“How many? Why, thirty years. Five years after the Freedom I began going as constable, that’s how I reckon it. And from that time I have been going every day since. Other people have holidays, but I am always going. When it’s Easter and the church bells are ringing and Christ has risen, I still go about with my bag⁠—to the treasury, to the post, to the police superintendent’s lodgings, to the rural captain, to the tax inspector, to the municipal office, to the gentry, to the peasants, to all orthodox Christians. I carry parcels, notices, tax papers, letters, forms of different sorts, circulars, and to be sure, kind gentleman, there are all sorts of forms nowadays, so as to note down the numbers⁠—yellow, white, and red⁠—and every gentleman or priest or well-to-do peasant must write down a dozen times in the year how much he has sown and harvested, how many quarters or poods he has of rye, how many of oats, how many of hay, and what the weather’s like, you know, and insects, too, of all sorts. To be sure you can write what you like, it’s only a regulation, but one must go and give out the notices and then go again and collect them.

Here, for instance, there’s no need to cut open the gentleman; you know yourself it’s a silly thing, it’s only dirtying your hands, and here you have been put to trouble, your honor; you have come because it’s the regulation; you can’t help it. For thirty years I have been going round according to regulation. In the summer it is all right, it is warm and dry; but in winter and autumn it’s uncomfortable. At times I have been almost drowned and almost frozen; all sorts of things have happened⁠—wicked people set on me in the forest and took away my bag; I have been beaten, and I have been before a court of law.”

“What were you accused of?”

“Of fraud.”

“How do you mean?”