THE CANDLE
1885
THE CANDLE
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil. (Matt. v. 38, 39.)
This happened in the days of slavery. There were then all kinds of masters. There were such as remembered their hour of death and God, and took pity on their people, and there were dogs,—not by that may their memory live! But there were no meaner masters than those who from serfdom rose, as though out of the mud, to be lords! With them life was hardest of all.
There happened to be such a clerk in a manorial estate. The peasants were doing manorial labour. There was much land, and the land was good, and there was water, and meadows, and forests. There would have been enough for everybody, both for the master and for the peasants, but the master had placed over them a clerk, a manorial servant of his from another estate.
The clerk took the power into his own hand, and sat down on the peasants' necks. He was a married man,—he had a wife and two married daughters,—and had saved some money: he might have lived gloriously without sin, but he was envious, and stuck fast in sin. He began by driving the peasants to manorial labour more than the usual number of days. He started a brick-kiln, and he drove all the men and women to work in it above their strength, and sold the brick. The peasants went to the proprietor in Moscow to complain against him, but they were not successful. When the clerk learned that the peasants had entered a complaint against him, he took his revenge out of them. The peasants led a harder life still. There were found faithless people among the peasants: they began to denounce their own brothers to the clerk, and to slander one another. And all the people became involved, and the clerk was furious.
The further it went, the worse it got, and the clerk carried on so terribly that the people became afraid of him as of a wolf. When he drove through the village, everybody ran away from him as from a wolf, so as not to be seen by him. The clerk saw that and raved more than ever because people were afraid of him. He tortured the peasants with beating and with work, and they suffered very much from him.