In front of a particularly dilapidated hut stood a number of women
with children in their arms, and among them he noticed a lean,
pale-faced woman, easily holding a bloodless child in a short garment
made of pieces of stuff. This child was incessantly smiling.
Nekhludoff knew that it was the smile of suffering. He asked who that
woman was.

It transpired that the woman's husband had been in prison for the past
six months--"feeding the insects"--as they termed it, for cutting down
two lindens.

Nekhludoff turned to the woman, Anisia.

"How do you fare?" he asked. "What do you live on?"

"How do I live? I sometimes get some food," and she began to sob.

The grave face of the child, however, spread into a broad smile, and
its thin legs began to wriggle.

Nekhludoff produced his pocketbook and gave the woman ten rubles. He
had scarcely made ten steps when he was overtaken by another woman
with a child; then an old woman, and again another woman. They all
spoke of their poverty and implored his help. Nekhludoff distributed
the sixty rubles that were in his pocketbook and returned home, i. e.,
to the wing inhabited by the clerk. The clerk, smiling, met Nekhludoff
with the information that the peasants would gather in the evening,
as he had ordered. Nekhludoff thanked him and strolled about the
garden, meditating on what he had seen. "The people are dying in large