The flat landscape was surrounded on all sides by a blue-grey belt of forest. A few firs grew here and there on grey sandhills, and waste strips of ground, belonging to God knows whom, were scattered in all directions. The only relief was given by the meadows covered with goat's-beard and yellowish grass, but even this withered prematurely--it was as if the light did not possess enough intensity to develop colour. The sun seemed to shine on that desolate spot only in order to show how arid and depressing it was. Daily the doctor trudged, umbrella in hand, along the edge of the sandy road, which was full of holes and marked by a tumbled-down fence. This road did not seem to lead anywhere, for it divided into several paths in the middle of the meadows, and disappeared among molehills. Later on it reappeared on the top of a sandhill in the shape of a furrow, and ran into a wood of dwarf pines. Impatient anger seized the doctor when he looked at that landscape, and a vague feeling of fear made him restless.... The years passed. The priest's mediation had brought about a reconciliation between the doctor and the chemist, now that it was clear that the doctor's zeal for innovations had cooled. Henceforward the rivals hobnobbed at whist, although the doctor always felt a sense of aversion towards the chemist. By degrees even this slightly lessened. He began to visit the chemist, and to make himself agreeable to his wife. On one occasion he was startled by the result of analyzing his heart, which showed that he was even capable of falling platonically in love with Pani Aniela, whose intellect was as blunt as a sugar-chopper. She was under the entirely mistaken impression that she was slim and irresistible, and talked unceasingly and with unexceptionable zeal of her servant's wickedness. Dr. Paweł listened to Pani Aniela's eloquence for hours together with the stereotyped smile that appears on the lips of a youth who is making himself agreeable to beautiful women while suffering tortures from toothache.