is cheek resting in his
hand, lost in thought and asking questions mechanically. Sergey
Sergeyitch sat down too, rubbing his hands, and from time to time
putting in his word.

"We suffer pain and poverty," he would say, "because we do not pray
to the merciful God as we should. Yes!"

Andrey Yefimitch never performed any operation when he was seeing
patients; he had long ago given up doing so, and the sight of blood
upset him. When he had to open a child's mouth in order to look at
its throat, and the child cried and tried to defend itself with its
little hands, the noise in his ears made his head go round and
brought tears to his eyes. He would make haste to prescribe a drug,
and motion to the woman to take the child away.

He was soon wearied by the timidity of the patients and their
incoherence, by the proximity of the pious Sergey Sergeyitch, by
the portraits on the walls, and by his own questions which he had
asked over and over again for twenty years. And he would go away
after seeing five or six patients. The rest would be seen by his
assistant in his absence.

With the agreeable thought that, thank God, he had no private
practice now, and that no one would interrupt him, Andrey Yefimitch
sat down to the table immediately on reaching home and took up a
book. He read a great deal and always with enjoyment. Half his
salary went on buying books, and of the six rooms that made up his
abode three were heaped up with books and old magazines. He liked
best of all works on history and philosophy; the only medical
publication to which he subscribed was _The Doctor_, of which he
always read the last pages first. He would always go on reading for
several hours without a break and without being weary. He did not
read as rapidly and impulsively as Ivan Dmitritch had done in the
past, but slowly and with concentration, often pausing over a passage
which he liked or did not find intelligible. Near the books there
always stood a decanter of vodka, and a salted cucumber or a pickled
apple lay beside it, not on a plate, but on the baize table-cloth.
Every half-hour he would pour himself out a glass of vodka and drink
it without taking his eyes off the book. Then without looking at
it he would feel for the cucumber and bite off a bit.

At three o'clock he would go cautiously to the kitchen door; cough,
and say, "Daryushka, what about dinner? . ."

After his dinner--a rather poor and untidily served one--Andrey
Yefimitch wou