it. He
ate a great deal, went to the bath-house, was growing stout, was already
at law with the village commune and both factories, and was very much
offended when the peasants did not call him 'Your Honour.' And he
concerned himself with the salvation of his soul in a substantial,
gentlemanly manner, and performed deeds of charity, not simply, but
with an air of consequence. And what deeds of charity! He treated the
peasants for every sort of disease with soda and castor oil, and on his
name-day had a thanksgiving service in the middle of the village, and
then treated the peasants to a gallon of vodka--he thought that was
the thing to do. Oh, those horrible gallons of vodka! One day the
fat landowner hauls the peasants up before the district captain for
trespass, and next day, in honour of a holiday, treats them to a gallon
of vodka, and they drink and shout 'Hurrah!' and when they are drunk bow
down to his feet. A change of life for the better, and being well-fed
and idle develop in a Russian the most insolent self-conceit. Nikolay
Ivanovitch, who at one time in the government office was afraid to have
any views of his own, now could say nothing that was not gospel truth,
and uttered such truths in the tone of a prime minister. 'Education is
essential, but for the peasants it is premature.' 'Corporal punishment
is harmful as a rule, but in some cases it is necessary and there is
nothing to take its place.'

"'I know the peasants and understand how to treat them,' he would say.
'The peasants like me. I need only to hold up my little finger and the
peasants will do anything I like.'

"And all this, observe, was uttered with a wise, benevolent smile. He
repeated twenty times over 'We noblemen,' 'I as a noble'; obviously he
did not remember that our grandfather was a peasant, and our father
a soldier. Even our surname Tchimsha-Himalaisky, in reality so
incongruous, seemed to him now melodious, distinguished, and very
agreeable.

"But the point just now is not he, but myself. I want to tell you about
the change that took place in me during the brief hours I spent at his
country place. In the evening, when we were drinking tea, the cook put
on the table a plateful of gooseberries. They were not bought, but his
own gooseberries, gathered for the first time since the bushes were
planted. Nikolay Ivanovitch laughed and looked for a minute in silence
at the gooseberries, with tears in his eyes; he could not speak for
excite