the other officials, and for some reason called them aristocrats.  He had only one book in his lodgings, “The Latest Prescriptions of the Vienna Clinic for 1881.”  When he went to a patient he always took this book with him.  He played billiards in the evening at the club:  he did not like cards.  He was very fond of using in conversation such expressions as “endless bobbery,” “canting soft soap,” “shut up with your finicking. . .”

He visited the hospital twice a week, made the round of the wards, and saw out-patients.  The complete absence of antiseptic treatment and the cupping roused his indignation, but he did not introduce any new system, being afraid of offending Andrey Yefimitch.  He regarded his colleague as a sly old rascal, suspected him of being a man of large means, and secretly envied him.  He would have been very glad to have his post.

IX

On a spring evening towards the end of March, when there was no snow left on the ground and the starlings were singing in the hospital garden, the doctor went out to see his friend the postmaster as far as the gate.  At that very moment the Jew Moiseika, returning with his booty, came into the yard.  He had no cap on, and his bare feet were thrust into goloshes; in his hand he had a little bag of coppers.

“Give me a kopeck!” he said to the doctor, smiling, and shivering with cold.  Andrey Yefimitch, who could never refuse anyone anything, gave him a ten-kopeck piece.

“How bad that is!” he thought, looking at the Jew’s bare feet with their thin red ankles.  “Why, it’s wet.”

And stirred by a feeling akin both to pity and disgust, he went into the lodge behind the Jew, looking now at his bald head, now at his ankles.  As the doctor went in, Nikita jumped up from his heap of litter and stood at attention.

“Good-day, Nikita,” Andrey Yefimitch said mildly.  “That Jew should be provided with boots or something, he will catch cold.”

“Certainly, your honour.  I’ll inform the superintendent.”

“Please do; ask him in my name.  Tell him that I asked.”

The door into the ward was open.  Ivan Dmitritch, lying propped on his elbow on the bed, listened in alarm to the unfamiliar voice, and suddenly recognized the doctor.  He trembled all over with anger, jumped up, and with a red and wrathful face, with his eyes starting out of his head, ran out into the middle of the road.

“The doctor has come!” he shouted, and broke into a laugh.  “At last!  Gentlemen, I congratulate you.  The doctor is honouring us with a visit!  Cursed reptile!” he shrieked, and stamped in a frenzy such as had never been seen in the ward before.  “Kill the reptile!  No, killing’s too good.  Drown him in the midden-pit!”

Andrey Yefimitch, hearing this, looked into the ward from the entry and asked gently:  “What for?”

“What for?” shouted Ivan Dmitritch, going up to him with a menacing air and convulsively wrapping himself in his dressing-gown.  “What for?  Thief!” he said with a look of repulsion, moving his lips as though he would spit at him.  “Quack! hangman!”