"Checkov, Anton - The Wife And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

point of view of principle. From the point of view of the law,
theft is the same whether a man is hungry or not."

"Yes, yes. . ." muttered Ivan Ivanitch in confusion. "Of course.
. . To be sure, yes."

Natalya Gavrilovna blushed.

"There are people. . ." she said and stopped; she made an effort
to seem indifferent, but she could not keep it up, and looked
into my eyes with the hatred that I know so well. "There are
people," she said, "for whom famine and human suffering exist
simply that they may vent their hateful and despicable
temperaments upon them."

I was confused and shrugged my shoulders.

"I meant to say generally," she went on, "that there are people
who are quite indifferent and completely devoid of all feeling of
sympathy, yet who do not pass human suffering by, but insist on
meddling for fear people should be able to do without them.
Nothing is sacred for their vanity."

"There are people," I said softly, "who have an angelic
character, but who express their glorious ideas in such a form
that it is difficult to distinguish the angel from an Odessa
market-woman."

I must confess it was not happily expressed.

My wife looked at me as though it cost her a great effort to hold
her tongue. Her sudden outburst, and then her inappropriate
eloquence on the subject of my desire to help the famine-stricken
peasants, were, to say the least, out of place; when I had
invited her to come upstairs I had expected quite a different
attitude to me and my intentions. I cannot say definitely what I
had expected, but I had been agreeably agitated by the
expectation. Now I saw that to go on speaking about the famine
would be difficult and perhaps stupid.

"Yes . . ." Ivan Ivanitch muttered inappropriately. "Burov, the
merchant, must have four hundred thousand at least. I said to
him: 'Hand over one or two thousand to the famine. You can't take
it with you when you die, anyway.' He was offended. But we all
have to die, you know. Death is not a potato."

A silence followed again.

"So there's nothing left for me but to reconcile myself to
loneliness," I sighed. "One cannot fight single-handed. Well, I