Balakhin stayed about the place, making himself at home with the servants, for twenty-four hours or more.  I believe that he strays about among the landed proprietors of the district as a profession.  In spite of his willingness to call himself “Prince Romanoff” as often as any one chose to incite him thereto, this did not impress me as a proof that he was too deranged to earn his own living, with his healthy frame, if he saw fit.  I had observed the mania for titles in other persons (not all Russians, by any means) who would vigorously resent the imputation that they should be in a lunatic asylum.  Moreover, this imperial “Prince Romanoff” never forgot his “manners.”  He invariably rose when his superiors (or his inferiors, perhaps I should say) approached, like any other peasant, and he looked far more crafty than crazy.

As the peasants were all busy haying, we postponed our visit to the village until the afternoon of Peter and Paul’s day, in the hope that we should then find some of them at home.  The butler’s family were drinking tea on the porch of their neat new log house with a tinned roof, at the end of the village near the park gate.  They rose and invited us to honor them with our company and share their meal.  We declined, for lack of time.

One of the count’s daughters had told me of a curious difference existing between the cut of the aprons of maidens and of those of married women.  I had been incredulous, and she suggested that I put the matter to the test by asking the first married woman whom we should see.  We found a pretty woman, with beautiful brown eyes and exquisite teeth (whose whiteness and soundness are said to be the result of the sour black bread which the peasants eat exclusively), standing at the door of her cottage.

“Here’s your chance!”

“Show me your window, please,” I said.

She laughed, and turned her back to me.  There was the “window,” sure enough.  The peasant apron, which is fastened under the armpits, is pretty evenly distributed as to fullness all the way round, and in the case of a maiden falls in straight lines in the back.  But the married woman makes hers with a semicircular opening a few inches below the band.  The points of the opening are connected by a loop of fringe, a couple of cords not always tied, or anything that comes handy, apparently for ornament.  Now, when the husband feels moved to demonstrate his affection for his spouse by administering a beating, he is not obliged to fumble and grope among those straight folds for the awkward triangular little opening, quite unsuited to accommodate his fist.  He can grasp her promptly by the neck of her chemise and this comfortable semicircle, and not force her to doubt his love by delay and hesitation in expression.  I asked the pretty woman if her husband found it very useful.  “Sometimes,” she answered nonchalantly.  The Russian peasant theory is:  “No beating, no jealousy; no jealousy, no love.”