Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/32

 his marital life, with the conjugal affection, new furniture, new dishes, new linen, passed very well until his wife's pregnancy, so that he began to think that his marriage would not only not impair that character of the easy, agreeable, merry, and always decent life, which was approved of by society and which he regarded as peculiar to life in general, but that it would even intensify it. But heginning with the first month of his wife's pregnancy, there appeared something new, unexpected, disagreeable, oppressive, and indecent, which it had been impossible to expect, and impossible to get rid of.

Without the least provocation, as it seemed to Iván Ilích, "de gaité de cœur," as he said to himself, his wife began to impair the pleasure and decency of life: she was without any cause jealous of him, demanded his attentions, nagged him in everything, and made disagreeable and vulgar scenes with him.

At first Iván Ilích hoped to free himself from the unpleasantness of this situation by means of that same light and decorous relation to life which had helped him out before; he tried to ignore his wife's disposition and continued to live lightly and agreeably, as before: he invited his friends to his house, to have a game, and tried himself to go to the club or to his friends; but his wife one day began with such energy to apply vulgar words to him, and continued so stubbornly to scold him every time that he did not comply with her demands, having apparently determined not to stop until he should submit, that is, should stay at home and experience tedium like herself, that he became frightened. He comprehended that marital life, at least with his wife, did not always contribute to the pleasures and the decency of life, but on the contrary frequently violated them, and that, therefore, it was necessary for him to defend himself against these violations. Iván Ilích began to look for means for this. His service was the one thing which impressed Praskóvya