Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/183

Rh  with a sheepskin, and breathing heavily.

"Well, how do you feel?"

The sufferer turned round on the stove and tried to sit up. He was one mass of wounds, and near to death,

"Lie still, lie still — well, how goes it?"

"Badly, sure enough."

"Are you in pain?" He held his peace. "Do you want anything?" Still silence. "Shall I send you some tea or anything else?"

"There's no need."

I stepped aside, and sat down on a bench. A quarter of an hour passed, then half an hour, in the same deathlike stillness. In the corner, on the table underneath the holy picture, a little girl of five years old was munching a piece of bread. The mother shook her finger at her from time to time. In the passage people went up and down, talked, and made a noise. The brother's wife was chopping cabbage.

"Axinia," began at length the sick man.

"Yes."

"A drink of kvass."

Axinia gave him the kvass. Silence set in again.

I asked in a whisper if he had received the sacrament.

"Yes," was the reply.

All was set in order, it seemed. He had only to wait till death came. I could bear it no longer, and went away.

Another time, I remember, I went to the village hospital of Krasnogore, to see the surgeon there, an acquaintance of mine, and an enthusiastic sportsman. The hospital consisted of the wing of what had been a family residence. It was founded by the lady of the manor herself; that is to say, she set up over the door a blue board, on which was painted in white letters, "Krasnogore Hospital," and she gave the surgeon, with her own hand, a handsome album, to write the names of the patients in. On the first page of that album one of that benevolent lady's hangers-on had inscribed the following verses:

Some other gentleman had written lower down: —

The village surgeon put up six beds at his own expense, and set to work to cure the sick folk as best he could. Besides him, there were two functionaries in the hozpitalhospital [sic] — a lunatic, named Paul; and Mellikitrissa, an old woman with a withered hand, who filled the office of cook. They both prepared the medicaments, and dried or pickled herbs. It was moreover their duty to control the patients when delirious. The lunatic was chary of his words, and gloomy in appearance. At night he used to sing songs about "Beautiful Venus," and he pleaded with every passer-by for permission to marry a certain girl called Malania, who had long been dead. The woman with the withered hand would then beat him, and send him to mind the turkeys.

Well, one day I was sitting with Kapiton, the village surgeon. We had just begun a discussion about our last sporting expedition, when suddenly there drove into the courtyard a telega, drawn by an unusually thick-set iron-grey horse, such as could only belong to a miller. In the telega sat a sturdy peasant in a new blouse, and with a mottled beard.

"Ah, Vassily Dimitritch!" called out Kapiton to him from the window. "Come in. It is the miller of Lyybovshin," he whispered.

The peasant alighted, groaning, from the telega, came into the surgeon's room, looked round for the holy picture, and made the sign of the cross.

"Well, Vassily, what news? — but you must be ill; you look all wrong."

"Indeed, Kapiton Timofeïtch, I am not well."

"What's the matter?"

"Well, you see, Kapiton Timofeïtch, I bought a millstone not long ago in the town. I took it home, and when I was getting it out of the cart I must have overstrained myself, for it was just as if something snapped in my inside, as if I had torn away something — and since then I have always been ailing. To-day, indeed, I am very bad."

"Hum," muttered Kapiton, taking a pinch of snuff; "probably a rupture. When did it happen?"

"Ten days ago."

"Ten?" said the surgeon, with a grave face, drawing his breath through his teeth, and shaking his head. "Let me examine you. Well, Vassily," he said at length, "I am very sorry for you, but your case is a bad one; you are seriously ill; stay here with me, and I will take the greatest pains, though I won't answer for the conquences."

"Is it really so had?" stammered the astonished miller.