Аbout pity

Luke. Come on, here ... caress! To caress a person is never harmful ...

Natasha. Kind you, grandfather ... Why are you - so kind?

Luke. Kind, speak? Well ... well, if so ... yes!

Behind the red wall the harmonica and the song sound quietly.

It is necessary, the girl, someone and kind to be ... it is necessary to feel sorry for people! Christ was sorry for everyone, and he told us so ... I’ll tell you, it’s good to regret a person in time ... it happens well! Here, approximately, I served as a guard at the dacha ... with an engineer alone under Tomsk-city ... Well, okay! There was a dacha in the forest, the place was deaf ... and the winter was, and - I alone, at the dacha ... Gloriously, well! Only once - I hear - climb!

Natasha. The thieves?

Luke. They. They climb, it means yes! .. I took the gun, went out ... I look - two ... open the window - and so they are busy, that they don’t see me. I shout to them: oh you! .. go away! .. And they, it means, with an ax on me ... I anticipate them - leave me alone, they say! And now I’m shooting! .. Yes, I’m putting the gun on one or the other. They fell on their knees: they say - let go! Well, I’m really so ... offended ... for an ax, you know! I say - I, the devotees, chased you, did not go ... and now, I say, break branches one alone! They broke. Now, I order one, lie down, and another, feed it! So they, on my orders, and whipped up the boyfriend boyfriend. And how they were thrashed out ... and they say to me - grandfather, they say, give a loaf of Christ for the sake of! Come, they say, not zhramshi. Here are the thieves, honey (laughs) ... here are the ones with the ax! Yes ... Good men are both ... I tell them: you would be devils, you would ask for bread directly. And they are tired, they say ... you ask, you ask, but no one gives ... offensively! .. So they have lived with me all winter. One, - to call Stepan, - would take, sometimes, a gun and roll into the forest. And the other - Yakov was, everything was sick, he coughed everything ... The three of us, it means that we kept the dacha. Spring has come - goodbye, they say, grandfather! And they left ... They came to Russia ...

Natasha. Are they runaway? Convicts?

Luke. Indeed - so, the fugitive ... left the settlement ... Good guys! .. If I didn’t regret them, they could have killed me ... or something else ... And then - the court, yes the prison, yes Siberia ... what's the use? A prison will not teach good, and Siberia will not teach ... and a person will teach ... yes! Man - can teach good ... very simple!

Maksim Gorky. The play "At the bottom". Act 3.