* * * * *

It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.

* * * * *

And she began to engage in prostitution, got used to sleeping on the
bed, while her aunt, fallen into poverty, used to lie on the little
carpet by her side and jumped up each time the bell rang; when they
left, she would say mindingly, with a pathetic grimace; "Something for
the chamber-maid." And they would tip her sixpence.

* * * * *

Prostitutes in Monte Carlo, the whole tone is prostitutional; the palm
trees, it seems, are prostitutes, and the chickens are prostitutes.

* * * * *

A big dolt, Z., a qualified nurse, of the Petersburg Rozhdestvensky
School, having ideals, fell in love with X., a teacher, and believed
him to be ideal, a public spirited worker after the manner of novels
and stories of which she was so fond. Little by little she found
him out, a drunkard, an idler, good-natured and not very clever.
Dismissed, he began to live on his wife, sponged on her. He was an
excrescence, a kind of sarcoma, who wasted her completely. She was
once engaged to attend some intellectual country people, she went to
them every day; they felt it awkward to give her money--and, to her
great vexation, gave her husband a suit as a present. He would drink
tea for hours and this infuriated her. Living with her husband she