Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 26
had begged the doctor to go and examine him. “Do this for my sake,” the Countess
Lidia Ivanovna had said to him.
“I will do it for the sake of Russia, countess,” replied the doctor.
“A priceless man!” said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
The doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey Alexandrovitch. He found the
liver considerably enlarged, and the digestive powers weakened, while the course of
mineral waters had been quite without effect. He prescribed more physical exercise
as far as possible, and as far as possible less mental strain, and above all no worry–
in other words, just what was as much out of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s power as
abstaining from breathing. Then he withdrew, leaving in Alexey Alexandrovitch an
unpleasant sense that something was wrong with him, and that there was no chance
of curing it.
As he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet on the staircase an acquaintance
of his, Sludin, who was secretary of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department.
They had been comrades at the university, and though they rarely met, they thought
highly of each other and were excellent friends, and so there was no one to whom
the doctor would have given his opinion of a patient so freely as to Sludin.
“How glad I am you’ve been seeing him!” said Sludin. “He’s not well, and I
fancy.... Well, what do you think of him?”
“I’ll tell you,” said the doctor, beckoning over Sludin’s head to his coachman to
bring the carriage round. “It’s just this,” said the doctor, taking a finger of his kid
glove in his white hands and pulling it, “if you don’t strain the strings, and then try
to break them, you’ll find it a difficult job; but strain a string to its very utmost, and
the mere weight of one finger on the strained string will snap it. And with his close
assiduity, his conscientious devotion to his work, he’s strained to the utmost; and
there’s some outside burden weighing on him, and not a light one,” concluded the
doctor, raising his eyebrows significantly. “Will you be at the races?” he added, as
he sank into his seat in the carriage.
“Yes, yes, to be sure; it does waste a lot of time,” the doctor responded vaguely to
some reply of Sludin’s he had not caught.
Directly after the doctor, who had taken up so much time, came the celebrated
traveler, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, by means of the pamphlet he had only just finished
reading and his previous acquaintance with the subject, impressed the traveler
by the depth of his knowledge of the subject and the breadth and enlightenment of
his view of it.
At the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial marshal of
nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had to have
some conversation. After his departure, he had to finish the daily routine of business
with his secretary, and then he still had to drive round to call on a certain great
personage on a matter of grave and serious import. Alexey Alexandrovitch only
just managed to be back by five o’clock, his dinner-hour, and after dining with his
secretary, he invited him to drive with him to his country villa and to the races.
Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey Alexandrovitch always tried
nowadays to secure the presence of a third person in his interviews with his wife.
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