The Death of Ivan Ilych

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