is, that I want to be a good man,
that is to say, I want to see myself in every other man. Every man
understands goodness thus, and in no other manner.] {111} And therefore,
if he should drink away every thing that you had given him twenty times,
and if he should again be cold and hungry, you cannot do otherwise than
give him more, if you are a good man; you can never cease giving to him,
if you have more than he has. And if you draw back, you will thereby
show that every thing that you have done, you have done not because you
are a good man, but because you wished to appear a good man in his sight,
and in the sight of men.

And thus in the case with the men from whom I chanced to recede, to whom
I ceased to give, and, by this action, denied good, I experienced a
torturing sense of shame.

What sort of shame was this? This shame I had experienced in the
Lyapinsky house, and both before and after that in the country, when I
happened to give money or any thing else to the poor, and in my
expeditions among the city poor.

A mortifying incident that occurred to me not long ago vividly reminded
me of that shame, and led me to an explanation of that shame which I had
felt when bestowing money on the poor.

[This happened in the country. I wanted twenty kopeks to give to a poor
pilgrim; I sent my son to borrow them from some one; he brought the
pilgrim a twenty-kopek piece, and told me that he had borrowed it from
the cook. A few days afterwards some more pilgrims arrived, and again I
was in want of a twenty-kopek piece. I had a ruble; I recollected that I
was in debt to the cook, and I went to the kitchen, hoping to get some
more small change from the cook. I said: "I borrowed a twenty-kopek
piece from you, so here is a ruble." I had not finished speaking, when
the cook called in his wife from another room: "Take it, Parasha," said
he. I, supposing that she understood what I wanted, handed her the
ruble. I must state that the cook had only lived with me a week, and,
though I had seen his wife, I had never spoken to her. I was just on the
point of saying to her that she was to give me some small coins, when she
bent swiftly down to my hand, and tried to kiss it, evidently imaging
that I had given her the ruble. I muttered something, and quitted the
kitchen. I was ashamed, ashamed to the verge of torture, as I had not
been for a long time. I shrank together; I was conscious that I was
making grimaces, and I