When Michael Petroff and the little lawyer entered Engelhardt's room, after vainly knocking at the door for some time, they found him in bed, with his thin hairy hands lying helplessly on the coverlet. He was gazing directly upward, and indeed his eyes were rolled up so far that the whites showed, and he seemed to be looking fixedly at some special point in the ceiling. His face was of a somewhat yellowish tone and gave the impression of being made of porcelain, the skin was so smooth and the bones were so prominent. His forehead was uncommonly large in proportion to his small face and mouth, which was drawn together as if ready to whistle and was surrounded by many little lines centering at the lips. The shoemaker had wasted away so during the year that the collar of his bright colored shirt stood out a finger's breadth from his thin neck. "Good morning!" said Michael Petroff gently and cheerfully. "Here are some friends to see you!" The lawyer remained timidly standing in the doorway. Engelhardt did not answer. A shudder passed over him, and his thin hairy hands twitched from time to time, as if he were receiving an electric shock of varying strength. Michael Petroff smiled and came toward him. "How are you, my dear friend?" said he softly and sympathetically, bending over Engelhardt. "Did the Doctor come to see you last night?" Engelhardt rolled his head from side to side on the pillow. He was exhausted by a sleepless night and by the effects of the hypnotics that the Doctor had given him. "Very ill!" answered he in a lifeless tone. "Very ill?" Michael Petroff raised his eyebrows anxiously. He turned to the little lawyer, who still stood at the door. "Our poor friend does not feel well!" said he. "Are you in pain?" Michael Petroff bent once more over the sick man and held his ear near Engelhardt's mouth. "Yes," answered the sick man in a dull and lifeless tone, and murmured something in Petroff's ear. It sounded as if he were praying. Michael Petroff straightened up again and glanced at the little lawyer. "He says that he has come to the end of his strength, our poor friend. He needs a new soul--like that time in the winter, when the attendant died, don't you remember?" And he shouted into the ear of the sufferer, unnecessarily loud: "I will speak with the Doctor, Friend Engelhardt. This is the Doctor's business. In one way or another he will get you a soul!" But the little lawyer suddenly wrapped himself closer in his shawl. He was as cold as ice. Ordinarily very few impressions remained in his memory, but he still remembered clearly the death of the attendant Schwindt--and how Michael Petroff had come to his room and whispered mysteriously in his ear: "The attendant is dead. Engelhardt has taken his soul, don't you see!" So now he was horrified at the thought that Engelhardt might perhaps demand _his_ soul, and there was nothing that he feared more than death.