“Lyeff Nikola’itch,” I said, “do me the favor to sit still.  Your reputation as well as mine is involved in this work.  It must be done thoroughly and neatly quite as much for your sake as for mine.”

“How so?” he asked in surprise.

“My woman’s reputation for neat mending trembles in the balance; and do not you advocate the theory that we should help our fellow-men?  You have helped others; it is your turn now to be experimented on.  And besides, if the fellow-man obstinately refuses to be helped by others, how are we to do our duty by him?  How could you work for others, if they persisted in following out the other half of your doctrine and doing everything for themselves?  ’Tis plain that you understand how to render services far better than to receive them.  Reform.  Submit.”

The count laughed, with a sort of grim bewilderment in his eye, and behaved in an exemplary manner for the few remaining moments.  I mentally thanked Fate for providing me with an opportunity for suggesting an object lesson on a point which had puzzled me not a little, and which I had been pining to attack in some form.  He did not explain away my difficulties, it is true, but I was satisfied with having presented the other side of the shield to his attention.

On another occasion, as we sat under the trees, a peasant came, scythe on shoulder, to complain to the countess of his wrongs.  No one ever went to the count, knowing that his wife had full management.  Peasants who came in a deputation to parley about hiring or buying extra land, and so on, applied directly to her.  The comrades of this Vasily Alexei’itch had got two buckets of vodka, and had forced him, who detested liquor, to drink of it.  Then they had become quarrelsome (he was peaceable), and they had torn his shirt—­so!  Hereupon he flung back his coat, worn in Russian fashion with the sleeves hanging, and let his faded red cotton shirt fall from his muscular shoulders, leaving him nude to the waist, save for the cheap little baptismal cross suspended round his neck by a cord.  The small boys set up a shout of laughter at his story and his action.  The countess rebuked him sharply for such conduct before the children, and refused to interfere in the quarrel.  The man pulled his torn shirt over his body and slouched off.  That evening, after tea, the count happened to hit upon a couple of Mr. Rider Haggard’s books for discussion, and, for the benefit of those in the company who had not read it, gave the chief points of “She” in particularly lively style, which kept us all in laughter.  In describing the heroine, he said that “she was clothed in an airy garment, like Vasily Alexei’itch;” and again that “she dropped her garment, and stood like Vasily Alexei’itch.”  He pronounced “She” and other works of Haggard “the lowest type of literature,” and said that “it was astonishing how so many English people could go wild over them.”  He seemed to read everything, good and bad, and to possess not only an omnivorous literary appetite, but a wonderful memory for books, even in small details.