Fed'otch!' We took
larger charges and higher posts. We were even thanked publicly in the
press for our services."

Varvara Ilinitchna sighed. Then she resumed her talking in a different
tone.

"But we live through our fortune. Well, I understand it. It is
our Karma after the Revolution. Property shall avail us nothing.
Everything we have shall be taken from us. Look at this Chinese wall
taking away all our money. Think of that foolish contractor Gretchkin
and our costly datcha. Behold our sickly children. How much money have
we not spent trying to heal our children, eh, eh! Doctors have all
failed. Even a magic healer in the country failed."

"Tell me of him," I urged.

Varvara Ilinitchna went on only too gladly. She had found a listener.

"It was a peasant woman. She healed so many people that, though she
was quite illiterate, the medical faculty gave her a certificate
to the effect that she could cure. I know for a fact that when
specialists gave their patients up as hopeless cases, they recommended
her as a last resort. She was a miracle worker: she almost raised the
dead. You must know, however, that she could only cure rheumatism
cases. For other diseases there are other peasant women in various
parts of Russia. We went to this one and lived a whole summer with her
on a very dirty, dismal countryside. We were all bored to death, and
we came away worse than we went. And all such things cost much, I
assure you."

My hostess verily believed in the effect of the holy water on the
stormy waves, in the gracious influence of St. Spiridon, and in the
magical faculties of certain peasants. Yet observe she uses the word
_Karma_: she calls herself a Theosophist. My long vagabondage she
calls my _Karma_.

"My happiness," I corrected her.

"Happiness or unhappiness, it is all the same, your _Karma_."

She went on to talk of the great powers of Mme. Blavatsky, and she
told me that Alexander Fed'otch had just ordered _The Secret Doctrine_
to read. Good simple man, he will never get through a page of that
abstruse work; and my hostess will understand nothing. Is it not
strange--these people were peasants a generation ago; they are
peasants now by their goodness, hospitality, religion, superstition,
and yet they aspire to be eclectic philosophers? Varvara Ilinitchna
has life itself to read, and she turns away to look at books. Life
does not satisfy her--there are great empty places in it, and she
would be bored often b