"You have so frightened the old lady that she has sent for the soldiers. Be calm, nothing will happen, I shall not let the soldiers harm you."
Fierce-looking warriors galloped up on horseback. It was winter-time, and the horses, which had sweated freely on the way, began to shiver as the hoar-frost settled on them. The nobleman pitied the horses and stabled them on his estate, saying to the peasants:
"You carted away some hay to which you had no right; please send it back for these horses. They are animals, guilty of nothing; don't you understand?"
The soldiers were hungry; they caught and ate all the cocks in the village, and everything became peaceful in the nobleman's district. Egorka, of course, went over to the nobleman's side and, as before, the nobleman used his services in matters of history: he bought new copies of all the books and ordered all those facts to be erased which are apt to incline one towards Liberalism; and into those which could not be erased he ordered new sense to be put.
As for Egorka, he was equal to anything. To prove his versatility he turned his hand to pornography. Nevertheless a bright spot remained in his soul, and while he was busy blotting out historical facts his heart misgave him, and to appease his conscience he wrote verses and printed them under the nom de plume, "V. W."—i.e. "Vanquished Warrior."
"O chanticler, thou harbinger of morn,
How comes it that thy proud call has been stilled?
How comes it that thy place of t'other day
By yonder gloomy barn-owl now is filled?
The nobleman he needs no future now,
And all of us live each day like the last;
Poor chanticler has long since ceased to crow
And giv'n his drumsticks to a last repast.
When shall we waken unto life once more?
And who will call us when the dawn is nigh?
If chanticler, poor chanticler, is dead,
Pray who will wake and turn us out of bed?"
And the peasants of course calmed down; they now live in peace, and, as they have nothing else to do, spend their time making ribald verse:
"O honest Mother!
The Spring is nigh
When we shall groan
And, starving, die!"
The Russians are a happy people.
[1] By Egorka is meant the ordinary type of the Russian "intellectual" who has no backbone or principle, and is always at the beck and call of the landed proprietor, capitalist or the authorities.