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 over cigarettes and tea; but there were very few people who directly depended upon his good pleasure. Such people were only the subordinate local magistrates and the dissenters who overwhelmed him with petitions, and he loved to converse with such dependent folks politely, nay, almost as a comrade; he loved to make them feel that he, who could have crushed them if he liked, preferred to treat them amicably and in quite a homely way. Then, however, there were very few of such people. But now that he was an investigating magistrate, Ivan Il'ich felt that all, all without exception, even the most important, self-satisfied people — all of them were in his hands, and that he had only to write certain words on a piece of headed paper, and the most important, self-satisfied person would instantly be brought before him, either as a criminal or a witness, and, unless he chose to ask him to sit down, would have to stand before him and answer his questions. Ivan Il'ich never abused his authority, on the contrary, he tried to soften its expression; but the consciousness of this authority, and of his power to soften it, constituted, so far as he was concerned, the principal interest and attraction of his new office. In his own department, especially in his judicial investigations, Ivan Il'ich very speedily adopted the plan of ignoring all circumstances not directly concerning the service, and of presenting even the most complicated affair in such a form as only superficially to express it on paper, at the same time completely excluding his personal views, and especially observing all the requisite formalities. This was a new way of doing things.