“Many deaths?”
“To-day—eleven.”
Paul looked up sharply.
“And the doctor?”
“He has not come yet, Excellency. I sent for him—a fortnight ago. The cholera is at Oseff, at Dolja, at Kalisheffa. It is everywhere. He has forty thousand souls under his care. He has to obey the Zemstvo, to go where they tell him. He takes no notice of me.”
“Yes,” interrupted Paul, “I know. And the people themselves, do they attempt to understand it—to follow out my instructions?”
The starosta spread out his thin hands in deprecation. He cringed a little as he stood. He had Jewish blood in his veins, which, while it raised him above his fellows in Osterno, carried with it the usual tendency to cringe. It is in the blood; it is part of what the people who stood without Pilate’s palace took upon themselves and upon their children.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “knows what they are. It is slow. They make no progress. For them one disease is as another. ‘Bog dal e Bog vzial,’ they say. ‘God gave and God took!’”
He paused, his black eyes flashing from one face to the other.
“Only the Moscow doctor, Excellency,” he said significantly, “can manage them.”