Explore "Hadji Murád" by Leo Tolstoy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Michael Seménovich Vorontsóv, being the son of the Russian Ambassador, had been educated in England, and possessed a European education quite exceptional among the higher Russian officials of his day. He was ambitious, gentle, and kind in his manner with inferiors, and a finished courtier with superiors. He did not understand life without power and submission. He had obtained all the highest ranks and decorations, and was looked upon as a clever commander, and even as the conqueror of Napoleon at Krásnoye.21
In 1852 he was over seventy, but was still quite fresh, moved briskly, and above all was in full possession of a facile, refined, and agreeable intellect which he used to maintain his power and strengthen and increase his popularity. He possessed large means -- his own and his wife's (née countess Branítski) -- and received an enormous salary as Viceroy; and he spent a great part of his means on building a palace and laying out a garden on the south coast of the Crimea.