“How are we to blame?” said Liza to her mother. “As though we had done it! I’m sorry for papa, but why punish us?”

At the usual hour the doctor came. Ivan Ilyitch answered, “Yes, no,” never taking his exasperated stare from him, and towards the end he said, “Why, you know that you can do nothing, so let me be.”

“We can relieve your suffering,” said the doctor.

“Even that you can’t do; let me be.”

The doctor went into the drawing-room and told Praskovya Fyodorovna that it was very serious, and that the only resource left them was opium to relieve his sufferings, which must be terrible. The doctor said his physical sufferings were terrible, and that was true; but even more terrible than his physical sufferings were his mental sufferings, and in that lay his chief misery.