ergy
and attention to all that lay before him to do.

Having ascertained that the doctor was not getting up, Levin
considered various plans, and decided on the following one: that
Kouzma should go for another doctor, while he himself should go
to the chemist's for opium, and if when he came back the doctor
had not yet begun to get up, he would either by tipping the
footman, or by force, wake the doctor at all hazards.

At the chemist's the lank shopman sealed up a packet of powders
for a coachman who stood waiting, and refused him opium with the
same callousness with which the doctor's footman had cleaned his
lamp chimneys. Trying not to get flurried or out of temper,
Levin mentioned the names of the doctor and midwife, and
explaining what the opium was needed for, tried to persuade him.
The assistant inquired in German whether he should give it, and
receiving an affirmative reply from behind the partition, he took
out a bottle and a funnel, deliberately poured the opium from a
bigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a label, sealed it up,
in spite of Levin's request that he would not do so, and was
about to wrap it up too. This was more than Levin could stand;
he took the bottle firmly out of his hands, and ran to the big
glass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and the
footman, busy now in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him.
Levin deliberately took out a ten rouble note, and, careful to
speak slowly, though losing no time over the business, he handed
him the note, and explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a great
and important personage he seemed to Levin now, this Pyotr
Dmitrievitch, who had been of so little consequence in his eyes
before!) had promised to come at any time; that he would
certainly not be angry! and that he must therefore wake him at
once.

The footman agreed, and went upstairs, taking Levin into the
waiting room.

Levin could hear through the door the doctor coughing, moving
about, washing, and saying something. Three minutes passed; it
seemed to Levin that more than an hour had gone by. He could not
wait any longer.

"Pyotr Dmitrievitch, Pyotr Dmitrievitch!" he said in an imploring
voice at the open door. "For God's sake, forgive me! See me as
you are. It's been going on more than two hours already."

"In a minute; in a minute!" answered a voice, and to his
amazement Levin heard that the doctor was smiling as he spoke.

"For one instant."

"In a minute."