Thoughts Evoked By The Census Of Moscow | Page 8

pale, long-nosed youth, with merely a shirt on the upper portion of his
body, and that torn on the shoulders, and a cap without a visor, forced
his way sidelong through the crowd. He shivered violently and
incessantly, but tried to smile disdainfully at the peasants' remarks,
thinking by this means to adopt the proper tone with me, and he stared
at me. I offered him some sbiten; he also, on taking the glass, warmed
his hands over it; but no sooner had he begun to speak, than he was
thrust aside by a big, black, hook-nosed individual, in a chintz shirt and
waistcoat, without a hat. The hook-nosed man asked for some sbiten
also. Then came a tall old man, with a mass of beard, clad in a
great-coat girded with a rope, and in bast shoes, who was drunk. Then a
small man with a swollen face and tearful eyes, in a brown nankeen
round-jacket, with his bare knees protruding from the holes in his

summer trousers, and knocking together with cold. He shivered so that
he could not hold his glass, and spilled it over himself. The men began
to reproach him. He only smiled in a woe-begone way, and went on
shivering. Then came a crooked monster in rags, with pattens on his
bare feet; then some sort of an officer; then something in the
ecclesiastical line; then something strange and nose-less,--all hungry
and cold, beseeching and submissive, thronged round me, and pressed
close to the sbiten. They drank up all the sbiten. One asked for money,
and I gave it. Then another asked, then a third, and the whole crowd
besieged me. Confusion and a press resulted. The porter of the
adjoining house shouted to the crowd to clear the sidewalk in front of
his house, and the crowd submissively obeyed his orders. Some
managers stepped out of the throng, and took me under their protection,
and wanted to lead me forth out of the press; but the crowd, which had
at first been scattered over the sidewalk, now became disorderly, and
hustled me. All stared at me and begged; and each face was more
pitiful and suffering and humble than the last. I distributed all that I had
with me. I had not much money, something like twenty rubles; and in
company with the crowd, I entered the Lyapinsky lodging-house. This
house is huge. It consists of four sections. In the upper stories are the
men's quarters; in the lower, the women's. I first entered the women's
place; a vast room all occupied with bunks, resembling the third-class
bunks on the railway. These bunks were arranged in two rows, one
above the other. The women, strange, tattered creatures, both old and
young, wearing nothing over their dresses, entered and took their places,
some below and some above. Some of the old ones crossed themselves,
and uttered a petition for the founder of this refuge; some laughed and
scolded. I went up-stairs. There the men had installed themselves;
among them I espied one of those to whom I had given money. [On
catching sight of him, I all at once felt terribly abashed, and I made
haste to leave the room. And it was with a sense of absolute crime that I
quitted that house and returned home. At home I entered over the
carpeted stairs into the ante-room, whose floor was covered with cloth;
and having removed my fur coat, I sat down to a dinner of five courses,
waited on by two lackeys in dress-coats, white neckties, and white
gloves.
Thirty years ago I witnessed in Paris a man's head cut off by the

guillotine in the presence of thousands of spectators. I knew that the
man was a horrible criminal. I was acquainted with all the arguments
which people have been devising for so many centuries, in order to
justify this sort of deed. I knew that they had done this expressly,
deliberately. But at the moment when head and body were severed, and
fell into the trough, I groaned, and apprehended, not with my mind, but
with my heart and my whole being, that all the arguments which I had
heard anent the death-penalty were arrant nonsense; that, no matter how
many people might assemble in order to perpetrate a murder, no matter
what they might call themselves, murder is murder, the vilest sin in the
world, and that that crime had been committed before my very eyes. By
my presence and non- interference, I had lent my approval to that crime,
and had taken part in it. So now, at the sight of this hunger, cold, and
degradation of thousands of persons, I understood not with my mind,
but with my heart and my whole being, that the existence of tens of