Purlevsky had even heard of a seigneur who punished a peasant boy for throwing a stone at one of his hunting dogs by stripping the lad of his clothes, which he showed to his borzois to sniff, then putting him in a field and loosing the dogs from their leads to hunt him down. (Fortunately the dogs did not harm him, and the emperor, on hearing this story, had the landlord arrested; there were limits even under serfdom, and he had clearly transgressed them.) Nevertheless, the serfs, not just educated ones like Purlevsky, keenly felt their overwhelming impotence in the face of seigneurial demands.
