by Leo Tolstoy
extremely like his father. He seemed a little Ivan Ilych, such as
Peter Ivanovich remembered when they studied law together. His
tear-stained eyes had in them the look that is seen in the eyes of
boys of thirteen or fourteen who are not pure-minded. When he saw
Peter Ivanovich he scowled morosely and shamefacedly. Peter
Ivanovich nodded to him and entered the death-chamber. The service
began: candles, groans, incense, tears, and sobs. Peter Ivanovich
stood looking gloomily down at his feet. He did not look once at
the dead man, did not yield to any depressing influence, and was
one of the first to leave the room. There was no one in the
anteroom, but Gerasim darted out of the dead man's room, rummaged
with his strong hands among the fur coats to find Peter Ivanovich's
and helped him on with it.
"Well, friend Gerasim," said Peter Ivanovich, so as to say
something. "It's a sad affair, isn't it?"
"It's God will. We shall all come to it some day," said
Gerasim, displaying his teeth -- the even white teeth of a healthy
peasant -- and, like a man in the thick of urgent work, he briskly
opened the front door, called the coachman, helped Peter Ivanovich
into the sledge, and sprang back to the porch as if in readiness
for what he had to do next.
Peter Ivanovich found the fresh air particularly pleasant
after the smell of incense, the dead body, and carbolic acid.
"Where to sir?" asked the coachman.
"It's not too late even now....I'll call round on Fedor
Vasilievich."
He accordingly drove there and found them just finishing the
first rubber, so that it was quite convenient for him to cut in.
II
Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and
therefore most terrible.
He had been a member of the Court of Justice, and died at the
age of forty-five. His father had been an official who after
serving in various ministries and departments in Petersburg had
made the sort of career which brings men to positions from which by
reason of their long service they cannot be dismissed, though they
are obviously unfit to hold any responsible position, and for whom
therefore posts are specially created, which though fictitious
carry salaries of from six to ten thousand rubles that are not
fictitious, and in receipt of which they live on to a great age.
Such was the Privy Councillor and superfluous member of
various superfluous institutions, Ilya Epimovich Golovin.
He had three sons, of whom Ivan Ilych was the second. The
eldest son was following in his father's footsteps only in another
department, and was already approaching that stage in the service
at which a similar sinecure would be reached. the third son was a
failure. He had ruined his prospects in a number of positions and
was not serving in the railway department. His father and
brothers, and still more their wives, not merely disliked meeting
him, but avoided remembering his existence unless compelled to do
so. His sister had married Baron Greff, a Petersburg official of
her father's type. Ivan Ilych was *le phenix de la famille* as
people said. He was neither as cold and formal as his elder
brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy mean between
them -- an intelligent polished, lively and agreeable man. He had
studied with his younger brother at the School of Law, but the
latter had failed to complete the course and was expelled when he
was in the fifth class. Ivan Ilych finished the course well. Even
when he was at the School of Law he was just what he remained for
the rest of his life: a capable, cheerful, good-natured, and
sociable man, though strict in the fulfillment of what he
considered to be his duty: and he considered his duty to be what
was so considered by those in authority. Neither as a boy nor as
a man was he a toady, but from early youth was by nature attracted
to people of high station as a fly is drawn to the light,
assimilating their ways and views of life and establishing friendly
relations with them. All the enthusiasms of childhood and youth
passed without leaving much trace on him; he succumbed to
sensuality, to vanity, and latterly among the highest classes to
liberalism, but always within limits which his instinct unfailingly
indicated to him as correct.
At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him
very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did
them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by
people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong,
he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to forget
about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering them.
Having graduated from the School of Law and qualified for the
tenth rank of the civil service, and having received money from his
father for his equipment, Ivan Ilych ordered himself clothes at
Scharmer's, the fashionable tailor, hung a medallion inscribed
*respice finem* on his watch-chain, took leave of his professor and
the prince who was patron of the school, had a farewell dinner with
his comrades at Donon's first-class restaurant, and with his new
and fashionable portmanteau, linen, clothes, shaving and other
toilet appliances, and a travelling rug, all purchased at the best
shops, he set off for one of the provinces where through his
father's influence, he had been attached to the governor as an
official for special service.
In the province Ivan Ilych soon arranged as easy and agreeable
a position for himself as he had had at the School of Law. He
performed his official task, made his career, and at the same time
amused himself pleasantly and decorously. Occasionally he paid
official visits to country districts where he behaved with dignity
both to his superiors and inferiors, and performed the duties
entrusted to him, which related chiefly to the sectarians, with an
exactness and incorruptible honesty of which he could not but feel
proud.
In official matters, despite his youth and taste for frivolous
gaiety, he was exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe;
but in society he was often amusing and witty, and always good-
natured, correct in his manner, and *bon enfant*, as the governor
and his wife -- with whom he was like one of the family -- used to
say of him.
In the province he had an affair with a lady who made advances
to the elegant young lawyer, and there was also a milliner; and
there were carousals with aides-de-camp who visited the district,
and after-supper visits to a certain outlying street of doubtful
reputation; and there was too some obsequiousness to his chief and
even to his chief's wife, but all this was done with such a tone of
good breeding that no hard names could be applied to it. It all
came under the heading of the French saying: *"Il faut que
jeunesse se passe
."* It was all done with clean hands, in clean
linen, with French phrases, and above all among people of the best
society and consequently with the approval of people of rank.
So Ivan Ilych served for five years and then came a change in
his official life. The new and reformed judicial institutions were
introduced, and new men were needed. Ivan Ilych became such a new
man. He was offered the post of examining magistrate, and he
accepted it though the post was in another province and obliged him
to give up the connexions he had formed and to make new ones. His
friends met to give him a send-off; they had a group photograph
taken and presented him with a silver cigarette-case, and he set
off to his new post.
As examining magistrate Ivan Ilych was just as *comme il faut*
and decorous a man, inspiring general respect and capable of
separating his official duties from his private life, as he had
been when acting as an official on special service. His duties now
as examining magistrate were fare more interesting and attractive
than before. In his former position it had been pleasant to wear
an undress uniform made by Scharmer, and to pass through the crowd
of petitioners and officials who were timorously awaiting an
audience with the governor, and who envied him as with free and
easy gait he went straight into his chief's private room to have a
cup of tea and a cigarette with him. But not many people had then
been directly dependent on him -- only police officials and the
sectarians when he went on special missions -- and he liked to
treat them politely, almost as comrades, as if he were letting them
feel that he who had the power to crush them was treating them in
this simple, friendly way. There were then but few such people.
But now, as an examining magistrate, Ivan Ilych felt that everyone
without exception, even the most important and self-satisfied, was
in his power, and that he need only write a few words on a sheet of
paper with a certain heading, and this or that important, self-
satisfied person would be brought before him in the role of an
accused person or a witness, and if he did not choose to allow him
to sit down, would have to stand before him and answer his
questions. Ivan Ilych never abused his power; he tried on the
contrary to soften its expression, but the consciousness of it and
the possibility of softening its effect, supplied the chief
interest and attraction of his office. In his work itself,
especially in his examinations, he very soon acquired a method of
eliminating all considerations irrelevant to the legal aspect of
the case, and reducing even the most complicated case to a form in
which it would be presented on paper only in its externals,
completely excluding his personal opinion of the matter, while
above all observing every prescribed formality. The work was new
and Ivan Ilych was one of the first men to apply the new Code of
1864.
On taking up the post of examining magistrate in a new town,
he made new acquaintances and connexions, placed himself on a new
footing and assumed a somewhat different tone. He took up an
attitude of rather dignified aloofness towards the provincial
authorities, but picked out the best circle of legal gentlemen and
wealthy gentry living in the town and assumed a tone of slight
dissatisfaction with the government, of moderate liberalism, and of
enlightened citizenship. At the same time, without at all altering
the elegance of his toilet, he ceased shaving his chin and allowed
his beard to grow as it pleased.
Ivan Ilych settled down very pleasantly in this new town. The
society there, which inclined towards opposition to the governor
was friendly, his salary was larger, and he began to play *vint* [a
form of bridge], which he found added not a little to the pleasure
of life, for he had a capacity for cards, played good-humouredly,
and calculated rapidly and astutely, so that he usually won.
After living there for two years he met his future wife,
Praskovya Fedorovna Mikhel, who was the most attractive, clever,
and brilliant girl of the set in which he moved, and among other
amusements and relaxations from his labours as examining
magistrate, Ivan Ilych established light and playful relations with
her.
While he had been an official on special service he had been
accustomed to dance, but now as an examining magistrate it was
exceptional for him to do so. If he danced now, he did it as if to
show that though he served under the reformed order of things, and
had reached the fifth official rank, yet when it came to dancing he
could do it better than most people. So at the end of an evening
he sometimes danced with Praskovya Fedorovna, and it was chiefly
during these dances that he captivated her. She fell in love with
him. Ivan Ilych had at first no definite intention of marrying,
but when the girl fell in love with him he said to himself:
"Really, why shouldn't I marry?"
Praskovya Fedorovna came of a good family, was not bad
looking, and had some little property. Ivan Ilych might have
aspired to a more brilliant match, but even this was good. He had
his salary, and she, he hoped, would have an equal income. She was
well connected, and was a sweet, pretty, and thoroughly correct
young woman. to say that Ivan Ilych married because he fell in
love with Praskovya Fedorovna and found that she sympathized with
his views of life would be as incorrect as to say that he married
because his social circle approved of the match. He was swayed by
both these considerations: the marriage gave him personal
satisfaction, and at the same time it was considered the right
thing by the most highly placed of his associates.
So Ivan Ilych got married.
The preparations for marriage and the beginning of married
life, with its conjugal caresses, the new furniture, new crockery,
and new linen, were very pleasant until his wife became pregnant --
so that Ivan Ilych had begun to think that marriage would not
impair the easy, agreeable, gay and always decorous character of
his life, approved of by society and regarded by himself as
natural, but would even improve it. But from the first months of
his wife's pregnancy, something new, unpleasant, depressing, and
unseemly, and from which there was no way of escape, unexpectedly
showed itself.
His wife, without any reason -- *de gaiete de coeur* as Ivan
Ilych expressed it to himself -- began to disturb the pleasure and
propriety of their life. She began to be jealous without any
cause, expected him to devote his whole attention to her, found
fault with everything, and made coarse and ill-mannered scenes.
At first Ivan Ilych hoped to escape from the unpleasantness of
this state of affairs by the same easy and decorous relation to
life that had served him heretofore: he tried to ignore his wife's
disagreeable moods
, continued to live in his usual easy and
pleasant way, invited friends to his house for a game of cards, and
also tried going out to his club or spending his evenings with
friends. But one day his wife began upbraiding him so vigorously,
using such coarse words, and continued to abuse him every time he
did not fulfil her demands, so resolutely and with such evident
determination not to give way till he submitted -- that is, till he
stayed at home and was bored just as she was -- that he became
alarmed. He now realized that matrimony -- at any rate with
Praskovya Fedorovna -- was not always conducive to the pleasures
and amenities of life, but on the contrary often infringed both
comfort and propriety, and that he must therefore entrench himself
against such infringement. And Ivan Ilych began to seek for means
of doing so. His official duties were the one thing that imposed
upon Praskovya Fedorovna, and by means of his official work and the
duties attached to it he began struggling with his wife to secure
his own independence.
With the birth of their child, the attempts to feed it and the
various failures in doing so, and with the real and imaginary
illnesses of mother and child, in which Ivan Ilych's sympathy was
demanded but about which he understood nothing, the need of
securing for himself an existence outside his family life became
still more imperative.
As his wife grew more irritable and exacting and Ivan Ilych
transferred the center of gravity of his life more and more to his
official work, so did he grow to like his work better and became
more ambitious than before.
Very soon, within a year of his wedding, Ivan Ilych had
realized that marriage, though it may add some comforts to life, is
in fact a very intricate and difficult affair towards which in
order to perform one's duty, that is, to lead a decorous life
approved of by society, one must adopt a definite attitude just as
towards one's official duties.
And Ivan Ilych evolved such an attitude towards married life.
He only required of it those conveniences -- dinner at home,
housewife, and bed -- which it could give him, and above all that
propriety of external forms required by public opinion. For the
rest he looked for lighthearted pleasure and propriety, and was
very thankful when he found them, but if he met with antagonism and
querulousness he at once retired into his separate fenced-off world
of official duties, where he found satisfaction.
Ivan Ilych was esteemed a good official, and after three years
was made Assistant Public Prosecutor. His new duties, their
importance, the possibility of indicting and imprisoning anyone he
chose, the publicity his speeches received, and the success he had
in all these things, made his work still more attractive.
More children came. His wife became more and more querulous
and ill-tempered, but the attitude Ivan Ilych had adopted towards
his home life rendered him almost impervious to her grumbling.
After seven years' service in that town he was transferred to
another province as Public Prosecutor. They moved, but were short
of money and his wife did not like the place they moved to. Though
the salary was higher the cost of living was greater, besides which
two of their children died and family life became still more
unpleasant for him.
Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for every inconvenience
they encountered in their new home. Most of the conversations
between husband and wife, especially as to the children's
education, led to topics which recalled former disputes, and these
disputes were apt to flare up again at any moment. There remained
only those rare periods of amorousness which still came to them at
times but did not last long. These were islets at which they
anchored for a while and then again set out upon that ocean of
veiled hostility which showed itself in their aloofness from one
another. This aloofness might have grieved Ivan Ilych had he
considered that it ought not to exist, but he now regarded the
position as normal, and even made it the goal at which he aimed in
family life. His aim was to free himself more and more from those