Twenty sacks of rye were stolen
from me, and it was I who telegraphed to the Governor. I telegraphed to
Petersburg, too. But it was by no means out of love for litigation, as
you are pleased to express it, and not because I bore them a grudge.
I look at every subject from the point of view of principle. From the
point of view of the law, theft is the same whether a man is hungry or
not."

"Yes, yes..." muttered Ivan Ivanitch in confusion. "Of course... To be
sure, yes."

Natalya Gavrilovna blushed.

"There are people..." she said and stopped; she made an effort to seem
indifferent, but she could not keep it up, and looked into my eyes with
the hatred that I know so well. "There are people," she said, "for whom
famine and human suffering exist simply that they may vent their hateful
and despicable temperaments upon them."

I was confused and shrugged my shoulders.

"I meant to say generally," she went on, "that there are people who are
quite indifferent and completely devoid of all feeling of sympathy,
yet who do not pass human suffering by, but insist on meddling for fear
people should be able to do without them. Nothing is sacred for their
vanity."

"There are people," I said softly, "who have an angelic character, but
who express their glorious ideas in such a form that it is difficult to
distinguish the angel from an Odessa market-woman."

I must confess it was not happily expressed.

My wife looked at me as though it cost her a great effort to hold her
tongue. Her sudden outburst, and then her inappropriate eloquence on the
subject of my desire to help the famine-stricken peasants, were, to say
the least, out of place; when I had invited her to come upstairs I had
expected quite a different attitude to me and my intentions. I cannot
say definitely what I had expected, but I had been agreeably agitated by
the expectation. Now I saw that to go on speaking about the famine would
be difficult and perhaps stupid.

"Yes..." Ivan Ivanitch muttered inappropriately. "Burov, the merchant,
must have four hundred thousand at least. I said to him: 'Hand over one
or two thousand to the famine. You can't take it with you when you die,
anyway.' He was offended. But we all have to die, you know. Death is not
a potato."

A silence followed again.

"So there's nothing left for me but to reconcile myself to loneliness,"
I sighed. "One cannot fight single-handed. Well, I will try
single-handed. Let us hope that my campaig