Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/29

 Iván Ilích became such a new man.

Iván Ilích was offered the place of examining magistrate, and accepted it, although this place was in another Government and it became necessary for him to give up the established relations and establish new ones. Iván Ilích was seen off by his friends, a group was formed, a silver cigarette case was presented to him, and he departed for the new place.

Iván Ilích was the same comme il faut, decent examining magistrate, who knew how to separate his official duties from his private life and who inspired general respect, that he had been as an official on special business. The post of the examining magistrate itself presented much more interest and attraction to him than the one he had formerly held. In his former office it had been a pleasure to him with an easy gait, and wearing Charmeur's undress uniform, to pass by the trembling petitioners, who were waiting for an audience, and by the official people, who envied him, and to enter directly the chief's private room and sit down with him at tea while smoking a cigarette, but there had been but few people who were directly dependent on his will. Such people had been chiefs of rural police and dissenters, whenever he was sent out on some special business; and he had been fond of treating such people, who were dependent on him, politely, almost chummily, and of making them feel that he, who might crush them, was treating them in a friendly and simple manner. There had been but few such people.

But now, while he was an examining magistrate, Iván Ilích felt that all, all without exception,—the most important and most self-satisfied people,—were in his hands, and that he needed only to write certain words on a paper with a certain heading, when such an important, self-satisfied man would be brought to him in the capacity of defendant or witness, who, if he had no mind to let him sit down, would stand before him and answer his ques-