a feeling of
envy provoked by the fact that the peasant seems to enjoy so many
advantages. But, on the contrary, the "barefoot brigade" admits
that the peasant subjugates his individuality for any sort of
profit, and that he cannot feel the yoke which he has voluntarily
taken in the hope of getting his daily bread.

These workingmen "who pitifully dig in the soil" are unfortunate
slaves. "They do nothing but construct, they work perpetually, their
blood and sweat are the cement of all the edifices of the earth. And
yet the remuneration which they receive, although they are crushed
by their work, does not give them shelter or enough food really to
live on."

The enlightened classes are always characterized in Gorky's works by
violent traits. The architect Shebouyev accords a sufficiently
great, but scarcely honorable, place to the category of intelligent
men to whom he belongs.

"All of us," he says, "are nonentities, deprived of happiness. We
are in such great numbers! And our numbers have been a power for so
long a time! We are animated by so many desires, pure and honest....
Why is there so much talk among us and so little action? And, all
the while, the germs are there!... All these papers, novels,
articles are germs ... just germs, and nothing else.... Some of us
write, others read; after reading, we discuss; after discussing, we
forget what we have read. For us, life is tedious, heavy, grey, and
burdensome. We live our lives, but sigh from fatigue and complain
of the heavy burdens we are carrying."

The journalist Yezhov, in "Thomas Gordeyev," expresses himself in
the same manner, but even more decisively:

"I should like to say to the intelligent classes: 'You people are
the best in my country! Your life is paid for by the blood and tears
of ten Russian generations! How much you have cost your country! And
what do you for her? What have you given to life? What have you
done?...'"

The absence of all independence, of any passion even a little
sincere, the complete submission of heart and mind to the old
prescribed morality, the constant effort to realize mere personal
ambitions--all of these are the reproaches that Gorky addresses to
cultivated man, whose moral disintegration he proves has been
produced by routine and prejudice.

In contrast to them, the vagabonds are the instinctive enemies of
all slavery, in any form whatsoever. The complete independence of
their personality means everything to them.