Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/158

 our wise men could teach them. On the contrary, I think it is the wise men who ought to learn from the people.

Before we started, Petrov told me naively that I should have a front place partly because I should subscribe more. There was no fixed price of admission: every one gave what he could or what he wished. When the plate was taken round almost every one put something in it, even if it were only a halfpenny. But if I were given a front place partly on account of money, on the supposition that I should give more than others, what a sense of their own dignity there was in that again! “You are richer than I am, so you can stand in front, and though we are all equal, you’ll give more; and so a spectator like you is more pleasing to the actors. You must have the first place for we are all here not thinking of the money, but showing our respect; so we ought to sort ourselves of our own accord.” How much fine and genuine pride there is in this! It is a respect not for money, but respect for oneself. As a rule there was not much respect for money, for wealth, in the prison, especially if one looks at convicts without distinction, as a gang, in the mass. I can’t remember one of them seriously demeaning himself for the sake of money. There were men who were always begging, who begged even of me. But this was rather mischief, roguery, than the real thing; there was too much humour and naïveté in it. I don’t know whether I express myself so as to be understood. But I am forgetting the theatricals. To return.

Till the curtain was raised, the whole room was a strange and animated picture. To begin with, masses of spectators crowded, squeezed tightly, packed on all sides, waiting with patient and blissful faces for the performance to begin. In the back rows men were clambering on one another. Many of them had brought blocks of wood from the kitchen; fixing the thick block of wood against the wall, a man would climb on to it, leaning with both hands on the shoulders of some one in front of him, and would stand like that without changing his attitude for the whole two hours, perfectly satisfied with himself and his position. Others got their feet on the lower step of the stove and stayed so all the time, leaning on men in front of them. This was quite in the hindmost rows, next to the wall. At the sides, too, men were standing on the bed in dense masses above the musicians. This was a good place. Five people had clambered on to the stove itself, and lying on it, looked down from it. They must have been blissful. The window-sills on the opposite wall were also crowded