Prince Boris, in St. Petersburg, adopted the usual habits of his
class. He dressed elegantly; he drove a dashing troika; he
played, and lost more frequently than he won; he took no special
pains to shun any form of fashionable dissipation. His money went
fast, it is true; but twenty-five thousand rubles was a large sum
in those days, and Boris did not inherit his father's expensive
constitution. He was presented to the Empress; but his thin face,
and mild, melancholy eyes did not make much impression upon that
ponderous woman. He frequented the salons of the nobility, but saw
no face so beautiful as that of Parashka, the serf-maiden who
personated Venus for Simon Petrovitch. The fact is, he had a dim,
undeveloped instinct of culture, and a crude, half-conscious
worship of beauty,--both of which qualities found just enough
nourishment in the life of the capital to tantalize and never
satisfy his nature. He was excited by his new experience, but
hardly happier.

Athough but three-and-twenty, he would never know the rich,
vital glow with which youth rushes to clasp all forms of sensation.

He had seen, almost daily, in his father's castle, excess in its
most excessive development. It had grown to be repulsive, and he
knew not how to fill the void in his life. With a single spark of
genius, and a little more culture, he might have become a passable
author or artist; but he was doomed to be one of those deaf and
dumb natures that see the movements of the lips of others, yet have
no conception of sound. No wonder his savage old father looked
upon him with contempt, for even his vices were without strength or
character.