Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2 by Leo Tolstoy

Author:Leo Tolstoy [Tolstoy, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-81991-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

VI

TEN years passed. Julius had not met Pamphilius again, and the meeting with him had slowly passed from his memory, and the impression of him and of the Christian life wore off.

Julius’s life ran its usual course. During these ten years his father had died and he had taken over the management of his whole business, which was a complicated one. There were the regular customers, salesmen in Africa, clerks, and debts to be collected and paid. Julius found himself involuntarily absorbed in it all and gave his whole time to it. Besides this, new cares presented themselves. He was elected to a public office, and this new occupation, which flattered his vanity, attracted him. In addition to his business affairs he now attended to public matters also, and being capable and a good speaker he began to distinguish himself among his fellows, and appeared likely to reach high public office. In his family life a considerable and unpleasant change had occurred during these ten years. Three children had been born to him, and this had separated him from his wife. In the first place she had lost much of her beauty and freshness, and in the second place she paid less attention to her husband. All her tenderness and endearments were devoted to her children. Though according to the pagan custom the children were handed over to wet-nurses and attendants, Julius often found them with their mother, or found her with them instead of in her own apartments. For the most part Julius found the children a burden, affording him more annoyance than pleasure.

Occupied with business and public affairs he had abandoned his former dissipated life, but considered that he needed some refined recreation after his labours. This, however, he did not find with his wife, the more so as during this time she had cultivated an acquaintance with her Christian slave-girl, had become more and more attracted by the new teaching, and had discarded from her life all the external, pagan things that had attracted Julius. Not finding what he wanted in his wife, Julius formed an intimacy with a woman of light conduct, and passed with her the leisure that remained after his business.

Had he been asked whether he was happy or unhappy during those years he would have been unable to answer.

He was so busy! From one affair or pleasure he passed to another affair or pleasure, but not one of them was such as fully to satisfy him or make him wish it to continue. Everything he did was of such a nature that the quicker he could free himself from it the better he was pleased, and his pleasures were all poisoned in some way, or the tedium of satiety mingled with them.

In this way he was living when something happened that came near to altering his whole manner of life. He took part in the races at the Olympic Games, and was driving his chariot successfully to the end of the course when he suddenly collided with another which was overtaking him.

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