Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/675

 His sufferings, growing ever more and more severe, did their work and prepared him to die. There was no position in which he could find relief; there was not a moment in which he could forget himself; there was not a place or a single member of his body that did not cause him pain, agony. Even the memories, the impressions, and the thoughts about his body now awakened in him the same feeling of repulsion as his body itself; the sight of other people and their talk, their individual recollections, were a torment to him. Those who surrounded him felt it and instinctively refrained in his presence from using any freedom of motion, from conversation or from expressing their wishes. All his life was concentrated in one feeling, suffering, and in an ardent desire to be freed from it.

Evidently there was accomplishing in him that revolution whereby he would be induced to look on death as a consummation of his desires, even as a joy. Hitherto, every individual desire called forth by suffering or privation, as by hunger, weariness, thirst, was satisfied by some bodily exercise producing pleasure; but now privation and suffering got no relief and any attempt at relieving them caused new suffering. And so all his desires were concentrated on one thing,—the wish to be delivered from all his woes and the very source of his woes, from his body. But he had no words to express this thought, and he continued out of habit to ask for what once gave him comfort, but could no longer satisfy him. "Turn me on the other side," he would say, and then immediately wish to return to his former position. "Give me bouillon! Take it away! Speak, and don't stay so still!" and as soon as any one began to speak, he would shut his eyes and show fatigue, indifference, and disgust.

On the tenth day after their arrival Kitty was taken ill; she had a headache and nausea and all the morning felt unable to get up.

The doctor declared that it was caused by her emotions and weariness. He advised quiet and rest.

Yet, after dinner, she got up and went as usual with