That morning Alexei Alexandrovich was very busy. The day before, Countess Lydia Ivanovna had sent him a booklet by a famous traveller to China, then in Petersburg, with a letter asking him to receive the traveller himself - a very interesting and necessary man in many regards. Alexei Alexandrovich had not finished the booklet the night before and so he finished it in the morning. Then petitioners came, reports began, receptions, appointments, dismissals, distributions of awards, pensions, salaries, correspondence - all that everyday business, as Alexei Alexandrovich called it, which took up so much time. Then there were personal matters - visits from his doctor and his office manager. The office manager did not take much time. He merely handed Alexei Alexandrovich the money he needed and gave a brief report on the state of his affairs, which was not entirely good, because it so happened that, having gone out frequently that year, they had spent more and there was a deficit. But the doctor, a famous Petersburg doctor who was on friendly terms with Alexei Alexandrovich, took much time. Alexei Alexandrovich did not expect him that day and was surprised by his arrival and still more by the fact that the doctor questioned him very attentively about his condition, sounded his chest, tapped and palpated his liver. Alexei Alexandrovich did not know that his friend Lydia Ivanovna, noticing that his health was not good that year, had asked the doctor to go and examine the patient. ‘Do it for me,’ she had said to him.
‘I shall do it for Russia, Countess,’ the doctor had replied.
‘A priceless man!’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna had said.
The doctor remained very displeased with Alexei Alexandrovich. He found his liver considerably enlarged, his appetite insufficient, and the waters of no effect. He prescribed as much physical movement and as little mental strain as possible, and above all no sort of distress - that is, the very thing which for Alexei Alexandrovich was as impossible as not to breathe; and he went off, leaving Alexei Alexandrovich with the unpleasant awareness that something was wrong with him and that it could not be put right.
On the porch, as he was leaving, the doctor ran into Slyudin, Alexei Alexandrovich’s office manager, whom he knew well. They had been at the university together and, though they saw each other rarely, respected each other and were good friends, and therefore the doctor would not have given anyone so frank an opinion of the patient as he gave to Slyudin.
‘I’m so glad you visited him,’ said Slyudin. ‘He’s unwell, and I think ... Well, what is it?’
‘Here’s what,’ said the doctor, waving over Slyudin’s head for his coachman to drive up. ‘Here’s what,’ he said, taking a finger of his kid glove in his white hands and stretching it. ‘If a string isn’t tight and you try to break it, it’s very hard to do. But tighten it to the utmost and put just the weight of your finger on it, and it will break. And he, with his assiduousness, his conscientiousness about his work, is tightened to the utmost degree; and there is an external pressure and a heavy one,’ the doctor concluded, raising his eyebrows significantly. ‘Will you be at the races?’ he added, going down to the waiting carriage. ‘Yes, yes, naturally, it takes a lot of time,’ the doctor replied to some remark of Slyudin’s that he had not quite heard.
After the doctor, who had taken so much time, came the famous traveller, and Alexei Alexandrovich, using the just-read booklet and his previous knowledge of the subject, struck the traveller with the depth of his grasp and the breadth of his enlightened outlook.
Along with the traveller, the arrival of a provincial marshal30 was announced, who had come to Petersburg and with whom he had to talk. After his departure, he needed to finish the everyday work with his office manager and also go to see a very significant person on some serious and important business. Alexei Alexandrovich just managed to get back by five o‘clock, his dinner-time, and, having dined with his office manager, invited him to come along to his country house and the races.
Without realizing it, Alexei Alexandrovich now sought occasions for having a third person present at his meetings with his wife.
XXVII
Anna was standing in front of the mirror upstairs, pinning the last bow to her dress with Annushka’s help, when she heard the sound of wheels crunching gravel at the entrance.
