Nekhludoff sighed.  “It is strange,” he said.

“However, we shall have a talk some other time,” said Selenin.  “I am coming,” he added, in answer to the usher, who had respectfully approached him.  “Yes, we must meet again,” he went on with a sigh.  “But will it be possible for me to find you?  You will always find me in at seven o’clock.  My address is Nadejdinskaya,” and he gave the number.  “Ah, time does not stand still,” and he turned to go, smiling only with his lips.

“I will come if I can,” said Nekhludoff, feeling that a man once near and dear to him had, by this brief conversation, suddenly become strange, distant, and incomprehensible, if not hostile to him.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR.

When Nekhludoff knew Selenin as a student, he was a good son, a true friend, and for his years an educated man of the world, with much tact; elegant, handsome, and at the same time truthful and honest.  He learned well, without much exertion and with no pedantry, receiving gold medals for his essays.  He considered the service of mankind, not only in words but in acts, to be the aim of his young life.  He saw no other way of being useful to humanity than by serving the State.  Therefore, as soon as he had completed his studies, he systematically examined all the activities to which he might devote his life, and decided to enter the Second Department of the Chancellerie, where the laws are drawn up, and he did so.  But, in spite of the most scrupulous and exact discharge of the duties demanded of him, this service gave no satisfaction to his desire of being useful, nor could he awake in himself the consciousness that he was doing “the right thing.”

This dissatisfaction was so much increased by the friction with his very small-minded and vain fellow officials that he left the Chancellerie and entered the Senate.  It was better there, but the same dissatisfaction still pursued him; he felt it to be very different from what he had expected, and from what ought to be.

And now that he was in the Senate his relatives obtained for him the post of Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and he had to go in a carriage, dressed in an embroidered uniform and a white linen apron, to thank all sorts of people for having placed him in the position of a lackey.  However much he tried he could find no reasonable explanation for the existence of this post, and felt, more than in the Senate, that it was not “the right thing,” and yet he could not refuse it for fear of hurting those who felt sure they were giving him much pleasure by this appointment, and because it flattered the lowest part of his nature.  It pleased him to see himself in a mirror in his gold-embroidered uniform, and to accept the deference paid him by some people because of his position.

Something of the same kind happened when he married.  A very brilliant match, from a worldly point of view, was arranged for him, and he married chiefly because by refusing he would have had to hurt the young lady who wished to be married to him, and those who arranged the marriage, and also because a marriage with a nice young girl of noble birth flattered his vanity and gave him pleasure.  But this marriage very soon proved to be even less “the right thing” than the Government service and his position at Court.