[The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoi]@TWC D-Link book
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

CHAPTER XII
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He went there to dinner and found Ivan's dumb sister preparing the meal.

She was often cheated by the lazy people, who while they did not work, yet ate up all the gruel.

But she learned to know the lazy people from the condition of their hands.

Those with great welts on their hands she invited first to the table, and those having smooth white hands had to take what was left.
The old devil took a seat at the table, but the dumb girl, taking his hands, looked at them, and seeing them white and clean, and with long nails, swore at him and put him from the table.
Ivan's wife said to the old devil: "You must excuse my sister-in-law; she will not allow any one to sit at the table whose hands have not been hardened by toil, so you will have to wait until the dinner is over and then you can have what is left.

With it you must be satisfied." The old devil was very much offended that he was made to eat with "pigs," as he expressed it, and complained to Ivan, saying: "The foolish law you have in your kingdom, that all persons must work, is surely the invention of fools.


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