nce with the cause.
I conceive that they desire, like the lawyers and the rest, to make
money. I would willingly have given them half of my income--and any one
would have done it in my place, understanding what they do--if they had
consented not to meddle in my conjugal life, and to keep themselves at a
distance. I have compiled no statistics, but I know scores of cases--in
reality, they are innumerable--where they have killed, now a child in
its mother's womb, asserting positively that the mother could not give
birth to it (when the mother could give birth to it very well), now
mothers, under the pretext of a so-called operation. No one has counted
these murders, just as no one counted the murders of the Inquisition,
because it was supposed that they were committed for the benefit of
humanity. Innumerable are the crimes of the doctors! But all these
crimes are nothing compared with the materialistic demoralization which
they introduce into the world through women. I say nothing of the fact
that, if it were to follow their advice,--thanks to the microbe which
they see everywhere,--humanity, instead of tending to union, would
proceed straight to complete disunion. Everybody, according to their
doctrine, should isolate himself, and never remove from his mouth a
syringe filled with phenic acid (moreover, they have found out now that
it does no good). But I would pass over all these things. The supreme
poison is the perversion of people, especially of women. One can no
longer say now: 'You live badly, live better.' One can no longer say
it either to himself or to others, for, if you live badly (say the
doctors), the cause is in the nervous system or in something similar,
and it is necessary to go to consult them, and they will prescribe
for you thirty-five copecks' worth of remedies to be bought at the
drug-store, and you must swallow them. Your condition grows worse? Again
to the doctors, and more remedies! An excellent business!

"But to return to our subject. I was saying that my wife nursed her
children well, that the nursing and the gestation of the children, and
the children in general, quieted my tortures of jealousy, but that, on
the other hand, they provoked torments of a different sort."

CHAPTER XVI.

"The children came rapidly, one after another, and there happened
what happens in our society with children and doctors. Yes, children,
maternal love, it is a painful thing. Children, to a woman of our
societ