into fashion, about the difficulty of getting labour, penalties,
and damage caused by cattle, even of Bismarck, the war of 1866,
and Napoleon III., whom Kollomietzev called a hero. Kollomietzev
gave vent to the most retrograde opinions, going so far as to
propose, in jest it is true, a toast given by a certain friend of
his on a names-day banquet, "I drink to the only principle I
acknowledge, the whip and Roedeger!"

Valentina Mihailovna frowned, and remarked that it was de tres
mauvais gout.

Sipiagin, on the contrary, expressed the most liberal views,
refuted Kollomietzev's arguments politely, though with a certain
amount of disdain, and even chaffed him a little.

"Your terror of emancipation, my dear Simion Petrovitch," he
said, "puts me in mind of our much respected friend, Alexai
Ivanovitch Tveritinov, and the petition he sent in, in the year
1860. He insisted on reading it in every drawing room in St.
Petersburg. There was one rather good sentence in it about our
liberated serf, who was to march over the face of the fatherland
bearing a torch in his hand. You should have seen our dear Alexai
Ivanovitch, blowing out his cheeks and blinking his little eyes,
pronounce in his babyish voice, 'T-torch! t-torch! Will march
with a t-torch!' Well, the emancipation is now an established
fact, but where is the peasant with the torch?

"Tveritinov was only slightly wrong," Kollomietzev said solemnly.
"Not the peasants will march with the torch, but others."