of his breast--one, to be
sure, a foreign star, not of the first magnitude. Like the governor,
whom he had come down to pass judgment upon, he was reckoned a
progressive; and though he was already a bigwig, he was not like the
majority of bigwigs. He had the highest opinion of himself; his vanity
knew no bounds, but he behaved simply, looked affable, listened
condescendingly, and laughed so good-naturedly, that on a first
acquaintance he might even be taken for 'a jolly good fellow.' On
important occasions, however, he knew, as the saying is, how to make
his authority felt. 'Energy is essential,' he used to say then,
'_l'energie est la premiere qualite d'un homme d'etat_;' and for all
that, he was usually taken in, and any moderately experienced official
could turn him round his finger. Matvy Ilyitch used to speak with great
respect of Guizot, and tried to impress every one with the idea that he
did not belong to the class of _routiniers_ and high-and-dry
bureaucrats, that not a single phenomenon of social life passed
unnoticed by him.... All such phrases were very familiar to him. He
even followed, with dignified indifference, it is true, the development
of contemporary literature; so a grown-up man who meets a procession of
small boys in the street will sometimes walk after it. In reality,
Matvy Ilyitch had not got much beyond those political men of the days
of Alexander, who used to prepare for an evening party at Madame
Svyetchin's by reading a page of Condillac; only his methods were
different, more modern. He was an adroit courtier, a great hypocrite,
and nothing more; he had no special aptitude for affairs, and no
intellect, but he knew how to manage his own business successfully; no
one could get the better of him there, and, to be sure, that's the
principal thing.

Matvy Ilyitch received Arkady with the good-nature, we might even call
it playfulness, characteristic of the enlightened higher official. He
was astonished, however, when he heard that the cousins he had invited
had remained at home in the country. 'Your father was always a queer
fellow,' he remarked, playing with the tassels of his magnificent
velvet dressing-gown, and suddenly turning to a young official in a
discreetly buttoned-up uniform, he cried, with an air of concentrated
attention, 'What?' The young man, whose lips were glued together from
prolonged silence, got up and looked in perplexity at his chief. But,
having nonplussed his subordina