The teacher, who was drawing pictures absently with his fingers on the table, and examining them, said, “Don’t you see, Yakov, why I don’t like it?…Let us go into the matter thoroughly, and find out what you are really doing, and what the result for you may be. Your wife is pregnant. You struck her last night on her sides and chest. That means that you beat not only her but the child too. You may have killed it, and your wife might have died or else have become seriously ill. To have the trouble of looking after a sick woman is not pleasant. It is wearying, and expensive because illness requires medicine, and medicine money. If you have not killed the child, you may have crippled it, and it will be born deformed, lop-sided, or hunch-backed. That means that it will not be able to work, and it is only too important to you that he should be a good workman. Even if he is born ill, it will be bad enough, because he will keep his mother from work, and will require medicine. Do you see what you are doing to yourself? Men who live by hard work must be strong and healthy, and they should have strong and healthy children. Is all this right?”

“Yes,” assented the listeners.

“But all this can’t happen,” said Yashka, rather frightened at the prospect held out to him by the teacher. “She is big and healthy, I could not possibly have got at the child. She is a devil—a hag, I tell you!” he shouted angrily. “She just eats me away as rust eats iron, whenever she gets a chance!”

“I understand, Yakov, that you cannot help beating your wife,” the teacher’s sad and thoughtful voice again broke in. “You have many reasons for doing so…It is not your wife’s nature that causes you to beat her so carelessly…but your own dark and sad life…”

“You are right!” shouted Yakov. “We do live in darkness, like under a chimney sweep’s shirt.”

“You are angry with your life, but you vent your anger on your wife, on your closest of kin, and you make her suffer all this simply because you are stronger than she is. She is always handy and cannot get away. Don’t you see how unreasonable you are?”

“That is so…Devil take it! But what shall I do? Am I not a man after all?”

“Just so! You are a man…Well, I only wish to tell you that if you cannot help beating her, then beat her carefully and always remember that you may injure her health or that of the child. It is not good to beat pregnant women…on their belly or on their sides and chest…Beat her, say, on the neck…or else take a rope and beat her on some soft place…”

The orator finished his speech and looked upon his hearers with his dark, deep-sunken eyes, seeming to apologize to them for some unknown crime.

They reacted to the speech with animation. They understood the ethics of this creature who was once a man, the ethics of the public house and much misfortune.

“Well, brother Yashka, did you understand? See how true all this is!”

Yakov understood. One should be careful how one beats one’s wife or one might do oneself a wrong. He is silent, replying to his companions’ jokes with confused smiles.

“Then again, what is a wife?” philosophizes the baker, Mokei Anisimoff. “A wife…is a friend…if we look at the matter in that way. She is like a chain, chained to you for life…and you are both just like two galley slaves. Try to walk in step with her, or else you will feel the chain…”

“Wait a moment,” says Yakov, “but you, you too beat your wife.”

“Did I say that I did not? I beat her…There is nothing else handy…Do you expect me to thump against the wall with my fist when I just can’t stand it all any longer?”