I arrive in a costly fur coat, or with my horses; or the man who
lacks shoes sees my two-thousand-ruble apartments. He sees how, a
little while ago, I gave five rubles without begrudging them, merely
because I took a whim to do so. He surely knows that if I give away
rubles in that manner, it is only because I have hoarded up so many
of them, that I have a great many superfluous ones, which I not only
have not given away, but which I have easily taken from other people.
[What else could he see in me but one of those persons who have got
possession of what belongs to him? And what other feeling can he
cherish towards me, than a desire to obtain from me as many of those
rubles, which have been stolen from him and from others, as possible?
I wish to get close to him, and I complain that he is not frank; and
here I am, afraid to sit down on his bed for fear of getting lice, or
catching something infectious; and I am afraid to admit him to my
room, and he, coming to me naked, waits, generally in the vestibule,
or, if very fortunate, in the ante-chamber. And yet I declare that
he is to blame because I cannot enter into intimate relations with
him, and because me is not frank.

Let the sternest man try the experiment of eating a dinner of five
courses in the midst of people who have had very little or nothing
but black bread to eat. Not a man will have the spirit to eat, and
to watch how the hungry lick their chops around him. Hence, then, in
order to eat daintily amid the famishing, the first indispensable
requisite is to hide from them, in order that they may not see it.
This is the very thing, and the first thing, that we do.

And I took a simpler view of our life, and perceived that an approach
to the poor is not difficult to us through accidental causes, but