B1035 <=> B1037 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1036]

“What? Talk to one’s children about ‘sex’? Is that not indecent?

“At the present time the people of contemporary civilization talk to their children and teach them for their edification only what has been invented or is being invented in the manuals of various candidates for ‘Hasnamuss individuals’ under the aforesaid title of ‘bon ton.’

“And since in all these manuals it seems that it is very indecent to talk about the ‘sex question’ and in the case of children even ‘immoral,’ then even if contemporary people see their favorite son or daughter rotting, they simply cannot, and even as I have already told you, with all their mental wish dare not, explain frankly to their children the harm and sin of these criminal habits.

“And so, my boy, when my good acquaintances the senator and his wife had returned from Siberia and I was free of the obligations I had taken upon myself in regard to my pet, their youngest daughter, there just then occurred the aforementioned event which served as the beginning of my special observations and studies of this terrestrial contemporary question, maleficent also to themselves.

“This sorrowful event occurred there in St. Petersburg itself in just such another educational institution and consisted in the following. The headmistress of this institution, finding that one of her pupils had behaved contrary to their famous regulations of ‘decency,’ reprimanded her so harshly and so unfairly that as a result the accused and her friend, two growing girls with the germs of data for future normal women-mothers, hanged themselves.

“My investigations into this case elicited the following:

“It appeared that among the pupils of the mentioned educational institution was a certain young girl Elizabeth who had been brought by her parents from a distant estate to the capital in order that there, in a special higher educational institution, she might receive this same contemporary ‘education.’