They did not mention the visit to Lauro’s bedside; even to themselves they refrained from comment on his behaviour. But both were better pleased with their call upon Anton Karlowitsch Ferge from St. Petersburg, who lay in bed, with his great good-natured beard and his just as good-natured-looking great Adam’s apple, recovering slowly from the unsuccessful attempt which had been made to install the pneumothorax in his interior economy, and which had been within a hair’s breadth of costing Herr Ferge his life on the spot. He had suffered a frightful shock, the pleura-shock⁠—a quite frequent occurrence in cases where this fashionable technique was applied. But Herr Ferge’s shock had been exceptionally dangerous, a total collapse and critical loss of consciousness, in a word so severe an attack that the operation had been broken off at once, and was indefinitely postponed.