Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/46

 disagreeable things, but he once or twice flew into such a rage during the dinner that she understood that this was a morbid condition, which was provoked in him by the partaking of the food, and she curbed herself: she no longer retorted, but only hastened to eat her dinner. Praskóvya Fédorovna regarded her humility as a great desert of hers. Having made up her mind that her husband had a terrible character, and had been the misfortune of her life, she began to pity herself, and the more she pitied herself, the more did she hate her husband. She began to wish that he would die, but she could not wish this, because then there would be no salary. And this irritated her still more against him. She considered herself terribly unfortunate even because his very death could not save her, and she was irritated and concealed her irritation, and this concealed irritation increased her irritation.

After a scene, in which Iván Ilích was particularly unjust, and after which he during the explanation said that he was indeed irritable, but that this was due to his disease, she said to him that if he was ill, he had to undergo a cure, and so demanded of him that he should consult a famous physician.

He went to see him. Everything was as he had expected; everything was done as such things always are. The expectancy, and the assumed importance of the doctor, which was familiar to him and which he knew in himself in the court, and the tapping, and the auscultation, and the questions which demanded previously determined and apparently useless answers, and the significant aspect which seemed to say, "Just submit to us, and we shall arrange everything; we know indubitably how to arrange it all, in the same fashion for any man you please." Everything was precisely as in the court. Just as he assumed a certain mien in respect to the defendants, so the famous doctor assumed the same mien.