversation in the Senate was all about the duel, and he heard a detailed account of how a young man, Kaminski, had been killed.  It was here he first heard all the facts of the case which was exciting the interest of all Petersburg.  The story was this:  Some officers were eating oysters and, as usual, drinking very much, when one of them said something ill-natured about the regiment to which Kaminski belonged, and Kaminski called him a liar.  The other hit Kaminski.  The next day they fought.  Kaminski was wounded in the stomach and died two hours later.  The murderer and the seconds were arrested, but it was said that though they were arrested and in the guardhouse they would be set free in a fortnight.

From the Senate Nekhludoff drove to see an influential member of the petition Committee, Baron Vorobioff, who lived in a splendid house belonging to the Crown.  The doorkeeper told Nekhludoff in a severe tone that the Baron could not be seen except on his reception days; that he was with His Majesty the Emperor to-day, and the next day he would again have to deliver a report.  Nekhludoff left his uncle’s letter with the doorkeeper and went on to see the Senator Wolf.  Wolf had just had his lunch, and was as usual helping digestion by smoking a cigar and pacing up and down the room, when Nekhludoff came in.  Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was certainly un homme tres comme il faut, and prized this quality very highly, and from that elevation he looked down at everybody else.  He could not but esteem this quality of his very highly, because it was thanks to it alone that he had made a brilliant career, the very career he desired, i.e., by marriage he obtained a fortune which brought him in 18,000 roubles a year, and by his own exertions the post of a senator.  He considered himself not only un homme tres comme il faut, but also a man of knightly honour.  By honour he understood not accepting secret bribes from private persons.  But he did not consider it dishonest to beg money for payment of fares and all sorts of travelling expenses from the Crown, and to do anything the Government might require of him in return.  To ruin hundreds of innocent people, to cause them to be imprisoned, to