Pyotr Pertsov who knew Balmont from teenage years, characterized him as "a very nice, friendly, and considerate young man." Marina Tsvetayeva insisted that he was "the kind of man who'd give a needy one his last piece of bread, his last log of wood." Mark Talov, a Soviet translator who in the 1920s found himself penniless in Paris, remembered how often, after having left Balmont's house, he would find money in a pocket; the poet (who was very poor himself) preferred this anonymous way of helping so as not to confuse a visitor.