Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/31

 After two years of service in the new city, Iván Ilích met his future wife. Praskóvya Fédorovna Míkhel was the most attractive, clever, and brilliant girl of the circle in which he moved. Among the other amusements and relaxations from the labours of the examining magistrate, Iván Ilích established playful, light relations with Praskóvya Fédorovna.

Iván Ilích had been in the habit of dancing while he was an official on special business; but being an examining magistrate, he danced only as an exception. He now danced in this sense that, though he was serving in the new institutions and belonged to the fifth class, he could prove, when it came to dancing, that in this line he was better than anybody else. Thus he occasionally danced with Praskóvya Fédorovna toward the end of the evening, and mainly during these dances conquered her. She fell in love with him. He did not have any clear and definite intention of getting married, but when the girl fell in love with him, he put this question to himself: "Indeed, why can't I get married?"

Miss Praskóvya Fédorovna belonged to a good family of the gentry, and she had some little property. Iván Ilích could count on a more brilliant match, but this one was not bad, either. Iván Ilích had his salary, and she, so he hoped, would have as much again. It was a good alliance; she was a sweet, pretty, and absolutely decent woman. To say that Iván Ilích married because he loved his fiancée and found in her a sympathetic relation to his views of life would be as unjust as saying that he married because the people of his society approved of the match. Iván Ilích married for two reasons: he was doing something agreeable for himself in acquiring such a wife, and at the same time did what people in high positions regarded as regular.

And so Iván Ilích got married.

The process of marrying itself and the first period of