“Poverty? There is want to be sure, there’s different sorts of want, Madam. If a man is in prison, or let us say blind or crippled, that really is trouble I wouldn’t wish anyone, but if a man’s free and has all his senses, if he has his eyes and his hands and his strength and God, what more does he want? It’s cockering themselves, and it’s ignorance, Madam, it’s not poverty. If you, let us suppose, good gentlefolk, by your education, wish out of kindness to help him he will drink away your money in his low way; or, what’s worse, he will open a drinkshop, and with your money start robbing the people. You say poverty, but does the rich peasant live better? He, too, asking your pardon, lives like a swine: coarse, loud-mouthed, cudgel-headed, broader than he is long, fat, red-faced mug, I’d like to swing my fist and send him flying, the scoundrel. There’s Larion, another rich one at Dubetchnya, and I bet he strips the bark off your trees as much as any poor one; and he is a foul-mouthed fellow; his children are the same, and when he has had a drop too much he’ll topple with his nose in a puddle and sleep there. They are all a worthless lot, Madam. If you live in a village with them it is like hell. It has stuck in my teeth, that village has, and thank the Lord, the King of Heaven, I’ve plenty to eat and clothes to wear, I served out my time in the dragoons, I was village elder for three years, and now I am a free Cossack, I live where I like. I don’t want to live in the village, and no one has the right to force me. They say—my wife. They say you are bound to live in your cottage with your wife. But why so? I am not her hired man.”

“Tell me, Stepan, did you marry for love?” asked Masha.

“Love among us in the village!” answered Stepan, and he gave a laugh. “Properly speaking, Madam, if you care to know, this is my second marriage. I am not a Kurilovka man, I am from Zalegoshtcho, but afterwards I was taken into Kurilovka when I married. You see my father did not want to divide the land among us. There were five of us brothers. I took my leave and went to another village to live with my wife’s family, but my first wife died when she was young.”

“What did she die of?”