Anna Karenina - Part 2

With his habitual control over his thoughts, though he thought

all this about his wife, he did not let his thoughts stray

further in regard to her.

That morning was a very full one for Alexey Alexandrovitch. The

evening before, Countess Lidia Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet

by a celebrated traveler in China, who was staying in Petersburg,

and with it she enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler

himself, as he was an extremely interesting person from various

points of view, and likely to be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch

had not had time to read the pamphlet through in the evening, and

finished it in the morning. Then people began arriving with

petitions, and there came the reports, interviews, appointments,

dismissals, apportionment of rewards, pensions, grants, notes,

the workaday round, as Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that

always took up so much time. Then there was private business of

his own, a visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his

property. The steward did not take up much time. He simply gave

Alexey Alexandrovitch the money he needed together with a brief

statement of the position of his affairs, which was not

altogether satisfactory, as it had happened that during that

year, owing to increased expenses, more had been paid out than

usual, and there was a deficit. But the doctor, a celebrated

Petersburg doctor, who was an intimate acquaintance of Alexey

Alexandrovitch, took up a great deal of time. Alexey

Alexandrovitch had not expected him that day, and was surprised

at his visit, and still more so when the doctor questioned him

very carefully about his health, listened to his breathing, and

tapped at his liver. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not know that his

friend Lidia Ivanovna, noticing that he was not as well as usual

that year, had begged the doctor to go and examine him. "Do this

for my sake," the Countess Lidia Ivanovna had said to him.

"I will do it for the sake of Russia, countess," replied the

doctor.

"A priceless man!" said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

The doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey Alexandrovitch.

He found the liver considerably enlarged, and the digestive

powers weakened, while the course of mineral waters had been

quite without effect. He prescribed more physical exercise as

far as possible, and as far as possible less mental strain, and

above all no worry--in other words, just what was as much out of

Alexey Alexandrovitch's power as abstaining from breathing. Then

he withdrew, leaving in Alexey Alexandrovitch an unpleasant sense

that something was wrong with him, and that there was no chance

of curing it.