Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/62

 the thought of it, but it continued its work and came and stationed itself right in front of him and looked at him, and he was dazed, and the fire went out in his eyes, and he began to ask himself again, "Is it possible it alone is true?" And his associates and his men under him saw in surprise and sorrow that he, such a brilliant and shrewd judge, was getting mixed and making blunders. He shook himself, tried to come back to his senses, and somehow managed to bring the session to a close, and returned home with the sad consciousness that his judicial work could not, as it had done of old, conceal from him what he wished to be concealed, and that by means of his judicial work he could not be freed from it. And, what was worst of all, was this, that it drew him toward itself, not that he might be able to do something, but only that he might look at it, straight into its eyes,—that he might look at it and, without doing anything, might suffer unutterably.

And, while trying to escape this state, Iván Ilích sought consolation and other shields, and the other shields appeared and for a short time seemed to save him, but very soon they were again, not destroyed, but made transparent, as though it penetrated through everything, and nothing could shroud it.

During this last period he entered the drawing-room which he himself had furnished,—that drawing-room where he had fallen, for which he,—as he thought with sarcasm and ridicule,—for the arrangement of which he had sacrificed his life, for he knew that his disease had begun with that hurt; he entered and saw that there was a nick in the table. He looked for the cause of it, and found it in the bronze adornment of the album which was bent at the edge. He took the album, an expensive one,—he had made it himself with love,—and was annoyed at the carelessness of his daughter and her friends,—here there was a tear, and there the photographs were turned bottom