Everybody seems to think that he is placed in an office for no other purpose than to fill his own pockets; and it is astonishing with what rapidity he manages to do so, especially if there be any public work on hand. We were staying in one of the provinces through which the railway from Moscow to St. Petersburg runs. While it was being constructed, the fortunes made by the engineers and _employés_ were astonishing: from having nothing at all, they soon acquired estates, and became quite rich, and that at the expense of the crown and of the _miserable serfs_ that laboured on the road. Once, when the trains began to run, we went to a picnic by one of them. When we stopped at the station we found about four hundred of the workmen assembled. They eagerly asked if the governor were of the party. Being told that he was not, but that his lady was among us, they earnestly begged to see her. She very kindly came at their request. We then heard a sad story, showing the way in which these poor people were treated: they had not been paid any wages for six weeks; their rations were bad; and, more than that, a dreadful fever, something like the plague, had broken out among them, which had not been reported, and they said that their companions had perished by scores, and had been buried, like so many dogs, in the morasses along the line. The wretched looks and half-clad bodies of these ill-used men bore witness to their unhappy state, and showed too plainly how they had been wronged by the rapacity of the government _employés_.
The police-master and the officer of _gensdarmes_, with some of the chief engineers, were of the party. They pretended utter ignorance of the whole affair, and wished to make every one believe that they were quite shocked to hear of it; but undoubtedly they knew well whither the money had gone. They made so plausible a tale, and put so fair a face on the matter, telling the poor serfs that they would see it all righted, that one would have deemed them their guardian angels, instead of their robbers: not so thought the unhappy peasants, if one might judge by the look of despair and hopelessness that they cast on each other. They too well knew that vengeance would fall on them for daring to make the complaints we had heard, and that they had only rendered their condition infinitely more wretched than before.