s hardly dry on your lips, and in your folly you
imagine that there is no one unhappier than you, but there will come a
time when you will say: God give every one such a life! Just look at me.
In a week's time the floods will be gone, and we will fix the ferry
here, and all of you will go away into Siberia and I shall stay here,
going to and fro. I have been living thus for the last two-and-twenty
years, but, thank God, I want nothing. God give everybody such a life."

The Tartar threw some branches onto the fire, crawled near to it and
said:

"My father is sick. When he dies, my mother and my wife have promised to
come here."

"What do you want your mother and your wife for?" asked Brains. "Just
foolishness, my friend. It's the devil tempting you, plague take him.
Don't listen to the Evil One. Don't give way to him. When he talks to
you about women you should answer him sharply: 'I don't want them!' When
he talks of freedom, you should stick to it and say: 'I don't want it. I
want nothing! No father, no mother, no wife, no freedom, no home, no
love! I want nothing.' Plague take 'em all."

Brains took a swig at his bottle and went on:

"My brother, I am not an ordinary peasant. I don't come from the servile
masses. I am the son of a deacon, and when I was a free man at Rursk, I
used to wear a frock coat, and now I have brought myself to such a point
that I can sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. God give such a life
to everybody. I want nothing. I am afraid of nobody and I think there is
no man richer or freer than I. When they sent me here from Russia I set
my teeth at once and said: 'I want nothing!' The devil whispers to me
about my wife and my kindred, and about freedom and I say to him: 'I
want nothing!' I stuck to it, and, you see, I live happily and have
nothing to grumble at. If a man gives the devil the least opportunity
and listens to him just once, then he is lost and has no hope of
salvation: he will be over ears in the mire and will never get out. Not
only peasants the like of you are lost, but the nobly born and the
educated also. About fifteen years ago a certain nobleman was sent here
from Russia. He had had some trouble with his brothers and had made a
forgery in a will. People said he was a prince or a baron, but perhaps
he was only a high official--who knows? Well, he came here and at once
bought a house and land in Moukhzyink. 'I want to live by my own work,'
said he, 'in the sweat of my br