rice for them. That
is what I wished, for reasons of my own, to make a point of in this my
'Explanation.'

"But let me resume."

VI.

"I WILL not deceive you. 'Reality' got me so entrapped in its meshes now
and again during the past six months, that I forgot my 'sentence' (or
perhaps I did not wish to think of it), and actually busied myself with
affairs.

"A word as to my circumstances. When, eight months since, I became
very ill, I threw up all my old connections and dropped all my old
companions. As I was always a gloomy, morose sort of individual, my
friends easily forgot me; of course, they would have forgotten me all
the same, without that excuse. My position at home was solitary enough.
Five months ago I separated myself entirely from the family, and no one
dared enter my room except at stated times, to clean and tidy it, and so
on, and to bring me my meals. My mother dared not disobey me; she kept
the children quiet, for my sake, and beat them if they dared to make any
noise and disturb me. I so often complained of them that I should think
they must be very fond, indeed, of me by this time. I think I must have
tormented 'my faithful Colia' (as I called him) a good deal too. He
tormented me of late; I could see that he always bore my tempers as
though he had determined to 'spare the poor invalid.' This annoyed
me, naturally. He seemed to have taken it into his head to imitate the
prince in Christian meekness! Surikoff, who lived above us, annoyed me,
too. He was so miserably poor, and I used to prove to him that he had no
one to blame but himself for his poverty. I used to be so angry that I
think I frightened him eventually, for he stopped coming to see me. He
was a most meek and humble fellow, was Surikoff. (N.B.--They say that
meekness is a great power. I must ask the prince about this, for the
expression is his.) But I remember one day in March, when I went up to
his lodgings to see whether it was true that one of his children had
been starved and frozen to death, I began to hold forth to him about
his poverty being his own fault, and, in the course of my remarks, I
accidentally smiled at the corpse of his child. Well, the poor wretch's
lips began to tremble, and he caught me by the shoulder, and pushed me
to the door. 'Go out,' he said, in a whisper. I went out, of course, and
I declare I LIKED it. I liked it at the very moment when I was
turned out. But his words filled me with a strange sort of feelin