h. Neither as a youth, nor as a grown-up man, was he ever a place-hunter, yet there was this about him from his very earliest years: as a fly is attracted to a candle, so he was always drawn towards the highest placed people in his own particular sphere, appropriated their ways, their views of life, and established amicable relations with them. All the distractions of childhood and youth passed him by without leaving any particular trace upon him; he yielded to sensuality, to ambition, and, finally, while in the higher classes, to liberalism, but always within certain limits, which his feelings of propriety indicated to him beforehand.
It was while he was a law student that he had indulged himself in things which he had regarded as disgusting before he did them, and which filled him with self loathing at the very time when he was doing them; but, subsequently, perceiving that such things were done even by people in the highest positions, and were not considered bad, he himself did not indeed regard them as good, but simply forgot about them altogether, and never worried himself by thinking about them.
Quitting the schools of jurisprudence when he had risen to the tenth class, and receiving from his father money for his uniform, Ivan Il'ich ordered a suit from the fashionable tailor, Sharmer, hung on his watch chain a medal with the inscription, respice finem; took leave of his principals and his instructors; dined with his comrades once or twice at Dinons; and with a new modish trunk, linen, suits of clothes, toilet and shaving requisites, and a plaid, ordered and paid for at the very best shops, he set off for the provinces,
