from my seat, and cry:

"Do leave off! Why are you sitting here like two toads, poisoning the
air with your breath? Give over!"

And without waiting for them to finish their gossip I prepare to go
home. And, indeed, it is high time: it is past ten.

"I will stay a little longer," says Mihail Fyodorovitch. "Will you allow
me, Ekaterina Vladimirovna?"

"I will," answers Katya.

"_Bene!_ In that case have up another little bottle."

They both accompany me with candles to the hall, and while I put on my
fur coat, Mihail Fyodorovitch says:

"You have grown dreadfully thin and older looking, Nikolay Stepanovitch.
What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"Yes; I am not very well."

"And you are not doing anything for it..." Katya puts in grimly.

"Why don't you? You can't go on like that! God helps those who help
themselves, my dear fellow. Remember me to your wife and daughter, and
make my apologies for not having been to see them. In a day or two,
before I go abroad, I shall come to say good-bye. I shall be sure to. I
am going away next week."

I come away from Katya, irritated and alarmed by what has been said
about my being ill, and dissatisfied with myself. I ask myself whether I
really ought not to consult one of my colleagues. And at once I imagine
how my colleague, after listening to me, would walk away to the window
without speaking, would think a moment, then would turn round to me
and, trying to prevent my reading the truth in his face, would say in
a careless tone: "So far I see nothing serious, but at the same time,
_collega_, I advise you to lay aside your work...." And that would
deprive me of my last hope.

Who is without hope? Now that I am diagnosing my illness and prescribing
for myself, from time to time I hope that I am deceived by my own
illness, that I am mistaken in regard to the albumen and the sugar I
find, and in regard to my heart, and in regard to the swellings I
have twice noticed in the mornings; when with the fervour of the
hypochondriac I look through the textbooks of therapeutics and take
a different medicine every day, I keep fancying that I shall hit upon
something comforting. All that is petty.

Whether the sky is covered with clouds or the moon and the stars are
shining, I turn my eyes towards it every evening and think that death is
taking me soon. One would think that my thoughts at such times ought
to be deep as the sky, brilliant, striking.... But no! I think about