"Do you think that it was of my own will or desire that I attacked you? I am not a fool, you know, and I knew that you would be more than a match for me. I am a man of little strength, a tippler. It was your master who told me to do it. 'Lead him on,' he said, 'and get him to break something in the shop while he is fighting you. Let him damage something, anyhow!' I should never have done it of my own accord; look how you have ornamented my phiz for me."
I believed him, and I began to be sorry for him. I knew that he lived, half-starved, with a woman who knocked him about. However, I asked him:
"And if he told you to poison a person, I suppose you would do it?"
"He might do that," said the shopman with a pitiful smile; "he is capable of it."
Soon after this he asked me:
"Listen, I have not a farthing; there is nothing to eat at home; my missus nags at me. Couldn't you take an icon out of your stock and give it to me to sell, like a friend, eh? Will you? Or a breviary?"
I remembered the boot-shop, and the beadle of the church, and I thought: "Will this man give me away?" But it was hard to refuse him, and I gave him an icon. To steal a breviary worth several rubles, that I could not do; it seemed, to me a great crime. What would you have? Arithmetic always lies concealed in ethics; the holy ingenuousness of "Regulations for the Punishment of Criminals" clearly gives away this little secret, behind which the great lie of property hides itself.
When I heard my shopman suggesting that this miserable man should incite me to steal psalters I was afraid. It was clear that he knew how charitable I had been on the other's behalf, and that the man from next door had told him about the icon.
The abominableness of being charitable at another person's expense, and the realization of the rotten trap that had been set for me—both these things aroused in me a feeling of indignation and disgust with myself and every one else. For several days I tormented myself cruelly, waiting for the arrival of the hamper with the books. At length they came, and when I was putting them away in the store-room, the shopman from next door came to me and asked me to give him a breviary.
Then I asked him: