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Being without money, he chose a practical career while
yet very young. But he met with a mishap at the outset.
Somewhere in a foreign country, in a semi-private
circle, he had made a speech of a political tendency
which had caused displeasure. On his return home
he was punished by exile to a little country town in
Esthonia, where he was obliged to remain for ten or
twelve years, exclusively limited as to society to men,
of whom not one stood on the same plane of culture as
himself, and shut out from all activity, all development,
and all means of livelihood. At last, he lost all hope of
ever being liberated from his place of exile, and in a sort
of desperation married a young woman of the neighborhood,
who, indeed, was both pretty and good-hearted, but
separated from him by so deep an abyss in culture, that
she, on her part, has never desired to enter her husband’s
circle in society at St. Petersburg as princess. She lives
only for her home and her son.
He came back finer-looking and more elegant than
ever, thoroughly cured of political enthusiasm. As if in
scorn, freedom was given him in the guise of a government
appointment in which he must work in its service
directly against that system of thought for which he
had suffered. Cold as ice, materialist in his manner of
thought and in all the relations of life, he has allowed
himself only one passion: the passion for collecting. He
collects books, manuscripts, bronzes, women. In literature
and art he gives his allegiance to the principle, Art
for the sake of art;[1] in life, to the principles from the
time of the court of Louis XV. Among French authors,
he specially affects the line of Flaubert, Zola, Huysmans;
among the Russian poets, Andreyevski, a lyric writer,
whose poems are not on emotional subjects, have no
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