Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/178

More Tales from Tolstoi past services and the rank to which they have attained; and, therefore, they get fictitious sinecures, to which by no means fictitious thousands—from six to ten—are attached, on which they go on living to an advanced old age.

Such a man was Privy Councillor Il'ya Efimovich Golovin, a superfluous member of various superfluous institutions.

He had three sons. Ivan Il'ich was his second son. The eldest son went through the same career as his father, only in another Ministry, and was already drawing near to that period of official life which is rewarded by a lucrative sinecure. The third son was a failure. He had failed in various places, and was now employed on the railway; and his father and his brothers, and, more particularly, his brothers' wives, not only did not like to meet him, but, except when it was absolutely impossible to do so, altogether ignored his existence. Ivan Il'ich was looked upon as le phenix de la famille. He was not so cold and careful as his elder brother, but not such a desperate character as the younger. He was the happy medium—a sensible, vivacious, amiable, respectable man. He was educated for the law, along with his younger brother. The younger brother did not finish his studies, and was expelled from the fifth class, but Ivan Il'ich did well. In the law schools he was already what he was to be in the future all his life—a capable man, gay, good-natured, and sociable, but severely scrupulous in doing what he considered his duty and he considered as his duty whatever highly placed people looked upon as such. Neither as a