The door opens and instead of Gavrila Gruzd, Zamuhrishen, a neighbouring landowner who has sunk into poverty, a little old man with sour eyes, and with a gentleman’s cap under his arm, walks into the room.  He puts down his stick in the corner, goes up to the lady, and without a word drops on one knee before her.

“What are you about, Kuzma Kuzmitch?” cries the lady in horror, flushing crimson.  “For goodness sake!”

“While I live I will not rise,” says Zamuhrishen, bending over her hand.  “Let all the world see my homage on my knees, our guardian angel, benefactress of the human race!  Let them!  Before the good fairy who has given me life, guided me into the path of truth, and enlightened my scepticism I am ready not merely to kneel but to pass through fire, our miraculous healer, mother of the orphan and the widowed!  I have recovered.  I am a new man, enchantress!”

“I . . .  I am very glad . . .” mutters the lady, flushing with pleasure.  “It’s so pleasant to hear that. . .  Sit down please!  Why, you were so seriously ill that Tuesday.”

“Yes indeed, how ill I was!  It’s awful to recall it,” says Zamuhrishen, taking a seat.  “I had rheumatism in every part and every organ.  I have been in misery for eight years, I’ve had no rest from it . . . by day or by night, my benefactress.  I have consulted doctors, and I went to professors at Kazan; I have tried all sorts of mud-baths, and drunk waters, and goodness knows what I haven’t tried!  I have wasted all my substance on doctors, my beautiful lady.  The doctors did me nothing but harm.  They drove the disease inwards.  Drive in, that they did, but to drive out was beyond their science.  All they care about is their fees, the brigands; but as for the benefit of humanity—­for that they don’t care a straw.  They prescribe some quackery, and you have to drink it.  Assassins, that’s the only word for them.  If it hadn’t been for you, our angel, I should have been in the grave by now!  I went home from you that Tuesday, looked at the pilules that you gave me then, and wondered what good there could be in them.  Was it possible that those little grains, scarcely visible, could cure my immense, long-standing disease?  That’s what I thought—­unbeliever that I was!—­and I smiled; but when I took the pilule—­it was instantaneous!  It was as though I had not been ill, or as though it had been lifted off me.  My wife looked at me with her eyes starting out of her head and couldn’t believe it.  ‘Why, is it you, Kolya?’ ‘Yes, it is I,’ I said.  And we knelt down together before the ikon, and fell to praying for our angel:  ‘Send her, O Lord, all that we are feeling!’”

Zamuhrishen wipes his eyes with his sleeve gets up from his chair, and shows a disposition to drop on one knee again; but the lady checks him and makes him sit down.

“It’s not me you must thank,” she says, blushing with excitement and looking enthusiastically at the portrait of Father Aristark.  “It’s not my doing. . . .  I am only the obedient instrument . .  It’s really a miracle.  Rheumatism of eight years’ standing by one pilule of scrofuloso!”