“Exaggerating? You can’t see it. Why, he’s a dead man. Look at his eyes—there’s no light in them. But what’s wrong with him?”
“No one can tell. Nikolaev” (that was another doctor) “said something, but I don’t know. Leshtchetitsky” (this was the celebrated doctor) “said the opposite.”
Ivan Ilyitch walked away, went to his own room, lay down, and fell to musing. “A kidney—a loose kidney.” He remembered all the doctors had told him, how it had been detached, and how it was loose; and by an effort of imagination he tried to catch that kidney and to stop it, to strengthen it. So little was needed, he fancied. “No, I’ll go again to Pyotr Ivanovitch” (this was the friend who had a friend a doctor). He rang, ordered the horse to be put in, and got ready to go out.
“Where are you off to, Jean?” asked his wife with a peculiarly melancholy and exceptionally kind expression.
This exceptionally kind expression exasperated him. He looked darkly at her.
“I want to see Pyotr Ivanovitch.”
He went to the friend who had a friend a doctor. And with him to the doctor’s. He found him in, and had a long conversation with him.
Reviewing the anatomical and physiological details of what, according to the doctor’s view, was taking place within him, he understood it all. It was just one thing—a little thing wrong with the intestinal appendix. It might all come right. Only strengthen one sluggish organ, and decrease the undue activity of another, and absorption would take place, and all would be set right. He was a little late for dinner. He ate his dinner, talked cheerfully, but it was a long while before he could go to his own room to work. At last he went to his study, and at once sat down to