would give all the peasants in Russia
for one Rachel. It's high time to look things in the face more
soberly, and not to mix up our national rustic pitch with _bouquet de
l'Imperatrice._"

Liputin agreed at once, but remarked that one had to perjure oneself and
praise the peasant all the same for the sake of being progressive, that
even ladies in good society shed tears reading "Poor Anton," and that
some of them even wrote from Paris to their bailiffs that they were,
henceforward, to treat the peasants as humanely as possible.

It happened, and as ill-luck would have it just after the rumours of the
Anton Petrov affair had reached us, that there was some disturbance
in our province too, only about ten miles from Skvoreshniki, so that a
detachment of soldiers was sent down in a hurry.

This time Stepan Trofimovitch was so much upset that he even frightened
us. He cried out at the club that more troops were needed, that they
ought to be telegraphed for from another province; he rushed off to the
governor to protest that he had no hand in it, begged him not to allow
his name on account of old associations to be brought into it, and
offered to write about his protest to the proper quarter in Petersburg.
Fortunately it all passed over quickly and ended in nothing, but I was
surprised at Stepan Trofimovitch at the time.

Three years later, as every one knows, people were beginning to talk
of nationalism, and "public opinion" first came upon the scene. Stepan
Trofimovitch laughed a great deal.

"My friends," he instructed us, "if our nationalism has 'dawned' as
they keep repeating in the papers--it's still at school, at some German
'Peterschule,' sitting over a German book and repeating its everlasting
German lesson, and its German teacher will make it go down on its knees
when he thinks fit. I think highly of the German teacher. But nothing
has happened and nothing of the kind has dawned and everything is going
on in the old way, that is, as ordained by God. To my thinking that
should be enough for Russia, _pour notre Sainte Russie_. Besides, all this
Slavism and nationalism is too old to be new. Nationalism, if you like,
has never existed among us except as a distraction for gentlemen's
clubs, and Moscow ones at that. I'm not talking of the days of Igor, of
course. And besides it all comes of idleness. Everything in Russia comes
of idleness, everything good and fine even. It all springs from the
charming, cultured, wh