"Aha! Yes!" Rybin drawled. "I understand you, Pavel." And with a
comical wink toward the mother, he added: "This is a delicate matter,
mother." And again turning to Pavel he held forth in a didactic
manner: "Your ideas on this subject are very green, brother. In
secret work there is no honor. Think! In the first place, they'll put
those persons in prison on whom they find the books, and not the
teachers. That's number one! Secondly, even though the teachers give
the people only legal books to read, you know that they contain
prohibited things just the same as in the forbidden books; only they
are put in a different language. The truths are fewer. That's number
two. I mean to say, they want the same thing that I do; only they
proceed by side paths, while I travel on the broad highway. And
thirdly, brother, what business have I with them? How can a traveler
on foot strike up friendship with a man on horseback? Toward a muzhik,
maybe, I wouldn't want to act that way. But these people, one a
clergyman, the other the daughter of a land proprietor, why they want
to uplift the people, I cannot understand. Their ideas, the ideas of
the masters, are unintelligible to me, a muzhik. What I do myself, I
know, but what they are after I cannot tell. For thousands of years
they have punctiliously and consistently pursued the business of being
masters, and have fleeced and flayed the skins of the muzhiks; and all
of a sudden they wake up and want to open the muzhik's eyes. I am not
a man for fairy tales, brother, and that's in the nature of a fairy
tale. That's why I can't get interested in them. The ways of the
masters are strange to me. You travel in winter, and you see some
living creature in front of you. But what it is--a wolf, a fox, or
just a plain dog--you don't know."

The mother glanced at her son. His face wore a gloomy expression.

Rybin's eyes sparkled with a dark gleam. He looked at Pavel, combing
down his beard with his fingers. His air was at once complacent and
excited.

"I have no time to flirt," he said. "Life is a stern matter. We live
in dog houses, not in sheep pens, and every pack barks after its own
fashion."

"There are some masters," said the mother, recalling certain familiar
faces, "who die for the people, and let themselves be tortured all
their lives in prison."

"Their calculations are different, and their deserts are different,"
said Rybin. "The muzhik grown rich tu