Within my memory, more striking changes have taken place. I remember that at table, a servant stood with a plate, behind each chair. Men made visits accompanied by two footmen. A Cossack boy and a girl stood in a room to give people their pipes, and to clean them, and so on. Now this seems to us strange and remarkable. But is it not equally strange that a young man or woman, or even an elderly man, that he may visit a friend, should order his horses to be harnessed, and that well-fed horses are kept only for this purpose? Is it not as strange that one man lives in five rooms, or that a woman spends tens, hundreds, thousands of rubles for her dress when she only needs some flax and wool wherewith to spin dresses for herself, and clothes for her husband and children? Is it not strange that men live doing nothing, riding to and fro, smoking and playing, and that a battalion of people are busy feeding and warming them? Is it not strange that old people quite gravely talk and write in newspapers about theatres and music, and other insane people drive to look at musicians or actors? Is it not strange that tens of thousands of boys and girls are brought up so as to make them unfit for every work (they return home from school, and their two books are carried for them by a servant)? There will soon come a time,--and it is already drawing near,--when it will be shameful to dine on five courses served by footmen, and cooked by any but the masters themselves; it will be shameful not only to ride thoroughbreds or to drive in a coach when one has feet to walk on; to wear on week-days dress, shoes, gloves, in which it is impossible to work; it will be shameful to play on a piano which costs one hundred and fifty pounds, or even ten pounds, while others work for one; to feed dogs upon milk and white bread, when there are men who have neither milk nor bread, and to burn lamps and candles without working by their light; to heat stoves in which no meal is cooked, while there are men who have neither light nor fuel. Then it will be impossible to think about giving openly not merely one pound, but even six pence, for a place in a concert or in a theatre. All this will be when the law of labour becomes public opinion. CHAPTER XL As it is said in the Bible, there is a law given unto man and woman,--to man, the law of labour; to woman, the law of child-bearing. Although with our science, "_nous avons changé tout ça_," the law of man as well as of woman remains as immutable as the liver in its place; and the breach of it is inevitably punished by death. The only difference is, that for man, the breach of law is punished by death in such a near future that it can almost be called present; but for woman, the breach of law is punished in a more distant future.