Note 4 — Chapter XXIII · IRKUTSK.

This assault by the husband was, as far as I know, quite unprovoked on the part of his better half, and it serves as an illustration of the way in which a certain class of the Russians treat their wives. It also serves to confirm what is written of Akoulka’s husband in Dostoyeffsky’s “Buried Alive,” where two prisoners are talking in the night, and one relates: “I had got, somehow or other, in the way of beating her. Some days I would keep at it from morning till night. I did not know what to do with myself when I was not beating her. She used to sit crying, and I could not help feeling sorry for her, and so I beat her.” Subsequently he murdered her. After which relation, the other prisoner acquiesces, and says that “wives must be beaten to be of any service.”