Part I

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"Yes," assented the listeners.

"But all this will never happen," says Yashka, becoming rather frightened at the prospect held out to him by the teacher.

"She is healthy, and I cannot have reached the child . . . She is a devil--a hag!" he shouts angrily. "I would . . . She will eat me away as rust eats iron."

"I understand, Yakov, that you cannot help beating your wife," the teacher's sad and thoughtful voice again breaks in. "You have many reasons for doing so . . . It is your wife's character that causes you to beat her so incautiously . . . But your own dark and sad life. . . ."

"You are right!" shouts Yakov. "We live in darkness, like the chimney-sweep when he is in the chimney!"

"You are angry with your life, but your wife is patient; the closest relation to you--your wife, and you make her suffer for this, simply because you are stronger than she. She is always with you, and cannot get away. Don't you see how absurd you are?"

"That is so . . . Devil take it! But what shall I do? Am I not a man?"

"Just so! You are a man. . . . I only wish to tell you that if you cannot help beating her, then beat her carefully and always remember that you may injure her health or that of the child. It is not good to beat pregnant women . . . on their belly or on their sides and chests . . . Beat her, say, on the neck . . . or else take a rope and beat her on some soft place. . . ."

The orator finished his speech and looked upon his hearers with his dark, pathetic eyes, seeming to apologize to them for some unknown crime.

The public understands it. They understand the morale of the creature who was once a man, the morale of the public-house and much misfortune.

"Well, brother Yashka, did you understand? See how true it is!"

Yakov understood that to beat her incautiously might be injurious to his wife. He is silent, replying to his companions' jokes with confused smiles.

"Then again, what is a wife?" philosophizes the baker, Mokei Anisimoff. "A wife . . . is a friend if we look at the matter in that way. She is like a chain, chained to you for life . . . and you are both just like galley slaves. And if you try to get away from her, you cannot, you feel the chain."

"Wait," says Yakovleff; "but you beat your wife too."

"Did I say that I did not? I beat her . . There is nothing else handy . . . Do you expect me to beat the wall with my fist when my patience is exhausted?"

"I feel just like that too . . ." says Yakov.