ur money start robbing the
people. You say poverty, but does the rich peasant live better? He,
too, asking your pardon, lives like a swine: coarse, loud-mouthed,
cudgel-headed, broader than he is long, fat, red-faced mug, I'd
like to swing my fist and send him flying, the scoundrel. There's
Larion, another rich one at Dubetchnya, and I bet he strips the
bark off your trees as much as any poor one; and he is a foul-mouthed
fellow; his children are the same, and when he has had a drop too
much he'll topple with his nose in a puddle and sleep there. They
are all a worthless lot, Madam. If you live in a village with them
it is like hell. It has stuck in my teeth, that village has, and
thank the Lord, the King of Heaven, I've plenty to eat and clothes
to wear, I served out my time in the dragoons, I was village elder
for three years, and now I am a free Cossack, I live where I like.
I don't want to live in the village, and no one has the right to
force me. They say--my wife. They say you are bound to live in
your cottage with your wife. But why so? I am not her hired man."

"Tell me, Stepan, did you marry for love?" asked Masha.

"Love among us in the village!" answered Stepan, and he gave a
laugh. "Properly speaking, Madam, if you care to know, this is my
second marriage. I am not a Kurilovka man, I am from Zalegoshtcho,
but afterwards I was taken into Kurilovka when I married. You see
my father did not want to divide the land among us. There were five
of us brothers. I took my leave and went to another village to live
with my wife's family, but my first wife died when she was young."

"What did she die of?"

"Of foolishness. She used to cry and cry and cry for no reason, and
so she pined away. She was always drinking some sort of herbs to
make her better looking, and I suppose she damaged her inside. And
my second wife is a Kurilovka woman too, there is nothing in her.
She's a village woman, a peasant woman, and nothing more. I was
taken in when they plighted me to her. I thought she was young and
fair-skinned, and that they lived in a clean way. Her mother was
just like a Flagellant and she drank coffee, and the chief thing,
to be sure, they were clean in their ways. So I married her, and
next day we sat down to dinner; I bade my mother-in-law give me a
spoon, and she gives me a spoon, and I see her wipe it out with her
finger. So much for you, thought I; nice sort of cleanliness yours
is. I lived a year with them an