"I can't understand that," said Ilya, shrugging his shoulders. "I can't understand how a man can live, and want nothing out of life."
"I'm different from the rest," answered Perfishka, with philosophical calm. "I think this way: keep quiet!—Fate gives what it will, and if a man is hollow and empty, so that nothing can be put in him, then, what can Fate do? Once, I admit, I wanted things, while my dead one was alive—I knew of Jeremy's pile. I'd have liked to have a fist in that. 'If I don't rob him,' I thought, 'some one else will.' Well, thank God, two others actually got in before me. I don't complain, but then I understood that one must learn, too, how to wish."
The cobbler laughed, climbed down from the stove, and added:
"Now give me the five kopecks. My inside's on fire. I can't stand it any more."
"There! Have your glass," said Ilya. Then he looked at Perfishka with a smile, and asked:
"Shall I tell you something?"
"Well, what?"
"You're a humbug, and a good-for-nothing, and a miserable drunkard. That's all certain."
"Yes, it's certain," confessed the cobbler, standing before Ilya with the five-kopeck piece in his hand.
"And yet," Ilya went on seriously and thoughtfully, "I don't believe I know a better man than you, by God, I don't."