Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/300

 The poor have no access to the prince, but only to the counsellors themselves; and indeed that is very difficult. Ocolnick holds the place of a prætor or judge appointed by the prince, otherwise the chief counsellor, who is always near the prince's person, is so called. Nedelsnick is the post of those who summon men to justice, seize malefactors and cast them into prison; and these are reckoned amongst the nobility.

Labourers work six days in the week for their master, but the seventh day is allowed for their private work. They have some fields and meadows of their own allowed them by their masters, from which they derive their livelihood: all the rest is their master's. They are, moreover, in a very wretched condition, for their goods are exposed to plunder from the nobility and soldiery, who call them Christians and black rascals by way of insult.

A nobleman, however poor he might be, would think it ignominious and disgraceful to labour with his own hands; but he does not think it disgraceful to pick up from the ground and eat the rind or peeling of fruits that have been thrown away by us and our servants, especially the skins of melons, garlic, and onions; but whenever occasion offers, they drink as immoderately as they eat sparingly. They are nearly all slow to anger, but proud in their poverty, whose irksome companion they consider slavery. They wear oblong dresses and white peaked hats of felt (of which we see coarse mantles made) rough from the shop.

The halls of their houses are indeed large and lofty enough, but the doors are so low, that in entering, one must stoop and bend one's self.

They who live by manual labour and work for hire, receive a deng and a half as one day's pay; a mechanic receives two dengs, but these do not work very industriously unless they are well beaten. I have heard some servants complain that they had not received their fair amount of beating from