MOSCOW,
October, 1885.
... You advise me to go to Petersburg, and say that Petersburg is not
China. I know it is not, and as you are aware, I have long realized the
necessity of going there; but what am I to do? Owing to the fact that we
are a large family, I never have a ten-rouble note to spare, and to go
there, even if I did it in the most uncomfortable and beggarly way, would
cost at least fifty roubles. How am I to get the money? I can’t squeeze it
out of my family and don’t think I ought to. If I were to cut down our two
courses at dinner to one, I should begin to pine away from pangs of
conscience.... Allah only knows how difficult it is for me to keep my
balance, and how easy it would be for me to slip and lose my equilibrium. I
fancy that if next month I should earn twenty or thirty roubles less, my
balance would be gone, and I should be in difficulties. I am awfully
apprehensive about money matters and, owing to this quite uncommercial
cowardice in pecuniary affairs, I avoid loans and payments on account. I am
not difficult to move. If I had money I should fly from one city to another
endlessly.