Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/27

 as desperate as the younger. He was intermediate between them,—a clever, lively, agreeable, and decent man. He attended the department of law together with his younger brother. The younger brother did not graduate, and was expelled in his fifth year, while Iván Ilích graduated high in his class. Even while studying law he was what he was later, during his whole life,—a capable, jolly, and affable man, who none the less strictly carried out what he considered to be his duty; and he considered his duty that which was so considered by men in the higher spheres. Neither as a boy nor as a grown man did he curry favour with any one, but from his earliest youth he tended, like a fly to the light, to men who occupied the highest positions in the world, adopted their manner and their views of life, and established friendly relations with them. All the distractions of childhood and youth had passed for him without leaving any great traces; he abandoned himself to sensuality and ambition, and toward the end to the liberalism of the higher classes, but all this within certain limits which his feeling indicated to him correctly.

He had committed acts, while studying law, which had presented themselves to him as great abominations and had inspired him with contempt for himself at the time that he had committed them, but later, when he observed that such acts were also committed by distinguished personages and were not considered to be bad, he, without acknowledging them to be good, completely forgot them and was by no means grieved at the thought of them.

Having graduated from the law school in the tenth class and having received from his father money with which to provide himself with clothes, Iván Ilích ordered them at Charmeur's, attached to his fob a small medal with the inscription, "Respice finem," bade good-bye to the prince and to his tutor, dined with his companions at Donon's, and with new trunk, underwear, clothes,