There was general rejoicing everywhere, but it was short-lived, and soon turned into oppressive embarrassment. For, if a new personality arose out of the peasant soil, it became forthwith a polished merchant, and, starting business at once, began to sell the fatherland piecemeal to foreigners—first of all at forty-five copecks[1] a plot, and afterwards going to such lengths that it wanted to sell a whole district, with all its live stock and thinking machines.
If they stirred up a new man on merchant soil he either was born a degenerate or at once became a bureaucrat. If they did it on a nobleman's estate, beings arose, as they had done before, who seemed intent upon swallowing up the whole revenue of the state. On the soil of the middle class and petty property-owners all sorts of wild thistles grew: agents-provocateurs, Nihilists, pacifists, and goodness knows what.
"But we already have all these in a sufficient quantity," the wise citizens confessed to each other.
And they were sadly puzzled.
"We have made some kind of mistake in the technique of creation," they said.
"But what was the mistake?"
They sat in the mud and thought very hard.
Then they began to upbraid one another:
"You, Selderey Lavrovich, you spit too much, and in all directions."
"And you, Kornishon Lukich, are too faint-hearted to do likewise."