As soon as she arrived in Rome, Irene sent for Gzhatski.

“Are you not ashamed of yourself?” she asked him reproachfully, “for having given me such a horrible book? What was your object? Of what benefit could such a book be to anybody?”

“I only wanted to open your eyes to convent life,” he answered, “you seemed to know nothing but its outer, or decorative side, so I thought I would show you what is hidden under that charming exterior.”

“But Saint Amulfia lived in the seventeenth century! Surely everything has changed since then?” protested Irene weakly.

“Not in convents!” replied Gzhatski with emphasis. “Nothing can ever change where the very fundamental conditions are abnormal. Human beings were created to live in the world, to work together, to be happy together, and thankfully to accept and enjoy all that life can give. Only in complying with these conditions can they retain their moral and mental equilibrium. The moment they leave the world and become possessed by some monomania, such as the saving of their own souls, they are unbalanced, and there soon follow all the hallucinations, visions, temptations of the devil, and what not, so common in convents. Convents are now being closed in France, not, as is popularly supposed, through the influence of Freemasons, but by science and enlightenment, two forces that always hold high their torch in France, and always have the last word. No one doubts that in their time convents were of great use to humanity. With the exception of the comparatively rare cases in which inexperienced souls were forcibly or artificially lured into taking the veil and so ruining their healthy, normal natures, most of the people who became nuns were such as felt the renunciation of normal life to be their vocation, in other words, entirely unbalanced characters. Convents, therefore, rendered an enormous service to society by imprisoning within their walls erotic and hysterical women, and all sorts of maniacs, whose presence in the world might have been highly detrimental to their fellows. Whenever some sort of power fell accidentally into their hands, they managed to do harm even after having renounced life. One need only take the one great instance of the Spanish Inquisition, and of all the subtle refinement of torture in which, during its sway, the cruel voluptuousness of these diseased natures found its outlet.

“Science tells us that rest and silence and a regular life, free from all disquieting influences, work wonders for sufferers from nervous diseases. In monasteries and convents, such patients were not only kept, but they also underwent cures, for in addition to everything else, these religious institutions were generally situated amid the loveliest and healthiest natural surroundings, and almost all the modern German and Swiss sanatoria and ‘Rest or Air Cure’ Establishments have been built on or near the ruins of some ancient monastery or convent. The founders of the latter well knew with what kind of subjects they would have to deal, and what exactly these subjects needed. I repeat: Monasteries and convents have in the past rendered humanity a great service, by taking the place of asylums and sanatoria for mental and nervous sufferers. Now that institutions for the cure or care of such sufferers abound everywhere, convents have become useless, and are being suppressed.

“In Russia, they still exist, and will long continue to exist and be needed, because they provide for our peasantry that change and relaxation which the upper classes find in their travels abroad. A certain amount of change is essential to all human beings, but most particularly to inhabitants of the gloomy North, with its cold cheerless climate. The English, for instance, have long ago realized that it is necessary for the maintenance of their health and strength to travel at least once a year. Whither would our Russian peasant and his hapless ‘old woman’ betake themselves, if there existed no monastery where one can go for a ‘prayer week’? For them, convents represent the new places, new people, new impressions, which are so necessary for jaded nerves, and which have such a reviving influence on body and soul. Our monasteries are perfectly aware of this, and willingly receive, feed, and maintain pilgrim visitors. The most hospitable of all is, perhaps, the Valamski Monastery, and our silly Petrograd does not even suspect how much of its moral and mental good health it owes to this institution. While various charitable societies are only just beginning to organize picnics and excursions, the Valamski Brothers have long had their own private steamers, which, modestly and without any advertisement or flourish of trumpets, bring visitors to Valam, at a fare cheap enough to be within the means of the most limited purse. Once there, all travellers are received alike by the monks, with kindness and courtesy, are regaled with simple, wholesome food, and provided with distractions in the shape of rowing and sailing. How many delightful impressions have been brought back from these excursions by the poor of Petrograd, during those glorious summer months, when all nature rejoices! But for the Valamski Monastery, many a puny Petrograd slum child would never have known how beautiful God’s world is. All honour to the modest brotherhood of Valam! These are true Christians, since they share with others God’s most glorious gift to man—nature!

“Russian monasteries also render a service to the people by their beautiful singing. The desire for music is not, as many people wrongly suppose, the privilege of the cultured circles. There are indeed many clever and well-educated people who do not care about music at all, while there are ignorant peasants who delight in it. You have only to go to the big Cathedral of the Alexander-Nevsky Lavra, at Christmas or Easter. At no concert will you see such beaming, happy faces. The people will stand for two or three hours, forgetting everything in the world but the delight of the soft dulcet tones of the choir.

“In all poor countries, where general culture is not very advanced, monasteries give to the masses the silence, poetry and music, for which their souls unconsciously yearn. As soon, however, as a people grows prosperous, educates itself and finds its own distractions, the need for convents or monasteries disappears. Simple-minded folk imagine that the suppression of the religious orders means the decay of Christianity—but they forget that monasteries existed in India and in China, long before the birth of Christ. Christianity did not invent them, but the monasteries of the time gradually adopted the new faith. Actually, all such institutions are quite contrary to Christian ideals, for Christ’s teaching, above all else, enjoins activity. Much more in conformity with the Gospel are the modern religious working associations, with their hospitals, schools, and refuges, which are springing up everywhere now in place of the old convents. Their introduction into modern life is perfectly comprehensible. In addition to the nervous wrecks, there were also some healthy people who used to enter convents; people, indeed, whose superior spiritual health, so to speak, prompted them to consider the happiness of others, before their own. Such monks and nuns as these were not content to do nothing but fast and pray, but invented occupations for themselves. Some founded schools and colleges, others nursed the sick, others again became missionaries in foreign lands. They wore the prescribed attire of their orders, but in all other respects they lived in the world as before, loving and helping their neighbours, and sharing the interests and joys and sorrows of their fellow-creatures. It is this healthy class of monastics, that is now, after the suppression of the old institutions, hastening to found new ones, more in keeping with the needs of our times. Such charitable associations have sprung up in large numbers also in Russia—God speed them! But institutions of that kind will never attract people like you, Irene Pavlovna!”

“Why not?”

“Because you are ill, and your illness makes the old convents, with their mysticism and their mysteries and their sleeping existence somewhere between earth and heaven, far more attractive to you.”

“But what is this disease?” asked Irene, with a mistrustful smile.

“The disease from which you are suffering is disgust for all activity and contempt for all mankind. This disease usually attacks the children or grand-children of writers, scientists, artists, sometimes also of State officials, the kind that have spent all their lives in pouring over State archives or other papers. Their mental overwork, at the expense of physical strength, leaves indelible traces, and has to be paid for by their children, who always have morbid desires for some fantastic existence invented by their own imaginations, and find real life dull and colourless. As soon as they are over the borders of childhood, they begin, like ancient Israel, to dispute and struggle with God. They refuse to accept the humanity He has created, with all its faults and failings; they invent their own fanciful heroes, and demand of God that He should give these imaginary creatures life. It is principally women in whom this morbid contempt for human nature manifests itself. The girl, indeed, is rare who does not, on getting married, attempt to remodel her husband according to her own ideas. She tries to turn a passionate worldling into a monk, prepares to metamorphose a pensive lover of solitude into a brilliant society dandy, or forces a pleasure-loving social lion into the narrow circle of her domestic interests. And the poor deluded creature never for a moment doubts the success of her efforts. ‘I shall only have to be insistent, and to give him no peace,’ she thinks, ‘and all will be as I wish.’

“Some women, indeed, shatter their happiness in this way, and to the end of their lives never realize their mistake. Of course, this ridiculous feature of their characters proves the profound depths of ignorance in which women are still groping, in spite of their superficial, if sometimes apparently brilliant, intellectual attainments. Were their mental development less shallow, they would understand that God cannot for their pleasure entirely remodel a completed creation. This seems, indeed, a very simple fact, but it is surprising how few women can grasp it. Most of my morbid types try to escape from the prose of life by means of operas, novels, dreams, and in this way they only broaden the gulf that separates them from their more reasonable fellow-creatures. They feel that happiness is their birthright, and they torment themselves because they cannot attain it. Time passes, and brings disillusionment, since the world refuses to conform itself to vain fancies. And then begins the quarrel with God.

“‘Send me a man after my own heart,’ cry the poor deluded ones to the Almighty, often with bitter tears. ‘Then I shall be happy, will believe in Thy might, and will bless and praise Thy name. I despise the low, sinful people by whom I am surrounded, and I suffer through this very fact. I long to bow my head before some nobler being, some man who has only virtues, and to whom I could all my life look up in adoration.’

“What answer can God give to such prayers, however sincere and agonized they may be? They remain ungranted, and little by little they turn into murmurs, discontent, and finally, unbelief.

“‘Were there a God,’ think these unfortunates, with a burning sense of injustice, ‘He would pay attention to my sufferings. Once He remains silent, this proves that He does not exist.’

“The only result is a wrecked life, void of happiness, and without benefit to anybody.

“Such diseased characters ought to be treated and cured in childhood. Their interest in life should be artificially educated. Novels and operas should be strictly forbidden. They should be taught history and medical science, and they should be made to work in hospitals, in order to overcome that unnatural disgust for mere physical life, which is one of their chief characteristics. They should be trained to observe their surroundings, even to express in writing their impressions of people with whom they come in contact, and to make logical deductions on the subject of the probable futures of these people. In a word, to attach these sick creatures to earth, one must convince them that there exists nothing so interesting as humanity. Only when observation and interest in their fellow-creatures becomes a habit, will they understand the object of life. Instead of contempt, their hearts will be filled with profound pity. It is themselves, indeed, that one cannot at present regard without pity, these hapless sufferers from a deep-seated moral disease. Rancour, greed, envy, voluptuousness, cruelty, these are all spiritual ailments, needing special doctors and special medicines.”

“But—” stammered Irene, “these are sins, and not diseases. You are preaching some entirely new theory.”

“No; it only seems new to you, but it is actually as old as the hills. Shakespeare already described, in Othello, the symptoms of the disease of jealousy, and in Hamlet, again, he showed us a soul paralyzed by excessive self-analysis. Read the monologue of Pouschkin’s ‘Avaricious Knight,’ and you will agree that this is the monologue of a madman. Compare him with MoliÈre’s ‘Miser,’ and you will notice that both the writers have emphasized the characteristic feature of all misers: hatred of their children. Ask any doctor, and he will tell you that mental patients, in almost every case, lose the capacity to love or take an interest in their relations and friends, sometimes, indeed, manifesting a violent animosity towards them.

“It is not, indeed, only Shakespeare, or Pushkin, or MoliÈre, it is all the science and literature of centuries, that has prepared the way for this (as you call it) ‘new theory.’ In our hearts, we have already long ago accepted it; we are only hesitating to proclaim it loudly, because it destroys all our laws and all our religions, and the whole working of our worn-out social machinery. We are not yet rid of the ideals of the Middle Ages; we cannot tear ourselves away from the hell that we picture to ourselves as clearly as did Dante, nor from the heaven that, in our imagination, is quite as dull and colourless as that of the immortal Florentine. But time passes, and we have reached the last days of the Middle Ages. The New Era will begin when people will at last dare to proclaim loudly that there are no saints and sinners, but only the sick and the healthy. A healthy man can find heaven on earth, while a diseased nature lives in a worse hell than any that can be invented by the most glowing imagination. Only when we realize this, shall we understand the Gospel. Until now, during all these nineteen centuries, we have not understood it at all, but have preserved it, feeling instinctively that we shall need it in time. Christ’s love for ‘sinners’ will become clear to us, and we ourselves shall be filled with profound pity for these sufferers. Even to-day, no one dreams of hating the insane, or being incensed against them, or punishing them. Gradually we shall begin to regard in the same light all malicious, immoral, envious natures, pitying them boundlessly for being afflicted with such cruel diseases. The teaching of Christ, hitherto but half understood, will become clear and simple.”

“But, allow me!”—interrupted Irene. “How about murderers? Will you expect us to pity them, too, and shed tears over their moral sufferings?”

“Undoubtedly. Murderers suffer from the most terrible of all moral diseases, and therefore deserve quite particular attention. I don’t know whether you have ever troubled to read accounts of the executions of criminals. I have often done so with great interest. In France, as soon as a man is condemned to death, he is fallen upon by a whole army of reporters, who repeat the minutest details to the public: what the prisoner ate, how much he drank, how he slept, and what he said. This wild chase after a sensational line sometimes unconsciously brings to light important facts. Recently, for instance, I read an account of the guillotining in a provincial town of a man who had killed his father. He had, in cold blood, cut the old man’s throat, in order to come more quickly into his little inheritance. He was, of course, very soon caught—these diseased creatures always are. In prison he astonished everybody by a complete indifference to his murdered father, as well as to his own fate. His sentence startled him for a moment, but, a minute later, he simply and confidently told his gaolers that he hoped to keep up his courage and his spirits to the last moment if, before mounting the scaffold, they could give him some black coffee and some white wine. This desire to make a show of courage before the public is the outcome of a very primitive human impulse. The lower a man’s mental development, the more he gives for his neighbour’s praise. Natures with loftier aspirations set a smaller value on public opinion, being, indeed, sometimes quite indifferent to it.

“The prisoner’s wish is granted, and having swallowed his wine and his coffee he leaves the prison with a firm step, accompanied by a priest, who does not for a moment leave his side. On mounting the scaffold the murderer turns to the assembled crowd and makes a speech, in which he declares his complete repentance and bequeaths his ill-gotten inheritance to charities. These are of course all phrases instilled into him by the priest for the edification of the public. The prisoner repeats them like a parrot, still for the sake of public opinion. In his heart he does not repent in the least, otherwise he could not have previously shown the supreme indifference to his dead father that had so enraged his gaolers.

“At last the comedy is over. The murderer, pleased with his pose of piety, turns round and sees the guillotine knife. Immediately, the savage brute in him awakens. He fights, struggles, scratches, bites and screams—he sells his life dearly. Four other savage brutes throw themselves on him and drag him to the knife. The crowd glumly watches the nauseating scene, and gradually disperses.

“‘The public,’ writes the simple-minded reporter, ‘was present at the triumph of justice, but instead of joy, the prevalent impression was one of having witnessed something incomplete and unsatisfactory.’

“What wonder, indeed! Whatever laws you may invent, whatever religions you may propagate, human instinct always was, is, and will be, more reliable than them all. Instinct pointed out to that crowd that a mistake had been made. No one knew where the mistake lay, but its disturbing presence made itself clearly felt.

“It is the same instinct that sometimes makes people act, in spite of themselves, apparently against their convictions. I remember once being taken to see a new prison, built according to the very latest ideas and principles. The criminals had not yet been transferred into their new quarters. The founder led me with pride through the enormous, lofty, light, excellently ventilated wards, showed me the perfect sanitary arrangements, the wash-stands, the hygienic beds, the luxurious baths, and the kitchen with all the latest and most modern improvements. The government had evidently built, for criminals, this magnificent sanatorium as a reward for the crimes they had committed. Leaving our honest little peasant to starve and freeze as he will, the powers that be had used the money extorted from him in taxes to provide robbers and thieves and murderers with comfortable free lodgings, including light, warmth, excellent food and clothing! In answer to my perplexed question, the prison inspector explained to me that the prisoner is punished by being deprived of his liberty. What an explanation! Liberty is dear to people who know how to profit by it. Of what use is it to those miserable wretches who look upon vodka and cheap tobacco as life’s greatest treasures? They can get both in prison, to say nothing of the gayest and most congenial society! Such prisons are a mockery of justice, and a perversion of common sense. All this and much more could be said to the Government—but the fault-finder would be wrong. The whole kernel of the matter lies in the fact that though we still refuse to accept the new teaching, though we regard it with contempt and hold it up to derision, we nevertheless instinctively already build, not prisons, but—sanatoria. As usual, instinct is more far-seeing than reason or the law. The time is not far off when prison inspectors (who have been transferred by chance into these new sanatoria, together with all the remaining out-of-date paraphernalia of the old institutions) will be replaced by doctors. Then, and only then, will begin the real recovery and redemption of society, never to be attained by the naÏve isolation of acute cases of disease, or the destruction of sick people as if they were mad dogs.”

“But how can such cures be possible? These are surely mere dreams!”

“Why mere dreams? Much has already been done—but medicine is unfortunately still in its infancy. The future will undoubtedly bring to light great discoveries—means and possibilities must only be provided for experiments. Such experiments, indeed, are already receiving attention everywhere. Only a few days ago, for instance, I read in the papers that an Italian professor, director of a gynÆcological institution, had announced at a congress that, according to the results of his researches, all female criminals suffered from various severe forms of women’s diseases. He suggested that instead of imprisonment they should undergo cures in gynÆcological hospitals. Can you imagine anything more wildly stupid than sentencing a woman to death, or shutting her up for life in a prison, only because she needs to undergo a surgical operation? Perhaps one can imagine just one thing that is still more uncivilized—the idea that she will burn for ever in hell, because at the birth of her children she was attended by a clumsy or ignorant midwife!

“And how many such cases do we meet at every step! I remember one of my aunts once told me how she had, in her youth, suffered from over-sensitiveness. She always imagined that everyone was laughing at her, that no one loved her, that she had constant reason to feel offended and insulted. She suffered dreadfully and began to grow positively misanthropical, hating and mistrusting everybody. Happily, chance sent her a clever doctor, who took her in hand, and put her nerves in order. Simultaneously with this improvement, her hysterical sensitiveness disappeared, and now, as soon as she suspects that she is going to have an attack of ‘being offended,’ she sends to the chemist for some bromide, and all is well!”

“You are joking, Sergei Grigorievitch!”

“Not in the least. We could all be of great help to doctors if we would only observe ourselves more closely. Just as people at present, when they feel indisposed, carefully note all the symptoms of their illness, and, in order to decide on a suitable cure, try to determine which of their organs is attacked, even so, some day, people will carefully note their spiritual ailments, and will treat envy, hatred, and malice just as they now treat their liver and kidneys! You are laughing, Irene Pavlovna. But indeed many a new view that seemed strange at first has, after fifty or a hundred years, become generally accepted and positively commonplace. We have, for the time being, forgotten the ancient precept Know thyself; if we took it to heart, we could often be our own doctors, for indeed we each have within ourselves an enormous power of self-treatment. Our Christian confessions—the so-called examens de conscience of the Catholics—are nothing but minute observations of ourselves. In former times people took communion, and therefore went to confession, every Sunday. They were obliged, once a week, critically to examine all their actions, and to decide which of them had been sinful (i.e., not normal). Beyond this they had to talk these actions over with their spiritual advisers, men chosen for this purpose because they were considered worthy of respect and confidence (i.e., because they were normal and healthy). Unfortunately, however, it always happens that customs initiated by master minds for the lasting benefit of humanity, invariably, after a time, fall into the hands of incapable mediocrities, who do not understand the true meaning and object of the ideas in question, and transform them into mechanical poses, from which all sincere natures must turn away.

“A careful observation of ourselves would immensely simplify life, and would make many things much clearer to us. You, for instance, Irene Pavlovna, are sincerely convinced that the only reason why you never married is the fact that you did not meet a man who was worthy of you. Actually there was quite another reason. You simply felt a physical disgust at thought of the realisms of marriage—the living with a man as his wife, the bearing of children, the feeding and nursing of these children. This prose sickened you, and as soon as someone was pleasing or sympathetic to you, you hastened to find or invent reasons for not marrying him. You looked for faults in him, exaggerated them, invented them, and did all you could to assure yourself that he was unworthy of you.

“In addition, marriage would really have meant too sudden a change for you—since, as is the case with all invalids, even the smallest change is a great trial for your nerves. Every trifling decision costs you many nightmares, and is accompanied by palpitation of the heart, tears, and nervous exhaustion. People like you bear every discomfort in their house rather than move into another one, and submit to the tyranny of their servants because they have not the energy to look for new ones. It is curious that such characters arrive, with the greatest ease and promptitude, at theoretical and abstract decisions. For instance, to take a furnished house in the country and move into it for the summer is frightfully difficult, but to emigrate is very easy. One only has to read a charming description of Rome, and—good-bye, Russia! I don’t want you any more! I am going to Italy, and shall become an Italian!”

“What nonsense you are talking, Sergei Grigorievitch! This is all bluff, and you are simply trying to be brilliant! I assure you I have dreamt of marriage all my life. If you only knew what touching scenes of family life I have pictured to myself! This was always my greatest delight!”

“Oh! I quite believe that! We know how to dream beautifully! And in our dreams we are always extraordinarily active! We cross oceans, found colonies, introduce ideal governments, and die as Kings or at least Presidents of Republics! In actual life, however, we groan, we are miserable, and we greatly resent being obliged to bother about going to the Bank, in order to receive the interest of the capital acquired for us by our more energetic ancestors.”

“All this is untrue, and a mockery!”

“Would you like me to prove the truth of my words by an example?”

“If you like.”

“Very well. Do you consider me a career-hunter?”

“Of course not. What an idea!”

“And, in your opinion, I am an honest man worthy of respect?”

“Certainly.”

“In that case, what would you say if I asked you to be my wife?”

“Sergei Grigorievitch! What are you thinking about? I am much too old to marry!”

“There! I have caught you at once! As soon as the word ‘marriage’ is mentioned, you immediately find an excuse.”

“But what I say is true! If you want to marry, you must choose a young girl who can have children.”

“And how do you know that you will have no children? Are you so well acquainted with the decrees of the celestial chancery? Be sincere and say that the thought of marriage disgusts you. That will be nearer the truth.”

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