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 the evil eye, and the others in
doctors who charge high fees. If they had faith they would know that
scarlatina, diphtheria, etc., are not so terrible, since they cannot
disturb that which man can and should love,--the soul. There can result
from them only that which none of us can avoid,--disease and death.