Clytemnestra's goings on and the state of
Greece generally.  Why didn't the terrible
queen kill that old bore, same time she
murdered her husband?  He has been prosing from
that watch-tower going on three thousand
years.  There seems to be no necessity, either,
for the watch-tower to have any windows,
but broken ones, or any door save four
shameful old planks hanging by one wooden
hinge, and for the hot sun to glare fiercely
through crevices in the walls that have not
been made by the wood shrinking, but by
the absence of part or parcel of the walls
themselves.  Why empty balcony, why broken
windows, why wooden hinges, why one hinge,
why yawning walls?  This: the lord is at
Hombourg (—actress of the Folies
Dramatiques—run of ill-luck on the red, and
so forth), and Herr Vandergutler's, his
intendant's, paramount business is to send
him silver roubles.  More silver roubles, and
yet more!  So those of his serfs who pay him
a yearly rent, or obrok, have had that obrok
considerably increased; and those who were
à corvée have been compelled to go upon
obrok; and everybody, man, woman, and
child, patriarch and young girl, have been
pinched, pressed, screwed, and squeezed,
beaten, harassed, cozened, bullied, driven,
and dragged by the North German intendant
for more silver roubles—more silver roubles
still—for M. de Katorichassoff, at Hombourg.
There the man who deals the cards, and the
woman who rouges her face, divide the
Russian prince's roubles between them (a simple
seigneur here, he is Prince Katorichassoff at
Hombourg); and this is why, you can
understand, that the fire-engine department has
been somewhat neglected, and its operation
suspended at Volnoï-Voloschtchok.  As for
the state of decay into which the building,
though barely two years old, is falling, that
is easily accounted for.  The villagers are
stealing it piecemeal.  They have already
stolen the lower part of the staircase, and
thereby have been too clever for themselves,
as they cannot get at the balcony, which,
being of real iron, must make their mouths
water. The hinges were originally made of
wood, together with all the clamps, and
rivets, and bolts employed in the lower part
of the structure, through a knowledge of the
fact patent and notorious, that iron anywhere
within his reach is as much too much for
the frail morality of a Russian peasant as of
a South Sea native.  He will steal the iron
tires off wheels; he will (and has frequently)
stolen the chains of suspension-bridges.  I
don't think he would object to being loaded
with chains, if he could steal and sell his
fetters.

On domains like those of Prince
Bouillabaissoff, the fire-engine and watch-tower
organisation is not a weak-minded caricature,
but an imposing reality.  And the
importance of such a preventive establishment
can with difficulty be exaggerated.
Of course, his dwelling being of wood, and
easily ignitable, the Russian is incredibly
careless with combustibles.  It is one large
tinderbox.  This is why fire insurance companies
do not flourish in Russia.  It may certainly
be asked what special reason the Russian has
for adopting any precautions against
conflagrations.  Many reasons he certainly has not.
He has about the same personal interest in
his house as a pig might have in his stye.
His breeder must give him four walls to live
in, and a trough to eat his grains from,—
but he may be driven to market any day—
he may be Pork (and well-scored for the
bakehouse) by next Wednesday week.  Again
his house is not unlike a spider's web—easily
destroyed, easily reconstructed.  The
housemaid's broom, or the destroying element—it
is all the same; a little saliva to the one, and
a few logs to the other, and the spider and
the moujik are at work again.  You don't
ask a baby to mend his cradle.  When it is
past service, papa goes out and buys him a
new one.  There is this paternal relation
between the lord and the serf (besides the
obvious non-rod-sparing to avoid the child-
spoiling one) that the former is to a certain
extent compelled to provide for the material
wants of his big-bearded bantling.  If Ivan's
roof be burnt over his head, the lord must
find him at least the materials for another
habitation; if the harvests have fallen short,
or an epizootis has decimated the
countryside, he must feed them.  The serf tills
the ground for his lord, but he must have
seeds given him to sow with.  The Russian
peasant having absolutely no earthly future
to look forward to, it is but reasonable that
his proprietor should supply the exigent
demands of the present moment.  There
is no absolute right of existence
guaranteed; but the master's natural interest in
the Souls he possesses having means
sufficient to keep their bodies alive withal,
obviously prompts him to keep them fed, and
housed, and clothed.  There are his lands;
when they have done their three days' work
for him, they may raise enough corn in the
next three days' serivat to make their
black bread with.  There are his hemp, and
flax, and wool,—their women can spin,
themselves can weave such hodden grey as they
require to cover their nakedness.  There are
his secular woods; they may cut pine-logs
there to make their huts. As regards the
rigid necessary—the bare elements of food,
covering, and shelter,—the nobility's serfs
have decidedly the same advantage over the
twenty millions or so, of crown slaves
(facetiously termed free peasants) as Mr. Legree's
negroes have over the free-born British
paupers of Buckinghamshire, or
Gloucestershire, or—out with it—St. James's,
Westminster, and St. George's, Hanover Square.
In a crown village, is a time of scarcity, the
sufferings of the free peasants are almost
incredibly horrible. Then the wretched