Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy [top 5 books to read .txt] 📗

“What do you want, then? That I should work and not eat anything?”

“No, I do not wish you not to eat. I only wish that we should all work and all eat.” He could not help smiling as he said it.

Again raising her brow and drooping her eyeballs his aunt looked at him curiously. “Mon cher vous finirez mal,” she said.

Just then the general, and former minister, Countess Tchársky’s husband, a tall, broad-shouldered man, came into the room.

“Ah, Dmítri, how d’you do?” he said, turning his freshly-shaved cheek to Nekhlúdoff to be kissed. “When did you get here?” And he silently kissed his wife on the forehead.

“Non il est impayable,” the Countess said, turning to her husband. “He wants me to go and wash clothes and live on potatoes. He is an awful fool, but all the same do what he is going to ask of you. A terrible simpleton,” she added. “Have you heard? Kámenskaya is in such despair that they fear for her life,” she said to her husband. “You should go and call there.”

“Yes; it is dreadful,” said her husband.

“Go along, then, and talk to him. I must write some letters.”

Hardly had Nekhlúdoff stepped into the room next the drawing-room than she called him back.

“Shall I write to Mariette, then?”

“Please, ma tante.”

“I shall leave a blank for what you want to say about the short-haired one, and she will give her husband his orders, and he’ll do it. Do not think me wicked; they are all so disgusting, your prologues, but je ne leur veux pas de mal, bother them. Well, go, but be sure to stay at home this evening to hear Kiesewetter, and we shall have some prayers. And if only you do not resist cela vous fera beaucoup de bien. I know your poor mother and all of you were always very backward in these things.”

Count Iván Micháelovitch had been a minister, and was a man of strong convictions. The convictions of Count Iván Micháelovitch consisted in the belief that, just as it was natural for a bird to feed on worms, to be clothed in feathers and down, and to fly in the air, so it was natural for him to feed on the choicest and most expensive food, prepared by highly-paid cooks, to wear the most comfortable and most expensive clothing, to drive with the best and fastest horses, and that, therefore, all these things should be ready found for him. Besides this, Count Iván Micháelovitch considered that the more money he could get out of the treasury by all sorts of means, the more orders he had, including different diamond insignia of something or other, and the oftener he spoke to highly-placed individuals of both sexes, so much the better it was.

All the rest Count Iván Micháelovitch considered insignificant and uninteresting beside these dogmas. All the rest might be as it was, or just the reverse. Count Iván Micháelovitch lived and acted according to these lights for forty years, and at the end of forty years reached the position of a Minister of State. The chief qualities that enabled Count Iván Micháelovitch to reach this position were his capacity of understanding the meaning of documents and laws and of drawing up, though clumsily, intelligible State papers, and of spelling them correctly; secondly, his very stately appearance, which enabled him, when necessary, to seem not only extremely proud, but unapproachable and majestic, while at other times he could be abjectly and almost passionately servile; thirdly, the absence of any general principles or rules, either of personal or administrative morality, which made it possible for him either to agree or disagree with anybody according to what was wanted at the time. When acting thus his only endeavour was to sustain the appearance of good breeding and not to seem too plainly inconsistent. As for his actions being moral or not, in themselves, or whether they were going to result in the highest welfare or greatest evil for the whole of the Russian Empire, or even the entire world, that was quite indifferent to him. When he became minister, not only those dependent on him (and there were great many of them) and people connected with him, but many strangers and even he himself were convinced that he was a very clever statesman. But after some time had elapsed and he had done nothing and had nothing to show, and when in accordance with the law of the struggle for existence, others, like himself, who had learnt to write and understand documents, stately and unprincipled officials, had displaced him, he turned out to be not only far from clever but very limited and badly educated. Though self-assured, his views hardly reaching the level of those in the leading articles of the Conservative papers, it became apparent that there was nothing in him to distinguish him from those other badly-educated and self-assured officials who had pushed him out, and he himself saw it. But this did not shake his conviction that he had to receive a great deal of money out of the Treasury every year, and new decorations for his dress clothes. This conviction was so firm that no one had the pluck to refuse these things to him, and he received yearly, partly in form of a pension, partly as a salary for being a member in a Government institution and chairman of all sorts of committees and councils, several tens of thousands of roubles, besides the right⁠—highly prized by him⁠—of sewing all sorts of new cords to his shoulders and trousers, and ribbons to wear under and enamel stars to fix on to his dress coat. In consequence of this Count Iván Micháelovitch had very high connections.

Count Iván Micháelovitch listened to Nekhlúdoff as he was wont to listen to the reports of the permanent secretary of his department, and, having heard him, said