If we want to play a little game of cards, we play cards; if we want to have some hot tea, well, then we have tea.
We won't drink more than we want to, but we may drink to our heart's content.
And why all this?
Because, mother dear, God's mercy is with us.
Were it not for Him, the King of Kings, maybe we, too, would now be wandering in the fields, in the cold and the darkness, in a shabby little coat, a flimsy little girdle, bast shoes." "Oh, come now, what do you mean—bast shoes?
We are gentlefolk, surely.
In any circumstances we can afford decent footwear."
"Do you know why we were born in the gentry, mother dear?
All because God's mercy was with us.
Were it not for that we would now be in a hut and it would be lighted not by a candle but by a luchina and as to tea or coffee, we wouldn't dare dream about them.
I would be patching my miserable little bast shoes, and you would be getting ready to sup off thin cabbage soup, and Yevpraksia would be weaving tick, and on top of it all, maybe the desyatsky would come to press us and the wagon into service."
"Yes, catch the desyatsky coming on a night like this!"
"Who knows, mother dear?
And maybe the regiments would come!
Maybe there would be war or mutiny. The regiments must be there on the dot.
The other day, for instance, the chief of police was telling me Napoleon III. had died. So you may be sure the French will be up to some mischief again.
Naturally, our soldiers will have to make for the front at once, and you, friend peasant, will have to get your wagon out, quick!
Never mind cold, blizzard, and snowdrifts. You go if the authorities tell you to, and if you know what is good for you.
But we, don't you see, will be spared a while. They won't turn us out with the wagon."
"Yes, who dares deny it? The mercy the Lord has shown us is great."
"That's just what I say.
God, mother dear, is everything.
He gives us wood to burn and food to eat. It's all His doing.
We think we buy things ourselves, and pay our own hard cash, but when you look into it more deeply, and reckon it up, and figure it out, it's all He, it's all God.
If it be His will, we'll have nothing.
Here, for instance, I would like to have some fine little oranges, I would have some myself, would offer one to my mother dear, would give an orange to everyone. I have the money to buy oranges. Suppose I produce some coin and say, 'Here, let me have some oranges,' but God says, 'Halt, man!' Then here I am, a philosopher without cucumbers."
They laughed.
"That's all talk," said Yevpraksia. "My uncle was sexton at the Uspenye Church in Pesochnoye. You may be sure he was as pious a man as ever was. So I think God ought to have done something for him. But he was caught in a snowstorm out in the fields and froze to death all the same."
"That's just my point.
If such is God's will, you will freeze to death, and if such is not His will, you will remain alive.
There are prayers that please God and there are prayers that do not please Him.
If a prayer pleases God it will reach Him, if it does not, you may as well not pray at all."
"I remember in 1824 I was travelling and was pregnant with Pavel. It was in the month of December, and I was going to Moscow——"
"Just a moment, mother dear.
Let me finish about the prayers.
A man prays for everything, for he needs everything.
He needs some butter and some cabbage, and some gherkins, well, in a word, he needs everything.
Sometimes he doesn't need the thing, but in his human weakness he prays for it all the same.
But God from above sees better.
You pray for butter, and he gives you cabbage or onions. You are after fair and warm weather and he sends you rain and hail.
What you have to do is to understand it all and not complain.
Last September, for example, we prayed God for frost, so that the winter corn might not rot, but God, you see, sent no frosts, and our winter corn rotted away."
"It certainly did rot away," remarked Arina Petrovna commiseratingly. "The peasants' winter fields at Novinky weren't worth a straw.
They'll have to plow them all over and plant spring corn."
"That's just it.
Here we are planning and philosophizing, and figuring it one way, and trying it another way, but God in a trice reduces all our plots and plans to dust.
You, mother dear, wanted to tell us something that happened to you in 1824?"
"What was it? I really don't remember.
I suppose I wanted to tell you again about God's mercy.
I don't remember, my friend, I don't."