But there was a lack of conviction in his voice, and it seemed to me that both he and Masha hated the peasants.

Masha often went to the mill, taking my sister with her, and they both said, laughing, that they went to have a look at Stepan, he was so handsome.  Stepan, it appeared, was torpid and taciturn only with men; in feminine society his manners were free and easy, and he talked incessantly.  One day, going down to the river to bathe, I accidentally overheard a conversation.  Masha and Kleopatra, both in white dresses, were sitting on the bank in the spreading shade of a willow, and Stepan was standing by them with his hands behind his back, and was saying: 

“Are peasants men?  They are not men, but, asking your pardon, wild beasts, impostors.  What life has a peasant?  Nothing but eating and drinking; all he cares for is victuals to be cheaper and swilling liquor at the tavern like a fool; and there’s no conversation, no manners, no formality, nothing but ignorance!  He lives in filth, his wife lives in filth, and his children live in filth.  What he stands up in, he lies down to sleep in; he picks the potatoes out of the soup with his fingers; he drinks kvass with a cockroach in it, and doesn’t bother to blow it away!”

“It’s their poverty, of course,” my sister put in.

“Poverty?  There is want to be sure, there’s different sorts of want, Madam.  If a man is in prison, or let us say blind or crippled, that really is trouble I wouldn’t wish anyone, but if a man’s free and has all his senses, if he has his eyes and his hands and his strength and God, what more does he want?  It’s cockering themselves, and it’s ignorance, Madam, it’s not poverty.  If you, let us suppose, good gentlefolk, by your education, wish out of kindness to help him he will drink away your money in his low way; or, what’s worse, he will open a drinkshop, and with your 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.”