d moved from the
house in which they were living, and thereby saved the little ones. And
the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this, sustaining my wife in
her opinions. She was not prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some
word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or else--heaven help
us--diphtheria, and off she went.

"It was impossible for it to be otherwise. Women in the old days had the
belief that 'God has given, God has taken away,' that the soul of the
little angel is going to heaven, and that it is better to die innocent
than to die in sin. If the women of to-day had something like this
faith, they could endure more peacefully the sickness of their children.
But of all that there does not remain even a trace. And yet it is
necessary to believe in something; consequently they stupidly believe in
medicine, and not even in medicine, but in the doctor. One believes in
X, another in Z, and, like all believers, they do not see the idiocy of
their beliefs. They believe quia absurdum, because, in reality, if they
did not believe in a stupid way, they would see the vanity of all that
these brigands prescribe for them. Scarlatina is a contagious disease;
so, when one lives in a large city, half the family has to move away
from its residence (we did it twice), and yet every man in the city is a
centre through which pass innumerable diameters, carrying threads of all
sorts of contagions. There is no obstacle: the baker, the tailor, the
coachman, the laundresses.

"And I would undertake, for every man who moves on account of contagion,
to find in his new dwelling-place another contagion similar, if not the
same.

"But that is not all. Every one knows rich people who, after a case of
diphtheria, destroy everything in their residences, and then fall sick
in houses newly built and furnished. Every one knows, likewise, numbers
of men who come in contact with sick people and do not get infected. Our
anxieties are due to the people who circulate tall stories. One woman
says that she has an excellent doctor. 'Pardon me,' answers the other,
'he killed such a one,' or such a one. And vice versa. Bring her
another, who knows no more, who learned from the same books, who treats
according to the same formulas, but who goes about in a carriage, and
asks a hundred roubles a visit, and she will have faith in him.

"It all lies in the fact that our women are savages. They have no belief
in God, but some of them believe in th