Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/63

 side up. He brought it all carefully back into shape and bent the adornment back again.

Then occurred to him the thought of transplanting all this établissement with the albums to another corner, near the flowers. He called up a lackey; either his daughter or his wife came to his rescue: they did not agree and contradicted him,—he quarrelled and grew angry; but everything was good, for he did not think of it,—it was not to be seen.

But just then his wife said, as he moved the things, "Let the servants do it, you will only hurt yourself," and suddenly it flashed above the screen, and he saw it. It flashed by, and he still hopes that it will pass, but he involuntarily listens to one side,—it is still seated there and still causing him the same gnawing pain, and he can no longer forget, and it looks at him quite clearly from behind the flowers. What is this all for?

"And it is true that I lost my life on this curtain, as though in the storming of a fortress. Is it really so? How terrible and how stupid! It cannot be! It cannot be, but it is so."

He went into his cabinet, and lay down there, and was again left all alone with it,—face to face with it,—and there was nothing he could do with it. All he had to do was to look at it and grow cold.