Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/37

 To economize, he took that summer a leave of absence and went with his wife to pass the summer in the country with Praskóvya Fédorovna's brother.

In the country without his service, Iván Ilích for the first time experienced not only tedium, but also intolerable despondency, and he decided that it was impossible to live in this manner and that it was necessary to take some decisive measures.

Iván Ilích passed a sleepless night, during which he walked up and down the terrace, and be decided to go to St. Petersburg, to bestir himself, and, in order to punish them, who had not appreciated him, to go over to another ministry.

On the next day he went to St. Petersburg, in spite of the dissuasions of his wife and his brother-in-law.

He went there with one thing in view,—to obtain a place which would give him a salary of five thousand a year. He no longer stuck to any ministry, political bias, or manner of activity. All he needed was a place, a place with five thousand, in the administration, in the banks, with the railways, in the institutions of Empress Mary, even in the custom-house,—but it had by all means to be five thousand, and he by all means to leave the ministry, where they did not know how to appreciate him.

This journey of Iván Ilích was crowned by remarkable, unexpected success. In Kursk F. S. Ilín, an acquaintance of his, entered the coach of the first class, and informed him of the contents of the latest despatch received by the governor of Kursk, that shortly a transposition would take place in the ministry: Iván Seménovich was to be appointed in Peter Ivánovich's place.

The proposed transposition had, in addition to its meaning for Russia, a special meaning for Iván Ilích, for, by bringing to the front Peter Petróvich and, apparently, his friend Zákhar Ivánovich, it was extremely favourable for