The next day the sick man received the sacrament and extreme

unction. During the ceremony Nikolay Levin prayed fervently.

His great eyes, fastened on the holy image that was set out on a

card table covered with a colored napkin, expressed such

passionate prayer and hope that it was awful to Levin to see it.

Levin knew that this passionate prayer and hope would only make

him feel more bitterly parting from the life he so loved. Levin

knew his brother and the workings of his intellect: he knew that

his unbelief came not from life being easier for him without

faith, but had grown up because step by step the contemporary

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scientific interpretation of natural phenomena crushed out the

possibility of faith; and so he knew that his present return was

not a legitimate one, brought about by way of the same working of

his intellect, but simply a temporary, interested return to faith

in a desperate hope of recovery. Levin knew too that Kitty had

strengthened his hope by accounts of the marvelous recoveries she

had heard of. Levin knew all this; and it was agonizingly

painful to him to behold the supplicating, hopeful eyes and the

emaciated wrist, lifted with difficulty, making the sign of the

cross on the tense brow, and the prominent shoulders and hollow,

gasping chest, which one could not feel consistent with the life

the sick man was praying for. During the sacrament Levin did

what he, an unbeliever, had done a thousand times. He said,

addressing God, "If Thou dost exist, make this man to recover"

(of course this same thing has been repeated many times), "and

Thou wilt save him and me."

After extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better.

He did not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed

Kitty's hand, thanking her with tears, and said he was

comfortable, free from pain, and that he felt strong and had an

appetite. He even raised himself when his soup was brought, and

asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly ill as he was, obvious as

it was at the first glance that he could not recover, Levin and

Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of excitement,

happy, though fearful of being mistaken.

"Is he better?"

"Yes, much."

"It's wonderful."

"There's nothing wonderful in it."

"Anyway, he's better," they said in a whisper, smiling to one

another.

This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell

into a quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his

cough. And all at once every hope vanished in those about him

and in himself. The reality of his suffering crushed all hopes

in Levin and Kitty and in the sick man himself, leaving no doubt,

no memory even of past hopes.




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