XIX
We walked in the Yussopor Park. He spoke superbly about the customs
of the Moscow aristocracy. A big Russian peasant woman was working on
the flower-bed, bent at right angles, showing her ivory legs, shaking
her heavy breasts. He looked at her attentively.
"It is those caryatides who have kept all that magnificence and
extravagance going.
Not only by the labor of peasant men and women, not only by the taxes
they pay, but in the literal sense by their blood. If the aristocracy
had not from time to time mated with such horse-women as she, they would
have died out long ago. It is impossible with impunity to waste one's
strength as the young men of my time did. But after sowing their wild
oats, many married serf-girls and produced a good breed. In that way,
too, the peasant's strength saved them. That strength is everywhere in
place. Half the aristocracy always has to spend its strength on itself,
and the other half to dilute itself with peasant blood and thus diffuse
the peasant blood a little. It's useful."
