The Moscow doctor was looked upon in Osterno and in many neighboring villages as second only to God.  In fact, many of the peasants placed him before their Creator.  They were stupid, vodka-soddened, hapless men.  The Moscow doctor they could see for themselves.  He came in, a very tangible thing of flesh and blood, built on a large and manly scale; he took them by the shoulders and bundled them out of their own houses, kicking their bedding after them.  He scolded them, he rated them and abused them.  He brought them food and medicine.  He understood the diseases which from time to time swept over their villages.  No cold was too intense for him to brave should they be in distress.  He asked no money, and he gave none.  But they lived on his charity, and they were wise enough to know it.

What wonder if these poor wretches loved the man whom they could see and hear above the God who manifested himself to them in no way!  The orthodox priests of their villages had no money to spend on their parishioners.  On the contrary, they asked for money to keep the churches in repair.  What wonder, then, if these poor ignorant, helpless peasants would listen to no priest; for the priest could not explain to them why it was that God sent a four-month-long winter which cut them off from the rest of the world behind impassable barriers of snow; that God sent them droughts in the summer so that there was no crop of rye; that God scourged them with dread and horrible disease!

It is almost impossible for us to realize, in these days of a lamentably cheap press and a cheaper literature, the mental condition of men and women who have no education, no newspaper, no news of the world, no communication with the universe.  To them the mystery of the Moscow doctor was as incomprehensible as to us is the Deity.  They were so near to the animals that Paul could not succeed in teaching them that disease and death followed on the heels of dirt and neglect.  They were too ignorant to reason, too low down the animal scale to comprehend things which some of the dumb animals undoubtedly recognize.

Paul Alexis, half Russian, half English, understood these people very thoroughly.  He took advantage of their ignorance, their simplicity, their unfathomable superstition.  He governed as no other could have ruled them, by fear and kindness at once.  He mastered them by his vitality, the wholesome strength of his nature, his infinite superiority.  He avoided the terrible mistake of the Nihilists by treating them as children to whom education must be given little by little instead of throwing down before them a mass of dangerous knowledge which their minds, unaccustomed to such strong food, are incapable of digesting.

A British coldness of blood damped as it were the Russian quixotism which would desire to see result follow upon action—­to see the world make quicker progress than its Creator has decreed.  With very unsatisfactory material Paul was setting in motion a great rock which will roll down into the ages unconnected with his name, clearing a path through a very thick forest of ignorance and tyranny.