"What do you think?" inquired Augustinovich.
"Well, what? I think nothing—he is ill, very ill."
A shade of irony passed over Augustinovich's face.
"But I think, professor, that medicine is a very dull child which believes that if it takes its heels in its hands it can lift itself. Is this not the case?"
The doctor nodded a couple of times, prescribed some cooling medicine, and went out. Augustinovich, looking at the prescription, shook his head in his turn, shrugged his shoulders, and sat at the bed.
Meanwhile the patient grew worse toward evening, about midnight he was almost dying. Augustinovich wept like a child and knocked himself against the walls of the chamber. He sat up again through the whole night.
Toward morning it seemed to him that he noticed a slight improvement, but that improvement was deceptive. Pale and red spots appeared on the sick man; evidently he had burnt out in fever and was quenching.
In the evening Pani Visberg came. Augustinovich would not admit her to the room. From his face she learned that something terrible must be happening.
