Chapter
III
So Ivan Ilych
lived for seventeen years after his marriage. He was already a Public
Prosecutor of long standing, and had declined several proposed transfers while
awaiting a more desirable post, when an unanticipated and unpleasant occurrence
quite upset the peaceful course of his life. He was expecting to be offered the
post of presiding judge in a University town, but Happe somehow came to the
front and obtained the appointment instead. Ivan Ilych became irritable,
reproached Happe, and quarrelled both him and with his immediate superiors — who
became colder to him and again passed him over when other appointments were
made.
This was in 1880, the hardest year of Ivan Ilych's life. It was then that it
became evident on the one hand that his salary was insufficient for them to live
on, and on the other that he had been forgotten, and not only this, but that
what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a
quite ordinary occurrence. Even his father did not consider it his duty to help
him. Ivan Ilych felt himself abandoned by everyone, and that they regarded his
position with a salary of 3,500 rubles as quite normal and even fortunate. He
alone knew that with the consciousness of the injustices done him, with his
wife's incessant nagging, and with the debts he had contracted by living beyond
his means, his position was far from normal.
In order to save money that summer he obtained leave of absence and went with
his wife to live in the country at her brother's place.
In the country, without his work, he experienced *ennui* for the first time
in his life, and not only *ennui* but intolerable depression, and he decided
that it was impossible to go on living like that, and that it was necessary to
take energetic measures.
Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and down the veranda, he decided to
go to Petersburg and bestir himself, in order to punish those who had failed to
appreciate him and to get transferred to another ministry.
Next day, despite many protests from his wife and her brother, he started for
Petersburg with the sole object of obtaining a post with a salary of five
thousand rubles a year. He was no longer bent on any particular department, or
tendency, or kind of activity. All he now wanted was an appointment to another
post with a salary of five thousand rubles, either in the administration, in the
banks, with the railways in one of the Empress Marya's Institutions, or even in
the customs — but it had to carry with it a salary of five thousand rubles and
be in a ministry other than that in which they had failed to appreciate him.
And this quest of Ivan Ilych's was crowned with remarkable and unexpected
success. At Kursk an acquaintance of his, F. I. Ilyin, got into the first-class
carriage, sat down beside Ivan Ilych, and told him of a telegram just received
by the governor of Kursk announcing that a change was about to take place in the
ministry: Peter Ivanovich was to be superseded by Ivan Semonovich.
The proposed change, apart from its significance for Russia, had a special
significance for Ivan Ilych, because by bringing forward a new man, Peter
Petrovich, and consequently his friend Zachar Ivanovich, it was highly
favourable for Ivan Ilych, since Sachar Ivanovich was a friend and colleague of
his.
In Moscow this news was confirmed, and on reaching Petersburg Ivan Ilych
found Zachar Ivanovich and received a definite promise of an appointment in his
former Department of Justice.
A week later he telegraphed to his wife: "Zachar in Miller's place. I shall
receive appointment on presentation of report."
Thanks to this change of personnel, Ivan Ilych had unexpectedly obtained an
appointment in his former ministry which placed him two states above his former
colleagues besides giving him five thousand rubles salary and three thousand
five hundred rubles for expenses connected with his removal. All his ill humour
towards his former enemies and the whole department vanished, and Ivan Ilych was
completely happy.
He returned to the country more cheerful and contented than he had been for a
long time. Praskovya Fedorovna also cheered up and a truce was arranged between
them. Ivan Ilych told of how he had been feted by everybody in Petersburg, how
all those who had been his enemies were put to shame and now fawned on him, how
envious they were of his appointment, and how much everybody in Petersburg had
liked him.
Praskovya Fedorovna listened to all this and appeared to believe it. She did
not contradict anything, but only made plans for their life in the town to which
they were going. Ivan Ilych saw with delight that these plans were his plans,
that he and his wife agreed, and that, after a stumble, his life was regaining
its due and natural character of pleasant lightheartedness and decorum.
Ivan Ilych had come back for a short time only, for he had to take up his new
duties on the 10th of September. Moreover, he needed time to settle into the
new place, to move all his belongings from the province, and to buy and order
many additional things: in a word, to make such arrangements as he had resolved
on, which were almost exactly what Praskovya Fedorovna too had decided on.
Now that everything had happened so fortunately, and that he and his wife
were at one in their aims and moreover saw so little of one another, they got on
together better than they had done since the first years of marriage. Ivan
Ilych had thought of taking his family away with him at once, but the insistence
of his wife's brother and her sister-in-law, who had suddenly become
particularly amiable and friendly to him and his family, induced him to depart
alone.
So he departed, and the cheerful state of mind induced by his success and by
the harmony between his wife and himself, the one intensifying the other, did
not leave him. He found a delightful house, just the thing both he and his wife
had dreamt of. Spacious, lofty reception rooms in the old style, a convenient
and dignified study, rooms for his wife and daughter, a study for his son — it
might have been specially built for them. Ivan Ilych himself superintended the
arrangements, chose the wallpapers, supplemented the furniture (preferably with
antiques which he considered particularly *comme il faut*), and supervised the
upholstering. Everything progressed and progressed and approached the ideal he
had set himself: even when things were only half completed they exceeded his
expectations. He saw what a refined and elegant character, free from vulgarity,
it would all have when it was ready. On falling asleep he pictured to himself
how the reception room would look. Looking at the yet unfinished drawing room
he could see the fireplace, the screen, the what-not, the little chairs dotted
here and there, the dishes and plates on the walls, and the bronzes, as they
would be when everything was in place. He was pleased by the thought of how his
wife and daughter, who shared his taste n this matter, would be impressed by it.
They were certainly not expecting as much. He had been particularly successful
in finding, and buying cheaply, antiques which gave a particularly aristocratic
character to the whole place. But in his letters he intentionally understated
everything in order to be able to surprise them. All this so absorbed him that
his new duties — though he liked his official work — interested him less than he
had expected. Sometimes he even had moments of absent-mindedness during the
court sessions and would consider whether he should have straight or curved
cornices for his curtains. He was so interested in it all that he often did
things himself, rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once when
mounting a step- ladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he
wanted the hangings draped, he mad a false step and slipped, but being a strong
and agile man he clung on and only knocked his side against the knob of the
window frame. The bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed, and he
felt particularly bright and well just then. He wrote: "I feel fifteen years
younger." He thought he would have everything ready by September, but it
dragged on till mid-October. But the result was charming not only in his eyes
but to everyone who saw it.
In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of
moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling
others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull
and polished bronzes — all the things people of a certain class have in order to
resemble other people of that class. His house was so like the others that it
would never have been noticed, but to him it all seemed to be quite exceptional.
He was very happy when he met his family at the station and brought them to the
newly furnished house all lit up, where a footman in a white tie opened the door
into the hall decorated with plants, and when they went on into the drawing-room
and the study uttering exclamations of delight. He conducted them everywhere,
drank in their praises eagerly, and beamed with pleasure. At tea that evening,
when Praskovya Fedorovna among others things asked him about his fall, he
laughed, and showed them how he had gone flying and had frightened the
upholsterer.
"It's a good thing I'm a bit of an athlete. Another man might have been
killed, but I merely knocked myself, just here; it hurts when it's touched, but
it's passing off already — it's only a bruise."
So they began living in their new home — in which, as always happens, when
they got thoroughly settled in they found they were just one room short — and
with the increased income, which as always was just a little (some five hundred
rubles) too little, but it was all very nice.
Things went particularly well at first, before everything was finally
arranged and while something had still to be done: this thing bought, that
thing ordered, another thing moved, and something else adjusted. Though there
were some disputes between husband and wife, they were both so well satisfied
and had so much to do that it all passed off without any serious quarrels. When
nothing was left to arrange it became rather dull and something seemed to be
lacking, but they were then making acquaintances, forming habits, and life was
growing fuller.
Ivan Ilych spent his mornings at the law court and came home to diner, and at
first he was generally in a good humour, though he occasionally became irritable
just on account of his house. (Every spot on the tablecloth or the upholstery,
and every broken window- blind string, irritated him. He had devoted so much
trouble to arranging it all that every disturbance of it distressed him.) But
on the whole his life ran its course as he believed life should do: easily,
pleasantly, and decorously.
He got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the paper, and then put on his
undress uniform and went to the law courts. there the harness in which he
worked had already been stretched to fit him and he donned it without a hitch:
petitioners, inquiries at the chancery, the chancery itself, and the sittings
public and administrative. In all this the thing was to exclude everything
fresh and vital, which always disturbs the regular course of official business,
and to admit only official relations with people, and then only on official
grounds. A man would come, for instance, wanting some information. Ivan Ilych,
as one in whose sphere the matter did not lie, would have nothing to do with
him: but if the man had some business with him in his official capacity,
something that could be expressed on officially stamped paper, he would do
everything, positively everything he could within the limits of such relations,
and in doing so would maintain the semblance of friendly human relations, that
is, would observe the courtesies of life. As soon as the official relations
ended, so did everything else. Ivan Ilych possessed this capacity to separate
his real life from the official side of affairs and not mix the two, in the
highest degree, and by long practice and natural aptitude had brought it to such
a pitch that sometimes, in the manner of a virtuoso, he would even allow himself
to let the human and official relations mingle. He let himself do this just
because he felt that he could at any time he chose resume the strictly official
attitude again and drop the human relation. and he did it all easily,
pleasantly, correctly, and even artistically. In the intervals between the
sessions he smoked, drank tea, chatted a little about politics, a little about
general topics, a little about cards, but most of all about official
appointments. Tired, but with the feelings of a virtuoso — one of the first
violins who has played his part in an orchestra with precision — he would return
home to find that his wife and daughter had been out paying calls, or had a
visitor, and that his son had been to school, had done his homework with his
tutor, and was surely learning what is taught at High Schools. Everything was
as it should be. After dinner, if they had no visitors, Ivan Ilych sometimes
read a book that was being much discussed at the time, and in the evening
settled down to work, that is, read official papers, compared the depositions of
witnesses, and noted paragraphs of the Code applying to them. This was neither
dull nor amusing. It was dull when he might have been playing bridge, but if no
bridge was available it was at any rate better than doing nothing or sitting
with his wife. Ivan Ilych's chief pleasure was giving little dinners to which
he invited men and women of good social position, and just as his drawing-room
resembled all other drawing-rooms so did his enjoyable little parties resemble
all other such parties.
Once they even gave a dance. Ivan Ilych enjoyed it and everything went off
well, except that it led to a violent quarrel with his wife about the cakes and
sweets. Praskovya Fedorovna had made her own plans, but Ivan Ilych insisted on
getting everything from an expensive confectioner and ordered too many cakes,
and the quarrel occurred because some of those cakes were left over and the
confectioner's bill came to forty-five rubles. It was a great and disagreeable
quarrel. Praskovya Fedorovna called him "a fool and an imbecile," and he
clutched at his head and made angry allusions to divorce.
But the dance itself had been enjoyable. The best people were there, and
Ivan Ilych had danced with Princess Trufonova, a sister of the distinguished
founder of the Society "Bear My Burden".
The pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of ambition; his social
pleasures were those of vanity; but Ivan Ilych's greatest pleasure was playing
bridge. He acknowledged that whatever disagreeable incident happened in his
life, the pleasure that beamed like a ray of light above everything else was to
sit down to bridge with good players, not noisy partners, and of course to
four-handed bridge (with five players it was annoying to have to stand out,
though one pretended not to mind), to play a clever and serious game (when the
cards allowed it) and then to have supper and drink a glass of wine. after a
game of bridge, especially if he had won a little (to win a large sum was
unpleasant), Ivan Ilych went to bed in a specially good humour.
So they lived. They formed a circle of acquaintances among the best people
and were visited by people of importance and by young folk. In their views as
to their acquaintances, husband, wife and daughter were entirely agreed, and
tacitly and unanimously kept at arm's length and shook off the various shabby
friends and relations who, with much show of affection, gushed into the
drawing-room with its Japanese plates on the walls. Soon these shabby friends
ceased to obtrude themselves and only the best people remained in the Golovins'
set.
Young men made up to Lisa, and Petrishchev, an examining magistrate and
Dmitri Ivanovich Petrishchev's son and sole heir, began to be so attentive to
her that Ivan Ilych had already spoken to Praskovya Fedorovna about it, and
considered whether they should not arrange a party for them, or get up some
private theatricals.
So they lived, and all went well, without change, and life flowed
pleasantly.
III
So Ivan Ilych
lived for seventeen years after his marriage. He was already a Public
Prosecutor of long standing, and had declined several proposed transfers while
awaiting a more desirable post, when an unanticipated and unpleasant occurrence
quite upset the peaceful course of his life. He was expecting to be offered the
post of presiding judge in a University town, but Happe somehow came to the
front and obtained the appointment instead. Ivan Ilych became irritable,
reproached Happe, and quarrelled both him and with his immediate superiors — who
became colder to him and again passed him over when other appointments were
made.
This was in 1880, the hardest year of Ivan Ilych's life. It was then that it
became evident on the one hand that his salary was insufficient for them to live
on, and on the other that he had been forgotten, and not only this, but that
what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a
quite ordinary occurrence. Even his father did not consider it his duty to help
him. Ivan Ilych felt himself abandoned by everyone, and that they regarded his
position with a salary of 3,500 rubles as quite normal and even fortunate. He
alone knew that with the consciousness of the injustices done him, with his
wife's incessant nagging, and with the debts he had contracted by living beyond
his means, his position was far from normal.
In order to save money that summer he obtained leave of absence and went with
his wife to live in the country at her brother's place.
In the country, without his work, he experienced *ennui* for the first time
in his life, and not only *ennui* but intolerable depression, and he decided
that it was impossible to go on living like that, and that it was necessary to
take energetic measures.
Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and down the veranda, he decided to
go to Petersburg and bestir himself, in order to punish those who had failed to
appreciate him and to get transferred to another ministry.
Next day, despite many protests from his wife and her brother, he started for
Petersburg with the sole object of obtaining a post with a salary of five
thousand rubles a year. He was no longer bent on any particular department, or
tendency, or kind of activity. All he now wanted was an appointment to another
post with a salary of five thousand rubles, either in the administration, in the
banks, with the railways in one of the Empress Marya's Institutions, or even in
the customs — but it had to carry with it a salary of five thousand rubles and
be in a ministry other than that in which they had failed to appreciate him.
And this quest of Ivan Ilych's was crowned with remarkable and unexpected
success. At Kursk an acquaintance of his, F. I. Ilyin, got into the first-class
carriage, sat down beside Ivan Ilych, and told him of a telegram just received
by the governor of Kursk announcing that a change was about to take place in the
ministry: Peter Ivanovich was to be superseded by Ivan Semonovich.
The proposed change, apart from its significance for Russia, had a special
significance for Ivan Ilych, because by bringing forward a new man, Peter
Petrovich, and consequently his friend Zachar Ivanovich, it was highly
favourable for Ivan Ilych, since Sachar Ivanovich was a friend and colleague of
his.
In Moscow this news was confirmed, and on reaching Petersburg Ivan Ilych
found Zachar Ivanovich and received a definite promise of an appointment in his
former Department of Justice.
A week later he telegraphed to his wife: "Zachar in Miller's place. I shall
receive appointment on presentation of report."
Thanks to this change of personnel, Ivan Ilych had unexpectedly obtained an
appointment in his former ministry which placed him two states above his former
colleagues besides giving him five thousand rubles salary and three thousand
five hundred rubles for expenses connected with his removal. All his ill humour
towards his former enemies and the whole department vanished, and Ivan Ilych was
completely happy.
He returned to the country more cheerful and contented than he had been for a
long time. Praskovya Fedorovna also cheered up and a truce was arranged between
them. Ivan Ilych told of how he had been feted by everybody in Petersburg, how
all those who had been his enemies were put to shame and now fawned on him, how
envious they were of his appointment, and how much everybody in Petersburg had
liked him.
Praskovya Fedorovna listened to all this and appeared to believe it. She did
not contradict anything, but only made plans for their life in the town to which
they were going. Ivan Ilych saw with delight that these plans were his plans,
that he and his wife agreed, and that, after a stumble, his life was regaining
its due and natural character of pleasant lightheartedness and decorum.
Ivan Ilych had come back for a short time only, for he had to take up his new
duties on the 10th of September. Moreover, he needed time to settle into the
new place, to move all his belongings from the province, and to buy and order
many additional things: in a word, to make such arrangements as he had resolved
on, which were almost exactly what Praskovya Fedorovna too had decided on.
Now that everything had happened so fortunately, and that he and his wife
were at one in their aims and moreover saw so little of one another, they got on
together better than they had done since the first years of marriage. Ivan
Ilych had thought of taking his family away with him at once, but the insistence
of his wife's brother and her sister-in-law, who had suddenly become
particularly amiable and friendly to him and his family, induced him to depart
alone.
So he departed, and the cheerful state of mind induced by his success and by
the harmony between his wife and himself, the one intensifying the other, did
not leave him. He found a delightful house, just the thing both he and his wife
had dreamt of. Spacious, lofty reception rooms in the old style, a convenient
and dignified study, rooms for his wife and daughter, a study for his son — it
might have been specially built for them. Ivan Ilych himself superintended the
arrangements, chose the wallpapers, supplemented the furniture (preferably with
antiques which he considered particularly *comme il faut*), and supervised the
upholstering. Everything progressed and progressed and approached the ideal he
had set himself: even when things were only half completed they exceeded his
expectations. He saw what a refined and elegant character, free from vulgarity,
it would all have when it was ready. On falling asleep he pictured to himself
how the reception room would look. Looking at the yet unfinished drawing room
he could see the fireplace, the screen, the what-not, the little chairs dotted
here and there, the dishes and plates on the walls, and the bronzes, as they
would be when everything was in place. He was pleased by the thought of how his
wife and daughter, who shared his taste n this matter, would be impressed by it.
They were certainly not expecting as much. He had been particularly successful
in finding, and buying cheaply, antiques which gave a particularly aristocratic
character to the whole place. But in his letters he intentionally understated
everything in order to be able to surprise them. All this so absorbed him that
his new duties — though he liked his official work — interested him less than he
had expected. Sometimes he even had moments of absent-mindedness during the
court sessions and would consider whether he should have straight or curved
cornices for his curtains. He was so interested in it all that he often did
things himself, rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once when
mounting a step- ladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he
wanted the hangings draped, he mad a false step and slipped, but being a strong
and agile man he clung on and only knocked his side against the knob of the
window frame. The bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed, and he
felt particularly bright and well just then. He wrote: "I feel fifteen years
younger." He thought he would have everything ready by September, but it
dragged on till mid-October. But the result was charming not only in his eyes
but to everyone who saw it.
In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of
moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling
others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull
and polished bronzes — all the things people of a certain class have in order to
resemble other people of that class. His house was so like the others that it
would never have been noticed, but to him it all seemed to be quite exceptional.
He was very happy when he met his family at the station and brought them to the
newly furnished house all lit up, where a footman in a white tie opened the door
into the hall decorated with plants, and when they went on into the drawing-room
and the study uttering exclamations of delight. He conducted them everywhere,
drank in their praises eagerly, and beamed with pleasure. At tea that evening,
when Praskovya Fedorovna among others things asked him about his fall, he
laughed, and showed them how he had gone flying and had frightened the
upholsterer.
"It's a good thing I'm a bit of an athlete. Another man might have been
killed, but I merely knocked myself, just here; it hurts when it's touched, but
it's passing off already — it's only a bruise."
So they began living in their new home — in which, as always happens, when
they got thoroughly settled in they found they were just one room short — and
with the increased income, which as always was just a little (some five hundred
rubles) too little, but it was all very nice.
Things went particularly well at first, before everything was finally
arranged and while something had still to be done: this thing bought, that
thing ordered, another thing moved, and something else adjusted. Though there
were some disputes between husband and wife, they were both so well satisfied
and had so much to do that it all passed off without any serious quarrels. When
nothing was left to arrange it became rather dull and something seemed to be
lacking, but they were then making acquaintances, forming habits, and life was
growing fuller.
Ivan Ilych spent his mornings at the law court and came home to diner, and at
first he was generally in a good humour, though he occasionally became irritable
just on account of his house. (Every spot on the tablecloth or the upholstery,
and every broken window- blind string, irritated him. He had devoted so much
trouble to arranging it all that every disturbance of it distressed him.) But
on the whole his life ran its course as he believed life should do: easily,
pleasantly, and decorously.
He got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the paper, and then put on his
undress uniform and went to the law courts. there the harness in which he
worked had already been stretched to fit him and he donned it without a hitch:
petitioners, inquiries at the chancery, the chancery itself, and the sittings
public and administrative. In all this the thing was to exclude everything
fresh and vital, which always disturbs the regular course of official business,
and to admit only official relations with people, and then only on official
grounds. A man would come, for instance, wanting some information. Ivan Ilych,
as one in whose sphere the matter did not lie, would have nothing to do with
him: but if the man had some business with him in his official capacity,
something that could be expressed on officially stamped paper, he would do
everything, positively everything he could within the limits of such relations,
and in doing so would maintain the semblance of friendly human relations, that
is, would observe the courtesies of life. As soon as the official relations
ended, so did everything else. Ivan Ilych possessed this capacity to separate
his real life from the official side of affairs and not mix the two, in the
highest degree, and by long practice and natural aptitude had brought it to such
a pitch that sometimes, in the manner of a virtuoso, he would even allow himself
to let the human and official relations mingle. He let himself do this just
because he felt that he could at any time he chose resume the strictly official
attitude again and drop the human relation. and he did it all easily,
pleasantly, correctly, and even artistically. In the intervals between the
sessions he smoked, drank tea, chatted a little about politics, a little about
general topics, a little about cards, but most of all about official
appointments. Tired, but with the feelings of a virtuoso — one of the first
violins who has played his part in an orchestra with precision — he would return
home to find that his wife and daughter had been out paying calls, or had a
visitor, and that his son had been to school, had done his homework with his
tutor, and was surely learning what is taught at High Schools. Everything was
as it should be. After dinner, if they had no visitors, Ivan Ilych sometimes
read a book that was being much discussed at the time, and in the evening
settled down to work, that is, read official papers, compared the depositions of
witnesses, and noted paragraphs of the Code applying to them. This was neither
dull nor amusing. It was dull when he might have been playing bridge, but if no
bridge was available it was at any rate better than doing nothing or sitting
with his wife. Ivan Ilych's chief pleasure was giving little dinners to which
he invited men and women of good social position, and just as his drawing-room
resembled all other drawing-rooms so did his enjoyable little parties resemble
all other such parties.
Once they even gave a dance. Ivan Ilych enjoyed it and everything went off
well, except that it led to a violent quarrel with his wife about the cakes and
sweets. Praskovya Fedorovna had made her own plans, but Ivan Ilych insisted on
getting everything from an expensive confectioner and ordered too many cakes,
and the quarrel occurred because some of those cakes were left over and the
confectioner's bill came to forty-five rubles. It was a great and disagreeable
quarrel. Praskovya Fedorovna called him "a fool and an imbecile," and he
clutched at his head and made angry allusions to divorce.
But the dance itself had been enjoyable. The best people were there, and
Ivan Ilych had danced with Princess Trufonova, a sister of the distinguished
founder of the Society "Bear My Burden".
The pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of ambition; his social
pleasures were those of vanity; but Ivan Ilych's greatest pleasure was playing
bridge. He acknowledged that whatever disagreeable incident happened in his
life, the pleasure that beamed like a ray of light above everything else was to
sit down to bridge with good players, not noisy partners, and of course to
four-handed bridge (with five players it was annoying to have to stand out,
though one pretended not to mind), to play a clever and serious game (when the
cards allowed it) and then to have supper and drink a glass of wine. after a
game of bridge, especially if he had won a little (to win a large sum was
unpleasant), Ivan Ilych went to bed in a specially good humour.
So they lived. They formed a circle of acquaintances among the best people
and were visited by people of importance and by young folk. In their views as
to their acquaintances, husband, wife and daughter were entirely agreed, and
tacitly and unanimously kept at arm's length and shook off the various shabby
friends and relations who, with much show of affection, gushed into the
drawing-room with its Japanese plates on the walls. Soon these shabby friends
ceased to obtrude themselves and only the best people remained in the Golovins'
set.
Young men made up to Lisa, and Petrishchev, an examining magistrate and
Dmitri Ivanovich Petrishchev's son and sole heir, began to be so attentive to
her that Ivan Ilych had already spoken to Praskovya Fedorovna about it, and
considered whether they should not arrange a party for them, or get up some
private theatricals.
So they lived, and all went well, without change, and life flowed
pleasantly.
Chapter
IV
They were all in
good health. It could not be called ill health if Ivan Ilych sometimes said
that he had a queer taste in his mouth and felt some discomfort in his left
side.
But this discomfort increased and, though not exactly painful, grew into a
sense of pressure in his side accompanied by ill humour. And his irritability
became worse and worse and began to mar the agreeable, easy, and correct life
that had established itself in the Golovin family. Quarrels between husband and
wife became more and more frequent, and soon the ease and amenity disappeared
and even the decorum was barely maintained. Scenes again became frequent, and
very few of those islets remained on which husband and wife could meet without
an explosion. Praskovya Fedorovna now had good reason to say that her husband's
temper was trying. With characteristic exaggeration she said he had always had
a dreadful temper, and that it had needed all her good nature to put up with it
for twenty years. It was true that now the quarrels were started by him. His
bursts of temper always came just before dinner, often just as he began to eat
his soup. Sometimes he noticed that a plate or dish was chipped, or the food
was not right, or his son put his elbow on the table, or his daughter's hair was
not done as he liked it, and for all this he blamed Praskovya Fedorovna. At
first she retorted and said disagreeable things to him, but once or twice he
fell into such a rage at the beginning of dinner that she realized it was due to
some physical derangement brought on by taking food, and so she restrained
herself and did not answer, but only hurried to get the dinner over. She
regarded this self-restraint as highly praiseworthy. Having come to the
conclusion that her husband had a dreadful temper and made her life miserable,
she began to feel sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself the more
she hated her husband. She began to wish he would die; yet she did not want him
to die because then his salary would cease. And this irritated her against him
still more. She considered herself dreadfully unhappy just because not even his
death could save her, and though she concealed her exasperation, that hidden
exasperation of hers increased his irritation also.
After one scene in which Ivan Ilych had been particularly unfair and after
which he had said in explanation that he certainly was irritable but that it was
due to his not being well, she said that he was ill it should be attended to,
and insisted on his going to see a celebrated doctor.
He went. Everything took place as he had expected and as it always does.
There was the usual waiting and the important air assumed by the doctor, with
which he was so familiar (resembling that which he himself assumed in court),
and the sounding and listening, and the questions which called for answers that
were foregone conclusions and were evidently unnecessary, and the look of
importance which implied that "if only you put yourself in our hands we will
arrange everything — we know indubitably how it has to be done, always in the
same way for everybody alike." It was all just as it was in the law courts.
The doctor put on just the same air towards him as he himself put on towards an
accused person.
The doctor said that so-and-so indicated that there was so- and-so inside the
patient, but if the investigation of so-and-so did not confirm this, then he
must assume that and that. If he assumed that and that, then...and so on. To
Ivan Ilych only one question was important: was his case serious or not? But
the doctor ignored that inappropriate question. From his point of view it was
not the one under consideration, the real question was to decide between a
floating kidney, chronic catarrh, or appendicitis. It was not a question the
doctor solved brilliantly, as it seemed to Ivan Ilych, in favour of the
appendix, with the reservation that should an examination of the urine give
fresh indications the matter would be reconsidered. All this was just what Ivan
Ilych had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand times in dealing with men
on trial. The doctor summed up just as brilliantly, looking over his spectacles
triumphantly and even gaily at the accused. From the doctor's summing up Ivan
Ilych concluded that things were bad, but that for the doctor, and perhaps for
everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though for him it was bad. And
this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing in him a great feeling of pity
for himself and of bitterness towards the doctor's indifference to a matter of
such importance.
He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the doctor's fee on the table, and
remarked with a sigh: "We sick people probably often put inappropriate
questions. But tell me, in general, is this complaint dangerous, or
not?..."
The doctor looked at him sternly over his spectacles with one eye, as if to
say: "Prisoner, if you will not keep to the questions put to you, I shall be
obliged to have you removed from the court."
"I have already told you what I consider necessary and proper. The analysis
may show something more." And the doctor bowed.
Ivan Ilych went out slowly, seated himself disconsolately in his sledge, and
drove home. All the way home he was going over what the doctor had said, trying
to translate those complicated, obscure, scientific phrases into plain language
and find in them an answer to the question: "Is my condition bad? Is it very
bad? Or is there as yet nothing much wrong?" And it seemed to him that the
meaning of what the doctor had said was that it was very bad. Everything in the
streets seemed depressing. The cabmen, the houses, the passers-by, and the
shops, were dismal. His ache, this dull gnawing ache that never ceased for a
moment, seemed to have acquired a new and more serious significance from the
doctor's dubious remarks. Ivan Ilych now watched it with a new and oppressive
feeling.
He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. She listened, but in
the middle of his account his daughter came in with her hat on, ready to go out
with her mother. She sat down reluctantly to listen to this tedious story, but
could not stand it long, and her mother too did not hear him to the end.
"Well, I am very glad," she said. "Mind now to take your medicine regularly.
Give me the prescription and I'll send Gerasim to the chemist's." And she went
to get ready to go out.
While she was in the room Ivan Ilych had hardly taken time to breathe, but he
sighed deeply when she left it.
"Well," he thought, "perhaps it isn't so bad after all."
He began taking his medicine and following the doctor's directions, which had
been altered after the examination of the urine. but then it happened that
there was a contradiction between the indications drawn from the examination of
the urine and the symptoms that showed themselves. It turned out that what was
happening differed from what the doctor had told him, and that he had either
forgotten or blundered, or hidden something from him. He could not, however, be
blamed for that, and Ivan Ilych still obeyed his orders implicitly and at first
derived some comfort from doing so.
From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilych's chief occupation was
the exact fulfillment of the doctor's instructions regarding hygiene and the
taking of medicine, and the observation of his pain and his excretions. His
chief interest came to be people's ailments and people's health. When sickness,
deaths, or recoveries were mentioned in his presence, especially when the
illness resembled his own, he listened with agitation which he tried to hide,
asked questions, and applied what he heard to his own case.
The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilych made efforts to force himself to
think that he was better. And he could do this so long as nothing agitated him.
But as soon as he had any unpleasantness with his wife, any lack of success in
his official work, or held bad cards at bridge, he was at once acutely sensible
of his disease. He had formerly borne such mischances, hoping soon to adjust
what was wrong, to master it and attain success, or make a grand slam. But now
every mischance upset him and plunged him into despair. He would say to
himself: "there now, just as I was beginning to get better and the medicine had
begun to take effect, comes this accursed misfortune, or unpleasantness..." And
he was furious with the mishap, or with the people who were causing the
unpleasantness and killing him, for he felt that this fury was killing him but
he could not restrain it. One would have thought that it should have been clear
to him that this exasperation with circumstances and people aggravated his
illness, and that he ought therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But he
drew the very opposite conclusion: he said that he needed peace, and he watched
for everything that might disturb it and became irritable at the slightest
infringement of it. His condition was rendered worse by the fact that he read
medical books and consulted doctors. The progress of his disease was so gradual
that he could deceive himself when comparing one day with another — the
difference was so slight. But when he consulted the doctors it seemed to him
that he was getting worse, and even very rapidly. Yet despite this he was
continually consulting them.
That month he went to see another celebrity, who told him almost the same as
the first had done but put his questions rather differently, and the interview
with this celebrity only increased Ivan Ilych's doubts and fears. A friend of a
friend of his, a very good doctor, diagnosed his illness again quite differently
from the others, and though he predicted recovery, his questions and
suppositions bewildered Ivan Ilych still more and increased his doubts. A
homeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet another way, and prescribed medicine
which Ivan Ilych took secretly for a week. But after a week, not feeling any
improvement and having lost confidence both in the former doctor's treatment and
in this one's, he became still more despondent. One day a lady acquaintance
mentioned a cure effected by a wonder-working icon. Ivan Ilych caught himself
listening attentively and beginning to believe that it had occurred. This
incident alarmed him. "Has my mind really weakened to such an extent?" he asked
himself. "Nonsense! It's all rubbish. I mustn't give way to nervous fears but
having chosen a doctor must keep strictly to his treatment. That is what I will
do. Now it's all settled. I won't think about it, but will follow the
treatment seriously till summer, and then we shall see. From now there must be
no more of this wavering!" this was easy to say but impossible to carry out.
The pain in his side oppressed him and seemed to grow worse and more incessant,
while the taste in his mouth grew stranger and stranger. It seemed to him that
his breath had a disgusting smell, and he was conscious of a loss of appetite
and strength. There was no deceiving himself: something terrible, new, and
more important than anything before in his life, was taking place within him of
which he alone was aware. Those about him did not understand or would not
understand it, but thought everything in the world was going on as usual. That
tormented Ivan Ilych more than anything. He saw that his household, especially
his wife and daughter who were in a perfect whirl of visiting, did not
understand anything of it and were annoyed that he was so depressed and so
exacting, as if he were to blame for it. Though they tried to disguise it he
saw that he was an obstacle in their path, and that his wife had adopted a
definite line in regard to his illness and kept to it regardless of anything he
said or did. Her attitude was this: "You know," she would say to her friends,
"Ivan Ilych can't do as other people do, and keep to the treatment prescribed
for him. One day he'll take his drops and keep strictly to his diet and go to
bed in good time, but the next day unless I watch him he'll suddenly forget his
medicine, eat sturgeon — which is forbidden — and sit up playing cards till one
o'clock in the morning."
"Oh, come, when was that?" Ivan Ilych would ask in vexation. "Only once at
Peter Ivanovich's."
"And yesterday with shebek."
"Well, even if I hadn't stayed up, this pain would have kept me awake."
"Be that as it may you'll never get well like that, but will always make us
wretched."
Praskovya Fedorovna's attitude to Ivan Ilych's illness, as she expressed it
both to others and to him, was that it was his own fault and was another of the
annoyances he caused her. Ivan ilych felt that this opinion escaped her
involuntarily — but that did not make it easier for him.
At the law courts too, Ivan Ilych noticed, or thought he noticed, a strange
attitude towards himself. It sometimes seemed to him that people were watching
him inquisitively as a man whose place might soon be vacant. Then again, his
friends would suddenly begin to chaff him in a friendly way about his low
spirits, as if the awful, horrible, and unheard-of thing that was going on
within him, incessantly gnawing at him and irresistibly drawing him away, was a
very agreeable subject for jests. Schwartz in particular irritated him by his
jocularity, vivacity, and *savoir-faire*, which reminded him of what he himself
had been ten years ago.
Friends came to make up a set and they sat down to cards. They dealt,
bending the new cards to soften them, and he sorted the diamonds in his hand and
found he had seven. His partner said "No trumps" and supported him with two
diamonds. What more could be wished for? It ought to be jolly and lively.
They would make a grand slam. But suddenly Ivan Ilych was conscious of that
gnawing pain, that taste in his mouth, and it seemed ridiculous that in such
circumstances he should be pleased to make a grand slam.
He looked at his partner Mikhail Mikhaylovich, who rapped the table with his
strong hand and instead of snatching up the tricks pushed the cards courteously
and indulgently towards Ivan Ilych that he might have the pleasure of gathering
them up without the trouble of stretching out his hand for them. "Does he think
I am too weak to stretch out my arm?" thought Ivan Ilych, and forgetting what he
was doing he over-trumped his partner, missing the grand slam by three tricks.
And what was most awful of all was that he saw how upset Mikhail Mikhaylovich
was about it but did not himself care. And it was dreadful to realize why he
did not care.
They all saw that he was suffering, and said: "We can stop if you are tired.
Take a rest." Lie down? No, he was not at all tired, and he finished the
rubber. All were gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilych felt that he had diffused this
gloom over them and could not dispel it. They had supper and went away, and
Ivan Ilych was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and
was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but
penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.
With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he must
go to bed, often to lie awake the greater part of the night. Next morning he
had to get up again, dress, go to the law courts, speak, and write; or if he did
not go out, spend at home those twenty-four hours a day each of which was a
torture. And he had to live thus all alone on the brink of an abyss, with no
one who understood or pitied him.
IV
They were all in
good health. It could not be called ill health if Ivan Ilych sometimes said
that he had a queer taste in his mouth and felt some discomfort in his left
side.
But this discomfort increased and, though not exactly painful, grew into a
sense of pressure in his side accompanied by ill humour. And his irritability
became worse and worse and began to mar the agreeable, easy, and correct life
that had established itself in the Golovin family. Quarrels between husband and
wife became more and more frequent, and soon the ease and amenity disappeared
and even the decorum was barely maintained. Scenes again became frequent, and
very few of those islets remained on which husband and wife could meet without
an explosion. Praskovya Fedorovna now had good reason to say that her husband's
temper was trying. With characteristic exaggeration she said he had always had
a dreadful temper, and that it had needed all her good nature to put up with it
for twenty years. It was true that now the quarrels were started by him. His
bursts of temper always came just before dinner, often just as he began to eat
his soup. Sometimes he noticed that a plate or dish was chipped, or the food
was not right, or his son put his elbow on the table, or his daughter's hair was
not done as he liked it, and for all this he blamed Praskovya Fedorovna. At
first she retorted and said disagreeable things to him, but once or twice he
fell into such a rage at the beginning of dinner that she realized it was due to
some physical derangement brought on by taking food, and so she restrained
herself and did not answer, but only hurried to get the dinner over. She
regarded this self-restraint as highly praiseworthy. Having come to the
conclusion that her husband had a dreadful temper and made her life miserable,
she began to feel sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself the more
she hated her husband. She began to wish he would die; yet she did not want him
to die because then his salary would cease. And this irritated her against him
still more. She considered herself dreadfully unhappy just because not even his
death could save her, and though she concealed her exasperation, that hidden
exasperation of hers increased his irritation also.
After one scene in which Ivan Ilych had been particularly unfair and after
which he had said in explanation that he certainly was irritable but that it was
due to his not being well, she said that he was ill it should be attended to,
and insisted on his going to see a celebrated doctor.
He went. Everything took place as he had expected and as it always does.
There was the usual waiting and the important air assumed by the doctor, with
which he was so familiar (resembling that which he himself assumed in court),
and the sounding and listening, and the questions which called for answers that
were foregone conclusions and were evidently unnecessary, and the look of
importance which implied that "if only you put yourself in our hands we will
arrange everything — we know indubitably how it has to be done, always in the
same way for everybody alike." It was all just as it was in the law courts.
The doctor put on just the same air towards him as he himself put on towards an
accused person.
The doctor said that so-and-so indicated that there was so- and-so inside the
patient, but if the investigation of so-and-so did not confirm this, then he
must assume that and that. If he assumed that and that, then...and so on. To
Ivan Ilych only one question was important: was his case serious or not? But
the doctor ignored that inappropriate question. From his point of view it was
not the one under consideration, the real question was to decide between a
floating kidney, chronic catarrh, or appendicitis. It was not a question the
doctor solved brilliantly, as it seemed to Ivan Ilych, in favour of the
appendix, with the reservation that should an examination of the urine give
fresh indications the matter would be reconsidered. All this was just what Ivan
Ilych had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand times in dealing with men
on trial. The doctor summed up just as brilliantly, looking over his spectacles
triumphantly and even gaily at the accused. From the doctor's summing up Ivan
Ilych concluded that things were bad, but that for the doctor, and perhaps for
everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though for him it was bad. And
this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing in him a great feeling of pity
for himself and of bitterness towards the doctor's indifference to a matter of
such importance.
He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the doctor's fee on the table, and
remarked with a sigh: "We sick people probably often put inappropriate
questions. But tell me, in general, is this complaint dangerous, or
not?..."
The doctor looked at him sternly over his spectacles with one eye, as if to
say: "Prisoner, if you will not keep to the questions put to you, I shall be
obliged to have you removed from the court."
"I have already told you what I consider necessary and proper. The analysis
may show something more." And the doctor bowed.
Ivan Ilych went out slowly, seated himself disconsolately in his sledge, and
drove home. All the way home he was going over what the doctor had said, trying
to translate those complicated, obscure, scientific phrases into plain language
and find in them an answer to the question: "Is my condition bad? Is it very
bad? Or is there as yet nothing much wrong?" And it seemed to him that the
meaning of what the doctor had said was that it was very bad. Everything in the
streets seemed depressing. The cabmen, the houses, the passers-by, and the
shops, were dismal. His ache, this dull gnawing ache that never ceased for a
moment, seemed to have acquired a new and more serious significance from the
doctor's dubious remarks. Ivan Ilych now watched it with a new and oppressive
feeling.
He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. She listened, but in
the middle of his account his daughter came in with her hat on, ready to go out
with her mother. She sat down reluctantly to listen to this tedious story, but
could not stand it long, and her mother too did not hear him to the end.
"Well, I am very glad," she said. "Mind now to take your medicine regularly.
Give me the prescription and I'll send Gerasim to the chemist's." And she went
to get ready to go out.
While she was in the room Ivan Ilych had hardly taken time to breathe, but he
sighed deeply when she left it.
"Well," he thought, "perhaps it isn't so bad after all."
He began taking his medicine and following the doctor's directions, which had
been altered after the examination of the urine. but then it happened that
there was a contradiction between the indications drawn from the examination of
the urine and the symptoms that showed themselves. It turned out that what was
happening differed from what the doctor had told him, and that he had either
forgotten or blundered, or hidden something from him. He could not, however, be
blamed for that, and Ivan Ilych still obeyed his orders implicitly and at first
derived some comfort from doing so.
From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilych's chief occupation was
the exact fulfillment of the doctor's instructions regarding hygiene and the
taking of medicine, and the observation of his pain and his excretions. His
chief interest came to be people's ailments and people's health. When sickness,
deaths, or recoveries were mentioned in his presence, especially when the
illness resembled his own, he listened with agitation which he tried to hide,
asked questions, and applied what he heard to his own case.
The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilych made efforts to force himself to
think that he was better. And he could do this so long as nothing agitated him.
But as soon as he had any unpleasantness with his wife, any lack of success in
his official work, or held bad cards at bridge, he was at once acutely sensible
of his disease. He had formerly borne such mischances, hoping soon to adjust
what was wrong, to master it and attain success, or make a grand slam. But now
every mischance upset him and plunged him into despair. He would say to
himself: "there now, just as I was beginning to get better and the medicine had
begun to take effect, comes this accursed misfortune, or unpleasantness..." And
he was furious with the mishap, or with the people who were causing the
unpleasantness and killing him, for he felt that this fury was killing him but
he could not restrain it. One would have thought that it should have been clear
to him that this exasperation with circumstances and people aggravated his
illness, and that he ought therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But he
drew the very opposite conclusion: he said that he needed peace, and he watched
for everything that might disturb it and became irritable at the slightest
infringement of it. His condition was rendered worse by the fact that he read
medical books and consulted doctors. The progress of his disease was so gradual
that he could deceive himself when comparing one day with another — the
difference was so slight. But when he consulted the doctors it seemed to him
that he was getting worse, and even very rapidly. Yet despite this he was
continually consulting them.
That month he went to see another celebrity, who told him almost the same as
the first had done but put his questions rather differently, and the interview
with this celebrity only increased Ivan Ilych's doubts and fears. A friend of a
friend of his, a very good doctor, diagnosed his illness again quite differently
from the others, and though he predicted recovery, his questions and
suppositions bewildered Ivan Ilych still more and increased his doubts. A
homeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet another way, and prescribed medicine
which Ivan Ilych took secretly for a week. But after a week, not feeling any
improvement and having lost confidence both in the former doctor's treatment and
in this one's, he became still more despondent. One day a lady acquaintance
mentioned a cure effected by a wonder-working icon. Ivan Ilych caught himself
listening attentively and beginning to believe that it had occurred. This
incident alarmed him. "Has my mind really weakened to such an extent?" he asked
himself. "Nonsense! It's all rubbish. I mustn't give way to nervous fears but
having chosen a doctor must keep strictly to his treatment. That is what I will
do. Now it's all settled. I won't think about it, but will follow the
treatment seriously till summer, and then we shall see. From now there must be
no more of this wavering!" this was easy to say but impossible to carry out.
The pain in his side oppressed him and seemed to grow worse and more incessant,
while the taste in his mouth grew stranger and stranger. It seemed to him that
his breath had a disgusting smell, and he was conscious of a loss of appetite
and strength. There was no deceiving himself: something terrible, new, and
more important than anything before in his life, was taking place within him of
which he alone was aware. Those about him did not understand or would not
understand it, but thought everything in the world was going on as usual. That
tormented Ivan Ilych more than anything. He saw that his household, especially
his wife and daughter who were in a perfect whirl of visiting, did not
understand anything of it and were annoyed that he was so depressed and so
exacting, as if he were to blame for it. Though they tried to disguise it he
saw that he was an obstacle in their path, and that his wife had adopted a
definite line in regard to his illness and kept to it regardless of anything he
said or did. Her attitude was this: "You know," she would say to her friends,
"Ivan Ilych can't do as other people do, and keep to the treatment prescribed
for him. One day he'll take his drops and keep strictly to his diet and go to
bed in good time, but the next day unless I watch him he'll suddenly forget his
medicine, eat sturgeon — which is forbidden — and sit up playing cards till one
o'clock in the morning."
"Oh, come, when was that?" Ivan Ilych would ask in vexation. "Only once at
Peter Ivanovich's."
"And yesterday with shebek."
"Well, even if I hadn't stayed up, this pain would have kept me awake."
"Be that as it may you'll never get well like that, but will always make us
wretched."
Praskovya Fedorovna's attitude to Ivan Ilych's illness, as she expressed it
both to others and to him, was that it was his own fault and was another of the
annoyances he caused her. Ivan ilych felt that this opinion escaped her
involuntarily — but that did not make it easier for him.
At the law courts too, Ivan Ilych noticed, or thought he noticed, a strange
attitude towards himself. It sometimes seemed to him that people were watching
him inquisitively as a man whose place might soon be vacant. Then again, his
friends would suddenly begin to chaff him in a friendly way about his low
spirits, as if the awful, horrible, and unheard-of thing that was going on
within him, incessantly gnawing at him and irresistibly drawing him away, was a
very agreeable subject for jests. Schwartz in particular irritated him by his
jocularity, vivacity, and *savoir-faire*, which reminded him of what he himself
had been ten years ago.
Friends came to make up a set and they sat down to cards. They dealt,
bending the new cards to soften them, and he sorted the diamonds in his hand and
found he had seven. His partner said "No trumps" and supported him with two
diamonds. What more could be wished for? It ought to be jolly and lively.
They would make a grand slam. But suddenly Ivan Ilych was conscious of that
gnawing pain, that taste in his mouth, and it seemed ridiculous that in such
circumstances he should be pleased to make a grand slam.
He looked at his partner Mikhail Mikhaylovich, who rapped the table with his
strong hand and instead of snatching up the tricks pushed the cards courteously
and indulgently towards Ivan Ilych that he might have the pleasure of gathering
them up without the trouble of stretching out his hand for them. "Does he think
I am too weak to stretch out my arm?" thought Ivan Ilych, and forgetting what he
was doing he over-trumped his partner, missing the grand slam by three tricks.
And what was most awful of all was that he saw how upset Mikhail Mikhaylovich
was about it but did not himself care. And it was dreadful to realize why he
did not care.
They all saw that he was suffering, and said: "We can stop if you are tired.
Take a rest." Lie down? No, he was not at all tired, and he finished the
rubber. All were gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilych felt that he had diffused this
gloom over them and could not dispel it. They had supper and went away, and
Ivan Ilych was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and
was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but
penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.
With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he must
go to bed, often to lie awake the greater part of the night. Next morning he
had to get up again, dress, go to the law courts, speak, and write; or if he did
not go out, spend at home those twenty-four hours a day each of which was a
torture. And he had to live thus all alone on the brink of an abyss, with no
one who understood or pitied him.