rguments
which people have been devising for so many centuries, in order to
justify this sort of deed. I knew that they had done this expressly,
deliberately. But at the moment when head and body were severed, and
fell into the trough, I groaned, and apprehended, not with my mind, but
with my heart and my whole being, that all the arguments which I had
heard anent the death-penalty were arrant nonsense; that, no matter how
many people might assemble in order to perpetrate a murder, no matter
what they might call themselves, murder is murder, the vilest sin in the
world, and that that crime had been committed before my very eyes. By my
presence and non-interference, I had lent my approval to that crime, and
had taken part in it. So now, at the sight of this hunger, cold, and
degradation of thousands of persons, I understood not with my mind, but
with my heart and my whole being, that the existence of tens of thousands
of such people in Moscow, while I and other thousands dined on fillets
and sturgeon, and covered my horses and my floors with cloth and rugs,--no
matter what the wise ones of this world might say to me about its being a
necessity,--was a crime, not perpetrated a single time, but one which was
incessantly being perpetrated over and over again, and that I, in my
luxury, was not only an accessory, but a direct accomplice in the matter.
The difference for me between these two impressions was this, that I
might have shouted to the assassins who stood around the guillotine, and
perpetrated the murder, that they were committing a crime, and have tried
with all my might to prevent the murder. But while so doing I should
have known that my action would not prevent the murder. But here I might
not only have given _sbiten_ and the money which I had with me, but the
coat from my back, and every thing that was in my house. But this I had
not done; and therefore I felt, I feel, and shall never cease to feel,
myself an accomplice in this constantly repeated crime, so long as I have
superfluous food and any one else has none at all, so long as I have two
garments while any one else has not even one.] {28}

CHAPTER III.

That very evening, on my return from the Lyapinsky house, I related my
impressions to a friend. The friend, an inhabitant of the city, began to
tell me, not without satisfaction, that this was the most natural
phenomenon of town life possible, that I only saw something extraordinary
in it bec