erwards this money was spent on drink by the
whole commune.

When Masha heard about this, she would say to the doctor or my
sister indignantly:

"What beasts! It's awful! awful!"

And I heard her more than once express regret that she had ever
taken it into her head to build the school.

"You must understand," the doctor tried to persuade her, "that if
you build this school and do good in general, it's not for the sake
of the peasants, but in the name of culture, in the name of the
future; and the worse the peasants are the more reason for building
the school. Understand that!"

But there was a lack of conviction in his voice, and it seemed to
me that both he and Masha hated the peasants.

Masha often went to the mill, taking my sister with her, and they
both said, laughing, that they went to have a look at Stepan, he
was so handsome. Stepan, it appeared, was torpid and taciturn only
with men; in feminine society his manners were free and easy, and
he talked incessantly. One day, going down to the river to bathe,
I accidentally overheard a conversation. Masha and Kleopatra, both
in white dresses, were sitting on the bank in the spreading shade
of a willow, and Stepan was standing by them with his hands behind
his back, and was saying:

"Are peasants men? They are not men, but, asking your pardon, wild
beasts, impostors. What life has a peasant? Nothing but eating and
drinking; all he cares for is victuals to be cheaper and swilling
liquor at the tavern like a fool; and there's no conversation, no
manners, no formality, nothing but ignorance! He lives in filth,
his wife lives in filth, and his children live in filth. What he
stands up in, he lies down to sleep in; he picks the potatoes out
of the soup with his fingers; he drinks kvass with a cockroach in
it, and doesn't bother to blow it away!"

"It's their poverty, of course," my sister put in.

"Poverty? There is want to be sure, there's different sorts of want,
Madam. If a man is in prison, or let us say blind or crippled, that
really is trouble I wouldn't wish anyone, but if a man's free and
has all his senses, if he has his eyes and his hands and his strength
and God, what more does he want? It's cockering themselves, and
it's ignorance, Madam, it's not poverty. If you, let us suppose,
good gentlefolk, by your education, wish out of kindness to help
him he will drink away your money in his low way; or, what's worse,
he will open a drinkshop, and with yo