to be repaid through their kindness at least for the paper and ink wasted upon it. But instead of kindness they heaped raillery upon me; so I left that capital from grief, and am on my way to St. Petersburg, where there is more culture.” Saying this, he made a deep bow, and straightening himself up, stood before me with the greatest respect. I understood his thought, took something out of my purse and, giving it to him, advised him to sell his paper by weight to peddlers for wrapping paper, for the prospective marquisates would only turn people’s heads, and he would be the cause of a recrudescence of an evil, now passed in Russia, of boasting of old genealogies. LYUBÁNI I suppose it is all the same to you, whether I travelled in summer or winter, especially since it is not uncommon for travellers to travel both summer and winter, starting out in a sleigh and returning in a wheel carriage. The corduroy road wore out my sides. I crawled out of the kibítka, and started on foot. While I was lying in the kibítka, my thoughts were directed to the immeasurableness of the world, and while my soul flitted away from the earth, it seemed easier to bear the jostling of the carriage. But spiritual exercises do not always distract our corporeality, and it was in order to save my sides that I went on foot. A few steps from the road I noticed a peasant who was ploughing his field. It was warm; I looked at my watch: it was twenty minutes to one. I left the city on Saturday, so it was Sunday then. The peasant that was ploughing evidently belonged to a landowner that did not receive any tax from him. The peasant was ploughing with great care; evidently the field did not belong to the master. He was turning the plough with remarkable ease. “God aid you!” I said as I approached the ploughman, who did not stop but finished the furrow he had begun. “God aid you!” I repeated. “Thank you, sir!” said the ploughman as he cleaned the ploughshare and transferred the plough to a new furrow. “You are, of course, a dissenter, since you work on Sunday.” “No, sir, I make the correct sign of the cross,” he said, and showed me his three fingers put together; “but God is merciful and does not want a person to starve, as long as he has a family and sufficient strength.” “Have you not any time to work during the week, that you work on a Sunday, and at that in a great heat?” “In the week, sir, there are six days, and we have to work for the manor six times a week, and in the evening we haul the hay from the meadows, if the weather is good; and on holidays the women and girls go to the woods to gather mushrooms and berries. God grant a rain this evening,” he added as he made the sign of the cross. “Sir, if you have any peasants, they are praying for the same.” “I have no peasants, my friend; and so nobody curses me. Have you a large family?” “Three sons and three daughters. My eldest is ten years old.”