"A woman needs more strength than a man. She has to have strength enough for two, and God has bestowed it upon her. Man is an unstable creature." She spoke calmly, without malice, sitting with her arms folded over her large bosom, resting her back against the fence, her eyes fixed sadly on the dusty gutter full of rubbish. Listening to her clever talk, I forgot all about the time. Suddenly I saw my master coming along arm in arm with the mistress. They were walking slowly, pompously, like a turkey-cock with his hen, and, looking at us attentively, said something to each other. I ran to open the front door for them, and as she came up the steps the mistress said to me, venomously: "So you are courting the washerwoman? Are you learning to carry on with ladies of that low class?" This was so stupid that it did not even annoy me but I felt offended when the master said, laughing: "What do you expect? It is time." The next morning when I went into the shed for the wood I found an empty purse, in the square hole which was made for the hook of the door. As I had seen it many times in the hands of Sidorov I took it to him at once. "Where is the money gone?" he asked, feeling inside the purse with his fingers. "Thirty rubles there were! Give them here!" His head was enveloped in a turban formed of a towel. Looking yellow and wasted, he blinked at me angrily with his swollen eyes, and refused to believe that I had found the purse empty. Ermokhin came in and backed him up, shaking his head at me. "It is he who has stolen it. Take him to his master. Soldiers do not steal from soldiers." These words made me think that he had stolen the money himself and had thrown the purse into my shed. I called out to his face, without hesitation: "Liar! You stole it yourself!" I was convinced that I had guessed right when I saw his wooden face drawn crooked with fear and rage. As he writhed, he cried shrilly: "Prove it!" How could I prove it? Ermokhin dragged me, with a shout, across the yard. Sidorov followed us, also shouting. Several people put their heads out of the windows. The mother of Queen Margot looked on, smoking calmly. I realized that I had fallen in the esteem of my lady, and I went mad. I remember the soldiers dragging me by the arms and my employers standing before them, sympathetically agreeing with them, as they listened to the complaint. Also the mistress saying: "Of course he took it! He was courting the washerwoman at the gate last evening, and he must have had some money. No one gets anything from her without money." "That's true," cried Ermokhin. I was swept off my feet, consumed by a wild rage. I began to abuse the mistress, and was soundly beaten. But it was not so much the beating which tortured me as the thought of what my Queen Margot was now thinking of me. How should I ever set myself right in her eyes? Bitter were my thoughts in that dreadful time. I did not strangle myself only because I had not the time to do so.