Page 446 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

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.
As he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet
on the staircase an acquaintance of his, Sludin, who was
secretary of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department. They
had been comrades at the university, and though they
rarely met, they thought highly of each other and were
excellent friends, and so there was no one to whom the
doctor would have given his opinion of a patient so freely
as to Sludin.
‘How glad I am you’ve been seeing him!’ said Sludin.
‘He’s not well, and I fancy.... Well, what do you think of
him?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said the doctor, beckoning over Sludin’s
head to his coachman to bring the carriage round. ‘It’s just
this,’ said the doctor, taking a finger of his kid glove in his
white hands and pulling it, ‘if you don’t strain the strings,
and then try to break them, you’ll find it a difficult job;

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