Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/241

 doctors, agriculturists, teachers, intelligent workmen of all kinds, my God, are torn from work, from honest toil, and bribed with a bit of bread to play in various dolls' comedies which would make any decent man blush! No young man can serve with you three years without turning into a hypocrite, a flatterer, an informer. . . . Is that right? Your Polish stewards, those base spies, all these Gaetans and Casimirs who gallop from morning to night over your tens of thousands of acres, and for your benefit alone suck blood out of every stone! . . . Excuse me for speaking incoherently, but that doesn't matter. The common people, in your opinion, are not human beings. Yes, and the princes, counts, and bishops who visit you, you look on as decorations and not as living men. But the chief thing. . . the thing that angers me most of all, is that you have property worth a million, yet do for your fellow-creatures nothing!”

Surprised, frightened, offended, the princess sat still. She was at a loss what to say or do. Never before had she been spoken to in that tone. The doctor's unpleasant, angry voice, his awkward, stammering words, hammered in her ears ; and it seemed from his gesticulations that he would strike her in the face with his hat.

“That is untrue!” she said gently and appealingly. “I have done much good to people, and you yourself know it.”