people standing in the corridor heard her blessing me. Probably the
questions which I had put with regard to poverty, had aroused
expectation, and several persons followed us. In the corridor also,
they began to ask me for money. Among those who begged were some
drunken men, who aroused an unpleasant feeling in me; but, having
once given to the old woman, I had no might to refuse these people,
and I began to give. As long as I continued to give, people kept
coming up; and excitement ran through all the lodgings. People made
them appearance on the stairs and galleries, and followed me. As I
emerged into the court-yard, a little boy ran swiftly down one of the
staircases thrusting the people aside. He did not see me, and
exclaimed hastily: "He gave Agashka a ruble!" When he reached the
ground, the boy joined the crowd which was following me. I went out
into the street: various descriptions of people followed me, and
asked for money. I distributed all my small change, and entered an
open shop with the request that the shopkeeper would change a ten-
ruble bill for me. And then the same thing happened as at the
Lyapinsky house. A terrible confusion ensued. Old women, noblemen,
peasants, and children crowded into the shop with outstretched hands;
I gave, and interrogated some of them as to their lives, and took
notes. The shopkeeper, turning up the furred points of the collar of
his coat, sat like a stuffed creature, glancing at the crowd
occasionally, and then fixing his eyes beyond them again. He
evidently, like every one else, felt that this was foolish, but he
could not say so.

The poverty and beggary in the Lyapinsky house had horrified me, and
I felt myself guilty of it; I felt the desire and the possibility of
improvement. But now, precisely the same scene produced on me an
entirely different effect; I experienced, in the first place, a