"Well and healthily, gossip; all night dancing, my suitors awaiting."
"Where have you been, fool?" asked the host.
"Dressing, gossip, to receive the dear guests, on the Lord's festival, by order of the Tsar, by command of the master, to the derision of the world in the German style."
At these words there was a loud burst of laughter, and the jester took her place behind the host's chair.
"And folly talks foolishly, and sometimes tells the truth in her folly," said Tatiana Afanassievna, eldest sister of the host, and much respected by him. "Naturally the present style of dress must seem ridiculous to everybody. When you, my friends, have shaved your beards and put on a short coat, it is of course no use talking of women's rags; but really it is a pity the sarafan, the maiden's ribbons, and the povoinik They stoop; they can neither stand, sit, nor breathe—real martyrs, my poor dears."
"Dear mother Tatiana Afanassievna!" said Kirila Petrovitch, formerly a voievod at Riasan, where he acquired 3,000 serfs and a young wife, neither by strictly honourable means. "But my wife may dress as she likes as long as she does not order new gowns every month and throw away the previous ones, while still quite perfectly new. Formerly the granddaughter included in her dowry the grandmother's sarafan; but now you see the mistress in a gown to-day and to-morrow it is on the maid. What is to be done? Nothing but ruin confronts the Russian noble. Very sad!" he said, with a sigh, looking at his Maria Ilienitchna, who seemed to like neither his praise of olden times nor his disparagement of the latest fashions. The rest of the ladies shared her displeasure, but they said nothing, for modesty was in those days still deemed essential in young women.
"And who is to blame?" asked Gravril Afanassievitch, frothing a mug of kissli shtchi (sort of lemonade). "Is it not our own fault? The young women play the fool and we encourage them."
"What can we do? We cannot help ourselves," replied Kirila Petrovitch. "A man would gladly shut his wife up in the house, but she is summoned with beating of drums to attend the assemblies. The husband follows the whip, but the wife runs after dress. Oh, those assemblies! The Lord has sent them upon us to punish us for our sins."
Maria Ilienitchna sat on needles; her tongue itched. At last she could bear it no longer, and turning to her husband inquired with a little acid smile what he found to object to in the assemblies.
"This is what I find to object to," replied the irritated husband. Since they began, husbands cannot manage their wives; wives have forgotten the teaching of the apostles—that a wife shall reverence her husband. They trouble themselves not about their domestic affairs, but about new apparel. They consider not how to please the husband, but how to attract the officers. And is it becoming, madam, for a Russian lady—wife or maid—to hobnob with German tobacconists and with their workmen? Who ever heard of dancing till night and talking with young men? If they were relatives, all well and good—but with strangers and with men they do not know."