At a quarter past one I went to bed.

"Have the visitors downstairs gone?" I asked Alexey as he was undressing
me.

"Yes, sir, they've gone."

"And why were they shouting hurrah?"

"Alexey Dmitritch Mahonov subscribed for the famine fund a thousand
bushels of flour and a thousand roubles. And the old lady--I don't know
her name--promised to set up a soup kitchen on her estate to feed a
hundred and fifty people. Thank God... Natalya Gavrilovna has been
pleased to arrange that all the gentry should assemble every Friday."

"To assemble here, downstairs?"

"Yes, sir. Before supper they read a list: since August up to today
Natalya Gavrilovna has collected eight thousand roubles, besides corn.
Thank God.... What I think is that if our mistress does take trouble for
the salvation of her soul, she will soon collect a lot. There are plenty
of rich people here."

Dismissing Alexey, I put out the light and drew the bedclothes over my
head.

"After all, why am I so troubled?" I thought. "What force draws me to
the starving peasants like a butterfly to a flame? I don't know them, I
don't understand them; I have never seen them and I don't like them. Why