“An evil Ikon, nevertheless, that Spiridon of Tremifond,” I thought, but I wouldn’t say so to my hostess.

“And you’ve been happy ever since?” I asked.

“Not happy.  Who even hopes to be happy?  But we did well.  The railway company opened new establishments, and the directors have loved my husband, and one of them even said at a public meeting, ’Would to God there were more men in the world like Alexander Fed’otch!’ We took larger charges and higher posts.  We were even thanked publicly in the press for our services.”

Varvara Ilinitchna sighed.  Then she resumed her talking in a different tone.

“But we live through our fortune.  Well, I understand it.  It is our Karma after the Revolution.  Property shall avail us nothing.  Everything we have shall be taken from us.  Look at this Chinese wall taking away all our money.  Think of that foolish contractor Gretchkin and our costly datcha.  Behold our sickly children.  How much money have we not spent trying to heal our children, eh, eh!  Doctors have all failed.  Even a magic healer in the country failed.”

“Tell me of him,” I urged.

Varvara Ilinitchna went on only too gladly.  She had found a listener.

“It was a peasant woman.  She healed so many people that, though she was quite illiterate, the medical faculty gave her a certificate to the effect that she could cure.  I know for a fact that when specialists gave their patients up as hopeless cases, they recommended her as a last resort.  She was a miracle worker:  she almost raised the dead.  You must know, however, that she could only cure rheumatism cases.  For other diseases there are other peasant women in various parts of Russia.  We went to this one and lived a whole summer with her on a very dirty, dismal countryside.  We were all bored to death, and we came away worse than we went.  And all such things cost much, I assure you.”

My hostess verily believed in the effect of the holy water on the stormy waves, in the gracious influence of St. Spiridon, and in the magical faculties of certain peasants.  Yet observe she uses the word Karma:  she calls herself a Theosophist.  My long vagabondage she calls my Karma.

“My happiness,” I corrected her.

“Happiness or unhappiness, it is all the same, your Karma.”

She went on to talk of the great powers of Mme. Blavatsky, and she told me that Alexander Fed’otch had just ordered The Secret Doctrine to read.  Good simple man, he will never get through a page of that abstruse work; and my hostess will understand nothing.  Is it not strange—­these people were peasants a generation ago; they are peasants now by their goodness, hospitality, religion, superstition, and yet they aspire to be eclectic philosophers?  Varvara Ilinitchna has life itself to read, and she turns away to look at books.  Life does not satisfy her—­there are great empty places in it, and she would be bored often but that she has books to open in these places.  She was very interesting to me as an example of the simple peasant mind under the influence of modern culture.  Perhaps it is rather a shame to have put down all her old wife’s talk in this way, for she is lovable as one’s own mother.