Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XV. Later Sects
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oppress some poor fellow. No bully dared ill-use his wife,
nor cruel parents to maltreat their children in P. P.’s presence.
He had nothing against a moderate amount of corporal
punishment. “One must punish,” he would say, “but it should be
done with discretion.”
P. P. had no land, and this grieved him deeply. “What!”
he used to exclaim, “an ignorant peasant, who has never
fought a Turk, never shed his blood for Tsar and country,
owns land and a house, while I, the officer Tolupa, who am
known by the higher authorities, whom the General Kornilov
himself has clapped on the shoulder more than once, who have
been wounded three times—Tolupa must in his old age suffer
want like a beggar, without land, without a home!”
At first Tolupa was ready to leave everything and walk on
foot to St. Petersburg to present his hard case in person, but
he thought better of it, and determined to treat the matter in
a more common-sense way. “Here in Russia we have, of
course, holy laws,” he would say; “I must treat this thing
according to law; then I shall surely gain my just cause.” In
general, he had a very deep reverence for law, and his opinions
in this respect were marked by the most childlike simplicity.
Tolupa took up the matter with great zeal. He wanted not
only to get something for himself, but to unite all homeless
veterans in common effort for their cause. But to convince
the other soldiers in his own and neighbouring villages, he had
to spend six months, and an immense amount of strength,
activity, and speech. Provided at last with a petition signed
by a hundred men, and attested at the village office, and having
ordered a mass for the success of his enterprise, he set out on
foot for the district town, convinced that his cause must be
crowned with success; all he had to do was to keep to the law.
In town he fell in with a “gin-lawyer” (one of the lowest
kind), who drew up for ten roubles an application to the
authorities of the district. His application was rejected, in
the first place, because it was so badly drafted that it was
impossible to understand what it was about.
Tolupa took a post as doorkeeper for a month or two, till he
earned sufficient to get a better lawyer, who wrote an
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