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"Stupid people! Foolish people! I don't want either your friendship or your medicines, stupid man! Vulgar! Nasty!" Hobotov and Mihail Averyanitch, looking at each other in bewilderment, staggered to the door and went out. Andrey Yefimitch snatched up the bottle of bromide and flung it after them; the bottle broke with a crash on the door-frame.
To stifle petty thoughts he made haste to reflect that he himself, and Hobotov, and Mihail Averyanitch, would all sooner or later perish without leaving any trace on the world. If one imagined some spirit flying by the earthly globe in space in a million years he would see nothing but clay and bare rocks.
"It's high time you were well, dear colleague," said Hobotov, yawning. "I'll be bound, you are sick of this bobbery." "And we shall recover," said Mihail Averyanitch cheerfully. "We shall live another hundred years! To be sure!" "Not a hundred years, but another twenty," Hobotov said reassuringly. "It's all right, all right, colleague; don't lose heart. . . . Don't go piling it on!"
On two or three occasions Andrey Yefimitch was visited by his colleague Hobotov, who also advised him to give up spirituous liquors, and for no apparent reason recommended him to take bromide. In August Andrey Yefimitch got a letter from the mayor of the town asking him to come on very important business.
He was angry with himself for having wasted on travelling the thousand roubles he had saved up. How useful that thousand roubles would have been now! He was vexed that people would not leave him in peace. Hobotov thought it his duty to look in on his sick colleague from time to time.
He meant to go on softly and politely, but against his will he suddenly clenched his fists and raised them above his head. "Leave me alone," he shouted in a voice unlike his own, blushing crimson and shaking all over. "Go away, both of you!" Mihail Averyanitch and Hobotov got up and stared at him first with amazement and then with alarm. "Go away, both!" Andrey Yefimitch went on shouting.
He was glad of the opportunity to smooth over his fault of the previous day and to be reconciled, and in his heart thanked Hobotov, who did not even allude to yesterday's scene and was evidently sparing him. One would never have expected such delicacy from this uncultured man. "Where is your invalid?" asked Andrey Yefimitch. "In the hospital. . . . I have long wanted to show him to you.
On arriving at the town hall at the time fixed, Andrey Yefimitch found there the military commander, the superintendent of the district school, a member of the town council, Hobotov, and a plump, fair gentleman who was introduced to him as a doctor. This doctor, with a Polish surname difficult to pronounce, lived at a pedigree stud-farm twenty miles away, and was now on a visit to the town.
Towards evening on the same day Hobotov, in his sheepskin and his high top-boots, suddenly made his appearance, and said to Andrey Yefimitch in a tone as though nothing had happened the day before: "I have come on business, colleague. I have come to ask you whether you would not join me in a consultation. Eh?"
Going into the lodge and stopping in the entry, Hobotov heard the following conversation: "We shall never agree, and you will not succeed in converting me to your faith," Ivan Dmitritch was saying irritably; "you are utterly ignorant of reality, and you have never known suffering, but have only like a leech fed beside the sufferings of others, while I have been in continual suffering from the day of my birth till to-day.
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