Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/39

 as they had been determined upon in his mind, and almost in precisely the same manner as had been decided also in Praskóvya Fédorovna's mind.

Now that everything had been arranged so successfully and he and his wife agreed in their aims, and besides lived so little together, they became more friendly with one another than they had been since the first years of their married life. Iván Ilích intended to take his family away at once, but the insistence of his sister and his brother-in-law, who suddenly became unusually amiable and familiarly interested in Iván Ilích and his family, had this effect, that Iván Ilích departed by himself.

Iván Ilích departed, and the happy mood which was produced by his success and the agreement with his wife, one intensifying the other, did not leave him all the time. He found charming quarters, precisely what husband and wife had been dreaming of together. The large, high-studded reception-rooms in the old style, the comfortable, magnificent cabinet, the rooms for his wife and his daughter, the class-room for his son,—everything was as if purposely intended for them; Iván Ilích himself attended to their appointments: he chose the wall-paper, bought more furniture, especially such as was old-fashioned, which gave the aspect of a comme il faut style and which he had re-covered, and everything grew and grew, and arrived at the ideal which he had formed for himself. When he had half arranged matters, his arrangement surpassed his expectations. He understood that comme il faut, elegant, and non-vulgar character which everything would assume when it was ready.

When he fell asleep, he imagined the parlour as it would be. As he looked at the drawing-room, which was not yet finished, he already saw the fireplace, the screen, the shelves, and those scattered chairs, those dishes and plates along the walls, and the bronzes, when they should all be set up in their proper places. He rejoiced at the thought