Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/73

 are our affairs?" but that he himself feels that it would not do to speak in this manner, and so he says, "How did you pass the night?"

Iván Ilích looks at the doctor with a questioning expression:

"Will you never feel ashamed of lying?"

But the doctor does not want to understand the expression, and Iván Ilích says:

"Just as terribly as ever. The pain does not pass away, does not subside. If it would stop just a little!"

"You patients are always like that. Well, sir, now, it seems, I am all warmed up, and even most exact Praskóvya Fédorovna would not be able to object to my temperature. Well, sir, good morning," and the doctor presses his hand.

Throwing aside his former playfulness, the doctor begins with a serious glance to investigate the patient, his pulse, his temperature, and there begin tappings and auscultations.

Iván Ilích knows full well and indubitably that all this is nonsense and mere deception, but when the doctor, getting down on his knees, stretches out over him, leaning his ear now higher up, and now lower down, and with a significant expression on his face makes over him all kinds of gymnastic evolutions, Iván Ilích submits to it, as he submitted to the speeches of the lawyers, though he knew well that they were ranting all the time, and why they were ranting.

The doctor was still kneeling on the divan, tapping at something, when Praskóvya Fédorovna's silk dress rustled at the door, and there was heard her reproach to Peter for not having announced to her the doctor's arrival.

She comes in, kisses her husband, and immediately proceeds to prove that she got up long ago, and that only by a misunderstanding did she fail to be present when the doctor came.