Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/12

Rh would have kept tea and food, but had to give it to some old pilgrims who were exhausted. At least it seemed right to keep the house clean, but beggar boys come and are allowed to spend the night, and again lice breed, after one has just got rid of those picked up during a visit to a sick man.

Where and how can one stop? Only those will find a point of stoppage who are either strangers to that feeling of the reality of the brotherhood of man which has brought these people to the village, or who are so accustomed to lie that they no longer notice the difference between truth and falsehood, The fact is, no such point of stoppage can exist; and if such a limit be found, it only proves that the feeling which prompted these people’s act was imaginary or feigned.

I continue to imagine these people’s life.

Having worked all day, they return home; having no longer a bed or a pillow, they sleep on some straw they have collected, and after a supper of bread they lie down to sleep, it is autumn. Rain is falling, mingled with snow. Someone knocks at the door. May they refuse to open? A man enters wet and fevered. What must they do? Let him have the dry straw? There is no more dry, so they must either drive away the sick man, or let him wet as he is, lie on the floor, or give him the straw