"I do not see God, and I do not love people," she said. "What kind of people are they if they cannot aid one another. Such people! Before the strong they are lambs and before the weak--wolves, but even the wolves live in packs but people live each one for himself and an enemy to his neighbor. I have seen and see much, and may they all go to ruin! To bear children and not to be able to bring them up! Is that right? I beat mine when they asked for bread; I beat them!" In the morning she arose to sell her body to the monks, and going away she said to me spitefully, "What is the matter with you? We slept near each other and you are stronger than I am, and yet you did not take advantage of the bargain." I felt as if she had slapped my face. "You do wrong in insulting me," I answered. She lowered her eyes and then said, "I feel like insulting every one, even those who are not guilty. You are young and you are worn out and your temples are gray. I know that you, too, suffer, but as for me, it is all the same, I pity no one. Good-by." And she went away. CHAPTER XVI In the six years of my wandering I have seen many people made bad by sorrow. An unquenchable hatred for every one burned within them, and they were blind to everything but evil. They saw evil and bathed in it as in a hot bath, and they drank gall like a drunkard wine, and laughed and triumphed. "Ours is the right," they cried. "Evil and unhappiness are everywhere; there is no place to escape." They fell into mad despair and, inflamed by it, led depraved lives and soiled the earth in every way, as if to revenge themselves on her that she gave them birth. They crawled without strength on the paths of the earth, and remained slaves of their own weakness to the very day of their death. They elevated sorrow to godhood and bowed before it, and desired to see nothing but their own sores and hear nothing but the outcries of their own despair. They were to be pitied, for they were as though mad; but how repulsive to the soul they were, with their readiness to spit their gall into every face and pollute the sun itself with their spittle if they could. There were others, who were crushed by sorrow and frightened by it, who remained silent and tried to hide their small and slave-like lives, but who did not succeed and only served as clay in the hands of the strong, to plaster up the chinks in the walls of their own fortress. Many faces and expressions have become engraved on my mind. Bitter tears were shed before me, and more than once I was deafened by the terrible laughter of despair. I have tasted of all the poisons and drunk of a hundred rivers, and many times I myself wept the bitter tears of impotence. Life seemed to me a terrible delirium. It was a whirlwind of frightened words and warm rain of tears; it was a ceaseless cry of despair, an agonized convulsion of the whole earth suffering with an upward struggle, unattainable to my mind and to my heart.