Perhaps peasant to him means merely—bad smell. He always feels it, and involuntarily has to talk of it.
Last night I told him of my battle with General Kornet's wife; he laughed until he cried, and he got a pain in his side and groaned and kept on crying out in a thin scream:
"With the shovel! On the bottom with the shovel, eh? Right on the bottom! Was it a broad shovel?"
Then, after a pause, he said seriously: "It was generous in you to strike her like that; any other man would have struck her on the head for that. Very generous! You understood that she wanted you?"
"I don't remember. I hardly think that I can have understood."
"Well now! But it's obvious. Of course she wanted you."
"I did not live for that then."
"Whatever you may live for, it's all the same. You are evidently not much of a lady's man. Anyone else in your place would have made his fortune out of the situation, would have become a landed proprietor and have ended by making one of a pair of drunkards."
After a silence:
"You are funny—don't be offended—very funny. And it's very strange that you should still be good-natured when you might well be spiteful ... Yes, you might well be spiteful ... You're strong ... that's good...."