says
there is little hope." And turning to me, she said: "Forgive me, I keep
forgetting that you are not interested."

I felt irritated.

"Why not?" I asked and shrugged my shoulders. "You don't care about my
opinion, but I assure you, the question greatly interests me."

"Yes?"

"In my opinion there is absolutely no need for a medical station at
Malozyomov."

My irritation affected her: she gave a glance at me, half closed her
eyes and said:

"What is wanted then? Landscapes?"

"Not landscapes either. Nothing is wanted there."

She finished taking off her gloves and took up a newspaper which had
just come by post; a moment later, she said quietly, apparently
controlling herself:

"Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if a medical man had been
available she would have lived. However, I suppose landscape-painters
are entitled to their opinions."

"I have a very definite opinion, I assure you," said I, and she took
refuge behind the newspaper, as though she did not wish to listen. "In
my opinion medical stations, schools, libraries, pharmacies, under
existing conditions, only lead to slavery. The masses are caught in a
vast chain: you do not cut it but only add new links to it. That is my
opinion."

She looked at me and smiled mockingly, and I went on, striving to catch
the thread of my ideas.

"It does not matter that Anna should die in childbirth, but it does
matter that all these Annas, Mavras, Pelagueyas, from dawn to sunset
should be grinding away, ill from overwork, all their lives worried
about their starving sickly children; all their lives they are afraid of
death and disease, and have to be looking after themselves; they fade in
youth, grow old very early, and die in filth and dirt; their children as
they grow up go the same way and hundreds of years slip by and millions
of people live worse than animals--in constant dread of never having a
crust to eat; but the horror of their position is that they have no time
to think of their souls, no time to remember that they are made in the
likeness of God; hunger, cold, animal fear, incessant work, like drifts
of snow block all the ways to spiritual activity, to the very thing that
distinguishes man from the animals, and is the only thing indeed that
makes life worth living. You come to their assistance with hospitals and
schools, but you do not free them from their fetters; on the contrary,
you enslave them even more, since by introducing new prejudi