Traveller and Peasant

I thought the peasants were doing well nowadays.

So well, that we go hungry for days at a time!

The reason I thought so, was that they have taken to squandering so much money.

Squandering what money? How strange you talk!⁠ ⁠… Here are people starving to death, and you talk of squandering money!

But how is it? The papers say that 700 million roubles (and a million is a thousand thousands)⁠—700 million were spent by the peasants on vodka last year.

Are we the only ones that drink? Just look at the priests.⁠ ⁠… Don’t they swill first-rate? And the gentlefolk aren’t behindhand!

Still, that’s only a small part. The greater part stills falls to the peasants.

What of that? Are we not to drink at all?