Not far from my estate this spring some moujiks were working on a railway embankment.

You know what a peasant's food is,--bread, kvass,* onions.

With this frugal nourishment he lives, he is alert, he makes light work in the fields.

But on the railway this bill of fare becomes cacha and a pound of meat.

Only he restores this meat by sixteen hours of labor pushing loads weighing twelve hundred pounds.
*Kvass, a sort of cider.
"And we, who eat two pounds of meat and game, we who absorb all sorts of heating drinks and food, how do we expend it?
In sensual excesses.
If the valve is open, all goes well; but close it, as I had closed it temporarily before my marriage, and immediately there will result an excitement which, deformed by novels, verses, music, by our idle and luxurious life, will give a love of the finest water.