"There are five tramps waiting near the porch."
"Take some money there is on the table, and give it them," said I.
Ilyá Vasílyevitch took it, and, as is the custom, gave each of them five copecks [five farthings]. About an hour passed. I went out into the porch. A dreadfully tattered little man with a sickly face, swollen eyelids, restless eyes, and boots all falling to pieces, began bowing, and held out a certificate to me.
"Have you received something?"
"Your Excellency, what am I to do with five copecks?... Your Excellency, put yourself in my place! Please, your Excellency, look ... please see!" and he shows me his clothing. "Where am I to go to, your Excellency?" (it is "Excellency" after every word, though his face expresses hatred). "What am I to do? Where am I to go?"
I tell him that I give to all alike. He continues to entreat, and demands that I should read his certificate. I refuse. He kneels down. I ask him to leave me.
"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 copecks, 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.