In the violence of its attacks, alternately bitter and almost comic, upon the world in general, and marriage in particular, the _Death of Ivan Ilyitch_ was the first of a new series of works; it was the forerunner of the still more morose and unworldly _Kreutzer Sonata_ and _Resurrection_. There is a lamentable yet laughable emptiness in this life (as there is in thousands and thousands of lives), with its grotesque ambitions, its wretched gratification of vanity, "always better than spending the evening opposite one's wife"; with its weariness and hatred of the official career; its privileges, and the embitterment which they cause; and its one real pleasure: whist. This ridiculous life is lost for a cause yet more ridiculous--a fall from a ladder, one day when Ivan wished to hang a curtain over the drawing-room window. The lie of life. The lie of sickness. The lie of the well-to-do doctor, who thinks only of himself. The lie of the family, whom illness disgusts. The lie of the wife, who professes devotion, and calculates how she will live when her husband is dead. The universal lie, against which is set only the truth of a compassionate servant, who does not try to conceal his condition from the dying man, and helps him out of brotherly kindness. Ivan Ilyitch, "full of an infinite pity for himself," weeps over his loneliness and the egoism of men; he suffers horribly, until the day on which he perceives that his past life has been a lie, and that he can repair that lie. Immediately all becomes clear--an hour before his death. He no longer thinks of himself; he thinks of his family; he pities them; he _must_ die and rid them of himself. "Where are you, Pain? Here.... Well, you have only to persist.--And Death, where is Death? He did not find it. In place of Death he saw only a ray of light. 'It is over,' said some one.--He heard these words and repeated them to himself. 'Death no longer exists,' he told himself."