Explore "The Awakening" by Leo Tolstoy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
With a note from Prince Ivan Michaelovitch, Nekhludoff went to Senator Wolf -- un homme tres comme il faut, as the Prince had described him.
Wolf had just breakfasted and, as usual, was smoking a cigar, to aid his digestion, when Nekhludoff arrived. Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was really un homme tres comme il faut, and this quality he placed above all else; from the height of it he looked upon all other people, and could not help valuing this quality, because, thanks to it, he had gained a brilliant career -- the same career he strove for; that is to say, through marriage he obtained a fortune, which brought him a yearly income of eighteen thousand rubles, and by his own efforts he obtained a senatorship. He considered himself not only un homme tres comme il faut, but a man of chivalric honesty. By honesty he understood the refusal to take bribes from private people. But to do everything in his power to obtain all sorts of traveling expenses, rents and disbursements he did not consider dishonest. Nor did he consider it dishonest to rob his wife and sister-in-law of their fortunes. On the contrary, he considered that a wise arrangement of his family affairs.