“Well… here I am, suppose, going in: they’re amazed, interrupt their dancing, stare wildly, back away. Right, sir, but here I show myself: I go straight to the frightened Pseldonymov and, with the tenderest smile, in the simplest words possible, say: ‘Thus and so,’ I say, ‘I was visiting His Excellency Stepan Nikiforovich. I suppose you know, it’s here in the neighborhood …’ Here I tell, lightly, in some amusing way, the adventure with Trifon. From Trifon I pass on to how I went by foot… ‘Well—I hear music, I ask a policeman, and find out that you, brother, are getting married. Why don’t I stop at my subordinate’s, I think, to see how my clerks make merry and… get married. Now, you’re not going to drive me out, I suppose!’ Drive out! What a phrase for a subordinate. The devil he’ll drive me out! I think he’ll lose his mind, he’ll rush headlong to sit me in an armchair, he’ll tremble with delight, he won’t even know what to make of it at first!…
“Well, what could be simpler, more gracious, than such an act! Why did I come? That’s another question! That’s, so to speak, the moral side of the matter. There’s where the juice is!
“Hm… What was I thinking about? Ah, yes!
“So then, of course, they’ll seat me next to the most important guest, some titular councillor, or a relative, a retired staff captain with a red nose… Gogol described these originals nicely. So, naturally, I make the acquaintance of the bride, praise her, encourage the guests. I beg them not to be embarrassed, to make merry, to go on dancing, I joke, I laugh, in short—I’m amiable and charming. I’m always amiable and charming when I’m pleased with myself. Hm… the thing is that I still seem to be a bit… that is, not drunk, but just…
“… Naturally, being a gentleman, I’m on an equal footing with them and by no means demand any special tokens… But morally, morally it’s another matter: they’ll understand and appreciate… My act will resurrect in them all the nobility of… And so I sit there for half an hour… Even an hour. I’ll leave, naturally, just before supper, otherwise they’ll start bustling about, baking, frying, they’ll bow low before me, but I’ll just drink a glass, congratulate them, and decline supper. I’ll say: business. And as soon as I pronounce ‘business,’ their faces will all become respectfully stern at once. By this I’ll delicately give a reminder that they and I are—different, sirs. Earth and sky. Not that I’d want to impose it, but it’s needed… even in the moral sense it’s necessary, whatever you say. However, I’ll smile at once, even laugh, perhaps, and everyone will instantly cheer up… I’ll joke once more with the bride; hm… and even this: I’ll hint that I’ll come again in exactly nine months as a godfather, heh, heh! And she’ll certainly give birth by then. Because they multiply like rabbits. So everyone bursts out laughing, the bride blushes; I kiss her on the forehead with feeling, even bless her, and… tomorrow my deed is already known in the office. Tomorrow I’m stern again, tomorrow I’m demanding again, even implacable, but by now they all know who I am. They know my soul, they know my essence: ‘He’s stern as a superior, but as a man he’s an angel!’ And so I’m victorious; I’ve caught them with some one small act that wouldn’t even occur to you; they’re mine now; I’m the father, they’re the children… Go on, Stepan Nikiforovich, Your Excellency, try doing something like that…
“… But do you know, do you understand, that Pseldonymov will recall for his children how the general himself feasted and even drank at his wedding! And those children will tell their children, and they will tell their grandchildren, like a sacred anecdote, that a dignitary, a statesman (and I’ll be all that by then) deigned… etc., etc. But I’ll raise the humiliated one morally, I’ll restore him to himself… He gets a salary of ten roubles a month! But if I were to repeat this or some such thing five or ten times, I’d win popularity everywhere… I’d be impressed on everybody’s heart, and the devil alone knows what might come of it later, this popularity!…”
Thus or almost thus reasoned Ivan Ilyich (gentlemen, a man sometimes says all sorts of things to himself, and in a somewhat peculiar state besides). All this reasoning flashed through his head in about half a minute, and, of course, he might have limited himself to these little dreams and, having mentally shamed Stepan Nikiforovich, gone quite calmly home and to bed. And it would have been well if he had! But the whole trouble was that the moment was a peculiar one.
As if on purpose, suddenly, at that very instant, his susceptible imagination pictured the complacent faces of Stepan Nikiforovich and Semyon Ivanovich.
“We won’t hold out!” Stepan Nikiforovich repeated, smiling superciliously.
“Hee, hee, hee!” echoed Semyon Ivanovich with his nastiest smile.
“And now let’s see how we won’t hold out!” Ivan Ilyich said resolutely, and his face even flushed hotly. He stepped off the planks and with firm tread went straight across the street to the house of his subordinate, the registrar Pseldonymov.
His star drew him on. He walked briskly through the open gate and in disdain shoved aside with his foot the hoarse, shaggy little cur that, more for decency’s sake than meaning any business, rushed at his legs with a rasping bark. By a wooden boardwalk he reached a covered porch, jutting like a booth into the yard, and by three decrepit wooden steps he went up to a tiny entryway. Though a tallow candle-end or something like a lamp was burning somewhere in a corner, that did not prevent Ivan Ilyich, just as he was, in galoshes, from stepping with his left foot into a galantine set out to cool. Ivan Ilyich bent down and, looking with curiosity, saw standing there two more dishes of some sort of aspic, as well as two molds, obviously of blancmange. The squashed galantine embarrassed him a bit, and for one tiny instant the thought flitted through him: shouldn’t I slip away right now? But he considered it too low. Reasoning that no one had seen and that no one was going to suspect him, he quickly wiped off the galosh, so as to conceal all traces, groped for the felt-upholstered door, opened it, and found himself in the tiniest of anterooms. One half of it was literally heaped with overcoats, caftans, cloaks, bonnets, scarves, and galoshes. In the other half the musicians had settled: two fiddles, a flute, and a string bass, four men in all, brought in, naturally, from the street. They were sitting by an unpainted wooden table, with one tallow candle, and sawing away for all they were worth at the last figure of a quadrille. Through the open door to the main room people could be seen dancing, in dust, smoke, and haze. It was somehow furiously merry. Guffaws, shouts, and ladies’ shrieks were heard. The cavaliers were stomping like a squadron of horses. Above this whole pandemonium sounded the commands of the master of ceremonies, probably an extremely unconstrained and even unbuttoned man: “Cavaliers, step out,
For the first moment no one noticed him: they were all finishing the end of the dance. Ivan Ilyich stood as if stunned and could make out nothing of this porridge in detail. Ladies’ dresses, cavaliers with cigarettes in their teeth flashed by… some lady’s light blue scarf flashed by and brushed his nose. After her, in furious ecstasy, a medical student swept, his tousled hair all in a whirl, and shoved him hard on his way. Before him also flashed, long as a milepost, an officer of some regiment. Someone shouted in an unnaturally shrill voice as he flew by, stomping, with everyone else: “E-e-eh, Pseldonymushka!” There was something sticky under Ivan Ilyich’s feet: the floor must have been waxed. In the room, not a small one incidentally, there were upward of thirty guests.
But a minute later the quadrille was over, and almost at once the very thing took place which Ivan Ilyich had imagined as he was dreaming on the plank sidewalk. Some sort of hum, some sort of extraordinary whisper passed through the guests and dancers, who had not yet had time to catch their breath and wipe the sweat from their faces. All eyes, all faces quickly began to turn to the newly entered guest. Then at once everyone started slowly retreating and backing away. Those who had not noticed were pulled by the clothes and brought to reason. They would look around and at once start backing away along with the others. Ivan Ilyich went on standing by the door, not taking one step forward, and the open space between him and the guests, the floor strewn with countless candy wrappers, tickets, and cigarette butts, was growing wider and wider. Suddenly a young man in a uniform,
