“Very well! That means, it seems, that I must put an end to myself! That’s all that’s left me to do.⁠ ⁠… Give me something, if only a trifle!”

I give him twenty kopecks, and he goes away, evidently angry.

There are a great many such peculiarly insistent beggars, who feel they have a right to demand their share from the rich. They are literate for the most part, and some of them are even well-read persons on whom the Revolution has had an effect. These men, unlike the ordinary, old-fashioned beggars, look on the rich, not as on people who wish to save their souls by distributing alms, but as on highwaymen and robbers who suck the blood of the working classes. It often happens that a beggar of this sort does no work himself and carefully avoids work, and yet considers himself, in the name of the workers, not merely justified, but bound, to hate the robbers of the people⁠—that is to say, the rich⁠—and to hate them from the depths of his heart; and if, instead of demanding from them, he begs, that is only a pretence.