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had sent for his brother, was broken up. Everyone knew that he must
inevitably die soon, that he was half dead already. Everyone wished
for nothing but that he should die as soon as possible, and everyone,
concealing this, gave him medicines, tried to find remedies and doctors,
and deceived him and themselves and each other. All this was false-
hood, disgusting, irreverent deceit. And owing to the bent of his char-
acter, and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else did,
Levin was most painfully conscious of this deceit.
Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his
brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother, Sergey
Ivanovitch, and having received an answer from him, he read this letter
to the sick man. Sergey Ivanovitch wrote that he could not come
himself, and in touching terms he begged his brother’s forgiveness.
The sick man said nothing.
“What am I to write to him?” said Levin. “I hope you are not angry
with him?”
“No, not the least!” Nikolay answered, vexed at the question. “Tell
him to send me a doctor.”
Three more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the
same condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by every-
one now at the mere sight of him, by the waiters and the hotel-keeper
and all the people staying in the hotel, and the doctor and Marya
Nikolaevna and Levin and Kitty. The sick man alone did not express
this feeling, but on the contrary was furious at their not getting him
doctors, and went on taking medicine and talking of life. Only at rare
moments, when the opium gave him an instant’s relief from the never-
ceasing pain, he would sometimes, half asleep, utter what was ever
more intense in his heart than in all the others: “Oh, if it were only the
end!” or: “When will it be over?”
His sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and
prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not in
pain, there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of it, not a
limb, not a part of his body that did not ache and cause him agony.
Even the memories, the impressions, the thoughts of this body awak-
ened in him now the same aversion as the body itself. The sight of
other people, their remarks, his own reminiscences, everything was for
him a source of agony. Those about him felt this, and instinctively did
not allow themselves to move freely, to talk, to express their wishes
before him. All his life was merged in the one feeling of suffering and
desire to be rid of it.
There was evidently coming over him that revulsion that would
make him look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness.
Hitherto each individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such
as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function
giving pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering received
relief, and the effort to relieve them only caused fresh suffering. And
so all desires were merged in one—the desire to be rid of all his suffer-
ings and their source, the body. But he had no words to express this
desire of deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit
asked for the satisfaction of desires which could not now be satisfied.
“Turn me over on the other side,” he would say, and immediately after
he would ask to be turned back again as before. “Give me some broth.
Take away the broth. Talk of something: why are you silent?” And
directly they began to talk ho would close his eyes, and would show
weariness, indifference, and loathing.
On the tenth day from their arrival at the town, Kitty was unwell.
She suffered from headache and sickness, and she could not get up all
the morning.