understood what I wanted, handed her the ruble. I must state that
the cook had only lived with me a week, and, though I had seen his
wife, I had never spoken to her. I was just on the point of saying
to her that she was to give me some small coins, when she bent
swiftly down to my hand, and tried to kiss it, evidently imaging that
I had given her the ruble. I muttered something, and quitted the
kitchen. I was ashamed, ashamed to the verge of torture, as I had
not been for a long time. I shrank together; I was conscious that I
was making grimaces, and I groaned with shame as I fled from the
kitchen. This utterly unexpected, and, as it seemed to me, utterly
undeserved shame, made a special impression on me, because it was a
long time since I had been mortified, and because I, as an old man,
had so lived, it seemed to me, that I had not merited this shame. I
was forcibly struck by this. I told the members of my household
about it, I told my acquaintances, and they all agreed that they
should have felt the same. And I began to reflect: why had this
caused me such shame? To this, something which had happened to me in
Moscow furnished me with an answer.

I meditated on that incident, and the shame which I had experienced
in the presence of the cook's wife was explained to me, and all those
sensations of mortification which I had undergone during the course
of my Moscow benevolence, and which I now feel incessantly when I
have occasion to give any one any thing except that petty alms to the
poor and to pilgrims, which I have become accustomed to bestow, and
which I consider a deed not of charity but of courtesy. If a man
asks you for a light, you must strike a match for him, if you have
one. If a man asks for three or for twenty kopeks, or even for
several rubles, you must give them if you have them. This is an act
of courtesy and not of charity.] {16}