Before we started, Petrov told me naively that I should have a front place partly because I should subscribe more. There was no fixed price of admission: everyone gave what he could or what he wished. When the plate was taken round almost everyone put something in it, even if it were only a halfpenny. But if I were given a front place partly on account of money, on the supposition that I should give more than others, what a sense of their own dignity there was in that again! “You are richer than I am, so you can stand in front, and though we are all equal, you’ll give more; and so a spectator like you is more pleasing to the actors. You must have the first place for we are all here not thinking of the money, but showing our respect; so we ought to sort ourselves of our own accord.” How much fine and genuine pride there is in this! It is a respect not for money, but respect for oneself. As a rule there was not much respect for money, for wealth, in the prison, especially if one looks at convicts without distinction, as a gang, in the mass. I can’t remember one of them seriously demeaning himself for the sake of money. There were men who were always begging, who begged even of me. But this was rather mischief, roguery, than the real thing; there was too much humour and naivete in it. I don’t know whether I express myself so as to be understood. But I am forgetting the theatricals. To return.