lth, his power, and in the
comparison of his importance with the poor. Charity corrupts giver and
taker alike; and, what's more, does not attain it's object, as it
only increases poverty. Fathers who don't want to work crowd round the
charitable like gamblers round the gambling-table, hoping for gain,
while the pitiful farthings that are flung them are a hundred times too
little. Have you given away much in your life? Less than a rouble, if
you try and think. Try to remember when last you gave away anything;
it'll be two years ago, maybe four. You make an outcry and only hinder
things. Charity ought to be forbidden by law, even in the present state
of society. In the new regime there will be no poor at all."

"Oh, what an eruption of borrowed phrases! So it's come to the new
regime already? Unhappy woman, God help you!"

"Yes; it has, Stepan Trofimovitch. You carefully concealed all these new
ideas from me, though every one's familiar with them nowadays. And you
did it simply out of jealousy, so as to have power over me. So that now
even that Yulia is a hundred miles ahead of me. But now my eyes have
been opened. I have defended you, Stepan Trofimovitch, all I could, but
there is no one who does not blame you."

"Enough!" said he, getting up from his seat. "Enough! And what can I
wish you now, unless it's repentance?"

"Sit still a minute, Stepan Trofimovitch. I have another question to ask
you. You've been told of the invitation to read at the literary matinee.
It was arranged through me. Tell me what you're going to read?"

"Why, about that very Queen of Queens, that ideal of humanity, the
Sistine Madonna, who to your thinking is inferior to a glass or a
pencil."

"So you're not taking something historical?'" said Varvara Petrovna
in mournful surprise. "But they won't listen to you. You've got that
Madonna on your brain. You seem bent on putting every one to sleep! Let
me assure you, Stepan Trofimovitch, I am speaking entirely in your own
interest. It would be a different matter if you would take some short
but interesting story of mediaeval court life from Spanish history, or,
better still, some anecdote, and pad it out with other anecdotes and
witty phrases of your own. There were magnificent courts then; ladies,
you know, poisonings. Karmazinov says it would be strange if you
couldn't read something interesting from Spanish history."

"Karmazinov--that fool who has written himself out--looking for a
subject