Chapter 25

August 1st.

MY DARLING BARBARA ALEXIEVNA,--Thank God that He has sent you a
chance of repaying my good with good. I believe in so doing, as
well as in the sweetness of your angelic heart. Therefore, I will
not reproach you. Only I pray you, do not again blame me because
in the decline of my life I have played the spendthrift. It was
such a sin, was it not?--such a thing to do? And even if you
would still have it that the sin was there, remember, little
friend, what it costs me to hear such words fall from your lips.
Do not be vexed with me for saying this, for my heart is
fainting. Poor people are subject to fancies--this is a provision
of nature. I myself have had reason to know this. The poor man is
exacting. He cannot see God's world as it is, but eyes each
passer-by askance, and looks around him uneasily in order that he
may listen to every word that is being uttered. May not people be
talking of him? How is it that he is so unsightly? What is he
feeling at all? What sort of figure is he cutting on the one side
or on the other? It is matter of common knowledge, my Barbara,
that the poor man ranks lower than a rag, and will never earn the
respect of any one. Yes, write about him as you like--let
scribblers say what they choose about him-- he will ever remain
as he was. And why is this? It is because, from his very nature,
the poor man has to wear his feelings on his sleeve, so that
nothing about him is sacred, and as for his self-respect--! Well,
Emelia told me the other day that once, when he had to collect
subscriptions, official sanction was demanded for every single
coin, since people thought that it would be no use paying their
money to a poor man. Nowadays charity is strangely administered.
Perhaps it has always been so. Either folk do not know how to
administer it, or they are adept in the art--one of the two.
Perhaps you did not know this, so I beg to tell it you. And how
comes it that the poor man knows, is so conscious of it all? The
answer is--by experience. He knows because any day he may see a
gentleman enter a restaurant and ask himself, "What shall I have
to eat today? I will have such and such a dish," while all the
time the poor man will have nothing to eat that day but gruel.
There are men, too--wretched busybodies--who walk about merely to
see if they can find some wretched tchinovnik or broken-down
official who has got toes projecting from his boots or his hair
uncut! And when they have found such a one they make a report of
the circumstance, and their rubbish gets entered on the file....
But what does it matter to you if my hair lacks the shears? If
you will forgive me what may seem to you a piece of rudeness, I
declare that the poor man is ashamed of such things