a village, and in course of time becomes a merchant. In order to
be a merchant, one must have money. Where can the mujik get the money
from? It is well known that he does not get it by honest hard work,
and that means that the mujik, somehow or other, has been swindling.
That is to say, a merchant is simply a dishonest mujik."

"Splendid!" cry the people, approving the orator's deduction, and Tyapa
bellows all the time, scratching his breast. He always bellows like
this as he drinks his first glass of vodki, when he has a drunken
headache. The Captain beams with joy. They next read the
correspondence. This is, for the Captain, "an abundance of drinks," as
he himself calls it. He always notices how the merchants make this
life abominable, and how cleverly they spoil everything. His speeches
thunder at and annihilate merchants. His audience listens to him with
the greatest pleasure, because he swears atrociously. "If I wrote for
the papers," he shouts, "I would show up the merchant in his true
colours ... I would show that he is a beast, playing for a time the
role of a man. I understand him! He is a rough boor, does not know the
meaning of the words 'good taste,' has no notion of patriotism, and his
knowledge is not worth five kopecks."

Abyedok, knowing the Captain's weak point, and fond of making other
people angry, cunningly adds:

"Yes, since the nobility began to make acquaintance with hunger, men
have disappeared from the world ..."

"You are right, you son of a spider and a toad. Yes, from the time
that the noblemen fell, there have been no men. There are only
merchants, and I hate them."

"That is easy to understand, brother, because you, too, have been
brought down by them ..."

"I? I was ruined by love of life ... Fool that I was, I loved life,
but the merchant spoils it, and I cannot bear it, simply for this
reason, and not because I am a nobleman. But if you want to know the
truth, I was once a man, though I was not noble. I care now for
nothing and nobody ... and all my life has been tame--a sweetheart who
has jilted me--therefore I despise life, and am indifferent to it."

"You lie!" says Abyedok.

"I lie?" roars Aristid Kuvalda, almost crimson with anger.

"Why shout?" comes in the cold sad voice of Martyanoff.

"Why judge others? Merchants, noblemen ... what have we to do with
them?"

"Seeing that we are" ... puts in Deacon Taras.

"Be quiet, Abyedok," says the teacher, g