e at all. The money which he had laid by on the day when
he gave three kopeks amounted to six rubles and fifty kopeks.
Accordingly, six rubles and twenty kopeks was the sum of his savings. My
reserve fund was in the neighborhood of six hundred thousand. I had a
wife and children, Semyon had a wife and children. He was younger than
I, and his children were fewer in number than mine; but his children were
small, and two of mine were of an age to work, so that our position, with
the exception of the savings, was on an equality; mine was somewhat the
more favorable, if any thing. He gave three kopeks, I gave twenty. What
did he really give, and what did I really give? What ought I to have
given, in order to do what Semyon had done? he had six hundred kopeks;
out of this he gave one, and afterwards two. I had six hundred thousand
rubles. In order to give what Semyon had given, I should have been
obliged to give three thousand rubles, and ask for two thousand in
change, and then leave the two thousand with the old man, cross myself,
and go my way, calmly conversing about life in the factories, and the
cost of liver in the Smolensk market.

I thought of this at the time; but it was only long afterwards that I was
in a condition to draw from this incident that deduction which inevitably
results from it. This deduction is so uncommon and so singular,
apparently, that, in spite of its mathematical infallibility, one
requires time to grow used to it. It does seem as though there must be
some mistake, but mistake there is none. There is merely the fearful
mist of error in which we live.

[This deduction, when I arrived at it, and when I recognized its
undoubted truth, furnished me with an explanation of my shame in the
presence of the cook's wife, and of all the poor people to whom I had
given and to whom I still give money.

What, in point of fact, is that money which I give to the poor, and which
the cook's wife thought I was giving to her? In the majority of cases,
it is that portion of my substance which it is impossible even to express
in figures to Semyon and the cook's wife,--it is generally one millionth
part or about that. I give so little that the bestowal of any money is
not and cannot be a deprivation to me; it is only a pleasure in which I
amuse myself when the whim seizes me. And it was thus that the cook's
wife understood it. If I give to a man who steps in from the street one
ruble or twenty kopeks