"But all this will never happen," says Yashka, becoming rather
frightened at the prospect held out to him by the teacher. "She
is healthy, and I cannot have reached the child . . . She is a
devil--a hag!" he shouts angrily. "I would . . . She will eat
me away as rust eats iron."

"I understand, Yakov, that you cannot help beating your wife,"
the teacher's sad and thoughtful voice again breaks in. "You
have many reasons for doing so . . . It is your wife's character
that causes you to beat her so incautiously . . . But your own
dark and sad life . . ."

"You are right!" shouts Yakov. "We live in darkness, like the
chimney-sweep when he is in the chimney!"

"You are angry with your life, but your wife is patient; the
closest relation to you--your wife, and you make her suffer for
this, simply because you are stronger than she. She is always
with you, and cannot get away. Don't you see how absurd you
are?"

"That is so. . . . Devil take it! But what shall I do? Am I
not a man?"

"Just so! You are a man. . . . I only wish to tell you that if
you cannot help beating her, then beat her carefully and always
remember that you may injure her health or that of the child. It
is not good to beat pregnant women . . . on their belly or on
their sides and chests. . . . Beat her, say, on the neck . . .
or else take a rope and beat her on some soft place . . ."