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 sometimes whole nights at a stretch, held up his feet, and would not go to sleep, saying: "Pray do not put yourself about, Ivan Il'ich, sleep a little more;" or, when suddenly addressing him with the familiar thou, added: "As if thou wert not ill, and why should not I render thee this little service?"

Gerasim alone told no lies, everything showed that he alone knew how the matter stood, and did not consider it necessary to conceal it, and was simply sorry for his weak, expiring master. On one occasion, when Ivan Il'ich was for sending him away, he spoke right out: "We must all die, why shouldn't I take a little trouble? " said he, thereby expressing that he made light of his labour, principally because he was doing it for the sake of a dying man, and hoped that for him also someone would do the same sort of work when his time came.

Besides this sort of lying, or in consequence of it, the most tormenting thing of all for Ivan Il'ich was the fact that nobody pitied him as he wanted to be pitied; at certain times, after long suffering, the wish would come to Ivan Il'ich, though he would not willingly have admitted it, that someone might pity him just as if he were a sick child, and it was the thing he wished for most of all. He wished that they would caress him and kiss him and weep over him a little, just as people caress and soothe children. He knew that he was an important functionary, that he had a grizzling beard, and therefore that it was impossible, and yet he wished it all the same. In his relations with Gerasim there was something akin to this. And therefore his relations with