TO E. M. S.

MOSCOW,
September 16.


So we old bachelors smell of dogs? So be it. But as for specialists in
feminine diseases being at heart rakes and cynics, allow me to differ.
Gynaecologists have to do with deadly prose such as you have never dreamed
of, and to which perhaps, if you knew it, you would, with the ferocity
characteristic of your imagination, attribute a worse smell than that of
dogs. One who is always swimming in the sea loves dry land; one who for
ever is plunged in prose passionately longs for poetry. All gynaecologists
are idealists. Your doctor reads poems, your instinct prompted you right; I
would add that he is a great liberal, a bit of a mystic, and that he dreams
of a wife in the style of the Nekrassov Russian woman. The famous Snyegirev
cannot speak of the "Russian woman" without a quiver in his voice. Another
gynaecologist whom I know is in love with a mysterious lady in a veil whom
he has only seen from a distance. Another one goes to all the first
performances at the theatre and then is loud in his abuse, declaring that
authors ought to represent only ideal women, and so on. You have omitted to
consider also that a good gynaecologist cannot be a stupid man or a
mediocrity. Intellect has a brighter lustre than baldness, but you have
noticed the baldness and emphasized it--and have flung the intellect
overboard. You have noticed, too, and emphasized that a fat man--brrr!--
exudes a sort of greasiness, but you completely lose sight of the fact that
he is a professor--that is, that he has spent several years in thinking and
doing something which sets him high above millions of men, high above all