“In the week, sir, there are six days, and we have to work for the manor six times a week, and in the evening we haul the hay from the meadows, if the weather is good; and on holidays the women and girls go to the woods to gather mushrooms and berries. God grant a rain this evening,” he added as he made the sign of the cross. “Sir, if you have any peasants, they are praying for the same.”
“I have no peasants, my friend; and so nobody curses me. Have you a large family?”
“Three sons and three daughters. My eldest is ten years old.”
“How do you manage to get enough grain, if you have only the Sundays to yourself?”
“Not only the Sundays,—the nights are ours too. We need not starve, if we are not lazy. You see, one horse is resting; and when this one gets tired, I’ll take the other, and that’s the way I make my work count.”
“Do you work the same way for your master?”
“No, sir! It would be sinful to work the same way; he has in his fields one hundred hands for one mouth, and I have but two hands for seven mouths, if you count it up. If you were to work yourself to death at your master’s work, he would not thank you for it. The master will not pay the capitation tax; he will let you have no mutton, no hempen cloth, no chicken, no butter. Our people are fortunate in those places where the master receives a rent from the peasant, particularly without a superintendent! It is true, some good masters ask more than three roubles for each soul, yet that is better than tenant labour. They are now getting in the habit of letting farms out to renters who, being poor, flay us alive. They do not give us our own time, and do not let us go out in the winter to work for ourselves, because they pay our capitation tax. It is a devilish idea to let one’s peasants do work for somebody else! There is at least a chance of complaining against a superintendent, but to whom is one to complain against a tenant?”
“My friend! You are mistaken: the laws do not permit to torture people.”
“Torture, yes! But, sir, you would not want to be in my hide!” In the meantime the ploughman hitched another horse to his plough and, bidding me good-bye, began a new furrow.
The conversation with this agriculturist awakened a multitude of thoughts in me. Above all, I thought of the inequality of the peasant’s condition. I compared the crown peasants with those of the proprietors. Both live in villages, but while the first pay a stated tax, the others have to be ready to pay whatever the master wishes. The first are judged by their peers; the others are dead to the laws, except in criminal matters. A member of society only then is taken cognisance of by the Government that protects him when he violates the social bond, when he becomes a criminal! That thought made all my blood boil. Beware, cruel proprietor! On the brow of every one of your peasants I see your condemnation!