I saw a story about Confucius in "Lu Shi Chun Qiu", the general idea is this:

Confucius led his disciples to travel around the country and came to the country between Chen and Cai. Due to the chaos of the war and the difficulty of the journey, they had to eat wild vegetables for three meals. Everyone had not eaten a grain of rice for seven days.

One day, Yan Hui finally got some white rice and put it into the pot to cook. When the rice was almost cooked, Confucius saw Yan Hui lift the lid of the pot, grab some white rice and stuff it into his mouth. Confucius was very angry, but he pretended not to see it and did not ask questions.

After the rice was cooked, Yan Hui invited Confucius to eat. Confucius pretended to be thoughtful and said: "I just dreamed that my ancestors came to me. I wanted to clean up the rice that no one had eaten. Let's use it to worship our ancestors first!"

Yan Hui immediately panicked and said, "No, I've already taken a bite of this pot of rice, so I can't sacrifice it to my ancestors."

< p> Confucius asked sternly: "Why do you want to eat first?"

Yan Hui blushed and said in a low voice: "When I was cooking just now, I accidentally dropped some soot in the pot, and some white rice was stained. It was a pity to throw it away, so I picked it up and ate it myself. I didn’t mean to eat it first." After hearing this, Confucius suddenly realized that he felt very guilty for his observation error. I think the reason why Confucius felt guilty was because he doubted his disciples without knowing the truth of the matter. Fortunately, Confucius was indeed a master and did not directly criticize his disciples even when he was angry. Otherwise, it will cause great harm to disciple Yan Hui's soul.