th the poor, the
more frequently did this remark recur to my mind, and the greater was the
significance which it acquired for me.

I arrive in a costly fur coat, or with my horses; or the man who lacks
shoes sees my two-thousand-ruble apartments. He sees how, a little while
ago, I gave five rubles without begrudging them, merely because I took a
whim to do so. He surely knows that if I give away rubles in that
manner, it is only because I have hoarded up so many of them, that I have
a great many superfluous ones, which I not only have not given away, but
which I have easily taken from other people. [What else could he see in
me but one of those persons who have got possession of what belongs to
him? And what other feeling can he cherish towards me, than a desire to
obtain from me as many of those rubles, which have been stolen from him
and from others, as possible? I wish to get close to him, and I complain
that he is not frank; and here I am, afraid to sit down on his bed for
fear of getting lice, or catching something infectious; and I am afraid
to admit him to my room, and he, coming to me naked, waits, generally in
the vestibule, or, if very fortunate, in the ante-chamber. And yet I
declare that he is to blame because I cannot enter into intimate
relations with him, and because me is not frank.

Let the sternest man try the experiment of eating a dinner of five
courses in the midst of people who have had very little or nothing but
black bread to eat. Not a man will have the spirit to eat, and to watch
how the hungry lick their chops around him. Hence, then, in order to eat
daintily amid the famishing, the first indispensable requisite is to hide
from them, in order that they may not see it. This is the very thing,
and the first thing, that we do.

And I took a simpler view of our life, and perceived that an approach to
the poor is not difficult to us through accidental causes, but that we
deliberately arrange our lives in such a fashion so that this approach
may be rendered difficult.

Not only this; but, on taking a survey of our life, of the life of the
wealthy, I saw that every thing which is considered desirable in that
life consists in, or is inseparably bound up with, the idea of getting as
far away from the poor as possible. In fact, all the efforts of our well-
endowed life, beginning with our food, dress, houses, our cleanliness,
and even down to our education,--every thing has for its chief ob