What Is to Be Done?

a great difference according to his ideas. He undertook a great contract; whether it was linen, or provisions, or boot-leather, I am not sure; but as he had been becoming every year more stubborn and supercilious on account of his age and his constant success, and the increasing respect with which he was regarded, he quarrelled with an important personage, got rather angry, berated him, and the job proved to be a bad one. At the end of a week they bade him eat humble pie: he said, “I won’t”; “You will collapse”; “All right, but I won’t give in.” In a month he was told the same thing; he made the same reply; and really, as far as eating humble pie was concerned, he ate no humble pie; but as far as collapsing went⁠—he collapsed! His goods were rejected; moreover, whether there were actual faults, or whether it came from ill will, at all events, his three or four millions vanished. And Pólozof, at the age of seventy, found himself a beggar; that is, a beggar compared to what he had been; but still, without any comparison with what he had been, he lived well; he had some shares in a stearine factory, and without hanging down his nose, accepted the position of manager of this factory, at a good salary. Besides that, there remained, by some chance, a few tens of thousands of rubles. If such remnants of his fortune had been in his hands fifteen or ten years before, they would have been enough to help him push himself up a respectable mountain. But being over sixty, it was hard for him to push himself, and Pólozof argued that it was too late for him to try such a thing, and not within his strength. Now he thought only about arranging as quickly as possible the sale of the factory, the shares of which gave him scarcely any income, or any credit, and the affairs of which it was difficult to bring into a better order. He argued the case cleverly, and he succeeded in explaining to the other chief shareholders that a quick sale was the only way of saving the money buried in the shares. Another thing which occupied his mind was a suitable marriage for his daughter. But the main thing was to sell the factory, turn all the money into five percent governmental bonds, which were at that time in vogue, and to live the remainder of his days peacefully, remembering his past grandeur, the loss of which he bore bravely, preserving all his gayety and firmness.

II

The father loved his Kátya; he did not allow ultra-high-society’s governesses to train the girl too severely. “That is nonsense,” he used to say at all straightenings of the figure, straightening of the manners, and everything of this sort; and when Kátya was fifteen years old, he agreed with her that she could do without English and French governesses. Thus Kátja was entirely at her ease; she felt full freedom in the house. And freedom for her at that time was not to be disturbed in her reading and dreaming. She had few friends among girls, though two or three were very intimate; but suitors for her hand she had without number. She is Pólozof’s only daughter; it’s terrible to speak of: four millions!

But Kátya read and dreamed, and the suitors remained in despair. And Kátya reached the age of seventeen. Thus she read and dreamed, and did not fall in love; but she suddenly began to grow thin, and pale, and languid.

III

Kirsánof did not care to practise, but he did not consider it right for him to refuse consultations. But at this time⁠—it was a year after he became professor, and a year before he married Viéra Pavlovna⁠—the Big Wigs of the Petersburg medical world began to invite him very often to consultations. There were two reasons for it. The first was that there happened to be in the courts a certain Claude Bernard who had lived in Paris. One of the Big Wigs, who went to Paris for some reason, scientific or other, saw with his own eyes Claude Bernard⁠—the real living Claude Bernard. He introduced himself with his rank, his name, his decorations, and his famous patient; and Claude Bernard, after listening to him for half an hour, said, “It was idle for you to come to Paris to learn the successes of medicine; you had no need of leaving Petersburg for that purpose.” The Big Wig took this as an attestation of his own fame, and after he came back to Petersburg mentioned Claude Bernard’s name no less than ten times in the course of twenty-four hours, adding to it no less than five times, “my learned friend” or “my famous comrade in science.” How could he help calling Kirsánof to consultations after that? It was impossible not to! And the second reason was still more important: all the Big Wigs saw that Kirsánof was not trying to get away their practice. He not only did not take cases, but even when eagerly requested did not take them. It is known that many of the Big Wigs who practise have this custom: if death, according to the opinion of the Big Wig, is inevitably approaching the patient, and if, by unfortunate change, they cannot get rid of the patient by sending him to any mineral springs or to any place abroad, then it is necessary to place him in the hands of some other medical man; and in these circumstances the Big Wig is willing to offer money from his own pocket for his colleague to take the case. Kirsánof, in these cases where the Big Wig, with the intention of running away, asked him to take a patient, was rarely willing; he generally recommended such of his friends as were in active practice, and he took for himself only a few cases which were