ke me a fool; I don't take black for white; I
know a thing or two; I could see very clearly, for instance that
Aleksandra Andreyevna--that was her name--did not feel love for me,
but had a friendly, so to say, inclination--a respect or something for
me. Though she herself perhaps mistook this sentiment, anyway this was
her attitude; you may form your own judgment of it. But," added the
doctor, who had brought out all these disconnected sentences without
taking breath, and with obvious embarrassment, "I seem to be wandering
rather--you won't understand anything like this ... There, with your
leave, I will relate it all in order."

He drank off a glass of tea, and began in a calmer voice.

"Well, then. My patient kept getting worse and worse. You are not a
doctor, my good sir; you cannot understand what passes in a poor
fellow's heart, especially at first, when he begins to suspect that
the disease is getting the upper hand of him. What becomes of his
belief in himself? You suddenly grow so timid; it's indescribable. You
fancy then that you have forgotten everything you knew, and that the
patient has no faith in you, and that other people begin to notice how
distracted you are, and tell you the symptoms with reluctance; that
they are looking at you suspiciously, whispering... Ah! it's horrid!
There must be a remedy, you think, for this disease, if one could find
it. Isn't this it? You try--no, that's not it! You don't allow the
medicine the necessary time to do good... You clutch at one thing,
then at another. Sometimes you take up a book of medical
prescriptions--here it is, you think! Sometimes, by Jove, you pick one
out by chance, thinking to leave it to fate... But meantime a
fellow-creature's dying, and another doctor would have saved him. 'We
must have a consultation,' you say; 'I will not take the
responsibility on myself.' And what a fool you look at such times!
Well, in time you learn to bear it; it's nothing to you. A man has
died--but it's not your fault; you treated him by the rules. But
what's still more torture to you is to see blind faith in you, and to
feel yourself that you are not able to be of use. Well, it was just
this blind faith that the whole of Aleksandra Andreyevna's family had
in me; they had forgotten to think that their daughter was in danger.
I, too, on my side assure them that it's nothing, but meantime my
heart sinks into my boots. To add to our troubles, the roads were in
such a state th