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.

Wolf, with a flattering and somewhat derisive smile--it was an
involuntary expression of his consciousness of his comme il faut