The last and most desperate means of defense which the serfs possessed were fire-raising and murder.  With regard to the amount of fire-raising there are no trustworthy statistics.  With regard to the number of agrarian murders I once obtained some interesting statistical data, but unfortunately lost them.  I may say, however, that these cases were not very numerous.  This is to be explained in part by the patient, long-suffering character of the peasantry, and in part by the fact that the great majority of the proprietors were by no means such inhuman taskmasters as is sometimes supposed.  When a case did occur, the Administration always made a strict investigation—­punishing the guilty with exemplary severity, and taking no account of the provocation to which they had been subjected.  The peasantry, on the contrary—­at least, when the act was not the result of mere personal vengeance—­secretly sympathised with “the unfortunates,” and long cherished their memory as that of men who had suffered for the Mir.

In speaking of the serfs I have hitherto confined my attention to the members of the Mir, or rural Commune—­that is to say, the peasants in the narrower sense of the term; but besides these there were the Dvorovuye, or domestic servants, and of these I must add a word or two.

The Dvorovuye were domestic slaves rather than serfs in the proper sense of the term.  Let us, however, avoid wounding unnecessarily Russian sensibilities by the use of the ill-sounding word.  We may call the class in question “domestics”—­remembering, of course, that they were not quite domestic servants in the ordinary sense.  They received no wages, were not at liberty to change masters, possessed almost no legal rights, and might be punished, hired out, or sold by their owners without any infraction of the written law.

These “domestics” were very numerous—­out of all proportion to the work to be performed—­and could consequently lead a very lazy life;* but the peasant considered it a great misfortune to be transferred to their ranks, for he thereby lost his share of the Communal land and the little independence which he enjoyed.  It very rarely happened, however, that the proprietor took an able-bodied peasant as domestic.  The class generally kept up its numbers by the legitimate and illegitimate method of natural increase; and involuntary additions were occasionally made when orphans were left without near relatives, and no other family wished to adopt them.  To this class belonged the lackeys, servant-girls, cooks, coachmen, stable-boys, gardeners, and a large number of nondescript old men and women who had no very clearly defined functions.  If the proprietor had a private theatre or orchestra, it was from this class that the actors and musicians were drawn.  Those of them who were married and had children occupied a position intermediate between the ordinary domestic servant and the peasant.  On the one hand, they received from the master a monthly allowance of food and a yearly allowance of clothes, and they were obliged to live in the immediate vicinity of the mansion-house; but, on the other hand, they had each a separate house or apartment, with a little cabbage-garden, and commonly a small plot of flax.  The unmarried ones lived in all respects like ordinary domestic servants.