More Tales from Tolstoi
examination, and in what ought to have been the course of procedure after it, some blunder, some confusion took place. It was impossible to get at the doctor, and it turned out that something had been done which the doctor hadn't ordered. Either he had forgotten, or lied, or hidden something from him.
Nevertheless, Ivan Il'ich continued to follow the doctor's prescriptions all the same, and in so doing found for a time some relief.
The principal occupation of Ivan Il'ich, ever since his visit to the doctor, was the exact observance of the doctor's prescriptions as regards hygiene, the taking of drugs, and close attention to his malady and the whole mechanism of his organism. The chief interests of Ivan Il'ich were people's diseases and people's healths. When they spoke about illnesses in his presence, or of people who were dying, or of wonderful cures, or especially of the disease from which he was suffering, he, trying all the time to conceal his emotion, listened eagerly, asked questions, and applied the answers he got to his own case.
His pain did not diminish, but Ivan Il'ich did violence to his own convictions in order to persuade himself that he was better. And he was able to deceive himself so long as nothing excited him. But no sooner did he have any unpleasantness with his wife, or any official bother, or bad cards at vint, then immediately he felt the full force of his illness. Formerly, he had put up with these little mishaps, and struggled against them, waiting for things to right themselves, and for better luck; but now
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