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attended entertainments; and this not from penuriousness but from
a genuine contempt for appearances.
When Andréi Yéfimitch first came to the town to take up his duties
as physician to the hospital, that "charitable institution" was in a
state of inconceivable disorder. In the wards, in the corridors, and
even in the open air of the yard it was impossible to breathe owing
to the stench. The male attendants, the nurses and their children,
slept in the dormitories together with the patients. It was
complained that the hospital was becoming uninhabitable owing to
the invasion of beetles, bugs, and mice. In the surgical department
there were only two scalpels, nowhere was there a thermometer,
and the baths were used for storing potatoes in. The
superintendent, the housekeeper, and the feldscher robbed the sick,
and of the former doctor, Andréi Yéfimitch's predecessor, it was said
that he sold the hospital spirits secretly, and kept up a whole harem
recruited from among the nurses and female patients. In the town
these scandals were well-known and even exaggerated; but the
townspeople were indifferent, and even excused the abuses on the
ground that the patients were all either petty tradespeople or
peasants who lived at home among conditions so much worse that
they had no right to complain; such gentry, they added, must not
expect to be fed on grouse! Others argued that as no small town
had sufficient resources to support a good hospital without subsidies
from the Zemstvo, they might thank God they had a bad one; and
the Zemstvo refused to open a hospital in the town on the ground
that there was already one.
When he inspected the hospital for the first time Andréi Yéfimitch
saw at once that the whole institution was hopelessly bad, and in
the highest degree dangerous to the health of the inmates. He
concluded that the best thing to do was to discharge the patients
and to close the hospital. But he knew that to effect this his wish
alone was not enough; and he reasoned that if the physical and
moral uncleanliness were driven from one place it would merely be
transplanted to another; it was necessary, in fact, to wait until it
cleaned itself out. To these considerations he added that if people
opened a hospital and tolerated its abuses they must have need of
it; and, no doubt, such abominations were necessary, and in the
course of time would evolve something useful, as good soil results
from manuring. And, indeed, on this earth there is nothing good that
has not had evil germs in its beginnings.
Having taken up his duties, therefore, Andréi Yéfimitch looked upon
the abuses with apparent indifference. He merely asked the servants
and nurses not to sleep in the wards, and bought two cases of
instruments; but he allowed the superintendent, the housekeeper,
and the feldscher to remain in their positions.
Andréi Yéfimitch was passionately enamoured of intellect and
honesty, but he had neither the character nor the confidence in his
own powers necessary to establish around himself an intelligent and
honest life. To command, to prohibit, to insist, he had never learned;
It seemed almost that he had sworn an oath never to raise his voice
or to use the imperative mood. ... Even to use the words "give" or
"bring" was difficult for him. When he felt hungry, he coughed
irresolutely and said to his cook, "Suppose I were to have a cup of
tea," or "I was thinking about dining." To tell the superintendent that
he must cease his robberies, to dismiss him, or to abolish altogether
his parasitical office he had not the strength. "When he was
deceived or flattered, or handed accounts for signature which he
knew to have been falsified, he would redden all over and feel guilty,
yet sign the accounts; and when the patients complained that they
were hungry or had been ill-treated by the nurses, he merely got
confused, and stammered guiltily:
"Very well, very well, I will investigate the matter. ... No doubt there
is some misunderstanding...."
At first Andréi Yéfimitch worked very zealously. He attended to
patients from morning until dinner-time, performed operations, and
even occupied himself with obstetrics. He gained a reputation for
exceptional skill in the treatment of women and children. But he
soon began visibly to weary of the monotony and uselessness of his
work. One day he would receive thirty patients, the next day the
number had grown to thirty-five, the next day to forty, and so on
from day to day, from year to year. Yet the death-rate in the town
did not decrease, and the number of patients never grew less. To
give any real assistance to forty patients in the few hours between
morning and dinner-time was physically impossible; in other words,
he became an involuntary deceiver. The twelve thousand persons
received every year, he reasoned, were therefore twelve thousand
dupes. To place the serious cases in the wards and treat them
according to the rules of medical science was impossible, because
there were no rules and no science; whereas if he left philosophy
and followed the regulations pedantically as other doctors did, he
would still be in difficulty, for in the first place were needed
cleanliness and fresh air, and not filth; wholesome food, and not
shtchi made of stinking sour cabbage; and honest assistants, not
thieves.
And, indeed, why hinder people dying, if death is the normal and
lawful end of us all? What does it matter whether some tradesman
or petty official lives, or does not live, an extra five years? We
pretend to see the object of medical science in its mitigation of
suffering, but we cannot but ask ourselves the question: Why should
suffering be mitigated? In the first place, we are told that suffering
leads men to perfection; and in the second, it is plain that if men
were really able to alleviate their sufferings with pills and potions,
they would abandon that religion and philosophy in which until now
they had found not only consolation, but even happiness. Pushkin
suffered agonising torment before his death; Heine lay for years in a
state of paralysis. Why, then, interfere with the sufferings of some
mere Andréi Yéfimitch or Matrena Savishin, whose lives are
meaningless, and would be as vacuous as the life of the amoeba if it
were not for suffering?
Defeated by such arguments, Andréi Yéfimitch dropped his hands
upon his knees, and ceased his daily attendances at the hospital.
 VI

His life passed thus. At eight in the morning he rose and took his
breakfast. After that he either sat in his study and read, or visited
the hospital. In the hospital in a narrow, dark corridor waited the
out-patients. With heavy boots clattering on the brick floor, servants
and nurses ran past them; emaciated patients in dressing-gowns
staggered by; and vessels of filth, and corpses were carried out. And
among them children cried and draughts blew. Andréi Yéfimitch
knew well that to the fevered, the consumptive, and the
impressionable such surroundings were torment; but what could he
do? In the reception-room he was met by the feldscher, Sergéi
Sergéyitch, a little fat man, with a beardless, well-washed, puffy
face, and easy manners. Sergéi Sergéyitch always wore clothes
which resembled a senator's more than a surgeon's; in the town he
had a large practice, and believed that he knew more than the
doctor, who had no practice at all. In the corner of the room hung a
case of ikons with a heavy lamp in front; on the walls were portraits
of bishops, a view of Sviatogorsk Monastery, and garlands of
withered corn-flowers. Sergéi Sergéyitch was religious, and the
images had been placed in the room at his expense; every Sunday
by his command one of the patients read the acathistus, and when
the reading was concluded, Sergéi Sergéyitch went around the
wards with a censer and sprinkled them piously.
There were many patients and little time. The examination was
therefore limited to a few short questions, and to the distribution of
such simple remedies as castor-oil and ointments. Andréi Yéfimitch
sat with his head resting on his hands, lost in thought, and asked
questions mechanically; and Sérgei Sergéyitch sat beside him, and
sometimes interjected a word.
"We become ill and suffer deprivation," he would sometimes say,
"only because we pray too little to God."
In these hours Andréi Yéfimitch performed no operations; he had
got out of practice, and the sight of blood affected him unpleasantly.
When he had to open a child's mouth, to examine its throat for
instance, if the child cried and defended itself with its hands, the
doctor's head went round and tears came into his eyes. He made
haste to prescribe a remedy, and motioned to the mother to take it
away as quickly as possible.
He quickly wearied of the timidity of the patients, of their shiftless
ways, of the proximity of the pompous Sérgei Sergéyitch, of the
portraits on the walls, and of his own questions—questions which he
had asked without change for more than twenty years.
And he would sometimes leave the hospital after having examined
five or six patients, the remainder in his absence being treated by
the feldscher.
With the pleasant reflection that thank God he had no private
practice and no one to interfere with him, Andréi Yéfimitch on
returning home would sit at his study-table and begin to read. He
read much, and always with pleasure. Half his salary went on the
purchase of books, and of the six rooms in his flat three were
crowded with books and old newspapers. Above all things he loved
history and philosophy; but of medical publications he subscribed
only to The Doctor, which he always began to read at the end. Every
day he read uninterruptedly for several hours, and it never wearied
him. He read, not quickly and eagerly as Iván Dmítritch had read,
but slowly, often stopping at passages which pleased him or which
he did not understand. Beside his books stood a decanter of vodka,
and a salted cucumber or soaked apple; and every half-hour he
poured himself out a glass of vodka, and drank it without lifting his
eyes from his book, and then—again without lifting his eyes—took
the cucumber and bit a piece off.
At three o'clock he would walk cautiously to the kitchen door, cough,
and say:
"Dáryushka, I was thinking of dining...."
After a bad and ill-served dinner, Andréi Yéfimitch walked about his
rooms, with his arms crossed on his chest, and thought. Sometimes
the kitchen door creaked, and the red, sleepy face of Dáryushka
appeared.
"Andréi Yéfimitch, is it time for your beer?" she would ask
solicitously.
"No, not yet," he would answer. "I'll wait a little longer...."
In the evening came the postmaster, Mikhail Averyanitch, the only
man in the town whose society did not weary Andréi Yéfimitch.
Mikhail Averyanitch had once been a rich country gentleman and had
served in a cavalry regiment, but having ruined himself he took a
position in the Post Office to save himself from beggary in his old
age. He hod a brisk, wholesome appearance, magnificent grey
whiskers, well-bred manners, and a loud but pleasant voice. When
visitors at the Post Office protested, refused to agree with him, or
began to argue, Mikhail Averyanitch became purple, shook all over,
and roared at the top of his voice: "Silence!" so that the Post Office
had the reputation of a place of terror. Mikhail Averyanitch was fond
of Andréi Yéfimitch and respected his attainments and the nobility of
his heart. But the other townspeople he treated haughtily as
inferiors.
"Well, here I am!" he would begin. "How are you, my dear?... But
perhaps I bore you? Eh?"
"On the contrary. I am delighted," answered the doctor. "I am
always glad to see you."
The friends would sit on the study sofa and smoke for a time silently.
"Dáryushka, suppose I were to have a little beer..." said Andréi
Yéfimitch.
The first bottle was drunk in silence. The doctor was lost in thought,
while Mikhail Averyanitch had the gay and active expression of a
man who has something very interesting to relate. The conversation
was always begun by the doctor.
"What a pity!" he would say, slowly and quietly, looking away from
his friend—he never looked anyone in the face. "What a pity, my
dear Mikhail Averyanitch, what a pity it is that there is not a soul in
this town who cares to engage in an intellectual or interesting
conversation! It is a great deprivation for us. Even the so-called
intelligent classes never rise above commonplaces; the level of their
development, I assure you, is no higher than that of the lower
order."
"Entirely true. I agree with you."
"As you yourself know very well," continued the doctor, pausing
intermittently, "as you know, everything in this world is insignificant
and uninteresting except the higher phenomena of the human
intellect. Intellect creates a sharp distinction between the animal and
the man, it reminds the latter of his divinity, and to a certain extent
compensates him for the immortality which he has not. As the result
of this, intellect serves as the only fountain of enjoyment. When we
say we see and hear around us no evidence of intellect, we mean
thereby that we are deprived of true happiness. True, we have our
books, but that is a very different thing from living converse and
communication. If I may use a not very apt simile, books are the
accompaniment, but conversation is the singing.'"
"That is entirely true."
A silence followed. From the kitchen came Dáryushka, and, with her
head resting on her hands and an expression of stupid vexation on
her face, stood at the door and listened.
"Akh!" sighed Mikhail Averyanitch, "why seek intellect among the
men of the present day?" And he began to relate how in the old
days life was wholesome, gay, and interesting, how the intellect of
Russia was really enlightened, and how high a place was given to
the ideas of honour and friendship. Money was lent without I. O.
U.'s, and it was regarded as shameful not to stretch out the hand of
aid to a needy friend. What marches there were, what adventures,
what fights, what companions-in-arms, what women! The Caucasus,
what a marvellous country! And the wife of the commander of his
battalion—what a strange woman!—who put on an officer's uniform
and drove into the mountains at night without an escort. They said
she had a romance with a prince in one of the villages.
"Heavenly mother! Lord preserve us!" sighed Dáryushka.
"And how we drank! How we used to eat! What desperate Liberals
we were!"
Andréi Yéfimitch listened, but heard nothing; he was thinking of
something else and drinking his beer.
"I often dream of clever people and have imaginary conversations
with them," he said, suddenly, interrupting Mikhail Averyanitch. "My
father gave me a splendid education, but, under the influence of the
ideas current in the sixties, forced me to become a doctor. It seems
to me that if I had disobeyed him I might now be living in the very
centre of the intellectual movement—probably a member of some
faculty. Of course intellect itself is not eternal but transitory—but you
already know why I worship it so. Life is a vexatious snare. When a
reflecting man attains manhood and ripe consciousness, he cannot
but feel himself in a trap from which there is no escape.... By an
accident, without consulting his own will, he is called from non-
existence into life.... Why? He wishes to know the aim and
significance of his existence; he is answered with silence or
absurdities; he knocks but it is not opened to him; and death itself
comes against his will. And so, as prisoners united by common
misfortune are relieved when they meet, men inclined to analysis
and generalisation do not notice the snare in which they live when
they spend their days in the exchange of free ideas. In this sense
intellect is an irreplaceable enjoyment."
"Entirely true!"
And still with his face averted from his companion, Andréi Yéfimitch,
in a soft voice, with constant pauses, continues to speak of clever
men and of the joy of communion with them, and Mikhail
Averyanitch listens attentively and says: "It is entirely true."
"Then you do not believe in the immortality of the soul?" asks the
postmaster.
"No, my dear Mikhail Averyanitch. I do not believe, and I have no
reason for believing."
"I admit that I also doubt it. Still I have a feeling that I can never
die. 'Come,' I say to myself, 'Come, old man, it's time for you to die.'
But in my heart a voice answers: 'Don't believe it, you will never
die.'"
At nine o'clock Mikhail Averyanitch takes leave. As he puts on his
overcoat in the hall, he says with a sigh:
"Yes, what a desert fate has planted us in! And what is worst of all,
we shall have to die here. Akh!"

VII

When he has parted from his friend, Andréi Yéfimitch sits at his table
and again begins to read. The stillness of evening, the stillness of
night is unbroken by a single sound; time, it seems, stands still and
perishes, and the doctor perishes also, till it seems that nothing
exists but a book and a green lamp-shade. Then the rude, peasant
face of the doctor, as he thinks of the achievements of the human
intellect, becomes gradually illumined by a smile of emotion and
rapture. Oh, why is man not immortal? he asks. For what end exist
brain-centres and convolutions, to what end vision, speech,
consciousness, genius, if all are condemned to pass into the earth,
to grow cold with it, and for countless millions of years, without aim
or object, to be borne with it around the sun? In order that the
human frame may decay and be whirled around the sun, is it
necessary to drag man with his high, his divine mind, out of non-
existence, as if in mockery, and to turn him again into earth?
Immortality of matter! What cowardice to console ourselves with this
fictitious immortality! Unconscious processes working themselves out
in Nature—processes lower even than folly, for in folly there is at
least consciousness and volition, while in these processes there is
neither! Yet they say to men, "Be at rest, thy substance, rotting in
the earth, will give life to other organisms "—in other words, thou
wilt be more foolish than folly! Only the coward, who has more fear
of death than sense of dignity, can console himself with the
knowledge that his body in the course of time will live again in grass,
in stones, in the toad. To seek immortality in the indestructibility of
matter is, indeed, as strange as to prophesy a brilliant future for the
case when the costly violin is broken and worthless.
When the clock strikes, Andréi Yéfimitch leans back in his chair,
shuts his eyes, and thinks. Under the influence of the lofty thoughts
which he has just been reading, he throws a glance over the present
and the past. The past is repellent, better not think of it! And the
present is but as the past. He knows that in this very moment, while
his thoughts are sweeping round the sun with the cooling earth, in
the hospital building in a line with his lodgings, lie men tortured by
pain and tormented by uncleanliness; one cannot sleep owing to the
insects, and howls in his pain; another is catching erysipelas, and
groaning at the tightness of his bandages; others are playing cards
with the nurses, and drinking vodka. In this very year no less than
twelve thousand persons were duped; the whole work of the
hospital, as twenty years before, is based on robbery, scandal,
intrigue, nepotism, and gross charlatanry; altogether, the hospital is
an immoral institution, and a source of danger to the health of its
inmates. And Andréi Yéfimitch knows that inside the iron bars of
Ward No. 6, Nikita beats the patients with his fists, and that,
outside, Moséika wanders about the streets begging for kopecks.
Yet he knows very well that in the last twenty-five years a fabulous
revolution has taken place in the doctor's art. When he studied at
the university it had seemed to him that medicine would soon be
overtaken by the lot of alchemy and metaphysics, but now the
records of its feats which he reads at night touch him, astonish him,
and even send him into raptures. What a revolution! what
unexpected brilliance! Thanks to antiseptics, operations are every
day performed which the great Pigorof regarded as impossible.
Ordinary Zemstvo doctors perform such operations as the resection
of the knee articulations, of a hundred operations on the stomach
only one results in death, and the stone is now such a trifle that it
has ceased to be written about. Complaints which were once only
alleviated are now entirely cured. And hypnotism, the theory of
heredity, the discoveries of Pasteur and Koch, statistics of hygiene,
even Russian Zemstvo medicine! Psychiatry, with its classification of
diseases, its methods of diagnosis, its method of cure—what a
transformation of the methods of the past! No longer arc lunatics
drenched with cold water and confined in strait waistcoats; they are
treated as human beings, and even—as Andréi Yéfimitch read in the
newspapers—have their own special dramatic entertainments and
dances. Andréi Yéfimitch is well aware that in the modern world
such an abomination as Ward No. 6 is possible only in a town
situated two hundred versts from a railway, where the Mayor and
Councillors are half-educated tradesmen, who regard a doctor as a
priest to whom everything must be entrusted without criticism, even
though he were to dose his patients with molten tin. In any other
town the public and the Press would long ago have tom this little
Bastille to pieces.
"But in the end?" asks Andréi Yéfimitch, opening his eyes. "What is
the difference? In spite of antiseptics and Koch and Pasteur, the
essence of the matter has no way changed. Disease and death still
exist. Lunatics are amused with dances and theatricals, but they are
still kept prisoners.... In other words, all these tilings are vanity and
folly, and between the best hospital in Vienna and the hospital here
there is in reality no difference at all."
But vexation and a feeling akin to envy forbid indifference. It all
arises out of weariness. Andréi Yéfimitch's head falls upon his book,
he rests his head comfortably on his hands and thinks:
"I am engaged in a bad work, and I receive a salary from the men
whom I deceive. I am not an honest man.... But then by myself I am
nothing; I am only part of a necessary social evil; all the officials in
the district are bod, and draw their salaries without doing their
work.... In other words, it is not I who am guilty of dishonesty, but
Time.... If I were born two hundred years hence I should be a
different man."
When the clock strikes three, he puts out his lamp and goes up to
his bedroom. But he has no wish to sleep.

VIII

Two years ago, in a fit of liberality, the Zemstvo determined to

appropriate three hundred roubles a year to the increase of the
personnel of the hospital, until such time as they should open one of
their own. They sent, therefore, as assistant to Andréi Yéfimitch, the
district physician Yevgéniï Feódoritch Khobótoff. Khobótoff was a
very young man, under thirty, bill and dark, with small eyes and high
cheek-bones; evidently of Asiatic origin. He arrived in the town
without a kopeck, with a small portmanteau as his only luggage, and
was accompanied by a young, unattractive woman, whom he called
his cook. This woman's child completed the party. Khobótoff wore a
peaked cap and high boots, and—in winter—a short fur coat. He was
soon on intimate terms with the feldscher, Sergéi Sergéyitch, and
with the bursar, but the rest of the officials he avoided and
denounced as aristocrats. He possessed only one book,
"Prescriptions of the Vienna Hospital in 1881," and when he visited
the hospital he always brought it with him. He did not care for cards,
and in the evenings spent his time playing billiards at the club.
Khobótoff visited the hospital twice a week, inspected the wards,
and received out-patients. The strange absence of antiseptics,
cupping-glasses, and other necessaries seemed to trouble him, but
he made no attempt to introduce a new order, fearing to offend
Andréi Yéfimitch, whom he regarded as all old rogue, suspected of
having large means, and secretly envied. He would willingly have
occupied his position.
 IX

One spring evening towards the end of March, when the snow had
disappeared and starlings sang in the hospital garden, the doctor
was standing at his gate saying good-bye to his friend the
postmaster. At that moment the Jew Moséika, returning with his
booty, entered the yard. He was capless, wore a pair of goloshes on
his stockingless feet, and held in his hand a small bag of coins.
"Give me a kopeck?" he said to the doctor, shuddering from the cold
and grinning.
Andréi Yéfimitch, who could refuse no one, gave him a ten-kopeck
piece.
"How wrong this is!" he thought, as he looked at the Jew's bare legs
and thin ankles. "Wet, I suppose?" And impelled by a feeling of pity
and squeamishness he entered the wing after Moséika, looking all
the time now at the Jew's bald head, now at his ankles. When the
doctor entered, Nikita jumped off his rubbish-heap and stretched
himself.
"Good evening, Nikita!" said the doctor softly. "Suppose you give this
man a pair of boots ... that is ... he might catch cold."
"Yes, your Honour. I will ask the superintendent."
"Please. Ask him in my name. Say that I spoke about it."
The door of the ward was open. Iván Dmítritch, who was lying on
his bed, and listening with alarm to the unknown voice, suddenly
recognised the doctor. He shook with anger, jumped oft his bed, and
with a flushed, malicious face, and staring eyeballs, ran into the
middle of the room.
"It is the doctor!" he cried, with a loud laugh. "At last! Lord, I
congratulate you, the doctor honours us with a visit! Accursed
monster!" he squealed, and in an ecstacy of rage never before seen
in the hospital, stamped his feet. "Kill this monster! No, killing is not
enough for him! Drown him in the closet!"
Andréi Yéfimitch heard him. He looked into the ward and asked
mildly:
"For what?"
"For what!" screamed Iván Dmítritch, approaching with a
threatening face, and convulsively clutching his dressing-gown. "For
what! Thief!" He spoke in a tone of disgust, and twisted his lips as if
about to spit.
"Charlatan! Hangman!"
"Be quiet!" said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling guiltily. "I assure you I
have never stolen anything.... I see that you are angry with me. Be
calm, I implore you, if you can, and tell me why you want to kill
me."
"For keeping me here."
"I do that because you are ill."
"Yes! Ill! But surely tens, hundreds, thousands of madmen live
unmolested merely because you in your ignorance cannot distinguish
them from the sane. You, the feldscher, the superintendent, all the
rascals employed in the hospital are immeasurably lower in morals
than the worst of us; why, then, are we here instead of you? Where
is the logic?"
"It is not a question of morality or logic. It depends on
circumstances. The man who is put here, here he stays, and the
man who is not here lives in freedom, that is all For the fact that I
am a doctor and you a lunatic neither morals nor logic is responsible,
but only empty circumstance."
"This nonsense I do not understand!" answered Iván Dmitri tch,
sitting down on his bed.
Moséika, whom Nikita was afraid to search in the doctor's presence,
spread out on his bed his booty—pieces of bread, papers, and
bones; and trembling with the cold, talked Yiddish in a sing-song
voice. Apparently he imagined that he was opening a shop.
"Release me!" said Iván Dmítritch. His voice trembled.
"I cannot."
"Why not?"
"Because it is not in my power. Judge for yourself! What good would
it do you if I released you? Suppose I do! The townspeople or the
police will capture you and send you back."
"Yes, that is true, it is true ..." said Iván Dmítritch, rubbing his
forehead. "It is terrible! But what can I do? What?"
His voice, his intelligent, youthful face pleased Andréi Yéfimitch. He
wished to caress him and quiet him. He sat beside him on the bed,
thought for a moment, and said:
"You ask what is to be done. The best thing in your position would
be to run away. But unfortunately that is useless. You would be
captured. When society resolves to protect itself from criminals,
lunatics, and inconvenient people, it is irresistible. One thing alone
remains to you, to console yourself with the thought that your stay
here is necessary."
"It is necessary to no one."
"Once prisons and asylums exist, someone must inhabit them. If it is
not you it will be I, if not I then someone else. But wait! In the far
future there will be neither prisons nor madhouses, nor barred
windows, nor dressing-gowns.... Such a time will come sooner or
later."
Iván Dmítritch smiled contemptuously.
"You are laughing at me," he said, winking. "Such gentry as you and
your assistant Nikita have no business with the future. But you may
be assured, sir, that better times are in store for us. What if I do
express myself vulgarly—laugh at me!—but the dawn of a new life
will shine, and truth will triumph ... and it will be on our side the
holiday will be. I shall not see it, but our posterity shall.... I
congratulate them with my whole soul, and rejoice—rejoice for
them! Forward! God help you, friends!"
Iván Dmítritch's eyes glittered; he rose, stretched out his eyes to the
window, and said in an agitated voice:
"For these barred windows I bless you. Hail to the truth! I rejoice!"
"I see no cause for rejoicing," said Andréi Yéfimitch, whom Iván
Dmítritch's movements, though they seemed theatrical, pleased.
"Prisons and asylums will no longer be, and justice, as you put it,
will triumph. But the essence of things will never change, the laws of
Nature will remain the same. Men will be diseased, grow old, and
die, just as now. However glorious the dawn which enlightens your
life, in the end of ends you will be nailed down in a coffin and flung
into a pit."
"But immortality?"
"Nonsense!"
"You do not believe, but I believe. Dostoyeffsky or Voltaire or
someone said that if there were no God men would have invented
one. And I am deeply convinced that if there were no immortality it
would sooner or later have been invented by the great human
intellect."
"You speak well," said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling with pleasure. "It is
well that you believe. With such faith as yours you would live happily
though entombed in a wall. May I asked where you were educated?"
"I was at college, but never graduated."
"You are a thoughtful and penetrating man. You would find
tranquillity in any environment. The free and profound thought
which aspires to the comprehension of life; and high contempt for
the vanity of the world—these are two blessings higher than which
no man can know. And these you will enjoy though you live behind a
dozen barred windows. Diogenes lived in a tub, yet he was happier
than all the kings of the earth."
"Your Diogenes was a blockhead!" cried Iván Dmítritch gloomily.
"What do you tell me about Diogenes and the understanding of life?"
He spoke angrily, and sprang up. "I love life, love it passionately. I
have the mania of persecution, a ceaseless, tormenting terror, but
there are moments when I am seized by the thirst of life, and in
those moments I fear to go out of my mind. I long to live ...
terribly!"
He walked up and down the ward in agitation, and continued in a
lower voice:
"When I meditate I am visited by visions. Men come to me, I hear
voices and music, and it seems to me that I am walking through
woods, on the shores of the sea; and I long passionately for the
vanities and worries of life.... Tell me! What is the news?"
"You ask about the town, or generally?"
"First tell me about the town, and then generally?"
"What is there? The town is tiresome to the point of torment. There
is no one to talk to, no one to listen to. There are no new people.
But lately we got a new doctor, Khobótoff, a young man."
"He has been here. A fool?"
"Yes, an uneducated man. It is strange, do you know. If you judge
by metropolitan life there is no intellectual stagnation in Russia, but
genuine activity; in other words, there are real men. But for some
reason or other they always send such fellows here. It is an
unfortunate town.'"
"An unfortunate town," sighed Iván Dmítritch. "And what news is
there generally? What have you in the newspapers and reviews?"
In the ward it was already dark. The doctor rose, and told his patient
what was being written in Russia and abroad, and what were the
current tendencies of the world. Iván Dmítritch listened attentively,
and asked questions. But suddenly, as if he had just remembered
something terrible, he seized his head and threw himself on the bed,
with his back turned to the doctor.
"What is the matter?" asked Andréi Yéfimitch. "You will not hear
another word from me," said Iván Dmítritch rudely. "Go away!"
"Why?"
"I tell you, go away! Go to the devil!"
Andréi Yéfimitch shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and left the ward.
As he passed through the hall, he said: "Suppose you were to clear
some of this away; Nikita.... The smell is frightful."
"Yes, your Honour!"
"What a delightful young man!" thought Andréi Yéfimitch, as he
walked home. "He is the first man worth talking to whom I have met
all the time I have lived in this town. He can reason and interests
himself only with what is essential."
As he read in his study, as he went to bed, all the time, he thought
of Iván Dmítritch. When he awoke next morning, he remembered
that he had made the acquaintance of a clever and interesting man.
And he decided to pay him another visit at the first opportunity.

Iván Dmítritch lay in the same position as on the day before, holding
his head in his hands, his legs being doubled up underneath him.
"Good morning, my friend," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "You are not
asleep?"
"In the first place I am not your friend," said Iván Dmítritch, keeping
his face turned towards the pillow, "and in the second, you are
troubling yourself in vain; you will not get from me a single word."
"That is strange," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "Yesterday we were
speaking as friends, but suddenly you took offence and stopped
short.... Perhaps I spoke awkwardly, or expressed opinions differing
widely from your own."
"You won't catch me!" said Iván Dmítritch, rising from the bed and
looking at the doctor ironically and suspiciously. "You may go and
spy and cross-examine somewhere else; here there is nothing for
you to do. I know very well why you came yesterday."
"That is a strange idea," laughed the doctor. "But why do you
assume that I am spying?"
"I assume it.... Whether spy or doctor it is all the same."
"Yes, but ... excuse me...." The doctor sat on a stool beside the bed,
and shook his head reproachfully. "Even suppose you are right,
suppose I am following your words only in order to betray you to the
police, what would happen? They would arrest you and try you. But
then, in the dock or in prison would you be worse off than here? In
exile or penal servitude you would not suffer any more than now....
What, then, do you fear?"
Apparently these words affected Iván Dmítritch. He sat down quietly.
It was five o'clock, the hour when Andréi Yéfimitch usually walked
up and down his room and Dáryushka asked him whether it was
time for his beer. The weather was calm and clear.
"After dinner I went out for a walk, and you see where I've come,"
said the doctor. "It is almost spring."
"What month is it?" asked Iván Dmítritch. "March?"
"Yes, we are at the end of March."
"Is it very muddy?"
"Not very. The paths in the garden are clear."
"How glorious it would be to drive somewhere outside the town!"
said Iván Dmítritch, rubbing his red eyes as if he were sleepy, "and
then to return to a warm comfortable study ... and to be cured of
headache by a decent doctor.... For years past I have not lived like a
human being.... Things are abominable here,—intolerable,
disgusting!"
After last evening's excitement he was tired and weak, and he spoke
unwillingly. His fingers twitched, and from his face it was plain that
his head ached badly.
"Between a warm, comfortable study and this ward there is no
difference," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "The rest and tranquillity of a man
are not outside but within him."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Ordinary men find good and evil outside, that is, in their carriages
and comfortable rooms; but the thinking man finds them within
himself."
"Go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it is warm and
smells of oranges—it doesn't suit this climate. With whom was it I
spoke of Diogenes? With you?"
"Yes, yesterday with me."
"Diogenes had no need of a study and a warm house, he was
comfortable without them.... Lie in a tub and eat oranges and olives!
Set him down in Russia—not in December, but even in May. He
would freeze even in May with the cold."
"No. Cold, like every other feeling, may be disregarded. As Marcus
Aurelius said, pain is the living conception of pain; make an effort of
the will to change this conception, cease to complain, and the pain
disappears. The wise man, the man of thought and penetration, is
distinguished by his contempt for suffering; he is always content and
he is surprised by nothing."
"That means that I am an idiot because I suffer, because I am
discontented, and marvel at the baseness of men."
"Your discontent is in vain. Think more, and you will realise how
trifling are all the things which now excite you.... Try to understand
life—in this is true beatitude."
"Understand!" frowned Iván Dmítritch. "External, internal.... Excuse
me, but I cannot understand you. I know only one thing," he
continued, rising and looking angrily at the doctor. "I know only that
God created me of warm blood and nerves; yes! and organic tissue,
if it be capable of life, must respond to irritation. And I respond to it!
Pain I answer with tears and cries, baseness with indignation,
meanness with repulsion. In my mind, that is right, and it is that
which is called life. The lower the organism the less susceptible is it,
and the more feebly it responds to irritation; the higher it is the
more sensitively it responds. How is it you do not know that? A
doctor—yet you do not know such truisms! If you would despise
suffering, be always contented, and marvel at nothing, you must
lower yourself to the condition of that...." Iván Dmítritch pointed to
the fat, greasy muzhik, "or inure yourself to suffering until you lose
all susceptibility—in other words, cease to live. Excuse me, but I am
not a wise man and not a philosopher," continued Iván Dmítritch
irritably, "and I do not understand these things. I am not in a
condition to reason."
"But you reason admirably."
"The Stoics whom you travesty were remarkable men, but their
teaching died two thousand years ago, and since then it has not
advanced, nor will it advance, an inch, for it is not a practical or a
living creed. It was successful only with a minority who spent their
lives in study and trifled with gospels of all sorts; the majority never
understood it.... A creed which teaches indifference to wealth,
indifference to the conveniences of life, and contempt for suffering,
is quite incomprehensible to the great majority who never knew
either wealth or the conveniences of life, and to whom contempt for
suffering would mean contempt for their own lives, which are made
up of feelings of hunger, cold, loss, insult, and a Hamlet-like terror of
death. All life lies in these feelings, and life may be hated or wearied
of, but never despised. Yes, I repeat it, the teaching of the Stoics
can never have a future; from the beginning of time, life has
consisted in sensibility to pain and response to irritation.[1] Iván