Another disappointment, another plan shattered, but I have still hope
that all is not lost. I spoke to-day with Kromitzki about the Boyar
who sold his wife, and invented a whole story in order to discover his
real feelings. We met the Englishman with his purchased wife near the
Cascades. I began by praising her beauty, and then remarked:--
"The doctor here told me something about the transaction, and I think
you are a little hard upon the Boyar."
"Hard upon him? not a bit; he amuses me intensely," he replied.
"There are extenuating circumstances in the case. He is not only a
Boyar, but the owner of extensive tannery works. Suddenly, because of
the infection, the importation of skins from Roumania was forbidden.
The man recognized that unless he could tide over the time until the
law was repealed he would be ruined, and with him hundreds of families
to whom he gave employment. My dear fellow, he looked at it from
a business point of view; perhaps business morality is a little
different from general morality, and as he had once entered into
that--"
"He had a right to sell his wife? To fulfil one part of his duties he
had no right to trample upon another and perhaps more binding duty."
Kromitzki could not have disappointed me more thoroughly than by thus
showing some decent feeling. But I did not give up my hope at once.
I know that even the meanest person has still at his disposition
high-sounding words wherewith to mask his real character. Therefore I
went on:--
"You do not take into account one thing, namely, that the man would
have dragged his wife with him into poverty. Confess it is a singular
idea of duty that it should lead us to deprive those dependent on us
of their daily bread."
"Do you know, I had no idea you were so deucedly sober-minded."
"You fool!" I thought to myself; "don't you understand that these are
not my views, but views I want you to adopt?" Aloud I said:--
"I only try to put myself into the place of this business man.
Besides, you do not consider that the woman probably did not love her
husband, and that the other man was aware of it."
"In such a case they were worthy of each other."
"That is another question altogether. Looking a little deeper into
the affair, and supposing that being in love with the Englishman, she
nevertheless remained faithful to her husband, she may be worthier
than you think. As to the Boyar, he may be a villain for anything I
know, but what can he do, I ask you, in case somebody comes to him and
says: 'You are a bankrupt twice over; you have debts you cannot pay,
and a wife that does not love you. Divorce that woman, and I will take
care of her future, and will also take upon me all your liabilities.'
It is a way of speaking, to say the man 'sold' his wife; but can a
transaction like this be called a sale? Consider that the merchant
who agreed to this proposition by one stroke saved his wife from
poverty,--and possibly this is the right way to look upon duty,--and
saved all those who depended upon him!"