“If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set going … such a lot of trouble wasted … I’d turn my back on the whole business, sell up, go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch … to hear La Belle Hélène ,” said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.
“But you see you don’t throw it up,” said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; “so there must be something gained.”
“The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you’d never believe it—the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a laborer, he’ll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring you up before the justice of the peace.”
“But then you make complaints to the justice too,” said Sviazhsky.