he pleasures of life to as great an extent as possible. He did
understand this, and he would not go with the peasant to tend cattle, and
to eat potatoes and _kvas_ with him, but he went to the zoological garden
in the costume of a savage, to lead the elephant at thirty kopeks a day.

I might have understood how clumsy I was, when I was rearing my children
in the most utter idleness and luxury, to reform other people and their
children, who were perishing from idleness in what I called the den of
the Rzhanoff house, where, nevertheless, three-fourths of the people toil
for themselves and for others. But I understood nothing of this.

There were a great many children in the Rzhanoff house, who were in the
same pitiable plight; there were the children of dissolute women, there
were orphans, there were children who had been picked up in the streets
by beggars. They were all very wretched. But my experience with Serozha
showed me that I, living the life I did, was not in a position to help
them.

While Serozha was living with us, I noticed in myself an effort to hide
our life from him, in particular the life of our children. I felt that
all my efforts to direct him towards a good, industrious life, were
counteracted by the examples of our lives and by that of our children. It
is very easy to take a child away from a disreputable woman, or from a
beggar. It is very easy, when one has the money, to wash, clean and
dress him in neat clothing, to support him, and even to teach him various
sciences; but it is not only difficult for us, who do not earn our own
bread, but quite the reverse, to teach him to work for his bread, but it
is impossible, because we, by our example, and even by those material and
valueless improvements of his life, inculcate the contrary. A puppy can
be taken, tended, fed, and taught to fetch and carry, and one may take
pleasure in him: but it is not enough to tend a man, to feed and teach
him Greek; we must teach the man how to live,--that is, to take as little
as possible from others, and to give as much as possible; and we cannot
help teaching him to do the contrary, if we take him into our houses, or
into an institution founded for this purpose.

CHAPTER X.

This feeling of compassion for people, and of disgust with myself, which
I had experienced in the Lyapinsky house, I experienced no longer. I was
completely absorbed in the desire to carry out the scheme which I had
concocted,--t