Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/40

 of how he would surprise Praskóvya and Lízanka, who also had good taste in such things. They were not expecting it at all. He was particularly fortunate in finding and purchasing some old things, which gave it a peculiarly noble aspect. In his letters he purposely represented matters worse than they were, in order to startle them the more. All this interested him so much that even his new service, though he liked it, interested him less than he had expected.

At the sessions he had minutes of absent-mindedness; he was wondering what borders to put on the curtains, whether to have them straight or gathered. He was so busy with this, that he frequently bothered with it himself, transposed the furniture, and himself hung the curtains in different places. One day he climbed a ladder in order to show the paper-hanger how he wanted the drapery hung; he made a misstep and fell, but, as he was a strong and agile man, he caught himself in time, merely striking his side against the window-frame knob. The blow hurt a little, but this soon passed away.

Iván Ilích felt himself particularly happy and well during this time. He wrote: "I feel that fifteen years have jumped off from me." He had intended to be through with it all in September, but it lasted until the middle of October. But it was superb, so not only he said, but also all those who saw it.

In reality it was the same as in the case of all not very wealthy men, who want to be like the rich, and so only resemble one another: there were stuffs, black wood, flowers, rugs, and bronzes, dark and burnished, everything which people of a certain class have in order to resemble all people of a certain class. And everything was so much like it in his house, that it was even impossible to direct one's attention to it, but to him it appeared as something quite special. When he met his family at the railway station and brought them home to his illuminated