“The Prince?” put in an elder who was lounging by the stove and now raised himself on one elbow. He looked the patriarch to the life, with his long white beard, and snowy locks falling benignantly around his finely wrinkled face. His eyes were still singularly bright under their shaggy eyebrows. “The Prince is far away, and does not know what occurs here.” “He should know!” asserted the man who had given his name as Gregor Lukitch. “What’s the use of a tyrant if he’s not here when for once in a way he should be--tell me that? Eh?” The elder pondered for a moment before answering this curious question. “Well,” he said at last, “the Prince is good to us. We have no cause for complaint. His father was the same before him. All of them were always fine _Barines_. There are not many like them.” Gregor Lukitch sneered. “Oh, you ancients!” he pronounced. “To listen to you one would think you had never been serfs, slaves, wretched creatures crushed by oppressors, victims of a tyrannical system that rested like a curse upon you, and still bears its bitter fruits. Good _Barines_ say you? Ach! You make me sick.” This lofty flight of words was rather lost upon the audience, but a few vague murmurs of approbation were heard to proceed from the corner where the younger men had congregated to smoke vile cigarettes--like kerosene-lamps, cigarettes are modern “luxuries” among the Russian peoples. Indeed, to indulge in “paper pipes”--as they are called--is looked upon as a sign of independence and enlightenment. Unfortunately those obtainable there by the masses are beyond all description offensive, and even the speaker’s nostrils, accustomed as they were to the terrible savor of public gatherings, began to quiver queerly. “_Gott verdamm!_” he swore in a most un-Russian way, but happily quite under his breath. “Why do you little fathers persist in rotting the atmosphere with your beastly cigarettes? Here, have some decentish cigars. At any rate, they’ll not poison us!” Which was not strictly true, since the packet of “Perfectos” he pulled from a capacious pocket were, to say the best one could for them, rolled from nicotine-soaked cabbage-leaf, and dangerous-looking at that. The _mujik_ is not particular, however, and cigars are to him the absolute complement of wealth and luxury; so with immense gratitude were the “delicacies” accepted and retained, excepting by the _staròstá_ and the elder, who knew better than to be tempted. “If I were you,” the irrepressible Gregor now went on, “I would speedily put myself in a position to live on the fat of the land, eat my fill, drink something better than government _vòdka_, and enjoy life while I’ve got it to enjoy.” “What’s the matter with government _vòdka_?” asked a tall, upstanding chap, blond and blue and pink as the _staròstá_ was, but with less of that worthy person’s dullness. “It’s strong and cheap, isn’t it? Much cheaper than when we had to buy it from the Jew innkeepers.”