Augustinovich pondered over this, how a man, so active and broadly living a short time before, would be in a couple of days, perhaps, something dead, which they would bury in the ground, and the comedy would be ended! Oh, an ordinary, everyday thought, and every day equally bitter for those who must think: This is the end! dust! Still, when he lived with full life, he judged, analyzed, acted perhaps more widely than others. As a plough turns out the sod, so he, in the soil of life, from the furrows of good and evil was winning good and--? Involuntarily one asks for the moral sense of this fable. Where, when, on what planets, will living persons find an answer beyond the tomb? Immortality?--In the ocean of human acts perhaps a few moral atoms of the deeds of the dead survive, but that I, powerful, energetically self-conscious, where is it? And those atoms of acts are like the corpse of a sailor dropped down from a ship into the abyss of the sea. Where shall we look for them, and who will find them? Will God ever fish them out from those shoreless billows, and will He develop from them a new self-conscious being? "_È bene trovato!_" The bitterness of these thoughts settled now on the sleepy forehead of Augustinovich, but meanwhile the window-panes from black began to turn gray. It was dawning. In the chamber the light of the candle grew rosier gradually and fainter, objects began to issue from the shade. In the corridors were heard now the steps of the hospital servants. An hour later the doctor came in. "How is the patient?" inquired he. "Ill," answered Augustinovich, abruptly. The doctor thrust out his lower lip with importance, wrinkled his forehead, and felt the pulse of the sick man. "What do you think?" inquired Augustinovich. "Well, what? I think nothing--he is ill, very ill." A shade of irony passed over Augustinovich's face. "But I think, professor, that medicine is a very dull child which believes that if it takes its heels in its hands it can lift itself. Is this not the case?" The doctor nodded a couple of times, prescribed some cooling medicine, and went out. Augustinovich, looking at the prescription, shook his head in his turn, shrugged his shoulders, and sat at the bed. Meanwhile the patient grew worse toward evening, about midnight he was almost dying. Augustinovich wept like a child and knocked himself against the walls of the chamber. He sat up again through the whole night. Toward morning it seemed to him that he noticed a slight improvement, but that improvement was deceptive. Pale and red spots appeared on the sick man; evidently he had burnt out in fever and was quenching. In the evening Pani Visberg came. Augustinovich would not admit her to the room. From his face she learned that something terrible must be happening. "Is he alive?" cried she. "He is dying!" answered Augustinovich, briefly.