Anna Karenina - Part 7

The doctor was not yet up, and the footman said that "he had been

up late, and had given orders not to be waked, but would get up

soon." The footman was cleaning the lamp-chimneys, and seemed

very busy about them. This concentration of the footman upon his

lamps, and his indifference to what was passing in Levin, at

first astounded him, but immediately on considering the question

he realized that no one knew or was bound to know his feelings,

and that it was all the more necessary to act calmly, sensibly,

and resolutely to get through this wall of indifference and

attain his aim.

"Don't be in a hurry or let anything slip," Levin said to

himself, feeling a greater and greater flow of physical energy

and attention to all that lay before him to do.

Having ascertained that the doctor was not getting up, Levin

considered various plans, and decided on the following one: that

Kouzma should go for another doctor, while he himself should go

to the chemist's for opium, and if when he came back the doctor

had not yet begun to get up, he would either by tipping the

footman, or by force, wake the doctor at all hazards.

At the chemist's the lank shopman sealed up a packet of powders

for a coachman who stood waiting, and refused him opium with the

same callousness with which the doctor's footman had cleaned his

lamp chimneys. Trying not to get flurried or out of temper,

Levin mentioned the names of the doctor and midwife, and

explaining what the opium was needed for, tried to persuade him.

The assistant inquired in German whether he should give it, and

receiving an affirmative reply from behind the partition, he took

out a bottle and a funnel, deliberately poured the opium from a

bigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a label, sealed it up,

in spite of Levin's request that he would not do so, and was

about to wrap it up too. This was more than Levin could stand;

he took the bottle firmly out of his hands, and ran to the big

glass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and the

footman, busy now in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him.

Levin deliberately took out a ten rouble note, and, careful to

speak slowly, though losing no time over the business, he handed

him the note, and explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a great

and important personage he seemed to Levin now, this Pyotr

Dmitrievitch, who had been of so little consequence in his eyes

before!) had promised to come at any time; that he would

certainly not be angry! and that he must therefore wake him at

once.