might do something, but simply that he might look at it, straight into its eyes, look at it, and helplessly inert, be inexpressibly tormented.
And escaping from this condition of mind, Ivan Il'ich would seek relief by interposing other screens between him and it, and these other screens would present themselves and for a time seem to deliver him, but immediately they would not so much be destroyed as become transparent, as if it was shining through everything, and nothing whatever could guard against it.
Once during these latter days he went into the drawing-room arranged by him, that very drawing-room where he had had the fall, for the sake of which—oh, the bitterly ridiculous thought of it!— for the sake of arranging which he had sacrificed his life, for he knew that his malady began with the contusion he had received there; well, he entered the room and perceived that there was a dent in the japanned table, cut deep in by something or other. He sought for the cause of it, and found it in the bronze ornamentation of the album which had been bent back at the corner. He took the album, a dear one, which he himself had introduced there con amore, and was very angry at the carelessness of his daughter and her friends; this thing torn too, these visiting cards all scattered about. He very carefully put everything in order again, and bent back the ornamentation of the album into its proper place.
On another occasion the idea occurred to him to move all this arrangement with the alb
