Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/74

62 lecturing for thirty years, and where are your pupils? Have you many famous scholars? Count them up. But to increase the number of doctors who exploit the general ignorance and make hundreds of thousands,—there's no need to be a good and gifted man. You aren't wanted."

"My God, how bitter you are!" I get terrified. "How bitter you are. Be quiet, or I'll go away. I can't reply to the bitter things you say."

The maid enters and calls us to tea. Thank God, our conversation changes round the samovar. I have made my moan, and now I want to indulge another senile weakness—reminiscences. I tell Katy about my past, to my great surprise with details that I never suspected I had kept safe in my memory. And she listens to me with emotion, with pride, holding her breath. I like particularly to tell how I once was a student at a seminary and how I dreamed of entering the University.

"I used to walk in the seminary garden," I tell her, "and the wind would bring the sound of a song and the thrumming of an accordion from a distant tavern, or a troika with bells would pass quickly by the seminary fence. That would be quite enough to fill not only my breast with a sense of happiness, but my stomach, legs, and hands. As I heard the sound of the accordion or the bells fading away, I would see myself a doctor and paint pictures, one more glorious than another. And, you see, my