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<h2> CHAPTER VII. </h2>
<p>"And it was very easy to capture me, since I was brought up under
artificial conditions, like cucumbers in a hothouse. Our too abundant
nourishment, together with complete physical idleness, is nothing but
systematic excitement of the imagination. The men of our society are fed
and kept like reproductive stallions. It is sufficient to close the valve,—that
is, for a young man to live a quiet life for some time,—to produce
as an immediate result a restlessness, which, becoming exaggerated by
reflection through the prism of our unnatural life, provokes the illusion
of love.</p>
<p>"All our idyls and marriage, all, are the result for the most part of our
eating. Does that astonish you? For my part, I am astonished that we do
not see it. Not far from my estate this spring some moujiks were working
on a railway embankment. You know what a peasant's food is,—bread,
kvass,* onions. With this frugal nourishment he lives, he is alert, he
makes light work in the fields. But on the railway this bill of fare
becomes cacha and a pound of meat. Only he restores this meat by sixteen
hours of labor pushing loads weighing twelve hundred pounds.</p>
<p>*Kvass, a sort of cider.<br/></p>
<p>"And we, who eat two pounds of meat and game, we who absorb all sorts of
heating drinks and food, how do we expend it? In sensual excesses. If the
valve is open, all goes well; but close it, as I had closed it temporarily
before my marriage, and immediately there will result an excitement which,
deformed by novels, verses, music, by our idle and luxurious life, will
give a love of the finest water. I, too, fell in love, as everybody does,
and there were transports, emotions, poesy; but really all this passion
was prepared by mamma and the dressmakers. If there had been no trips in
boats, no well-fitted garments, etc., if my wife had worn some shapeless
blouse, and I had seen her thus at her home, I should not have been
seduced."</p>
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