The doctor went off into a shrill laugh and brought out in a shrill voice: 

“You get out of the carriage, and the old hags, at the word of command from the old garrison rat, begin chanting:  ’The Glory of our Lord in Zion the tongue of man cannot express. . .’  A pretty scene, wasn’t it?”

The doctor went off into a bass chuckle, and waved his hand as though to signify that he could not utter another word for laughing.  He laughed heavily, harshly, with clenched teeth, as ill-natured people laugh; and from his voice, from his face, from his glittering, rather insolent eyes it could be seen that he had a profound contempt for the princess, for the home, and for the old women.  There was nothing amusing or laughable in all that he described so clumsily and coarsely, but he laughed with satisfaction, even with delight.

“And the school?” he went on, panting from laughter.  “Do you remember how you wanted to teach peasant children yourself?  You must have taught them very well, for very soon the children all ran away, so that they had to be thrashed and bribed to come and be taught.  And you remember how you wanted to feed with your own hands the infants whose mothers were working in the fields.  You went about the village crying because the infants were not at your disposal, as the mothers would take them to the fields with them.  Then the village foreman ordered the mothers by turns to leave their infants behind for your entertainment.  A strange thing!  They all ran away from your benevolence like mice from a cat!  And why was it?  It’s very simple.  Not because our people are ignorant and ungrateful, as you always explained it to yourself, but because in all your fads, if you’ll excuse the word, there wasn’t a ha’p’orth of love and kindness!  There was nothing but the desire to amuse yourself with living puppets, nothing else. . . .  A person who does not feel the difference between a human being and a lap-dog ought not to go in for philanthropy.  I assure you, there’s a great difference between human beings and lap-dogs!”

The princess’s heart was beating dreadfully; there was a thudding in her ears, and she still felt as though the doctor were beating her on the head with his hat.  The doctor talked quickly, excitedly, and uncouthly, stammering and gesticulating unnecessarily.  All she grasped was that she was spoken to by a coarse, ill-bred, spiteful, and ungrateful man; but what he wanted of her and what he was talking about, she could not understand.

“Go away!” she said in a tearful voice, putting up her hands to protect her head from the doctor’s hat; “go away!”