Ivan Ilyitch looks at the doctor with an expression that asks—
“Is it possible you’re never ashamed of lying?”
But the doctor does not care to understand this look.
And Ivan Ilyitch says—
“It’s always just as awful. The pain never leaves me, never ceases. If only there were something!”
“Ah, you’re all like that, all sick people say that. Come, now I do believe I’m thawed; even Praskovya Fyodorovna, who’s so particular, could find no fault with my temperature. Well, now I can say good morning.” And the doctor shakes hands.
And dropping his former levity, the doctor, with a serious face, proceeds to examine the patient, feeling his pulse, to take his temperature, and then the tappings and soundings begin.
Ivan Ilyitch knows positively and indubitably that it’s all nonsense and empty deception; but when the doctor, kneeling down, stretches over him, putting his ear first higher, then lower, and goes through various gymnastic evolutions over him with a serious face, Ivan Ilyitch is affected by this, as he used sometimes to be affected by the speeches of the lawyers in court, though he was perfectly well aware that they were telling lies all the while and why they were telling lies.
The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, was still sounding him, when there was the rustle of Praskovya Fyodorovna’s silk dress in the doorway, and she was heard scolding Pyotr for not having let her know that the doctor had come.