Some readers of the story have remarked about it that this detail is immoral, and that the idea of the budget as of a milch-cow ought to be suppressed, rather than confirmed.
For me this touch, entirely apart from its artistic unity, is especially dear. You see the crown funds get into some one's hands, why should they not sometimes come to a homeless soldier? There will often be found absolute contrariety between the views regarding honesty held by the people and by the upper class. The demands of the people are especially grave and stern regarding honesty in the more intimate relations, for instance, in relation to the family, the village, the commune. In relation to those outside—to the public, to the empire, especially to foreigners, toward the treasury, they have a confused notion of the general laws of honesty. The muzhik who will never tell his brother a lie, who will endure every imaginable privation for his family, who will not take a spare kopek or one that he has not earned from his neighbor or fellow-villager, that same muzhik will skin a stranger or a person from the city as he would a linden, and will tell a lie at every word he speaks to a nobleman or a functionary; supposing he is a soldier, he will, without the slightest compunction, kill a French prisoner, and if crown money comes into his hands, consider it a crime to his family not to divert it to his own use.
In the upper class the exact opposite takes place. Any one of us[1] would sooner deceive his wife, his brother, a tradesman with whom he had dealt for a score of years, his servant, his peasants, his neighbor, and at the same time while abroad is most scrupulous not to cheat any one and is always asking if, by chance, he owes any one money. He will also fleece his regiment or company for champagne and gloves, and will lay himself out in polite attentions to a French prisoner. This same man in regard to the treasury will consider it the greatest of crimes to divert funds to his own use, even if he is without money—will stop at considering it so, and generally, when the
- ↑ Nash brat, "Our brother."
