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"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff like a shopman. Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the things he showed her. "That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the material. "It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?" Pierre told her the price. "Too dear!"

If I want to help the poor, that is, to make the poor no longer poor, I must not produce poor people. And I give, at my own selection, to poor men who have gone astray from the path of life, a ruble, or ten rubles, or a hundred; and I grasp hundreds from people who have not yet left the path, and thereby I render them poor also, and demoralize them to boot.

Take it, brother, I beg of you! I implore you, take it! I don't know where to put all this money; relieve me, here!" Tchelkache handed Gavrilo several ten ruble notes. The other took them with a shaking hand, dropped the oars and proceeded to conceal his booty in his blouse, screwing up his eyes greedily, and breathing noisily as though he were drinking something hot.

And moreover, I had seen these people at their most unfortunate time, when they had eaten and drunk up every thing, and when, cold, hungry, and driven forth from the taverns, they were awaiting admission into the free night lodging-house, and thence into the promised prison for despatch to their places of residence, like heavenly manna; but here I beheld them and a majority of workers, and at a time, when by one means or another, they had procured three or five kopeks for a lodging for the night, and sometimes a ruble for food and drink.

PODKHALYÚZIN. That's right, sir. RISPOLÓZHENSKY. And why do you make the trip? You write a little petition for one man, you register somebody else in the citizen class. Some days you'll not bring home half a ruble in silver. I vow, I'm not lying! Then what're you going to live on? PODKHALYÚZIN. For what sort of knavery, sir? RISPOLÓZHENSKY. What do you mean by knavery!

RISPOLÓZHENSKY. Then we'll write out a statement that such and such notes are due, and that we'll pay twenty-five kopeks on the ruble: well, then go see the creditors. If anybody is especially stubborn, you can add a bit, and if a man gets real angry, pay him the whole bill. You'll pay him on the condition that he writes that he accepted twenty-five kopeks just for appearances, to show the others.

"See here, batuchka: if I take a ten- kopeck piece a month on each ruble, I ought to receive fifteen kopecks on a ruble and a half, the interest being payable in advance. Then, as you ask me to wait another month for the repayment of the two rubles I have already lent you, you owe me twenty kopecks more, which makes a total of five and thirty.

There are days, it is true, when all the cabmen in town seem to have entered into a league and agreed to demand a ruble for a drive of half a dozen blocks; and again, though rarely, they will offer to carry one miles for one fifth of that sum, which is equally unreasonable in the other direction. In either case one has his bargaining sport, at one end of the journey or the other.

But I, by the most complicated, and cunning, and evil practices, which have been heaped up for centuries, have acquired for myself the position of an owner of the inexhaustible ruble, that is to say, one in which, never working myself, I can make hundreds and thousands of people toil for me which also I do; and I imagine that I pity people, and I wish to assist them.

I went out into the street: various descriptions of people followed me, and asked for money. I distributed all my small change, and entered an open shop with the request that the shopkeeper would change a ten- ruble bill for me. And then the same thing happened as at the Lyapinsky house. A terrible confusion ensued.