Saltykov-Shchedrin lost his conscience read, Saltykov-Shchedrin lost his conscience read free, Saltykov-Shchedrin lost his conscience read online

Other characters

• A drunkard is a bitter drunkard, a degraded person who does not want to change anything in his life.
• Prokhorych is the owner of a tavern who sold the poor people on fake alcohol.
• Arina Ivanovna is Prokhorych’s wife, a savvy woman.
• The catcher is a quarterly overseer, accustomed to appropriating other people's property.
• The Trapper is the Trapper’s wife, smart and cunning.
• Samuil Davydych Brzhotsky is a major financier, a Jew, accustomed to deceiving people.

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin

Conscience gone

***

Conscience is gone. People crowded the streets and theaters as before; in the old way they either caught up or overtook each other; as before, they fussed and caught pieces on the fly, and no one guessed that something had suddenly become missing and that some pipe had stopped playing in the general orchestra of life. Many even began to feel more cheerful and freer. Man’s move has become easier: it has become more dexterous to expose one’s neighbor’s foot, it has become more convenient to flatter, grovel, deceive, gossip and slander. Any pain

suddenly it was gone; people did not walk, but seemed to rush; nothing upset them, nothing made them think; both the present and the future - everything seemed to be given into their hands - to them, the lucky ones, who did not notice the loss of conscience.

Conscience disappeared suddenly... almost instantly! Just yesterday, this annoying hanger-on was just flashing before my eyes, just imagining it in my excited imagination, and suddenly... nothing! The annoying ghosts disappeared, and with them the moral turmoil that the accusatory conscience brought with it subsided. All that remained was to look at God’s world and rejoice: the wise ones of the world realized that they had finally freed themselves from the last yoke, which hindered their movements, and, of course, hastened to take advantage of the fruits of this freedom. People went crazy; Robberies and robberies began, and general devastation began.

Meanwhile, the poor conscience lay on the road, tormented, spat upon, trampled under the feet of pedestrians. Everyone threw it away like a worthless rag, away from themselves; Everyone was surprised how in a well-organized city, and in the most lively place, such a blatant disgrace could lie. And God knows how long the poor exile would have lain like this if some unfortunate drunkard had not raised her up, having his drunken eyes on even a worthless rag, in the hope of getting a scale for it.

And suddenly he felt that he was pierced like some kind of electric current. With dull eyes, he began to look around and quite clearly felt that his head was being freed from the wine fumes and that that bitter consciousness of reality was gradually returning to him, to get rid of which the best forces of his being had been spent. At first he felt only fear, that dull fear that plunges a person into anxiety from the mere premonition of some impending danger; Then my memory arose and my imagination began to speak. Memory without mercy extracted from the darkness of the shameful past all the details of violence, betrayal, heartfelt lethargy and untruths; imagination clothed these details in living forms. Then, of course, the court woke up...

To a pathetic drunkard, his entire past seems like a continuous ugly crime. He does not analyze, does not ask, does not think: he is so depressed by the picture of his moral fall that confronts him that the process of self-condemnation to which he voluntarily exposes himself hits him incomparably more painfully and severely than the strictest human court. He doesn’t even want to take into account that most of the past for which he curses himself so much does not belong to him at all, the poor and pitiful drunkard, but to some secret, monstrous force that twisted and twisted him, as he twists and turns in the steppe a whirlwind like an insignificant blade of grass. What is his past? why did he live it this way and not otherwise? what is he himself? - all these are questions that he can answer only with surprise and complete unconsciousness. The yoke built his life; He was born under the yoke, and under the yoke he will go to the grave. Now, perhaps, consciousness has appeared - but what does it need it for? then did it come to ruthlessly pose questions and answer them with silence? Is it then that the ruined life will again pour into the destroyed temple, which can no longer withstand its influx?

Alas! his awakened consciousness brings him neither reconciliation nor hope, and his awakened conscience shows only one way out - the way out of fruitless self-accusation. And before there was darkness all around, and even now the same darkness, only populated by painful ghosts; and before heavy chains rang on his hands, and now the same chains, only their weight has doubled, because he realized that they were chains. Useless drunken tears flow like a river; good people stop in front of him and claim that wine is crying inside him.

- Fathers! I can’t... it’s unbearable! - the pathetic singer screams, and the crowd laughs and mocks him. She does not understand that the drinker has never been so free from wine fumes as at this moment, that he simply made an unfortunate discovery that is tearing his poor heart to pieces. If she herself had come across this find, she would have realized, of course, that there is a sorrow in the world, the fiercest of all sorrows - this is the sorrow of a suddenly acquired conscience. She would have realized that she, too, is a crowd that is just as under-juiced and disfigured in spirit as the preacher who cries out before her is under-yoked and morally distorted.

“No, we have to sell it somehow! Otherwise you’ll disappear like a dog!” - thinks the pathetic drunkard and is about to throw his find on the road, but he is stopped by a walker standing nearby.

- You, brother, seem to have decided to engage in planting false libels! - he says to him, shaking his finger, - I, brother, won’t be in the unit for long for this!

The drunkard quickly hides the find in his pocket and leaves with it. Looking around and stealthily, he approaches the drinking house where his old acquaintance, Prokhorych, trades. First, he slowly peers through the window and, seeing that there is no one in the tavern, and Prokhorych is dozing alone behind the counter, in the blink of an eye he opens the door, runs in, and before Prokhorych has time to come to his senses, the terrible find is already in his hand .

For some time Prokhorych stood with his eyes wide; then suddenly he started sweating. For some reason he imagined that he was trading without a patent; but, having looked carefully, he was convinced that all the patents, blue, green, and yellow, were there. He looked at the rag that was in his hands, and it seemed familiar to him.

Summary

Suddenly, conscience disappeared, but people did not notice the loss and lived their previous lives. In the bustle of everyday life, he did not realize “that something suddenly began to be missing and that in the general orchestra of life some kind of pipe had stopped playing.” Some even felt freer: now they could slander, deceive, flatter, and set up their neighbors without hindrance - no mental torment threatened them from now on.

Life became easy and joyful. Conscience disappeared suddenly, as if it had never existed, and with it “that moral turmoil that the accusatory conscience brought with it” also disappeared. But freedom, along with the ease of life, also brought moral decay: “robberies and robberies became more frequent in society, and general ruin began.”

Meanwhile, the unfortunate conscience lay on the side of the road - tormented, spat on, forgotten by everyone. Passers-by frowned in disgust at the sight of her and tried to throw her away from them, like some kind of infection. Only a pathetic drunkard dared to pick up his conscience in the hope of getting some booze for it.

Taking his conscience in hand, the drunkard suddenly felt that “he was pierced like some kind of electric current”: his head was cleared of wine fumes, memory began to speak in him, and fear appeared in his soul. His past life seemed to him “a complete ugly crime,” and his awakened self-consciousness began to mercilessly tyrannize the drunkard who had sunk to the very bottom. The drunkard had previously had chains on his hands, but now, under the influence of his conscience, they became heavier for the widow. He began to weep bitterly over his lot, not realizing that “the most severe of all sorrows is the sorrow of a suddenly acquired conscience.”

The drunkard realized that the only way out of the situation was to quickly get rid of his conscience. He went to the drinking house and foisted his conscience on the owner, Prokhorych. Having barely come to his senses from what had happened, Prokhorych began to think that it was very bad to get poor people drunk, and even with a fake patent. He realized that with this approach he would quickly go broke - he passionately wanted to “break the dishes and pour the wine into the ditch.” But his wife Arina Ivanovna intervened in the matter, and the next day she cleverly slipped her conscience into the hands of the quarterly overseer, Lovts.

The catcher “didn’t like to embarrass himself and moved his paw quite freely.” Arriving, as usual, at the market square, he wanted, out of old habit, to put his paw into someone else’s property, but he could not: his conscience did not allow him to appropriate someone else’s property. The Quarterly was seriously frightened, and the men, seeing that he was crazy, “began to joke, began to call the Catcher Fofan Fofanych.”

Returning home without any loot, the policeman took off his coat and immediately became his old self—his conscience remained in his pocket. At that same moment he felt “easy and free again, and it began to seem again that there was nothing alien in the world, but everything was his.” He decided to return to the market, put on his coat and again felt the pressure of his conscience. It even seemed to him that in the wallet “the wallet was not his, but someone else’s money.” Without thinking twice, the Trapper distributed them to the people, and then invited the beggars to dine at his home.

The hunter realized that something was wrong with her husband. After putting him to bed, she rummaged in her coat pockets and found her conscience. The catcher wanted to get rid of the unnecessary burden, but only in such a way that the conscience “would not completely burden that person, but would only cause him a little anxiety.” After giving it some thought, she gave her conscience to a major financier and railway inventor, the Jew Samuil Davydych Brzhotsky.

Samiul Davydych was having dinner in his luxurious home, surrounded by his loving family, when a letter was brought to him. So Brzhotsky received an unfortunate conscience, but, “looking frail and weak, he heroically endured the most severe tortures” and did not return a penny of the stolen money. Soon he figured out how to get rid of her: to make “a donation to some charitable institution, which was run by a general he knew.” He transferred his conscience to another envelope, where there was already a hundred-ruble banknote, sealed it and went to the general.

So conscience was passed from hand to hand for a long time, but “no one wanted to shelter it, and everyone, on the contrary, only thought about how to get rid of it.” Finally, the conscience itself was tired of wandering. She asked one tradesman to find her a “little Russian child” to settle in his kind, pure heart. That's how it all happened. And now the child is growing, and with it the conscience, in order to overcome in the future “all lies, deceit and violence.”

Conscience gone

Young lover of literature, we are firmly convinced that you will enjoy reading the fairy tale “Conscience Lost” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and you will be able to learn a lesson and benefit from it. With the virtuosity of a genius, portraits of the heroes are depicted, their appearance, rich inner world, they “breathe life” into the creation and the events taking place in it. Every time you read this or that epic, you feel the incredible love with which the images of the environment are described. It is very useful when the plot is simple and, so to speak, life-like, when similar situations arise in our everyday life, this contributes to better memorization. A person’s worldview is formed gradually, and this kind of work is extremely important and edifying for our young readers. Tens, hundreds of years separate us from the time of creation of the work, but the problems and morals of people remain the same, practically unchanged. Thanks to children's developed imagination, they quickly revive colorful pictures of the world around them in their imagination and fill in the gaps with their visual images. The fairy tale “Conscience Lost” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is certainly useful to read for free online; it will instill in your child only good and useful qualities and concepts.

Conscience is gone. People crowded the streets and theaters as before; in the old way they either caught up or overtook each other; as before, they fussed and caught pieces on the fly, and no one guessed that something had suddenly become missing and that some pipe had stopped playing in the general orchestra of life. Many even began to feel more cheerful and freer. Man’s move has become easier: it has become more dexterous to expose one’s neighbor’s foot, it has become more convenient to flatter, grovel, deceive, gossip and slander. All pain suddenly disappeared; people did not walk, but seemed to rush; nothing upset them, nothing made them think; both the present and the future - everything seemed to be given into their hands - to them, the lucky ones, who did not notice the loss of conscience.

Conscience disappeared suddenly... almost instantly! Just yesterday, this annoying hanger-on was just flashing before my eyes, just imagining it in my excited imagination, and suddenly... nothing! The annoying ghosts disappeared, and with them the moral turmoil that the accusatory conscience brought with it subsided. All that remained was to look at God’s world and rejoice: the wise ones of the world realized that they had finally freed themselves from the last yoke, which hindered their movements, and, of course, hastened to take advantage of the fruits of this freedom. People went crazy; Robberies and robberies began, and general devastation began.

Meanwhile, the poor conscience lay on the road, tormented, spat upon, trampled under the feet of pedestrians. Everyone threw it away like a worthless rag, away from themselves; Everyone was surprised how in a well-organized city, and in the most lively place, such a blatant disgrace could lie. And God knows how long the poor exile would have lain like this if some unfortunate drunkard had not raised her up, having his drunken eyes on even a worthless rag, in the hope of getting a scale for it.

And suddenly he felt that he was pierced like some kind of electric current. With dull eyes, he began to look around and quite clearly felt that his head was being freed from the wine fumes and that that bitter consciousness of reality was gradually returning to him, to get rid of which the best forces of his being had been spent. At first he felt only fear, that dull fear that plunges a person into anxiety from the mere premonition of some impending danger; Then my memory arose and my imagination began to speak. Memory without mercy extracted from the darkness of the shameful past all the details of violence, betrayal, heartfelt lethargy and untruths; imagination clothed these details in living forms. Then, of course, the court woke up...

To a pathetic drunkard, his entire past seems like a continuous ugly crime. He does not analyze, does not ask, does not think: he is so depressed by the picture of his moral fall that confronts him that the process of self-condemnation to which he voluntarily exposes himself hits him incomparably more painfully and severely than the strictest human court. He doesn’t even want to take into account that most of the past for which he curses himself so much does not belong to him at all, the poor and pitiful drunkard, but to some secret, monstrous force that twisted and twisted him, as he twists and turns in the steppe a whirlwind like an insignificant blade of grass. What is his past? why did he live it this way and not otherwise? what is he himself? - all these are questions that he can answer only with surprise and complete unconsciousness. The yoke built his life; He was born under the yoke, and under the yoke he will go to the grave. Now, perhaps, consciousness has appeared - but what does it need it for? then did it come to ruthlessly pose questions and answer them with silence? Is it then that the ruined life will again pour into the destroyed temple, which can no longer withstand its influx?

Alas! his awakened consciousness brings him neither reconciliation nor hope, and his awakened conscience shows only one way out - the way out of fruitless self-accusation. And before there was darkness all around, and even now the same darkness, only populated by painful ghosts; and before heavy chains rang on his hands, and now the same chains, only their weight has doubled, because he realized that they were chains. Useless drunken tears flow like a river; good people stop in front of him and claim that wine is crying inside him.

- Fathers! I can’t... it’s unbearable! - the pathetic singer screams, and the crowd laughs and mocks him. She does not understand that the drinker has never been so free from wine fumes as at this moment, that he simply made an unfortunate discovery that is tearing his poor heart to pieces. If she herself had come across this find, she would have realized, of course, that there is a sorrow in the world, the fiercest of all sorrows - this is the sorrow of a suddenly acquired conscience. She would have realized that she, too, is a crowd that is just as under-juiced and disfigured in spirit as the preacher who cries out before her is under-yoked and morally distorted.

“No, we have to sell it somehow! Otherwise you’ll disappear like a dog!” - thinks the pathetic drunkard and is about to throw his find on the road, but he is stopped by a walker standing nearby.

- You, brother, seem to have decided to engage in planting false libels! - he says to him, shaking his finger, - I, brother, won’t be in the unit for long for this!

The drunkard quickly hides the find in his pocket and leaves with it. Looking around and stealthily, he approaches the drinking house where his old acquaintance, Prokhorych, trades. First, he slowly peers through the window and, seeing that there is no one in the tavern, and Prokhorych is dozing alone behind the counter, in the blink of an eye he opens the door, runs in, and before Prokhorych has time to come to his senses, the terrible find is already in his hand .

For some time Prokhorych stood with his eyes wide; then suddenly he started sweating. For some reason he imagined that he was trading without a patent; but, having looked carefully, he was convinced that all the patents, blue, green, and yellow, were there. He looked at the rag that was in his hands, and it seemed familiar to him.

“Hey! - he remembered, - yes, no way, this is the same rag that I forcibly sold before buying the patent! Yes! she is the one!”

Having convinced himself of this, for some reason he immediately realized that now he had to go broke.

“If a person is busy with something, and such a nasty thing becomes attached to him, say, it’s lost!” there will be no business and there cannot be! - he reasoned almost mechanically, and suddenly he shook all over and turned pale, as if a hitherto unknown fear had looked into his eyes.

- But it’s so bad to make poor people drunk! - whispered the awakened conscience.

- Wife! Arina Ivanovna! - he cried out, beside himself with fright.

Arina Ivanovna came running, but as soon as she saw what Prokhorych had made, she shouted in a voice that was not her own: “Guard! Fathers! They're robbing me!"

“And why should I, through this scoundrel, lose everything in one minute?” - thought Prokhorych, obviously hinting at the drunkard who foisted his find on him. Meanwhile, large drops of sweat appeared on his forehead.

Meanwhile, the tavern was gradually filled with people, but Prokhorych, instead of treating the visitors with the usual courtesy, to the complete amazement of the latter, not only refused to pour them

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wine, but even very touchingly argued that wine is the source of all misfortune for a poor person.

- If you only drank one glass, that’s it! it's even beneficial! - he said through tears, - otherwise you’re trying to devour a whole bucket! So what? now you will be dragged to the unit for this very thing; in the unit they will pour it under your shirt, and you will come out as if you had received some kind of reward! And your entire reward was one hundred lozans! So think about it, dear man, is it worth trying because of this, and even paying me, a fool, your labor money!

- No way, Prokhorych, you’re crazy! - the amazed visitors told him.

- You're crazy, brother, if such an opportunity happens to you! - answered Prokhorych, - you better look at the patent I have corrected for myself today!

Prokhorych showed the conscience that had been handed to him and asked if any of the visitors would like to use it. But the visitors, having learned what the matter was, not only did not express consent, but even timidly stood aside and moved away.

- That's a patent! - Prokhorych added, not without anger.

- What are you going to do now? - his visitors asked.

- Now I think this: there is only one thing left for me - to die! That’s why I can’t deceive now; I also don’t agree to make the poor people drunk with vodka; What should I do now except die?

- Reason! — the visitors laughed at him.

“I even think so now,” continued Prokhorych, “break all this vessel that is here and pour the wine into the ditch!” Therefore, if someone has this virtue in himself, then even the very smell of fusel can turn his insides!

- Just dare me! - Arina Ivanovna finally stood up, whose heart, apparently, was not touched by the grace that suddenly overshadowed Prokhorych, - look, what virtue has emerged!

But Prokhorych was already difficult to penetrate. He burst into bitter tears and kept talking and talking.

“Because,” he said, “if this misfortune happened to someone, he should be so unhappy.” And he does not dare to conclude any opinion about himself that he is a trader or merchant. Because it will be one of his unnecessary worries. And he should reason about himself like this: “I am an unhappy person in this world - and nothing more.”

Thus, a whole day passed in philosophical exercises, and although Arina Ivanovna resolutely opposed her husband’s intention to break the dishes and pour the wine into the ditch, they did not sell a drop that day. By evening, Prokhorych even cheered up and, going to bed for the night, said to the crying Arina Ivanovna:

- Well, here you go, my darling and dear wife! Although we haven’t gained anything today, how easy it is for that person who has a conscience in his eyes!

And indeed, as soon as he lay down, he fell asleep. And he didn’t rush about in his sleep, and didn’t even snore, as happened to him in the old days, when he made money, but had no conscience.

But Arina Ivanovna thought about it a little differently. She understood very well that in the tavern business a conscience is not at all such a pleasant acquisition from which one could expect a profit, and therefore she decided to get rid of the uninvited guest at all costs. Reluctantly, she waited out the night, but as soon as light began to shine through the dusty windows of the tavern, she stole her sleeping husband’s conscience and rushed headlong into the street with it.

As luck would have it, it was market day; Men with carts were already arriving from neighboring villages, and the quarter overseer, Trapper, personally went to the market to monitor order. As soon as Arina Ivanovna saw the hurrying Trapper, a happy thought flashed in her head. She ran after him at full speed, and barely had time to catch up when she immediately, with amazing dexterity, quietly slipped her conscience into the pocket of his coat.

The catcher was small, not exactly shameless, but he did not like to embarrass himself and moved his paw quite freely. He looked not so impudent, but impetuous. The hands weren’t exactly too mischievous, but they willingly grabbed hold of everything that came along the way. In a word, he was a decent greedy man.

And suddenly this very man began to feel jarred.

He came to the market square, and it seemed to him that everything that was there, both on the carts, and on the lockers, and in the shops, was not his, but someone else’s. This had never happened to him before. He rubbed his shameless eyes and thought: “Have I gone crazy, am I seeing all this in a dream?” He approached one of the carts, he wants to launch his paw, but the paw does not rise; he went up to another cart and wanted to shake the man by the beard - oh, horror! arms do not stretch out!

I got scared.

“What has happened to me today? - thinks the Catcher, - after all, in this manner, I’ll probably ruin the whole thing for myself! Shouldn’t we return home for good measure?”

However, I hoped that maybe it would pass. He began to walk around the bazaar; he looks, all kinds of living creatures are lying, all sorts of materials are spread out, and all this seems to say: “The elbow is close, but you won’t bite!”

Meanwhile, the men dared: seeing that the man was crazy, batting his eyes at his goods, they began to joke and began to call the Catcher Fofan Fofanych.

- No, it’s some kind of illness with me! - the Catcher decided, and so without bags, with empty hands, and went home.

He returns home, and the Huntsman’s wife is already waiting, thinking: “How many bags will my dear husband bring me today?” And suddenly - not a single one. So her heart began to boil in her, and she attacked the Trapper.

- Where did you put the bags? - she asks him.

“In the face of my conscience, I testify...” began the Trapper.

- Where are your bags, they ask you?

“In the face of my conscience, I testify...” the Trapper repeated again.

- Well, then dine on your conscience until the next market, but I don’t have lunch for you! - decided the Hunter.

Trapper hung his head because he knew that Trapper’s word was firm. He took off his coat - and suddenly it was as if he was completely transformed! Since his conscience remained, along with his coat, on the wall, he again felt at ease and free, and it began to seem again that nothing in the world was foreign, but everything was his. And he again felt in himself the ability to swallow and rake.

- Well, now you won’t get away from me, friends! - said the Catcher, rubbing his hands, and began hastily putting on his coat so that he could fly to the market with full sail.

But, lo and behold! He barely had time to put on his coat when he began to squirm again. It was as if there were two people in him: one, without a coat, shameless, raked and pawed; the other, in a coat, is shy and timid. However, even though he saw that he had no sooner left the gate than he had calmed down, he did not abandon his intention to go to the market. “Maybe, he thinks, I’ll prevail.”

But the closer he came to the bazaar, the stronger his heart beat, the more persistent was the need to come to terms with all these middle and small people who, for a penny, beat all day in the rain and slush. He has no time to look at other people's bags; his own wallet, which was in his pocket, became a burden to him, as if he suddenly learned from reliable sources that in this wallet it was not his money, but someone else’s money.

- Here's fifteen kopecks for you, my friend! - he says, approaching a man and handing him a coin.

- What is this for, Fofan Fofanych?

- And for my previous insult, friend! forgive me, for Christ's sake!

- Well, God will forgive you!

In this way he went around the entire bazaar and distributed all the money he had. However, having done this, although he felt that his heart became light, he became thoughtful.

“No, some kind of illness happened to me today,” he said to himself again, “I’d better go home, and by the way, I’ll grab more beggars along the way, and I’ll feed them what God sent!”

No sooner said than done: he recruited beggars, visibly or invisibly, and brought them to his yard. The catcher just threw up her hands, waiting to see what further mischief he would do. He slowly walked past her and said affectionately:

“Here, Fedosyushka, are the very strange people you asked me to bring: feed them, for Christ’s sake!”

But as soon as he had time to hang his coat on the nail, he again felt light and free. He looks out the window and sees that in his yard the poor brethren from all over the city have been knocked down! He sees and does not understand: “Why? Is there really a lot of flogging to be done?”

- What kind of people? - He ran out into the yard in a frenzy.

- What kind of people are they? These are all strange people whom you ordered to feed! - the Trapper snapped.

- Drive them out! in the neck! like this! - he shouted in a voice that was not his own and, like a madman, rushed back into the house.

He walked back and forth through the rooms for a long time and kept wondering what had happened to him? He was always a serviceable man, but in terms of performing his official duty he was simply a lion, and suddenly he became a rag!

- Fedosya Petrovna! mother! Yes, bind me, for Christ's sake! I feel like I’m going to do things like this today that it won’t be possible to fix after a whole year! - he begged.

The Trapper also sees that the Trapper had a hard time with her. She undressed him, put him to bed and gave him something hot to drink. Only a quarter of an hour later she went into the hall and thought: “I’ll look in his coat; Maybe there will still be some pennies in your pockets? I searched one pocket and found an empty wallet; I searched another pocket and found some dirty, oily piece of paper. As soon as she unfolded this piece of paper, she gasped!

- So what kind of things has he done today! - she said to herself, - I got my conscience in my pocket!

And she began to think about who she could sell this conscience to, so that it would not completely burden that person, but would only cause him a little anxiety. And she came up with the idea that the best place for her would be with a retired tax farmer, and now a financier and railway inventor, the Jew Shmul Davydovich Brzhotsky.

- At least this one has a thick neck! - she decided, - maybe a small thing will be beaten, but it will survive!

Having decided thus, she carefully put her conscience into a stamped envelope, wrote Brzhotsky's address on it and put it in the mailbox.

“Well, now you can, my friend, go to the market with confidence,” she said to her husband upon returning home.

Samuel Davydych Brzhotsky was sitting at the dining table, surrounded by his entire family. His ten-year-old son, Reuben Samuilovich, sat next to him and performed banking transactions in his mind.

- And one hundred, papasa, if I give this gold that you gave me in interest at twenty percent a month, how much money will I have by the end of the year? - he asked.

— What percentage: simple or compound? - Samuil Davydych asked, in turn.

- Of course, papasa, you slimy one!

- If it’s a syllable and with truncated fractions, then it will be forty-five rubles and seventy-nine kopecks!

- So, I’ll give it back to Papa!

- Give it back, my friend, but you need to take a trustworthy deposit!

On the other side sat Yosel Samuilovich, a boy of about seven years old, and was also solving a problem in his mind: a flock of geese was flying; Then Solomon Samuilovich was placed, followed by Davyd Samuilovich, and they figured out how much the latter owed the former in interest for the candy they had borrowed. At the other end of the table sat the beautiful wife of Samuil Davydych, Liya Solomonovna, and held in her arms tiny Rifochka, who instinctively reached for the gold bracelets that adorned her mother’s hands.

In a word, Samuil Davydych was happy. He was about to eat some unusual sauce, decorated almost with ostrich feathers and Brussels lace, when a footman handed him a letter on a silver tray.

As soon as Samuil Davydych took the envelope in his hands, he darted in all directions, like an eel on the coals.

- And this is what it is! and why bother with this whole thing for me! - he screamed, shaking all over.

Although none of those present understood anything about these screams, it became clear to everyone that the continuation of dinner was impossible.

I will not describe here the torment that Samuil Davydych endured on this memorable day for him; I will only say one thing: this man, seemingly frail and weak, heroically endured the most severe tortures, but did not even agree to return the five-alt coin.

- This is a hundred ze! it's nothing! Only you dare me more, Leah! - he persuaded his wife during the most desperate paroxysms, - and if I ask the casket - no, no! Let me die!

But since there is no such difficult situation in the world from which a way out would be impossible, one was found in the present case. Samuil Davydych remembered that he had long promised to make some kind of donation to a certain charitable institution, which was run by a general he knew, but for some reason this matter was delayed from day to day. And now the case directly pointed to a means of fulfilling this long-standing intention.

Planned and done. Samuil Davydych carefully opened the envelope sent by mail, took the parcel out of it with tweezers, put it in another envelope, hid another hundred-dollar bank note there, sealed it and went to see a general he knew.

- I wish, Vasya Excellency, to make a donation! - he said, placing the package on the table in front of the delighted general.

- Well, sir! it is commendable! - answered the general, - I always knew that you... as a Jew... and according to the law of David... You dance and play... so, it seems?

The general was confused, because he did not know for sure whether it was David who issued the laws, or who else.

- That’s right, sir; Just what kind of Jews we are, Your Excellency! - Samuil Davydych hurried, already completely relieved, - only in appearance we are Jews, but in reality we are completely, completely Russian!

- Thank you! - said the general, - I regret one thing... as a Christian... why would you, for example?.., huh?..

- Vasya Excellency... we are only in appearance... believe me, only in appearance!

- However?

- Vasya Excellency!

- Well well well! Christ is with you!

Samuil Davydych flew home as if on wings. That same evening, he completely forgot about the suffering he had endured and came up with such an outlandish operation, to everyone’s annoyance, that the next day everyone gasped as they found out.

And for a long time the poor, exiled conscience wandered around the world in this way, and it stayed with many thousands of people. But no one wanted to shelter her, and everyone, on the contrary, was only thinking about how to get rid of her, even by deception, and get away with it.

Finally, she herself became bored with the fact that she, poor thing, had nowhere to lay her head and had to live her life among strangers, and without shelter. So she prayed to her last owner, some tradesman who was selling dust in the passage and could not get by from that trade.

- Why are you tyrannizing me? — my poor conscience complained, “why are you pushing me around, like some kind of swindler?

“What am I going to do with you, madam conscience, if no one needs you?” - the tradesman asked, in turn.

“But that’s what,” answered conscience, “find me a little Russian child, dissolve his pure heart before me and bury me in it!” What if he, an innocent baby, shelters and nurtures me, what if he grows me to the extent of his age, and then comes out with me among the people—he won’t disdain.

According to this word of hers, everything became so. The tradesman found a little Russian child, dissolved his pure heart and buried his conscience in him.

A little child grows, and with him his conscience grows. And the little child will be a big man, and he will have a big conscience. And then all untruths, deceit and violence will disappear, because the conscience will not be timid and will want to manage everything itself.

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