worth two who have not been.’ ‘Simplicity is worse than thieving.’” “So, according to you, the best way for a man to live is like an arrant fool?” inquired Tikhon Ilitch with a sneer. And Kuzma joyfully snapped up his words: “Well, that’s right, that’s the idea! There’s nothing in the whole world so beggar-bare as we are, and on the other hand there’s nobody more insolent on the ground of that same nakedness. What’s the vicious way to insult a person? Accuse ’em of poverty! Say: ‘You devil! You haven’t a morsel to eat.’ Here’s an illustration: Deniska--well, I mean the son of Syery, he’s a cobbler--said to me the other day--” “Wait a minute,” interrupted Tikhon Ilitch. “How’s Syery himself getting on?” “Deniska says he’s ‘perishing with hunger.’” “A good-for-nothing peasant!” said Tikhon Ilitch with conviction. “Don’t sing any of your songs about him to me.” “I’m not singing!” retorted Kuzma angrily. “But I ought to do it. For his name is Krasoff. However, that’s another story. You’d better listen to what I have to say about Deniska. Well, he told me this: ‘Sometimes, in a famine year, we foremen would go to the neighbourhood of the cemetery in the Black Suburb; and there those public women were--regular troops of them. And they were hungry, the lean hags, extremely hungry! If you gave one of them half a pound of bread for her work she’d devour it to the last crumb, there under you. It was downright ridiculous!’ Take note,” cried Kuzma sternly, pausing: “‘It was downright ridiculous’!” “Oh, stop it, for Christ’s sake!” Tikhon Ilitch interrupted again. “Give me a chance to say a word about business!” Kuzma stopped short. “Well, talk away,” said he. “Only, what are you going to say? Tell him ‘You ought to do thus and so’? Not a bit of it! If you give him money--that’s the end of it. Just think it over: they have no fuel, they have nothing to eat, nothing to pay for a funeral. That means, ’tis your most sacred duty to give them some money--well, and something more to boot: a few potatoes, a wagon-load or two of straw. And hire the Bride. Send her here as my cook.” And immediately Tikhon Ilitch felt as though a stone had been rolled off his breast. He hastily drew out his purse, plucked out a ten-ruble banknote, joyfully assented also to all the other suggestions. And suddenly he asked once more, in a rapid distressed voice: “But didn’t she poison him?” Kuzma merely shrugged his shoulders by way of reply.