tarts during a lesson in jurisprudence? Was Caius ever in love? Could Caius ever have presided in Court ?
And Caius was certainly mortal, and must die in the regular course of things; but as for me, Vanya, Ivan Il'ich, with all my feelings and sentiments — that's quite a different thing. It cannot possibly be that I must die, that would be too terrible.
Thus did he think within himself.
"If I had to die like Caius, then I should have known it, then an inner voice must needs have told me so; but there was nothing of the sort within me, and I and all my friends quite understood that we were quite different from Caius. And now look here! "he said to himself." It cannot be, it cannot be, and yet it is. What's the meaning of it? How shall I understand it?"
And he could not understand it, and tried to drive the thought away from him as a false, abnormal, morbid thought, and to substitute for it other normal, healthy thoughts. But this thought, and it was not a mere thought, but as if a reality, came to him again and remained constantly before him.
And he summoned one after the other to take the place of this thought other thoughts, hoping to find a support in them. He tried to return to his former habit of thought which had formerly obscured from him the thought of death; but, strange to say, all that had formerly obscured, concealed, annihilated the thought of death, was unable now to produce that effect. Of late Ivan Il'ich had spent a considerable time in these attempts to revive those "habits of thought which had obscured the thought of death. "At one
