tors. There it is. I eat nothing but bread, for 'Give us this day our
daily bread,' and my father ate nothing but bread, and my grandfather;
but the peasant nowadays must have tea and vodka and white loaves, and
must sleep from sunset to dawn, and he goes to the doctor and pampers
himself in all sorts of ways. And why is it? He has grown weak; he
has not the strength to endure. If he wants to stay awake, his eyes
close--there is no doing anything."

"That's true," Meliton agreed; "the peasant is good for nothing
nowadays."

"It's no good hiding what is wrong; we get worse from year to year. And
if you take the gentry into consideration, they've grown feebler
even more than the peasants have. The gentleman nowadays has mastered
everything; he knows what he ought not to know, and what is the sense
of it? It makes you feel pitiful to look at him.... He is a thin, puny
little fellow, like some Hungarian or Frenchman; there is no dignity nor
air about him; it's only in name he is a gentleman. There is no place
for him, poor dear, and nothing for him to do, and there is no making
out what he wants. Either he sits with a hook catching fish, or he lolls
on his back reading, or trots about among the peasants saying all sorts
of things to them, and those that are hungry go in for being clerks. So
he spends his life in vain. And he has no notion of doing something
real and useful. The gentry in old days were half of them generals, but
nowadays they are--a poor lot."

"They are badly off nowadays," said Meliton.

"They are poorer because God has taken away their strength. You can't go
against God."

Meliton stared at a fixed point again. After thinking a little he heaved
a sigh as staid, reasonable people do sigh, shook his head, and said:

"And all because of what? We have sinned greatly, we have forgotten
God.. and it seems that the time has come for all to end. And, after
all, the world can't last for ever--it's time to know when to take
leave."

The shepherd sighed and, as though wishing to cut short an unpleasant
conversation, he walked away from the birch-tree and began silently
reckoning over the cows.

"Hey-hey-hey!" he shouted. "Hey-hey-hey! Bother you, the plague take
you! The devil has taken you into the thicket. Tu-lu-lu!"

With an angry face he went into the bushes to collect his herd. Meliton
got up and sauntered slowly along the edge of the wood. He looked at the
ground at his feet and pondered; he still w