But to return to my friend the schoolmaster. I asked him if “Paradise Lost” was still popular in the village. “Yes,” he answered, “they come and ask me for it every year. Unfortunately,” he added, “I may not have it in the school library as it is not on the list of books which are allowed by the censor. It is not forbidden; but it is not on the official list of books for school use.” Then he said that after all his experience the taste of the peasants in literature baffled him. “They will not read modern stories,” he said. “When I ask them why they like ‘Paradise Lost’ they point to their heart and say, ‘It is near to the heart; it speaks; you read and a sweetness comes to you.’ Gogol they do not like. On the other hand they ask for a strange book of adventures, about a Count or a Baron.” “Baron Munchausen?” I suggested. “No,” he said, “a Count.” “Not Monte Cristo?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “that is it. And what baffles me more than all is that they like Dostoievski’s ‘Letters from a Dead House.’” (Dostoievski’s record of his life in prison in Siberia.) Their taste does not to me personally seem to be so baffling. As for Dostoievski’s book, I am certain they recognise its great truth, and they feel the sweetness and simplicity of the writer’s character, and this “speaks” to them also. As for “Monte Cristo,” is not the beginning of it epical? It was a mistake, he said, to suppose the peasants were unimaginative. Sometimes this was manifested in a curious manner. There was a peasant who was well known as a great drunkard. In one of his fits of drink he imagined that he had sold his wife to the “Tzar of Turkey,” and that at midnight her head must be cut off. As the hour drew near he wept bitterly, said goodbye to his wife, and fetching an axe said with much lamentation that this terrible deed had to be done because he had promised her life to the “Tzar of Turkey.” The neighbours eventually interfered and stopped the execution.