Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/55

 "No, you exaggerate it," said Praskóvya Fédorovna.

"Exaggerate? No. You do not see it, he is a dead man,—look into his eyes. There is no light in them. What is the matter with him?”

"Nobody knows. Nikoláev" (that was the second doctor) "said something, but I do not know what. Leshchetítski" (that was the famous doctor) "said, on the contrary—"

Iván Ilích walked away and went to his room; he lay down and began to think: "The kidney, a floating kidney." He recalled everything which the doctors had told him about how it had torn itself away and was floating around. He tried with an effort of the imagination to catch this kidney, and to arrest and fasten it. So little was needed for that, he thought. "No, I will call on Peter Ivánovich before I do anything else." (This was that friend whose friend was a doctor.) He rang the bell, ordered the horse to be hitched up, and got himself ready to go."

"Whither are you going, Jean?" asked his wife, with a peculiarly sad and strangely kind expression.

This strangely kind expression made him furious. He cast a gloomy glance at her.

"I have some business with Peter Ivánovich."

He drove to the house of his friend, who had a friend who was a doctor. With him he drove to the doctor. He found him at home, and conversed with him for a long time.

By analyzing anatomically and physiologically the details of what, according to the doctor's opinion, was going on in him, he understood it all.

There was a thing, just a little thing, in his blind gut. All this might change for the better. Strengthen the energy of one organ, weaken the activity of another, there will take place a suction, and all will be well. He was a little too late for dinner. He dined and conversed merrily,