“Why did you bring me here?” the doctor went on, shaking his beard. “You marry out of high spirits, get angry out of high spirits, and make a melodrama--but where do I come in? What have I got to do with your romances? Leave me alone! Get on with your noble grabbing, parade your humane ideas, play--” the doctor gave a side-glance at the cello-case--“the double-bass and the trombone, stuff yourselves like capons, but don’t dare to jeer at a real man! If you can’t respect him, then you can at least spare him your attentions.” “What does all this mean?” Aboguin asked, blushing. “It means that it’s vile and foul to play with a man! I’m a doctor. You consider doctors and all men who work and don’t reek of scent and harlotry, your footmen, your _mauvais tons._ Very well, but no one gave you the right to turn a man who suffers into a property.” “How dare you say that?” Aboguin asked quietly. Again his face began to twist about, this time in visible anger. “How dare _you_ bring me here to listen to trivial rubbish, when you know that I’m in sorrow?” the doctor cried and banged his fists on the table once more. “Who gave you the right to jeer at another’s grief?” “You’re mad,” cried Aboguin. “You’re ungenerous. I too am deeply unhappy and ... and ...” “Unhappy”--the doctor gave a sneering laugh--“Don’t touch the word, it’s got nothing to do with you. Wasters who can’t get money on a bill call themselves unhappy too. A capon’s unhappy, oppressed with all its superfluous fat. You worthless lot!” “Sir, you’re forgetting yourself,” Aboguin gave a piercing scream. “For words like those, people are beaten. Do you understand?” Aboguin thrust his hand into his side pocket, took out a pocket-book, found two notes and flung them on the table. “There’s your fee,” he said, and his nostrils trembled. “You’re paid.” “You dare not offer me money,” said the doctor, and brushed the notes from the table to the floor. “You don’t settle an insult with money.” Aboguin and the doctor stood face to face, heaping each other with undeserved insults. Never in their lives, even in a frenzy, had they said so much that was unjust and cruel and absurd. In both the selfishness of the unhappy is violently manifest. Unhappy men are selfish, wicked, unjust, and less able to understand each other than fools. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them; and just where one would imagine that people should be united by the community of grief, there is more injustice and cruelty done than among the comparatively contented. “Send me home, please,” the doctor cried, out of breath. Aboguin rang the bell violently. Nobody came. He rang once more; then flung the bell angrily to the floor. It struck dully on the carpet and gave out a mournful sound like a death-moan. The footman appeared.