"I can't help it," replied Dr. Dólgopólof; "my relations with the isprávnik are strained. I have already been once in trouble for practising without authority; and I have been strictly forbidden to act professionally, under any circumstances whatever, upon pain of imprisonment."
"You were exiled to Siberia," said Mr. Balákhin, desperately, "for your humanity — because you showed sympathy with people in distress. Have you not courage and humanity enough now to come to the help of a suffering woman, even though you may be imprisoned for it?"
"If you put the question in that way," replied Dr. Dólgopólof, "I have. I will perform the operation and take the punishment."
Upon making an examination, Dr. Dólgopólof found that Mrs. Balákhina was not in immediate danger, and he thereupon suggested that a telegram be sent to Governor Lisogórski, at Tobólsk, asking that Dr. Dólgopólof be authorized to perform a grave surgical operation which the local practitioner declined to undertake. The telegram was sent, and in an hour an answer came, saying that the case was not one over which the governor had jurisdiction, and directing the mayor to apply for the desired permission to the medical department of the Ministry of the Interior.
"You see," said Dr. Dólgopólof, contemptuously, to Mr. Balákhin, "how much regard your rulers have for human life."
He then performed the operation, extracted the ball, tied up the artery, and left Mrs. Balákhina comfortable and out of danger. On the following day the isprávnik, Ílyin, caused the young surgeon to be arrested and thrown into prison, and began proceedings in a case which still stands on record in the archives of the province of Tobólsk as "The affair of the unauthorized extraction of a bullet, by the administrative exile Nifónt Dólgopólof, from the leg of Madam Balákhina, wife of the mayor of Tiukalínsk." While these proceedings dragged along in the Circumlocution Office of the
