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 but keep it stretched out to its utmost tension, and put the weight of your finger on it, it breaks. Now, with his too sedentary life, and his too conscientious labor, he is strained to the utmost limit; and besides, there is a violent pressure in another direction," concluded the doctor, raising his eyebrows significantly. "Shall you be at the races?" he added, as he got into his carriage.

"Yes, yes, certainly; it takes a good deal of time," he said in reply to something that Sliudin said, and which he did not catch.

Immediately after the departure of the doctor, who had taken so much time, the celebrated traveler appeared; and Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, aided by the pamphlet which he had just read, and by some previous information which he had on the subject, astonished his visitor by the extent of his knowledge and the breadth of his views.

At the same time the marshal of nobility of his government was announced, who had come to Petersburg and wanted to talk with him. After his departure he was obliged to settle the routine business with his chief secretary, and finally to go out and make a serious and necessary call on an important personage.

Alekseï Aleksandrovitch had only time to get back to his five o'clock dinner with Sliudin, whom he invited to join him on his visit to the country and to the races.

Without exactly accounting for it, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch always endeavored lately to have a third person present when he had an interview with his wife.

CHAPTER XXVII

was in her room standing before a mirror and fastening a final bow to her dress, with Annushka's aid, when the noise of wheels on the gravel driveway was heard.