Then she began asking me where I was working now, how much I earned,
where I lived.

"Do you spend on yourself nothing but what you earn?" she asked.

"No."

"Happy man!" she sighed. "All the evil in life, it seems to me,
comes from idleness, boredom, and spiritual emptiness, and all this
is inevitable when one is accustomed to living at other people's
expense. Don't think I am showing off, I tell you truthfully: it
is not interesting or pleasant to be rich. 'Make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness' is said, because there
is not and cannot be a mammon that's righteous."

She looked round at the furniture with a grave, cold expression,
as though she wanted to count it over, and went on:

"Comfort and luxury have a magical power; little by little they
draw into their clutches even strong-willed people. At one time
father and I lived simply, not in a rich style, but now you see
how! It is something monstrous," she said, shrugging her shoulders;
"we spend up to twenty thousand a year! In the provinces!"

"One comes to look at comfort and luxury as the invariable privilege
of capital and education," I said, "and it seems to me that the
comforts of life may be combined with any sort of labour, even the
hardest and dirtiest. Your father is rich, and yet he says himself
that it has been his lot to be a mechanic and an oiler."