would have been now! He was vexed that people would not leave him
in peace. Hobotov thought it his duty to look in on his sick colleague
from time to time. Everything about him was revolting to Andrey
Yefimitch--his well-fed face and vulgar, condescending tone, and
his use of the word "colleague," and his high top-boots; the most
revolting thing was that he thought it was his duty to treat Andrey
Yefimitch, and thought that he really was treating him. On every
visit he brought a bottle of bromide and rhubarb pills.

Mihail Averyanitch, too, thought it his duty to visit his friend
and entertain him. Every time he went in to Andrey Yefimitch with
an affectation of ease, laughed constrainedly, and began assuring
him that he was looking very well to-day, and that, thank God, he
was on the highroad to recovery, and from this it might be concluded
that he looked on his friend's condition as hopeless. He had not
yet repaid his Warsaw debt, and was overwhelmed by shame; he was
constrained, and so tried to laugh louder and talk more amusingly.
His anecdotes and descriptions seemed endless now, and were an agony
both to Andrey Yefimitch and himself.

In his presence Andrey Yefimitch usually lay on the sofa with his
face to the wall, and listened with his teeth clenched; his soul
was oppressed with rankling disgust, and after every visit from his
friend he felt as though this disgust had risen higher, and was
mounting into his throat.

To stifle petty thoughts he made haste to reflect that he himself,
and Hobotov, and Mihail Averyanitch, would all sooner or later
perish without leaving any trace on the world. If one imagined some
spirit flying by the earthly globe in space in a million years he
would see nothing but clay and bare rocks. Everything--culture
and the moral law--would pass away and not even a burdock would
grow out of them. Of what consequence was shame in the presence of
a shopkeeper, of what consequence was the insignificant Hobotov or
the wearisome friendship of Mihail Averyanitch? It was all trivial
and nonsensical.

But such reflections did not help him now. Scarcely had he imagined
the earthly globe in a million years, when Hobotov in his high
top-boots or Mihail Averyanitch with his forced laugh would appear
from behind a bare rock, and he even heard the shamefaced whisper:
"The Warsaw debt. . . . I will repay it in a day or two, my dear
fellow, without fail. . . ."

XVI

One day Mihail Averyanitch ca