And all Nikoláy did was fruitful⁠—probably just because he refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for virtue’s sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring estates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the memory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs. “He was a master⁠ ⁠… the peasants’ affairs first and then his own. Of course he was not to be trifled with either⁠—in a word, he was a real master!”

One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nikoláy, and that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of making free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form of punishment suddenly changed.