He dreamt that he and his wife were the guests of Doctor Wasschtschenko--in a great room, around which stood elegant Viennese chairs. On these chairs sat all the patients from the Infirmary. In the middle of the room the doctor began to dance the Russian national dance with Matrona, whilst Grischka himself played on the accordion and laughed light-heartedly, for the doctor's long legs were quite stiff at the joints, and he stepped in a dignified way like a heron on a bog, by the side of Matrona. And the patients sitting round all laughed also, and swayed uncertainly on their chairs. Suddenly there appeared at the door the police-officer. "Aha!" he cried out in a gloomy threatening voice. "You thought I was dead already, brother Grischka! Here you are playing on the accordion ... but you sent _me_ into the mortuary.... So now then, get up with you, and come and follow me!" Trembling in his whole body, and covered with perspiration, Orloff awoke, and scrambled up from the ground, whilst Doctor Wasschtschenko stood watching him reproachfully, and remarked-- "Just listen to what I've got to say to you, my friend; if you want to go to sleep you have your own bunk there in the Infirmary! Haven't they shown you where it is? What sort of an attendant do you call yourself, if you go and lie here on the ground with nothing over your body?... If you get an inward chill, and knock up and die (which God forbid), what's going to happen then? That's not the way to behave, my friend.... Why you're shivering now ... come along with me, and I will give you something for that...." "I was so dead tired," muttered Orloff in a low voice, making excuses for himself. "So much the worse! You'll have to take care.... It's a dangerous time just now, and we need you here very much." Orloff followed the doctor quietly through the corridors of the Infirmary, swallowed in silence a small glass of medicine, which was handed to him, then drank another; finally made a grimace and spat on one side. "That's right ... and now go and have a good sleep.... Good-day to you!..." The doctor strode with his long thin legs down the corridor, and Orloff stood watching him. Suddenly a smile lit up the attendant's whole face, and he ran after the doctor. "Thank you so much, doctor." "What for?" asked the doctor, standing still. "Why, for the work that I have got here! I will do all I can to please you, for I like being here in all this bustle ... and you said just now you needed me ... so I thank you specially for that, with all my heart...." The doctor watched with surprise the joyful, excited face of the new attendant, and smiled in a friendly way.