in a peasant cart in the same direction as I, jumped off his cart and came up to me.
He was a short man, with small, red moustaches, an unhealthy complexion, and a clever, harsh face with a dissatisfied expression.
He asked me for booklets, and did this evidently as an excuse for entering into conversation.
I asked him where he came from.
He was a peasant from a distant village, from which the wives of some men who have been imprisoned lately, had been to see me.
It is a village I know well, and in which it fell to my lot to administer the Charter of Liberation[1]; and I always admired the particularly handsome and bold type of peasants who live there. From that village specially talented pupils used to come to my school.
I asked him about the peasants who had been sent to prison. With the same assurance and absence of doubt that I had recently met with in everyone—the same full confidence that the Government alone is to blame—he told me that though they had done no wrong, they had been seized, beaten and imprisoned.
Only with great difficulty could I get him to explain what they were accused of.
It turned out that they were "orators," and held meetings at which the necessity of expropriating the land was spoken of.
I said that the establishment of the equal right of all to the use of the land cannot be established by violence.
He did not agree.
"Why not?" said he; "we only need to organize."
"How will you organize?" asked I.
"That will be seen, when the time comes."
"Do you mean, another armed rising?"
"It has become a painful necessity."
- ↑ The only official position Tolstoy ever held, after he left the army, was that of "Arbiter of the Peace" in 1861-2. In that capacity it fell to his lot to regulate the relations between the landlords and the newly-emancipated serfs in his district. (Trans.)
