"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.
Death dwelt in his confused sick brain as a figure that was invisible all but the hands. Suddenly, Oh so suddenly, it would stand near him, close by his side. And a horrible chill would stream forth from the dread form, and all the flowers, white with frost, would die, and the millions of swift little birds would fall frozen through the air, and he himself would be changed into a little heap of snow.
The lawyer drew in his head, so that his thin gray beard pushed out above his scarf, and gazed timidly at Michael Petroff with his little mouse-like eyes and shivered.
Michael Petroff looked at him in astonishment. "What is the matter, my dear fellow?" he drawled, smilingly. "Are you afraid! Why should you be, I wonder? I shall go at once to Dr. März and explain to him what Engelhardt requires. From what I know of him, he will not delay, and so everything will be attended to. I would gladly place my own soul at your disposal. Friend Engelhardt, but I still need it myself—-I have a mission to fulfil, you know—I am Napoleon, and I fight a battle every day, I am—" But here he paused suddenly and listened.
"The Doctor is coming! Don't you hear him?" he whispered. "He will be here immediately—"
Dr. März had come into the ward. He could be heard speaking with some one in the corridor, and the three men in the shoemaker's room listened. The Doctor's voice was the only one which had the power to change the current of their thoughts and to give them hopes, great hopes, indefinite though they were. It affected them somewhat as a voice affects wanderers, who believe that they are lost in a solitary wilderness. And yet Dr. März did not talk much, but he had become a master of the art of listening, and would pay attention for hours every day to the complaints, the lamentations, and the hundreds of requests of his patients. But a few words from him had the power to encourage, to comfort, to cheer and to influence the mood of his patients for the whole day.
Suddenly the lawyer ceased to shiver, Michael Petroff began to laugh happily, and Engelhardt withdrew his gaze from the point in the ceiling and looked toward the half open door. He gazed so intently that his small bright eyes seemed to squint.