Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/75

 and she told him that she was doing for herself everything that she really was doing for herself, as though it were such an incredible thing that he ought to understand it as the exact opposite.

Indeed, at half-past eleven the famous doctor arrived. Again there were auscultations and significant conversations in his presence and in another room about the kidney and the blind gut, and questions and answers with such significant looks that instead of the real question about life and death, which alone now stood before him, there again came forward the question about the kidney and the blind gut, which were not acting as they ought to, and which Mikhail Danílovich and the celebrity will for this reason attack and compel to get better.

The famous doctor departed with a serious, but not with a hopeless, look. In reply to the timid question, which Iván Ilích directed to him with eyes raised to him and shining with terror and hope, as to whether there was any possibility of recovery, he replied that he could not guarantee it, but that it was possible. The glance of hope with which Iván Ilích saw the doctor off was so pitiful that, seeing it, Praskóvya Fédorovna even burst out into tears as she went out of the cabinet, in order to give the famous doctor his fee.

The elation of spirit, produced by the doctor's encouragement, did not last long. There were again the same room, the same pictures, curtains, wall-paper, bottles, and the same paining, suffering body. Iván Ilích began to groan; they gave him an injection, and he forgot himself.

When he came to, it was growing dark; they brought him his dinner. He took with difficulty some soup, and again it was the same, and again nightfall.

After dinner, at seven o'clock, the room was entered by Praskóvya Fédorovna, who was dressed as for an evening entertainment, with swelling, raised up breasts, and traces