The officers regarded him as an aristocrat and behaved towards him with dignity.

Cardplaying and the officers' carousals accompanied by the soldier-singers, of which he had had experience when he was with the detachment, did not seem to him attractive, and he also avoided the society and life of the officers in the village.

The life of officers stationed in a Cossack village has long had its own definite form.

Just as every cadet or officer when in a fort regularly drinks porter, plays cards, and discusses the rewards given for taking part in the expeditions, so in the Cossack villages he regularly drinks chikhir with his hosts, treats the girls to sweet-meats and honey, dangles after the Cossack women, and falls in love, and occasionally marries there.

Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.