"The nests have been found empty."

"Oh, Heaven help us! The thieving villains,
they will drive me mad! Quick, you fool of a
girl, and bring the butter that was made
yesterday."

"Baroness, there is no butter. The young
baron's dogs and the pigs got into the cellar
and ate it all up."

"Liar!" roared the Tartar lady, and cuffed the
girl out of the room: the girl screaming as she
fled, "It is God's truth!" '

"Give such pigs liberty!" said the lady,
catching her breath. "We have two-and-twenty
servants in this house, and yet you see how we
are served. We dare not punish them now as
we used to, and they don't care for my cuffing.
Last July the young baron, my nephew, was
here on a visit, and for some fault he lashed
a peasant with his whip, and cut him over
the eye with the handle. What do you think
the wretch did? He complained to the—" I
did not catch the name, but it was one of
the 'icks'—"and there has been no end of
trouble ever since about it. Ah! We used to
get good work out of the moushicks once.
They paid forty—some of the clever ones fifty
and sixty—roubles obrok when they were out at
work, and those at home were obedient and
willing to slave for us five days every week.
But now we can neither get obrok from those
who are away, nor work from those who remain.
Heaven knows how it is all to end; but I think
the world is turning upside down. The mud is
coming to the top. We shall all soon be slaves
to our own serfs."

"But, my dear madame," I said, "why do
you not adopt Madame Obrassoff's plan? Give
them their freedom at once, a few deciteens of
land, and time to pay?"

"And who is to work our land?"

"You must work it by hired labourers."

"And where are we to get them, and how
pay them?"

"That you must provide for; the surplus of
these peasants, if fairly treated, will work for
you after a time."

"Not one of them! You are a foreigner, and
don't understand these people. They are all
revelling in the anticipation of a life of idleness
and high wages. They are already dividing and
picking out the best land for their share. As
for paying for it, or working for us, nonsense!
A moushick is never satisfied. Give him land,
and he will ask for pasture. Give him
pasture, and he will ask for wood. What he
don't get, he will steal. No, our land must
be cultivated by machinery and engines; and
where the money is to come from I can't tell.
Those who can buy engines, and wait twenty
years for a return of capital, may hold on. As
for us, we are ruined, and must sell what
remains to us for what it will bring, if a customer
can be found. That, Mr. Englishman, is the
condition to which we are coming, if the barons
don't soon put a stop to this emancipation
folly!"

A deciteen of land, measures nearly three
acres. This quantity has been for many years
selling in Russia from three to ten roubles,
according to quality. The serfs do not in law
belong to the barons personally, but the land
does; and as the serfs were, by imperial edict,
long ago made fixtures on the land, so, by a
curious fiction, whoever possessed the land
possessed the serfs or souls on it. Although
not slaves by name, they were really as much
slaves as any African negroes are the
property of any American planters. Now, the
emancipation edict severs that connexion
totally. A serf is no longer a fixture on his
master's land. He is no longer a serf, but a
free man. He can go where he likes. The
land is the baron's, but these now free people
must live on it or by it. The edict, therefore,
enjoins that a certain portion of it, five or six
deciteens, shall be sold to each male peasant,
and for this he must pay the baron fifteen
roubles for each deciteen. The general price of
land in the market being (as I am informed)
not one half of this sum, the price seems to
be a fair one, involving compensation: so on
this head the barons would seem to have little
cause to complain. But as the peasants are
poor, it is decreed that they are to have nine
years to pay in, at a stipulated sum per annum.
Or if the baron be willing—and, indeed,
whether he be willing or no—the serfs in a village
may borrow money from the State, by becoming
security for each other, and pledging their land,
to pay the baron off at once. Thus, they can
become immediately and wholly independent,
with the State for their only creditor, while the
baron obtains the wherewith to farm his own
remaining lands. But such arrangements not
being thought sufficient to meet the present
need of the great mass of poor barons, the State
has further devoted a large sum to be expended
in loans for a long time, at low interest, on
the security of the land, to these poor baronial
proprietors. Such, with some other arrangements
of less moment, are the terms of the
famous emancipation edict now at last in
force.

  THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER,
    A New Series of Occasional Papers
            By CHARLES DICKENS,
   WILL BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK

On the 1st of September will be published, bound in cloth
                   price 5s. 6d.
           THE NINTH VOLUME.