at he was a learned man disguised as a soldier. And, by the
way, the rumours of the erudition of the University porters are greatly
exaggerated. It is true that Nikolay knows more than a hundred Latin
words, knows how to put the skeleton together, sometimes prepares the
apparatus and amuses the students by some long, learned quotation, but
the by no means complicated theory of the circulation of the blood, for
instance, is as much a mystery to him now as it was twenty years ago.

At the table in my study, bending low over some book or preparation,
sits Pyotr Ignatyevitch, my demonstrator, a modest and industrious but
by no means clever man of five-and-thirty, already bald and corpulent;
he works from morning to night, reads a lot, remembers well everything
he has read--and in that way he is not a man, but pure gold; in all else
he is a carthorse or, in other words, a learned dullard. The carthorse
characteristics that show his lack of talent are these: his outlook is
narrow and sharply limited by his specialty; outside his special branch
he is simple as a child.

"Fancy! what a misfortune! They say Skobelev is dead."

Nikolay crosses himself, but Pyotr Ignatyevitch turns to me and asks:

"What Skobelev is that?"

Another time--somewhat earlier--I told him that Professor Perov was
dead. Good Pyotr Ignatyevitch asked:

"What did he lecture on?"

I believe if Patti had sung in his very ear, if a horde of Chinese
had invaded Russia, if there had been an earthquake, he would not have
stirred a limb, but screwing up his eye, would have gone on calmly
looking through his microscope. What is he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him,
in fact? I would give a good deal to see how this dry stick sleeps with
his wife at night.

Another characteristic is his fanatical faith in the infallibility
of science, and, above all, of everything written by the Germans. He
believes in himself, in his preparations; knows the object of life, and
knows nothing of the doubts and disappointments that turn the hair o f
talent grey. He has a slavish reverence for authorities and a complete
lack of any desire for independent thought. To change his convictions is
difficult, to argue with him impossible. How is one to argue with a man
who is firmly persuaded that medicine is the finest of sciences, that
doctors are the best of men, and that the traditions of the medical
profession are superior to those of any other? Of the evil past of
medicine only one tr