up and down the drawing-room. Now in his short coat, his fashionable
narrow trousers which made his legs look disproportionately slim,
with his big head and long mane he was extremely like a lion. A
gleam of curiosity came into the apathetic face of the doctor. He
got up and looked at Abogin.

"Excuse me, where is the patient?" he said.

"The patient! The patient!" cried Abogin, laughing, crying, and
still brandishing his fists. "She is not ill, but accursed! The
baseness! The vileness! The devil himself could not have imagined
anything more loathsome! She sent me off that she might run away
with a buffoon, a dull-witted clown, an Alphonse! Oh God, better
she had died! I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!"

The doctor drew himself up. His eyes blinked and filled with tears,
his narrow beard began moving to right and to left together with
his jaw.

"Allow me to ask what's the meaning of this?" he asked, looking
round him with curiosity. "My child is dead, my wife is in grief
alone in the whole house. . . . I myself can scarcely stand up, I
have not slept for three nights. . . . And here I am forced to play
a part in some vulgar farce, to play the part of a stage property!
I don't . . . don't understand it!"

Abogin unclenched one fist, flung a crumpled note on the floor, and
stamped on it as though it were an insect he wanted to crush.

"And I didn't see, didn't understand," he said through his clenched