e said. "But I am
now just as poor as before."

"It is much better never to change, but to take life as it comes," said
Maria Semenovna. "Take life as it comes," she repeated.

"Why, I wonder at you, Maria Semenovna," said the lame tailor. "You
alone do the work, and you are so good to everybody. But they don't
repay you in kind, I see."

Maria Semenovna did not utter a word in answer.

"I dare say you have found out in books that we are rewarded in heaven
for the good we do here."

"We don't know that. But we must try to do the best we can."

"Is it said so in books?"

"In books as well," she said, and read to him the Sermon on the Mount.
The tailor was much impressed. When he had been paid for his job and
gone home, he did not cease to think about Maria Semenovna, both what
she had said and what she had read to him.

XVII

PETER NIKOLAEVICH SVENTIZKY'S views of the peasantry had now changed for
the worse, and the peasants had an equally bad opinion of him. In the
course of a single year they felled twenty-seven oaks in his forest, and
burnt a barn which had not been insured. Peter Nikolaevich came to the
conclusion that there was no getting on with the people around him.

At that very time the landowner, Liventsov, was trying to find a manager
for his estate, and the Marshal of the Nobility recommended Peter
Nikolaevich as the ablest man in the district in the management of land.
The estate owned by Liventsov was an extremely large one, but there was
no revenue to be got out of it, as the peasants appropriated all
its wealth to their own profit. Peter Nikolaevich undertook to bring
everything into order; rented out his own land to somebody else; and
settled with his wife on the Liventsov estate, in a distant province on
the river Volga.

Peter Nikolaevich was always fond of order, and wanted things to be
regulated by law; and now he felt less able of allowing those raw and
rude peasants to take possession, quite illegally too, of property that
did not belong to them. He was glad of the opportunity of giving them a
good lesson, and set seriously to work at once. One peasant was sent to
prison for stealing wood; to another he gave a thrashing for not having
made way for him on the road with his cart, and for not having lifted
his cap to salute him. As to the pasture ground which was a subject of
dispute, and was considered by the peasants as their property, Peter
Nikolaevich informed the peasants that an