"Yes," said he, "the tea; very well, set it down. Only help me to wash, and put on a clean shirt."

And Iván Ilyitch began to perform his toilet. With resting-spells he washed his hands and face, cleaned his teeth, began to comb his hair, and looked into the mirror. It seemed frightful, perfectly frightful, to him, to see how his hair lay flat upon his pale brow.

While he was changing his shirt, he knew that it would be still more frightful if he gazed at his body; and so he did not look at himself. But now it was done. He put on his dressing-gown, wrapped himself in his plaid, and sat down in his easy-chair to take his tea. For a single moment he felt refreshed; but as soon as he began to drink the tea, again that taste, that same pain. He compelled himself to drink it up, and lay down, stretching out his legs. He lay down, and let Piotr go.

Always the same thing. Now a drop of hope gleams, then a sea of despair rises up, and always pain, always melancholy, and always the same monotony. It was terribly melancholy to the lonely man: he longs to call in some one, but he knows in advance that it is still worse when others are present.

I

"Even morphine again . . . I should forget. will tell him, tell the doctor, to invent something else. It is impossible, impossible so."

One hour, two, passes in this way. But there! the bell in the corridor. Perhaps 'tis the doctor. Exactly it is the doctor, fresh, hearty, portly, jovial, with that expression as if he said, "You may feel apprehension of something or other, but we will immediately straighten things out for you."

The doctor knows that this expression is not appropriate here; but he has already put it on once for all,

and he cannot rid himself of it like a man who has put on his dress-coat in the morning, and gone to make calls.

The doctor rubs his hands with an air of hearty

assurance.

"I am cold. A healthy frost. Let me get warm a little," says he, with just the expression that signifies that all he needs is to wait until he gets warmed a little, and, when he is warmed, then he will straighten things out.

66 Well, now, how goes it?

Iván Ilyitch feels that the doctor wants to say, "How go your little affairs?' but that he feels that

it is impossible to say so; and he says, "How did you spend the night?"

Iván Ilyitch looks at the doctor with an expression as though asking the question, "Are you never ashamed of lying?"

But the doctor has no desire to understand his question. And Iván Ilyitch says,

66

It was just horrible! The pain does not cease, does not disappear. If you could only give me something for it!"

"That is always the way with you sick folks! Well, now, it seems to me I am warm enough: even the most particular Praskovia Feodorovna would not find any thing to take exception to in my temperature. Well, now,1 good-by." And the doctor shakes hands

with him.

And, laying aside his former jocularity, the doctor begins with serious mien to examine the sick man, his pulse and temperature, and the tappings, and the auscultation.

1 Nu-s.

Iván Ilyitch knows certainly, and beyond peradventure, that all this is nonsense and foolish deception; but when the doctor, on his knees, leans over toward him, applying his ear, now higher up, now lower down, and with most sapient mien performs various gymnastic evolutions before him, Iván Ilyitch succumbs to him, as once he succumbed to the discourses of the lawyers, even when he knew perfectly well that they were deceiving him, and why they were deceiving him.

The doctor, still on his knees on the divan, was still performing the auscultation, when at the door were heard the rustle of Praskovia Feódorovna's silk dress, and her words of blame to Piotr because she had not been informed of the doctor's visit.

She comes in, kisses her husband, and immediately begins to explain that she had been up a long time; and only through a misunderstanding, she had not been there when the doctor came.

Iván Ilyitch looks at her, observes her from head to foot, and feels a secret indignation at her fairness, and her plumpness, and the propriety of her hands, her neck, her glossy hair, and the brilliancy of her eyes brimming with life. He hates her with all the strength of his soul, and her touch makes him suffer an actual paroxysm of hatred of her.

Her attitude toward him and his malady was the same as before. Just as the doctor had adopted an attitude toward his patients from which he could not depart, so she had adopted one toward him; namely, that he was not doing what he ought to do, and was himself to blame; and she liked to reproach him for this, and she could not change her attitude toward him.

"Now, just see! he does not heed, he does not take his medicine regularly; and, above all, he lies in a position that is surely bad for him, his feet up."

She related how he made Gerásim hold his legs. The doctor listened with a disdainfully good-natured smile. "What is to be done about it, pray? These sick folks are always conceiving some such foolishness. But you must let it go."

When the examination was over, the doctor looked at his watch; and then Praskovia Feódorovna declared to Iván Ilyitch, that, whether he was willing or not, she was going that very day to call in the celebrated doctor to come and have an examination and consultation with Mikhail Danilovitch (that was the name of their ordinary doctor).

"Now, don't oppose it, please. I am doing this for my own self," she said ironically, giving him to understand that she did it all for him, and only on this account did not allow him the right to oppose her.

He said nothing, and frowned. He felt that this lie surrounding him was so complicated that it was now hard to escape from it.

She did all this for him, only in her own interest; and she said that she was doing it for him, while she was in reality doing it for herself, as some incredible thing, so that he was forced to take it in its opposite

sense.

The celebrated doctor, in fact, came about half-past eleven. Once more they had auscultations; and learned discussions took place before him, or in the next room, about his kidney, about the blind intestine, and questions and answers in such a learned form, that again the place of the real question of life and death, which now alone faced him, was driven away by the question

of the kidney and the blind intestine, which were not acting as became them, and upon which Mikhaïl Danilovitch and the celebrity were to fall instantly, and compel to attend to their duties.

The famous doctor took leave with a serious but not hopeless expression. And in reply to the timid question which Iván Ilyitch's eyes, shining with fear and hope, asked of him, whether there was a possibility of his getting well, it replied that it was impossible to foretell, but there was a possibility.

The look of hope with which Iván Ilyitch followed the doctor was so pathetic that Praskovia Feodorovna, seeing it, even wept, as she went out of the librarydoor in order to give the celebrated doctor his honorarium.

The raising of his spirits, caused by the doctor's hopefulness, was but temporary. Again the same room, the same pictures, curtains, wall-paper, vials, and his aching, pain-broken body. And Iván Ilyitch began to groan. They gave him a subcutaneous injection, and he forgot it.

When he came to himself, it was beginning to grow dusky. They brought him his dinner. He forced himself to eat a little bouillon. And again the same monotony, and again the advancing night.

About seven o'clock, after dinner, Praskovia Feódorovna came into his room, dressed as for a party, with her exuberant bosom swelling in her stays, and with traces of powder on her face. She had already that morning told him that they were going to the theatre. Sarah Bernhardt had come to town, and they had a lozha which he had advised their taking.

Now he had forgotten about that, and her toilet offended him. But he concealed his vexation when