man remained always the peasant
woman, and would come and whine that she was sick and ailing, and keep
pitifully hugging to herself the mean and filthy rags which she had
donned for the occasion. And when poor Tientietnikov found himself
unable to say more to her than just, "Get out of my sight, and may the
Lord go with you!" the next item in the comedy would be that he would
see her, even as she was leaving his gates, fall to contending with a
neighbour for, say, the possession of a turnip, and dealing out slaps
in the face such as even a strong, healthy man could scarcely have
compassed!

Again, amongst other things, Tientietnikov conceived the idea of
establishing a school for his people; but the scheme resulted in a farce
which left him in sackcloth and ashes. In the same way he found that,
when it came to a question of dispensing justice and of adjusting
disputes, the host of juridical subtleties with which the professors had
provided him proved absolutely useless. That is to say, the one party
lied, and the other party lied, and only the devil could have decided
between them. Consequently he himself perceived that a knowledge of
mankind would have availed him more than all the legal refinements and
philosophical maxims in the world could do. He lacked something; and
though he could not divine what it was, the situation brought about was
the common one of the barin failing to understand the peasant, and the
peasant failing to understand the barin, and both becoming disaffected.
In the end, these difficulties so chilled Tientietnikov's enthusiasm
that he took to supervising the labours of the field with greatly
diminished attention. That is to say, no matter whether the scythes were
softly swishing through the grass, or ricks were being built, or rafts
were being loaded, he would allow his eyes to wander from his men, and
to fall to gazing at, say, a red-billed, red-legged heron which, after
strutting along the bank of a stream, would have caught a fish in its
beak, and be holding it awhile, as though in doubt whether to swallow
it. Next he would glance towards the spot where a similar bird, but one
not yet in possession of a fish, was engaged in watching the doings of
its mate. Lastly, with eyebrows knitted, and face turned to scan the
zenith, he would drink in the smell of the fields, and fall to listening
to the winged population of the air as from earth and sky alike the
manifold music of winged creatures combin