ts of thought you like, because the
art of enslaving is also gradually being cultivated. We no longer
flog our servants in the stable, but we give to slavery refined
forms, at least, we succeed in finding a justification for it in
each particular case. Ideas are ideas with us, but if now, at the
end of the nineteenth century, it were possible to lay the burden
of the most unpleasant of our physiological functions upon the
working class, we should certainly do so, and afterwards, of course,
justify ourselves by saying that if the best people, the thinkers
and great scientists, were to waste their precious time on these
functions, progress might be menaced with great danger."

But at this point my sister arrived. Seeing the doctor she was
fluttered and troubled, and began saying immediately that it was
time for her to go home to her father.

"Kleopatra Alexyevna," said Blagovo earnestly, pressing both hands
to his heart, "what will happen to your father if you spend half
an hour or so with your brother and me?"

He was frank, and knew how to communicate his liveliness to others.
After a moment's thought, my sister laughed, and all at once became
suddenly gay as she had been at the picnic. We went out into the
country, and lying in the grass went on with our talk, and looked
towards the town where all the windows facing west were like
glittering gold because the sun was setting.

After that, whenever my sister was coming to see me Blagovo turned
up too, and they always greeted each other as though their meeting
in my room was accidental. My sister listened while the doctor and
I argued, and at such times her expression was joyfully enthusiastic,
full of tenderness and curiosity, and it seemed to me that a new
world she had never dreamed of before, and which she was now striving
to fathom, was gradually opening before her eyes. When the doctor
was not there she was quiet and sad, and now if she sometimes shed
tears as she sat on my bed it was for reasons of which she did not
speak.

In August Radish ordered us to be ready to go to the railway-line.
Two days before we were "banished" from the town my father came to
see me. He sat down and in a leisurely way, without looking at me,
wiped his red face, then took out of his pocket our town _Messenger_,
and deliberately, with emphasis on each word, read out the news
that the son of the branch manager of the State Bank, a young man
of my age, had been appointed head of a D