on and did not let up for about three more minutes. When I recovered, he was sitting next to me on another chair, from which he had probably also thrown the rags on the floor, and was studying me intently.

"You seem to be . . . suffering?" he said in the tone in which doctors usually speak when they approach a patient. "I myself am a . . . medical man" (he did not say "doctor"), and having said that, he pointed to the room with his hand for some reason, as if protesting against his present situation. "I see that you . . ."

"I have consumption," I said as curtly as possible and stood up.

He also jumped up at once.

"Maybe you exaggerate and . . . if measures are taken . . ."

He was very bewildered and still as if unable to come to his senses; the wallet stuck out of his left hand.

"Oh, don't worry," I interrupted again, taking hold of the door handle, "last week —n examined me" (again I put —n into it) "and my case is decided. Excuse me . . ."

I was again about to open the door and leave my embarrassed, grateful, and crushed-with- shame doctor, but just then the cursed cough seized me again. Here my doctor insisted that I again sit down to rest; he turned to his wife, and she, without leaving her place, spoke a few friendly words of gratitude. She became very embarrassed as she did so, and color even played over her dry, pale yellow cheeks. I stayed, but with a look which showed every second that I was terribly afraid of being in their way (as was proper). Remorse finally tormented my doctor, I could see that.

"If I . . ." he began, constantly breaking off and jumping to another subject, "I'm so grateful to you, and so guilty before you . . . I . . . you see . . ." and again he pointed to the room, "at the present moment my situation . . ."

"Oh," I said, "there's nothing to see; it's a well-known thing; you must have lost your job, and you've come to explain things and look for another job?"

"How . . . did you know?" he asked in surprise.

"It's obvious at first glance," I said with unintentional mockery. "Many people come here from the provinces with hopes, go running around, and live like this."

He suddenly began speaking heatedly, his lips trembling; he complained, talked, and, I confess, got me carried away; I sat there for almost an hour. He told me his story, a very ordinary one, by the way. He had been a provincial doctor, had occupied a

government post, but then some intrigues had started, which his wife was even mixed up in. He had shown his pride, his hot temper; a change had occurred in the provincial government to the advantage of his enemies; there had been sabotage, complaints; he had lost his job and on his last means had come to Petersburg for an explanation; in Petersburg, to be sure, they did not listen to him for a long time, then they heard him out, then responded with a refusal, then lured him with promises, then responded with severity, then told him to write something in explanation, then refused to accept what he had written, told him to petition—in short, it was already the fifth month that he had been running around, everything had been eaten up, his wife's last clothes had been pawned, and now the baby had been born and, and . . . "today came the final negative response to my petition, and I have almost no food, nothing, my wife has given birth. I . . . I . . ."

He jumped up from his chair and turned away. His wife wept in the corner, the baby began squealing again. I took out my notebook and started writing in it. When I finished and got up, he was standing before me and looking at me with timorous curiosity.

"I've written down your name," I said to him, "well, and all the rest: the place of work, the name of your governor, the days, the months. I have a friend from my school days, Bakhmutov, and his uncle, Pyotr Matveevich Bakhmutov, an actual state councillor,¹⁵ who serves as the director . . ."

"Pyotr Matveevich Bakhmutov!" my medical man cried out, all but trembling. "But it's on him that almost everything depends!"

Indeed, in my medical man's story and in its denouement, to which I inadvertently contributed, everything came together and got settled as if it had been prepared that way on purpose, decidedly as in a novel. I told these poor people that they should try not to place any hopes in me, that I myself was a poor high-school student (I exaggerated the humiliation on purpose; I finished my studies long ago and am not a student), and that they need not know my name, but that I would go at once to Vassilievsky Island, to see my friend Bakhmutov, and as I knew for certain that his uncle, an actual state councillor, a bachelor, and with no children, decidedly adored his nephew and loved him to the point of passion, seeing in him the last bearer of his name, "maybe my friend will be able to do something for you—and for me, of course—through his uncle . . ."

"If only I could be allowed to explain things to his excellency!

If only I could be vouchsafed the honor of explaining it verbally!" he exclaimed, trembling as if in fever and with flashing eyes. He did say vouchsafed. Having repeated once more that the thing would probably be a flop and turn out to be all nonsense, I added that if I did not come to see them the next morning, it would mean that the matter was ended and they had nothing to expect. They saw me off, bowing, they were nearly out of their minds. I will never forget the expressions on their faces. I hired a cab and headed at once for Vassilievsky Island.

In school, over the course of several years, I was constantly at enmity with this Bakhmutov. Among us he was considered an aristocrat, or at least I called him one: he was excellently dressed, drove around in his own carriage, did not show off in the least, was always a wonderful comrade, was always remarkably cheerful and sometimes even very witty, though none too long on intelligence, despite the fact that he was always first in the class; while I was never first in anything. All our classmates liked him, except for me alone. He approached me several times during those several years; but each time I sullenly and irritably turned my back on him. Now I had not seen him for about a year; he was at the university. When, towards nine o'clock, I entered his room (with great ceremony: I was announced), he met me at first with surprise, even quite ungraciously, but he cheered up at once and, looking at me, suddenly burst into laughter.

"But why did you take it into your head to call on me, Terentyev?" he cried with his usual sweet casualness, sometimes bold but never offensive, which I so loved in him and for which I so hated him. "But what's wrong," he cried in fear, "you're quite ill!"

Coughing tormented me again, I fell into a chair and was barely able to catch my breath.

"Don't worry, I have consumption," I said. "I've come to you with a request."

He sat down in surprise, and I at once told him the doctor's whole story and explained that he himself, having great influence on his uncle, might be able to do something.

"I will, I certainly will, I'll assault my uncle tomorrow; and I'm even glad, and you told it all so well . . . But still, Terentyev, why did you take it into your head to turn to me?"

"So much of it depends on your uncle, and besides, Bakhmutov, you and I were always enemies, and since you are a noble man, I thought you would not refuse an enemy," I added with irony.