chief virtue has
always been modesty, exhibit themselves in the midst of strange men, who
are also clad in improperly tight-fitting garments; and to the sound of
maddening music, they embrace and whirl. Old women, often as naked as
the young ones, sit and look on, and eat and drink savory things; old men
do the same. It is not to be wondered at that this should take place at
night, when all the common people are asleep, so that no one may see
them. But this is not done with the object of concealment: it seems to
them that there is nothing to conceal; that it is a very good thing; that
by this merry-making, in which the labor of thousands of toiling people
is destroyed, they not only do not injure any one, but that by this very
act they furnish the poor with the means of subsistence. Possibly it is
very merry at balls. But how does this come about? When we see that
there is a man in the community, in our midst, who has had no food, or
who is freezing, we regret our mirth, and we cannot be cheerful until he
is fed and warmed, not to mention the impossibility of imagining people
who can indulge in such mirth as causes suffering to others. The mirth
of wicked little boys, who pitch a dog's tail in a split stick, and make
merry over it, is repulsive and incomprehensible to us.

In the same manner here, in these diversions of ours, blindness has
fallen upon us, and we do not see the split stick with which we have
pitched all those people who suffer for our amusement.

[We live as though there were no connection between the dying laundress,
the prostitute of fourteen, and our own life; and yet the connection
between them strikes us in the face.

We may say: "But we personally have not pinched any tail in a stick;" but
we have no right, to deny that had the tail not been pitched, our merry-
making would not have taken place. We do not see what connection exists
between the laundress and our luxury; but that is not because no such
connection does exist, but because we have placed a screen in front of
us, so that we may not see.

If there were no screen, we should see that which it is impossible not to
see.] {154}

Surely all the women who attended that ball in dresses worth a hundred
and fifty rubles each were born not in a ballroom, or at Madame
Minanguoit's; but they have lived in the country, and have seen the
peasants; they know their own nurse and maid, whose father and brother
are poor, for whom the earning o