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times. He said, addressing God, “If Thou dost exist, make this man to
recover” (of course this same thing has been repeated many times),
“and Thou wilt save him and me.”
After extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better.
He did not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Kitty’s
hand, thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free from
pain, and that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised
himself when his soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well.
Hopelessly ill as he was, obvious as it was at the first glance that he
could not recover, Levin and Kitty were for that hour both in the same
state of excitement, happy, though fearful of being mistaken.
“Is he better?”
“Yes, much.”
“It’s wonderful.”
“There’s nothing wonderful in it.”
“Anyway, he’s better,” they said in a whisper, smiling to one an-
other.
This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into
a quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough.
And all at once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself.
The reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty and in
the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes.
Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before,
as though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a
bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and
the same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacra-
ment was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the con-
firmation of the doctor’s words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.
“Is Katya not here?” he gasped, looking round while Levin reluc-
tantly assented to the doctor’s words. “No; so I can say it.... It was for
her sake I went through that farce. She’s so sweet; but you and I can’t
deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in,” he said, and, squeezing
the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it.
At eight o’clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking
tea in their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly.
She was pale, and her lips were quivering. “He is dying!” she whis-
pered. “I’m afraid will die this minute.”
Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow
on the bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.
“How do you feel?” Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.
“I feel I’m setting off,” Nikolay said with difficulty, but with ex-
treme distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did not raise
his head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without their reaching
his brother’s face. “Katya, go away!” he added.
Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go
out.
“I’m setting off,” he said again.
“Why do you think so?” said Levin, so as to say something.
“Because I’m setting off,” he repeated, as though he had a liking for
the phrase. “It’s the end.”
Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.
“You had better lie down; you’d be easier,” she said.
“I shall lie down soon enough,” he pronounced slowly, “when I’m
dead,” he said sarcastically, wrathfully. “Well, you can lay me down if
you like.”
Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed
at his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but
the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one