Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/19

 table in the corner of the room. Afterward, when this motion of making the sign of the cross with his hand appeared to him to have lasted long enough, he stopped and began to look at the corpse.

The dead man was lying, as all dead men lie, quite heavily, in corpse-like fashion sinking with the stark members of his body in the bedding of the coffin, with an eternally bent head on a pillow, and displayed, as corpses always do, his yellow, waxen brow with bare spots over his sunken temples, and a towering nose which seemed to be pressing against the upper lip. He was very much changed and much thinner than when Peter Ivánovich had seen him the last time, but, as is the case with all corpses, his face was more beautiful and, above all, more significant than that of a living man. On his face there was an expression of this, that what was necessary to do had been done, and done correctly. Besides, in this expression there was also a rebuke or reminder to the living.

This reminder seemed to Peter Ivánovich out of place, or, at least, having no reference to him. For some reason he felt ill at ease, and so hastened to cross himself again and, as it appeared to him, too precipitously and out of keeping with the proprieties, turned around and walked toward the door.

Schwarz was waiting for him in a middle room, spreading his legs wide, and with both his hands playing behind his back with his silk hat. One glance at Schwarz's playful, natty, and elegant figure refreshed Peter Ivánovich. Peter Ivánovich understood that he, Schwarz, was standing above such things, and did not surrender himself to crushing impressions. His very glance said: the incident of the mass for Iván Ilích can by no means serve as a sufficient reason for declaring the order of the session disturbed, that is, that nothing could keep him that very evening from clicking with the deck of cards after break-