Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/26



past life was simple and most common, and yet most terrible.

Iván Ilích died at the age of forty-five years, as a member of the court of justice. He was the son of an official who had in various ministries and departments of St. Petersburg made that career which brings people to that state from which, though it becomes evident to them that they are no good for the performance of any essential duty, they none the less cannot be expelled, both on account of their long past service and their ranks, and so receive imaginary, fictitious places, and non-fictitious thousands, from six to ten, with which they live to a good old age.

Such had been the privy councillor, the useless member of all kinds of useless establishments, Ilyá Efímovich Golovín.

He had three sons: Iván Ilích was his second; the eldest had made a similar career to that of his father, only in a different ministry, and was rapidly approaching that official age when one attains that inertia of salary. The third son was a failure. He had continuously ruined himself in various places, and was now serving with the railways, and his father and his brothers, but especially their wives, not only disliked meeting him, but without some extreme need did not even mention his existence. His sister was married to Baron Gref, a St. Petersburg official like his father-in-law.

Iván Ilích was "le phénix de la famille," as they said. He was not as cold and as precise as the elder, and not