Yefimitch knew that such surroundings were torture to feverish, consumptive, and impressionable patients; but what could be done?  In the consulting-room he was met by his assistant, Sergey Sergeyitch—­a fat little man with a plump, well-washed shaven face, with soft, smooth manners, wearing a new loosely cut suit, and looking more like a senator than a medical assistant.  He had an immense practice in the town, wore a white tie, and considered himself more proficient than the doctor, who had no practice.  In the corner of the consulting-room there stood a large ikon in a shrine with a heavy lamp in front of it, and near it a candle-stand with a white cover on it.  On the walls hung portraits of bishops, a view of the Svyatogorsky Monastery, and wreaths of dried cornflowers.  Sergey Sergeyitch was religious, and liked solemnity and decorum.  The ikon had been put up at his expense; at his instructions some one of the patients read the hymns of praise in the consulting-room on Sundays, and after the reading Sergey Sergeyitch himself went through the wards with a censer and burned incense.

There were a great many patients, but the time was short, and so the work was confined to the asking of a few brief questions and the administration of some drugs, such as castor-oil or volatile ointment.  Andrey Yefimitch would sit with his cheek resting in his hand, lost in thought and asking questions mechanically.  Sergey Sergeyitch sat down too, rubbing his hands, and from time to time putting in his word.

“We suffer pain and poverty,” he would say, “because we do not pray to the merciful God as we should.  Yes!”

Andrey Yefimitch never performed any operation when he was seeing patients; he had long ago given up doing so, and the sight of blood upset him.  When he had to open a child’s mouth in order to look at its throat, and the child cried and tried to defend itself with its little hands, the noise in his ears made his head go round and brought tears to his eyes.  He would make haste to prescribe a drug, and motion to the woman to take the child away.

He was soon wearied by the timidity of the patients and their incoherence, by the proximity of the pious Sergey Sergeyitch, by the portraits on the walls, and by his own questions which he had asked over and over again for twenty years.  And he would go away after seeing five or six patients.  The rest would be seen by his assistant in his absence.

With the agreeable thought that, thank God, he had no private practice now, and that no one would interrupt him, Andrey Yefimitch sat down to the table immediately on reaching home and took up a book.  He read a great deal and always with enjoyment.  Half his salary went on buying books, and of the six rooms that made up his abode three were heaped up with books and old magazines.  He liked best of all works on history and philosophy; the only medical publication to which he subscribed was The Doctor, of which