“I am afraid to say for fear of being mistaken, but I feel that he is alive and will live,” said she, glancing at her stomach.
“Ah, it is dreadful, dreadful to think of.”
Notwithstanding Liza’s insistence that he should go away, Eugène spent the night with her, hardly closing an eye and ready to attend on her.
But she passed the night well, and had they not sent for the doctor she would perhaps have got up.
By dinnertime the doctor arrived and of course said that though if the symptoms recurred there might be cause for apprehension, yet actually there were no positive symptoms, but as there were also no contrary indications one might suppose on the one hand that—and on the other hand that … And therefore she must lie still, and that “though I do not like prescribing, yet all the same she should take this mixture and should lie quiet.” Besides this, the doctor gave Varvára Alexéevna a lecture on woman’s anatomy, during which Varvára Alexéevna nodded her head significantly. Having received his fee, as usual into the backmost part of his palm, the doctor drove away and the patient was left to lie in bed for a week.