“Now, look at me, brother. I am not a simple muzhik, but a sexton’s son, in fact; and when I lived in freedom in Kursk I wore a frock-coat; but now I’ve gotten so that I could sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. And God grant every one such a life! I want nothing, and I fear no one. I’m on good terms with myself, and I cannot imagine any one richer and freer than I. When I was banished from Russia, I insisted from the very first day: ‘I want nothing!’ The devil he talks to me of wife, and of home, and of freedom; and I back at him: ‘I want nothing!’ I insisted on mine, and, as you see, I live well, and do not complain. Give way to the devil but an inch, and you are lost. There’s no deliverance, you sink into the bog over your very head, and there’s no getting out. Not alone your brother, the stupid _muzhik_; but nobles and educated men are lost. Some fifteen years ago they sent here one of that gentry. He didn’t share some property with his brothers, tampered somehow with a will. They say he comes from the dukes or the barons--or perhaps he is only an official--how should one know? Well, this gentleman arrived here, and the first thing he did was to buy himself a house and some land. ‘I intend,’ he said, ‘to live by the sweat of my brow, because,’ he said, ‘I am no longer a gentleman, but a convict.’ ‘Well,’ said I to myself, ‘may God help him, he means well!’ He was at that time a fussy, bustling young man; did his own mowing and now and then caught fish, and rode sixty versts a day on horseback. That was his one misfortune. From the very first year he made trips to Girino, to the post-office there. Times were and he would be on my ferry-boat, sighing: ‘Ah, Simon, it’s rather a long time since they have sent me money from home!’ ‘There’s no need,’ I’d go on telling him, ‘of money, Vassili Sergeyich. What good is it? Throw it aside,’ I argued with him. ‘All that’s gone by; forget it as if it never were; as if you had only dreamt it; and begin life anew. Don’t listen,’ I said to him, ‘to the devil. It’ll lead to no good; it’ll only draw a noose around your neck. Now it’s money you want, and later it’ll be another thing--there’s no end to it. If it’s happiness you seek, first of all desire nothing. Yes.... If,’ I said to him, ‘fate has treated you and me badly, there’s no begging charity of her, no falling at her feet; rather should one treat her with scorn and laugh at her--then she too will laugh.’ So I spoke to him.... Two years later I ferried him over to this side--and he all overjoyed and laughing. ‘I am going,’ he said, ‘to Girino to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me,’ he said, ‘and is coming out here. She’s a fine woman, good-hearted.’ He almost choked from happiness. The next day he brought his wife. She was young, handsome, in a pretty hat; and in her arms a girl baby; and all sorts of baggage with her. As to Vassili Sergeyich, he fussed around her, couldn’t stop feasting his eyes on her or stop raving about her.