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

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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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