“If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set going...such a lot of trouble wasted...I’d turn my back on the whole business, sell up, go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch...to hear La Belle Helene,” said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.

“But you see you don’t throw it up,” said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; “so there must be something gained.”

“The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you’d never believe it — the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but