Still the authorities very naturally looked upon the action of the girls as a case of idti v narod (going to the people), in the sense understood by the revolutionary propagandists.  Their prohibition was based on this ground.

In some way we got upon the subject of English things and ways.  The count’s eyes flashed.

“The English are the most brutal nation on earth!” he exclaimed.  “Along with the Zulus, that is to say.  Both go naked:  the Zulus all day long, the Englishwomen as soon as dinner is served.  The English worship their muscle; they think of it, talk of it.  If I had time, I should like to write a book on their ways.  And then their executions, which they go to see as a pleasure!”

I asked which nation was a model, in his opinion.

“The French,” he answered, which seemed to me inconsistent, when he told of the execution which he had witnessed in Paris, where a father had lifted up his little child that it might have a good view of the horrors of the guillotine.

“Defective as is Russian civilization in many respects,” he said, “you will never find the Russian peasant like that.  He abhors deliberate murder, like an execution.”

“Yet he will himself commit murder,” I objected.  “There has been a perfect flood of murders reported in the newspapers this very spring.  Those perpetrated in town were all by men of the peasant class; and most of them were by lads under twenty years of age.”

He insisted that I must have misread the papers.  So I proceeded to inquire, “What will a peasant do in case of an execution?”

“He will murder, but without premeditation.  What he will do in case of an execution I can illustrate for you by something which occurred in this very neighborhood some years ago.

“The regimental secretary of a regiment stationed at Z. was persecuted by one of his officers, who found fault with him continually, and even placed him under arrest for days at a time, when the man had only obeyed his own orders.  At last the secretary’s patience failed him, and one day he struck the officer.  A court-martial followed.  I was chosen to defend him.  He was sentenced to death.  I appealed to the Emperor through Madame A.,—­you know her.  For some reason she spoke to one of the ministers.  ‘You have not stated the number of his regiment; that is indispensable,’ was the reply.  Evidently this was a subterfuge, that time might be consumed in correspondence, and the pardon might arrive too late.  The reason for this was, in all probability, that just at this time a soldier had struck an officer in Moscow and had been condemned.  If one were pardoned, in justice the other must be also.  Otherwise discipline would suffer.  This coincidence was awkward for the secretary, strong as his case was, and he was shot.