ngry
and indignant face, brandished his fist towards the top of the stairs
and shouted:

"Scoundrels! Torturers! Bloodsuckers! I won't allow you to hit them! To
hit a weak, drunken woman! Oh, you brutes!..."

"Yegor!... Come, Yegor!..." the medical student began imploring
him. "I give you my word of honor I'll never come with you again. On my
word of honor I won't!"

Little by little the artist was pacified and the friends went homewards.

"Against my will an unknown force," hummed the medical student, "has led
me to these mournful shores."

"Behold t he mill," the artist chimed in a little later, "in ruins now.
What a lot of snow, Holy Mother! Grisha, why did you go? You are a funk,
a regular old woman."

Vassilyev walked behind his companions, looked at their backs, and
thought:

"One of two things: either we only fancy prostitution is an evil, and
we exaggerate it; or, if prostitution really is as great an evil as is
generally assumed, these dear friends of mine are as much slaveowners,
violators, and murderers, as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo, that
are described in the 'Neva.' Now they are singing, laughing, talking
sense, but haven't they just been exploiting hunger, ignorance, and
stupidity? They have--I have been a witness of it. What is the use of
their humanity, their medicine, their painting? The science, art, and
lofty sentiments of these soul-destroyers remind me of the piece of
bacon in the story. Two brigands murdered a beggar in a forest; they
began sharing his clothes between them, and found in his wallet a piece
of bacon. 'Well found,' said one of them, 'let us have a bit.' 'What do
you mean? How can you?' cried the other in horror. 'Have you forgotten
that to-day is Wednesday?' And they would not eat it. After murdering a
man, they came out of the forest in the firm conviction that they were
keeping the fast. In the same way these men, after buying women, go
their way imagining that they are artists and men of science...."

"Listen!" he said sharply and angrily. "Why do you come here? Is it
possible--is it possible you don't understand how horrible it is? Your
medical books tell you that every one of these women dies prematurely of
consumption or something; art tells you that morally they are dead even
earlier. Every one of them dies because she has in her time to entertain
five hundred men on an average, let us say. Each one of them is killed
by five hundred men. You are among those fi