Yashka was "touched with paint" after having two glasses of vodki, and was in a slightly uplifted condition. The people looked at him, expecting him to make a row, and all were silent. "Did you see me? And how did it please you?" asks Yashka. The people control their laughter. "No; it did not please me," replies the teacher. His tone is so serious that the people are silent. "You see I was just trying it," said Yashka, with bravado, fearing that the teacher would rebuke him. "The wife is satisfied. . . She has not got up yet today. . . ." The teacher, who was drawing absently with his fingers on the table, said, "Do you see, Yakov, why this did not please me? . . . Let us go into the matter thoroughly, and understand what you are really doing, and what the result may be. Your wife is pregnant. You struck her last night on her sides and breast. That means that you beat not only her but the child too. You may have killed him, and your wife might have died or else have become seriously ill. To have the trouble of looking after a sick woman is not pleasant. It is wearing, and would cost you dear, because illness requires medicine, and medicine money. If you have not killed the child, you may have crippled him, and he will he born deformed, lop-sided, or hunch-backed. That means that he will not be able to work, and it is only too important to you that he should be a good workman. Even if he be born ill, it will be bad enough, because he will keep his mother from work, and will require medicine. Do you see what you are doing to yourself? Men who live by hard work must be strong and healthy, and they should have strong and healthy children . . . Do I speak truly?" "Yes," assented the listeners. "But all this will never happen," says Yashka, becoming rather frightened at the prospect held out to him by the teacher. "She is healthy, and I cannot have reached the child . . . She is a devil-- a hag!" he shouts angrily. "I would . . . She will eat me away as rust eats iron." "I understand, Yakov, that you cannot help beating your wife," the teacher's sad and thoughtful voice again breaks in. "You have many reasons for doing so . . . It is your wife's character that causes you to beat her so incautiously . . . But your own dark and sad life. . . ." "You are right!" shouts Yakov. "We live in darkness, like the chimney-sweep when he is in the chimney!" "You are angry with your life, but your wife is patient; the closest relation to you--your wife, and you make her suffer for this, simply because you are stronger than she. She is always with you, and cannot get away. Don't you see how absurd you are?" "That is so . . . Devil take it! But what shall I do? Am I not a man?"