into simple language, and to read in them an answer to the question. It’s bad—is it very bad, or nothing much as yet? And it seemed to him that the upshot of all the doctor had said was that it was very bad. Everything seemed dismal to Ivan Ilyitch in the streets. The sledge-drivers were dismal, the houses were dismal, the people passing, and the shops were dismal. This ache, this dull gnawing ache, that never ceased for a second, seemed, when connected with the doctor’s obscure utterances, to have gained a new, more serious significance. With a new sense of misery Ivan Ilyitch kept watch on it now.
He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. His wife listened; but in the middle of his account his daughter came in with her hat on, ready to go out with her mother. Reluctantly she half sat down to listen to these tedious details, but she could not stand it for long, and her mother did not hear his story to the end.
“Well, I’m very glad,” said his wife; “now you must be sure and take the medicine regularly. Give me the prescription; I’ll send Gerasim to the chemist’s!” And she went to get ready to go out.
He had not taken breath while she was in the room, and he heaved a deep sigh when she was gone.
“Well,” he said, “maybe it really is nothing as yet.”
He began to take the medicine, to carry out the doctor’s directions, which were changed after the analysis of the water. But it was just at this point that some confusion arose, either in the analysis or in what ought to have followed from it. The doctor himself, of course, could not be blamed for it, but it turned out that things had not gone as the doctor had told him. Either he had forgotten or told a lie, or was hiding something from him.
But Ivan Ilyitch still went on just as exactly carrying out the doctor’s direction, and in doing so he found comfort at first.