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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Resurrection
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+Released on October, 1999  [Etext #1938]
+Last Updated: September 11, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RESURRECTION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RESURRECTION
+
+By Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+Translated by Mrs. Louise Maude
+
+
+
+[Transcriber’s Note: The following paragraph is on a page of its own, in
+cursive writing, apparently in Tolstoy’s own hand.]
+
+     This English version
+     of “Resurrection” is pub-
+     lished by Dodd, Mead and
+     Company by my authority.
+                 Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
+
+Opinions about Tolstoy and his work differ, but on one point there
+surely might be unanimity. A writer of world-wide reputation should be
+at least allowed to know how to spell his own name. Why should any one
+insist on spelling it “Tolstoi” (with one, two or three dots over the
+“i”), when he himself writes it “Tolstoy”? The only reason I have ever
+heard suggested is, that in England and America such outlandish views
+are attributed to him, that an outlandish spelling is desirable to match
+those views.
+
+This novel, written in the rough by Tolstoy some years ago and founded
+upon an actual occurrence, was completely rewritten by him during the
+last year and a half, and all the proceeds have been devoted by him
+to aiding the Doukhobors, a sect who were persecuted in the Caucasus
+(especially from 1895 to 1898) for refusing to learn war. About seven
+thousand three hundred of them are settled in Canada, and about a
+hundred of the leaders are exiled to the remote parts of Siberia.
+
+Anything I may receive for my work in translating the book will go to
+the same cause. “Prevention is better than cure,” and I would rather
+help people to abstain from killing and wounding each other than devote
+the money to patch up their wounds after the battle.
+
+LOUISE MAUDE
+
+
+
+
+RESURRECTION
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+
+Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the
+small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paving the
+ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting
+down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with
+the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the
+town.
+
+The sun shone warm, the air was balmy; everywhere, where it did not get
+scraped away, the grass revived and sprang up between the paving-stones
+as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards. The birches,
+the poplars, and the wild cherry unfolded their gummy and fragrant
+leaves, the limes were expanding their opening buds; crows, sparrows,
+and pigeons, filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests
+ready; the flies were buzzing along the walls, warmed by the sunshine.
+All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But
+men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting
+themselves and each other. It was not this spring morning men thought
+sacred and worthy of consideration not the beauty of God’s world, given
+for a joy to all creatures, this beauty which inclines the heart to
+peace, to harmony, and to love, but only their own devices for enslaving
+one another.
+
+Thus, in the prison office of the Government town, it was not the fact
+that men and animals had received the grace and gladness of spring that
+was considered sacred and important, but that a notice, numbered and
+with a superscription, had come the day before, ordering that on this
+28th day of April, at 9 a.m., three prisoners at present detained in the
+prison, a man and two women (one of these women, as the chief criminal,
+to be conducted separately), had to appear at Court. So now, on the 28th
+of April, at 8 o’clock, a jailer and soon after him a woman warder with
+curly grey hair, dressed in a jacket with sleeves trimmed with gold,
+with a blue-edged belt round her waist, and having a look of suffering
+on her face, came into the corridor.
+
+“You want Maslova?” she asked, coming up to the cell with the jailer who
+was on duty.
+
+The jailer, rattling the iron padlock, opened the door of the cell, from
+which there came a whiff of air fouler even than that in the corridor,
+and called out, “Maslova! to the Court,” and closed the door again.
+
+Even into the prison yard the breeze had brought the fresh vivifying air
+from the fields. But in the corridor the air was laden with the germs of
+typhoid, the smell of sewage, putrefaction, and tar; every newcomer felt
+sad and dejected in it. The woman warder felt this, though she was
+used to bad air. She had just come in from outside, and entering the
+corridor, she at once became sleepy.
+
+From inside the cell came the sound of bustle and women’s voices, and
+the patter of bare feet on the floor.
+
+“Now, then, hurry up, Maslova, I say!” called out the jailer, and in a
+minute or two a small young woman with a very full bust came briskly out
+of the door and went up to the jailer. She had on a grey cloak over a
+white jacket and petticoat. On her feet she wore linen stockings and
+prison shoes, and round her head was tied a white kerchief, from under
+which a few locks of black hair were brushed over the forehead with
+evident intent. The face of the woman was of that whiteness peculiar to
+people who have lived long in confinement, and which puts one in mind of
+shoots of potatoes that spring up in a cellar. Her small broad hands and
+full neck, which showed from under the broad collar of her cloak, were
+of the same hue. Her black, sparkling eyes, one with a slight squint,
+appeared in striking contrast to the dull pallor of her face.
+
+She carried herself very straight, expanding her full bosom.
+
+With her head slightly thrown back, she stood in the corridor, looking
+straight into the eyes of the jailer, ready to comply with any order.
+
+The jailer was about to lock the door when a wrinkled and severe-looking
+old woman put out her grey head and began speaking to Maslova. But the
+jailer closed the door, pushing the old woman’s head with it. A woman’s
+laughter was heard from the cell, and Maslova smiled, turning to the
+little grated opening in the cell door. The old woman pressed her face
+to the grating from the other side, and said, in a hoarse voice:
+
+“Now mind, and when they begin questioning you, just repeat over the
+same thing, and stick to it; tell nothing that is not wanted.”
+
+“Well, it could not be worse than it is now, anyhow; I only wish it was
+settled one way or another.”
+
+“Of course, it will be settled one way or another,” said the jailer,
+with a superior’s self-assured witticism. “Now, then, get along! Take
+your places!”
+
+The old woman’s eyes vanished from the grating, and Maslova stepped out
+into the middle of the corridor. The warder in front, they descended
+the stone stairs, past the still fouler, noisy cells of the men’s
+ward, where they were followed by eyes looking out of every one of the
+gratings in the doors, and entered the office, where two soldiers were
+waiting to escort her. A clerk who was sitting there gave one of the
+soldiers a paper reeking of tobacco, and pointing to the prisoner,
+remarked, “Take her.”
+
+The soldier, a peasant from Nijni Novgorod, with a red, pock-marked
+face, put the paper into the sleeve of his coat, winked to his
+companion, a broad-shouldered Tchouvash, and then the prisoner and the
+soldiers went to the front entrance, out of the prison yard, and through
+the town up the middle of the roughly-paved street.
+
+Isvostchiks [cabmen], tradespeople, cooks, workmen, and government
+clerks, stopped and looked curiously at the prisoner; some shook their
+heads and thought, “This is what evil conduct, conduct unlike ours,
+leads to.” The children stopped and gazed at the robber with frightened
+looks; but the thought that the soldiers were preventing her from doing
+more harm quieted their fears. A peasant, who had sold his charcoal, and
+had had some tea in the town, came up, and, after crossing himself, gave
+her a copeck. The prisoner blushed and muttered something; she noticed
+that she was attracting everybody’s attention, and that pleased her. The
+comparatively fresh air also gladdened her, but it was painful to step
+on the rough stones with the ill-made prison shoes on her feet, which
+had become unused to walking. Passing by a corn-dealer’s shop, in front
+of which a few pigeons were strutting about, unmolested by any one, the
+prisoner almost touched a grey-blue bird with her foot; it fluttered up
+and flew close to her ear, fanning her with its wings. She smiled, then
+sighed deeply as she remembered her present position.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MASLOVA’S EARLY LIFE.
+
+The story of the prisoner Maslova’s life was a very common one.
+
+Maslova’s mother was the unmarried daughter of a village woman,
+employed on a dairy farm, which belonged to two maiden ladies who were
+landowners. This unmarried woman had a baby every year, and, as often
+happens among the village people, each one of these undesired babies,
+after it had been carefully baptised, was neglected by its mother, whom
+it hindered at her work, and left to starve. Five children had died in
+this way. They had all been baptised and then not sufficiently fed, and
+just left to die. The sixth baby, whose father was a gipsy tramp, would
+have shared the same fate, had it not so happened that one of the maiden
+ladies came into the farmyard to scold the dairymaids for sending up
+cream that smelt of the cow. The young woman was lying in the cowshed
+with a fine, healthy, new-born baby. The old maiden lady scolded the
+maids again for allowing the woman (who had just been confined) to lie
+in the cowshed, and was about to go away, but seeing the baby her heart
+was touched, and she offered to stand godmother to the little girl, and
+pity for her little god-daughter induced her to give milk and a little
+money to the mother, so that she should feed the baby; and the little
+girl lived. The old ladies spoke of her as “the saved one.” When the
+child was three years old, her mother fell ill and died, and the maiden
+ladies took the child from her old grandmother, to whom she was nothing
+but a burden.
+
+The little black-eyed maiden grew to be extremely pretty, and so full of
+spirits that the ladies found her very entertaining.
+
+The younger of the ladies, Sophia Ivanovna, who had stood godmother to
+the girl, had the kinder heart of the two sisters; Maria Ivanovna, the
+elder, was rather hard. Sophia Ivanovna dressed the little girl in nice
+clothes, and taught her to read and write, meaning to educate her like a
+lady. Maria Ivanovna thought the child should be brought up to work, and
+trained her to be a good servant. She was exacting; she punished, and,
+when in a bad temper, even struck the little girl. Growing up under
+these two different influences, the girl turned out half servant, half
+young lady. They called her Katusha, which sounds less refined than
+Katinka, but is not quite so common as Katka. She used to sew, tidy up
+the rooms, polish the metal cases of the icons and do other light work,
+and sometimes she sat and read to the ladies.
+
+Though she had more than one offer, she would not marry. She felt that
+life as the wife of any of the working men who were courting her would
+be too hard; spoilt as she was by a life of case.
+
+She lived in this manner till she was sixteen, when the nephew of the
+old ladies, a rich young prince, and a university student, came to
+stay with his aunts, and Katusha, not daring to acknowledge it even to
+herself, fell in love with him.
+
+Then two years later this same nephew stayed four days with his aunts
+before proceeding to join his regiment, and the night before he left he
+betrayed Katusha, and, after giving her a 100-rouble note, went away.
+Five months later she knew for certain that she was to be a mother.
+After that everything seemed repugnant to her, her only thought being
+how to escape from the shame that awaited her. She began not only to
+serve the ladies in a half-hearted and negligent way, but once, without
+knowing how it happened, was very rude to them, and gave them notice,
+a thing she repented of later, and the ladies let her go, noticing
+something wrong and very dissatisfied with her. Then she got a
+housemaid’s place in a police-officer’s house, but stayed there only
+three months, for the police officer, a man of fifty, began to torment
+her, and once, when he was in a specially enterprising mood, she fired
+up, called him “a fool and old devil,” and gave him such a knock in the
+chest that he fell. She was turned out for her rudeness. It was useless
+to look for another situation, for the time of her confinement was
+drawing near, so she went to the house of a village midwife, who also
+sold wine. The confinement was easy; but the midwife, who had a case of
+fever in the village, infected Katusha, and her baby boy had to be sent
+to the foundlings’ hospital, where, according to the words of the old
+woman who took him there, he at once died. When Katusha went to the
+midwife she had 127 roubles in all, 27 which she had earned and 100
+given her by her betrayer. When she left she had but six roubles; she
+did not know how to keep money, but spent it on herself, and gave to
+all who asked. The midwife took 40 roubles for two months’ board and
+attendance, 25 went to get the baby into the foundlings’ hospital, and
+40 the midwife borrowed to buy a cow with. Twenty roubles went just for
+clothes and dainties. Having nothing left to live on, Katusha had to
+look out for a place again, and found one in the house of a forester.
+The forester was a married man, but he, too, began to annoy her from the
+first day. He disgusted her, and she tried to avoid him. But he, more
+experienced and cunning, besides being her master, who could send her
+wherever he liked, managed to accomplish his object. His wife found it
+out, and, catching Katusha and her husband in a room all by themselves,
+began beating her. Katusha defended herself, and they had a fight, and
+Katusha got turned out of the house without being paid her wages.
+
+Then Katusha went to live with her aunt in town. The aunt’s husband,
+a bookbinder, had once been comfortably off, but had lost all his
+customers, and had taken to drink, and spent all he could lay hands
+on at the public-house. The aunt kept a little laundry, and managed to
+support herself, her children, and her wretched husband. She offered
+Katusha the place of an assistant laundress; but seeing what a life of
+misery and hardship her aunt’s assistants led, Katusha hesitated, and
+applied to a registry office for a place. One was found for her with a
+lady who lived with her two sons, pupils at a public day school. A
+week after Katusha had entered the house the elder, a big fellow with
+moustaches, threw up his studies and made love to her, continually
+following her about. His mother laid all the blame on Katusha, and gave
+her notice.
+
+It so happened that, after many fruitless attempts to find a situation,
+Katusha again went to the registry office, and there met a woman with
+bracelets on her bare, plump arms and rings on most of her fingers.
+Hearing that Katusha was badly in want of a place, the woman gave her
+her address, and invited her to come to her house. Katusha went. The
+woman received her very kindly, set cake and sweet wine before her,
+then wrote a note and gave it to a servant to take to somebody. In the
+evening a tall man, with long, grey hair and a white beard, entered the
+room, and sat down at once near Katusha, smiling and gazing at her with
+glistening eyes. He began joking with her. The hostess called him away
+into the next room, and Katusha heard her say, “A fresh one from the
+country,” Then the hostess called Katusha aside and told her that the
+man was an author, and that he had a great deal of money, and that if
+he liked her he would not grudge her anything. He did like her, and gave
+her 25 roubles, promising to see her often. The 25 roubles soon went;
+some she paid to her aunt for board and lodging; the rest was spent on
+a hat, ribbons, and such like. A few days later the author sent for her,
+and she went. He gave her another 25 roubles, and offered her a separate
+lodging.
+
+Next door to the lodging rented for her by the author there lived a
+jolly young shopman, with whom Katusha soon fell in love. She told
+the author, and moved to a little lodging of her own. The shopman, who
+promised to marry her, went to Nijni on business without mentioning it
+to her, having evidently thrown her up, and Katusha remained alone. She
+meant to continue living in the lodging by herself, but was informed
+by the police that in this case she would have to get a license. She
+returned to her aunt. Seeing her fine dress, her hat, and mantle, her
+aunt no longer offered her laundry work. As she understood things, her
+niece had risen above that sort of thing. The question as to whether she
+was to become a laundress or not did not occur to Katusha, either. She
+looked with pity at the thin, hard-worked laundresses, some already in
+consumption, who stood washing or ironing with their thin arms in the
+fearfully hot front room, which was always full of soapy steam and
+draughts from the windows, and thought with horror that she might have
+shared the same fate.
+
+Katusha had begun to smoke some time before, and since the young shopman
+had thrown her up she was getting more and more into the habit of
+drinking. It was not so much the flavour of wine that tempted her as the
+fact that it gave her a chance of forgetting the misery she suffered,
+making her feel more unrestrained and more confident of her own worth,
+which she was not when quite sober; without wine she felt sad and
+ashamed. Just at this time a woman came along who offered to place her
+in one of the largest establishments in the city, explaining all the
+advantages and benefits of the situation. Katusha had the choice before
+her of either going into service or accepting this offer--and she chose
+the latter. Besides, it seemed to her as though, in this way, she could
+revenge herself on her betrayer and the shopman and all those who had
+injured her. One of the things that tempted her, and was the cause
+of her decision, was the woman telling her she might order her own
+dresses--velvet, silk, satin, low-necked ball dresses, anything she
+liked. A mental picture of herself in a bright yellow silk trimmed with
+black velvet with low neck and short sleeves conquered her, and she gave
+up her passport. On the same evening the procuress took an isvostchik
+and drove her to the notorious house kept by Carolina Albertovna
+Kitaeva.
+
+From that day a life of chronic sin against human and divine laws
+commenced for Katusha Maslova, a life which is led by hundreds of
+thousands of women, and which is not merely tolerated but sanctioned by
+the Government, anxious for the welfare of its subjects; a life
+which for nine women out of ten ends in painful disease, premature
+decrepitude, and death.
+
+Katusha Maslova lived this life for seven years. During these years she
+twice changed houses, and had once been to the hospital. In the seventh
+year of this life, when she was twenty-six years old, happened that for
+which she was put in prison and for which she was now being taken to
+be tried, after more than three months of confinement with thieves and
+murderers in the stifling air of a prison.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF.
+
+When Maslova, wearied out by the long walk, reached the building,
+accompanied by two soldiers, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, who
+had seduced her, was still lying on his high bedstead, with a feather
+bed on the top of the spring mattress, in a fine, clean, well-ironed
+linen night shirt, smoking a cigarette, and considering what he had to
+do to-day, and what had happened yesterday.
+
+Recalling the evening he had spent with the Korchagins, a wealthy and
+aristocratic family, whose daughter every one expected he would marry,
+he sighed, and, throwing away the end of his cigarette, was going
+to take another out of the silver case; but, changing his mind, he
+resolutely raised his solid frame, and, putting down his smooth, white
+legs, stepped into his slippers, threw his silk dressing gown over his
+broad shoulders, and passed into his dressing-room, walking heavily
+and quickly. There he carefully cleaned his teeth, many of which were
+filled, with tooth powder, and rinsed his mouth with scented elixir.
+After that he washed his hands with perfumed soap, cleaned his long
+nails with particular care, then, from a tap fixed to his marble
+washstand, he let a spray of cold water run over his face and stout
+neck. Having finished this part of the business, he went into a third
+room, where a shower bath stood ready for him. Having refreshed his
+full, white, muscular body, and dried it with a rough bath sheet, he put
+on his fine undergarments and his boots, and sat down before the glass
+to brush his black beard and his curly hair, that had begun to get thin
+above the forehead. Everything he used, everything belonging to his
+toilet, his linen, his clothes, boots, necktie, pin, studs, was of the
+best quality, very quiet, simple, durable and costly.
+
+Nekhludoff dressed leisurely, and went into the dining-room. A table,
+which looked very imposing with its four legs carved in the shape of
+lions’ paws, and a huge side-board to match, stood in the oblong room,
+the floor of which had been polished by three men the day before. On
+the table, which was covered with a fine, starched cloth, stood a silver
+coffeepot full of aromatic coffee, a sugar basin, a jug of fresh cream,
+and a bread basket filled with fresh rolls, rusks, and biscuits; and
+beside the plate lay the last number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, a
+newspaper, and several letters.
+
+Nekhludoff was just going to open his letters, when a stout, middle-aged
+woman in mourning, a lace cap covering the widening parting of her hair,
+glided into the room. This was Agraphena Petrovna, formerly lady’s maid
+to Nekhludoff’s mother. Her mistress had died quite recently in this
+very house, and she remained with the son as his housekeeper. Agraphena
+Petrovna had spent nearly ten years, at different times, abroad with
+Nekhludoff’s mother, and had the appearance and manners of a lady. She
+had lived with the Nekhludoffs from the time she was a child, and had
+known Dmitri Ivanovitch at the time when he was still little Mitinka.
+
+“Good-morning, Dmitri Ivanovitch.”
+
+“Good-morning, Agraphena Petrovna. What is it you want?” Nekhludoff
+asked.
+
+“A letter from the princess; either from the mother or the daughter.
+The maid brought it some time ago, and is waiting in my room,” answered
+Agraphena Petrovna, handing him the letter with a significant smile.
+
+“All right! Directly!” said Nekhludoff, taking the letter and frowning
+as he noticed Agraphena Petrovna’s smile.
+
+That smile meant that the letter was from the younger Princess
+Korchagin, whom Agraphena Petrovna expected him to marry. This
+supposition of hers annoyed Nekhludoff.
+
+“Then I’ll tell her to wait?” and Agraphena Petrovna took a crumb brush
+which was not in its place, put it away, and sailed out of the room.
+
+Nekhludoff opened the perfumed note, and began reading it.
+
+The note was written on a sheet of thick grey paper, with rough edges;
+the writing looked English. It said:
+
+Having assumed the task of acting as your memory, I take the liberty of
+reminding you that on this the 28th day of April you have to appear
+at the Law Courts, as juryman, and, in consequence, can on no account
+accompany us and Kolosoff to the picture gallery, as, with your habitual
+flightiness, you promised yesterday; _a moins que vous ne soyez dispose
+a payer la cour d’assise les 300 roubles d’amende que vous vous refusez
+pour votre cheval,_ for not appearing in time. I remembered it last
+night after you were gone, so do not forget.
+
+                      Princess M. Korchagin.
+
+On the other side was a postscript.
+
+_Maman vous fait dire que votre convert vous attendra jusqu’a la nuit.
+Venez absolument a quelle heure que cela soit._
+
+                                    M. K.
+
+Nekhludoff made a grimace. This note was a continuation of that skilful
+manoeuvring which the Princess Korchagin had already practised for two
+months in order to bind him closer and closer with invisible threads.
+And yet, beside the usual hesitation of men past their youth to marry
+unless they are very much in love, Nekhludoff had very good reasons why,
+even if he did make up his mind to it, he could not propose at once. It
+was not that ten years previously he had betrayed and forsaken Maslova;
+he had quite forgotten that, and he would not have considered it a
+reason for not marrying. No! The reason was that he had a liaison with a
+married woman, and, though he considered it broken off, she did not.
+
+Nekhludoff was rather shy with women, and his very shyness awakened in
+this married woman, the unprincipled wife of the marechal de noblesse
+of a district where Nekhludoff was present at an election, the desire
+of vanquishing him. This woman drew him into an intimacy which entangled
+him more and more, while it daily became more distasteful to him. Having
+succumbed to the temptation, Nekhludoff felt guilty, and had not the
+courage to break the tie without her consent. And this was the reason he
+did not feel at liberty to propose to Korchagin even if he had wished to
+do so. Among the letters on the table was one from this woman’s husband.
+Seeing his writing and the postmark, Nekhludoff flushed, and felt his
+energies awakening, as they always did when he was facing any kind of
+danger.
+
+But his excitement passed at once. The marechal do noblesse, of the
+district in which his largest estate lay, wrote only to let Nekhludoff
+know that there was to be a special meeting towards the end of May, and
+that Nekhludoff was to be sure and come to “_donner un coup d’epaule_,”
+ at the important debates concerning the schools and the roads, as a
+strong opposition by the reactionary party was expected.
+
+The marechal was a liberal, and was quite engrossed in this fight, not
+even noticing the misfortune that had befallen him.
+
+Nekhludoff remembered the dreadful moments he had lived through; once
+when he thought that the husband had found him out and was going to
+challenge him, and he was making up his mind to fire into the air; also
+the terrible scene he had with her when she ran out into the park, and
+in her excitement tried to drown herself in the pond.
+
+“Well, I cannot go now, and can do nothing until I get a reply from
+her,” thought Nekhludoff. A week ago he had written her a decisive
+letter, in which he acknowledged his guilt, and his readiness to atone
+for it; but at the same time he pronounced their relations to be at an
+end, for her own good, as he expressed it. To this letter he had as yet
+received no answer. This might prove a good sign, for if she did not
+agree to break off their relations, she would have written at once, or
+even come herself, as she had done before. Nekhludoff had heard that
+there was some officer who was paying her marked attention, and this
+tormented him by awakening jealousy, and at the same time encouraged him
+with the hope of escape from the deception that was oppressing him.
+
+The other letter was from his steward. The steward wrote to tell
+him that a visit to his estates was necessary in order to enter into
+possession, and also to decide about the further management of his
+lands; whether it was to continue in the same way as when his mother was
+alive, or whether, as he had represented to the late lamented princess,
+and now advised the young prince, they had not better increase their
+stock and farm all the land now rented by the peasants themselves. The
+steward wrote that this would be a far more profitable way of managing
+the property; at the same time, he apologised for not having forwarded
+the 3,000 roubles income due on the 1st. This money would be sent on by
+the next mail. The reason for the delay was that he could not get the
+money out of the peasants, who had grown so untrustworthy that he had
+to appeal to the authorities. This letter was partly disagreeable, and
+partly pleasant. It was pleasant to feel that he had power over so
+large a property, and yet disagreeable, because Nekhludoff had been an
+enthusiastic admirer of Henry George and Herbert Spencer. Being himself
+heir to a large property, he was especially struck by the position
+taken up by Spencer in Social Statics, that justice forbids private
+landholding, and with the straightforward resoluteness of his age, had
+not merely spoken to prove that land could not be looked upon as private
+property, and written essays on that subject at the university, but had
+acted up to his convictions, and, considering it wrong to hold landed
+property, had given the small piece of land he had inherited from his
+father to the peasants. Inheriting his mother’s large estates, and thus
+becoming a landed proprietor, he had to choose one of two things: either
+to give up his property, as he had given up his father’s land ten years
+before, or silently to confess that all his former ideas were mistaken
+and false.
+
+He could not choose the former because he had no means but the landed
+estates (he did not care to serve); moreover, he had formed luxurious
+habits which he could not easily give up. Besides, he had no longer the
+same inducements; his strong convictions, the resoluteness of youth, and
+the ambitious desire to do something unusual were gone. As to the second
+course, that of denying those clear and unanswerable proofs of the
+injustice of landholding, which he had drawn from Spencer’s Social
+Statics, and the brilliant corroboration of which he had at a later
+period found in the works of Henry George, such a course was impossible
+to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MISSY.
+
+When Nekhludoff had finished his coffee, he went to his study to look
+at the summons, and find out what time he was to appear at the court,
+before writing his answer to the princess. Passing through his studio,
+where a few studies hung on the walls and, facing the easel, stood an
+unfinished picture, a feeling of inability to advance in art, a sense of
+his incapacity, came over him. He had often had this feeling, of late,
+and explained it by his too finely-developed aesthetic taste; still, the
+feeling was a very unpleasant one. Seven years before this he had given
+up military service, feeling sure that he had a talent for art, and had
+looked down with some disdain at all other activity from the height of
+his artistic standpoint. And now it turned out that he had no right
+to do so, and therefore everything that reminded him of all this was
+unpleasant. He looked at the luxurious fittings of the studio with a
+heavy heart, and it was in no cheerful mood that he entered his study,
+a large, lofty room fitted up with a view to comfort, convenience,
+and elegant appearance. He found the summons at once in a pigeon hole,
+labelled “immediate,” of his large writing table. He had to appear at
+the court at 11 o’clock.
+
+Nekhludoff sat down to write a note in reply to the princess, thanking
+her for the invitation, and promising to try and come to dinner. Having
+written one note, he tore it up, as it seemed too intimate. He wrote
+another, but it was too cold; he feared it might give offence, so he
+tore it up, too. He pressed the button of an electric bell, and his
+servant, an elderly, morose-looking man, with whiskers and shaved chin
+and lip, wearing a grey cotton apron, entered at the door.
+
+“Send to fetch an isvostchik, please.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And tell the person who is waiting that I send thanks for the
+invitation, and shall try to come.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“It is not very polite, but I can’t write; no matter, I shall see her
+today,” thought Nekhludoff, and went to get his overcoat.
+
+When he came out of the house, an isvostchik he knew, with india-rubber
+tires to his trap, was at the door waiting for him. “You had hardly gone
+away from Prince Korchagin’s yesterday,” he said, turning half round,
+“when I drove up, and the Swiss at the door says, ‘just gone.’” The
+isvostchik knew that Nekhludoff visited at the Korchagins, and called
+there on the chance of being engaged by him.
+
+“Even the isvostchiks know of my relations with the Korchagins,” thought
+Nekhludoff, and again the question whether he should not marry Princess
+Korchagin presented itself to him, and he could not decide it either
+way, any more than most of the questions that arose in his mind at this
+time.
+
+It was in favour of marriage in general, that besides the comforts
+of hearth and home, it made a moral life possible, and chiefly that a
+family would, so Nekhludoff thought, give an aim to his now empty life.
+
+Against marriage in general was the fear, common to bachelors past
+their first youth, of losing freedom, and an unconscious awe before this
+mysterious creature, a woman.
+
+In this particular case, in favour of marrying Missy (her name was Mary,
+but, as is usual among a certain set, a nickname had been given her)
+was that she came of good family, and differed in everything, manner
+of speaking, walking, laughing, from the common people, not by anything
+exceptional, but by her “good breeding”--he could find no other term
+for this quality, though he prized it very highly---and, besides, she
+thought more of him than of anybody else, therefore evidently understood
+him. This understanding of him, i.e., the recognition of his superior
+merits, was to Nekhludoff a proof of her good sense and correct
+judgment. Against marrying Missy in particular, was, that in all
+likelihood, a girl with even higher qualities could be found, that she
+was already 27, and that he was hardly her first love. This last idea
+was painful to him. His pride would not reconcile itself with the
+thought that she had loved some one else, even in the past. Of course,
+she could not have known that she should meet him, but the thought that
+she was capable of loving another offended him. So that he had as many
+reasons for marrying as against it; at any rate, they weighed equally
+with Nekhludoff, who laughed at himself, and called himself the ass of
+the fable, remaining like that animal undecided which haycock to turn
+to.
+
+“At any rate, before I get an answer from Mary Vasilievna (the
+marechal’s wife), and finish completely with her, I can do nothing,” he
+said to himself. And the conviction that he might, and was even obliged,
+to delay his decision, was comforting. “Well, I shall consider all that
+later on,” he said to himself, as the trap drove silently along the
+asphalt pavement up to the doors of the Court.
+
+“Now I must fulfil my public duties conscientiously, as I am in the
+habit of always doing, and as I consider it right to do. Besides, they
+are often interesting.” And he entered the hall of the Law Courts, past
+the doorkeeper.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE JURYMEN.
+
+The corridors of the Court were already full of activity. The attendants
+hurried, out of breath, dragging their feet along the ground without
+lifting them, backwards and forwards, with all sorts of messages and
+papers. Ushers, advocates, and law officers passed hither and thither.
+Plaintiffs, and those of the accused who were not guarded, wandered
+sadly along the walls or sat waiting.
+
+“Where is the Law Court?” Nekhludoff asked of an attendant.
+
+“Which? There is the Civil Court and the Criminal Court.”
+
+“I am on the jury.”
+
+“The Criminal Court you should have said. Here to the right, then to the
+left--the second door.”
+
+Nekhludoff followed the direction.
+
+Meanwhile some of the Criminal Court jurymen who were late had hurriedly
+passed into a separate room. At the door mentioned two men stood
+waiting.
+
+One, a tall, fat merchant, a kind-hearted fellow, had evidently partaken
+of some refreshments and a glass of something, and was in most pleasant
+spirits. The other was a shopman of Jewish extraction. They were talking
+about the price of wool when Nekhludoff came up and asked them if this
+was the jurymen’s room.
+
+“Yes, my dear sir, this is it. One of us? On the jury, are you?” asked
+the merchant, with a merry wink.
+
+“Ah, well, we shall have a go at the work together,” he continued, after
+Nekhludoff had answered in the affirmative. “My name is Baklasheff,
+merchant of the Second Guild,” he said, putting out his broad, soft,
+flexible hand.
+
+“With whom have I the honour?”
+
+Nekhludoff gave his name and passed into the jurymen’s room.
+
+Inside the room were about ten persons of all sorts. They had come but
+a short while ago, and some were sitting, others walking up and down,
+looking at each other, and making each other’s acquaintance. There was a
+retired colonel in uniform; some were in frock coats, others in morning
+coats, and only one wore a peasant’s dress.
+
+Their faces all had a certain look of satisfaction at the prospect of
+fulfilling a public duty, although many of them had had to leave their
+businesses, and most were complaining of it.
+
+The jurymen talked among themselves about the weather, the early spring,
+and the business before them, some having been introduced, others just
+guessing who was who. Those who were not acquainted with Nekhludoff made
+haste to get introduced, evidently looking upon this as an honour, and
+he taking it as his due, as he always did when among strangers. Had he
+been asked why he considered himself above the majority of people, he
+could not have given an answer; the life he had been living of late was
+not particularly meritorious. The fact of his speaking English, French,
+and German with a good accent, and of his wearing the best linen,
+clothes, ties, and studs, bought from the most expensive dealers in
+these goods, he quite knew would not serve as a reason for claiming
+superiority. At the same time he did claim superiority, and accepted the
+respect paid him as his due, and was hurt if he did not get it. In the
+jurymen’s room his feelings were hurt by disrespectful treatment. Among
+the jury there happened to be a man whom he knew, a former teacher of
+his sister’s children, Peter Gerasimovitch. Nekhludoff never knew his
+surname, and even bragged a bit about this. This man was now a master
+at a public school. Nekhludoff could not stand his familiarity, his
+self-satisfied laughter, his vulgarity, in short.
+
+“Ah ha! You’re also trapped.” These were the words, accompanied with
+boisterous laughter, with which Peter Gerasimovitch greeted Nekhludoff.
+“Have you not managed to get out of it?”
+
+“I never meant to get out of it,” replied Nekhludoff, gloomily, and in a
+tone of severity.
+
+“Well, I call this being public spirited. But just wait until you get
+hungry or sleepy; you’ll sing to another tune then.”
+
+“This son of a priest will be saying ‘thou’ [in Russian, as in many
+other languages, ‘thou’ is used generally among people very familiar
+with each other, or by superiors to inferiors] to me next,” thought
+Nekhludoff, and walked away, with such a look of sadness on his face,
+as might have been natural if he had just heard of the death of all
+his relations. He came up to a group that had formed itself round a
+clean-shaven, tall, dignified man, who was recounting something with
+great animation. This man was talking about the trial going on in the
+Civil Court as of a case well known to himself, mentioning the judges
+and a celebrated advocate by name. He was saying that it seemed
+wonderful how the celebrated advocate had managed to give such a clever
+turn to the affair that an old lady, though she had the right on her
+side, would have to pay a large sum to her opponent. “The advocate is a
+genius,” he said.
+
+The listeners heard it all with respectful attention, and several of
+them tried to put in a word, but the man interrupted them, as if he
+alone knew all about it.
+
+Though Nekhludoff had arrived late, he had to wait a long time. One
+of the members of the Court had not yet come, and everybody was kept
+waiting.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE JUDGES.
+
+The president, who had to take the chair, had arrived early. The
+president was a tall, stout man, with long grey whiskers. Though
+married, he led a very loose life, and his wife did the same, so they
+did not stand in each other’s way. This morning he had received a note
+from a Swiss girl, who had formerly been a governess in his house, and
+who was now on her way from South Russia to St. Petersburg. She wrote
+that she would wait for him between five and six p.m. in the Hotel
+Italia. This made him wish to begin and get through the sitting as soon
+as possible, so as to have time to call before six p.m. on the little
+red-haired Clara Vasilievna, with whom he had begun a romance in the
+country last summer. He went into a private room, latched the door, took
+a pair of dumb-bells out of a cupboard, moved his arms 20 times upwards,
+downwards, forwards, and sideways, then holding the dumb-bells above his
+head, lightly bent his knees three times.
+
+“Nothing keeps one going like a cold bath and exercise,” he said,
+feeling the biceps of his right arm with his left hand, on the third
+finger of which he wore a gold ring. He had still to do the moulinee
+movement (for he always went through those two exercises before a long
+sitting), when there was a pull at the door. The president quickly put
+away the dumb-bells and opened the door, saying, “I beg your pardon.”
+
+One of the members, a high-shouldered, discontented-looking man, with
+gold spectacles, came into the room. “Matthew Nikitich has again not
+come,” he said, in a dissatisfied tone.
+
+“Not yet?” said the president, putting on his uniform. “He is always
+late.”
+
+“It is extraordinary. He ought to be ashamed of himself,” said the
+member, angrily, and taking out a cigarette.
+
+This member, a very precise man, had had an unpleasant encounter with
+his wife in the morning, because she had spent her allowance before the
+end of the month, and had asked him to give her some money in advance,
+but he would not give way to her, and they had a quarrel. The wife told
+him that if he were going to behave so, he need not expect any dinner;
+there would be no dinner for him at home. At this point he left, fearing
+that she might carry out her threat, for anything might be expected from
+her. “This comes of living a good, moral life,” he thought, looking at
+the beaming, healthy, cheerful, and kindly president, who, with elbows
+far apart, was smoothing his thick grey whiskers with his fine white
+hands over the embroidered collar of his uniform. “He is always
+contented and merry while I am suffering.”
+
+The secretary came in and brought some document.
+
+“Thanks, very much,” said the president, lighting a cigarette. “Which
+case shall we take first, then?”
+
+“The poisoning case, I should say,” answered the secretary, with
+indifference.
+
+“All right; the poisoning case let it be,” said the president, thinking
+that he could get this case over by four o’clock, and then go away. “And
+Matthew Nikitich; has he come?”
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“And Breve?”
+
+“He is here,” replied the secretary.
+
+“Then if you see him, please tell him that we begin with the poisoning
+case.” Breve was the public prosecutor, who was to read the indictment
+in this case.
+
+In the corridor the secretary met Breve, who, with up lifted shoulders,
+a portfolio under one arm, the other swinging with the palm turned to
+the front, was hurrying along the corridor, clattering with his heels.
+
+“Michael Petrovitch wants to know if you are ready?” the secretary
+asked.
+
+“Of course; I am always ready,” said the public prosecutor. “What are we
+taking first?”
+
+“The poisoning case.”
+
+“That’s quite right,” said the public prosecutor, but did not think it
+at all right. He had spent the night in a hotel playing cards with a
+friend who was giving a farewell party. Up to five in the morning they
+played and drank, so he had no time to look at this poisoning case,
+and meant to run it through now. The secretary, happening to know this,
+advised the president to begin with the poisoning case. The secretary
+was a Liberal, even a Radical, in opinion.
+
+Breve was a Conservative; the secretary disliked him, and envied him his
+position.
+
+“Well, and how about the Skoptzy?” [a religious sect] asked the
+secretary.
+
+“I have already said that I cannot do it without witnesses, and so I
+shall say to the Court.”
+
+“Dear me, what does it matter?”
+
+“I cannot do it,” said Breve; and, waving his arm, he ran into his
+private room.
+
+He was putting off the case of the Skoptzy on account of the absence
+of a very unimportant witness, his real reason being that if they were
+tried by an educated jury they might possibly be acquitted.
+
+By an agreement with the president this case was to be tried in the
+coming session at a provincial town, where there would be more peasants,
+and, therefore, more chances of conviction.
+
+The movement in the corridor increased. The people crowded most at
+the doors of the Civil Court, in which the case that the dignified man
+talked about was being heard.
+
+An interval in the proceeding occurred, and the old woman came out of
+the court, whose property that genius of an advocate had found means of
+getting for his client, a person versed in law who had no right to it
+whatever. The judges knew all about the case, and the advocate and his
+client knew it better still, but the move they had invented was such
+that it was impossible not to take the old woman’s property and not to
+hand it over to the person versed in law.
+
+The old woman was stout, well dressed, and had enormous flowers on her
+bonnet; she stopped as she came out of the door, and spreading out her
+short fat arms and turning to her advocate, she kept repeating. “What
+does it all mean? just fancy!”
+
+The advocate was looking at the flowers in her bonnet, and evidently not
+listening to her, but considering some question or other.
+
+Next to the old woman, out of the door of the Civil Court, his broad,
+starched shirt front glistening from under his low-cut waistcoat, with
+a self-satisfied look on his face, came the celebrated advocate who had
+managed to arrange matters so that the old woman lost all she had, and
+the person versed in the law received more than 100,000 roubles. The
+advocate passed close to the old woman, and, feeling all eyes directed
+towards him, his whole bearing seemed to say: “No expressions of
+deference are required.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE OFFICIALS OF THE COURT.
+
+At last Matthew Nikitich also arrived, and the usher, a thin man, with a
+long neck and a kind of sideways walk, his nether lip protruding to one
+side, which made him resemble a turkey, came into the jurymen’s room.
+
+This usher was an honest man, and had a university education, but could
+not keep a place for any length of time, as he was subject to fits of
+drunkenness. Three months before a certain countess, who patronised his
+wife, had found him this place, and he was very pleased to have kept it
+so long.
+
+“Well, sirs, is everybody here?” he asked, putting his pince-nez on his
+nose, and looking round.
+
+“Everybody, I think,” said the jolly merchant.
+
+“All right; we’ll soon see.” And, taking a list from his pocket, he
+began calling out the names, looking at the men, sometimes through and
+sometimes over his pince-nez.
+
+“Councillor of State, [grades such as this are common in Russia, and
+mean very little] J. M. Nikiforoff!”
+
+“I am he,” said the dignified-looking man, well versed in the habits of
+the law court.
+
+“Ivan Semionovitch Ivanoff, retired colonel!”
+
+“Here!” replied a thin man, in the uniform of a retired officer.
+
+“Merchant of the Second Guild, Peter Baklasheff!”
+
+“Here we are, ready!” said the good-humoured merchant, with a broad
+smile.
+
+“Lieutenant of the Guards, Prince Dmitri Nekhludoff!”
+
+“I am he,” answered Nekhludoff.
+
+The usher bowed to him, looking over his pince-nez, politely and
+pleasantly, as if wishing to distinguish him from the others.
+
+“Captain Youri Demitrievitch-Dantchenko, merchant; Grigori Euphimitch
+Kouleshoff,” etc. All but two were present.
+
+“Now please to come to the court, gentlemen,” said the usher, pointing
+to the door, with an amiable wave of his hand.
+
+All moved towards the door, pausing to let each other pass. Then they
+went through the corridor into the court.
+
+The court was a large, long room. At one end there was a raised
+platform, with three steps leading up to it, on which stood a table,
+covered with a green cloth trimmed with a fringe of a darker shade. At
+the table were placed three arm-chairs, with high-carved oak backs; on
+the wall behind them hung a full-length, brightly-coloured portrait of
+the Emperor in uniform and ribbon, with one foot in advance, and holding
+a sword. In the right corner hung a case, with an image of Christ
+crowned with thorns, and beneath it stood a lectern, and on the same
+side the prosecuting attorney’s desk. On the left, opposite the desk,
+was the secretary’s table, and in front of it, nearer the public, an
+oak grating, with the prisoners’ bench, as yet unoccupied, behind
+it. Besides all this, there were on the right side of the platform
+high-backed ashwood chairs for the jury, and on the floor below tables
+for the advocates. All this was in the front part of the court, divided
+from the back by a grating.
+
+The back was all taken up by seats in tiers. Sitting on the front seats
+were four women, either servant or factory girls, and two working men,
+evidently overawed by the grandeur of the room, and not venturing to
+speak above a whisper.
+
+Soon after the jury had come in the usher entered, with his sideward
+gait, and stepping to the front, called out in a loud voice, as if he
+meant to frighten those present, “The Court is coming!” Every one got
+up as the members stepped on to the platform. Among them the president,
+with his muscles and fine whiskers. Next came the gloomy member of the
+Court, who was now more gloomy than ever, having met his brother-in-law,
+who informed him that he had just called in to see his sister (the
+member’s wife), and that she had told him that there would be no dinner
+there.
+
+“So that, evidently, we shall have to call in at a cook shop,” the
+brother-in-law added, laughing.
+
+“It is not at all funny,” said the gloomy member, and became gloomier
+still.
+
+Then at last came the third member of the Court, the same Matthew
+Nikitich, who was always late. He was a bearded man, with large, round,
+kindly eyes. He was suffering from a catarrh of the stomach, and,
+according to his doctor’s advice, he had begun trying a new treatment,
+and this had kept him at home longer than usual. Now, as he was
+ascending the platform, he had a pensive air. He was in the habit of
+making guesses in answer to all sorts of self-put questions by different
+curious means. Just now he had asked whether the new treatment would be
+beneficial, and had decided that it would cure his catarrh if the number
+of steps from the door to his chair would divide by three. He made 26
+steps, but managed to get in a 27th just by his chair.
+
+The figures of the president and the members in their uniforms, with
+gold-embroidered collars, looked very imposing. They seemed to feel this
+themselves, and, as if overpowered by their own grandeur, hurriedly sat
+down on the high backed chairs behind the table with the green cloth,
+on which were a triangular article with an eagle at the top, two glass
+vases--something like those in which sweetmeats are kept in refreshment
+rooms--an inkstand, pens, clean paper, and good, newly-cut pencils of
+different kinds.
+
+The public prosecutor came in with the judges. With his portfolio under
+one arm, and swinging the other, he hurriedly walked to his seat near
+the window, and was instantly absorbed in reading and looking through
+the papers, not wasting a single moment, in hope of being ready when the
+business commenced. He had been public prosecutor but a short time, and
+had only prosecuted four times before this. He was very ambitious,
+and had firmly made up his mind to get on, and therefore thought it
+necessary to get a conviction whenever he prosecuted. He knew the chief
+facts of the poisoning case, and had already formed a plan of action. He
+only wanted to copy out a few points which he required.
+
+The secretary sat on the opposite side of the platform, and, having
+got ready all the papers he might want, was looking through an article,
+prohibited by the censor, which he had procured and read the day before.
+He was anxious to have a talk about this article with the bearded
+member, who shared his views, but wanted to look through it once more
+before doing so.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SWEARING IN THE JURY.
+
+The president, having looked through some papers and put a few questions
+to the usher and the secretary, gave the order for the prisoners to be
+brought in.
+
+The door behind the grating was instantly opened, and two gendarmes,
+with caps on their heads, and holding naked swords in their hands,
+came in, followed by the prisoners, a red-haired, freckled man, and two
+women. The man wore a prison cloak, which was too long and too wide for
+him. He stuck out his thumbs, and held his arms close to his sides, thus
+keeping the sleeves, which were also too long, from slipping over his
+hands. Without looking at the judges he gazed steadfastly at the form,
+and passing to the other side of it, he sat down carefully at the very
+edge, leaving plenty of room for the others. He fixed his eyes on the
+president, and began moving the muscles of his cheeks, as if whispering
+something. The woman who came next was also dressed in a prison cloak,
+and had a prison kerchief round her head. She had a sallow complexion,
+no eyebrows or lashes, and very red eyes. This woman appeared perfectly
+calm. Having caught her cloak against something, she detached it
+carefully, without any haste, and sat down.
+
+The third prisoner was Maslova.
+
+As soon as she appeared, the eyes of all the men in the court turned
+her way, and remained fixed on her white face, her sparklingly-brilliant
+black eyes and the swelling bosom under the prison cloak. Even the
+gendarme whom she passed on her way to her seat looked at her fixedly
+till she sat down, and then, as if feeling guilty, hurriedly turned
+away, shook himself, and began staring at the window in front of him.
+
+The president paused until the prisoners had taken their seats, and when
+Maslova was seated, turned to the secretary.
+
+Then the usual procedure commenced; the counting of the jury, remarks
+about those who had not come, the fixing of the fines to be exacted
+from them, the decisions concerning those who claimed exemption, the
+appointing of reserve jurymen.
+
+Having folded up some bits of paper and put them in one of the glass
+vases, the president turned up the gold-embroidered cuffs of his uniform
+a little way, and began drawing the lots, one by one, and opening them.
+Nekhludoff was among the jurymen thus drawn. Then, having let down his
+sleeves, the president requested the priest to swear in the jury.
+
+The old priest, with his puffy, red face, his brown gown, and his gold
+cross and little order, laboriously moving his stiff legs, came up to
+the lectern beneath the icon.
+
+The jurymen got up, and crowded towards the lectern.
+
+“Come up, please,” said the priest, pulling at the cross on his breast
+with his plump hand, and waiting till all the jury had drawn near. When
+they had all come up the steps of the platform, the priest passed his
+bald, grey head sideways through the greasy opening of the stole, and,
+having rearranged his thin hair, he again turned to the jury. “Now,
+raise your right arms in this way, and put your fingers together, thus,”
+ he said, with his tremulous old voice, lifting his fat, dimpled hand,
+and putting the thumb and two first fingers together, as if taking a
+pinch of something. “Now, repeat after me, ‘I promise and swear, by the
+Almighty God, by His holy gospels, and by the life-giving cross of
+our Lord, that in this work which,’” he said, pausing between each
+sentence--“don’t let your arm down; hold it like this,” he remarked to a
+young man who had lowered his arm--“‘that in this work which . . . ’”
+
+The dignified man with the whiskers, the colonel, the merchant, and
+several more held their arms and fingers as the priest required of
+them, very high, very exactly, as if they liked doing it; others did it
+unwillingly and carelessly. Some repeated the words too loudly, and with
+a defiant tone, as if they meant to say, “In spite of all, I will and
+shall speak.” Others whispered very low, and not fast enough, and
+then, as if frightened, hurried to catch up the priest. Some kept their
+fingers tightly together, as if fearing to drop the pinch of invisible
+something they held; others kept separating and folding theirs. Every
+one save the old priest felt awkward, but he was sure he was fulfilling
+a very useful and important duty.
+
+After the swearing in, the president requested the jury to choose
+a foreman, and the jury, thronging to the door, passed out into
+the debating-room, where almost all of them at once began to smoke
+cigarettes. Some one proposed the dignified man as foreman, and he was
+unanimously accepted. Then the jurymen put out their cigarettes and
+threw them away and returned to the court. The dignified man informed
+the president that he was chosen foreman, and all sat down again on the
+high-backed chairs.
+
+Everything went smoothly, quickly, and not without a certain solemnity.
+And this exactitude, order, and solemnity evidently pleased those
+who took part in it: it strengthened the impression that they were
+fulfilling a serious and valuable public duty. Nekhludoff, too, felt
+this.
+
+As soon as the jurymen were seated, the president made a speech on
+their rights, obligations, and responsibilities. While speaking he kept
+changing his position; now leaning on his right, now on his left hand,
+now against the back, then on the arms of his chair, now putting the
+papers straight, now handling his pencil and paper-knife.
+
+According to his words, they had the right of interrogating the
+prisoners through the president, to use paper and pencils, and to
+examine the articles put in as evidence. Their duty was to judge not
+falsely, but justly. Their responsibility meant that if the secrecy of
+their discussion were violated, or communications were established with
+outsiders, they would be liable to punishment. Every one listened with
+an expression of respectful attention. The merchant, diffusing a smell
+of brandy around him, and restraining loud hiccups, approvingly nodded
+his head at every sentence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE PRISONERS QUESTIONED.
+
+When he had finished his speech, the president turned to the male
+prisoner.
+
+“Simeon Kartinkin, rise.”
+
+Simeon jumped up, his lips continuing to move nervously and inaudibly.
+
+“Your name?”
+
+“Simon Petrov Kartinkin,” he said, rapidly, with a cracked voice, having
+evidently prepared the answer.
+
+“What class do you belong to?”
+
+“Peasant.”
+
+“What government, district, and parish?”
+
+“Toula Government, Krapivinskia district, Koupianovski parish, the
+village Borki.”
+
+“Your age?”
+
+“Thirty-three; born in the year one thousand eight--”
+
+“What religion?”
+
+“Of the Russian religion, orthodox.”
+
+“Married?”
+
+“Oh, no, sir.”
+
+“Your occupation?”
+
+“I had a place in the Hotel Mauritania.”
+
+“Have you ever been tried before?”
+
+“I never got tried before, because, as we used to live formerly--”
+
+“So you never were tried before?”
+
+“God forbid, never.”
+
+“Have you received a copy of the indictment?”
+
+“I have.”
+
+“Sit down.”
+
+“Euphemia Ivanovna Botchkova,” said the president, turning to the next
+prisoner.
+
+But Simon continued standing in front of Botchkova.
+
+“Kartinkin, sit down!” Kartinkin continued standing.
+
+“Kartinkin, sit down!” But Kartinkin sat down only when the usher, with
+his head on one side, and with preternaturally wide-open eyes, ran up,
+and said, in a tragic whisper, “Sit down, sit down!”
+
+Kartinkin sat down as hurriedly as he had risen, wrapping his cloak
+round him, and again began moving his lips silently.
+
+“Your name?” asked the president, with a weary sigh at being obliged to
+repeat the same questions, without looking at the prisoner, but glancing
+over a paper that lay before him. The president was so used to his task
+that, in order to get quicker through it all, he did two things at a
+time.
+
+Botchkova was forty-three years old, and came from the town of Kalomna.
+She, too, had been in service at the Hotel Mauritania.
+
+“I have never been tried before, and have received a copy of the
+indictment.” She gave her answers boldly, in a tone of voice as if she
+meant to add to each answer, “And I don’t care who knows it, and I won’t
+stand any nonsense.”
+
+She did not wait to be told, but sat down as soon as she had replied to
+the last question.
+
+“Your name?” turning abruptly to the third prisoner. “You will have to
+rise,” he added, softly and gently, seeing that Maslova kept her seat.
+
+Maslova got up and stood, with her chest expanded, looking at the
+president with that peculiar expression of readiness in her smiling
+black eyes.
+
+“What is your name?”
+
+“Lubov,” she said.
+
+Nekhludoff had put on his pince-nez, looking at the prisoners while they
+were being questioned.
+
+“No, it is impossible,” he thought, not taking his eyes off the
+prisoner. “Lubov! How can it be?” he thought to himself, after hearing
+her answer. The president was going to continue his questions, but
+the member with the spectacles interrupted him, angrily whispering
+something. The president nodded, and turned again to the prisoner.
+
+“How is this,” he said, “you are not put down here as Lubov?”
+
+The prisoner remained silent.
+
+“I want your real name.”
+
+“What is your baptismal name?” asked the angry member.
+
+“Formerly I used to be called Katerina.”
+
+“No, it cannot be,” said Nekhludoff to himself; and yet he was now
+certain that this was she, that same girl, half ward, half servant to
+his aunts; that Katusha, with whom he had once been in love, really
+in love, but whom he had betrayed and then abandoned, and never again
+brought to mind, for the memory would have been too painful, would
+have convicted him too clearly, proving that he who was so proud of his
+integrity had treated this woman in a revolting, scandalous way.
+
+Yes, this was she. He now clearly saw in her face that strange,
+indescribable individuality which distinguishes every face from all
+others; something peculiar, all its own, not to be found anywhere else.
+In spite of the unhealthy pallor and the fulness of the face, it was
+there, this sweet, peculiar individuality; on those lips, in the slight
+squint of her eyes, in the voice, particularly in the naive smile, and
+in the expression of readiness on the face and figure.
+
+“You should have said so,” remarked the president, again in a gentle
+tone. “Your patronymic?”
+
+“I am illegitimate.”
+
+“Well, were you not called by your godfather’s name?”
+
+“Yes, Mikhaelovna.”
+
+“And what is it she can be guilty of?” continued Nekhludoff, in his
+mind, unable to breathe freely.
+
+“Your family name--your surname, I mean?” the president went on.
+
+“They used to call me by my mother’s surname, Maslova.”
+
+“What class?”
+
+“Meschanka.” [the lowest town class or grade]
+
+“Religion--orthodox?”
+
+“Orthodox.”
+
+“Occupation. What was your occupation?”
+
+Maslova remained silent.
+
+“What was your employment?”
+
+“You know yourself,” she said, and smiled. Then, casting a hurried look
+round the room, again turned her eyes on the president.
+
+There was something so unusual in the expression of her face, so
+terrible and piteous in the meaning of the words she had uttered, in
+this smile, and in the furtive glance she had cast round the room, that
+the president was abashed, and for a few minutes silence reigned in the
+court. The silence was broken by some one among the public laughing,
+then somebody said “Ssh,” and the president looked up and continued:
+
+“Have you ever been tried before?”
+
+“Never,” answered Maslova, softly, and sighed.
+
+“Have you received a copy of the indictment?”
+
+“I have,” she answered.
+
+“Sit down.”
+
+The prisoner leant back to pick up her skirt in the way a fine lady
+picks up her train, and sat down, folding her small white hands in the
+sleeves of her cloak, her eyes fixed on the president. Her face was calm
+again.
+
+The witnesses were called, and some sent away; the doctor who was to act
+as expert was chosen and called into the court.
+
+Then the secretary got up and began reading the indictment. He read
+distinctly, though he pronounced the “I” and “r” alike, with a loud
+voice, but so quickly that the words ran into one another and formed one
+uninterrupted, dreary drone.
+
+The judges bent now on one, now on the other arm of their chairs, then
+on the table, then back again, shut and opened their eyes, and whispered
+to each other. One of the gendarmes several times repressed a yawn.
+
+The prisoner Kartinkin never stopped moving his cheeks. Botchkova sat
+quite still and straight, only now and then scratching her head under
+the kerchief.
+
+Maslova sat immovable, gazing at the reader; only now and then she gave
+a slight start, as if wishing to reply, blushed, sighed heavily, and
+changed the position of her hands, looked round, and again fixed her
+eyes on the reader.
+
+Nekhludoff sat in the front row on his high-backed chair, without
+removing his pince-nez, and looked at Maslova, while a complicated and
+fierce struggle was going on in his soul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE INDICTMENT.
+
+The indictment ran as follows: On the 17th of January, 18--, in the
+lodging-house Mauritania, occurred the sudden death of the Second Guild
+merchant, Therapont Emilianovich Smelkoff, of Kourgan.
+
+The local police doctor of the fourth district certified that death was
+due to rupture of the heart, owing to the excessive use of alcoholic
+liquids. The body of the said Smelkoff was interred. After several days
+had elapsed, the merchant Timokhin, a fellow-townsman and companion
+of the said Smelkoff, returned from St. Petersburg, and hearing the
+circumstances that accompanied the death of the latter, notified his
+suspicions that the death was caused by poison, given with intent to
+rob the said Smelkoff of his money. This suspicion was corroborated on
+inquiry, which proved:
+
+1. That shortly before his death the said Smelkoff had received the sum
+of 3,800 roubles from the bank. When an inventory of the property of the
+deceased was made, only 312 roubles and 16 copecks were found.
+
+2. The whole day and night preceding his death the said Smelkoff spent
+with Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) at her home and in the lodging-house
+Mauritania, which she also visited at the said Smelkoff’s request during
+his absence, to get some money, which she took out of his portmanteau in
+the presence of the servants of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia
+Botchkova and Simeon Kartinkin, with a key given her by the said
+Smelkoff. In the portmanteau opened by the said Maslova, the said
+Botchkova and Kartinkin saw packets of 100-rouble bank-notes.
+
+3. On the said Smelkoff’s return to the lodging-house Mauritania,
+together with Lubka, the latter, in accordance with the attendant
+Kartinkin’s advice, gave the said Smelkoff some white powder given to
+her by the said Kartinkin, dissolved in brandy.
+
+4. The next morning the said Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) sold to her
+mistress, the witness Kitaeva, a brothel-keeper, a diamond ring given to
+her, as she alleged, by the said Smelkoff.
+
+5. The housemaid of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia Botchkova,
+placed to her account in the local Commercial Bank 1,800 roubles. The
+postmortem examination of the body of the said Smelkoff and the chemical
+analysis of his intestines proved beyond doubt the presence of poison
+in the organism, so that there is reason to believe that the said
+Smelkoff’s death was caused by poisoning.
+
+When cross-examined, the accused, Maslova, Botchkova, and Kartinkin,
+pleaded not guilty, deposing--Maslova, that she had really been sent by
+Smelkoff from the brothel, where she “works,” as she expresses it, to
+the lodging-house Mauritania to get the merchant some money, and that,
+having unlocked the portmanteau with a key given her by the merchant,
+she took out 40 roubles, as she was told to do, and that she had taken
+nothing more; that Botchkova and Kartinkin, in whose presence she
+unlocked and locked the portmanteau, could testify to the truth of the
+statement.
+
+She gave this further evidence--that when she came to the lodging-house
+for the second time she did, at the instigation of Simeon Kartinkin,
+give Smelkoff some kind of powder, which she thought was a narcotic,
+in a glass of brandy, hoping he would fall asleep and that she would be
+able to get away from him; and that Smelkoff, having beaten her, himself
+gave her the ring when she cried and threatened to go away.
+
+The accused, Euphemia Botchkova, stated that she knew nothing about the
+missing money, that she had not even gone into Smelkoff’s room, but
+that Lubka had been busy there all by herself; that if anything had
+been stolen, it must have been done by Lubka when she came with the
+merchant’s key to get his money.
+
+At this point Maslova gave a start, opened her mouth, and looked at
+Botchkova. “When,” continued the secretary, “the receipt for 1,800
+roubles from the bank was shown to Botchkova, and she was asked where
+she had obtained the money, she said that it was her own earnings for
+12 years, and those of Simeon, whom she was going to marry. The accused
+Simeon Kartinkin, when first examined, confessed that he and Botchkova,
+at the instigation of Maslova, who had come with the key from the
+brothel, had stolen the money and divided it equally among themselves
+and Maslova.” Here Maslova again started, half-rose from her seat, and,
+blushing scarlet, began to say something, but was stopped by the usher.
+“At last,” the secretary continued, reading, “Kartinkin confessed also
+that he had supplied the powders in order to get Smelkoff to sleep. When
+examined the second time he denied having had anything to do with the
+stealing of the money or giving Maslova the powders, accusing her of
+having done it alone.”
+
+Concerning the money placed in the bank by Botchkova, he said the same
+as she, that is, that the money was given to them both by the lodgers in
+tips during 12 years’ service.
+
+The indictment concluded as follows:
+
+In consequence of the foregoing, the peasant of the village Borki,
+Simeon Kartinkin, 33 years of age, the meschanka Euphemia Botchkova, 43
+years of age, and the meschanka Katerina Maslova, 27 years of age, are
+accused of having on the 17th day of January, 188--, jointly stolen from
+the said merchant, Smelkoff, a ring and money, to the value of 2,500
+roubles, and of having given the said merchant, Smelkoff, poison to
+drink, with intent of depriving him of life, and thereby causing his
+death. This crime is provided for in clause 1,455 of the Penal Code,
+paragraphs 4 and 5.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE TRIAL--MASLOVA CROSS-EXAMINED.
+
+When the reading of the indictment was over, the president, after having
+consulted the members, turned to Kartinkin, with an expression that
+plainly said: Now we shall find out the whole truth down to the minutest
+detail.
+
+“Peasant Simeon Kartinkin,” he said, stooping to the left.
+
+Simeon Kartinkin got up, stretched his arms down his sides, and leaning
+forward with his whole body, continued moving his cheeks inaudibly.
+
+“You are accused of having on the 17th January, 188--, together with
+Euphemia Botchkova and Katerina Maslova, stolen money from a portmanteau
+belonging to the merchant Smelkoff, and then, having procured some
+arsenic, persuaded Katerina Maslova to give it to the merchant Smelkoff
+in a glass of brandy, which was the cause of Smelkoff’s death. Do you
+plead guilty?” said the president, stooping to the right.
+
+“Not nohow, because our business is to attend on the lodgers, and--”
+
+“You’ll tell us that afterwards. Do you plead guilty?”
+
+“Oh, no, sir. I only,--”
+
+“You’ll tell us that afterwards. Do you plead guilty?” quietly and
+firmly asked the president.
+
+“Can’t do such a thing, because that--”
+
+The usher again rushed up to Simeon Kartinkin, and stopped him in a
+tragic whisper.
+
+The president moved the hand with which he held the paper and placed the
+elbow in a different position with an air that said: “This is finished,”
+ and turned to Euphemia Botchkova.
+
+“Euphemia Botchkova, you are accused of having, on the 17th of January,
+188-, in the lodging-house Mauritania, together with Simeon Kartinkin
+and Katerina Maslova, stolen some money and a ring out of the merchant
+Smelkoff’s portmanteau, and having shared the money among yourselves,
+given poison to the merchant Smelkoff, thereby causing his death. Do you
+plead guilty?”
+
+“I am not guilty of anything,” boldly and firmly replied the prisoner.
+“I never went near the room, but when this baggage went in she did the
+whole business.”
+
+“You will say all this afterwards,” the president again said, quietly
+and firmly. “So you do not plead guilty?”
+
+“I did not take the money nor give the drink, nor go into the room. Had
+I gone in I should have kicked her out.”
+
+“So you do not plead guilty?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Very well.”
+
+“Katerina Maslova,” the president began, turning to the third prisoner,
+“you are accused of having come from the brothel with the key of the
+merchant Smelkoff’s portmanteau, money, and a ring.” He said all this
+like a lesson learned by heart, leaning towards the member on his left,
+who was whispering into his ear that a bottle mentioned in the list
+of the material evidence was missing. “Of having stolen out of the
+portmanteau money and a ring,” he repeated, “and shared it. Then,
+returning to the lodging house Mauritania with Smelkoff, of giving
+him poison in his drink, and thereby causing his death. Do you plead
+guilty?”
+
+“I am not guilty of anything,” she began rapidly. “As I said before
+I say again, I did not take it--I did not take it; I did not take
+anything, and the ring he gave me himself.”
+
+“You do not plead guilty of having stolen 2,500 roubles?” asked the
+president.
+
+“I’ve said I took nothing but the 40 roubles.”
+
+“Well, and do you plead guilty of having given the merchant Smelkoff a
+powder in his drink?”
+
+“Yes, that I did. Only I believed what they told me, that they were
+sleeping powders, and that no harm could come of them. I never thought,
+and never wished. . . God is my witness; I say, I never meant this,” she
+said.
+
+“So you do not plead guilty of having stolen the money and the ring from
+the merchant Smelkoff, but confess that you gave him the powder?” said
+the president.
+
+“Well, yes, I do confess this, but I thought they were sleeping powders.
+I only gave them to make him sleep; I never meant and never thought of
+worse.”
+
+“Very well,” said the president, evidently satisfied with the results
+gained. “Now tell us how it all happened,” and he leaned back in his
+chair and put his folded hands on the table. “Tell us all about it. A
+free and full confession will be to your advantage.”
+
+Maslova continued to look at the president in silence, and blushing.
+
+“Tell us how it happened.”
+
+“How it happened?” Maslova suddenly began, speaking quickly. “I came to
+the lodging-house, and was shown into the room. He was there, already
+very drunk.” She pronounced the word _he_ with a look of horror in her
+wide-open eyes. “I wished to go away, but he would not let me.” She
+stopped, as if having lost the thread, or remembered some thing else.
+
+“Well, and then?”
+
+“Well, what then? I remained a bit, and went home again.”
+
+At this moment the public prosecutor raised himself a little, leaning on
+one elbow in an awkward manner.
+
+“You would like to put a question?” said the president, and having
+received an answer in the affirmative, he made a gesture inviting the
+public prosecutor to speak.
+
+“I want to ask, was the prisoner previously acquainted with Simeon
+Kartinkin?” said the public prosecutor, without looking at Maslova, and,
+having put the question, he compressed his lips and frowned.
+
+The president repeated the question. Maslova stared at the public
+prosecutor, with a frightened look.
+
+“With Simeon? Yes,” she said.
+
+“I should like to know what the prisoner’s acquaintance with Kartinkin
+consisted in. Did they meet often?”
+
+“Consisted in? . . . He invited me for the lodgers; it was not an
+acquaintance at all,” answered Maslova, anxiously moving her eyes from
+the president to the public prosecutor and back to the president.
+
+“I should like to know why Kartinkin invited only Maslova, and none
+of the other girls, for the lodgers?” said the public prosecutor, with
+half-closed eyes and a cunning, Mephistophelian smile.
+
+“I don’t know. How should I know?” said Maslova, casting a frightened
+look round, and fixing her eyes for a moment on Nekhludoff. “He asked
+whom he liked.”
+
+“Is it possible that she has recognised me?” thought Nekhludoff, and the
+blood rushed to his face. But Maslova turned away without distinguishing
+him from the others, and again fixed her eyes anxiously on the public
+prosecutor.
+
+“So the prisoner denies having had any intimate relations with
+Kartinkin? Very well, I have no more questions to ask.”
+
+And the public prosecutor took his elbow off the desk, and began writing
+something. He was not really noting anything down, but only going over
+the letters of his notes with a pen, having seen the procureur and
+leading advocates, after putting a clever question, make a note, with
+which, later on, to annihilate their adversaries.
+
+The president did not continue at once, because he was consulting the
+member with the spectacles, whether he was agreed that the questions
+(which had all been prepared be forehand and written out) should be put.
+
+“Well! What happened next?” he then went on.
+
+“I came home,” looking a little more boldly only at the president, “and
+went to bed. Hardly had I fallen asleep when one of our girls, Bertha,
+woke me. ‘Go, your merchant has come again!’ He”--she again uttered the
+word _he_ with evident horror--“he kept treating our girls, and then
+wanted to send for more wine, but his money was all gone, and he sent me
+to his lodgings and told me where the money was, and how much to take.
+So I went.”
+
+The president was whispering to the member on his left, but, in order to
+appear as if he had heard, he repeated her last words.
+
+“So you went. Well, what next?”
+
+“I went, and did all he told me; went into his room. I did not go alone,
+but called Simeon Kartinkin and her,” she said, pointing to Botchkova.
+
+“That’s a lie; I never went in,” Botchkova began, but was stopped.
+
+“In their presence I took out four notes,” continued Maslova, frowning,
+without looking at Botchkova.
+
+“Yes, but did the prisoner notice,” again asked the prosecutor, “how
+much money there was when she was getting out the 40 roubles?”
+
+Maslova shuddered when the prosecutor addressed her; she did not know
+why it was, but she felt that he wished her evil.
+
+“I did not count it, but only saw some 100-rouble notes.”
+
+“Ah! The prisoner saw 100-rouble notes. That’s all?”
+
+“Well, so you brought back the money,” continued the president, looking
+at the clock.
+
+“I did.”
+
+“Well, and then?”
+
+“Then he took me back with him,” said Maslova.
+
+“Well, and how did you give him the powder? In his drink?”
+
+“How did I give it? I put them in and gave it him.”
+
+“Why did you give it him?”
+
+She did not answer, but sighed deeply and heavily.
+
+“He would not let me go,” she said, after a moment’s silence, “and I was
+quite tired out, and so I went out into the passage and said to Simeon,
+‘If he would only let me go, I am so tired.’ And he said, ‘We are also
+sick of him; we were thinking of giving him a sleeping draught; he will
+fall asleep, and then you can go.’ So I said all right. I thought they
+were harmless, and he gave me the packet. I went in. He was lying behind
+the partition, and at once called for brandy. I took a bottle of ‘fine
+champagne’ from the table, poured out two glasses, one for him and one
+for myself, and put the powders into his glass, and gave it him. Had I
+known how could I have given them to him?”
+
+“Well, and how did the ring come into your possession?” asked the
+president. “When did he give it you?”
+
+“That was when we came back to his lodgings. I wanted to go away, and he
+gave me a knock on the head and broke my comb. I got angry and said I’d
+go away, and he took the ring off his finger and gave it to me so that I
+should not go,” she said.
+
+Then the public prosecutor again slightly raised himself, and, putting
+on an air of simplicity, asked permission to put a few more questions,
+and, having received it, bending his head over his embroidered collar,
+he said: “I should like to know how long the prisoner remained in the
+merchant Smelkoff’s room.”
+
+Maslova again seemed frightened, and she again looked anxiously from the
+public prosecutor to the president, and said hurriedly:
+
+“I do not remember how long.”
+
+“Yes, but does the prisoner remember if she went anywhere else in the
+lodging-house after she left Smelkoff?”
+
+Maslova considered for a moment. “Yes, I did go into an empty room next
+to his.”
+
+“Yes, and why did you go in?” asked the public prosecutor, forgetting
+himself, and addressing her directly.
+
+“I went in to rest a bit, and to wait for an isvostchik.”
+
+“And was Kartinkin in the room with the prisoner, or not?”
+
+“He came in.”
+
+“Why did he come in?”
+
+“There was some of the merchant’s brandy left, and we finished it
+together.”
+
+“Oh, finished it together. Very well! And did the prisoner talk to
+Kartinkin, and, if so, what about?”
+
+Maslova suddenly frowned, blushed very red, and said, hurriedly, “What
+about? I did not talk about anything, and that’s all I know. Do what you
+like with me; I am not guilty, and that’s all.”
+
+“I have nothing more to ask,” said the prosecutor, and, drawing up his
+shoulders in an unnatural manner, began writing down, as the prisoner’s
+own evidence, in the notes for his speech, that she had been in the
+empty room with Kartinkin.
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+“You have nothing more to say?”
+
+“I have told everything,” she said, with a sigh, and sat down.
+
+Then the president noted something down, and, having listened to
+something that the member on his left whispered to him, he announced
+a ten-minutes’ interval, rose hurriedly, and left the court. The
+communication he had received from the tall, bearded member with
+the kindly eyes was that the member, having felt a slight stomach
+derangement, wished to do a little massage and to take some drops. And
+this was why an interval was made.
+
+When the judges had risen, the advocates, the jury, and the witnesses
+also rose, with the pleasant feeling that part of the business was
+finished, and began moving in different directions.
+
+Nekhludoff went into the jury’s room, and sat down by the window.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+TWELVE YEARS BEFORE.
+
+“Yes, this was Katusha.”
+
+The relations between Nekhludoff and Katusha had been the following:
+
+Nekhludoff first saw Katusha when he was a student in his third year
+at the University, and was preparing an essay on land tenure during
+the summer vacation, which he passed with his aunts. Until then he had
+always lived, in summer, with his mother and sister on his mother’s
+large estate near Moscow. But that year his sister had married, and his
+mother had gone abroad to a watering-place, and he, having his essay to
+write, resolved to spend the summer with his aunts. It was very quiet
+in their secluded estate and there was nothing to distract his mind; his
+aunts loved their nephew and heir very tenderly, and he, too, was fond
+of them and of their simple, old-fashioned life.
+
+During that summer on his aunts’ estate, Nekhludoff passed through that
+blissful state of existence when a young man for the first time, without
+guidance from any one outside, realises all the beauty and significance
+of life, and the importance of the task allotted in it to man; when he
+grasps the possibility of unlimited advance towards perfection for one’s
+self and for all the world, and gives himself to this task, not only
+hopefully, but with full conviction of attaining to the perfection
+he imagines. In that year, while still at the University, he had read
+Spencer’s Social Statics, and Spencer’s views on landholding especially
+impressed him, as he himself was heir to large estates. His father had
+not been rich, but his mother had received 10,000 acres of land for her
+dowry. At that time he fully realised all the cruelty and injustice of
+private property in land, and being one of those to whom a sacrifice
+to the demands of conscience gives the highest spiritual enjoyment, he
+decided not to retain property rights, but to give up to the peasant
+labourers the land he had inherited from his father. It was on this land
+question he wrote his essay.
+
+He arranged his life on his aunts’ estate in the following manner. He
+got up very early, sometimes at three o’clock, and before sunrise went
+through the morning mists to bathe in the river, under the hill.
+He returned while the dew still lay on the grass and the flowers.
+Sometimes, having finished his coffee, he sat down with his books of
+reference and his papers to write his essay, but very often, instead of
+reading or writing, he left home again, and wandered through the fields
+and the woods. Before dinner he lay down and slept somewhere in the
+garden. At dinner he amused and entertained his aunts with his bright
+spirits, then he rode on horseback or went for a row on the river, and
+in the evening he again worked at his essay, or sat reading or playing
+patience with his aunts.
+
+His joy in life was so great that it agitated him, and kept him awake
+many a night, especially when it was moonlight, so that instead of
+sleeping he wandered about in the garden till dawn, alone with his
+dreams and fancies.
+
+And so, peacefully and happily, he lived through the first month of his
+stay with his aunts, taking no particular notice of their half-ward,
+half-servant, the black-eyed, quick-footed Katusha. Then, at the age
+of nineteen, Nekhludoff, brought up under his mother’s wing, was still
+quite pure. If a woman figured in his dreams at all it was only as a
+wife. All the other women, who, according to his ideas he could not
+marry, were not women for him, but human beings.
+
+But on Ascension Day that summer, a neighbour of his aunts’, and her
+family, consisting of two young daughters, a schoolboy, and a young
+artist of peasant origin who was staying with them, came to spend the
+day. After tea they all went to play in the meadow in front of the
+house, where the grass had already been mown. They played at the game
+of gorelki, and Katusha joined them. Running about and changing partners
+several times, Nekhludoff caught Katusha, and she became his partner.
+Up to this time he had liked Katusha’s looks, but the possibility of any
+nearer relations with her had never entered his mind.
+
+“Impossible to catch those two,” said the merry young artist, whose turn
+it was to catch, and who could run very fast with his short, muscular
+legs.
+
+“You! And not catch us?” said Katusha.
+
+“One, two, three,” and the artist clapped his hands. Katusha, hardly
+restraining her laughter, changed places with Nekhludoff, behind the
+artist’s back, and pressing his large hand with her little rough one,
+and rustling with her starched petticoat, ran to the left. Nekhludoff
+ran fast to the right, trying to escape from the artist, but when he
+looked round he saw the artist running after Katusha, who kept well
+ahead, her firm young legs moving rapidly. There was a lilac bush in
+front of them, and Katusha made a sign with her head to Nekhludoff to
+join her behind it, for if they once clasped hands again they were safe
+from their pursuer, that being a rule of the game. He understood the
+sign, and ran behind the bush, but he did not know that there was a
+small ditch overgrown with nettles there. He stumbled and fell into the
+nettles, already wet with dew, stinging his bands, but rose immediately,
+laughing at his mishap.
+
+Katusha, with her eyes black as sloes, her face radiant with joy, was
+flying towards him, and they caught hold of each other’s hands.
+
+“Got stung, I daresay?” she said, arranging her hair with her free hand,
+breathing fast and looking straight up at him with a glad, pleasant
+smile.
+
+“I did not know there was a ditch here,” he answered, smiling also, and
+keeping her hand in his. She drew nearer to him, and he himself, not
+knowing how it happened, stooped towards her. She did not move away, and
+he pressed her hand tight and kissed her on the lips.
+
+“There! You’ve done it!” she said; and, freeing her hand with a swift
+movement, ran away from him. Then, breaking two branches of white lilac
+from which the blossoms were already falling, she began fanning her hot
+face with them; then, with her head turned back to him, she walked away,
+swaying her arms briskly in front of her, and joined the other players.
+
+After this there grew up between Nekhludoff and Katusha those peculiar
+relations which often exist between a pure young man and girl who are
+attracted to each other.
+
+When Katusha came into the room, or even when he saw her white apron
+from afar, everything brightened up in Nekhludoff’s eyes, as when the
+sun appears everything becomes more interesting, more joyful, more
+important. The whole of life seemed full of gladness. And she felt the
+same. But it was not only Katusha’s presence that had this effect on
+Nekhludoff. The mere thought that Katusha existed (and for her that
+Nekhludoff existed) had this effect.
+
+When he received an unpleasant letter from his mother, or could not get
+on with his essay, or felt the unreasoning sadness that young people are
+often subject to, he had only to remember Katusha and that he should see
+her, and it all vanished. Katusha had much work to do in the house, but
+she managed to get a little leisure for reading, and Nekhludoff gave her
+Dostoievsky and Tourgeneff (whom he had just read himself) to read. She
+liked Tourgeneff’s Lull best. They had talks at moments snatched when
+meeting in the passage, on the veranda, or the yard, and sometimes
+in the room of his aunts’ old servant, Matrona Pavlovna, with whom he
+sometimes used to drink tea, and where Katusha used to work.
+
+These talks in Matrona Pavlovna’s presence were the pleasantest. When
+they were alone it was worse. Their eyes at once began to say something
+very different and far more important than what their mouths uttered.
+Their lips puckered, and they felt a kind of dread of something that
+made them part quickly. These relations continued between Nekhludoff
+and Katusha during the whole time of his first visit to his aunts’.
+They noticed it, and became frightened, and even wrote to Princess
+Elena Ivanovna, Nekhludoff’s mother. His aunt, Mary Ivanovna, was
+afraid Dmitri would form an intimacy with Katusha; but her fears were
+groundless, for Nekhludoff, himself hardly conscious of it, loved
+Katusha, loved her as the pure love, and therein lay his safety--his and
+hers. He not only did not feel any desire to possess her, but the very
+thought of it filled him with horror. The fears of the more poetical
+Sophia Ivanovna, that Dmitri, with his thoroughgoing, resolute
+character, having fallen in love with a girl, might make up his mind to
+marry her, without considering either her birth or her station, had more
+ground.
+
+Had Nekhludoff at that time been conscious of his love for Katusha, and
+especially if he had been told that he could on no account join his life
+with that of a girl in her position, it might have easily happened
+that, with his usual straight-forwardness, he would have come to the
+conclusion that there could be no possible reason for him not to marry
+any girl whatever, as long as he loved her. But his aunts did not
+mention their fears to him; and, when he left, he was still unconscious
+of his love for Katusha. He was sure that what he felt for Katusha was
+only one of the manifestations of the joy of life that filled his whole
+being, and that this sweet, merry little girl shared this joy with him.
+Yet, when he was going away, and Katusha stood with his aunts in the
+porch, and looked after him, her dark, slightly-squinting eyes filled
+with tears, he felt, after all, that he was leaving something beautiful,
+precious, something which would never reoccur. And he grew very sad.
+
+“Good-bye, Katusha,” he said, looking across Sophia Ivanovna’s cap as he
+was getting into the trap. “Thank you for everything.”
+
+“Good-bye, Dmitri Ivanovitch,” she said, with her pleasant, tender
+voice, keeping back the tears that filled her eyes--and ran away into
+the hall, where she could cry in peace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+LIFE IN THE ARMY.
+
+After that Nekhludoff did not see Katusha for more than three years.
+When he saw her again he had just been promoted to the rank of officer
+and was going to join his regiment. On the way he came to spend a few
+days with his aunts, being now a very different young man from the one
+who had spent the summer with them three years before. He then had been
+an honest, unselfish lad, ready to sacrifice himself for any good cause;
+now he was depraved and selfish, and thought only of his own enjoyment.
+Then God’s world seemed a mystery which he tried enthusiastically and
+joyfully to solve; now everything in life seemed clear and simple,
+defined by the conditions of the life he was leading. Then he had felt
+the importance of, and had need of intercourse with, nature, and with
+those who had lived and thought and felt before him--philosophers
+and poets. What he now considered necessary and important were human
+institutions and intercourse with his comrades. Then women seemed
+mysterious and charming--charming by the very mystery that enveloped
+them; now the purpose of women, all women except those of his own family
+and the wives of his friends, was a very definite one: women were the
+best means towards an already experienced enjoyment. Then money was not
+needed, and he did not require even one-third of what his mother allowed
+him; but now this allowance of 1,500 roubles a month did not suffice,
+and he had already had some unpleasant talks about it with his mother.
+
+Then he had looked on his spirit as the I; now it was his healthy strong
+animal I that he looked upon as himself.
+
+And all this terrible change had come about because he had ceased to
+believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done
+because it was too difficult to live believing one’s self; believing
+one’s self, one had to decide every question not in favour of one’s own
+animal life, which is always seeking for easy gratifications, but almost
+in every case against it. Believing others there was nothing to decide;
+everything had been decided already, and decided always in favour of the
+animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his
+own self he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around
+him; believing others he had their approval. So, when Nekhludoff had
+talked of the serious matters of life, of God, truth, riches, and
+poverty, all round him thought it out of place and even rather funny,
+and his mother and aunts called him, with kindly irony, notre cher
+philosophe. But when he read novels, told improper anecdotes, went
+to see funny vaudevilles in the French theatre and gaily repeated the
+jokes, everybody admired and encouraged him. When he considered it
+right to limit his needs, wore an old overcoat, took no wine, everybody
+thought it strange and looked upon it as a kind of showing off; but
+when he spent large sums on hunting, or on furnishing a peculiar and
+luxurious study for himself, everybody admired his taste and gave him
+expensive presents to encourage his hobby. While he kept pure and meant
+to remain so till he married his friends prayed for his health, and even
+his mother was not grieved but rather pleased when she found out that
+he had become a real man and had gained over some French woman from his
+friend. (As to the episode with Katusha, the princess could not without
+horror think that he might possibly have married her.) In the same way,
+when Nekhludoff came of age, and gave the small estate he had inherited
+from his father to the peasants because he considered the holding
+of private property in land wrong, this step filled his mother and
+relations with dismay and served as an excuse for making fun of him to
+all his relatives. He was continually told that these peasants, after
+they had received the land, got no richer, but, on the contrary, poorer,
+having opened three public-houses and left off doing any work. But when
+Nekhludoff entered the Guards and spent and gambled away so much with
+his aristocratic companions that Elena Ivanovna, his mother, had to draw
+on her capital, she was hardly pained, considering it quite natural
+and even good that wild oats should be sown at an early age and in good
+company, as her son was doing. At first Nekhludoff struggled, but all
+that he had considered good while he had faith in himself was considered
+bad by others, and what he had considered evil was looked upon as good
+by those among whom he lived, and the struggle grew too hard. And at
+last Nekhludoff gave in, i.e., left off believing himself and began
+believing others. At first this giving up of faith in himself was
+unpleasant, but it did not long continue to be so. At that time he
+acquired the habit of smoking, and drinking wine, and soon got over this
+unpleasant feeling and even felt great relief.
+
+Nekhludoff, with his passionate nature, gave himself thoroughly to the
+new way of life so approved of by all those around, and he entirely
+stifled the inner voice which demanded something different. This began
+after he moved to St. Petersburg, and reached its highest point when he
+entered the army.
+
+Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of
+complete idleness, i.e., absence of all useful work; frees them of their
+common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional ones to
+the honour of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and, while giving
+them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into
+conditions of servile obedience to those of higher rank than themselves.
+
+But when, to the usual depraving influence of military service with its
+honours, uniforms, flags, its permitted violence and murder, there is
+added the depraving influence of riches and nearness to and intercourse
+with members of the Imperial family, as is the case in the chosen
+regiment of the Guards in which all the officers are rich and of good
+family, then this depraving influence creates in the men who succumb
+to it a perfect mania of selfishness. And this mania of selfishness
+attacked Nekhludoff from the moment he entered the army and began living
+in the way his companions lived. He had no occupation whatever except
+to dress in a uniform, splendidly made and well brushed by other people,
+and, with arms also made and cleaned and handed to him by others, ride
+to reviews on a fine horse which had been bred, broken in and fed by
+others. There, with other men like himself, he had to wave a sword,
+shoot off guns, and teach others to do the same. He had no other work,
+and the highly-placed persons, young and old, the Tsar and those near
+him, not only sanctioned his occupation but praised and thanked him for
+it.
+
+After this was done, it was thought important to eat, and particularly
+to drink, in officers’ clubs or the salons of the best restaurants,
+squandering large sums of money, which came from some invisible source;
+then theatres, ballets, women, then again riding on horseback, waving
+of swords and shooting, and again the squandering of money, the wine,
+cards, and women. This kind of life acts on military men even more
+depravingly than on others, because if any other than a military man
+lead such a life he cannot help being ashamed of it in the depth of his
+heart. A military man is, on the contrary, proud of a life of this kind
+especially at war time, and Nekhludoff had entered the army just after
+war with the Turks had been declared. “We are prepared to sacrifice
+our lives at the wars, and therefore a gay, reckless life is not only
+pardonable, but absolutely necessary for us, and so we lead it.”
+
+Such were Nekhludoff’s confused thoughts at this period of his
+existence, and he felt all the time the delight of being free of the
+moral barriers he had formerly set himself. And the state he lived in
+was that of a chronic mania of selfishness. He was in this state when,
+after three years’ absence, he came again to visit his aunts.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE SECOND MEETING WITH MASLOVA.
+
+Nekhludoff went to visit his aunts because their estate lay near the
+road he had to travel in order to join his regiment, which had gone
+forward, because they had very warmly asked him to come, and especially
+because he wanted to see Katusha. Perhaps in his heart he had already
+formed those evil designs against Katusha which his now uncontrolled
+animal self suggested to him, but he did not acknowledge this as his
+intention, but only wished to go back to the spot where he had been so
+happy, to see his rather funny, but dear, kind-hearted old aunts, who
+always, without his noticing it, surrounded him with an atmosphere of
+love and admiration, and to see sweet Katusha, of whom he had retained
+so pleasant a memory.
+
+He arrived at the end of March, on Good Friday, after the thaw had set
+in. It was pouring with rain so that he had not a dry thread on him and
+was feeling very cold, but yet vigorous and full of spirits, as always
+at that time. “Is she still with them?” he thought, as he drove into the
+familiar, old-fashioned courtyard, surrounded by a low brick wall, and
+now filled with snow off the roofs.
+
+He expected she would come out when she heard the sledge bells but she
+did not. Two bare-footed women with pails and tucked-up skirts, who had
+evidently been scrubbing the floors, came out of the side door. She was
+not at the front door either, and only Tikhon, the man-servant, with his
+apron on, evidently also busy cleaning, came out into the front porch.
+His aunt Sophia Ivanovna alone met him in the ante-room; she had a silk
+dress on and a cap on her head. Both aunts had been to church and had
+received communion.
+
+“Well, this is nice of you to come,” said Sophia Ivanovna, kissing him.
+“Mary is not well, got tired in church; we have been to communion.”
+
+“I congratulate you, Aunt Sophia,” [it is usual in Russia to
+congratulate those who have received communion] said Nekhludoff, kissing
+Sophia Ivanovna’s hand. “Oh, I beg your pardon, I have made you wet.”
+
+“Go to your room--why you are soaking wet. Dear me, you have got
+moustaches! . . . Katusha! Katusha! Get him some coffee; be quick.”
+
+“Directly,” came the sound of a well-known, pleasant voice from the
+passage, and Nekhludoff’s heart cried out “She’s here!” and it was as if
+the sun had come out from behind the clouds.
+
+Nekhludoff, followed by Tikhon, went gaily to his old room to change his
+things. He felt inclined to ask Tikhon about Katusha; how she was,
+what she was doing, was she not going to be married? But Tikhon was so
+respectful and at the same time so severe, insisted so firmly on pouring
+the water out of the jug for him, that Nekhludoff could not make up
+his mind to ask him about Katusha, but only inquired about Tikhon’s
+grandsons, about the old so-called “brother’s” horse, and about the
+dog Polkan. All were alive except Polkan, who had gone mad the summer
+before.
+
+When he had taken off all his wet things and just begun to dress again,
+Nekhludoff heard quick, familiar footsteps and a knock at the door.
+Nekhludoff knew the steps and also the knock. No one but she walked and
+knocked like that.
+
+Having thrown his wet greatcoat over his shoulders, he opened the door.
+
+“Come in.” It was she, Katusha, the same, only sweeter than before. The
+slightly squinting naive black eyes looked up in the same old way. Now
+as then, she had on a white apron. She brought him from his aunts
+a piece of scented soap, with the wrapper just taken off, and two
+towels--one a long Russian embroidered one, the other a bath towel. The
+unused soap with the stamped inscription, the towels, and her own self,
+all were equally clean, fresh, undefiled and pleasant. The irrepressible
+smile of joy at the sight of him made the sweet, firm lips pucker up as
+of old.
+
+“How do you do, Dmitri Ivanovitch?” she uttered with difficulty, her
+face suffused with a rosy blush.
+
+“Good-morning! How do you do?” he said, also blushing. “Alive and well?”
+
+“Yes, the Lord be thanked. And here is your favorite pink soap and
+towels from your aunts,” she said, putting the soap on the table and
+hanging the towels over the back of a chair.
+
+“There is everything here,” said Tikhon, defending the visitor’s
+independence, and pointing to Nekhludoff’s open dressing case filled
+with brushes, perfume, fixatoire, a great many bottles with silver lids
+and all sorts of toilet appliances.
+
+“Thank my aunts, please. Oh, how glad I am to be here,” said Nekhludoff,
+his heart filling with light and tenderness as of old.
+
+She only smiled in answer to these words, and went out. The aunts, who
+had always loved Nekhludoff, welcomed him this time more warmly than
+ever. Dmitri was going to the war, where he might be wounded or killed,
+and this touched the old aunts. Nekhludoff had arranged to stay only a
+day and night with his aunts, but when he had seen Katusha he agreed to
+stay over Easter with them and telegraphed to his friend Schonbock, whom
+he was to have joined in Odessa, that he should come and meet him at his
+aunts’ instead.
+
+As soon as he had seen Katusha Nekhludoff’s old feelings toward her
+awoke again. Now, just as then, he could not see her white apron without
+getting excited; he could not listen to her steps, her voice, her laugh,
+without a feeling of joy; he could not look at her eyes, black as sloes,
+without a feeling of tenderness, especially when she smiled; and, above
+all, he could not notice without agitation how she blushed when they
+met. He felt he was in love, but not as before, when this love was a
+kind of mystery to him and he would not own, even to himself, that he
+loved, and when he was persuaded that one could love only once; now he
+knew he was in love and was glad of it, and knew dimly what this love
+consisted of and what it might lead to, though he sought to conceal
+it even from himself. In Nekhludoff, as in every man, there were two
+beings: one the spiritual, seeking only that kind of happiness for him
+self which should tend towards the happiness of all; the other, the
+animal man, seeking only his own happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it
+the happiness of the rest of the world. At this period of his mania of
+self-love brought on by life in Petersburg and in the army, this animal
+man ruled supreme and completely crushed the spiritual man in him.
+
+But when he saw Katusha and experienced the same feelings as he had had
+three years before, the spiritual man in him raised its head once more
+and began to assert its rights. And up to Easter, during two whole days,
+an unconscious, ceaseless inner struggle went on in him.
+
+He knew in the depths of his soul that he ought to go away, that there
+was no real reason for staying on with his aunts, knew that no good
+could come of it; and yet it was so pleasant, so delightful, that he did
+not honestly acknowledge the facts to himself and stayed on. On Easter
+eve, the priest and the deacon who came to the house to say mass had had
+(so they said) the greatest difficulty in getting over the three miles
+that lay between the church and the old ladies’ house, coming across the
+puddles and the bare earth in a sledge.
+
+Nekhludoff attended the mass with his aunts and the servants, and kept
+looking at Katusha, who was near the door and brought in the censers
+for the priests. Then having given the priests and his aunts the Easter
+kiss, though it was not midnight and therefore not Easter yet, he was
+already going to bed when he heard the old servant Matrona Pavlovna
+preparing to go to the church to get the koulitch and paski [Easter
+cakes] blest after the midnight service. “I shall go too,” he thought.
+
+The road to the church was impassable either in a sledge or on wheels,
+so Nekhludoff, who behaved in his aunts’ house just as he did at home,
+ordered the old horse, “the brother’s horse,” to be saddled, and instead
+of going to bed he put on his gay uniform, a pair of tight-fitting
+riding breeches and his overcoat, and got on the old over-fed and heavy
+horse, which neighed continually all the way as he rode in the dark
+through the puddles and snow to the church.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE EARLY MASS.
+
+For Nekhludoff this early mass remained for ever after one of the
+brightest and most vivid memories of his life. When he rode out of the
+darkness, broken only here and there by patches of white snow, into the
+churchyard illuminated by a row of lamps around the church, the service
+had already begun.
+
+The peasants, recognising Mary Ivanovna’s nephew, led his horse, which
+was pricking up its ears at the sight of the lights, to a dry place
+where he could get off, put it up for him, and showed him into the
+church, which was full of people. On the right stood the peasants; the
+old men in home-spun coats, and clean white linen bands [long strips of
+linen are worn by the peasants instead of stockings] wrapped round their
+legs, the young men in new cloth coats, bright-coloured belts round
+their waists, and top-boots.
+
+On the left stood the women, with red silk kerchiefs on their
+heads, black velveteen sleeveless jackets, bright red shirt-sleeves,
+gay-coloured green, blue, and red skirts, and thick leather boots.
+The old women, dressed more quietly, stood behind them, with white
+kerchiefs, homespun coats, old-fashioned skirts of dark home-spun
+material, and shoes on their feet. Gaily-dressed children, their hair
+well oiled, went in and out among them.
+
+The men, making the sign of the cross, bowed down and raised their heads
+again, shaking back their hair.
+
+The women, especially the old ones, fixed their eyes on an icon
+surrounded with candies and made the sign of the cross, firmly pressing
+their folded fingers to the kerchief on their foreheads, to their
+shoulders, and their stomachs, and, whispering something, stooped
+or knelt down. The children, imitating the grown-up people, prayed
+earnestly when they knew that they were being observed. The gilt case
+containing the icon glittered, illuminated on all sides by tall candles
+ornamented with golden spirals. The candelabra was filled with tapers,
+and from the choir sounded most merry tunes sung by amateur choristers,
+with bellowing bass and shrill boys’ voices among them.
+
+Nekhludoff passed up to the front. In the middle of the church stood
+the aristocracy of the place: a landed proprietor, with his wife and
+son (the latter dressed in a sailor’s suit), the police officer, the
+telegraph clerk, a tradesman in top-boots, and the village elder, with
+a medal on his breast; and to the right of the ambo, just behind the
+landed proprietor’s wife, stood Matrona Pavlovna in a lilac dress and
+fringed shawl and Katusha in a white dress with a tucked bodice, blue
+sash, and red bow in her black hair.
+
+Everything seemed festive, solemn, bright, and beautiful: the priest in
+his silver cloth vestments with gold crosses; the deacon, the clerk and
+chanter in their silver and gold surplices; the amateur choristers in
+their best clothes, with their well-oiled hair; the merry tunes of the
+holiday hymns that sounded like dance music; and the continual blessing
+of the people by the priests, who held candles decorated with flowers,
+and repeated the cry of “Christ is risen!” “Christ is risen!” All was
+beautiful; but, above all, Katusha, in her white dress, blue sash, and
+the red bow on her black head, her eyes beaming with rapture.
+
+Nekhludoff knew that she felt his presence without looking at him. He
+noticed this as he passed her, walking up to the altar. He had nothing
+to tell her, but he invented something to say and whispered as he passed
+her: “Aunt told me that she would break her fast after the late mass.”
+ The young blood rushed up to Katusha’s sweet face, as it always did
+when she looked at him. The black eyes, laughing and full of joy, gazed
+naively up and remained fixed on Nekhludoff.
+
+“I know,” she said, with a smile.
+
+At this moment the clerk was going out with a copper coffee-pot
+[coffee-pots are often used for holding holy water in Russia] of holy
+water in his hand, and, not noticing Katusha, brushed her with his
+surplice. Evidently he brushed against Katusha through wishing to pass
+Nekhludoff at a respectful distance, and Nekhludoff was surprised that
+he, the clerk, did not understand that everything here, yes, and in
+all the world, only existed for Katusha, and that everything else might
+remain unheeded, only not she, because she was the centre of all. For
+her the gold glittered round the icons; for her all these candles in
+candelabra and candlesticks were alight; for her were sung these
+joyful hymns, “Behold the Passover of the Lord” “Rejoice, O ye people!”
+ All--all that was good in the world was for her. And it seemed to him
+that Katusha was aware that it was all for her when he looked at her
+well-shaped figure, the tucked white dress, the wrapt, joyous expression
+of her face, by which he knew that just exactly the same that was
+singing in his own soul was also singing in hers.
+
+In the interval between the early and the late mass Nekhludoff left the
+church. The people stood aside to let him pass, and bowed. Some knew
+him; others asked who he was.
+
+He stopped on the steps. The beggars standing there came clamouring
+round him, and he gave them all the change he had in his purse and went
+down. It was dawning, but the sun had not yet risen. The people grouped
+round the graves in the churchyard. Katusha had remained inside.
+Nekhludoff stood waiting for her.
+
+The people continued coming out, clattering with their nailed boots on
+the stone steps and dispersing over the churchyard. A very old man with
+shaking head, his aunts’ cook, stopped Nekhludoff in order to give
+him the Easter kiss, his old wife took an egg, dyed yellow, out of her
+handkerchief and gave it to Nekhludoff, and a smiling young peasant in a
+new coat and green belt also came up.
+
+“Christ is risen,” he said, with laughing eyes, and coming close to
+Nekhludoff he enveloped him in his peculiar but pleasant peasant smell,
+and, tickling him with his curly beard, kissed him three times straight
+on the mouth with his firm, fresh lips.
+
+While the peasant was kissing Nekhludoff and giving him a dark brown
+egg, the lilac dress of Matrona Pavlovna and the dear black head with
+the red bow appeared.
+
+Katusha caught sight of him over the heads of those in front of her, and
+he saw how her face brightened up.
+
+She had come out with Matrona Pavlovna on to the porch, and stopped
+there distributing alms to the beggars. A beggar with a red scab in
+place of a nose came up to Katusha. She gave him something, drew nearer
+him, and, evincing no sign of disgust, but her eyes still shining with
+joy, kissed him three times. And while she was doing this her eyes met
+Nekhludoff’s with a look as if she were asking, “Is this that I am doing
+right?” “Yes, dear, yes, it is right; everything is right, everything is
+beautiful. I love!”
+
+They came down the steps of the porch, and he came up to them.
+
+He did not mean to give them the Easter kiss, but only to be nearer to
+her. Matrona Pavlovna bowed her head, and said with a smile, “Christ is
+risen!” and her tone implied, “To-day we are all equal.” She wiped her
+mouth with her handkerchief rolled into a ball and stretched her lips
+towards him.
+
+“He is, indeed,” answered Nekhludoff, kissing her. Then he looked
+at Katusha; she blushed, and drew nearer. “Christ is risen, Dmitri
+Ivanovitch.”
+
+“He is risen, indeed,” answered Nekhludoff, and they kissed twice, then
+paused as if considering whether a third kiss were necessary, and,
+having decided that it was, kissed a third time and smiled.
+
+“You are going to the priests?” asked Nekhludoff.
+
+“No, we shall sit out here a bit, Dmitri Ivanovitch,” said Katusha with
+effort, as if she had accomplished some joyous task, and, her whole
+chest heaving with a deep sigh, she looked straight in his face with
+a look of devotion, virgin purity, and love, in her very slightly
+squinting eyes.
+
+In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when
+this love has reached its zenith--a moment when it is unconscious,
+unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it. Such a moment had come
+for Nekhludoff on that Easter eve. When he brought Katusha back to his
+mind, now, this moment veiled all else; the smooth glossy black head,
+the white tucked dress closely fitting her graceful maidenly form, her,
+as yet, un-developed bosom, the blushing cheeks, the tender shining
+black eyes with their slight squint heightened by the sleepless night,
+and her whole being stamped with those two marked features, purity and
+chaste love, love not only for him (he knew that), but for everybody and
+everything, not for the good alone, but for all that is in the world,
+even for that beggar whom she had kissed.
+
+He knew she had that love in her because on that night and morning
+he was conscious of it in himself, and conscious that in this love he
+became one with her. Ah! if it had all stopped there, at the point it
+had reached that night. “Yes, all that horrible business had not yet
+happened on that Easter eve!” he thought, as he sat by the window of the
+jurymen’s room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE FIRST STEP.
+
+When he returned from church Nekhludoff broke the fast with his aunts
+and took a glass of spirits and some wine, having got into that habit
+while with his regiment, and when he reached his room fell asleep at
+once, dressed as he was. He was awakened by a knock at the door. He knew
+it was her knock, and got up, rubbing his eyes and stretching himself.
+
+“Katusha, is it you? Come in,” said he.
+
+She opened the door.
+
+“Dinner is ready,” she said. She still had on the same white dress, but
+not the bow in her hair. She looked at him with a smile, as if she had
+communicated some very good news to him.
+
+“I am coming,” he answered, as he rose, taking his comb to arrange his
+hair.
+
+She stood still for a minute, and he, noticing it, threw down his comb
+and made a step towards her, but at that very moment she turned suddenly
+and went with quick light steps along the strip of carpet in the middle
+of the passage.
+
+“Dear me, what a fool I am,” thought Nekhludoff. “Why did I not stop
+her?” What he wanted her for he did not know himself, but he felt that
+when she came into his room something should have been done, something
+that is generally done on such occasions, and that he had left it
+undone.
+
+“Katusha, wait,” he said.
+
+“What do you want?” she said, stopping.
+
+“Nothing, only--” and, with an effort, remembering how men in his
+position generally behave, he put his arm round her waist.
+
+She stood still and looked into his eyes.
+
+“Don’t, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you must not,” she said, blushing to tears
+and pushing away his arm with her strong hard hand. Nekhludoff let her
+go, and for a moment he felt not only confused and ashamed but disgusted
+with himself. He should now have believed himself, and then he would
+have known that this confusion and shame were caused by the best
+feelings of his soul demanding to be set free; but he thought it was
+only his stupidity and that he ought to behave as every one else did. He
+caught her up and kissed her on the neck.
+
+This kiss was very different from that first thoughtless kiss behind
+the lilac bush, and very different to the kiss this morning in the
+churchyard. This was a dreadful kiss, and she felt it.
+
+“Oh, what are you doing?” she cried, in a tone as if he had irreparably
+broken something of priceless value, and ran quickly away.
+
+He came into the dining-room. His aunts, elegantly dressed, their family
+doctor, and a neighbour were already there. Everything seemed so very
+ordinary, but in Nekhludoff a storm was raging. He understood nothing
+of what was being said and gave wrong answers, thinking only of Katusha.
+The sound of her steps in the passage brought back the thrill of that
+last kiss and he could think of nothing else. When she came into the
+room he, without looking round, felt her presence with his whole being
+and had to force himself not to look at her.
+
+After dinner he at once went into his bedroom and for a long time walked
+up and down in great excitement, listening to every sound in the house
+and expecting to hear her steps. The animal man inside him had now not
+only lifted its head, but had succeeded in trampling under foot the
+spiritual man of the days of his first visit, and even of that every
+morning. That dreadful animal man alone now ruled over him.
+
+Though he was watching for her all day he could not manage to meet her
+alone. She was probably trying to evade him. In the evening, however,
+she was obliged to go into the room next to his. The doctor had been
+asked to stay the night, and she had to make his bed. When he heard her
+go in Nekhludoff followed her, treading softly and holding his breath as
+if he were going to commit a crime.
+
+She was putting a clean pillow-case on the pillow, holding it by two of
+its corners with her arms inside the pillow-case. She turned round
+and smiled, not a happy, joyful smile as before, but in a frightened,
+piteous way. The smile seemed to tell him that what he was doing was
+wrong. He stopped for a moment. There was still the possibility of a
+struggle. The voice of his real love for her, though feebly, was still
+speaking of her, her feelings, her life. Another voice was saying,
+“Take care I don’t let the opportunity for your own happiness, your own
+enjoyment, slip by!” And this second voice completely stifled the first.
+He went up to her with determination and a terrible, ungovernable animal
+passion took possession of him.
+
+With his arm round he made her sit down on the bed; and feeling that
+there was something more to be done he sat down beside her.
+
+“Dmitri Ivanovitch, dear! please let me go,” she said, with a piteous
+voice. “Matrona Pavlovna is coming,” she cried, tearing herself away.
+Some one was really coming to the door.
+
+“Well, then, I’ll come to you in the night,” he whispered. “You’ll be
+alone?”
+
+“What are you thinking of? On no account. No, no!” she said, but only
+with her lips; the tremulous confusion of her whole being said something
+very different.
+
+It was Matrona Pavlovna who had come to the door. She came in with a
+blanket over her arm, looked reproachfully at Nekhludoff, and began
+scolding Katusha for having taken the wrong blanket.
+
+Nekhludoff went out in silence, but he did not even feel ashamed. He
+could see by Matrona Pavlovna’s face that she was blaming him, he knew
+that she was blaming him with reason and felt that he was doing wrong,
+but this novel, low animal excitement, having freed itself of all the
+old feelings of real love for Katusha, ruled supreme, leaving room for
+nothing else. He went about as if demented all the evening, now into his
+aunts’, then back into his own room, then out into the porch, thinking
+all the time how he could meet her alone; but she avoided him, and
+Matrona Pavlovna watched her closely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF AND KATUSHA.
+
+And so the evening passed and night came. The doctor went to bed.
+Nekhludoff’s aunts had also retired, and he knew that Matrona Pavlovna
+was now with them in their bedroom so that Katusha was sure to be alone
+in the maids’ sitting-room. He again went out into the porch. It was
+dark, damp and warm out of doors, and that white spring mist which
+drives away the last snow, or is diffused by the thawing of the last
+snow, filled the air. From the river under the hill, about a hundred
+steps from the front door, came a strange sound. It was the ice
+breaking. Nekhludoff came down the steps and went up to the window of
+the maids’ room, stepping over the puddles on the bits of glazed snow.
+His heart was beating so fiercely in his breast that he seemed to hear
+it, his laboured breath came and went in a burst of long-drawn sighs. In
+the maids’ room a small lamp was burning, and Katusha sat alone by the
+table, looking thoughtfully in front of her. Nekhludoff stood a long
+time without moving and waited to see what she, not knowing that she
+was observed, would do. For a minute or two she did not move; then she
+lifted her eyes, smiled and shook her head as if chiding herself, then
+changed her pose and dropped both her arms on the table and again began
+gazing down in front of her. He stood and looked at her, involuntarily
+listening to the beating of his own heart and the strange sounds from
+the river. There on the river, beneath the white mist, the unceasing
+labour went on, and sounds as of something sobbing, cracking, dropping,
+being shattered to pieces mixed with the tinkling of the thin bits of
+ice as they broke against each other like glass.
+
+There he stood, looking at Katusha’s serious, suffering face, which
+betrayed the inner struggle of her soul, and he felt pity for her; but,
+strange though it may seem, this pity only confirmed him in his evil
+intention.
+
+He knocked at the window. She started as if she had received an electric
+shock, her whole body trembled, and a look of horror came into her face.
+Then she jumped up, approached the window and brought her face up to the
+pane. The look of terror did not leave her face even when, holding her
+hands up to her eyes like blinkers and peering through the glass, she
+recognised him. Her face was unusually grave; he had never seen it so
+before. She returned his smile, but only in submission to him; there was
+no smile in her soul, only fear. He beckoned her with his hand to come
+out into the yard to him. But she shook her head and remained by the
+window. He brought his face close to the pane and was going to call out
+to her, but at that moment she turned to the door; evidently some one
+inside had called her. Nekhludoff moved away from the window. The fog
+was so dense that five steps from the house the windows could not be
+seen, but the light from the lamp shone red and huge out of a shapeless
+black mass. And on the river the same strange sounds went on, sobbing
+and rustling and cracking and tinkling. Somewhere in the fog, not
+far off, a cock crowed; another answered, and then others, far in the
+village took up the cry till the sound of the crowing blended into one,
+while all around was silent excepting the river. It was the second time
+the cocks crowed that night.
+
+Nekhludoff walked up and down behind the corner of the house, and once
+or twice got into a puddle. Then again came up to the window. The lamp
+was still burning, and she was again sitting alone by the table as
+if uncertain what to do. He had hardly approached the window when she
+looked up. He knocked. Without looking who it was she at once ran out of
+the room, and he heard the outside door open with a snap. He waited
+for her near the side porch and put his arms round her without saying a
+word. She clung to him, put up her face, and met his kiss with her lips.
+Then the door again gave the same sort of snap and opened, and the voice
+of Matrona Pavlovna called out angrily, “Katusha!”
+
+She tore herself away from him and returned into the maids’ room. He
+heard the latch click, and then all was quiet. The red light disappeared
+and only the mist remained, and the bustle on the river went on.
+Nekhludoff went up to the window, nobody was to be seen; he knocked, but
+got no answer. He went back into the house by the front door, but could
+not sleep. He got up and went with bare feet along the passage to her
+door, next to Matrona Pavlovna’s room. He heard Matrona Pavlovna snoring
+quietly, and was about to go on when she coughed and turned on her
+creaking bed, and his heart fell, and he stood immovable for about five
+minutes. When all was quiet and she began to snore peacefully again, he
+went on, trying to step on the boards that did not creak, and came to
+Katusha’s door. There was no sound to be heard. She was probably
+awake, or else he would have heard her breathing. But as soon as he
+had whispered “Katusha” she jumped up and began to persuade him, as if
+angrily, to go away.
+
+“Open! Let me in just for a moment! I implore you!” He hardly knew what
+he was saying.
+
+                   * * * * * * *
+
+When she left him, trembling and silent, giving no answer to his words,
+he again went out into the porch and stood trying to understand the
+meaning of what had happened.
+
+It was getting lighter. From the river below the creaking and tinkling
+and sobbing of the breaking ice came still louder and a gurgling sound
+could now also be heard. The mist had begun to sink, and from above it
+the waning moon dimly lighted up something black and weird.
+
+“What was the meaning of it all? Was it a great joy or a great
+misfortune that had befallen him?” he asked himself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+AFTERWARDS.
+
+The next day the gay, handsome, and brilliant Schonbock joined
+Nekhludoff at his aunts’ house, and quite won their hearts by his
+refined and amiable manner, his high spirits, his generosity, and his
+affection for Dmitri.
+
+But though the old ladies admired his generosity it rather perplexed
+them, for it seemed exaggerated. He gave a rouble to some blind beggars
+who came to the gate, gave 15 roubles in tips to the servants, and
+when Sophia Ivanovna’s pet dog hurt his paw and it bled, he tore his
+hemstitched cambric handkerchief into strips (Sophia Ivanovna knew that
+such handkerchiefs cost at least 15 roubles a dozen) and bandaged the
+dog’s foot. The old ladies had never met people of this kind, and did
+not know that Schonbock owed 200,000 roubles which he was never going to
+pay, and that therefore 25 roubles more or less did not matter a bit to
+him. Schonbock stayed only one day, and he and Nekhludoff both, left
+at night. They could not stay away from their regiment any longer, for
+their leave was fully up.
+
+At the stage which Nekhludoff’s selfish mania had now reached he could
+think of nothing but himself. He was wondering whether his conduct, if
+found out, would be blamed much or at all, but he did not consider what
+Katusha was now going through, and what was going to happen to her.
+
+He saw that Schonbock guessed his relations to her and this flattered
+his vanity.
+
+“Ah, I see how it is you have taken such a sudden fancy to your aunts
+that you have been living nearly a week with them,” Schonbock remarked
+when he had seen Katusha. “Well, I don’t wonder--should have done the
+same. She’s charming.” Nekhludoff was also thinking that though it was
+a pity to go away before having fully gratified the cravings of his
+love for her, yet the absolute necessity of parting had its advantages
+because it put a sudden stop to relations it would have been very
+difficult for him to continue. Then he thought that he ought to give her
+some money, not for her, not because she might need it, but because it
+was the thing to do.
+
+So he gave her what seemed to him a liberal amount, considering his and
+her station. On the day of his departure, after dinner, he went out and
+waited for her at the side entrance. She flushed up when she saw him
+and wished to pass by, directing his attention to the open door of the
+maids’ room by a look, but he stopped her.
+
+“I have come to say good-bye,” he said, crumbling in his hand an
+envelope with a 100-rouble note inside. “There, I . . . ”
+
+She guessed what he meant, knit her brows, and shaking her head pushed
+his hand away.
+
+“Take it; oh, you must!” he stammered, and thrust the envelope into the
+bib of her apron and ran back to his room, groaning and frowning as if
+he had hurt himself. And for a long time he went up and down writhing as
+in pain, and even stamping and groaning aloud as he thought of this last
+scene. “But what else could I have done? Is it not what happens to every
+one? And if every one does the same . . . well I suppose it can’t be
+helped.” In this way he tried to get peace of mind, but in vain. The
+recollection of what had passed burned his conscience. In his soul--in
+the very depths of his soul--he knew that he had acted in a base, cruel,
+cowardly manner, and that the knowledge of this act of his must prevent
+him, not only from finding fault with any one else, but even from
+looking straight into other people’s eyes; not to mention the
+impossibility of considering himself a splendid, noble, high-minded
+fellow, as he did and had to do to go on living his life boldly and
+merrily. There was only one solution of the problem--i.e., not to think
+about it. He succeeded in doing so. The life he was now entering upon,
+the new surroundings, new friends, the war, all helped him to forget.
+And the longer he lived, the less he thought about it, until at last he
+forgot it completely.
+
+Once only, when, after the war, he went to see his aunts in hopes of
+meeting Katusha, and heard that soon after his last visit she had left,
+and that his aunts had heard she had been confined somewhere or other
+and had gone quite to the bad, his heart ached. According to the time of
+her confinement, the child might or might not have been his. His aunts
+said she had gone wrong, that she had inherited her mother’s depraved
+nature, and he was pleased to hear this opinion of his aunts’. It seemed
+to acquit him. At first he thought of trying to find her and her child,
+but then, just because in the depths of his soul he felt so ashamed and
+pained when thinking about her, he did not make the necessary effort to
+find her, but tried to forget his sin again and ceased to think about
+it. And now this strange coincidence brought it all back to his memory,
+and demanded from him the acknowledgment of the heartless, cruel
+cowardice which had made it possible for him to live these nine years
+with such a sin on his conscience. But he was still far from such an
+acknowledgment, and his only fear was that everything might now be found
+out, and that she or her advocate might recount it all and put him to
+shame before every one present.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE TRIAL--RESUMPTION.
+
+In this state of mind Nekhludoff left the Court and went into the
+jurymen’s room. He sat by the window smoking all the while, and hearing
+what was being said around him.
+
+The merry merchant seemed with all his heart to sympathise with
+Smelkoff’s way of spending his time. “There, old fellow, that was
+something like! Real Siberian fashion! He knew what he was about, no
+fear! That’s the sort of wench for me.”
+
+The foreman was stating his conviction, that in some way or other the
+expert’s conclusions were the important thing. Peter Gerasimovitch
+was joking about something with the Jewish clerk, and they burst out
+laughing. Nekhludoff answered all the questions addressed to him in
+monosyllables and longed only to be left in peace.
+
+When the usher, with his sideways gait, called the jury back to the
+Court, Nekhludoff was seized with fear, as if he were not going to
+judge, but to be judged. In the depth of his soul he felt that he was a
+scoundrel, who ought to be ashamed to look people in the face, yet,
+by sheer force of habit, he stepped on to the platform in his usual
+self-possessed manner, and sat down, crossing his legs and playing with
+his pince-nez.
+
+The prisoners had also been led out, and were now brought in again.
+There were some new faces in the Court witnesses, and Nekhludoff noticed
+that Maslova could not take her eyes off a very fat woman who sat in the
+row in front of the grating, very showily dressed in silk and velvet, a
+high hat with a large bow on her head, and an elegant little reticule on
+her arm, which was bare to the elbow. This was, as he subsequently found
+out, one of the witnesses, the mistress of the establishment to which
+Maslova had belonged.
+
+The examination of the witnesses commenced: they were asked their names,
+religion, etc. Then, after some consultation as to whether the witnesses
+were to be sworn in or not, the old priest came in again, dragging
+his legs with difficulty, and, again arranging the golden cross on his
+breast, swore the witnesses and the expert in the same quiet manner,
+and with the same assurance that he was doing something useful and
+important.
+
+The witnesses having been sworn, all but Kitaeva, the keeper of the
+house, were led out again. She was asked what she knew about this
+affair. Kitaeva nodded her head and the big hat at every sentence
+and smiled affectedly. She gave a very full and intelligent account,
+speaking with a strong German accent. First of all, the hotel servant
+Simeon, whom she knew, came to her establishment on behalf of a rich
+Siberian merchant, and she sent Lubov back with him. After a time
+Lubov returned with the merchant. The merchant was already somewhat
+intoxicated--she smiled as she said this--and went on drinking and
+treating the girls. He was short of money. He sent this same Lubov to
+his lodgings. He had taken a “predilection” to her. She looked at the
+prisoner as she said this.
+
+Nekhludoff thought he saw Maslova smile here, and this seemed disgusting
+to him. A strange, indefinite feeling of loathing, mingled with
+suffering, arose in him.
+
+“And what was your opinion of Maslova?” asked the blushing and confused
+applicant for a judicial post, appointed to act as Maslova’s advocate.
+
+“Zee ferry pesht,” answered Kitaeva. “Zee yoong voman is etucated and
+elecant. She was prought up in a coot family and can reat French. She
+tid have a trop too moch sometimes, put nefer forcot herself. A ferry
+coot girl.”
+
+Katusha looked at the woman, then suddenly turned her eyes on the jury
+and fixed them on Nekhludoff, and her face grew serious and even severe.
+One of her serious eyes squinted, and those two strange eyes for some
+time gazed at Nekhludoff, who, in spite of the terrors that seized him,
+could not take his look off these squinting eyes, with their bright,
+clear whites.
+
+He thought of that dreadful night, with its mist, the ice breaking on
+the river below, and when the waning moon, with horns turned upwards,
+that had risen towards morning, lit up something black and weird. These
+two black eyes now looking at him reminded him of this weird, black
+something. “She has recognised me,” he thought, and Nekhludoff shrank as
+if expecting a blow. But she had not recognised him. She sighed quietly
+and again looked at the president. Nekhludoff also sighed. “Oh, if it
+would only get on quicker,” he thought.
+
+He now felt the same loathing and pity and vexation as when, out
+shooting, he was obliged to kill a wounded bird. The wounded bird
+struggles in the game bag. One is disgusted and yet feels pity, and one
+is in a hurry to kill the bird and forget it.
+
+Such mixed feelings filled Nekhludoff’s breast as he sat listening to
+the examination of the witnesses.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE MEDICAL REPORT.
+
+But, as if to spite him, the case dragged out to a great length. After
+each witness had been examined separately and the expert last of all,
+and a great number of useless questions had been put, with the usual
+air of importance, by the public prosecutor and by both advocates, the
+president invited the jury to examine the objects offered as material
+evidence. They consisted of an enormous diamond ring, which had
+evidently been worn on the first finger, and a test tube in which the
+poison had been analysed. These things had seals and labels attached to
+them.
+
+Just as the witnesses were about to look at these things, the public
+prosecutor rose and demanded that before they did this the results of
+the doctor’s examination of the body should be read. The president, who
+was hurrying the business through as fast as he could in order to visit
+his Swiss friend, though he knew that the reading of this paper could
+have no other effect than that of producing weariness and putting off
+the dinner hour, and that the public prosecutor wanted it read simply
+because he knew he had a right to demand it, had no option but to
+express his consent.
+
+The secretary got out the doctor’s report and again began to read in his
+weary lisping voice, making no distinction between the “r’s” and “l’s.”
+
+The external examination proved that:
+
+“1. Theropont Smelkoff’s height was six feet five inches.
+
+“Not so bad, that. A very good size,” whispered the merchant, with
+interest, into Nekhludoff’s ear.
+
+“2. He looked about 40 years of age.
+
+“3. The body was of a swollen appearance.
+
+“4. The flesh was of a greenish colour, with dark spots in several
+places.
+
+“5. The skin was raised in blisters of different sizes and in places had
+come off in large pieces.
+
+“6. The hair was chestnut; it was thick, and separated easily from the
+skin when touched.
+
+“7. The eye-balls protruded from their sockets and the cornea had grown
+dim.
+
+“8. Out of the nostrils, both ears, and the mouth oozed serous liquid;
+the mouth was half open.
+
+“9. The neck had almost disappeared, owing to the swelling of the face
+and chest.”
+
+And so on and so on.
+
+Four pages were covered with the 27 paragraphs describing all the
+details of the external examination of the enormous, fat, swollen, and
+decomposing body of the merchant who had been making merry in the
+town. The indefinite loathing that Nekhludoff felt was increased by the
+description of the corpse. Katusha’s life, and the scrum oozing from
+the nostrils of the corpse, and the eyes that protruded out of their
+sockets, and his own treatment of her--all seemed to belong to the same
+order of things, and he felt surrounded and wholly absorbed by things of
+the same nature.
+
+When the reading of the report of the external examination was ended,
+the president heaved a sigh and raised his hand, hoping it was finished;
+but the secretary at once went on to the description of the internal
+examination. The president’s head again dropped into his hand and he
+shut his eyes. The merchant next to Nekhludoff could hardly keep awake,
+and now and then his body swayed to and fro. The prisoners and the
+gendarmes sat perfectly quiet.
+
+The internal examination showed that:
+
+“1. The skin was easily detachable from the bones of the skull, and
+there was no coagulated blood.
+
+“2. The bones of the skull were of average thickness and in sound
+condition.
+
+“3. On the membrane of the brain there were two discoloured spots about
+four inches long, the membrane itself being of a dull white.” And so on
+for 13 paragraphs more. Then followed the names and signatures of
+the assistants, and the doctor’s conclusion showing that the changes
+observed in the stomach, and to a lesser degree in the bowels and
+kidneys, at the postmortem examination, and described in the official
+report, gave great probability to the conclusion that Smelkoff’s death
+was caused by poison which had entered his stomach mixed with alcohol.
+To decide from the state of the stomach what poison had been introduced
+was difficult; but it was necessary to suppose that the poison entered
+the stomach mixed with alcohol, since a great quantity of the latter was
+found in Smelkoff’s stomach.
+
+“He could drink, and no mistake,” again whispered the merchant, who had
+just waked up.
+
+The reading of this report had taken a full hour, but it had not
+satisfied the public prosecutor, for, when it had been read through and
+the president turned to him, saying, “I suppose it is superfluous to
+read the report of the examination of the internal organs?” he answered
+in a severe tone, without looking at the president, “I shall ask to have
+it read.”
+
+He raised himself a little, and showed by his manner that he had a right
+to have this report read, and would claim this right, and that if that
+were not granted it would serve as a cause of appeal.
+
+The member of the Court with the big beard, who suffered from catarrh of
+the stomach, feeling quite done up, turned to the president:
+
+“What is the use of reading all this? It is only dragging it out. These
+new brooms do not sweep clean; they only take a long while doing it.”
+
+The member with the gold spectacles said nothing, but only looked
+gloomily in front of him, expecting nothing good, either from his wife
+or life in general. The reading of the report commenced.
+
+“In the year 188-, on February 15th, I, the undersigned, commissioned
+by the medical department, made an examination, No. 638,” the secretary
+began again with firmness and raising the pitch of his voice as if to
+dispel the sleepiness that had overtaken all present, “in the presence
+of the assistant medical inspector, of the internal organs:
+
+“1. The right lung and the heart (contained in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+
+“2. The contents of the stomach (in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+
+“3. The stomach itself (in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+
+“4. The liver, the spleen and the kidneys (in a 9-lb. glass jar).
+
+“5. The intestines (in a 9-lb. earthenware jar).”
+
+The president here whispered to one of the members, then stooped to the
+other, and having received their consent, he said: “The Court considers
+the reading of this report superfluous.” The secretary stopped reading
+and folded the paper, and the public prosecutor angrily began to write
+down something. “The gentlemen of the jury may now examine the articles
+of material evidence,” said the president. The foreman and several of
+the others rose and went to the table, not quite knowing what to do with
+their hands. They looked in turn at the glass, the test tube, and the
+ring. The merchant even tried on the ring.
+
+“Ah! that was a finger,” he said, returning to his place; “like a
+cucumber,” he added. Evidently the image he had formed in his mind of
+the gigantic merchant amused him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE PROSECUTOR AND THE ADVOCATES.
+
+When the examination of the articles of material evidence was finished,
+the president announced that the investigation was now concluded and
+immediately called on the prosecutor to proceed, hoping that as the
+latter was also a man, he, too, might feel inclined to smoke or dine,
+and show some mercy on the rest. But the public prosecutor showed mercy
+neither to himself nor to any one else. He was very stupid by nature,
+but, besides this, he had had the misfortune of finishing school with a
+gold medal and of receiving a reward for his essay on “Servitude” when
+studying Roman Law at the University, and was therefore self-confident
+and self-satisfied in the highest degree (his success with the ladies
+also conducing to this) and his stupidity had become extraordinary.
+
+When the word was given to him, he got up slowly, showing the whole of
+his graceful figure in his embroidered uniform. Putting his hand on the
+desk he looked round the room, slightly bowing his head, and, avoiding
+the eyes of the prisoners, began to read the speech he had prepared
+while the reports were being read.
+
+“Gentlemen of the jury! The business that now lies before you is, if I
+may so express myself, very characteristic.”
+
+The speech of a public prosecutor, according to his views, should always
+have a social importance, like the celebrated speeches made by the
+advocates who have become distinguished. True, the audience consisted of
+three women--a semptress, a cook, and Simeon’s sister--and a coachman;
+but this did not matter. The celebrities had begun in the same way. To
+be always at the height of his position, i.e., to penetrate into the
+depths of the psychological significance of crime and to discover the
+wounds of society, was one of the prosecutor’s principles.
+
+“You see before you, gentlemen of the jury, a crime characteristic, if
+I may so express myself, of the end of our century; bearing, so to say,
+the specific features of that very painful phenomenon, the corruption to
+which those elements of our present-day society, which are, so to say,
+particularly exposed to the burning rays of this process, are subject.”
+
+The public prosecutor spoke at great length, trying not to forget any of
+the notions he had formed in his mind, and, on the other hand, never to
+hesitate, and let his speech flow on for an hour and a quarter without a
+break.
+
+Only once he stopped and for some time stood swallowing his saliva, but
+he soon mastered himself and made up for the interruption by heightened
+eloquence. He spoke, now with a tender, insinuating accent, stepping
+from foot to foot and looking at the jury, now in quiet, business-like
+tones, glancing into his notebook, then with a loud, accusing voice,
+looking from the audience to the advocates. But he avoided looking at
+the prisoners, who were all three fixedly gazing at him. Every new craze
+then in vogue among his set was alluded to in his speech; everything
+that then was, and some things that still are, considered to be the last
+words of scientific wisdom: the laws of heredity and inborn criminality,
+evolution and the struggle for existence, hypnotism and hypnotic
+influence.
+
+According to his definition, the merchant Smelkoff was of the genuine
+Russian type, and had perished in consequence of his generous, trusting
+nature, having fallen into the hands of deeply degraded individuals.
+
+Simeon Kartinkin was the atavistic production of serfdom, a stupefied,
+ignorant, unprincipled man, who had not even any religion. Euphemia was
+his mistress, and a victim of heredity; all the signs of degeneration
+were noticeable in her. The chief wire-puller in this affair was
+Maslova, presenting the phenomenon of decadence in its lowest form.
+“This woman,” he said, looking at her, “has, as we have to-day heard
+from her mistress in this court, received an education; she cannot only
+read and write, but she knows French; she is illegitimate, and probably
+carries in her the germs of criminality. She was educated in an
+enlightened, noble family and might have lived by honest work, but she
+deserts her benefactress, gives herself up to a life of shame in which
+she is distinguished from her companions by her education, and chiefly,
+gentlemen of the jury, as you have heard from her mistress, by her power
+of acting on the visitors by means of that mysterious capacity lately
+investigated by science, especially by the school of Charcot, known by
+the name of hypnotic influence. By these means she gets hold of this
+Russian, this kind-hearted Sadko, [Sadko, the hero of a legend] the rich
+guest, and uses his trust in order first to rob and then pitilessly to
+murder him.”
+
+“Well, he is piling it on now, isn’t he?” said the president with a
+smile, bending towards the serious member.
+
+“A fearful blockhead!” said the serious member.
+
+Meanwhile the public prosecutor went on with his speech. “Gentlemen of
+the jury,” gracefully swaying his body, “the fate of society is to a
+certain extent in your power. Your verdict will influence it. Grasp the
+full meaning of this crime, the danger that awaits society from those
+whom I may perhaps be permitted to call pathological individuals, such
+as Maslova. Guard it from infection; guard the innocent and strong
+elements of society from contagion or even destruction.”
+
+And as if himself overcome by the significance of the expected verdict,
+the public prosecutor sank into his chair, highly delighted with his
+speech.
+
+The sense of the speech, when divested of all its flowers of rhetoric,
+was that Maslova, having gained the merchant’s confidence, hypnotised
+him and went to his lodgings with his key meaning to take all the money
+herself, but having been caught in the act by Simeon and Euphemia had to
+share it with them. Then, in order to hide the traces of the crime, she
+had returned to the lodgings with the merchant and there poisoned him.
+
+After the prosecutor had spoken, a middle-aged man in swallow-tail coat
+and low-cut waistcoat showing a large half-circle of starched white
+shirt, rose from the advocates’ bench and made a speech in defence of
+Kartinkin and Botchkova; this was an advocate engaged by them for 300
+roubles. He acquitted them both and put all the blame on Maslova. He
+denied the truth of Maslova’s statements that Botchkova and Kartinkin
+were with her when she took the money, laying great stress on the
+point that her evidence could not be accepted, she being charged with
+poisoning. “The 2,500 roubles,” the advocate said, “could have been
+easily earned by two honest people getting from three to five roubles
+per day in tips from the lodgers. The merchant’s money was stolen by
+Maslova and given away, or even lost, as she was not in a normal state.”
+
+The poisoning was committed by Maslova alone; therefore he begged the
+jury to acquit Kartinkin and Botchkova of stealing the money; or if they
+could not acquit them of the theft, at least to admit that it was done
+without any participation in the poisoning.
+
+In conclusion the advocate remarked, with a thrust at the public
+prosecutor, that “the brilliant observations of that gentleman on
+heredity, while explaining scientific facts concerning heredity, were
+inapplicable in this case, as Botchkova was of unknown parentage.” The
+public prosecutor put something down on paper with an angry look, and
+shrugged his shoulders in contemptuous surprise.
+
+Then Maslova’s advocate rose, and timidly and hesitatingly began his
+speech in her defence.
+
+Without denying that she had taken part in the stealing of the money,
+he insisted on the fact that she had no intention of poisoning Smelkoff,
+but had given him the powder only to make him fall asleep. He tried to
+go in for a little eloquence in giving a description of how Maslova was
+led into a life of debauchery by a man who had remained unpunished while
+she had to bear all the weight of her fall; but this excursion into the
+domain of psychology was so unsuccessful that it made everybody feel
+uncomfortable. When he muttered something about men’s cruelty and
+women’s helplessness, the president tried to help him by asking him to
+keep closer to the facts of the case. When he had finished the public
+prosecutor got up to reply. He defended his position against the first
+advocate, saying that even if Botchkova was of unknown parentage the
+truth of the doctrine of heredity was thereby in no way invalidated,
+since the laws of heredity were so far proved by science that we can not
+only deduce the crime from heredity, but heredity from the crime. As to
+the statement made in defence of Maslova, that she was the victim of an
+imaginary (he laid a particularly venomous stress on the word imaginary)
+betrayer, he could only say that from the evidence before them it was
+much more likely that she had played the part of temptress to many and
+many a victim who had fallen into her hands. Having said this he sat
+down in triumph. Then the prisoners were offered permission to speak in
+their own defence.
+
+Euphemia Botchkova repeated once more that she knew nothing about it and
+had taken part in nothing, and firmly laid the whole blame on Maslova.
+Simeon Kartinkin only repeated several times: “It is your business, but
+I am innocent; it’s unjust.” Maslova said nothing in her defence. Told
+she might do so by the president, she only lifted her eyes to him, cast
+a look round the room like a hunted animal, and, dropping her head,
+began to cry, sobbing aloud.
+
+“What is the matter?” the merchant asked Nekhludoff, hearing him utter
+a strange sound. This was the sound of weeping fiercely kept back.
+Nekhludoff had not yet understood the significance of his present
+position, and attributed the sobs he could hardly keep back and the
+tears that filled his eyes to the weakness of his nerves. He put on his
+pince-nez in order to hide the tears, then got out his handkerchief and
+began blowing his nose.
+
+Fear of the disgrace that would befall him if every one in the court
+knew of his conduct stifled the inner working of his soul. This fear
+was, during this first period, stronger than all else.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE SUMMING UP.
+
+After the last words of the prisoners had been heard, the form in which
+the questions were to be put to the jury was settled, which also took
+some time. At last the questions were formulated, and the president
+began the summing up.
+
+Before putting the case to the jury, he spoke to them for some time in a
+pleasant, homely manner, explaining that burglary was burglary and theft
+was theft, and that stealing from a place which was under lock and key
+was stealing from a place under lock and key. While he was explaining
+this, he looked several times at Nekhludoff as if wishing to impress
+upon him these important facts, in hopes that, having understood it,
+Nekhludoff would make his fellow-jurymen also understand it. When he
+considered that the jury were sufficiently imbued with these facts, he
+proceeded to enunciate another truth--namely, that a murder is an
+action which has the death of a human being as its consequence, and that
+poisoning could therefore also be termed murder. When, according to his
+opinion, this truth had also been received by the jury, he went on to
+explain that if theft and murder had been committed at the same time,
+the combination of the crimes was theft with murder.
+
+Although he was himself anxious to finish as soon as possible, although
+he knew that his Swiss friend would be waiting for him, he had grown so
+used to his occupation that, having begun to speak, he could not stop
+himself, and therefore he went on to impress on the jury with much
+detail that if they found the prisoners guilty, they would have the
+right to give a verdict of guilty; and if they found them not guilty,
+to give a verdict of not guilty; and if they found them guilty of one of
+the crimes and not of the other, they might give a verdict of guilty
+on the one count and of not guilty on the other. Then he explained that
+though this right was given them they should use it with reason.
+
+He was going to add that if they gave an affirmative answer to any
+question that was put to them they would thereby affirm everything
+included in the question, so that if they did not wish to affirm the
+whole of the question they should mention the part of the question they
+wished to be excepted. But, glancing at the clock, and seeing it was
+already five minutes to three, he resolved to trust to their being
+intelligent enough to understand this without further comment.
+
+“The facts of this case are the following,” began the president, and
+repeated all that had already been said several times by the advocates,
+the public prosecutor and the witnesses.
+
+The president spoke, and the members on each side of him listened with
+deeply-attentive expressions, but looked from time to time at the clock,
+for they considered the speech too long though very good--i.e., such
+as it ought to be. The public prosecutor, the lawyers, and, in fact,
+everyone in the court, shared the same impression. The president
+finished the summing up. Then he found it necessary to tell the jury
+what they all knew, or might have found out by reading it up--i.e., how
+they were to consider the case, count the votes, in case of a tie to
+acquit the prisoners, and so on.
+
+Everything seemed to have been told; but no, the president could not
+forego his right of speaking as yet. It was so pleasant to hear the
+impressive tones of his own voice, and therefore he found it necessary
+to say a few words more about the importance of the rights given to the
+jury, how carefully they should use the rights and how they ought not
+to abuse them, about their being on their oath, that they were the
+conscience of society, that the secrecy of the debating-room should be
+considered sacred, etc.
+
+From the time the president commenced his speech, Maslova watched him
+without moving her eyes as if afraid of losing a single word; so that
+Nekhludoff was not afraid of meeting her eyes and kept looking at her
+all the time. And his mind passed through those phases in which a face
+which we have not seen for many years first strikes us with the outward
+changes brought about during the time of separation, and then gradually
+becomes more and more like its old self, when the changes made by
+time seem to disappear, and before our spiritual eyes rises only the
+principal expression of one exceptional, unique individuality. Yes,
+though dressed in a prison cloak, and in spite of the developed figure,
+the fulness of the bosom and lower part of the face, in spite of a few
+wrinkles on the forehead and temples and the swollen eyes, this was
+certainly the same Katusha who, on that Easter eve, had so innocently
+looked up to him whom she loved, with her fond, laughing eyes full of
+joy and life.
+
+“What a strange coincidence that after ten years, during which I never
+saw her, this case should have come up today when I am on the jury, and
+that it is in the prisoners’ dock that I see her again! And how will it
+end? Oh, dear, if they would only get on quicker.”
+
+Still he would not give in to the feelings of repentance which began to
+arise within him. He tried to consider it all as a coincidence, which
+would pass without infringing his manner of life. He felt himself in
+the position of a puppy, when its master, taking it by the scruff of
+its neck, rubs its nose in the mess it has made. The puppy whines, draws
+back and wants to get away as far as possible from the effects of its
+misdeed, but the pitiless master does not let go.
+
+And so, Nekhludoff, feeling all the repulsiveness of what he had done,
+felt also the powerful hand of the Master, but he did not feel the whole
+significance of his action yet and would not recognise the Master’s
+hand. He did not wish to believe that it was the effect of his deed that
+lay before him, but the pitiless hand of the Master held him and he felt
+he could not get away. He was still keeping up his courage and sat on
+his chair in the first row in his usual self-possessed pose, one leg
+carelessly thrown over the other, and playing with his pince-nez. Yet
+all the while, in the depths of his soul, he felt the cruelty, cowardice
+and baseness, not only of this particular action of his but of his whole
+self-willed, depraved, cruel, idle life; and that dreadful veil which
+had in some unaccountable manner hidden from him this sin of his and
+the whole of his subsequent life was beginning to shake, and he caught
+glimpses of what was covered by that veil.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE VERDICT.
+
+At last the president finished his speech, and lifting the list of
+questions with a graceful movement of his arm he handed it to the
+foreman, who came up to take it. The jury, glad to be able to get
+into the debating-court, got up one after the other and left the room,
+looking as if a bit ashamed of themselves and again not knowing what
+to do with their hands. As soon as the door was closed behind them
+a gendarme came up to it, pulled his sword out of the scabbard, and,
+holding it up against his shoulder, stood at the door. The judges got up
+and went away. The prisoners were also led out. When the jury came
+into the debating-room the first thing they did was to take out their
+cigarettes, as before, and begin smoking. The sense of the unnaturalness
+and falseness of their position, which all of them had experienced
+while sitting in their places in the court, passed when they entered the
+debating-room and started smoking, and they settled down with a feeling
+of relief and at once began an animated conversation.
+
+“‘Tisn’t the girl’s fault. She’s got mixed up in it,” said the kindly
+merchant. “We must recommend her to mercy.”
+
+“That’s just what we are going to consider,” said the foreman. “We must
+not give way to our personal impressions.”
+
+“The president’s summing up was good,” remarked the colonel.
+
+“Good? Why, it nearly sent me to sleep!”
+
+“The chief point is that the servants could have known nothing about the
+money if Maslova had not been in accord with them,” said the clerk of
+Jewish extraction.
+
+“Well, do you think that it was she who stole the money?” asked one of
+the jury.
+
+“I will never believe it,” cried the kindly merchant; “it was all that
+red-eyed hag’s doing.”
+
+“They are a nice lot, all of them,” said the colonel.
+
+“But she says she never went into the room.”
+
+“Oh, believe her by all means.”
+
+“I should not believe that jade, not for the world.”
+
+“Whether you believe her or not does not settle the question,” said the
+clerk.
+
+“The girl had the key,” said the colonel.
+
+“What if she had?” retorted the merchant.
+
+“And the ring?”
+
+“But didn’t she say all about it?” again cried the merchant. “The fellow
+had a temper of his own, and had had a drop too much besides, and gave
+the girl a licking; what could be simpler? Well, then he’s sorry--quite
+naturally. ‘There, never mind,’ says he; ‘take this.’ Why, I heard them
+say he was six foot five high; I should think he must have weighed about
+20 stones.”
+
+“That’s not the point,” said Peter Gerasimovitch. “The question is,
+whether she was the instigator and inciter in this affair, or the
+servants?”
+
+“It was not possible for the servants to do it alone; she had the key.”
+
+This kind of random talk went on for a considerable time. At last the
+foreman said: “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but had we not better take
+our places at the table and discuss the matter? Come, please.” And he
+took the chair.
+
+The questions were expressed in the following manner.
+
+1. Is the peasant of the village Borki, Krapivinskia district, Simeon
+Petrov Kartinkin, 33 years of age, guilty of having, in agreement with
+other persons, given the merchant Smelkoff, on the 17th January, 188-,
+in the town of N-----, with intent to deprive him of life, for the
+purpose of robbing him, poisoned brandy, which caused Smelkoff’s death,
+and of having stolen from him about 2,500 roubles in money and a diamond
+ring?
+
+2. Is the meschanka Euphemia Ivanovna Botchkova, 43 years of age, guilty
+of the crimes described above?
+
+3. Is the meschanka Katerina Michaelovna Maslova, 27 years of age,
+guilty of the crimes described in the first question?
+
+4. If the prisoner Euphemia Botchkova is not guilty according to the
+first question, is she not guilty of having, on the 17th January, in the
+town of N----, while in service at the hotel Mauritania, stolen from a
+locked portmanteau, belonging to the merchant Smelkoff, a lodger in that
+hotel, and which was in the room occupied by him, 2,500 roubles, for
+which object she unlocked the portmanteau with a key she brought and
+fitted to the lock?
+
+The foreman read the first question.
+
+“Well, gentlemen, what do you think?” This question was quickly
+answered. All agreed to say “Guilty,” as if convinced that Kartinkin
+had taken part both in the poisoning and the robbery. An old artelshik,
+[member of an artel, an association of workmen, in which the members
+share profits and liabilities] whose answers were all in favour of
+acquittal, was the only exception.
+
+The foreman thought he did not understand, and began to point out to him
+that everything tended to prove Kartinkin’s guilt. The old man answered
+that he did understand, but still thought it better to have pity on him.
+“We are not saints ourselves,” and he kept to his opinion.
+
+The answer to the second question concerning Botchkova was, after much
+dispute and many exclamations, answered by the words, “Not guilty,”
+ there being no clear proofs of her having taken part in the poisoning--a
+fact her advocate had strongly insisted on. The merchant, anxious to
+acquit Maslova, insisted that Botchkova was the chief instigator of it
+all. Many of the jury shared this view, but the foreman, wishing to be
+in strict accord with the law, declared they had no grounds to consider
+her as an accomplice in the poisoning. After much disputing the
+foreman’s opinion triumphed.
+
+To the fourth question concerning Botchkova the answer was “Guilty.” But
+on the artelshik’s insistence she was recommended to mercy.
+
+The third question, concerning Maslova, raised a fierce dispute. The
+foreman maintained she was guilty both of the poisoning and the theft,
+to which the merchant would not agree. The colonel, the clerk and the
+old artelshik sided with the merchant, the rest seemed shaky, and the
+opinion of the foreman began to gain ground, chiefly because all the
+jurymen were getting tired, and preferred to take up the view that would
+bring them sooner to a decision and thus liberate them.
+
+From all that had passed, and from his former knowledge of Maslova,
+Nekhludoff was certain that she was innocent of both the theft and the
+poisoning. And he felt sure that all the others would come to the same
+conclusion. When he saw that the merchant’s awkward defence (evidently
+based on his physical admiration for her, which he did not even try
+to hide) and the foreman’s insistence, and especially everybody’s
+weariness, were all tending to her condemnation, he longed to state his
+objections, yet dared not, lest his relations with Maslova should be
+discovered. He felt he could not allow things to go on without stating
+his objection; and, blushing and growing pale again, was about to speak
+when Peter Gerasimovitch, irritated by the authoritative manner of
+the foreman, began to raise his objections and said the very things
+Nekhludoff was about to say.
+
+“Allow me one moment,” he said. “You seem to think that her having the
+key proves she is guilty of the theft; but what could be easier than
+for the servants to open the portmanteau with a false key after she was
+gone?”
+
+“Of course, of course,” said the merchant.
+
+“She could not have taken the money, because in her position she would
+hardly know what to do with it.”
+
+“That’s just what I say,” remarked the merchant.
+
+“But it is very likely that her coming put the idea into the servants’
+heads and that they grasped the opportunity and shoved all the blame
+on her.” Peter Gerasimovitch spoke so irritably that the foreman became
+irritated too, and went on obstinately defending the opposite views; but
+Peter Gerasimovitch spoke so convincingly that the majority agreed with
+him, and decided that Maslova was not guilty of stealing the money and
+that the ring was given her.
+
+But when the question of her having taken part in the poisoning was
+raised, her zealous defender, the merchant, declared that she must
+be acquitted, because she could have no reason for the poisoning. The
+foreman, however, said that it was impossible to acquit her, because she
+herself had pleaded guilty to having given the powder.
+
+“Yes, but thinking it was opium,” said the merchant.
+
+“Opium can also deprive one of life,” said the colonel, who was fond
+of wandering from the subject, and he began telling how his
+brother-in-law’s wife would have died of an overdose of opium if there
+had not been a doctor near at hand to take the necessary measures. The
+colonel told his story so impressively, with such self-possession and
+dignity, that no one had the courage to interrupt him. Only the clerk,
+infected by his example, decided to break in with a story of his own:
+“There are some who get so used to it that they can take 40 drops. I
+have a relative--,” but the colonel would not stand the interruption,
+and went on to relate what effects the opium had on his brother-in-law’s
+wife.
+
+“But, gentlemen, do you know it is getting on towards five o’clock?”
+ said one of the jury.
+
+“Well, gentlemen, what are we to say, then?” inquired the foreman.
+“Shall we say she is guilty, but without intent to rob? And without
+stealing any property? Will that do?” Peter Gerasimovitch, pleased with
+his victory, agreed.
+
+“But she must be recommended to mercy,” said the merchant.
+
+All agreed; only the old artelshik insisted that they should say “Not
+guilty.”
+
+“It comes to the same thing,” explained the foreman; “without intent to
+rob, and without stealing any property. Therefore, ‘Not guilty,’ that’s
+evident.”
+
+“All right; that’ll do. And we recommend her to mercy,” said the
+merchant, gaily.
+
+They were all so tired, so confused by the discussions, that nobody
+thought of saying that she was guilty of giving the powder but without
+the intent of taking life. Nekhludoff was so excited that he did not
+notice this omission, and so the answers were written down in the form
+agreed upon and taken to the court.
+
+Rabelais says that a lawyer who was trying a case quoted all sorts of
+laws, read 20 pages of judicial senseless Latin, and then proposed to
+the judges to throw dice, and if the numbers proved odd the defendant
+would be right, if not, the plaintiff.
+
+It was much the same in this case. The resolution was taken, not because
+everybody agreed upon it, but because the president, who had been
+summing up at such length, omitted to say what he always said on such
+occasions, that the answer might be, “Yes, guilty, but without the
+intent of taking life;” because the colonel had related the story of his
+brother-in-law’s wife at such great length; because Nekhludoff was too
+excited to notice that the proviso “without intent to take life” had
+been omitted, and thought that the words “without intent” nullified the
+conviction; because Peter Gerasimovitch had retired from the room while
+the questions and answers were being read, and chiefly because, being
+tired, and wishing to get away as soon as possible, all were ready to
+agree with the decision which would bring matters to an end soonest.
+
+The jurymen rang the bell. The gendarme who had stood outside the door
+with his sword drawn put the sword back into the scabbard and stepped
+aside. The judges took their seats and the jury came out one by one.
+
+The foreman brought in the paper with an air of solemnity and handed
+it to the president, who looked at it, and, spreading out his hands
+in astonishment, turned to consult his companions. The president was
+surprised that the jury, having put in a proviso--without intent to
+rob--did not put in a second proviso--without intent to take life. From
+the decision of the jury it followed that Maslova had not stolen, nor
+robbed, and yet poisoned a man without any apparent reason.
+
+“Just see what an absurd decision they have come to,” he whispered to
+the member on his left. “This means penal servitude in Siberia, and she
+is innocent.”
+
+“Surely you do not mean to say she is innocent?” answered the serious
+member.
+
+“Yes, she is positively innocent. I think this is a case for putting
+Article 817 into practice (Article 817 states that if the Court
+considers the decision of the jury unjust it may set it aside).”
+
+“What do you think?” said the president, turning to the other member.
+The kindly member did not answer at once. He looked at the number on a
+paper before him and added up the figures; the sum would not divide
+by three. He had settled in his mind that if it did divide by three he
+would agree to the president’s proposal, but though the sum would not so
+divide his kindness made him agree all the same.
+
+“I, too, think it should be done,” he said.
+
+“And you?” asked the president, turning to the serious member.
+
+“On no account,” he answered, firmly. “As it is, the papers accuse the
+jury of acquitting prisoners. What will they say if the Court does it?
+I, shall not agree to that on any account.”
+
+The president looked at his watch. “It is a pity, but what’s to be
+done?” and handed the questions to the foreman to read out. All got
+up, and the foreman, stepping from foot to foot, coughed, and read the
+questions and the answers. All the Court, secretary, advocates, and even
+the public prosecutor, expressed surprise. The prisoners sat impassive,
+evidently not understanding the meaning of the answers. Everybody sat
+down again, and the president asked the prosecutor what punishments the
+prisoners were to be subjected to.
+
+The prosecutor, glad of his unexpected success in getting Maslova
+convicted, and attributing the success entirely to his own eloquence,
+looked up the necessary information, rose and said: “With Simeon
+Kartinkin I should deal according to Statute 1,452 paragraph 93.
+Euphemia Botchkova according to Statute . . ., etc. Katerina Maslova
+according to Statute . . ., etc.”
+
+All three punishments were the heaviest that could be inflicted.
+
+“The Court will adjourn to consider the sentence,” said the president,
+rising. Everybody rose after him, and with the pleasant feeling of a
+task well done began to leave the room or move about in it.
+
+“D’you know, sirs, we have made a shameful hash of it?” said Peter
+Gerasimovitch, approaching Nekhludoff, to whom the foreman was relating
+something. “Why, we’ve got her to Siberia.”
+
+“What are you saying?” exclaimed Nekhludoff. This time he did not notice
+the teacher’s familiarity.
+
+“Why, we did not put in our answer ‘Guilty, but without intent of
+causing death.’ The secretary just told me the public prosecutor is for
+condemning her to 15 years’ penal servitude.”
+
+“Well, but it was decided so,” said the foreman.
+
+Peter Gerasimovitch began to dispute this, saying that since she did
+not take the money it followed naturally that she could not have had any
+intention of committing murder.
+
+“But I read the answer before going out,” said the foreman, defending
+himself, “and nobody objected.”
+
+“I had just then gone out of the room,” said Peter Gerasimovitch,
+turning to Nekhludoff, “and your thoughts must have been wool-gathering
+to let the thing pass.”
+
+“I never imagined this,” Nekhludoff replied.
+
+“Oh, you didn’t?”
+
+“Oh, well, we can get it put right,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Oh, dear no; it’s finished.”
+
+Nekhludoff looked at the prisoners. They whose fate was being decided
+still sat motionless behind the grating in front of the soldiers.
+Maslova was smiling. Another feeling stirred in Nekhludoff’s soul. Up to
+now, expecting her acquittal and thinking she would remain in the town,
+he was uncertain how to act towards her. Any kind of relations with her
+would be so very difficult. But Siberia and penal servitude at once cut
+off every possibility of any kind of relations with her. The wounded
+bird would stop struggling in the game-bag, and no longer remind him of
+its existence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE SENTENCE.
+
+Peter Gerasimovitch’s assumption was correct. The president came back
+from the debating room with a paper, and read as follows:--“April 28th,
+188-. By His Imperial Majesty’s ukase No. ----- The Criminal Court, on
+the strength of the decision of the jury, in accordance with Section
+3 of Statute 771, Section 3 of Statutes 770 and 777, decrees that the
+peasant, Simeon Kartinkin, 33 years of age, and the meschanka Katerina
+Maslova, 27 years of age, are to be deprived of all property rights and
+to be sent to penal servitude in Siberia, Kartinkin for eight, Maslova
+for four years, with the consequences stated in Statute 25 of the code.
+The meschanka Botchkova, 43 years of age, to be deprived of all special
+personal and acquired rights, and to be imprisoned for three years with
+consequences in accord with Statute 48 of the code. The costs of the
+case to be borne equally by the prisoners; and, in the case of their
+being without sufficient property, the costs to be transferred to the
+Treasury. Articles of material evidence to be sold, the ring to be
+returned, the phials destroyed.” Botchkova was condemned to prison,
+Simeon Kartinken and Katerina Maslova to the loss of all special rights
+and privileges and to penal servitude in Siberia, he for eight and she
+for four years.
+
+Kartinkin stood holding his arms close to his sides and moving his lips.
+Botchkova seemed perfectly calm. Maslova, when she heard the sentence,
+blushed scarlet. “I’m not guilty, not guilty!” she suddenly cried, so
+that it resounded through the room. “It is a sin! I am not guilty! I
+never wished--I never thought! It is the truth I am saying--the truth!”
+ and sinking on the bench she burst into tears and sobbed aloud. When
+Kartinkin and Botchkova went out she still sat crying, so that a
+gendarme had to touch the sleeve of her cloak.
+
+“No; it is impossible to leave it as it is,” said Nekhludoff to himself,
+utterly forgetting his bad thoughts. He did not know why he wished to
+look at her once more, but hurried out into the corridor. There was
+quite a crowd at the door. The advocates and jury were going out,
+pleased to have finished the business, and he was obliged to wait a few
+seconds, and when he at last got out into the corridor she was far
+in front. He hurried along the corridor after her, regardless of the
+attention he was arousing, caught her up, passed her, and stopped. She
+had ceased crying and only sobbed, wiping her red, discoloured face with
+the end of the kerchief on her head. She passed without noticing him.
+Then he hurried back to see the president. The latter had already left
+the court, and Nekhludoff followed him into the lobby and went up to
+him just as he had put on his light grey overcoat and was taking the
+silver-mounted walking-stick which an attendant was handing him.
+
+“Sir, may I have a few words with you concerning some business I have
+just decided upon?” said Nekhludoff. “I am one of the jury.”
+
+“Oh, certainly, Prince Nekhludoff. I shall be delighted. I think we
+have met before,” said the president, pressing Nekhludoff’s hand and
+recalling with pleasure the evening when he first met Nekhludoff, and
+when he had danced so gaily, better than all the young people. “What can
+I do for you?”
+
+“There is a mistake in the answer concerning Maslova. She is not guilty
+of the poisoning and yet she is condemned to penal servitude,” said
+Nekhludoff, with a preoccupied and gloomy air.
+
+“The Court passed the sentence in accordance with the answers you
+yourselves gave,” said the president, moving towards the front door;
+“though they did not seem to be quite in accord.” And he remembered
+that he had been going to explain to the jury that a verdict of “guilty”
+ meant guilty of intentional murder unless the words “without intent to
+take life” were added, but had, in his hurry to get the business over,
+omitted to do so.
+
+“Yes, but could not the mistake be rectified?”
+
+“A reason for an appeal can always be found. You will have to speak to
+an advocate,” said the president, putting on his hat a little to one
+side and continuing to move towards the door.
+
+“But this is terrible.”
+
+“Well, you see, there were two possibilities before Maslova,” said the
+president, evidently wishing to be as polite and pleasant to Nekhludoff
+as he could. Then, having arranged his whiskers over his coat collar, he
+put his hand lightly under Nekhludoff’s elbow, and, still directing his
+steps towards the front door, he said, “You are going, too?”
+
+“Yes,” said Nekhludoff, quickly getting his coat, and following him.
+
+They went out into the bright, merry sunlight, and had to raise their
+voices because of the rattling of the wheels on the pavement.
+
+“The situation is a curious one, you see,” said the president; “what lay
+before this Maslova was one of two things: either to be almost acquitted
+and only imprisoned for a short time, or, taking the preliminary
+confinement into consideration, perhaps not at all--or Siberia. There is
+nothing between. Had you but added the words, ‘without intent to cause
+death,’ she would have been acquitted.”
+
+“Yes, it was inexcusable of me to omit that,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“That’s where the whole matter lies,” said the president, with a smile,
+and looked at his watch. He had only three-quarters of an hour left
+before the time appointed by his Clara would elapse.
+
+“Now, if you like to speak to the advocates you’ll have to find a reason
+for an appeal; that can be easily done.” Then, turning to an isvostchik,
+he called out, “To the Dvoryanskaya 30 copecks; I never give more.”
+
+“All right, your honour; here you are.”
+
+“Good-afternoon. If I can be of any use, my address is House Dvornikoff,
+on the Dvoryanskaya; it’s easy to remember.” And he bowed in a friendly
+manner as he got into the trap and drove off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF CONSULTS AN ADVOCATE.
+
+His conversation with the president and the fresh air quieted Nekhludoff
+a little. He now thought that the feelings experienced by him had been
+exaggerated by the unusual surroundings in which he had spent the whole
+of the morning, and by that wonderful and startling coincidence. Still,
+it was absolutely necessary to take some steps to lighten Maslova’s
+fate, and to take them quickly. “Yes, at once! It will be best to find
+out here in the court where the advocate Fanarin or Mikishin lives.”
+ These were two well-known advocates whom Nekhludoff called to mind. He
+returned to the court, took off his overcoat, and went upstairs. In the
+first corridor he met Fanarin himself. He stopped him, and told him that
+he was just going to look him up on a matter of business.
+
+Fanarin knew Nekhludoff by sight and name, and said he would be very
+glad to be of service to him.
+
+“Though I am rather tired, still, if your business will not take very
+long, perhaps you might tell me what it is now. Will you step in here?”
+ And he led Nekhludoff into a room, probably some judge’s cabinet. They
+sat down by the table.
+
+“Well, and what is your business?”
+
+“First of all, I must ask you to keep the business private. I do not
+want it known that I take an interest in the affair.”
+
+“Oh, that of course. Well?”
+
+“I was on the jury to-day, and we have condemned a woman to Siberia,
+an innocent woman. This bothers me very much.” Nekhludoff, to his own
+surprise, blushed and became confused. Fanarin glanced at him rapidly,
+and looked down again, listening.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“We have condemned a woman, and I should like to appeal to a higher
+court.”
+
+“To the Senate, you mean,” said Fanarin, correcting him.
+
+“Yes, and I should like to ask you to take the case in hand.” Nekhludoff
+wanted to get the most difficult part over, and added, “I shall take the
+costs of the case on myself, whatever they may be.”
+
+“Oh, we shall settle all that,” said the advocate, smiling with
+condescension at Nekhludoff’s inexperience in these matters. “What is
+the case?”
+
+Nekhludoff stated what had happened.
+
+“All right. I shall look the case through to-morrow or the day
+after--no--better on Thursday. If you will come to me at six o’clock I
+will give you an answer. Well, and now let us go; I have to make a few
+inquiries here.”
+
+Nekhludoff took leave of him and went out. This talk with the advocate,
+and the fact that he had taken measures for Maslova’s defence, quieted
+him still further. He went out into the street. The weather was
+beautiful, and he joyfully drew in a long breath of spring air. He was
+at once surrounded by isvostchiks offering their services, but he went
+on foot. A whole swarm of pictures and memories of Katusha and his
+conduct to her began whirling in his brain, and he felt depressed and
+everything appeared gloomy. “No, I shall consider all this later on; I
+must now get rid of all these disagreeable impressions,” he thought to
+himself.
+
+He remembered the Korchagin’s dinner and looked at his watch. It was
+not yet too late to get there in time. He heard the ring of a passing
+tramcar, ran to catch it, and jumped on. He jumped off again when they
+got to the market-place, took a good isvostchik, and ten minutes later
+was at the entrance of the Korchagins’ big house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE HOUSE OF KORCHAGIN.
+
+“Please to walk in, your excellency,” said the friendly, fat doorkeeper
+of the Korchagins’ big house, opening the door, which moved noiselessly
+on its patent English hinges; “you are expected. They are at dinner.
+My orders were to admit only you.” The doorkeeper went as far as the
+staircase and rang.
+
+“Are there any strangers?” asked Nekhludoff, taking off his overcoat.
+
+“Mr. Kolosoff and Michael Sergeivitch only, besides the family.”
+
+A very handsome footman with whiskers, in a swallow-tail coat and white
+gloves, looked down from the landing.
+
+“Please to walk up, your excellency,” he said. “You are expected.”
+
+Nekhludoff went up and passed through the splendid large dancing-room,
+which he knew so well, into the dining-room. There the whole Korchagin
+family--except the mother, Sophia Vasilievna, who never left her
+cabinet--were sitting round the table. At the head of the table sat old
+Korchagin; on his left the doctor, and on his right, a visitor, Ivan
+Ivanovitch Kolosoff, a former Marechal de Noblesse, now a bank director,
+Korchagin’s friend and a Liberal. Next on the left side sat Miss Rayner,
+the governess of Missy’s little sister, and the four-year-old girl
+herself. Opposite them, Missy’s brother, Petia, the only son of the
+Korchagins, a public-school boy of the Sixth Class. It was because of
+his examinations that the whole family were still in town. Next to
+him sat a University student who was coaching him, and Missy’s cousin,
+Michael Sergeivitch Telegin, generally called Misha; opposite him,
+Katerina Alexeevna, a 40-year-old maiden lady, a Slavophil; and at the
+foot of the table sat Missy herself, with an empty place by her side.
+
+“Ah! that’s right! Sit down. We are still at the fish,” said old
+Korchagin with difficulty, chewing carefully with his false teeth,
+and lifting his bloodshot eyes (which had no visible lids to them) to
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“Stephen!” he said, with his mouth full, addressing the stout, dignified
+butler, and pointing with his eyes to the empty place. Though Nekhludoff
+knew Korchagin very well, and had often seen him at dinner, to-day this
+red face with the sensual smacking lips, the fat neck above the napkin
+stuck into his waistcoat, and the whole over-fed military figure, struck
+him very disagreeably. Then Nekhludoff remembered, without wishing to,
+what he knew of the cruelty of this man, who, when in command, used
+to have men flogged, and even hanged, without rhyme or reason, simply
+because he was rich and had no need to curry favour.
+
+“Immediately, your excellency,” said Stephen, getting a large soup ladle
+out of the sideboard, which was decorated with a number of silver vases.
+He made a sign with his head to the handsome footman, who began at once
+to arrange the untouched knives and forks and the napkin, elaborately
+folded with the embroidered family crest uppermost, in front of the
+empty place next to Missy. Nekhludoff went round shaking hands with
+every one, and all, except old Korchagin and the ladies, rose when he
+approached. And this walk round the table, this shaking the hands of
+people, with many of whom he never talked, seemed unpleasant and odd. He
+excused himself for being late, and was about to sit down between Missy
+and Katerina Alexeevna, but old Korchagin insisted that if he would not
+take a glass of vodka he should at least take a bit of something to whet
+his appetite, at the side table, on which stood small dishes of lobster,
+caviare, cheese, and salt herrings. Nekhludoff did not know how hungry
+he was until he began to eat, and then, having taken some bread and
+cheese, he went on eating eagerly.
+
+“Well, have you succeeded in undermining the basis of society?”
+ asked Kolosoff, ironically quoting an expression used by a retrograde
+newspaper in attacking trial by jury. “Acquitted the culprits and
+condemned the innocent, have you?”
+
+“Undermining the basis--undermining the basis,” repeated Prince
+Korchagin, laughing. He had a firm faith in the wisdom and learning of
+his chosen friend and companion.
+
+At the risk of seeming rude, Nekhludoff left Kolosoff’s question
+unanswered, and sitting down to his steaming soup, went on eating.
+
+“Do let him eat,” said Missy, with a smile. The pronoun him she used as
+a reminder of her intimacy with Nekhludoff. Kolosoff went on in a loud
+voice and lively manner to give the contents of the article against
+trial by jury which had aroused his indignation. Missy’s cousin, Michael
+Sergeivitch, endorsed all his statements, and related the contents of
+another article in the same paper. Missy was, as usual, very distinguee,
+and well, unobtrusively well, dressed.
+
+“You must be terribly tired,” she said, after waiting until Nekhludoff
+had swallowed what was in his mouth.
+
+“Not particularly. And you? Have you been to look at the pictures?” he
+asked.
+
+“No, we put that off. We have been playing tennis at the Salamatoffs’.
+It is quite true, Mr. Crooks plays remarkably well.”
+
+Nekhludoff had come here in order to distract his thoughts, for he
+used to like being in this house, both because its refined luxury had a
+pleasant effect on him and because of the atmosphere of tender flattery
+that unobtrusively surrounded him. But to-day everything in the house
+was repulsive to him--everything: beginning with the doorkeeper, the
+broad staircase, the flowers, the footman, the table decorations, up to
+Missy herself, who to-day seemed unattractive and affected. Kolosoff’s
+self-assured, trivial tone of liberalism was unpleasant, as was also the
+sensual, self-satisfied, bull-like appearance of old Korchagin, and the
+French phrases of Katerina Alexeevna, the Slavophil. The constrained
+looks of the governess and the student were unpleasant, too, but most
+unpleasant of all was the pronoun _him_ that Missy had used. Nekhludoff
+had long been wavering between two ways of regarding Missy; sometimes he
+looked at her as if by moonlight, and could see in her nothing but what
+was beautiful, fresh, pretty, clever and natural; then suddenly, as
+if the bright sun shone on her, he saw her defects and could not help
+seeing them. This was such a day for him. To-day he saw all the wrinkles
+of her face, knew which of her teeth were false, saw the way her hair
+was crimped, the sharpness of her elbows, and, above all, how large her
+thumb-nail was and how like her father’s.
+
+“Tennis is a dull game,” said Kolosoff; “we used to play lapta when we
+were children. That was much more amusing.”
+
+“Oh, no, you never tried it; it’s awfully interesting,” said Missy,
+laying, it seemed to Nekhludoff, a very affected stress on the word
+“awfully.” Then a dispute arose in which Michael Sergeivitch, Katerina
+Alexeevna and all the others took part, except the governess, the
+student and the children, who sat silent and wearied.
+
+“Oh, these everlasting disputes!” said old Korchagin, laughing, and he
+pulled the napkin out of his waistcoat, noisily pushed back his chair,
+which the footman instantly caught hold of, and left the table.
+
+Everybody rose after him, and went up to another table on which stood
+glasses of scented water. They rinsed their mouths, then resumed the
+conversation, interesting to no one.
+
+“Don’t you think so?” said Missy to Nekhludoff, calling for a
+confirmation of the statement that nothing shows up a man’s character
+like a game. She noticed that preoccupied and, as it seemed to her,
+dissatisfied look which she feared, and she wanted to find out what had
+caused it.
+
+“Really, I can’t tell; I have never thought about it,” Nekhludoff
+answered.
+
+“Will you come to mamma?” asked Missy.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he said, in a tone which plainly proved that he did not want
+to go, and took out a cigarette.
+
+She looked at him in silence, with a questioning look, and he felt
+ashamed. “To come into a house and give the people the dumps,” he
+thought about himself; then, trying to be amiable, said that he would go
+with pleasure if the princess would admit him.
+
+“Oh, yes! Mamma will be pleased. You may smoke there; and Ivan
+Ivanovitch is also there.”
+
+The mistress of the house, Princess Sophia Vasilievna, was a recumbent
+lady. It was the eighth year that, when visitors were present, she lay
+in lace and ribbons, surrounded with velvet, gilding, ivory, bronze,
+lacquer and flowers, never going out, and only, as she put it, receiving
+intimate friends, i.e., those who according to her idea stood out from
+the common herd.
+
+Nekhludoff was admitted into the number of these friends because he was
+considered clever, because his mother had been an intimate friend of the
+family, and because it was desirable that Missy should marry him.
+
+Sophia Vasilievna’s room lay beyond the large and the small
+drawing-rooms. In the large drawing-room, Missy, who was in front of
+Nekhludoff, stopped resolutely, and taking hold of the back of a small
+green chair, faced him.
+
+Missy was very anxious to get married, and as he was a suitable match
+and she also liked him, she had accustomed herself to the thought that
+he should be hers (not she his). To lose him would be very mortifying.
+She now began talking to him in order to get him to explain his
+intentions.
+
+“I see something has happened,” she said. “Tell me, what is the matter
+with you?”
+
+He remembered the meeting in the law court, and frowned and blushed.
+
+“Yes, something has happened,” he said, wishing to be truthful; “a very
+unusual and serious event.”
+
+“What is it, then? Can you not tell me what it is?” She was pursuing her
+aim with that unconscious yet obstinate cunning often observable in the
+mentally diseased.
+
+“Not now. Please do not ask me to tell you. I have not yet had time
+fully to consider it,” and he blushed still more.
+
+“And so you will not tell me?” A muscle twitched in her face and she
+pushed back the chair she was holding. “Well then, come!” She shook her
+head as if to expel useless thoughts, and, faster than usual, went on in
+front of him.
+
+He fancied that her mouth was unnaturally compressed in order to keep
+back the tears. He was ashamed of having hurt her, and yet he knew that
+the least weakness on his part would mean disaster, i.e., would bind
+him to her. And to-day he feared this more than anything, and silently
+followed her to the princess’s cabinet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+MISSY’S MOTHER.
+
+Princess Sophia Vasilievna, Missy’s mother, had finished her very
+elaborate and nourishing dinner. (She had it always alone, that no one
+should see her performing this unpoetical function.) By her couch stood
+a small table with her coffee, and she was smoking a pachitos. Princess
+Sophia Vasilievna was a long, thin woman, with dark hair, large black
+eyes and long teeth, and still pretended to be young.
+
+Her intimacy with the doctor was being talked about. Nekhludoff had
+known that for some time; but when he saw the doctor sitting by her
+couch, his oily, glistening beard parted in the middle, he not only
+remembered the rumours about them, but felt greatly disgusted. By
+the table, on a low, soft, easy chair, next to Sophia Vasilievna, sat
+Kolosoff, stirring his coffee. A glass of liqueur stood on the table.
+Missy came in with Nekhludoff, but did not remain in the room.
+
+“When mamma gets tired of you and drives you away, then come to me,”
+ she said, turning to Kolosoff and Nekhludoff, speaking as if nothing had
+occurred; then she went away, smiling merrily and stepping noiselessly
+on the thick carpet.
+
+“How do you do, dear friend? Sit down and talk,” said Princess Sophia
+Vasilievna, with her affected but very naturally-acted smile, showing
+her fine, long teeth--a splendid imitation of what her own had
+once been. “I hear that you have come from the Law Courts very much
+depressed. I think it must be very trying to a person with a heart,” she
+added in French.
+
+“Yes, that is so,” said Nekhludoff. “One often feels one’s own de--one
+feels one has no right to judge.”
+
+“Comme, c’est vrai,” she cried, as if struck by the truth of this
+remark. She was in the habit of artfully flattering all those with whom
+she conversed. “Well, and what of your picture? It does interest me so.
+If I were not such a sad invalid I should have been to see it long ago,”
+ she said.
+
+“I have quite given it up,” Nekhludoff replied drily. The falseness of
+her flattery seemed as evident to him to-day as her age, which she was
+trying to conceal, and he could not put himself into the right state to
+behave politely.
+
+“Oh, that _is_ a pity! Why, he has a real talent for art; I have it from
+Repin’s own lips,” she added, turning to Kolosoff.
+
+“Why is it she is not ashamed of lying so?” Nekhludoff thought, and
+frowned.
+
+When she had convinced herself that Nekhludoff was in a bad temper and
+that one could not get him into an agreeable and clever conversation,
+Sophia Vasilievna turned to Kolosoff, asking his opinion of a new play.
+She asked it in a tone as if Kolosoff’s opinion would decide all doubts,
+and each word of this opinion be worthy of being immortalised. Kolosoff
+found fault both with the play and its author, and that led him to
+express his views on art. Princess Sophia Vasilievna, while trying at
+the same time to defend the play, seemed impressed by the truth of his
+arguments, either giving in at once, or at least modifying her opinion.
+Nekhludoff looked and listened, but neither saw nor heard what was going
+on before him.
+
+Listening now to Sophia Vasilievna, now to Kolosoff, Nekhludoff noticed
+that neither he nor she cared anything about the play or each other, and
+that if they talked it was only to gratify the physical desire to
+move the muscles of the throat and tongue after having eaten; and that
+Kolosoff, having drunk vodka, wine and liqueur, was a little tipsy.
+Not tipsy like the peasants who drink seldom, but like people to
+whom drinking wine has become a habit. He did not reel about or talk
+nonsense, but he was in a state that was not normal; excited and
+self-satisfied. Nekhludoff also noticed that during the conversation
+Princess Sophia Vasilievna kept glancing uneasily at the window, through
+which a slanting ray of sunshine, which might vividly light up her aged
+face, was beginning to creep up.
+
+“How true,” she said in reference to some remark of Kolosoff’s, touching
+the button of an electric bell by the side of her couch. The doctor
+rose, and, like one who is at home, left the room without saying
+anything. Sophia Vasilievna followed him with her eyes and continued the
+conversation.
+
+“Please, Philip, draw these curtains,” she said, pointing to the window,
+when the handsome footman came in answer to the bell. “No; whatever you
+may say, there is some mysticism in him; without mysticism there can be
+no poetry,” she said, with one of her black eyes angrily following the
+footman’s movements as he was drawing the curtains. “Without poetry,
+mysticism is superstition; without mysticism, poetry is--prose,” she
+continued, with a sorrowful smile, still not losing sight of the footman
+and the curtains. “Philip, not that curtain; the one on the large
+window,” she exclaimed, in a suffering tone. Sophia Vasilievna was
+evidently pitying herself for having to make the effort of saying these
+words; and, to soothe her feelings, she raised to her lips a scented,
+smoking cigarette with her jewel-bedecked fingers.
+
+The broad-chested, muscular, handsome Philip bowed slightly, as
+if begging pardon; and stepping lightly across the carpet with his
+broad-calved, strong, legs, obediently and silently went to the other
+window, and, looking at the princess, carefully began to arrange the
+curtain so that not a single ray dared fall on her. But again he did
+not satisfy her, and again she had to interrupt the conversation about
+mysticism, and correct in a martyred tone the unintelligent Philip,
+who was tormenting her so pitilessly. For a moment a light flashed in
+Philip’s eyes.
+
+“‘The devil take you! What do you want?’ was probably what he said to
+himself,” thought Nekhludoff, who had been observing all this scene. But
+the strong, handsome Philip at once managed to conceal the signs of his
+impatience, and went on quietly carrying out the orders of the worn,
+weak, false Sophia Vasilievna.
+
+“Of course, there is a good deal of truth in Lombroso’s teaching,” said
+Kolosoff, lolling back in the low chair and looking at Sophia Vasilievna
+with sleepy eyes; “but he over-stepped the mark. Oh, yes.”
+
+“And you? Do you believe in heredity?” asked Sophia Vasilievna, turning
+to Nekhludoff, whose silence annoyed her. “In heredity?” he asked. “No,
+I don’t.” At this moment his whole mind was taken up by strange images
+that in some unaccountable way rose up in his imagination. By the side
+of this strong and handsome Philip he seemed at this minute to see the
+nude figure of Kolosoff as an artist’s model; with his stomach like a
+melon, his bald head, and his arms without muscle, like pestles. In the
+same dim way the limbs of Sophia Vasilievna, now covered with silks and
+velvets, rose up in his mind as they must be in reality; but this mental
+picture was too horrid and he tried to drive it away.
+
+“Well, you know Missy is waiting for you,” she said. “Go and find her.
+She wants to play a new piece by Grieg to you; it is most interesting.”
+
+“She did not mean to play anything; the woman is simply lying, for
+some reason or other,” thought Nekhludoff, rising and pressing Sophia
+Vasilievna’s transparent and bony, ringed hand.
+
+Katerina Alexeevna met him in the drawing-room, and at once began, in
+French, as usual:
+
+“I see the duties of a juryman act depressingly upon you.”
+
+“Yes; pardon me, I am in low spirits to-day, and have no right to weary
+others by my presence,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Why are you in low spirits?”
+
+“Allow me not to speak about that,” he said, looking round for his hat.
+
+“Don’t you remember how you used to say that we must always tell the
+truth? And what cruel truths you used to tell us all! Why do you not
+wish to speak out now? Don’t you remember, Missy?” she said, turning to
+Missy, who had just come in.
+
+“We were playing a game then,” said Nekhludoff, seriously; “one may
+tell the truth in a game, but in reality we are so bad--I mean I am so
+bad--that I, at least, cannot tell the truth.”
+
+“Oh, do not correct yourself, but rather tell us why _we_ are so bad,”
+ said Katerina Alexeevna, playing with her words and pretending not to
+notice how serious Nekhludoff was.
+
+“Nothing is worse than to confess to being in low spirits,” said Missy.
+“I never do it, and therefore am always in good spirits.”
+
+Nekhludoff felt as a horse must feel when it is being caressed to make
+it submit to having the bit put in its mouth and be harnessed, and
+to-day he felt less than ever inclined to draw.
+
+“Well, are you coming into my room? We will try to cheer you up.”
+
+He excused himself, saying he had to be at home, and began taking leave.
+Missy kept his hand longer than usual.
+
+“Remember that what is important to you is important to your friends,”
+ she said. “Are you coming tomorrow?”
+
+“I hardly expect to,” said Nekhludoff; and feeling ashamed, without
+knowing whether for her or for himself, he blushed and went away.
+
+“What is it? _Comme cela m’intrigue_,” said Katerina Alexeevna. “I must
+find it out. I suppose it is some _affaire d’amour propre; il est tres
+susceptible, notre cher Mitia_.”
+
+“_Plutot une affaire d’amour sale_,” Missy was going to say, but stopped
+and looked down with a face from which all the light had gone--a very
+different face from the one with which she had looked at him. She would
+not mention to Katerina Alexeevna even, so vulgar a pun, but only said,
+“We all have our good and our bad days.”
+
+“Is it possible that he, too, will deceive?” she thought; “after all
+that has happened it would be very bad of him.”
+
+If Missy had had to explain what she meant by “after all that has
+happened,” she could have said nothing definite, and yet she knew that
+he had not only excited her hopes but had almost given her a promise. No
+definite words had passed between them--only looks and smiles and hints;
+and yet she considered him as her own, and to lose him would be very
+hard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+THE AWAKENING.
+
+“Shameful and stupid, horrid and shameful!” Nekhludoff kept saying to
+himself, as he walked home along the familiar streets. The depression
+he had felt whilst speaking to Missy would not leave him. He felt that,
+looking at it externally, as it were, he was in the right, for he had
+never said anything to her that could be considered binding, never made
+her an offer; but he knew that in reality he had bound himself to her,
+had promised to be hers. And yet to-day he felt with his whole being
+that he could not marry her.
+
+“Shameful and horrid, horrid and shameful!” he repeated to himself, with
+reference not only to his relations with Missy but also to the rest.
+“Everything is horrid and shameful,” he muttered, as he stepped into the
+porch of his house. “I am not going to have any supper,” he said to
+his manservant Corney, who followed him into the dining-room, where the
+cloth was laid for supper and tea. “You may go.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Corney, yet he did not go, but began clearing the
+supper off the table. Nekhludoff looked at Corney with a feeling
+of ill-will. He wished to be left alone, and it seemed to him that
+everybody was bothering him in order to spite him. When Corney had gone
+away with the supper things, Nekhludoff moved to the tea urn and
+was about to make himself some tea, but hearing Agraphena Petrovna’s
+footsteps, he went hurriedly into the drawing-room, to avoid being seen
+by her, and shut the door after him. In this drawing-room his mother had
+died three months before. On entering the room, in which two lamps with
+reflectors were burning, one lighting up his father’s and the other his
+mother’s portrait, he remembered what his last relations with his mother
+had been. And they also seemed shameful and horrid. He remembered how,
+during the latter period of her illness, he had simply wished her to
+die. He had said to himself that he wished it for her sake, that she
+might be released from her suffering, but in reality he wished to be
+released from the sight of her sufferings for his own sake.
+
+Trying to recall a pleasant image of her, he went up to look at her
+portrait, painted by a celebrated artist for 800 roubles. She was
+depicted in a very low-necked black velvet dress. There was something
+very revolting and blasphemous in this representation of his mother as
+a half-nude beauty. It was all the more disgusting because three months
+ago, in this very room, lay this same woman, dried up to a mummy. And he
+remembered how a few days before her death she clasped his hand with her
+bony, discoloured fingers, looked into his eyes, and said: “Do not judge
+me, Mitia, if I have not done what I should,” and how the tears came
+into her eyes, grown pale with suffering.
+
+“Ah, how horrid!” he said to himself, looking up once more at the
+half-naked woman, with the splendid marble shoulders and arms, and the
+triumphant smile on her lips. “Oh, how horrid!” The bared shoulders of
+the portrait reminded him of another, a young woman, whom he had seen
+exposed in the same way a few days before. It was Missy, who had devised
+an excuse for calling him into her room just as she was ready to go to
+a ball, so that he should see her in her ball dress. It was with disgust
+that he remembered her fine shoulders and arms. “And that father of
+hers, with his doubtful past and his cruelties, and the bel-esprit her
+mother, with her doubtful reputation.” All this disgusted him, and also
+made him feel ashamed. “Shameful and horrid; horrid and shameful!”
+
+“No, no,” he thought; “freedom from all these false relations with the
+Korchagins and Mary Vasilievna and the inheritance and from all the rest
+must be got. Oh, to breathe freely, to go abroad, to Rome and work at
+my picture!” He remembered the doubts he had about his talent for art.
+“Well, never mind; only just to breathe freely. First Constantinople,
+then Rome. Only just to get through with this jury business, and arrange
+with the advocate first.”
+
+Then suddenly there arose in his mind an extremely vivid picture of a
+prisoner with black, slightly-squinting eyes, and how she began to cry
+when the last words of the prisoners had been heard; and he hurriedly
+put out his cigarette, pressing it into the ash-pan, lit another, and
+began pacing up and down the room. One after another the scenes he had
+lived through with her rose in his mind. He recalled that last interview
+with her. He remembered the white dress and blue sash, the early mass.
+“Why, I loved her, really loved her with a good, pure love, that night;
+I loved her even before: yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the
+first time and was writing my composition.” And he remembered himself as
+he had been then. A breath of that freshness, youth and fulness of life
+seemed to touch him, and he grew painfully sad. The difference between
+what he had been then and what he was now, was enormous--just as great,
+if not greater than the difference between Katusha in church that night,
+and the prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom
+they judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable
+possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught
+in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of
+which he saw no means of extricating himself even if he wished to,
+which he hardly did. He remembered how proud he was at one time of
+his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the
+truth, and really had been truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in
+lies: in the most dreadful of lies--lies considered as the truth by all
+who surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there was no way out of
+these lies. He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, indulged himself in
+it.
+
+How was he to break off his relations with Mary Vasilievna and her
+husband in such a way as to be able to look him and his children in the
+eyes? How disentangle himself from Missy? How choose between the two
+opposites--the recognition that holding land was unjust and the heritage
+from his mother? How atone for his sin against Katusha? This last, at
+any rate, could not be left as it was. He could not abandon a woman he
+had loved, and satisfy himself by paying money to an advocate to save
+her from hard labour in Siberia. She had not even deserved hard labour.
+Atone for a fault by paying money? Had he not then, when he gave her the
+money, thought he was atoning for his fault?
+
+And he clearly recalled to mind that moment when, having caught her up
+in the passage, he thrust the money into her bib and ran away. “Oh, that
+money!” he thought with the same horror and disgust he had then felt.
+“Oh, dear! oh, dear! how disgusting,” he cried aloud as he had done
+then. “Only a scoundrel, a knave, could do such a thing. And I am that
+knave, that scoundrel!” He went on aloud: “But is it possible?”--he
+stopped and stood still--“is it possible that I am really a scoundrel?
+. . . Well, who but I?” he answered himself. “And then, is this the only
+thing?” he went on, convicting himself. “Was not my conduct towards Mary
+Vasilievna and her husband base and disgusting? And my position with
+regard to money? To use riches considered by me unlawful on the plea
+that they are inherited from my mother? And the whole of my idle,
+detestable life? And my conduct towards Katusha to crown all? Knave and
+scoundrel! Let men judge me as they like, I can deceive them; but myself
+I cannot deceive.”
+
+And, suddenly, he understood that the aversion he had lately, and
+particularly to-day, felt for everybody--the Prince and Sophia
+Vasilievna and Corney and Missy--was an aversion for himself. And,
+strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was
+something painful yet joyful and quieting.
+
+More than once in Nekhludoff’s life there had been what he called a
+“cleansing of the soul.” By “cleansing of the soul” he meant a state
+of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life, a total
+cessation of its activity, he began to clear out all the rubbish that
+had accumulated in his soul, and was the cause of the cessation of the
+true life. His soul needed cleansing as a watch does. After such an
+awakening Nekhludoff always made some rules for himself which he meant
+to follow forever after, wrote his diary, and began afresh a life which
+he hoped never to change again. “Turning over a new leaf,” he called
+it to himself in English. But each time the temptations of the world
+entrapped him, and without noticing it he fell again, often lower than
+before.
+
+Thus he had several times in his life raised and cleansed himself. The
+first time this happened was during the summer he spent with his aunts;
+that was his most vital and rapturous awakening, and its effects had
+lasted some time. Another awakening was when he gave up civil service
+and joined the army at war time, ready to sacrifice his life. But here
+the choking-up process was soon accomplished. Then an awakening came
+when he left the army and went abroad, devoting himself to art.
+
+From that time until this day a long period had elapsed without
+any cleansing, and therefore the discord between the demands of his
+conscience and the life he was leading was greater than it had ever been
+before. He was horror-struck when he saw how great the divergence was.
+It was so great and the defilement so complete that he despaired of the
+possibility of getting cleansed. “Have you not tried before to perfect
+yourself and become better, and nothing has come of it?” whispered the
+voice of the tempter within. “What is the use of trying any more? Are
+you the only one?--All are alike, such is life,” whispered the voice.
+But the free spiritual being, which alone is true, alone powerful,
+alone eternal, had already awakened in Nekhludoff, and he could not but
+believe it. Enormous though the distance was between what he wished
+to be and what he was, nothing appeared insurmountable to the
+newly-awakened spiritual being.
+
+“At any cost I will break this lie which binds me and confess
+everything, and will tell everybody the truth, and act the truth,” he
+said resolutely, aloud. “I shall tell Missy the truth, tell her I am a
+profligate and cannot marry her, and have only uselessly upset her.
+I shall tell Mary Vasilievna. . . Oh, there is nothing to tell her. I
+shall tell her husband that I, scoundrel that I am, have been deceiving
+him. I shall dispose of the inheritance in such a way as to acknowledge
+the truth. I shall tell her, Katusha, that I am a scoundrel and have
+sinned towards her, and will do all I can to ease her lot. Yes, I will
+see her, and will ask her to forgive me.
+
+“Yes, I will beg her pardon, as children do.” . . . He stopped---“will
+marry her if necessary.” He stopped again, folded his hands in front of
+his breast as he used to do when a little child, lifted his eyes, and
+said, addressing some one: “Lord, help me, teach me, come enter within
+me and purify me of all this abomination.”
+
+He prayed, asking God to help him, to enter into him and cleanse him;
+and what he was praying for had happened already: the God within him had
+awakened his consciousness. He felt himself one with Him, and therefore
+felt not only the freedom, fulness and joy of life, but all the power of
+righteousness. All, all the best that a man could do he felt capable of
+doing.
+
+His eyes filled with tears as he was saying all this to himself, good
+and bad tears: good because they were tears of joy at the awakening
+of the spiritual being within him, the being which had been asleep all
+these years; and bad tears because they were tears of tenderness to
+himself at his own goodness.
+
+He felt hot, and went to the window and opened it. The window opened
+into a garden. It was a moonlit, quiet, fresh night; a vehicle rattled
+past, and then all was still. The shadow of a tall poplar fell on the
+ground just opposite the window, and all the intricate pattern of its
+bare branches was clearly defined on the clean swept gravel. To the left
+the roof of a coach-house shone white in the moonlight, in front the
+black shadow of the garden wall was visible through the tangled branches
+of the trees.
+
+Nekhludoff gazed at the roof, the moonlit garden, and the shadows of the
+poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.
+
+“How delightful, how delightful; oh, God, how delightful,” he said,
+meaning that which was going on in his soul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+
+Maslova reached her cell only at six in the evening, tired and footsore,
+having, unaccustomed as she was to walking, gone 10 miles on the stony
+road that day. She was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence and
+tormented by hunger. During the first interval of her trial, when the
+soldiers were eating bread and hard-boiled eggs in her presence, her
+mouth watered and she realised she was hungry, but considered it beneath
+her dignity to beg of them. Three hours later the desire to eat had
+passed, and she felt only weak. It was then she received the unexpected
+sentence. At first she thought she had made a mistake; she could not
+imagine herself as a convict in Siberia, and could not believe what she
+heard. But seeing the quiet, business-like faces of judges and jury, who
+heard this news as if it were perfectly natural and expected, she grew
+indignant, and proclaimed loudly to the whole Court that she was not
+guilty. Finding that her cry was also taken as something natural
+and expected, and feeling incapable of altering matters, she was
+horror-struck and began to weep in despair, knowing that she must submit
+to the cruel and surprising injustice that had been done her. What
+astonished her most was that young men--or, at any rate, not old
+men--the same men who always looked so approvingly at her (one of them,
+the public prosecutor, she had seen in quite a different humour) had
+condemned her. While she was sitting in the prisoners’ room before the
+trial and during the intervals, she saw these men looking in at the open
+door pretending they had to pass there on some business, or enter the
+room and gaze on her with approval. And then, for some unknown reason,
+these same men had condemned her to hard labour, though she was innocent
+of the charge laid against her. At first she cried, but then quieted
+down and sat perfectly stunned in the prisoners’ room, waiting to be led
+back. She wanted only two things now--tobacco and strong drink. In this
+state Botchkova and Kartinkin found her when they were led into the same
+room after being sentenced. Botchkova began at once to scold her, and
+call her a “convict.”
+
+“Well! What have you gained? justified yourself, have you? What you have
+deserved, that you’ve got. Out in Siberia you’ll give up your finery, no
+fear!”
+
+Maslova sat with her hands inside her sleeves, hanging her head and
+looking in front of her at the dirty floor without moving, only saying:
+“I don’t bother you, so don’t you bother me. I don’t bother you, do I?”
+ she repeated this several times, and was silent again. She did brighten
+up a little when Botchkova and Kartinkin were led away and an attendant
+brought her three roubles.
+
+“Are you Maslova?” he asked. “Here you are; a lady sent it you,” he
+said, giving her the money.
+
+“A lady--what lady?”
+
+“You just take it. I’m not going to talk to you.”
+
+This money was sent by Kitaeva, the keeper of the house in which she
+used to live. As she was leaving the court she turned to the usher with
+the question whether she might give Maslova a little money. The usher
+said she might. Having got permission, she removed the three-buttoned
+Swedish kid glove from her plump, white hand, and from an elegant purse
+brought from the back folds of her silk skirt took a pile of coupons,
+[in Russia coupons cut off interest-bearing papers are often used as
+money] just cut off from the interest-bearing papers which she had
+earned in her establishment, chose one worth 2 roubles and 50 copecks,
+added two 20 and one 10-copeck coins, and gave all this to the usher.
+The usher called an attendant, and in his presence gave the money.
+
+“Belease to giff it accurately,” said Carolina Albertovna Kitaeva.
+
+The attendant was hurt by her want of confidence, and that was why he
+treated Maslova so brusquely. Maslova was glad of the money, because
+it could give her the only thing she now desired. “If I could but get
+cigarettes and take a whiff!” she said to herself, and all her thoughts
+centred on the one desire to smoke and drink. She longed for spirits so
+that she tasted them and felt the strength they would give her; and she
+greedily breathed in the air when the fumes of tobacco reached her from
+the door of a room that opened into the corridor. But she had to wait
+long, for the secretary, who should have given the order for her to go,
+forgot about the prisoners while talking and even disputing with one of
+the advocates about the article forbidden by the censor.
+
+At last, about five o’clock, she was allowed to go, and was led away
+through the back door by her escort, the Nijni man and the Tchoovash.
+Then, still within the entrance to the Law Courts, she gave them 50
+copecks, asking them to get her two rolls and some cigarettes. The
+Tchoovash laughed, took the money, and said, “All right; I’ll get ‘em,”
+ and really got her the rolls and the cigarettes and honestly returned
+the change. She was not allowed to smoke on the way, and, with her
+craving unsatisfied, she continued her way to the prison. When she was
+brought to the gate of the prison, a hundred convicts who had arrived by
+rail were being led in. The convicts, bearded, clean-shaven, old, young,
+Russians, foreigners, some with their heads shaved and rattling with the
+chains on their feet, filled the anteroom with dust, noise and an acid
+smell of perspiration. Passing Maslova, all the convicts looked at her,
+and some came up to her and brushed her as they passed.
+
+“Ay, here’s a wench--a fine one,” said one.
+
+“My respects to you, miss,” said another, winking at her. One dark man
+with a moustache, the rest of his face and the back of his head clean
+shaved, rattling with his chains and catching her feet in them, sprang
+near and embraced her.
+
+“What! don’t you know your chum? Come, come; don’t give yourself airs,”
+ showing his teeth and his eyes glittering when she pushed him away.
+
+“You rascal! what are you up to?” shouted the inspector’s assistant,
+coming in from behind. The convict shrank back and jumped away. The
+assistant assailed Maslova.
+
+“What are you here for?”
+
+Maslova was going to say she had been brought back from the Law Courts,
+but she was so tired that she did not care to speak.
+
+“She has returned from the Law Courts, sir,” said one of the soldiers,
+coming forward with his fingers lifted to his cap.
+
+“Well, hand her over to the chief warder. I won’t have this sort of
+thing.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Sokoloff, take her in!” shouted the assistant inspector.
+
+The chief warder came up, gave Maslova a slap on the shoulder, and
+making a sign with his head for her to follow led her into the corridor
+of the women’s ward. There she was searched, and as nothing prohibited
+was found on her (she had hidden her box of cigarettes inside a roll)
+she was led to the cell she had left in the morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE CELL.
+
+The cell in which Maslova was imprisoned was a large room 21 feet long
+and 10 feet broad; it had two windows and a large stove. Two-thirds of
+the space were taken up by shelves used as beds. The planks they were
+made of had warped and shrunk. Opposite the door hung a dark-coloured
+icon with a wax candle sticking to it and a bunch of everlastings
+hanging down from it. By the door to the right there was a dark spot on
+the floor on which stood a stinking tub. The inspection had taken place
+and the women were locked up for the night.
+
+The occupants of this room were 15 persons, including three children.
+It was still quite light. Only two of the women were lying down: a
+consumptive woman imprisoned for theft, and an idiot who spent most of
+her time in sleep and who was arrested because she had no passport. The
+consumptive woman was not asleep, but lay with wide open eyes, her cloak
+folded under her head, trying to keep back the phlegm that irritated her
+throat, and not to cough.
+
+Some of the other women, most of whom had nothing on but coarse brown
+holland chemises, stood looking out of the window at the convicts down
+in the yard, and some sat sewing. Among the latter was the old woman,
+Korableva, who had seen Maslova off in the morning. She was a tall,
+strong, gloomy-looking woman; her fair hair, which had begun to turn
+grey on the temples, hung down in a short plait. She was sentenced to
+hard labour in Siberia because she had killed her husband with an axe
+for making up to their daughter. She was at the head of the women in
+the cell, and found means of carrying on a trade in spirits with them.
+Beside her sat another woman sewing a coarse canvas sack. This was the
+wife of a railway watchman, [There are small watchmen’s cottages at
+distances of about one mile from each other along the Russian railways,
+and the watchmen or their wives have to meet every train.] imprisoned
+for three months because she did not come out with the flags to meet a
+train that was passing, and an accident had occurred. She was a short,
+snub-nosed woman, with small, black eyes; kind and talkative. The third
+of the women who were sewing was Theodosia, a quiet young girl, white
+and rosy, very pretty, with bright child’s eyes, and long fair plaits
+which she wore twisted round her head. She was in prison for attempting
+to poison her husband. She had done this immediately after her wedding
+(she had been given in marriage without her consent at the age of 16)
+because her husband would give her no peace. But in the eight months
+during which she had been let out on bail, she had not only made it up
+with her husband, but come to love him, so that when her trial came
+they were heart and soul to one another. Although her husband, her
+father-in-law, but especially her mother-in-law, who had grown very fond
+of her, did all they could to get her acquitted, she was sentenced to
+hard labour in Siberia. The kind, merry, ever-smiling Theodosia had a
+place next Maslova’s on the shelf bed, and had grown so fond of her that
+she took it upon herself as a duty to attend and wait on her. Two
+other women were sitting without any work at the other end of the shelf
+bedstead. One was a woman of about 40, with a pale, thin face, who once
+probably had been very handsome. She sat with her baby at her thin,
+white breast. The crime she had committed was that when a recruit was,
+according to the peasants’ view, unlawfully taken from their village,
+and the people stopped the police officer and took the recruit away from
+him, she (an aunt of the lad unlawfully taken) was the first to catch
+hold of the bridle of the horse on which he was being carried off.
+The other, who sat doing nothing, was a kindly, grey-haired old woman,
+hunchbacked and with a flat bosom. She sat behind the stove on the
+bedshelf, and pretended to catch a fat four-year-old boy, who ran
+backwards and forwards in front of her, laughing gaily. This boy had
+only a little shirt on and his hair was cut short. As he ran past the
+old woman he kept repeating, “There, haven’t caught me!” This old woman
+and her son were accused of incendiarism. She bore her imprisonment with
+perfect cheerfulness, but was concerned about her son, and chiefly about
+her “old man,” who she feared would get into a terrible state with no
+one to wash for him. Besides these seven women, there were four standing
+at one of the open windows, holding on to the iron bars. They were
+making signs and shouting to the convicts whom Maslova had met when
+returning to prison, and who were now passing through the yard. One
+of these women was big and heavy, with a flabby body, red hair, and
+freckled on her pale yellow face, her hands, and her fat neck. She
+shouted something in a loud, raucous voice, and laughed hoarsely. This
+woman was serving her term for theft. Beside her stood an awkward, dark
+little woman, no bigger than a child of ten, with a long waist and very
+short legs, a red, blotchy face, thick lips which did not hide her
+long teeth, and eyes too far apart. She broke by fits and starts into
+screeching laughter at what was going on in the yard. She was to be
+tried for stealing and incendiarism. They called her Khoroshavka. Behind
+her, in a very dirty grey chemise, stood a thin, miserable-looking
+pregnant woman, who was to be tried for concealment of theft. This woman
+stood silent, but kept smiling with pleasure and approval at what was
+going on below. With these stood a peasant woman of medium height,
+the mother of the boy who was playing with the old woman and of a
+seven-year-old girl. These were in prison with her because she had no
+one to leave them with. She was serving her term of imprisonment for
+illicit sale of spirits. She stood a little further from the window
+knitting a stocking, and though she listened to the other prisoners’
+words she shook her head disapprovingly, frowned, and closed her eyes.
+But her seven-year-old daughter stood in her little chemise, her flaxen
+hair done up in a little pigtail, her blue eyes fixed, and, holding
+the red-haired woman by the skirt, attentively listened to the words of
+abuse that the women and the convicts flung at each other, and repeated
+them softly, as if learning them by heart. The twelfth prisoner, who
+paid no attention to what was going on, was a very tall, stately girl,
+the daughter of a deacon, who had drowned her baby in a well. She went
+about with bare feet, wearing only a dirty chemise. The thick, short
+plait of her fair hair had come undone and hung down dishevelled, and
+she paced up and down the free space of the cell, not looking at any
+one, turning abruptly every time she came up to the wall.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+THE PRISONERS.
+
+When the padlock rattled and the door opened to let Maslova into the
+cell, all turned towards her. Even the deacon’s daughter stopped for a
+moment and looked at her with lifted brows before resuming her steady
+striding up and down.
+
+Korableva stuck her needle into the brown sacking and looked
+questioningly at Maslova through her spectacles. “Eh, eh, deary me, so
+you have come back. And I felt sure they’d acquit you. So you’ve got
+it?” She took off her spectacles and put her work down beside her on the
+shelf bed.
+
+“And here have I and the old lady been saying, ‘Why, it may well be
+they’ll let her go free at once.’ Why, it happens, ducky, they’ll even
+give you a heap of money sometimes, that’s sure,” the watchman’s wife
+began, in her singing voice: “Yes, we were wondering, ‘Why’s she so
+long?’ And now just see what it is. Well, our guessing was no use. The
+Lord willed otherwise,” she went on in musical tones.
+
+“Is it possible? Have they sentenced you?” asked Theodosia, with
+concern, looking at Maslova with her bright blue, child-like eyes; and
+her merry young face changed as if she were going to cry.
+
+Maslova did not answer, but went on to her place, the second from the
+end, and sat down beside Korableva.
+
+“Have you eaten anything?” said Theodosia, rising and coming up to
+Maslova.
+
+Maslova gave no reply, but putting the rolls on the bedstead, took
+off her dusty cloak, the kerchief off her curly black head, and began
+pulling off her shoes. The old woman who had been playing with the boy
+came up and stood in front of Maslova. “Tz, tz, tz,” she clicked with
+her tongue, shaking her head pityingly. The boy also came up with her,
+and, putting out his upper lip, stared with wide open eyes at the roll
+Maslova had brought. When Maslova saw the sympathetic faces of her
+fellow-prisoners, her lips trembled and she felt inclined to cry, but
+she succeeded in restraining herself until the old woman and the boy
+came up. When she heard the kind, pitying clicking of the old woman’s
+tongue, and met the boy’s serious eyes turned from the roll to her face,
+she could bear it no longer; her face quivered and she burst into sobs.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you to insist on having a proper advocate?” said
+Norableva. “Well, what is it? Exile?”
+
+Maslova could not answer, but took from inside the roll a box of
+cigarettes, on which was a picture of a lady with hair done up very high
+and dress cut low in front, and passed the box to Korableva. Korableva
+looked at it and shook her head, chiefly because see did not approve of
+Maslova’s putting her money to such bad use; but still she took out a
+cigarette, lit it at the lamp, took a puff, and almost forced it into
+Maslova’s hand. Maslova, still crying, began greedily to inhale the
+tobacco smoke. “Penal servitude,” she muttered, blowing out the smoke
+and sobbing.
+
+“Don’t they fear the Lord, the cursed soul-slayers?” muttered Korableva,
+“sentencing the lass for nothing.” At this moment the sound of loud,
+coarse laughter came from the women who were still at the window. The
+little girl also laughed, and her childish treble mixed with the hoarse
+and screeching laughter of the others. One of the convicts outside had
+done something that produced this effect on the onlookers.
+
+“Lawks! see the shaved hound, what he’s doing,” said the red-haired
+woman, her whole fat body shaking with laughter; and leaning against the
+grating she shouted meaning less obscene words.
+
+“Ugh, the fat fright’s cackling,” said Korableva, who disliked the
+red-haired woman. Then, turning to Maslova again, she asked: “How many
+years?”
+
+“Four,” said Maslova, and the tears ran down her cheeks in such
+profusion that one fell on the cigarette. Maslova crumpled it up angrily
+and took another.
+
+Though the watchman’s wife did not smoke she picked up the cigarette
+Maslova had thrown away and began straightening it out, talking
+unceasingly.
+
+“There, now, ducky, so it’s true,” she said. “Truth’s gone to the dogs
+and they do what they please, and here we were guessing that you’d go
+free. Norableva says, ‘She’ll go free.’ I say, ‘No,’ say I. ‘No, dear,
+my heart tells me they’ll give it her.’ And so it’s turned out,” she
+went on, evidently listening with pleasure to her own voice.
+
+The women who had been standing by the window now also came up to
+Maslova, the convicts who had amused them having gone away. The first to
+come up were the woman imprisoned for illicit trade in spirits, and her
+little girl. “Why such a hard sentence?” asked the woman, sitting down
+by Maslova and knitting fast.
+
+“Why so hard? Because there’s no money. That’s why! Had there been
+money, and had a good lawyer that’s up to their tricks been hired,
+they’d have acquitted her, no fear,” said Korableva. “There’s
+what’s-his-name--that hairy one with the long nose. He’d bring you out
+clean from pitch, mum, he would. Ah, if we’d only had him!”
+
+“Him, indeed,” said Khoroshavka. “Why, he won’t spit at you for less
+than a thousand roubles.”
+
+“Seems you’ve been born under an unlucky star,” interrupted the old
+woman who was imprisoned for incendiarism. “Only think, to entice the
+lad’s wife and lock him himself up to feed vermin, and me, too, in my
+old days--” she began to retell her story for the hundredth time. “If
+it isn’t the beggar’s staff it’s the prison. Yes, the beggar’s staff and
+the prison don’t wait for an invitation.”
+
+“Ah, it seems that’s the way with all of them,” said the spirit trader;
+and after looking at her little girl she put down her knitting, and,
+drawing the child between her knees, began to search her head with deft
+fingers. “Why do you sell spirits?” she went on. “Why? but what’s one to
+feed the children on?”
+
+These words brought back to Maslova’s mind her craving for drink.
+
+“A little vodka,” she said to Korableva, wiping the tears with her
+sleeve and sobbing less frequently.
+
+“All right, fork out,” said Korableva.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+A PRISON QUARREL.
+
+Maslova got the money, which she had also hidden in a roll, and passed
+the coupon to Korableva. Korableva accepted it, though she could not
+read, trusting to Khoroshavka, who knew everything, and who said that
+the slip of paper was worth 2 roubles 50 copecks, then climbed up to the
+ventilator, where she had hidden a small flask of vodka. Seeing this,
+the women whose places were further off went away. Meanwhile Maslova
+shook the dust out of her cloak and kerchief, got up on the bedstead,
+and began eating a roll.
+
+“I kept your tea for you,” said Theodosia, getting down from the shelf
+a mug and a tin teapot wrapped in a rag, “but I’m afraid it is quite
+cold.” The liquid was quite cold and tasted more of tin than of tea, yet
+Maslova filled the mug and began drinking it with her roll. “Finashka,
+here you are,” she said, breaking off a bit of the roll and giving it to
+the boy, who stood looking at her mouth.
+
+Meanwhile Korableva handed the flask of vodka and a mug to Maslova, who
+offered some to her and to Khoroshavka. These prisoners were considered
+the aristocracy of the cell because they had some money, and shared what
+they possessed with the others.
+
+In a few moments Maslova brightened up and related merrily what had
+happened at the court, and what had struck her most, i.e., how all the
+men had followed her wherever she went. In the court they all looked at
+her, she said, and kept coming into the prisoners’ room while she was
+there.
+
+“One of the soldiers even says, ‘It’s all to look at you that they
+come.’ One would come in, ‘Where is such a paper?’ or something, but I
+see it is not the paper he wants; he just devours me with his eyes,” she
+said, shaking her head. “Regular artists.”
+
+“Yes, that’s so,” said the watchman’s wife, and ran on in her musical
+strain, “they’re like flies after sugar.”
+
+“And here, too,” Maslova interrupted her, “the same thing. They can
+do without anything else. But the likes of them will go without bread
+sooner than miss that! Hardly had they brought me back when in comes a
+gang from the railway. They pestered me so, I did not know how to
+rid myself of them. Thanks to the assistant, he turned them off. One
+bothered so, I hardly got away.”
+
+“What’s he like?” asked Khoroshevka.
+
+“Dark, with moustaches.”
+
+“It must be him.”
+
+“Him--who?”
+
+“Why, Schegloff; him as has just gone by.”
+
+“What’s he, this Schegloff?”
+
+“What, she don’t know Schegloff? Why, he ran twice from Siberia. Now
+they’ve got him, but he’ll run away. The warders themselves are afraid
+of him,” said Khoroshavka, who managed to exchange notes with the male
+prisoners and knew all that went on in the prison. “He’ll run away,
+that’s flat.”
+
+“If he does go away you and I’ll have to stay,” said Korableva, turning
+to Maslova, “but you’d better tell us now what the advocate says about
+petitioning. Now’s the time to hand it in.”
+
+Maslova answered that she knew nothing about it.
+
+At that moment the red-haired woman came up to the “aristocracy” with
+both freckled hands in her thick hair, scratching her head with her
+nails.
+
+“I’ll tell you all about it, Katerina,” she began. “First and foremost,
+you’ll have to write down you’re dissatisfied with the sentence, then
+give notice to the Procureur.”
+
+“What do you want here?” said Korableva angrily; “smell the vodka, do
+you? Your chatter’s not wanted. We know what to do without your advice.”
+
+“No one’s speaking to you; what do you stick your nose in for?”
+
+“It’s vodka you want; that’s why you come wriggling yourself in here.”
+
+“Well, offer her some,” said Maslova, always ready to share anything she
+possessed with anybody.
+
+“I’ll offer her something.”
+
+“Come on then,” said the red-haired one, advancing towards Korableva.
+“Ah! think I’m afraid of such as you?”
+
+“Convict fright!”
+
+“That’s her as says it.”
+
+“Slut!”
+
+“I? A slut? Convict! Murderess!” screamed the red-haired one.
+
+“Go away, I tell you,” said Korableva gloomily, but the red-haired one
+came nearer and Korableva struck her in the chest. The red-haired woman
+seemed only to have waited for this, and with a sudden movement caught
+hold of Korableva’s hair with one hand and with the other struck her in
+the face. Korableva seized this hand, and Maslova and Khoroshavka caught
+the red-haired woman by her arms, trying to pull her away, but she let
+go the old woman’s hair with her hand only to twist it round her fist.
+Korableva, with her head bent to one side, was dealing out blows with
+one arm and trying to catch the red-haired woman’s hand with her teeth,
+while the rest of the women crowded round, screaming and trying to
+separate the fighters; even the consumptive one came up and stood
+coughing and watching the fight. The children cried and huddled
+together. The noise brought the woman warder and a jailer. The fighting
+women were separated; and Korableva, taking out the bits of torn hair
+from her head, and the red-haired one, holding her torn chemise together
+over her yellow breast, began loudly to complain.
+
+“I know, it’s all the vodka. Wait a bit; I’ll tell the inspector
+tomorrow. He’ll give it you. Can’t I smell it? Mind, get it all out of
+the way, or it will be the worse for you,” said the warder. “We’ve no
+time to settle your disputes. Get to your places and be quiet.”
+
+But quiet was not soon re-established. For a long time the women went on
+disputing and explaining to one another whose fault it all was. At last
+the warder and the jailer left the cell, the women grew quieter and
+began going to bed, and the old woman went to the icon and commenced
+praying.
+
+“The two jailbirds have met,” the red-haired woman suddenly called out
+in a hoarse voice from the other end of the shelf beds, accompanying
+every word with frightfully vile abuse.
+
+“Mind you don’t get it again,” Korableva replied, also adding words of
+abuse, and both were quiet again.
+
+“Had I not been stopped I’d have pulled your damned eyes out,” again
+began the red-haired one, and an answer of the same kind followed from
+Korableva. Then again a short interval and more abuse. But the intervals
+became longer and longer, as when a thunder-cloud is passing, and at
+last all was quiet.
+
+All were in bed, some began to snore; and only the old woman, who always
+prayed a long time, went on bowing before the icon and the deacon’s
+daughter, who had got up after the warder left, was pacing up and
+down the room again. Maslova kept thinking that she was now a convict
+condemned to hard labour, and had twice been reminded of this--once by
+Botchkova and once by the red-haired woman--and she could not reconcile
+herself to the thought. Korableva, who lay next to her, turned over in
+her bed.
+
+“There now,” said Maslova in a low voice; “who would have thought it?
+See what others do and get nothing for it.”
+
+“Never mind, girl. People manage to live in Siberia. As for you, you’ll
+not be lost there either,” Korableva said, trying to comfort her.
+
+“I know I’ll not be lost; still it is hard. It’s not such a fate I
+want--I, who am used to a comfortable life.”
+
+“Ah, one can’t go against God,” said Korableva, with a sigh. “One can’t,
+my dear.”
+
+“I know, granny. Still, it’s hard.”
+
+They were silent for a while.
+
+“Do you hear that baggage?” whispered Korableva, drawing Maslova’s
+attention to a strange sound proceeding from the other end of the room.
+
+This sound was the smothered sobbing of the red-haired woman. The
+red-haired woman was crying because she had been abused and had not got
+any of the vodka she wanted so badly; also because she remembered
+how all her life she had been abused, mocked at, offended, beaten.
+Remembering this, she pitied herself, and, thinking no one heard her,
+began crying as children cry, sniffing with her nose and swallowing the
+salt tears.
+
+“I’m sorry for her,” said Maslova.
+
+“Of course one is sorry,” said Korableva, “but she shouldn’t come
+bothering.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE LEAVEN AT WORK--NEKHLUDOFF’S DOMESTIC CHANGES.
+
+The next morning Nekhludoff awoke, conscious that something had happened
+to him, and even before he had remembered what it was he knew it to be
+something important and good.
+
+“Katusha--the trial!” Yes, he must stop lying and tell the whole truth.
+
+By a strange coincidence on that very morning he received the
+long-expected letter from Mary Vasilievna, the wife of the Marechal
+de Noblesse, the very letter he particularly needed. She gave him full
+freedom, and wished him happiness in his intended marriage.
+
+“Marriage!” he repeated with irony. “How far I am from all that at
+present.”
+
+And he remembered the plans he had formed the day before, to tell
+the husband everything, to make a clean breast of it, and express his
+readiness to give him any kind of satisfaction. But this morning this
+did not seem so easy as the day before. And, then, also, why make a man
+unhappy by telling him what he does not know? Yes, if he came and
+asked, he would tell him all, but to go purposely and tell--no! that was
+unnecessary.
+
+And telling the whole truth to Missy seemed just as difficult this
+morning. Again, he could not begin to speak without offence. As in many
+worldly affairs, something had to remain unexpressed. Only one thing he
+decided on, i.e., not to visit there, and to tell the truth if asked.
+
+But in connection with Katusha, nothing was to remain unspoken. “I shall
+go to the prison and shall tell her every thing, and ask her to forgive
+me. And if need be--yes, if need be, I shall marry her,” he thought.
+
+This idea, that he was ready to sacrifice all on moral grounds, and
+marry her, again made him feel very tender towards himself. Concerning
+money matters he resolved this morning to arrange them in accord with
+his conviction, that the holding of landed property was unlawful. Even
+if he should not be strong enough to give up everything, he would still
+do what he could, not deceiving himself or others.
+
+It was long since he had met the coming day with so much energy. When
+Agraphena Petrovna came in, he told her, with more firmness than he
+thought himself capable of, that he no longer needed this lodging nor
+her services. There had been a tacit understanding that he was keeping
+up so large and expensive an establishment because he was thinking of
+getting married. The giving up of the house had, therefore, a special
+meaning. Agraphena Petrovna looked at him in surprise.
+
+“I thank you very much, Agraphena Petrovna, for all your care for me,
+but I no longer require so large a house nor so many servants. If you
+wish to help me, be so good as to settle about the things, put them away
+as it used to be done during mamma’s life, and when Natasha comes she
+will see to everything.” Natasha was Nekhludoff’s sister.
+
+Agraphena Petrovna shook her head. “See about the things? Why, they’ll
+be required again,” she said.
+
+“No, they won’t, Agraphena Petrovna; I assure you they won’t be
+required,” said Nekhludoff, in answer to what the shaking of her head
+had expressed. “Please tell Corney also that I shall pay him two months’
+wages, but shall have no further need of him.”
+
+“It is a pity, Dmitri Ivanovitch, that you should think of doing this,”
+ she said. “Well, supposing you go abroad, still you’ll require a place
+of residence again.”
+
+“You are mistaken in your thoughts, Agraphena Petrovna; I am not going
+abroad. If I go on a journey, it will be to quite a different place.”
+ He suddenly blushed very red. “Yes, I must tell her,” he thought; “no
+hiding; everybody must be told.”
+
+“A very strange and important thing happened to me yesterday. Do you
+remember my Aunt Mary Ivanovna’s Katusha?”
+
+“Oh, yes. Why, I taught her how to sew.”
+
+“Well, this Katusha was tried in the Court and I was on the jury.”
+
+“Oh, Lord! What a pity!” cried Agraphena Petrovna. “What was she being
+tried for?”
+
+“Murder; and it is I have done it all.”
+
+“Well, now this is very strange; how could you do it all?”
+
+“Yes, I am the cause of it all; and it is this that has altered all my
+plans.”
+
+“What difference can it make to you?”
+
+“This difference: that I, being the cause of her getting on to that
+path, must do all I can to help her.”
+
+“That is just according to your own good pleasure; you are not
+particularly in fault there. It happens to every one, and if one’s
+reasonable, it all gets smoothed over and forgotten,” she said,
+seriously and severely. “Why should you place it to your account?
+There’s no need. I had already heard before that she had strayed from
+the right path. Well, whose fault is it?”
+
+“Mine! that’s why I want to put it right.”
+
+“It is hard to put right.”
+
+“That is my business. But if you are thinking about yourself, then I
+will tell you that, as mamma expressed the wish--”
+
+“I am not thinking about myself. I have been so bountifully treated by
+the dear defunct, that I desire nothing. Lisenka” (her married niece)
+“has been inviting me, and I shall go to her when I am not wanted any
+longer. Only it is a pity you should take this so to heart; it happens
+to everybody.”
+
+“Well, I do not think so. And I still beg that you will help me let this
+lodging and put away the things. And please do not be angry with me. I
+am very, very grateful to you for all you have done.”
+
+And, strangely, from the moment Nekhludoff realised that it was he who
+was so bad and disgusting to himself, others were no longer disgusting
+to him; on the contrary, he felt a kindly respect for Agraphena
+Petrovna, and for Corney.
+
+He would have liked to go and confess to Corney also, but Corney’s
+manner was so insinuatingly deferential that he had not the resolution
+to do it.
+
+On the way to the Law Courts, passing along the same streets with the
+same isvostchik as the day before, he was surprised what a different
+being he felt himself to be. The marriage with Missy, which only
+yesterday seemed so probable, appeared quite impossible now. The day
+before he felt it was for him to choose, and had no doubts that she
+would be happy to marry him; to-day he felt himself unworthy not only of
+marrying, but even of being intimate with her. “If she only knew what
+I am, nothing would induce her to receive me. And only yesterday I was
+finding fault with her because she flirted with N---. Anyhow, even if
+she consented to marry me, could I be, I won’t say happy, but at peace,
+knowing that the other was here in prison, and would to-day or to-morrow
+he taken to Siberia with a gang of other prisoners, while I accepted
+congratulations and made calls with my young wife; or while I count the
+votes at the meetings, for and against the motion brought forward by the
+rural inspection, etc., together with the Marechal de Noblesse, whom I
+abominably deceive, and afterwards make appointments with his wife
+(how abominable!) or while I continue to work at my picture, which will
+certainly never get finished? Besides, I have no business to waste
+time on such things. I can do nothing of the kind now,” he continued
+to himself, rejoicing at the change he felt within himself. “The first
+thing now is to see the advocate and find out his decision, and then
+. . . then go and see her and tell her everything.”
+
+And when he pictured to himself how he would see her, and tell her all,
+confess his sin to her, and tell her that he would do all in his power
+to atone for his sin, he was touched at his own goodness, and the tears
+came to his eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE ABSURDITY OF LAW--REFLECTIONS OF A JURYMAN.
+
+On coming into the Law Courts Nekhludoff met the usher of yesterday, who
+to-day seemed to him much to be pitied, in the corridor, and asked him
+where those prisoners who had been sentenced were kept, and to whom one
+had to apply for permission to visit them. The usher told him that the
+condemned prisoners were kept in different places, and that, until they
+received their sentence in its final form, the permission to visit them
+depended on the president. “I’ll come and call you myself, and take you
+to the president after the session. The president is not even here at
+present. After the session! And now please come in; we are going to
+commence.”
+
+Nekhludoff thanked the usher for his kindness, and went into the
+jurymen’s room. As he was approaching the room, the other jurymen were
+just leaving it to go into the court. The merchant had again partaken
+of a little refreshment, and was as merry as the day before, and greeted
+Nekhludoff like an old friend. And to-day Peter Gerasimovitch did not
+arouse any unpleasant feelings in Nekhludoff by his familiarity and his
+loud laughter. Nekhludoff would have liked to tell all the jurymen about
+his relations to yesterday’s prisoner. “By rights,” he thought, “I ought
+to have got up yesterday during the trial and disclosed my guilt.”
+
+He entered the court with the other jurymen, and witnessed the same
+procedure as the day before.
+
+“The judges are coming,” was again proclaimed, and again three men,
+with embroidered collars, ascended the platform, and there was the same
+settling of the jury on the high-backed chairs, the same gendarmes, the
+same portraits, the same priest, and Nekhludoff felt that, though he
+knew what he ought to do, he could not interrupt all this solemnity.
+The preparations for the trials were just the same as the day before,
+excepting that the swearing in of the jury and the president’s address
+to them were omitted.
+
+The case before the Court this day was one of burglary. The prisoner,
+guarded by two gendarmes with naked swords, was a thin, narrow-chested
+lad of 20, with a bloodless, sallow face, dressed in a grey cloak.
+He sat alone in the prisoner’s dock. This boy was accused of having,
+together with a companion, broken the lock of a shed and stolen several
+old mats valued at 3 roubles [the rouble is worth a little over two
+shillings, and contains 100 copecks] and 67 copecks. According to the
+indictment, a policeman had stopped this boy as he was passing with his
+companion, who was carrying the mats on his shoulder. The boy and
+his companion confessed at once, and were both imprisoned. The boy’s
+companion, a locksmith, died in prison, and so the boy was being tried
+alone. The old mats were lying on the table as the objects of material
+evidence. The business was conducted just in the same manner as the day
+before, with the whole armoury of evidence, proofs, witnesses, swearing
+in, questions, experts, and cross-examinations. In answer to every
+question put to him by the president, the prosecutor, or the advocate,
+the policeman (one of the witnesses) in variably ejected the words:
+“just so,” or “Can’t tell.” Yet, in spite of his being stupefied, and
+rendered a mere machine by military discipline, his reluctance to speak
+about the arrest of this prisoner was evident. Another witness, an old
+house proprietor, and owner of the mats, evidently a rich old man, when
+asked whether the mats were his, reluctantly identified them as such.
+When the public prosecutor asked him what he meant to do with these
+mats, what use they were to him, he got angry, and answered: “The devil
+take those mats; I don’t want them at all. Had I known there would be
+all this bother about them I should not have gone looking for them, but
+would rather have added a ten-rouble note or two to them, only not to
+be dragged here and pestered with questions. I have spent a lot
+on isvostchiks. Besides, I am not well. I have been suffering from
+rheumatism for the last seven years.” It was thus the witness spoke.
+
+The accused himself confessed everything, and looking round stupidly,
+like an animal that is caught, related how it had all happened. Still
+the public prosecutor, drawing up his shoulders as he had done the day
+before, asked subtle questions calculated to catch a cunning criminal.
+
+In his speech he proved that the theft had been committed from a
+dwelling-place, and a lock had been broken; and that the boy, therefore,
+deserved a heavy punishment. The advocate appointed by the Court proved
+that the theft was not committed from a dwelling-place, and that, though
+the crime was a serious one, the prisoner was not so very dangerous
+to society as the prosecutor stated. The president assumed the role of
+absolute neutrality in the same way as he had done on the previous day,
+and impressed on the jury facts which they all knew and could not help
+knowing. Then came an interval, just as the day before, and they smoked;
+and again the usher called out “The judges are coming,” and in the
+same way the two gendarmes sat trying to keep awake and threatening the
+prisoner with their naked weapons.
+
+The proceedings showed that this boy was apprenticed by his father at
+a tobacco factory, where he remained five years. This year he had been
+discharged by the owner after a strike, and, having lost his place, he
+wandered about the town without any work, drinking all he possessed. In
+a traktir [cheap restaurant] he met another like himself, who had lost
+his place before the prisoner had, a locksmith by trade and a drunkard.
+One night, those two, both drunk, broke the lock of a shed and took the
+first thing they happened to lay hands on. They confessed all and were
+put in prison, where the locksmith died while awaiting the trial. The
+boy was now being tried as a dangerous creature, from whom society must
+be protected.
+
+“Just as dangerous a creature as yesterday’s culprit,” thought
+Nekhludoff, listening to all that was going on before him. “They are
+dangerous, and we who judge them? I, a rake, an adulterer, a deceiver.
+We are not dangerous. But, even supposing that this boy is the most
+dangerous of all that are here in the court, what should be done from a
+common-sense point of view when he has been caught? It is clear that he
+is not an exceptional evil-doer, but a most ordinary boy; every one
+sees it--and that he has become what he is simply because he got into
+circumstances that create such characters, and, therefore, to prevent
+such a boy from going wrong the circumstances that create these
+unfortunate beings must be done away with.
+
+“But what do we do? We seize one such lad who happens to get caught,
+knowing well that there are thousands like him whom we have not caught,
+and send him to prison, where idleness, or most unwholesome, useless
+labour is forced on him, in company of others weakened and ensnared by
+the lives they have led. And then we send him, at the public expense,
+from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government, in company with the most
+depraved of men.
+
+“But we do nothing to destroy the conditions in which people like these
+are produced; on the contrary, we support the establishments where
+they are formed. These establishments are well known: factories, mills,
+workshops, public-houses, gin-shops, brothels. And we do not destroy
+these places, but, looking at them as necessary, we support and regulate
+them. We educate in this way not one, but millions of people, and then
+catch one of them and imagine that we have done something, that we have
+guarded ourselves, and nothing more can be expected of us. Have we
+not sent him from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government?” Thus thought
+Nekhludoff with unusual clearness and vividness, sitting in his
+high-backed chair next to the colonel, and listening to the different
+intonations of the advocates’, prosecutor’s, and president’s voices, and
+looking at their self-confident gestures. “And how much and what hard
+effort this pretence requires,” continued Nekhludoff in his mind,
+glancing round the enormous room, the portraits, lamps, armchairs,
+uniforms, the thick walls and large windows; and picturing to himself
+the tremendous size of the building, and the still more ponderous
+dimensions of the whole of this organisation, with its army of
+officials, scribes, watchmen, messengers, not only in this place, but
+all over Russia, who receive wages for carrying on this comedy which no
+one needs. “Supposing we spent one-hundredth of these efforts helping
+these castaways, whom we now only regard as hands and bodies, required
+by us for our own peace and comfort. Had some one chanced to take pity
+on him and given some help at the time when poverty made them send him
+to town, it might have been sufficient,” Nekhludoff thought, looking at
+the boy’s piteous face. “Or even later, when, after 12 hours’ work
+at the factory, he was going to the public-house, led away by his
+companions, had some one then come and said, ‘Don’t go, Vania; it is
+not right,’ he would not have gone, nor got into bad ways, and would not
+have done any wrong.
+
+“But no; no one who would have taken pity on him came across this
+apprentice in the years he lived like a poor little animal in the town,
+and with his hair cut close so as not to breed vermin, and ran errands
+for the workmen. No, all he heard and saw, from the older workmen and
+his companions, since he came to live in town, was that he who cheats,
+drinks, swears, who gives another a thrashing, who goes on the loose,
+is a fine fellow. Ill, his constitution undermined by unhealthy labour,
+drink, and debauchery--bewildered as in a dream, knocking aimlessly
+about town, he gets into some sort of a shed, and takes from there some
+old mats, which nobody needs--and here we, all of us educated people,
+rich or comfortably off, meet together, dressed in good clothes and fine
+uniforms, in a splendid apartment, to mock this unfortunate brother of
+ours whom we ourselves have ruined.
+
+“Terrible! It is difficult to say whether the cruelty or the absurdity
+is greater, but the one and the other seem to reach their climax.”
+
+Nekhludoff thought all this, no longer listening to what was going on,
+and he was horror-struck by that which was being revealed to him. He
+could not understand why he had not been able to see all this before,
+and why others were unable to see it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+THE PROCUREUR--NEKHLUDOFF REFUSES TO SERVE.
+
+During an interval Nekhludoff got up and went out into the corridor,
+with the intention of not returning to the court. Let them do what they
+liked with him, he could take no more part in this awful and horrid
+tomfoolery.
+
+Having inquired where the Procureur’s cabinet was he went straight to
+him. The attendant did not wish to let him in, saying that the Procureur
+was busy, but Nekhludoff paid no heed and went to the door, where he was
+met by an official. He asked to be announced to the Procureur, saying he
+was on the jury and had a very important communication to make.
+
+His title and good clothes were of assistance to him. The official
+announced him to the Procureur, and Nekhludoff was let in. The Procureur
+met him standing, evidently annoyed at the persistence with which
+Nekhludoff demanded admittance.
+
+“What is it you want?” the Procureur asked, severely.
+
+“I am on the jury; my name is Nekhludoff, and it is absolutely necessary
+for me to see the prisoner Maslova,” Nekhludoff said, quickly and
+resolutely, blushing, and feeling that he was taking a step which would
+have a decisive influence on his life.
+
+The Procureur was a short, dark man, with short, grizzly hair, quick,
+sparkling eyes, and a thick beard cut close on his projecting lower jaw.
+
+“Maslova? Yes, of course, I know. She was accused of poisoning,” the
+Procureur said, quietly. “But why do you want to see her?” And then, as
+if wishing to tone down his question, he added, “I cannot give you the
+permission without knowing why you require it.”
+
+“I require it for a particularly important reason.”
+
+“Yes?” said the Procureur, and, lifting his eyes, looked attentively at
+Nekhludoff. “Has her case been heard or not?”
+
+“She was tried yesterday, and unjustly sentenced; she is innocent.”
+
+“Yes? If she was sentenced only yesterday,” went on the Procureur,
+paying no attention to Nekhludoff’s statement concerning Maslova’s
+innocence, “she must still be in the preliminary detention prison until
+the sentence is delivered in its final form. Visiting is allowed there
+only on certain days; I should advise you to inquire there.”
+
+“But I must see her as soon as possible,” Nekhludoff said, his jaw
+trembling as he felt the decisive moment approaching.
+
+“Why must you?” said the Procureur, lifting his brows with some
+agitation.
+
+“Because I betrayed her and brought her to the condition which exposed
+her to this accusation.”
+
+“All the same, I cannot see what it has to do with visiting her.”
+
+“This: that whether I succeed or not in getting the sentence changed I
+want to follow her, and--marry her,” said Nekhludoff, touched to tears
+by his own conduct, and at the same time pleased to see the effect he
+produced on the Procureur.
+
+“Really! Dear me!” said the Procureur. “This is certainly a very
+exceptional case. I believe you are a member of the Krasnoporsk rural
+administration?” he asked, as if he remembered having heard before of
+this Nekhludoff, who was now making so strange a declaration.
+
+“I beg your pardon, but I do not think that has anything to do with my
+request,” answered Nekhludoff, flushing angrily.
+
+“Certainly not,” said the Procureur, with a scarcely perceptible smile
+and not in the least abashed; “only your wish is so extraordinary and so
+out of the common.”
+
+“Well; but can I get the permission?”
+
+“The permission? Yes, I will give you an order of admittance directly.
+Take a seat.”
+
+He went up to the table, sat down, and began to write. “Please sit
+down.”
+
+Nekhludoff continued to stand.
+
+Having written an order of admittance, and handed it to Nekhludoff, the
+Procureur looked curiously at him.
+
+“I must also state that I can no longer take part in the sessions.”
+
+“Then you will have to lay valid reasons before the Court, as you, of
+course, know.”
+
+“My reasons are that I consider all judging not only useless, but
+immoral.”
+
+“Yes,” said the Procureur, with the same scarcely perceptible smile,
+as if to show that this kind of declaration was well known to him and
+belonged to the amusing sort. “Yes, but you will certainly understand
+that I as Procureur, can not agree with you on this point. Therefore,
+I should advise you to apply to the Court, which will consider your
+declaration, and find it valid or not valid, and in the latter case will
+impose a fine. Apply, then, to the Court.”
+
+“I have made my declaration, and shall apply nowhere else,” Nekhludoff
+said, angrily.
+
+“Well, then, good-afternoon,” said the Procureur, bowing his head,
+evidently anxious to be rid of this strange visitor.
+
+“Who was that you had here?” asked one of the members of the Court, as
+he entered, just after Nekhludoff left the room.
+
+“Nekhludoff, you know; the same that used to make all sorts of strange
+statements at the Krasnoporsk rural meetings. Just fancy! He is on the
+jury, and among the prisoners there is a woman or girl sentenced to
+penal servitude, whom he says he betrayed, and now he wants to marry
+her.”
+
+“You don’t mean to say so.”
+
+“That’s what he told me. And in such a strange state of excitement!”
+
+“There is something abnormal in the young men of to-day.”
+
+“Oh, but he is not so very young.”
+
+“Yes. But how tiresome your famous Ivoshenka was. He carries the day by
+wearying one out. He talked and talked without end.”
+
+“Oh, that kind of people should be simply stopped, or they will become
+real obstructionists.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF ENDEAVOURS TO VISIT MASLOVA.
+
+From the Procureur Nekhludoff went straight to the preliminary detention
+prison. However, no Maslova was to be found there, and the inspector
+explained to Nekhludoff that she would probably be in the old temporary
+prison. Nekhludoff went there.
+
+Yes, Katerina Maslova was there.
+
+The distance between the two prisons was enormous, and Nekhludoff only
+reached the old prison towards evening. He was going up to the door of
+the large, gloomy building, but the sentinel stopped him and rang. A
+warder came in answer to the bell. Nekhludoff showed him his order of
+admittance, but the warder said he could not let him in without the
+inspector’s permission. Nekhludoff went to see the inspector. As he was
+going up the stairs he heard distant sounds of some complicated bravura,
+played on the piano. When a cross servant girl, with a bandaged eye,
+opened the door to him, those sounds seemed to escape from the room
+and to strike his car. It was a rhapsody of Liszt’s, that everybody was
+tired of, splendidly played but only to one point. When that point was
+reached the same thing was repeated. Nekhludoff asked the bandaged maid
+whether the inspector was in. She answered that he was not in.
+
+“Will he return soon?”
+
+The rhapsody again stopped and recommenced loudly and brilliantly again
+up to the same charmed point.
+
+“I will go and ask,” and the servant went away.
+
+“Tell him he is not in and won’t be to-day; he is out visiting. What do
+they come bothering for?” came the sound of a woman’s voice from behind
+the door, and again the rhapsody rattled on and stopped, and the sound
+of a chair pushed back was heard. It was plain the irritated pianist
+meant to rebuke the tiresome visitor, who had come at an untimely hour.
+“Papa is not in,” a pale girl with crimped hair said, crossly, coming
+out into the ante-room, but, seeing a young man in a good coat, she
+softened.
+
+“Come in, please. . . . What is it you want?”
+
+“I want to see a prisoner in this prison.”
+
+“A political one, I suppose?”
+
+“No, not a political one. I have a permission from the Procureur.”
+
+“Well, I don’t know, and papa is out; but come in, please,” she said,
+again, “or else speak to the assistant. He is in the office at present;
+apply there. What is your name?”
+
+“I thank you,” said Nekhludoff, without answering her question, and went
+out.
+
+The door was not yet closed after him when the same lively tones
+recommenced. In the courtyard Nekhludoff met an officer with bristly
+moustaches, and asked for the assistant-inspector. It was the assistant
+himself. He looked at the order of admittance, but said that he could
+not decide to let him in with a pass for the preliminary prison.
+Besides, it was too late. “Please to come again to-morrow. To morrow, at
+10, everybody is allowed to go in. Come then, and the inspector himself
+will be at home. Then you can have the interview either in the common
+room or, if the inspector allows it, in the office.”
+
+And so Nekhludoff did not succeed in getting an interview that day,
+and returned home. As he went along the streets, excited at the idea of
+meeting her, he no longer thought about the Law Courts, but recalled his
+conversations with the Procureur and the inspector’s assistant. The
+fact that he had been seeking an interview with her, and had told the
+Procureur, and had been in two prisons, so excited him that it was long
+before he could calm down. When he got home he at once fetched out his
+diary, that had long remained untouched, read a few sentences out of it,
+and then wrote as follows:
+
+“For two years I have not written anything in my diary, and thought I
+never should return to this childishness. Yet it is not childishness,
+but converse with my own self, with this real divine self which lives
+in every man. All this time that I slept there was no one for me to
+converse with. I was awakened by an extraordinary event on the 28th
+of April, in the Law Court, when I was on the jury. I saw her in the
+prisoners’ dock, the Katusha betrayed by me, in a prisoner’s cloak,
+condemned to penal servitude through a strange mistake, and my own
+fault. I have just been to the Procureur’s and to the prison, but I was
+not admitted. I have resolved to do all I can to see her, to confess to
+her, and to atone for my sin, even by a marriage. God help me. My soul
+is at peace and I am full of joy.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+MASLOVA RECALLS THE PAST.
+
+That night Maslova lay awake a long time with her eyes open looking at
+the door, in front of which the deacon’s daughter kept passing. She was
+thinking that nothing would induce her to go to the island of Sakhalin
+and marry a convict, but would arrange matters somehow with one of the
+prison officials, the secretary, a warder, or even a warder’s assistant.
+“Aren’t they all given that way? Only I must not get thin, or else I am
+lost.”
+
+She thought of how the advocate had looked at her, and also the
+president, and of the men she met, and those who came in on purpose at
+the court. She recollected how her companion, Bertha, who came to see
+her in prison, had told her about the student whom she had “loved” while
+she was with Kitaeva, and who had inquired about her, and pitied her
+very much. She recalled many to mind, only not Nekhludoff. She never
+brought back to mind the days of her childhood and youth, and her love
+to Nekhludoff. That would have been too painful. These memories lay
+untouched somewhere deep in her soul; she had forgotten him, and never
+recalled and never even dreamt of him. To-day, in the court, she did not
+recognise him, not only because when she last saw him he was in uniform,
+without a beard, and had only a small moustache and thick, curly, though
+short hair, and now was bald and bearded, but because she never thought
+about him. She had buried his memory on that terrible dark night when
+he, returning from the army, had passed by on the railway without
+stopping to call on his aunts. Katusha then knew her condition. Up to
+that night she did not consider the child that lay beneath her heart
+a burden. But on that night everything changed, and the child became
+nothing but a weight.
+
+His aunts had expected Nekhludoff, had asked him to come and see them in
+passing, but he had telegraphed that he could not come, as he had to be
+in Petersburg at an appointed time. When Katusha heard this she made up
+her mind to go to the station and see him. The train was to pass by at
+two o’clock in the night. Katusha having helped the old ladies to bed,
+and persuaded a little girl, the cook’s daughter, Mashka, to come with
+her, put on a pair of old boots, threw a shawl over her head, gathered
+up her dress, and ran to the station.
+
+It was a warm, rainy, and windy autumn night. The rain now pelted down
+in warm, heavy drops, now stopped again. It was too dark to see the path
+across the field, and in the wood it was pitch black, so that although
+Katusha knew the way well, she got off the path, and got to the little
+station where the train stopped for three minutes, not before, as she
+had hoped, but after the second bell had been rung. Hurrying up the
+platform, Katusha saw him at once at the windows of a first-class
+carriage. Two officers sat opposite each other on the velvet-covered
+seats, playing cards. This carriage was very brightly lit up; on the
+little table between the seats stood two thick, dripping candles. He sat
+in his closefitting breeches on the arm of the seat, leaning against
+the back, and laughed. As soon as she recognised him she knocked at the
+carriage window with her benumbed hand, but at that moment the last bell
+rang, and the train first gave a backward jerk, and then gradually the
+carriages began to move forward. One of the players rose with the cards
+in his hand, and looked out. She knocked again, and pressed her face to
+the window, but the carriage moved on, and she went alongside looking
+in. The officer tried to lower the window, but could not. Nekhludoff
+pushed him aside and began lowering it himself. The train went faster,
+so that she had to walk quickly. The train went on still faster and the
+window opened. The guard pushed her aside, and jumped in. Katusha ran
+on, along the wet boards of the platform, and when she came to the end
+she could hardly stop herself from falling as she ran down the steps
+of the platform. She was running by the side of the railway, though the
+first-class carriage had long passed her, and the second-class carriages
+were gliding by faster, and at last the third-class carriages still
+faster. But she ran on, and when the last carriage with the lamps at
+the back had gone by, she had already reached the tank which fed the
+engines, and was unsheltered from the wind, which was blowing her shawl
+about and making her skirt cling round her legs. The shawl flew off her
+head, but still she ran on.
+
+“Katerina Michaelovna, you’ve lost your shawl!” screamed the little
+girl, who was trying to keep up with her.
+
+Katusha stopped, threw back her head, and catching hold of it with both
+hands sobbed aloud. “Gone!” she screamed.
+
+“He is sitting in a velvet arm-chair and joking and drinking, in a
+brightly lit carriage, and I, out here in the mud, in the darkness, in
+the wind and the rain, am standing and weeping,” she thought to herself;
+and sat down on the ground, sobbing so loud that the little girl got
+frightened, and put her arms round her, wet as she was.
+
+“Come home, dear,” she said.
+
+“When a train passes--then under a carriage, and there will be an end,”
+ Katusha was thinking, without heeding the girl.
+
+And she made up her mind to do it, when, as it always happens, when a
+moment of quiet follows great excitement, he, the child--his child--made
+himself known within her. Suddenly all that a moment before had been
+tormenting her, so that it had seemed impossible to live, all her
+bitterness towards him, and the wish to revenge herself, even by dying,
+passed away; she grew quieter, got up, put the shawl on her head, and
+went home.
+
+Wet, muddy, and quite exhausted, she returned, and from that day the
+change which brought her where she now was began to operate in her soul.
+Beginning from that dreadful night, she ceased believing in God and
+in goodness. She had herself believed in God, and believed that other
+people also believed in Him; but after that night she became convinced
+that no one believed, and that all that was said about God and His
+laws was deception and untruth. He whom she loved, and who had loved
+her--yes, she knew that--had thrown her away; had abused her love. Yet
+he was the best of all the people she knew. All the rest were still
+worse. All that afterwards happened to her strengthened her in this
+belief at every step. His aunts, the pious old ladies, turned her out
+when she could no longer serve them as she used to. And of all those she
+met, the women used her as a means of getting money, the men, from the
+old police officer down to the warders of the prison, looked at her as
+on an object for pleasure. And no one in the world cared for aught but
+pleasure. In this belief the old author with whom she had come together
+in the second year of her life of independence had strengthened her. He
+had told her outright that it was this that constituted the happiness of
+life, and he called it poetical and aesthetic.
+
+Everybody lived for himself only, for his pleasure, and all the talk
+concerning God and righteousness was deception. And if sometimes doubts
+arose in her mind and she wondered why everything was so ill-arranged
+in the world that all hurt each other, and made each other suffer, she
+thought it best not to dwell on it, and if she felt melancholy she could
+smoke, or, better still, drink, and it would pass.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+SUNDAY IN PRISON--PREPARING FOR MASS.
+
+On Sunday morning at five o’clock, when a whistle sounded in the
+corridor of the women’s ward of the prison, Korableva, who was already
+awake, called Maslova.
+
+“Oh, dear! life again,” thought Maslova, with horror, involuntarily
+breathing in the air that had become terribly noisome towards the
+morning. She wished to fall asleep again, to enter into the region of
+oblivion, but the habit of fear overcame sleepiness, and she sat up and
+looked round, drawing her feet under her. The women had all got up; only
+the elder children were still asleep. The spirit-trader was carefully
+drawing a cloak from under the children, so as not to wake them. The
+watchman’s wife was hanging up the rags to dry that served the baby
+as swaddling clothes, while the baby was screaming desperately in
+Theodosia’s arms, who was trying to quiet it. The consumptive woman was
+coughing with her hands pressed to her chest, while the blood rushed to
+her face, and she sighed loudly, almost screaming, in the intervals of
+coughing. The fat, red-haired woman was lying on her back, with
+knees drawn up, and loudly relating a dream. The old woman accused of
+incendiarism was standing in front of the image, crossing herself and
+bowing, and repeating the same words over and over again. The deacon’s
+daughter sat on the bedstead, looking before her, with a dull, sleepy
+face. Khoroshavka was twisting her black, oily, coarse hair round her
+fingers. The sound of slipshod feet was heard in the passage, and the
+door opened to let in two convicts, dressed in jackets and grey trousers
+that did not reach to their ankles. With serious, cross faces they
+lifted the stinking tub and carried it out of the cell. The women went
+out to the taps in the corridor to wash. There the red-haired woman
+again began a quarrel with a woman from another cell.
+
+“Is it the solitary cell you want?” shouted an old jailer, slapping the
+red-haired woman on her bare, fat back, so that it sounded through the
+corridor. “You be quiet.”
+
+“Lawks! the old one’s playful,” said the woman, taking his action for a
+caress.
+
+“Now, then, be quick; get ready for the mass.” Maslova had hardly time
+to do her hair and dress when the inspector came with his assistants.
+
+“Come out for inspection,” cried a jailer.
+
+Some more prisoners came out of other cells and stood in two rows along
+the corridor; each woman had to place her hand on the shoulder of the
+woman in front of her. They were all counted.
+
+After the inspection the woman warder led the prisoners to church.
+Maslova and Theodosia were in the middle of a column of over a hundred
+women, who had come out of different cells. All were dressed in white
+skirts, white jackets, and wore white kerchiefs on their heads, except
+a few who had their own coloured clothes on. These were wives who, with
+their children, were following their convict husbands to Siberia. The
+whole flight of stairs was filled by the procession. The patter of
+softly-shod feet mingled with the voices and now and then a laugh. When
+turning, on the landing, Maslova saw her enemy, Botchkova, in front, and
+pointed out her angry face to Theodosia. At the bottom of the stairs the
+women stopped talking. Bowing and crossing themselves, they entered the
+empty church, which glistened with gilding. Crowding and pushing one
+another, they took their places on the right.
+
+After the women came the men condemned to banishment, those serving
+their term in the prison, and those exiled by their Communes; and,
+coughing loudly, they took their stand, crowding the left side and the
+middle of the church.
+
+On one side of the gallery above stood the men sentenced to penal
+servitude in Siberia, who had been let into the church before the
+others. Each of them had half his head shaved, and their presence was
+indicated by the clanking of the chains on their feet. On the other side
+of the gallery stood those in preliminary confinement, without chains,
+their heads not shaved.
+
+The prison church had been rebuilt and ornamented by a rich merchant,
+who spent several tens of thousands of roubles on it, and it glittered
+with gay colours and gold. For a time there was silence in the church,
+and only coughing, blowing of noses, the crying of babies, and now and
+then the rattling of chains, was heard. But at last the convicts that
+stood in the middle moved, pressed against each other, leaving a passage
+in the centre of the church, down which the prison inspector passed to
+take his place in front of every one in the nave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE PRISON CHURCH--BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND.
+
+The service began.
+
+It consisted of the following. The priest, having dressed in a strange
+and very inconvenient garb, made of gold cloth, cut and arranged little
+bits of bread on a saucer, and then put them into a cup with wine,
+repeating at the same time different names and prayers. Meanwhile
+the deacon first read Slavonic prayers, difficult to understand in
+themselves, and rendered still more incomprehensible by being read very
+fast, and then sang them turn and turn about with the convicts. The
+contents of the prayers were chiefly the desire for the welfare of
+the Emperor and his family. These petitions were repeated many times,
+separately and together with other prayers, the people kneeling. Besides
+this, several verses from the Acts of the Apostles were read by the
+deacon in a peculiarly strained voice, which made it impossible to
+understand what he read, and then the priest read very distinctly a
+part of the Gospel according to St. Mark, in which it said that Christ,
+having risen from the dead before flying up to heaven to sit down at His
+Father’s right hand, first showed Himself to Mary Magdalene, out of whom
+He had driven seven devils, and then to eleven of His disciples, and
+ordered them to preach the Gospel to the whole creation, and the priest
+added that if any one did not believe this he would perish, but he that
+believed it and was baptised should be saved, and should besides drive
+out devils and cure people by laying his hands on them, should talk in
+strange tongues, should take up serpents, and if he drank poison should
+not die, but remain well.
+
+The essence of the service consisted in the supposition that the bits
+cut up by the priest and put by him into the wine, when manipulated and
+prayed over in a certain way, turned into the flesh and blood of God.
+
+These manipulations consisted in the priest’s regularly lifting and
+holding up his arms, though hampered by the gold cloth sack he had on,
+then, sinking on to his knees and kissing the table and all that was on
+it, but chiefly in his taking a cloth by two of its corners and waving
+it regularly and softly over the silver saucer and golden cup. It was
+supposed that, at this point, the bread and the wine turned into flesh
+and blood; therefore, this part of the service was performed with the
+greatest solemnity.
+
+“Now, to the blessed, most pure, and most holy Mother of God,” the
+priest cried from the golden partition which divided part of the church
+from the rest, and the choir began solemnly to sing that it was very
+right to glorify the Virgin Mary, who had borne Christ without losing
+her virginity, and was therefore worthy of greater honour than some kind
+of cherubim, and greater glory than some kind of seraphim. After this
+the transformation was considered accomplished, and the priest having
+taken the napkin off the saucer, cut the middle bit of bread in four,
+and put it into the wine, and then into his mouth. He was supposed to
+have eaten a bit of God’s flesh and swallowed a little of His blood.
+Then the priest drew a curtain, opened the middle door in the partition,
+and, taking the gold cup in his hands, came out of the door, inviting
+those who wished to do so also to come and eat some of God’s flesh and
+blood that was contained in the cup. A few children appeared to wish to
+do so.
+
+After having asked the children their names, the priest carefully took
+out of the cup, with a spoon, and shoved a bit of bread soaked in wine
+deep into the mouth of each child in turn, and the deacon, while wiping
+the children’s mouths, sang, in a merry voice, that the children were
+eating the flesh and drinking the blood of God. After this the priest
+carried the cup back behind the partition, and there drank all the
+remaining blood and ate up all the bits of flesh, and after having
+carefully sucked his moustaches and wiped his mouth, he stepped briskly
+from behind the partition, the soles of his calfskin boots creaking.
+The principal part of this Christian service was now finished, but
+the priest, wishing to comfort the unfortunate prisoners, added to the
+ordinary service another. This consisted of his going up to the gilt
+hammered-out image (with black face and hands) supposed to represent
+the very God he had been eating, illuminated by a dozen wax candles, and
+proceeding, in a strange, discordant voice, to hum or sing the following
+words:
+
+“Jesu sweetest, glorified of the Apostles, Jesu lauded by the martyrs,
+almighty Monarch, save me, Jesu my Saviour. Jesu, most beautiful, have
+mercy on him who cries to Thee, Saviour Jesu. Born of prayer Jesu, all
+thy saints, all thy prophets, save and find them worthy of the joys of
+heaven. Jesu, lover of men.”
+
+Then he stopped, drew breath, crossed himself, bowed to the ground, and
+every one did the same--the inspector, the warders, the prisoners; and
+from above the clinking of the chains sounded more unintermittently.
+Then he continued: “Of angels the Creator and Lord of powers, Jesu most
+wonderful, the angels’ amazement, Jesu most powerful, of our forefathers
+the Redeemer. Jesu sweetest, of patriarchs the praise. Jesu most
+glorious, of kings the strength. Jesu most good, of prophets the
+fulfilment. Jesu most amazing, of martyrs the strength. Jesu most
+humble, of monks the joy. Jesu most merciful, of priests the sweetness.
+Jesu most charitable, of the fasting the continence. Jesu most sweet,
+of the just the joy. Jesu most pure, of the celibates the chastity. Jesu
+before all ages of sinners the salvation. Jesu, son of God, have mercy
+on me.”
+
+Every time he repeated the word “Jesu” his voice became more and
+more wheezy. At last he came to a stop, and holding up his silk-lined
+cassock, and kneeling down on one knee, he stooped down to the ground
+and the choir began to sing, repeating the words, “Jesu, Son of God,
+have mercy on me,” and the convicts fell down and rose again, shaking
+back the hair that was left on their heads, and rattling with the chains
+that were bruising their thin ankles.
+
+This continued for a long time. First came the glorification, which
+ended with the words, “Have mercy on me.” Then more glorifications,
+ending with “Alleluia!” And the convicts made the sign of the cross,
+and bowed, first at each sentence, then after every two and then after
+three, and all were very glad when the glorification ended, and the
+priest shut the book with a sigh of relief and retired behind the
+partition. One last act remained. The priest took a large, gilt cross,
+with enamel medallions at the ends, from a table, and came out into the
+centre of the church with it. First the inspector came up and kissed
+the cross, then the jailers, then the convicts, pushing and abusing
+each other in whispers. The priest, talking to the inspector, pushed the
+cross and his hand now against the mouths and now against the noses of
+the convicts, who were trying to kiss both the cross and the hand of the
+priest. And thus ended the Christian service, intended for the comfort
+and the teaching of these strayed brothers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE HUSKS OF RELIGION.
+
+And none of those present, from the inspector down to Maslova, seemed
+conscious of the fact that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeated
+such a great number of times, and whom he praised with all these curious
+expressions, had forbidden the very things that were being done there;
+that He had prohibited not only this meaningless much-speaking and the
+blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine, but had also, in the
+clearest words, forbidden men to call other men their master, and to
+pray in temples; and had ordered that every one should pray in solitude,
+had forbidden to erect temples, saying that He had come to destroy
+them, and that one should worship, not in a temple, but in spirit and
+in truth; and, above all, that He had forbidden not only to judge, to
+imprison, to torment, to execute men, as was being done here, but had
+prohibited any kind of violence, saying that He had come to give freedom
+to the captives.
+
+No one present seemed conscious that all that was going on here was the
+greatest blasphemy and a supreme mockery of that same Christ in whose
+name it was being done. No one seemed to realise that the gilt cross
+with the enamel medallions at the ends, which the priest held out to the
+people to be kissed, was nothing but the emblem of that gallows on which
+Christ had been executed for denouncing just what was going on here.
+That these priests, who imagined they were eating and drinking the body
+and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine, did in reality eat
+and drink His flesh and His blood, but not as wine and bits of bread,
+but by ensnaring “these little ones” with whom He identified Himself,
+by depriving them of the greatest blessings and submitting them to most
+cruel torments, and by hiding from men the tidings of great joy which
+He had brought. That thought did not enter into the mind of any one
+present.
+
+The priest did his part with a quiet conscience, because he was brought
+up from childhood to consider that the only true faith was the faith
+which had been held by all the holy men of olden times and was still
+held by the Church, and demanded by the State authorities. He did not
+believe that the bread turned into flesh, that it was useful for the
+soul to repeat so many words, or that he had actually swallowed a bit of
+God. No one could believe this, but he believed that one ought to hold
+this faith. What strengthened him most in this faith was the fact that,
+for fulfilling the demands of this faith, he had for the last 15 years
+been able to draw an income, which enabled him to keep his family, send
+his son to a gymnasium and his daughter to a school for the daughters of
+the clergy. The deacon believed in the same manner, and even more firmly
+than the priest, for he had forgotten the substance of the dogmas of
+this faith, and knew only that the prayers for the dead, the masses,
+with and without the acathistus, all had a definite price, which real
+Christians readily paid, and, therefore, he called out his “have mercy,
+have mercy,” very willingly, and read and said what was appointed, with
+the same quiet certainty of its being necessary to do so with which
+other men sell faggots, flour, or potatoes. The prison inspector and the
+warders, though they had never understood or gone into the meaning of
+these dogmas and of all that went on in church, believed that they must
+believe, because the higher authorities and the Tsar himself believed in
+it. Besides, though faintly (and themselves unable to explain why), they
+felt that this faith defended their cruel occupations. If this faith
+did not exist it would have been more difficult, perhaps impossible, for
+them to use all their powers to torment people, as they were now doing,
+with a quiet conscience. The inspector was such a kind-hearted man that
+he could not have lived as he was now living unsupported by his faith.
+Therefore, he stood motionless, bowed and crossed himself zealously,
+tried to feel touched when the song about the cherubims was being sung,
+and when the children received communion he lifted one of them, and held
+him up to the priest with his own hands.
+
+The great majority of the prisoners believed that there lay a mystic
+power in these gilt images, these vestments, candles, cups, crosses,
+and this repetition of incomprehensible words, “Jesu sweetest” and “have
+mercy”--a power through which might be obtained much convenience in this
+and in the future life. Only a few clearly saw the deception that was
+practised on the people who adhered to this faith, and laughed at it in
+their hearts; but the majority, having made several attempts to get the
+conveniences they desired, by means of prayers, masses, and candles, and
+not having got them (their prayers remaining unanswered), were each of
+them convinced that their want of success was accidental, and that
+this organisation, approved by the educated and by archbishops, is very
+important and necessary, if not for this, at any rate for the next life.
+
+Maslova also believed in this way. She felt, like the rest, a mixed
+sensation of piety and dulness. She stood at first in a crowd behind a
+railing, so that she could see no one but her companions; but when those
+to receive communion moved on, she and Theodosia stepped to the front,
+and they saw the inspector, and, behind him, standing among the warders,
+a little peasant, with a very light beard and fair hair. This was
+Theodosia’s husband, and he was gazing with fixed eyes at his wife.
+During the acathistus Maslova occupied herself in scrutinising him and
+talking to Theodosia in whispers, and bowed and made the sign of the
+cross only when every one else did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+VISITING DAY--THE MEN’S WARD.
+
+Nekhludoff left home early. A peasant from the country was still driving
+along the side street and calling out in a voice peculiar to his trade,
+“Milk! milk! milk!”
+
+The first warm spring rain had fallen the day before, and now wherever
+the ground was not paved the grass shone green. The birch trees in the
+gardens looked as if they were strewn with green fluff, the wild cherry
+and the poplars unrolled their long, balmy buds, and in shops and
+dwelling-houses the double window-frames were being removed and the
+windows cleaned.
+
+In the Tolkoochi [literally, jostling market, where second-hand clothes
+and all sorts of cheap goods are sold] market, which Nekhludoff had to
+pass on his way, a dense crowd was surging along the row of booths, and
+tattered men walked about selling top-boots, which they carried under
+their arms, and renovated trousers and waistcoats, which hung over their
+shoulders.
+
+Men in clean coats and shining boots, liberated from the factories, it
+being Sunday, and women with bright silk kerchiefs on their heads and
+cloth jackets trimmed with jet, were already thronging at the door of
+the traktir. Policemen, with yellow cords to their uniforms and carrying
+pistols, were on duty, looking out for some disorder which might
+distract the ennui that oppressed them. On the paths of the boulevards
+and on the newly-revived grass, children and dogs ran about, playing,
+and the nurses sat merrily chattering on the benches. Along the streets,
+still fresh and damp on the shady side, but dry in the middle, heavy
+carts rumbled unceasingly, cabs rattled and tramcars passed ringing by.
+The air vibrated with the pealing and clanging of church bells, that
+were calling the people to attend to a service like that which was now
+being conducted in the prison. And the people, dressed in their Sunday
+best, were passing on their way to their different parish churches.
+
+The isvostchik did not drive Nekhludoff up to the prison itself, but to
+the last turning that led to the prison.
+
+Several persons--men and women--most of them carrying small bundles,
+stood at this turning, about 100 steps from the prison. To the right
+there were several low wooden buildings; to the left, a two-storeyed
+house with a signboard. The huge brick building, the prison proper, was
+just in front, and the visitors were not allowed to come up to it. A
+sentinel was pacing up and down in front of it, and shouted at any one
+who tried to pass him.
+
+At the gate of the wooden buildings, to the right, opposite the
+sentinel, sat a warder on a bench, dressed in uniform, with gold cords,
+a notebook in his hands. The visitors came up to him, and named the
+persons they wanted to see, and he put the names down. Nekhludoff also
+went up, and named Katerina Maslova. The warder wrote down the name.
+
+“Why--don’t they admit us yet?” asked Nekhludoff.
+
+“The service is going on. When the mass is over, you’ll be admitted.”
+
+Nekhludoff stepped aside from the waiting crowd. A man in tattered
+clothes, crumpled hat, with bare feet and red stripes all over his face,
+detached himself from the crowd, and turned towards the prison.
+
+“Now, then, where are you going?” shouted the sentinel with the gun.
+
+“And you hold your row,” answered the tramp, not in the least abashed by
+the sentinel’s words, and turned back. “Well, if you’ll not let me in,
+I’ll wait. But, no! Must needs shout, as if he were a general.”
+
+The crowd laughed approvingly. The visitors were, for the greater
+part, badly-dressed people; some were ragged, but there were also
+some respectable-looking men and women. Next to Nekhludoff stood a
+clean-shaven, stout, and red-cheeked man, holding a bundle, apparently
+containing under-garments. This was the doorkeeper of a bank; he had
+come to see his brother, who was arrested for forgery. The good-natured
+fellow told Nekhludoff the whole story of his life, and was going to
+question him in turn, when their attention was aroused by a student and
+a veiled lady, who drove up in a trap, with rubber tyres, drawn by a
+large thoroughbred horse. The student was holding a large bundle. He
+came up to Nekhludoff, and asked if and how he could give the rolls he
+had brought in alms to the prisoners. His fiancee wished it (this lady
+was his fiancee), and her parents had advised them to take some rolls to
+the prisoners.
+
+“I myself am here for the first time,” said Nekhludoff, “and don’t know;
+but I think you had better ask this man,” and he pointed to the warder
+with the gold cords and the book, sitting on the right.
+
+As they were speaking, the large iron door with a window in it opened,
+and an officer in uniform, followed by another warder, stepped out.
+The warder with the notebook proclaimed that the admittance of visitors
+would now commence. The sentinel stepped aside, and all the visitors
+rushed to the door as if afraid of being too late; some even ran. At
+the door there stood a warder who counted the visitors as they came
+in, saying aloud, 16, 17, and so on. Another warder stood inside the
+building and also counted the visitors as they entered a second door,
+touching each one with his hand, so that when they went away again
+not one visitor should be able to remain inside the prison and not
+one prisoner might get out. The warder, without looking at whom he was
+touching, slapped Nekhludoff on the back, and Nekhludoff felt hurt by
+the touch of the warder’s hand; but, remembering what he had come about,
+he felt ashamed of feeling dissatisfied and taking offence.
+
+The first apartment behind the entrance doors was a large vaulted room
+with iron bars to the small windows. In this room, which was called the
+meeting-room, Nekhludoff was startled by the sight of a large picture of
+the Crucifixion.
+
+“What’s that for?” he thought, his mind involuntarily connecting the
+subject of the picture with liberation and not with imprisonment.
+
+He went on, slowly letting the hurrying visitors pass before, and
+experiencing a mingled feeling of horror at the evil-doers locked up in
+this building, compassion for those who, like Katusha and the boy they
+tried the day before, must be here though guiltless, and shyness and
+tender emotion at the thought of the interview before him. The warder
+at the other end of the meeting-room said something as they passed, but
+Nekhludoff, absorbed by his own thoughts, paid no attention to him, and
+continued to follow the majority of the visitors, and so got into the
+men’s part of the prison instead of the women’s.
+
+Letting the hurrying visitors pass before him, he was the last to get
+into the interviewing-room. As soon as Nekhludoff opened the door of
+this room, he was struck by the deafening roar of a hundred voices
+shouting at once, the reason of which he did not at once understand. But
+when he came nearer to the people, he saw that they were all pressing
+against a net that divided the room in two, like flies settling on
+sugar, and he understood what it meant. The two halves of the room,
+the windows of which were opposite the door he had come in by, were
+separated, not by one, but by two nets reaching from the floor to the
+ceiling. The wire nets were stretched 7 feet apart, and soldiers were
+walking up and down the space between them. On the further side of the
+nets were the prisoners, on the nearer, the visitors. Between them was
+a double row of nets and a space of 7 feet wide, so that they could not
+hand anything to one another, and any one whose sight was not very
+good could not even distinguish the face on the other side. It was also
+difficult to talk; one had to scream in order to be heard.
+
+On both sides were faces pressed close to the nets, faces of wives,
+husbands, fathers, mothers, children, trying to see each other’s
+features and to say what was necessary in such a way as to be
+understood.
+
+But as each one tried to be heard by the one he was talking to, and
+his neighbour tried to do the same, they did their best to drown each
+other’s voices’ and that was the cause of the din and shouting which
+struck Nekhludoff when he first came in. It was impossible to understand
+what was being said and what were the relations between the different
+people. Next Nekhludoff an old woman with a kerchief on her head stood
+trembling, her chin pressed close to the net, and shouting something to
+a young fellow, half of whose head was shaved, who listened attentively
+with raised brows. By the side of the old woman was a young man in
+a peasant’s coat, who listened, shaking his head, to a boy very like
+himself. Next stood a man in rags, who shouted, waving his arm and
+laughing. Next to him a woman, with a good woollen shawl on her
+shoulders, sat on the floor holding a baby in her lap and crying
+bitterly. This was apparently the first time she saw the greyheaded man
+on the other side in prison clothes, and with his head shaved. Beyond
+her was the doorkeeper, who had spoken to Nekhludoff outside; he was
+shouting with all his might to a greyhaired convict on the other side.
+
+When Nekhludoff found that he would have to speak in similar conditions,
+a feeling of indignation against those who were able to make and enforce
+these conditions arose in him; he was surprised that, placed in such
+a dreadful position, no one seemed offended at this outrage on human
+feelings. The soldiers, the inspector, the prisoners themselves, acted
+as if acknowledging all this to be necessary.
+
+Nekhludoff remained in this room for about five minutes, feeling
+strangely depressed, conscious of how powerless he was, and at variance
+with all the world. He was seized with a curious moral sensation like
+seasickness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+VISITING DAY--THE WOMEN’S WARD.
+
+“Well, but I must do what I came here for,” he said, trying to pick up
+courage. “What is to be done now?” He looked round for an official, and
+seeing a thin little man in the uniform of an officer going up and down
+behind the people, he approached him.
+
+“Can you tell me, sir,” he said, with exceedingly strained politeness of
+manner, “where the women are kept, and where one is allowed to interview
+them?”
+
+“Is it the women’s ward you want to go to?”
+
+“Yes, I should like to see one of the women prisoners,” Nekhludoff said,
+with the same strained politeness.
+
+“You should have said so when you were in the hall. Who is it, then,
+that you want to see?”
+
+“I want to see a prisoner called Katerina Maslova.”
+
+“Is she a political one?”
+
+“No, she is simply . . .”
+
+“What! Is she sentenced?”
+
+“Yes; the day before yesterday she was sentenced,” meekly answered
+Nekhludoff, fearing to spoil the inspector’s good humour, which seemed
+to incline in his favour.
+
+“If you want to go to the women’s ward please to step this way,” said
+the officer, having decided from Nekhludoff’s appearance that he was
+worthy of attention. “Sideroff, conduct the gentleman to the women’s
+ward,” he said, turning to a moustached corporal with medals on his
+breast.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+At this moment heart-rending sobs were heard coming from some one near
+the net.
+
+Everything here seemed strange to Nekhludoff; but strangest of all was
+that he should have to thank and feel obligation towards the inspector
+and the chief warders, the very men who were performing the cruel deeds
+that were done in this house.
+
+The corporal showed Nekhludoff through the corridor, out of the men’s
+into the women’s interviewing-room.
+
+This room, like that of the men, was divided by two wire nets; but it
+was much smaller, and there were fewer visitors and fewer prisoners, so
+that there was less shouting than in the men’s room. Yet the same thing
+was going on here, only, between the nets instead of soldiers there was
+a woman warder, dressed in a blue-edged uniform jacket, with gold cords
+on the sleeves, and a blue belt. Here also, as in the men’s room, the
+people were pressing close to the wire netting on both sides; on the
+nearer side, the townspeople in varied attire; on the further side, the
+prisoners, some in white prison clothes, others in their own coloured
+dresses. The whole length of the net was taken up by the people standing
+close to it. Some rose on tiptoe to be heard across the heads of others;
+some sat talking on the floor.
+
+The most remarkable of the prisoners, both by her piercing screams and
+her appearance, was a thin, dishevelled gipsy. Her kerchief had slipped
+off her curly hair, and she stood near a post in the middle of the
+prisoner’s division, shouting something, accompanied by quick gestures,
+to a gipsy man in a blue coat, girdled tightly below the waist. Next
+the gipsy man, a soldier sat on the ground talking to prisoner; next the
+soldier, leaning close to the net, stood a young peasant, with a fair
+beard and a flushed face, keeping back his tears with difficulty. A
+pretty, fair-haired prisoner, with bright blue eyes, was speaking to
+him. These two were Theodosia and her husband. Next to them was a tramp,
+talking to a broad-faced woman; then two women, then a man, then again a
+woman, and in front of each a prisoner. Maslova was not among them. But
+some one stood by the window behind the prisoners, and Nekhludoff knew
+it was she. His heart began to beat faster, and his breath stopped. The
+decisive moment was approaching. He went up to the part of the net where
+he could see the prisoner, and recognised her at once. She stood behind
+the blue-eyed Theodosia, and smiled, listening to what Theodosia was
+saying. She did not wear the prison cloak now, but a white dress,
+tightly drawn in at the waist by a belt, and very full in the bosom.
+From under her kerchief appeared the black ringlets of her fringe, just
+the same as in the court.
+
+“Now, in a moment it will be decided,” he thought.
+
+“How shall I call her? Or will she come herself?”
+
+She was expecting Bertha; that this man had come to see her never
+entered her head.
+
+“Whom do you want?” said the warder who was walking between the nets,
+coming up to Nekhludoff.
+
+“Katerina Maslova,” Nekhludoff uttered, with difficulty.
+
+“Katerina Maslova, some one to see you,” cried the warder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF VISITS MASLOVA.
+
+Maslova looked round, and with head thrown back and expanded chest,
+came up to the net with that expression of readiness which he well
+knew, pushed in between two prisoners, and gazed at Nekhludoff with a
+surprised and questioning look. But, concluding from his clothing he was
+a rich man, she smiled.
+
+“Is it me you want?” she asked, bringing her smiling face, with the
+slightly squinting eyes, nearer the net.
+
+“I, I--I wished to see--” Nekhludoff did not know how to address her. “I
+wished to see you--I--” He was not speaking louder than usual.
+
+“No; nonsense, I tell you!” shouted the tramp who stood next to him.
+“Have you taken it or not?”
+
+“Dying, I tell you; what more do you want?” some one else was screaming
+at his other side. Maslova could not hear what Nekhludoff was saying,
+but the expression of his face as he was speaking reminded her of him.
+She did not believe her own eyes; still the smile vanished from her face
+and a deep line of suffering appeared on her brow.
+
+“I cannot hear what you are saying,” she called out, wrinkling her brow
+and frowning more and more.
+
+“I have come,” said Nekhludoff. “Yes, I am doing my duty--I am
+confessing,” thought Nekhludoff; and at this thought the tears came in
+his eyes, and he felt a choking sensation in his throat, and holding on
+with both hands to the net, he made efforts to keep from bursting into
+tears.
+
+“I say, why do you shove yourself in where you’re not wanted?” some one
+shouted at one side of him.
+
+“God is my witness; I know nothing,” screamed a prisoner from the other
+side.
+
+Noticing his excitement, Maslova recognised him.
+
+“You’re like . . . but no; I don’t know you,” she shouted, without
+looking at him, and blushing, while her face grew still more stern.
+
+“I have come to ask you to forgive me,” he said, in a loud but
+monotonous voice, like a lesson learnt by heart. Having said these words
+he became confused; but immediately came the thought that, if he felt
+ashamed, it was all the better; he had to bear this shame, and he
+continued in a loud voice:
+
+“Forgive me; I have wronged you terribly.”
+
+She stood motionless and without taking her squinting eyes off him.
+
+He could not continue to speak, and stepping away from the net he tried
+to suppress the sobs that were choking him.
+
+The inspector, the same officer who had directed Nekhludoff to the
+women’s ward, and whose interest he seemed to have aroused, came into
+the room, and, seeing Nekhludoff not at the net, asked him why he was
+not talking to her whom he wanted to see. Nekhludoff blew his nose, gave
+himself a shake, and, trying to appear calm, said:
+
+“It’s so inconvenient through these nets; nothing can be heard.”
+
+Again the inspector considered for a moment.
+
+“Ah, well, she can be brought out here for awhile. Mary Karlovna,”
+ turning to the warder, “lead Maslova out.”
+
+A minute later Maslova came out of the side door. Stepping softly, she
+came up close to Nekhludoff, stopped, and looked up at him from under
+her brows. Her black hair was arranged in ringlets over her forehead in
+the same way as it had been two days ago; her face, though unhealthy and
+puffy, was attractive, and looked perfectly calm, only the glittering
+black eyes glanced strangely from under the swollen lids.
+
+“You may talk here,” said the inspector, and shrugging his shoulders he
+stepped aside with a look of surprise. Nekhludoff moved towards a seat
+by the wall.
+
+Maslova cast a questioning look at the inspector, and then, shrugging
+her shoulders in surprise, followed Nekhludoff to the bench, and having
+arranged her skirt, sat down beside him.
+
+“I know it is hard for you to forgive me,” he began, but stopped. His
+tears were choking him. “But though I can’t undo the past, I shall now
+do what is in my power. Tell me--”
+
+“How have you managed to find me?” she said, without answering his
+question, neither looking away from him nor quite at him, with her
+squinting eyes.
+
+“O God, help me! Teach me what to do,” Nekhludoff thought, looking at
+her changed face. “I was on the jury the day before yesterday,” he said.
+“You did not recognise me?”
+
+“No, I did not; there was not time for recognitions. I did not even
+look,” she said.
+
+“There was a child, was there not?” he asked.
+
+“Thank God! he died at once,” she answered, abruptly and viciously.
+
+“What do you mean? Why?”
+
+“I was so ill myself, I nearly died,” she said, in the same quiet voice,
+which Nekhludoff had not expected and could not understand.
+
+“How could my aunts have let you go?”
+
+“Who keeps a servant that has a baby? They sent me off as soon as
+they noticed. But why speak of this? I remember nothing. That’s all
+finished.”
+
+“No, it is not finished; I wish to redeem my sin.”
+
+“There’s nothing to redeem. What’s been has been and is passed,” she
+said; and, what he never expected, she looked at him and smiled in an
+unpleasantly luring, yet piteous, manner.
+
+Maslova never expected to see him again, and certainly not here and not
+now; therefore, when she first recognised him, she could not keep back
+the memories which she never wished to revive. In the first moment she
+remembered dimly that new, wonderful world of feeling and of thought
+which had been opened to her by the charming young man who loved her
+and whom she loved, and then his incomprehensible cruelty and the whole
+string of humiliations and suffering which flowed from and followed that
+magic joy. This gave her pain, and, unable to understand it, she did
+what she was always in the habit of doing, she got rid of these memories
+by enveloping them in the mist of a depraved life. In the first moment,
+she associated the man now sitting beside her with the lad she had
+loved; but feeling that this gave her pain, she dissociated them again.
+Now, this well-dressed, carefully-got-up gentleman with perfumed beard
+was no longer the Nekhludoff whom she had loved but only one of the
+people who made use of creatures like herself when they needed them,
+and whom creatures like herself had to make use of in their turn as
+profitably as they could; and that is why she looked at him with a
+luring smile and considered silently how she could best make use of him.
+
+“That’s all at an end,” she said. “Now I’m condemned to Siberia,” and
+her lip trembled as she was saying this dreadful word.
+
+“I knew; I was certain you were not guilty,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Guilty! of course not; as if I could be a thief or a robber.” She
+stopped, considering in what way she could best get something out of
+him.
+
+“They say here that all depends on the advocate,” she began. “A petition
+should be handed in, only they say it’s expensive.”
+
+“Yes, most certainly,” said Nekhludoff. “I have already spoken to an
+advocate.”
+
+“No money ought to be spared; it should be a good one,” she said.
+
+“I shall do all that is possible.”
+
+They were silent, and then she smiled again in the same way.
+
+“And I should like to ask you . . . a little money if you can . . . not
+much; ten roubles, I do not want more,” she said, suddenly.
+
+“Yes, yes,” Nekhludoff said, with a sense of confusion, and felt for his
+purse.
+
+She looked rapidly at the inspector, who was walking up and down the
+room. “Don’t give it in front of him; he’d take it away.”
+
+Nekhludoff took out his purse as soon as the inspector had turned his
+back; but had no time to hand her the note before the inspector faced
+them again, so he crushed it up in his hand.
+
+“This woman is dead,” Nekhludoff thought, looking at this once sweet,
+and now defiled, puffy face, lit up by an evil glitter in the black,
+squinting eyes which were now glancing at the hand in which he held
+the note, then following the inspector’s movements, and for a moment he
+hesitated. The tempter that had been speaking to him in the night again
+raised its voice, trying to lead him out of the realm of his inner into
+the realm of his outer life, away from the question of what he should
+do to the question of what the consequences would be, and what would be
+practical.
+
+“You can do nothing with this woman,” said the voice; “you will only
+tie a stone round your neck, which will help to drown you and hinder you
+from being useful to others.
+
+“Is it not better to give her all the money that is here, say good-bye,
+and finish with her forever?” whispered the voice.
+
+But here he felt that now, at this very moment, something most important
+was taking place in his soul--that his inner life was, as it were,
+wavering in the balance, so that the slightest effort would make it sink
+to this side or the other. And he made this effort by calling to his
+assistance that God whom he had felt in his soul the day before, and
+that God instantly responded. He resolved to tell her everything now--at
+once.
+
+“Katusha, I have come to ask you to forgive me, and you have given me no
+answer. Have you forgiven me? Will you ever forgive me?” he asked.
+
+She did not listen to him, but looked at his hand and at the inspector,
+and when the latter turned she hastily stretched out her hand, grasped
+the note, and hid it under her belt.
+
+“That’s odd, what you are saying there,” she said, with a smile of
+contempt, as it seemed to him.
+
+Nekhludoff felt that there was in her soul one who was his enemy and who
+was protecting her, such as she was now, and preventing him from getting
+at her heart. But, strange to say, this did not repel him, but drew him
+nearer to her by some fresh, peculiar power. He knew that he must waken
+her soul, that this was terribly difficult, but the very difficulty
+attracted him. He now felt towards her as he had never felt towards her
+or any one else before. There was nothing personal in this feeling: he
+wanted nothing from her for himself, but only wished that she might not
+remain as she now was, that she might awaken and become again what she
+had been.
+
+“Katusha, why do you speak like that? I know you; I remember you--and
+the old days in Papovo.”
+
+“What’s the use of recalling what’s past?” she remarked, drily.
+
+“I am recalling it in order to put it right, to atone for my sin,
+Katusha,” and he was going to say that he would marry her, but,
+meeting her eyes, he read in them something so dreadful, so coarse, so
+repellent, that he could not go on.
+
+At this moment the visitors began to go. The inspector came up to
+Nekhludoff and said that the time was up.
+
+“Good-bye; I have still much to say to you, but you see it is impossible
+to do so now,” said Nekhludoff, and held out his hand. “I shall come
+again.”
+
+“I think you have said all.”
+
+She took his hand but did not press it.
+
+“No; I shall try to see you again, somewhere where we can talk, and then
+I shall tell you what I have to say-something very important.”
+
+“Well, then, come; why not?” she answered, and smiled with that
+habitual, inviting, and promising smile which she gave to the men whom
+she wished to please.
+
+“You are more than a sister to me,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“That’s odd,” she said again, and went behind the grating.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+MASLOVA’S VIEW OF LIFE.
+
+Before the first interview, Nekhludoff thought that when she saw him
+and knew of his intention to serve her, Katusha would be pleased and
+touched, and would be Katusha again; but, to his horror, he found
+that Katusha existed no more, and there was Maslova in her place. This
+astonished and horrified him.
+
+What astonished him most was that Katusha was not ashamed of her
+position--not the position of a prisoner (she was ashamed of that), but
+her position as a prostitute. She seemed satisfied, even proud of it.
+And, yet, how could it be otherwise? Everybody, in order to be able to
+act, has to consider his occupation important and good. Therefore, in
+whatever position a person is, he is certain to form such a view of the
+life of men in general which will make his occupation seem important and
+good.
+
+It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute,
+acknowledging his or her profession as evil, is ashamed of it. But the
+contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in
+a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of
+life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In
+order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to
+the circle of those people who share their views of life and their own
+place in it. This surprises us, where the persons concerned are thieves,
+bragging about their dexterity, prostitutes vaunting their depravity, or
+murderers boasting of their cruelty. This surprises us only because the
+circle, the atmosphere in which these people live, is limited, and we
+are outside it. But can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich
+boast of their wealth, i.e., robbery; the commanders in the army pride
+themselves on victories, i.e., murder; and those in high places vaunt
+their power, i.e., violence? We do not see the perversion in the views
+of life held by these people, only because the circle formed by them is
+more extensive, and we ourselves are moving inside of it.
+
+And in this manner Maslova had formed her views of life and of her own
+position. She was a prostitute condemned to Siberia, and yet she had a
+conception of life which made it possible for her to be satisfied with
+herself, and even to pride herself on her position before others.
+
+According to this conception, the highest good for all men without
+exception--old, young, schoolboys, generals, educated and uneducated,
+was connected with the relation of the sexes; therefore, all men, even
+when they pretended to be occupied with other things, in reality
+took this view. She was an attractive woman, and therefore she was an
+important and necessary person. The whole of her former and present life
+was a confirmation of the correctness of this conception.
+
+With such a view of life, she was by no means the lowest, but a very
+important person. And Maslova prized this view of life more than
+anything; she could not but prize it, for, if she lost the importance
+that such a view of life gave her among men, she would lose the meaning
+of her life. And, in order not to lose the meaning of her life, she
+instinctively clung to the set that looked at life in the same way as
+she did. Feeling that Nekhludoff wanted to lead her out into another
+world, she resisted him, foreseeing that she would have to lose her
+place in life, with the self-possession and self-respect it gave her.
+For this reason she drove from her the recollections of her early youth
+and her first relations with Nekhludoff. These recollections did not
+correspond with her present conception of the world, and were therefore
+quite rubbed out of her mind, or, rather, lay somewhere buried and
+untouched, closed up and plastered over so that they should not escape,
+as when bees, in order to protect the result of their labour, will
+sometimes plaster a nest of worms. Therefore, the present Nekhludoff
+was not the man she had once loved with a pure love, but only a rich
+gentleman whom she could, and must, make use of, and with whom she could
+only have the same relations as with men in general.
+
+“No, I could not tell her the chief thing,” thought Nekhludoff, moving
+towards the front doors with the rest of the people. “I did not tell her
+that I would marry her; I did not tell her so, but I will,” he thought.
+
+The two warders at the door let out the visitors, counting them again,
+and touching each one with their hands, so that no extra person should
+go out, and none remain within. The slap on his shoulder did not offend
+Nekhludoff this time; he did not even notice it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+FANARIN, THE ADVOCATE--THE PETITION.
+
+Nekhludoff meant to rearrange the whole of his external life, to let
+his large house and move to an hotel, but Agraphena Petrovna pointed out
+that it was useless to change anything before the winter. No one would
+rent a town house for the summer; anyhow, he would have to live and keep
+his things somewhere. And so all his efforts to change his manner
+of life (he meant to live more simply: as the students live) led to
+nothing. Not only did everything remain as it was, but the house was
+suddenly filled with new activity. All that was made of wool or fur was
+taken out to be aired and beaten. The gate-keeper, the boy, the cook,
+and Corney himself took part in this activity. All sorts of strange
+furs, which no one ever used, and various uniforms were taken out and
+hung on a line, then the carpets and furniture were brought out, and the
+gate-keeper and the boy rolled their sleeves up their muscular arms and
+stood beating these things, keeping strict time, while the rooms were
+filled with the smell of naphthaline.
+
+When Nekhludoff crossed the yard or looked out of the window and saw
+all this going on, he was surprised at the great number of things there
+were, all quite useless. Their only use, Nekhludoff thought, was the
+providing of exercise for Agraphena Petrovna, Corney, the gate-keeper,
+the boy, and the cook.
+
+“But it’s not worth while altering my manner of life now,” he thought,
+“while Maslova’s case is not decided. Besides, it is too difficult. It
+will alter of itself when she will be set free or exiled, and I follow
+her.”
+
+On the appointed day Nekhludoff drove up to the advocate Fanarin’s own
+splendid house, which was decorated with huge palms and other plants,
+and wonderful curtains, in fact, with all the expensive luxury
+witnessing to the possession of much idle money, i.e., money acquired
+without labour, which only those possess who grow rich suddenly. In
+the waiting-room, just as in a doctor’s waiting-room, he found many
+dejected-looking people sitting round several tables, on which lay
+illustrated papers meant to amuse them, awaiting their turns to be
+admitted to the advocate. The advocate’s assistant sat in the room at a
+high desk, and having recognised Nekhludoff, he came up to him and said
+he would go and announce him at once. But the assistant had not reached
+the door before it opened and the sounds of loud, animated voices were
+heard; the voice of a middle-aged, sturdy merchant, with a red face and
+thick moustaches, and the voice of Fanarin himself. Fanarin was also
+a middle-aged man of medium height, with a worn look on his face. Both
+faces bore the expression which you see on the faces of those who have
+just concluded a profitable but not quite honest transaction.
+
+“Your own fault, you know, my dear sir,” Fanarin said, smiling.
+
+“We’d all be in ‘eaven were it not for hour sins.”
+
+“Oh, yes, yes; we all know that,” and both laughed un-naturally.
+
+“Oh, Prince Nekhludoff! Please to step in,” said Fanarin, seeing him,
+and, nodding once more to the merchant, he led Nekhludoff into his
+business cabinet, furnished in a severely correct style.
+
+“Won’t you smoke?” said the advocate, sitting down opposite Nekhludoff
+and trying to conceal a smile, apparently still excited by the success
+of the accomplished transaction.
+
+“Thanks; I have come about Maslova’s case.”
+
+“Yes, yes; directly! But oh, what rogues these fat money bags are!”
+ he said. “You saw this here fellow. Why, he has about twelve million
+roubles, and he cannot speak correctly; and if he can get a twenty-five
+rouble note out of you he’ll have it, if he’s to wrench it out with his
+teeth.”
+
+“He says ‘’eaven’ and ‘hour,’ and you say ‘this here fellow,’”
+ Nekhludoff thought, with an insurmountable feeling of aversion towards
+this man who wished to show by his free and easy manner that he and
+Nekhludoff belonged to one and the same camp, while his other clients
+belonged to another.
+
+“He has worried me to death--a fearful scoundrel. I felt I must relieve
+my feelings,” said the advocate, as if to excuse his speaking about
+things that had no reference to business. “Well, how about your case?
+I have read it attentively, but do not approve of it. I mean that
+greenhorn of an advocate has left no valid reason for an appeal.”
+
+“Well, then, what have you decided?”
+
+“One moment. Tell him,” he said to his assistant, who had just come in,
+“that I keep to what I have said. If he can, it’s all right; if not, no
+matter.”
+
+“But he won’t agree.”
+
+“Well, no matter,” and the advocate frowned.
+
+“There now, and it is said that we advocates get our money for nothing,”
+ he remarked, after a pause. “I have freed one insolvent debtor from a
+totally false charge, and now they all flock to me. Yet every such case
+costs enormous labour. Why, don’t we, too, ‘lose bits of flesh in the
+inkstand?’ as some writer or other has said. Well, as to your case, or,
+rather, the case you are taking an interest in. It has been conducted
+abominably. There is no good reason for appealing. Still,” he continued,
+“we can but try to get the sentence revoked. This is what I have noted
+down.” He took up several sheets of paper covered with writing, and
+began to read rapidly, slurring over the uninteresting legal terms and
+laying particular stress on some sentences. “To the Court of Appeal,
+criminal department, etc., etc. According to the decisions, etc., the
+verdict, etc., So-and-so Maslova pronounced guilty of having caused the
+death through poison of the merchant Smelkoff, and has, according to
+Statute 1454 of the penal code, been sentenced to Siberia,” etc., etc.
+He stopped. Evidently, in spite of his being so used to it, he still
+felt pleasure in listening to his own productions. “This sentence is
+the direct result of the most glaring judicial perversion and error,”
+ he continued, impressively, “and there are grounds for its revocation.
+Firstly, the reading of the medical report of the examination of
+Smelkoff’s intestines was interrupted by the president at the very
+beginning. This is point one.”
+
+“But it was the prosecuting side that demanded this reading,” Nekhludoff
+said, with surprise.
+
+“That does not matter. There might have been reasons for the defence to
+demand this reading, too.”
+
+“Oh, but there could have been no reason whatever for that.”
+
+“It is a ground for appeal, though. To continue: ‘Secondly,’ he went
+on reading, ‘when Maslova’s advocate, in his speech for the defence,
+wishing to characterise Maslova’s personality, referred to the causes of
+her fall, he was interrupted by the president calling him to order
+for the alleged deviation from the direct subject. Yet, as has been
+repeatedly pointed out by the Senate, the elucidation of the criminal’s
+characteristics and his or her moral standpoint in general has a
+significance of the first importance in criminal cases, even if only
+as a guide in the settling of the question of imputation.’ That’s point
+two,” he said, with a look at Nekhludoff.
+
+“But he spoke so badly that no one could make anything of it,”
+ Nekhludoff said, still more astonished.
+
+“The fellow’s quite a fool, and of course could not be expected to say
+anything sensible,” Fanarin said, laughing; “but, all the same, it will
+do as a reason for appeal. Thirdly: ‘The president, in his summing up,
+contrary to the direct decree of section 1, statute 801, of the criminal
+code, omitted to inform the jury what the judicial points are that
+constitute guilt; and did not mention that having admitted the fact of
+Maslova having administered the poison to Smelkoff, the jury had a right
+not to impute the guilt of murder to her, since the proofs of wilful
+intent to deprive Smelkoff of life were absent, and only to pronounce
+her guilty of carelessness resulting in the death of the merchant, which
+she did not desire.’ This is the chief point.”
+
+“Yes; but we ought to have known that ourselves. It was our mistake.”
+
+“And now the fourth point,” the advocate continued. “The form of the
+answer given by the jury contained an evident contradiction. Maslova
+is accused of wilfully poisoning Smelkoff, her one object being that of
+cupidity, the only motive to commit murder she could have had. The jury
+in their verdict acquit her of the intent to rob, or participation in
+the stealing of valuables, from which it follows that they intended
+also to acquit her of the intent to murder, and only through a
+misunderstanding, which arose from the incompleteness of the president’s
+summing up, omitted to express it in due form in their answer. Therefore
+an answer of this kind by the jury absolutely demanded the application
+of statutes 816 and 808 of the criminal code of procedure, i.e., an
+explanation by the president to the jury of the mistake made by them,
+and another debate on the question of the prisoner’s guilt.”
+
+“Then why did the president not do it?”
+
+“I, too, should like to know why,” Fanarin said, laughing.
+
+“Then the Senate will, of course, correct this error?”
+
+“That will all depend on who will preside there at the time. Well, now,
+there it is. I have further said,” he continued, rapidly, “a verdict of
+this kind gave the Court no right to condemn Maslova to be punished as
+a criminal, and to apply section 3, statute 771 of the penal code to her
+case. This is a decided and gross violation of the basic principles of
+our criminal law. In view of the reasons stated, I have the honour of
+appealing to you, etc., etc., the refutation, according to 909, 910, and
+section 2, 912 and 928 statute of the criminal code, etc., etc. . . .
+to carry this case before another department of the same Court for a
+further examination. There; all that can be done is done, but, to be
+frank, I have little hope of success, though, of course, it all depends
+on what members will be present at the Senate. If you have any influence
+there you can but try.”
+
+“I do know some.”
+
+“All right; only be quick about it. Else they’ll all go off for a change
+of air; then you may have to wait three months before they return. Then,
+in case of failure, we have still the possibility of appealing to His
+Majesty. This, too, depends on the private influence you can bring to
+work. In this case, too, I am at your service; I mean as to the working
+of the petition, not the influence.”
+
+“Thank you. Now as to your fees?”
+
+“My assistant will hand you the petition and tell you.”
+
+“One thing more. The Procureur gave me a pass for visiting this person
+in prison, but they tell me I must also get a permission from the
+governor in order to get an interview at another time and in another
+place than those appointed. Is this necessary?”
+
+“Yes, I think so. But the governor is away at present; a vice-governor
+is in his place. And he is such an impenetrable fool that you’ll
+scarcely be able to do anything with him.”
+
+“Is it Meslennikoff?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I know him,” said Nekhludoff, and got up to go. At this moment a
+horribly ugly, little, bony, snub-nosed, yellow-faced woman flew into
+the room. It was the advocate’s wife, who did not seem to be in the
+least bit troubled by her ugliness. She was attired in the most original
+manner; she seemed enveloped in something made of velvet and silk,
+something yellow and green, and her thin hair was crimped.
+
+She stepped out triumphantly into the ante-room, followed by a tall,
+smiling man, with a greenish complexion, dressed in a coat with silk
+facings, and a white tie. This was an author. Nekhludoff knew him by
+sight.
+
+She opened the cabinet door and said, “Anatole, you must come to
+me. Here is Simeon Ivanovitch, who will read his poems, and you must
+absolutely come and read about Garshin.”
+
+Nekhludoff noticed that she whispered something to her husband, and,
+thinking it was something concerning him, wished to go away, but she
+caught him up and said: “I beg your pardon, Prince, I know you, and,
+thinking an introduction superfluous, I beg you to stay and take part
+in our literary matinee. It will be most interesting. M. Fanarin will
+read.”
+
+“You see what a lot I have to do,” said Fanarin, spreading out his hands
+and smilingly pointing to his wife, as if to show how impossible it was
+to resist so charming a creature.
+
+Nekhludoff thanked the advocate’s wife with extreme politeness for the
+honour she did him in inviting him, but refused the invitation with a
+sad and solemn look, and left the room.
+
+“What an affected fellow!” said the advocate’s wife, when he had gone
+out.
+
+In the ante-room the assistant handed him a ready-written petition,
+and said that the fees, including the business with the Senate and the
+commission, would come to 1,000 roubles, and explained that M. Fanarin
+did not usually undertake this kind of business, but did it only to
+oblige Nekhludoff.
+
+“And about this petition. Who is to sign it?”
+
+“The prisoner may do it herself, or if this is inconvenient, M. Fanarin
+can, if he gets a power of attorney from her.”
+
+“Oh, no. I shall take the petition to her and get her to sign it,” said
+Nekhludoff, glad of the opportunity of seeing her before the appointed
+day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+A PRISON FLOGGING.
+
+At the usual time the jailer’s whistle sounded in the corridors of the
+prison, the iron doors of the cells rattled, bare feet pattered, heels
+clattered, and the prisoners who acted as scavengers passed along the
+corridors, filling the air with disgusting smells. The prisoners washed,
+dressed, and came out for revision, then went to get boiling water for
+their tea.
+
+The conversation at breakfast in all the cells was very lively. It was
+all about two prisoners who were to be flogged that day. One, Vasiliev,
+was a young man of some education, a clerk, who had killed his mistress
+in a fit of jealousy. His fellow-prisoners liked him because he
+was merry and generous and firm in his behaviour with the prison
+authorities. He knew the laws and insisted on their being carried out.
+Therefore he was disliked by the authorities. Three weeks before a
+jailer struck one of the scavengers who had spilt some soup over his new
+uniform. Vasiliev took the part of the scavenger, saying that it was not
+lawful to strike a prisoner.
+
+“I’ll teach you the law,” said the jailer, and gave Vasiliev a scolding.
+Vasiliev replied in like manner, and the jailer was going to hit him,
+but Vasiliev seized the jailer’s hands, held them fast for about three
+minutes, and, after giving the hands a twist, pushed the jailer out of
+the door. The jailer complained to the inspector, who ordered Vasiliev
+to be put into a solitary cell.
+
+The solitary cells were a row of dark closets, locked from outside, and
+there were neither beds, nor chairs, nor tables in them, so that the
+inmates had to sit or lie on the dirty floor, while the rats, of which
+there were a great many in those cells, ran across them. The rats were
+so bold that they stole the bread from the prisoners, and even attacked
+them if they stopped moving. Vasiliev said he would not go into the
+solitary cell, because he had not done anything wrong; but they used
+force. Then he began struggling, and two other prisoners helped him to
+free himself from the jailers. All the jailers assembled, and among them
+was Petrov, who was distinguished for his strength. The prisoners got
+thrown down and pushed into the solitary cells.
+
+The governor was immediately informed that something very like a
+rebellion had taken place. And he sent back an order to flog the two
+chief offenders, Vasiliev and the tramp, Nepomnishy, giving each thirty
+strokes with a birch rod. The flogging was appointed to take place in
+the women’s interviewing-room.
+
+All this was known in the prison since the evening, and it was being
+talked about with animation in all the cells.
+
+Korableva, Khoroshevka, Theodosia, and Maslova sat together in their
+corner, drinking tea, all of them flushed and animated by the vodka they
+had drunk, for Maslova, who now had a constant supply of vodka, freely
+treated her companions to it.
+
+“He’s not been a-rioting, or anything,” Korableva said, referring to
+Vasiliev, as she bit tiny pieces off a lump of sugar with her strong
+teeth. “He only stuck up for a chum, because it’s not lawful to strike
+prisoners nowadays.”
+
+“And he’s a fine fellow, I’ve heard say,” said Theodosia, who sat
+bareheaded, with her long plaits round her head, on a log of wood
+opposite the shelf bedstead on which the teapot stood.
+
+“There, now, if you were to ask _him_,” the watchman’s wife said to
+Maslova (by him she meant Nekhludoff).
+
+“I shall tell him. He’ll do anything for me,” Maslova said, tossing her
+head, and smiling.
+
+“Yes, but when is he coming? and they’ve already gone to fetch them,”
+ said Theodosia. “It is terrible,” she added, with a sigh.
+
+“I once did see how they flogged a peasant in the village.
+Father-in-law, he sent me once to the village elder. Well, I went,
+and there . . . “ The watchman’s wife began her long story, which was
+interrupted by the sound of voices and steps in the corridor above them.
+
+The women were silent, and sat listening.
+
+“There they are, hauling him along, the devils!” Khoroshavka said.
+“They’ll do him to death, they will. The jailers are so enraged with him
+because he never would give in to them.”
+
+All was quiet again upstairs, and the watchman’s wife finished her story
+of how she was that frightened when she went into the barn and saw
+them flogging a peasant, her inside turned at the sight, and so on.
+Khoroshevka related how Schegloff had been flogged, and never uttered
+a sound. Then Theodosia put away the tea things, and Korableva and the
+watchman’s wife took up their sewing. Maslova sat down on the bedstead,
+with her arms round her knees, dull and depressed. She was about to lie
+down and try to sleep, when the woman warder called her into the office
+to see a visitor.
+
+“Now, mind, and don’t forget to tell him about us,” the old woman
+(Menshova) said, while Maslova was arranging the kerchief on her head
+before the dim looking-glass. “We did not set fire to the house, but he
+himself, the fiend, did it; his workman saw him do it, and will not damn
+his soul by denying it. You just tell to ask to see my Mitri. Mitri
+will tell him all about it, as plain as can be. Just think of our being
+locked up in prison when we never dreamt of any ill, while he, the
+fiend, is enjoying himself at the pub, with another man’s wife.”
+
+“That’s not the law,” remarked Korableva.
+
+“I’ll tell him--I’ll tell him,” answered Maslova. “Suppose I have
+another drop, just to keep up courage,” she added, with a wink; and
+Korableva poured out half a cup of vodka, which Maslova drank. Then,
+having wiped her mouth and repeating the words “just to keep up
+courage,” tossing her head and smiling gaily, she followed the warder
+along the corridor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF AGAIN VISITS MASLOVA.
+
+Nekhludoff had to wait in the hall for a long time. When he had arrived
+at the prison and rung at the entrance door, he handed the permission of
+the Procureur to the jailer on duty who met him.
+
+“No, no,” the jailer on duty said hurriedly, “the inspector is engaged.”
+
+“In the office?” asked Nekhludoff.
+
+“No, here in the interviewing-room.”.
+
+“Why, is it a visiting day to-day?”
+
+“No; it’s special business.”
+
+“I should like to see him. What am I to do?” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“When the inspector comes out you’ll tell him--wait a bit,” said the
+jailer.
+
+At this moment a sergeant-major, with a smooth, shiny face and
+moustaches impregnated with tobacco smoke, came out of a side door, with
+the gold cords of his uniform glistening, and addressed the jailer in a
+severe tone.
+
+“What do you mean by letting any one in here? The office. . . .”
+
+“I was told the inspector was here,” said Nekhludoff, surprised at the
+agitation he noticed in the sergeant-major’s manner.
+
+At this moment the inner door opened, and Petrov came out, heated and
+perspiring.
+
+“He’ll remember it,” he muttered, turning to the sergeant major. The
+latter pointed at Nekhludoff by a look, and Petrov knitted his brows and
+went out through a door at the back.
+
+“Who will remember it? Why do they all seem so confused? Why did the
+sergeant-major make a sign to him?” Nekhludoff thought.
+
+The sergeant-major, again addressing Nekhludoff, said: “You cannot meet
+here; please step across to the office.” And Nekhludoff was about to
+comply when the inspector came out of the door at the back, looking even
+more confused than his subordinates, and sighing continually. When he
+saw Nekhludoff he turned to the jailer.
+
+“Fedotoff, have Maslova, cell 5, women’s ward, taken to the office.”
+
+“Will you come this way, please,” he said, turning to Nekhludoff. They
+ascended a steep staircase and entered a little room with one window, a
+writing-table, and a few chairs in it. The inspector sat down.
+
+“Mine are heavy, heavy duties,” he remarked, again addressing
+Nekhludoff, and took out a cigarette.
+
+“You are tired, evidently,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Tired of the whole of the service--the duties are very trying. One
+tries to lighten their lot and only makes it worse; my only thought is
+how to get away. Heavy, heavy duties!”
+
+Nekhludoff did not know what the inspector’s particular difficulties
+were, but he saw that to-day he was in a peculiarly dejected and
+hopeless condition, calling for pity.
+
+“Yes, I should think the duties were heavy for a kind-hearted man,” he
+said. “Why do you serve in this capacity?”
+
+“I have a family.”
+
+“But, if it is so hard--”
+
+“Well, still you know it is possible to be of use in some measure; I
+soften down all I can. Another in my place would conduct the affairs
+quite differently. Why, we have more than 2,000 persons here. And what
+persons! One must know how to manage them. It is easier said than done,
+you know. After all, they are also men; one cannot help pitying them.”
+ The inspector began telling Nekhludoff of a fight that had lately taken
+place among the convicts, which had ended by one man being killed.
+
+The story was interrupted by the entrance of Maslova, who was
+accompanied by a jailer.
+
+Nekhludoff saw her through the doorway before she had noticed the
+inspector. She was following the warder briskly, smiling and tossing her
+head. When she saw the inspector she suddenly changed, and gazed at
+him with a frightened look; but, quickly recovering, she addressed
+Nekhludoff boldly and gaily.
+
+“How d’you do?” she said, drawling out her words, and smilingly took his
+hand and shook it vigorously, not like the first time.
+
+“Here, I’ve brought you a petition to sign,” said Nekhludoff, rather
+surprised by the boldness with which she greeted him to-day.
+
+“The advocate has written out a petition which you will have to sign,
+and then we shall send it to Petersburg.”
+
+“All right! That can be done. Anything you like,” she said, with a wink
+and a smile.
+
+And Nekhludoff drew a folded paper from his pocket and went up to the
+table.
+
+“May she sign it here?” asked Nekhludoff, turning to the inspector.
+
+“It’s all right, it’s all right! Sit down. Here’s a pen; you can write?”
+ said the inspector.
+
+“I could at one time,” she said; and, after arranging her skirt and the
+sleeves of her jacket, she sat down at the table, smiled awkwardly, took
+the pen with her small, energetic hand, and glanced at Nekhludoff with a
+laugh.
+
+Nekhludoff told her what to write and pointed out the place where to
+sign.
+
+Sighing deeply as she dipped her pen into the ink, and carefully shaking
+some drops off the pen, she wrote her name.
+
+“Is it all?” she asked, looking from Nekhludoff to the inspector, and
+putting the pen now on the inkstand, now on the papers.
+
+“I have a few words to tell you,” Nekhludoff said, taking the pen from
+her.
+
+“All right; tell me,” she said. And suddenly, as if remembering
+something, or feeling sleepy, she grew serious.
+
+The inspector rose and left the room, and Nekhludoff remained with her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+MASLOVA REFUSES TO MARRY.
+
+The jailer who had brought Maslova in sat on a windowsill at some
+distance from them.
+
+The decisive moment had come for Nekhludoff. He had been incessantly
+blaming himself for not having told her the principal thing at the first
+interview, and was now determined to tell her that he would marry her.
+She was sitting at the further side of the table. Nekhludoff sat down
+opposite her. It was light in the room, and Nekhludoff for the first
+time saw her face quite near. He distinctly saw the crowsfeet round her
+eyes, the wrinkles round her mouth, and the swollen eyelids. He felt
+more sorry than before. Leaning over the table so as not to be heard by
+the jailer--a man of Jewish type with grizzly whiskers, who sat by the
+window--Nekhludoff said:
+
+“Should this petition come to nothing we shall appeal to the Emperor.
+All that is possible shall be done.”
+
+“There, now, if we had had a proper advocate from the first,” she
+interrupted. “My defendant was quite a silly. He did nothing but pay me
+compliments,” she said, and laughed. “If it had then been known that I
+was acquainted with you, it would have been another matter. They think
+every one’s a thief.”
+
+“How strange she is to-day,” Nekhludoff thought, and was just going to
+say what he had on his mind when she began again:
+
+“There’s something I want to say. We have here an old woman; such a fine
+one, d’you know, she just surprises every one; she is imprisoned for
+nothing, and her son, too, and everybody knows they are innocent, though
+they are accused of having set fire to a house. D’you know, hearing I
+was acquainted with you, she says: ‘Tell him to ask to see my son; he’ll
+tell him all about it.”’ Thus spoke Maslova, turning her head from side
+to side, and glancing at Nekhludoff. “Their name’s Menshoff. Well, will
+you do it? Such a fine old thing, you know; you can see at once she’s
+innocent. You’ll do it, there’s a dear,” and she smiled, glanced up at
+him, and then cast down her eyes.
+
+“All right. I’ll find out about them,” Nekhludoff said, more and more
+astonished by her free-and-easy manner. “But I was going to speak to you
+about myself. Do you remember what I told you last time?”
+
+“You said a lot last time. What was it you told me?” she said,
+continuing to smile and to turn her head from side to side.
+
+“I said I had come to ask you to forgive me,” he began.
+
+“What’s the use of that? Forgive, forgive, where’s the good of--”
+
+“To atone for my sin, not by mere words, but in deed. I have made up my
+mind to marry you.”
+
+An expression of fear suddenly came over her face. Her squinting eyes
+remained fixed on him, and yet seemed not to be looking at him.
+
+“What’s that for?” she said, with an angry frown.
+
+“I feel that it is my duty before God to do it.”
+
+“What God have you found now? You are not saying what you ought to. God,
+indeed! What God? You ought to have remembered God then,” she said, and
+stopped with her mouth open. It was only now that Nekhludoff noticed
+that her breath smelled of spirits, and that he understood the cause of
+her excitement.
+
+“Try and be calm,” he said.
+
+“Why should I be calm?” she began, quickly, flushing scarlet. “I am a
+convict, and you are a gentleman and a prince. There’s no need for you
+to soil yourself by touching me. You go to your princesses; my price is
+a ten-rouble note.”
+
+“However cruelly you may speak, you cannot express what I myself am
+feeling,” he said, trembling all over; “you cannot imagine to what
+extent I feel myself guilty towards you.”
+
+“Feel yourself guilty?” she said, angrily mimicking him. “You did not
+feel so then, but threw me 100 roubles. That’s your price.”
+
+“I know, I know; but what is to be done now?” said Nekhludoff. “I have
+decided not to leave you, and what I have said I shall do.”
+
+“And I say you sha’n’t,” she said, and laughed aloud.
+
+“Katusha,” he said, touching her hand.
+
+“You go away. I am a convict and you a prince, and you’ve no business
+here,” she cried, pulling away her hand, her whole appearance
+transformed by her wrath. “You’ve got pleasure out of me in this life,
+and want to save yourself through me in the life to come. You are
+disgusting to me--your spectacles and the whole of your dirty fat mug.
+Go, go!” she screamed, starting to her feet.
+
+The jailer came up to them.
+
+“What are you kicking up this row for?’ That won’t--”
+
+“Let her alone, please,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“She must not forget herself,” said the jailer. “Please wait a little,”
+ said Nekhludoff, and the jailer returned to the window.
+
+Maslova sat down again, dropping her eyes and firmly clasping her small
+hands.
+
+Nekhludoff stooped over her, not knowing what to do.
+
+“You do not believe me?” he said.
+
+“That you mean to marry me? It will never be. I’ll rather hang myself.
+So there!”
+
+“Well, still I shall go on serving you.”
+
+“That’s your affair, only I don’t want anything from you. I am telling
+you the plain truth,” she said. “Oh, why did I not die then?” she added,
+and began to cry piteously.
+
+Nekhludoff could not speak; her tears infected him.
+
+She lifted her eyes, looked at him in surprise, and began to wipe her
+tears with her kerchief.
+
+The jailer came up again and reminded them that it was time to part.
+
+Maslova rose.
+
+“You are excited. If it is possible, I shall come again tomorrow; you
+think it over,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+She gave him no answer and, without looking up, followed the jailer out
+of the room.
+
+“Well, lass, you’ll have rare times now,” Korableva said, when Maslova
+returned to the cell. “Seems he’s mighty sweet on you; make the most
+of it while he’s after you. He’ll help you out. Rich people can do
+anything.”
+
+“Yes, that’s so,” remarked the watchman’s wife, with her musical voice.
+“When a poor man thinks of getting married, there’s many a slip ‘twixt
+the cup and the lip; but a rich man need only make up his mind and it’s
+done. We knew a toff like that duckie. What d’you think he did?”
+
+“Well, have you spoken about my affairs?” the old woman asked.
+
+But Maslova gave her fellow-prisoners no answer; she lay down on the
+shelf bedstead, her squinting eyes fixed on a corner of the room, and
+lay there until the evening.
+
+A painful struggle went on in her soul. What Nekhludoff had told her
+called up the memory of that world in which she had suffered and which
+she had left without having understood, hating it. She now feared to
+wake from the trance in which she was living. Not having arrived at any
+conclusion when evening came, she again bought some vodka and drank with
+her companions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+VERA DOUKHOVA.
+
+“So this is what it means, this,” thought Nekhludoff as he left the
+prison, only now fully understanding his crime. If he had not tried to
+expiate his guilt he would never have found out how great his crime was.
+Nor was this all; she, too, would never have felt the whole horror of
+what had been done to her. He only now saw what he had done to the soul
+of this woman; only now she saw and understood what had been done to
+her.
+
+Up to this time Nekhludoff had played with a sensation of
+self-admiration, had admired his own remorse; now he was simply filled
+with horror. He knew he could not throw her up now, and yet he could not
+imagine what would come of their relations to one another.
+
+Just as he was going out, a jailer, with a disagreeable, insinuating
+countenance, and a cross and medals on his breast, came up and handed
+him a note with an air of mystery.
+
+“Here is a note from a certain person, your honour,” he said to
+Nekhludoff as he gave him the envelope.
+
+“What person?”
+
+“You will know when you read it. A political prisoner. I am in that
+ward, so she asked me; and though it is against the rules, still
+feelings of humanity--” The jailer spoke in an unnatural manner.
+
+Nekhludoff was surprised that a jailer of the ward where political
+prisoners were kept should pass notes inside the very prison walls, and
+almost within sight of every one; he did not then know that this was
+both a jailer and a spy. However, he took the note and read it on coming
+out of the prison.
+
+The note was written in a bold hand, and ran as follows: “Having heard
+that you visit the prison, and are interested in the case of a criminal
+prisoner, the desire of seeing you arose in me. Ask for a permission
+to see me. I can give you a good deal of information concerning your
+protegee, and also our group.--Yours gratefully, VERA DOUKHOVA.”
+
+Vera Doukhova had been a school-teacher in an out-of-the-way village of
+the Novgorod Government, where Nekhludoff and some friends of his had
+once put up while bear hunting. Nekhludoff gladly and vividly recalled
+those old days, and his acquaintance with Doukhova. It was just before
+Lent, in an isolated spot, 40 miles from the railway. The hunt had
+been successful; two bears had been killed; and the company were having
+dinner before starting on their return journey, when the master of the
+hut where they were putting up came in to say that the deacon’s daughter
+wanted to speak to Prince Nekhludoff. “Is she pretty?” some one asked.
+“None of that, please,” Nekhludoff said, and rose with a serious look
+on his face. Wiping his mouth, and wondering what the deacon’s daughter
+might want of him, he went into the host’s private hut.
+
+There he found a girl with a felt hat and a warm cloak on--a sinewy,
+ugly girl; only her eyes with their arched brows were beautiful.
+
+“Here, miss, speak to him,” said the old housewife; “this is the prince
+himself. I shall go out meanwhile.”
+
+“In what way can I be of service to you?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“I--I--I see you are throwing away your money on such nonsense--on
+hunting,” began the girl, in great confusion. “I know--I only want one
+thing--to be of use to the people, and I can do nothing because I know
+nothing--” Her eyes were so truthful, so kind, and her expression of
+resoluteness and yet bashfulness was so touching, that Nekhludoff, as
+it often happened to him, suddenly felt as if he were in her position,
+understood, and sympathised.
+
+“What can I do, then?”
+
+“I am a teacher, but should like to follow a course of study; and I
+am not allowed to do so. That is, not that I am not allowed to; they’d
+allow me to, but I have not got the means. Give them to me, and when I
+have finished the course I shall repay you. I am thinking the rich kill
+bears and give the peasants drink; all this is bad. Why should they not
+do good? I only want 80 roubles. But if you don’t wish to, never mind,”
+ she added, gravely.
+
+“On the contrary, I am very grateful to you for this opportunity. . . .
+I will bring it at once,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+He went out into the passage, and there met one of his comrades, who
+had been overhearing his conversation. Paying no heed to his chaffing,
+Nekhludoff got the money out of his bag and took it to her.
+
+“Oh, please, do not thank me; it is I who should thank you,” he said.
+
+It was pleasant to remember all this now; pleasant to remember that
+he had nearly had a quarrel with an officer who tried to make an
+objectionable joke of it, and how another of his comrades had taken his
+part, which led to a closer friendship between them. How successful the
+whole of that hunting expedition had been, and how happy he had felt
+when returning to the railway station that night. The line of sledges,
+the horses in tandem, glide quickly along the narrow road that lies
+through the forest, now between high trees, now between low firs weighed
+down by the snow, caked in heavy lumps on their branches. A red light
+flashes in the dark, some one lights an aromatic cigarette. Joseph, a
+bear driver, keeps running from sledge to sledge, up to his knees in
+snow, and while putting things to rights he speaks about the elk which
+are now going about on the deep snow and gnawing the bark off the aspen
+trees, of the bears that are lying asleep in their deep hidden dens, and
+his breath comes warm through the opening in the sledge cover. All this
+came back to Nekhludoff’s mind; but, above all, the joyous sense of
+health, strength, and freedom from care: the lungs breathing in the
+frosty air so deeply that the fur cloak is drawn tightly on his chest,
+the fine snow drops off the low branches on to his face, his body
+is warm, his face feels fresh, and his soul is free from care,
+self-reproach, fear, or desire. How beautiful it was. And now, O God!
+what torment, what trouble!
+
+Evidently Vera Doukhova was a revolutionist and imprisoned as such. He
+must see her, especially as she promised to advise him how to lighten
+Maslova’s lot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+THE VICE-GOVERNOR OF THE PRISON.
+
+Awaking early the next morning, Nekhludoff remembered what he had done
+the day before, and was seized with fear.
+
+But in spite of this fear, he was more determined than ever to continue
+what he had begun.
+
+Conscious of a sense of duty, he left the house and went to see
+Maslennikoff in order to obtain from him a permission to visit Maslova
+in prison, and also the Menshoffs--mother and son--about whom Maslova
+had spoken to him. Nekhludoff had known this Maslennikoff a long time;
+they had been in the regiment together. At that time Maslennikoff was
+treasurer to the regiment.
+
+He was a kind-hearted and zealous officer, knowing and wishing to know
+nothing beyond the regiment and the Imperial family. Now Nekhludoff
+saw him as an administrator, who had exchanged the regiment for an
+administrative office in the government where he lived. He was married
+to a rich and energetic woman, who had forced him to exchange military
+for civil service. She laughed at him, and caressed him, as if he were
+her own pet animal. Nekhludoff had been to see them once during the
+winter, but the couple were so uninteresting to him that he had not gone
+again.
+
+At the sight of Nekhludoff Maslennikoff’s face beamed all over. He had
+the same fat red face, and was as corpulent and as well dressed as in
+his military days. Then, he used to be always dressed in a well-brushed
+uniform, made according to the latest fashion, tightly fitting his chest
+and shoulders; now, it was a civil service uniform he wore, and that,
+too, tightly fitted his well-fed body and showed off his broad chest,
+and was cut according to the latest fashion. In spite of the difference
+in age (Maslennikoff was 40), the two men were very familiar with one
+another.
+
+“Halloo, old fellow! How good of you to come! Let us go and see my wife.
+I have just ten minutes to spare before the meeting. My chief is away,
+you know. I am at the head of the Government administration,” he said,
+unable to disguise his satisfaction.
+
+“I have come on business.”
+
+“What is it?” said Maslennikoff, in an anxious and severe tone, putting
+himself at once on his guard.
+
+“There is a person, whom I am very much interested in, in prison” (at
+the word “prison” Maslennikoff’s face grew stern); “and I should like to
+have an interview in the office, and not in the common visiting-room. I
+have been told it depended on you.”
+
+“Certainly, mon cher,” said Maslennikoff, putting both hands on
+Nekhludoff’s knees, as if to tone down his grandeur; “but remember, I am
+monarch only for an hour.”
+
+“Then will you give me an order that will enable me to see her?”
+
+“It’s a woman?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What is she there for?”
+
+“Poisoning, but she has been unjustly condemned.”
+
+“Yes, there you have it, your justice administered by jury, ils n’en
+font point d’autres,” he said, for some unknown reason, in French. “I
+know you do not agree with me, but it can’t be helped, c’est mon opinion
+bien arretee,” he added, giving utterance to an opinion he had for the
+last twelve months been reading in the retrograde Conservative paper. “I
+know you are a Liberal.”
+
+“I don’t know whether I am a Liberal or something else,” Nekhludoff
+said, smiling; it always surprised him to find himself ranked with a
+political party and called a Liberal, when he maintained that a man
+should be heard before he was judged, that before being tried all men
+were equal, that nobody at all ought to be ill-treated and beaten, but
+especially those who had not yet been condemned by law. “I don’t know
+whether I am a Liberal or not; but I do know that however had the
+present way of conducting a trial is, it is better than the old.”
+
+“And whom have you for an advocate?”
+
+“I have spoken to Fanarin.”
+
+“Dear me, Fanarin!” said Meslennikoff, with a grimace, recollecting how
+this Fanarin had examined him as a witness at a trial the year before
+and had, in the politest manner, held him up to ridicule for half an
+hour.
+
+“I should not advise you to have anything to do with him. _Fanarin est
+un homme tare_.”
+
+“I have one more request to make,” said Nekhludoff, without answering
+him. “There’s a girl whom I knew long ago, a teacher; she is a very
+pitiable little thing, and is now also imprisoned, and would like to see
+me. Could you give me a permission to visit her?”
+
+Meslennikoff bent his head on one side and considered.
+
+“She’s a political one?”
+
+“Yes, I have been told so.”
+
+“Well, you see, only relatives get permission to visit political
+prisoners. Still, I’ll give you an open order. _Je sais que vous
+n’abuserez pas_. What’s the name of your protegee? Doukhova? _Elle est
+jolie?_”
+
+“Hideuse.”
+
+Maslennikoff shook his head disapprovingly, went up to the table, and
+wrote on a sheet of paper, with a printed heading: “The bearer, Prince
+Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, is to be allowed to interview in the
+prison office the meschanka Maslova, and also the medical assistant,
+Doukhova,” and he finished with an elaborate flourish.
+
+“Now you’ll be able to see what order we have got there. And it is
+very difficult to keep order, it is so crowded, especially with people
+condemned to exile; but I watch strictly, and love the work. You will
+see they are very comfortable and contented. But one must know
+how to deal with them. Only a few days ago we had a little
+trouble--insubordination; another would have called it mutiny, and would
+have made many miserable, but with us it all passed quietly. We must
+have solicitude on one hand, firmness and power on the other,” and he
+clenched the fat, white, turquoise-ringed fist, which issued out of
+the starched cuff of his shirt sleeve, fastened with a gold stud.
+“Solicitude and firm power.”
+
+“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Nekhludoff. “I went there twice,
+and felt very much depressed.”
+
+“Do you know, you ought to get acquainted with the Countess Passek,”
+ continued Maslennikoff, growing talkative. “She has given herself up
+entirely to this sort of work. Elle fait beaucoup de bien. Thanks to
+her--and, perhaps I may add without false modesty, to me--everything has
+been changed, changed in such a way that the former horrors no longer
+exist, and they are really quite comfortable there. Well, you’ll see.
+There’s Fanarin. I do not know him personally; besides, my social
+position keeps our ways apart; but he is positively a bad man, and
+besides, he takes the liberty of saying such things in the court--such
+things!”
+
+“Well, thank you,” Nekhludoff said, taking the paper, and without
+listening further he bade good-day to his former comrade.
+
+“And won’t you go in to see my wife?”
+
+“No, pray excuse me; I have no time now.”
+
+“Dear me, why she will never forgive me,” said Maslennikoff,
+accompanying his old acquaintance down to the first landing, as he was
+in the habit of doing to persons of not the greatest, but the second
+greatest importance, with whom he classed Nekhludoff; “now do go in, if
+only for a moment.”
+
+But Nekhludoff remained firm; and while the footman and the door-keeper
+rushed to give him his stick and overcoat, and opened the door, outside
+of which there stood a policeman, Nekhludoff repeated that he really
+could not come in.
+
+“Well, then; on Thursday, please. It is her ‘at-home.’ I will tell her
+you will come,” shouted Maslennikoff from the stairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+THE CELLS.
+
+Nekhludoff drove that day straight from Maslennikoff’s to the prison,
+and went to the inspector’s lodging, which he now knew. He was again
+struck by the sounds of the same piano of inferior quality; but this
+time it was not a rhapsody that was being played, but exercises by
+Clementi, again with the same vigour, distinctness, and quickness. The
+servant with the bandaged eye said the inspector was in, and showed
+Nekhludoff to a small drawing-room, in which there stood a sofa and,
+in front of it, a table, with a large lamp, which stood on a piece of
+crochet work, and the paper shade of which was burnt on one side. The
+chief inspector entered, with his usual sad and weary look.
+
+“Take a seat, please. What is it you want?” he said, buttoning up the
+middle button of his uniform.
+
+“I have just been to the vice-governor’s, and got this order from him. I
+should like to see the prisoner Maslova.”
+
+“Markova?” asked the inspector, unable to bear distinctly because of the
+music.
+
+“Maslova!”
+
+“Well, yes.” The inspector got up and went to the door whence proceeded
+Clementi’s roulades.
+
+“Mary, can’t you stop just a minute?” he said, in a voice that showed
+that this music was the bane of his life. “One can’t hear a word.”
+
+The piano was silent, but one could hear the sound of reluctant steps,
+and some one looked in at the door.
+
+The inspector seemed to feel eased by the interval of silence, lit a
+thick cigarette of weak tobacco, and offered one to Nekhludoff.
+
+Nekhludoff refused.
+
+“What I want is to see Maslova.”
+
+“Oh, yes, that can be managed. Now, then, what do you want?” he said,
+addressing a little girl of five or six, who came into the room and
+walked up to her father with her head turned towards Nekhludoff, and her
+eyes fixed on him.
+
+“There, now, you’ll fall down,” said the inspector, smiling, as the
+little girl ran up to him, and, not looking where she was going, caught
+her foot in a little rug.
+
+“Well, then, if I may, I shall go.”
+
+“It’s not very convenient to see Maslova to-day,” said the inspector.
+
+“How’s that?”
+
+“Well, you know, it’s all your own fault,” said the inspector, with a
+slight smile. “Prince, give her no money into her hands. If you like,
+give it me. I will keep it for her. You see, you gave her some money
+yesterday; she got some spirits (it’s an evil we cannot manage to root
+out), and to-day she is quite tipsy, even violent.”
+
+“Can this be true?”
+
+“Oh, yes, it is. I have even been obliged to have recourse to severe
+measures, and to put her into a separate cell. She is a quiet woman in
+an ordinary way. But please do not give her any money. These people are
+so--” What had happened the day before came vividly back to Nekhludoff’s
+mind, and again he was seized with fear.
+
+“And Doukhova, a political prisoner; might I see her?”
+
+“Yes, if you like,” said the inspector. He embraced the little girl,
+who was still looking at Nekhludoff, got up, and, tenderly motioning
+her aside, went into the ante-room. Hardly had he got into the overcoat
+which the maid helped him to put on, and before he had reached the door,
+the distinct sounds of Clementi’s roulades again began.
+
+“She entered the Conservatoire, but there is such disorder there. She
+has a great gift,” said the inspector, as they went down the stairs.
+“She means to play at concerts.”
+
+The inspector and Nekhludoff arrived at the prison. The gates were
+instantly opened as they appeared. The jailers, with their fingers
+lifted to their caps, followed the inspector with their eyes. Four
+men, with their heads half shaved, who were carrying tubs filled with
+something, cringed when they saw the inspector. One of them frowned
+angrily, his black eyes glaring.
+
+“Of course a talent like that must be developed; it would not do to bury
+it, but in a small lodging, you know, it is rather hard.” The inspector
+went on with the conversation, taking no notice of the prisoners.
+
+“Who is it you want to see?”
+
+“Doukhova.”
+
+“Oh, she’s in the tower. You’ll have to wait a little,” he said.
+
+“Might I not meanwhile see the prisoners Menshoff, mother and son, who
+are accused of incendiarism?”
+
+“Oh, yes. Cell No. 21. Yes, they can be sent for.”
+
+“But might I not see Menshoff in his cell?”
+
+“Oh, you’ll find the waiting-room more pleasant.”
+
+“No. I should prefer the cell. It is more interesting.”
+
+“Well, you have found something to be interested in!”
+
+Here the assistant, a smartly-dressed officer, entered the side door.
+
+“Here, see the Prince into Menshoff’s cell, No. 21,” said the inspector
+to his assistant, “and then take him to the office. And I’ll go and
+call--What’s her name? Vera Doukhova.”
+
+The inspector’s assistant was young, with dyed moustaches, and diffusing
+the smell of eau-de-cologne. “This way, please,” he said to Nekhludoff,
+with a pleasant smile. “Our establishment interests you?”
+
+“Yes, it does interest me; and, besides, I look upon it as a duty to
+help a man who I heard was confined here, though innocent.”
+
+The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Yes, that may happen,” he said quietly, politely stepping aside to let
+the visitor enter, the stinking corridor first. “But it also happens
+that they lie. Here we are.”
+
+The doors of the cells were open, and some of the prisoners were in the
+corridor. The assistant nodded slightly to the jailers, and cast a side
+glance at the prisoners, who, keeping close to the wall, crept back to
+their cells, or stood like soldiers, with their arms at their sides,
+following the official with their eyes. After passing through one
+corridor, the assistant showed Nekhludoff into another to the left,
+separated from the first by an iron door. This corridor was darker, and
+smelt even worse than the first. The corridor had doors on both sides,
+with little holes in them about an inch in diameter. There was only an
+old jailer, with an unpleasant face, in this corridor.
+
+“Where is Menshoff?” asked the inspector’s assistant.
+
+“The eighth cell to the left.”
+
+“And these? Are they occupied?” asked Nekhludoff.
+
+“Yes, all but one.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+NO. 21.
+
+“May I look in?” asked Nekhludoff.
+
+“Oh, certainly,” answered the assistant, smiling, and turned to the
+jailer with some question.
+
+Nekhludoff looked into one of the little holes, and saw a tall young man
+pacing up and down the cell. When the man heard some one at the door he
+looked up with a frown, but continued walking up and down.
+
+Nekhludoff looked into another hole. His eye met another large eye
+looking out of the hole at him, and he quickly stepped aside. In the
+third cell he saw a very small man asleep on the bed, covered, head and
+all, with his prison cloak. In the fourth a broad-faced man was sitting
+with his elbows on his knees and his head low down. At the sound of
+footsteps this man raised his head and looked up. His face, especially
+his large eyes, bore the expression of hopeless dejection. One could see
+that it did not even interest him to know who was looking into his
+cell. Whoever it might be, he evidently hoped for nothing good from him.
+Nekhludoff was seized with dread, and went to Menshoff’s cell, No. 21,
+without stopping to look through any more holes. The jailer unlocked the
+door and opened it. A young man, with long neck, well-developed muscles,
+a small head, and kind, round eyes, stood by the bed, hastily putting
+on his cloak, and looking at the newcomers with a frightened face.
+Nekhludoff was specially struck by the kind, round eyes that were
+throwing frightened and inquiring glances in turns at him, at the
+jailer, and at the assistant, and back again.
+
+“Here’s a gentleman wants to inquire into your affair.”
+
+“Thank you kindly.”
+
+“Yes, I was told about you,” Nekhludoff said, going through the cell up
+to the dirty grated window, “and I should like to hear all about it from
+yourself.”
+
+Menshoff also came up to the window, and at once started telling his
+story, at first looking shyly at the inspector’s assistant, but growing
+gradually bolder. When the assistant left the cell and went into the
+corridor to give some order the man grew quite bold. The story was told
+with the accent and in the manner common to a most ordinary good peasant
+lad. To hear it told by a prisoner dressed in this degrading clothing,
+and inside a prison, seemed very strange to Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff
+listened, and at the same time kept looking around him--at the low
+bedstead with its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall,
+and the piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant
+in his prison cloak and shoes, and he felt sadder and sadder, and would
+have liked not to believe what this good-natured fellow was saying. It
+seemed too dreadful to think that men could do such a thing as to take
+a man, dress him in convict clothes, and put him in this horrible place
+without any reason only because he himself had been injured. And yet the
+thought that this seemingly true story, told with such a good-natured
+expression on the face, might be an invention and a lie was still
+more dreadful. This was the story: The village public-house keeper had
+enticed the young fellow’s wife. He tried to get justice by all sorts
+of means. But everywhere the public-house keeper managed to bribe the
+officials, and was acquitted. Once, he took his wife back by force, but
+she ran away next day. Then he came to demand her back, but, though he
+saw her when he came in, the public-house keeper told him she was not
+there, and ordered him to go away. He would not go, so the public-house
+keeper and his servant beat him so that they drew blood. The next day
+a fire broke out in the public-house, and the young man and his mother
+were accused of having set the house on fire. He had not set it on fire,
+but was visiting a friend at the time.
+
+“And it is true that you did not set it on fire?”
+
+“It never entered my head to do it, sir. It must be my enemy that did
+it himself. They say he had only just insured it. Then they said it was
+mother and I that did it, and that we had threatened him. It is true I
+once did go for him, my heart couldn’t stand it any longer.”
+
+“Can this be true?”
+
+“God is my witness it is true. Oh, sir, be so good--” and Nekhludoff had
+some difficulty to prevent him from bowing down to the ground. “You see
+I am perishing without any reason.” His face quivered and he turned
+up the sleeve of his cloak and began to cry, wiping the tears with the
+sleeve of his dirty shirt.
+
+“Are you ready?” asked the assistant.
+
+“Yes. Well, cheer up. We will consult a good lawyer, and will do what we
+can,” said Nekhludoff, and went out. Menshoff stood close to the door,
+so that the jailer knocked him in shutting it, and while the jailer was
+locking it he remained looking out through the little hole.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT.
+
+Passing back along the broad corridor (it was dinner time, and the cell
+doors were open), among the men dressed in their light yellow cloaks,
+short, wide trousers, and prison shoes, who were looking eagerly at him,
+Nekhludoff felt a strange mixture of sympathy for them, and horror and
+perplexity at the conduct of those who put and kept them here, and,
+besides, he felt, he knew not why, ashamed of himself calmly examining
+it all.
+
+In one of the corridors, some one ran, clattering with his shoes, in
+at the door of a cell. Several men came out from here, and stood in
+Nekhludoff’s way, bowing to him.
+
+“Please, your honour (we don’t know what to call you), get our affair
+settled somehow.”
+
+“I am not an official. I know nothing about it.”
+
+“Well, anyhow, you come from outside; tell somebody--one of the
+authorities, if need be,” said an indignant voice. “Show some pity
+on us, as a human being. Here we are suffering the second month for
+nothing.”
+
+“What do you mean? Why?” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Why? We ourselves don’t know why, but are sitting here the second
+month.”
+
+“Yes, it’s quite true, and it is owing to an accident,” said the
+inspector. “These people were taken up because they had no passports,
+and ought to have been sent back to their native government; but the
+prison there is burnt, and the local authorities have written, asking us
+not to send them on. So we have sent all the other passportless people
+to their different governments, but are keeping these.”
+
+“What! For no other reason than that?” Nekhludoff exclaimed, stopping at
+the door.
+
+A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes, surrounded
+him and the assistant, and several began talking at once. The assistant
+stopped them.
+
+“Let some one of you speak.”
+
+A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty, stepped out
+from the rest. He told Nekhludoff that all of them had been ordered back
+to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no
+passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue.
+The same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to
+renew their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said
+anything; but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in
+prison the second month, as if they were criminals.
+
+“We are all masons, and belong to the same artel. We are told that the
+prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault. Do help
+us.”
+
+Nekhludoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-looking old
+man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey,
+many-legged louse that was creeping along the good-looking man’s cheek.
+
+“How’s that? Is it possible for such a reason?” Nekhludoff said, turning
+to the assistant.
+
+“Yes, they should have been sent off and taken back to their homes,”
+ calmly said the assistant, “but they seem to have been forgotten or
+something.”
+
+Before the assistant had finished, a small, nervous man, also in prison
+dress, came out of the crowd, and, strangely contorting his mouth, began
+to say that they were being ill-used for nothing.
+
+“Worse than dogs,” he began.
+
+“Now, now; not too much of this. Hold your tongue, or you know--”
+
+“What do I know?” screamed the little man, desperately. “What is our
+crime?”
+
+“Silence!” shouted the assistant, and the little man was silent.
+
+“But what is the meaning of all this?” Nekhludoff thought to himself
+as he came out of the cell, while a hundred eyes were fixed upon him
+through the openings of the cell doors and from the prisoners that met
+him, making him feel as if he were running the gauntlet.
+
+“Is it really possible that perfectly innocent people are kept here?”
+ Nekhludoff uttered when they left the corridor.
+
+“What would you have us do? They lie so. To hear them talk they are all
+of them innocent,” said the inspector’s assistant. “But it does happen
+that some are really imprisoned for nothing.”
+
+“Well, these have done nothing.”
+
+“Yes, we must admit it. Still, the people are fearfully spoilt. There
+are such types--desperate fellows, with whom one has to look sharp.
+To-day two of that sort had to be punished.”
+
+“Punished? How?”
+
+“Flogged with a birch-rod, by order.”
+
+“But corporal punishment is abolished.”
+
+“Not for such as are deprived of their rights. They are still liable to
+it.”
+
+Nekhludoff thought of what he had seen the day before while waiting
+in the hall, and now understood that the punishment was then being
+inflicted, and the mixed feeling of curiosity, depression, perplexity,
+and moral nausea, that grew into physical sickness, took hold of him
+more strongly than ever before.
+
+Without listening to the inspector’s assistant, or looking round, he
+hurriedly left the corridor, and went to the office. The inspector was
+in the office, occupied with other business, and had forgotten to send
+for Doukhova. He only remembered his promise to have her called when
+Nekhludoff entered the office.
+
+“Sit down, please. I’ll send for her at once,” said the inspector.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+PRISONERS AND FRIENDS.
+
+The office consisted of two rooms. The first room, with a large,
+dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for
+measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a
+large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people.
+In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty
+persons, men and women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices.
+There was a writing table by the window.
+
+The inspector sat down by the table, and offered Nekhludoff a chair
+beside him. Nekhludoff sat down, and looked at the people in the room.
+
+The first who drew his attention was a young man with a pleasant face,
+dressed in a short jacket, standing in front of a middle-aged woman
+with dark eyebrows, and he was eagerly telling her something and
+gesticulating with his hands. Beside them sat an old man, with blue
+spectacles, holding the hand of a young woman in prisoner’s clothes, who
+was telling him something. A schoolboy, with a fixed, frightened look on
+his face, was gazing at the old man. In one corner sat a pair of
+lovers. She was quite young and pretty, and had short, fair hair, looked
+energetic, and was elegantly dressed; he had fine features, wavy hair,
+and wore a rubber jacket. They sat in their corner and seemed stupefied
+with love. Nearest to the table sat a grey-haired woman dressed in
+black, evidently the mother of a young, consumptive-looking fellow, in
+the same kind of jacket. Her head lay on his shoulder. She was trying
+to say something, but the tears prevented her from speaking; she began
+several times, but had to stop. The young man held a paper in his hand,
+and, apparently not knowing what to do, kept folding and pressing it
+with an angry look on his face.
+
+Beside them was a short-haired, stout, rosy girl, with very prominent
+eyes, dressed in a grey dress and a cape; she sat beside the weeping
+mother, tenderly stroking her. Everything about this girl was beautiful;
+her large, white hands, her short, wavy hair, her firm nose and lips,
+but the chief charm of her face lay in her kind, truthful hazel eyes.
+The beautiful eyes turned away from the mother for a moment when
+Nekhludoff came in, and met his look. But she turned back at once and
+said something to the mother.
+
+Not far from the lovers a dark, dishevelled man, with a gloomy face, sat
+angrily talking to a beardless visitor, who looked as if he belonged to
+the Scoptsy sect.
+
+At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed more
+concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker than about
+what he was saying. Nekhludoff, sitting by the inspector’s side, looked
+round with strained curiosity. A little boy with closely-cropped hair
+came up to him and addressed him in a thin little voice.
+
+“And whom are you waiting for?”
+
+Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy, and
+seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive eyes fixed
+on him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for a woman of his
+acquaintance.
+
+“Is she, then, your sister?” the boy asked.
+
+“No, not my sister,” Nekhludoff answered in surprise.
+
+“And with whom are you here?” he inquired of the boy.
+
+“I? With mamma; she is a political one,” he replied.
+
+“Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!” said the inspector, evidently considering
+Nekhludoff’s conversation with the boy illegal.
+
+Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff’s
+attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps,
+approached Nekhludoff and the boy.
+
+“What is he asking you? Who you are?” she inquired with a slight smile,
+and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in her kind,
+prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no doubt whatever
+that she was and must be on sisterly terms with everybody.
+
+“He likes to know everything,” she said, looking at the boy with so
+sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were obliged to
+smile back.
+
+“He was asking me whom I have come to see.”
+
+“Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers. You know
+it is,” said the inspector.
+
+“All right, all right,” she said, and went back to the consumptive lad’s
+mother, holding Kolia’s little hand in her large, white one, while he
+continued gazing up into her face.
+
+“Whose is this little boy?” Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.
+
+“His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,”
+ said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how
+exceptional his establishment was.
+
+“Is it possible?”
+
+“Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her.”
+
+“And that young girl?”
+
+“I cannot answer your question,” said the inspector, shrugging his
+shoulders. “Besides, here is Doukhova.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS.
+
+Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait,
+the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large, kind eyes.
+
+“Thanks for having come,” she said, pressing Nekhludoff’s hand. “Do you
+remember me? Let us sit down.”
+
+“I did not expect to see you like this.”
+
+“Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire
+nothing better,” said Vera Doukhova, with the usual expression of fright
+in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhludoff, and twisting the
+terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty
+collar of her bodice. Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.
+
+In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great animation.
+Her speech was intermingled with a great many long words, such as
+propaganda, disorganisation, social groups, sections and sub-sections,
+about which she seemed to think everybody knew, but which Nekhludoff had
+never heard of.
+
+She told him all the secrets of the Nardovolstvo, [literally, “People’s
+Freedom,” a revolutionary movement] evidently convinced that he was
+pleased to hear them. Nekhludoff looked at her miserable little neck,
+her thin, unkempt hair, and wondered why she had been doing all these
+strange things, and why she was now telling all this to him. He pitied
+her, but not as he had pitied Menshoff, the peasant, kept for no fault
+of his own in the stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the
+confusion that filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself
+a heroine, and was ready to give her life for a cause, though she could
+hardly have explained what that cause was and in what its success would
+lie.
+
+The business that Vera Doukhova wanted to see Nekhludoff about was
+the following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to their
+“sub-group,” as she expressed it, had been arrested with her about five
+months before, and imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress because
+some prohibited books and papers (which she had been asked to keep) had
+been found in her possession. Vera Doukhova felt herself in some measure
+to blame for her friend’s arrest, and implored Nekhludoff, who had
+connections among influential people, to do all he could in order to set
+this friend free.
+
+Besides this, Doukhova asked him to try and get permission for
+another friend of hers, Gourkevitch (who was also imprisoned in the
+Petropavlovsky fortress), to see his parents, and to procure some
+scientific books which he required for his studies. Nekhludoff promised
+to do what he could when he went to Petersburg.
+
+As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a course
+of midwifery, she became connected with a group of adherents to the
+Nardovolstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in the revolutionary
+movement. At first all went on smoothly. She wrote proclamations
+and occupied herself with propaganda work in the factories; then, an
+important member having been arrested, their papers were seized and all
+concerned were arrested. “I was also arrested, and shall be exiled. But
+what does it matter? I feel perfectly happy.” She concluded her story
+with a piteous smile.
+
+Nekhludoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the prominent
+eyes. Vera Doukhova told him that this girl was the daughter of a
+general, and had been long attached to the revolutionary party, and was
+arrested because she had pleaded guilty to having shot a gendarme.
+She lived in a house with some conspirators, where they had a secret
+printing press. One night, when the police came to search this house,
+the occupiers resolved to defend themselves, put out the light, and
+began destroying the things that might incriminate them. The police
+forced their way in, and one of the conspirators fired, and mortally
+wounded a gendarme. When an inquiry was instituted, this girl said that
+it was she who had fired, although she had never had a revolver in her
+hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And she kept to it, and was now
+condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.
+
+“An altruistic, fine character,” said Vera Doukhova, approvingly.
+
+The third business that Vera Doukhova wanted to talk about concerned
+Maslova. She knew, as everybody does know in prison, the story of
+Maslova’s life and his connection with her, and advised him to take
+steps to get her removed into the political prisoner’s ward, or into
+the hospital to help to nurse the sick, of which there were very many at
+that time, so that extra nurses were needed.
+
+Nekhludoff thanked her for the advice, and said he would try to act upon
+it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF AND THE PRISONERS.
+
+Their conversation was interrupted by the inspector, who said that the
+time was up, and the prisoners and their friends must part. Nekhludoff
+took leave of Vera Doukhova and went to the door, where he stopped to
+watch what was going on.
+
+The inspector’s order called forth only heightened animation among the
+prisoners in the room, but no one seemed to think of going. Some rose
+and continued to talk standing, some went on talking without rising.
+A few began crying and taking leave of each other. The mother and
+her consumptive son seemed especially pathetic. The young fellow kept
+twisting his bit of paper and his face seemed angry, so great were his
+efforts not to be infected by his mother’s emotion. The mother, hearing
+that it was time to part, put her head on his shoulder and sobbed and
+sniffed aloud.
+
+The girl with the prominent eyes--Nekhludoff could not help watching
+her--was standing opposite the sobbing mother, and was saying something
+to her in a soothing tone. The old man with the blue spectacles stood
+holding his daughter’s hand and nodding in answer to what she said. The
+young lovers rose, and, holding each other’s hands, looked silently into
+one another’s eyes.
+
+“These are the only two who are merry,” said a young man with a short
+coat who stood by Nekhludoff’s side, also looking at those who were
+about to part, and pointed to the lovers. Feeling Nekhludoff’s and
+the young man’s eyes fixed on them, the lovers--the young man with the
+rubber coat and the pretty girl--stretched out their arms, and with
+their hands clasped in each other’s, danced round and round again.
+“To-night they are going to be married here in prison, and she will
+follow him to Siberia,” said the young man.
+
+“What is he?”
+
+“A convict, condemned to penal servitude. Let those two at least have a
+little joy, or else it is too painful,” the young man added, listening
+to the sobs of the consumptive lad’s mother.
+
+“Now, my good people! Please, please do not oblige me to have recourse
+to severe measures,” the inspector said, repeating the same words
+several times over. “Do, please,” he went on in a weak, hesitating
+manner. “It is high time. What do you mean by it? This sort of thing is
+quite impossible. I am now asking you for the last time,” he repeated
+wearily, now putting out his cigarette and then lighting another.
+
+It was evident that, artful, old, and common as were the devices
+enabling men to do evil to others without feeling responsible for it,
+the inspector could not but feel conscious that he was one of those who
+were guilty of causing the sorrow which manifested itself in this
+room. And it was apparent that this troubled him sorely. At length the
+prisoners and their visitors began to go--the first out of the inner,
+the latter out of the outer door. The man with the rubber jacket passed
+out among them, and the consumptive youth and the dishevelled man. Mary
+Pavlovna went out with the boy born in prison.
+
+The visitors went out too. The old man with the blue spectacles,
+stepping heavily, went out, followed by Nekhludoff.
+
+“Yes, a strange state of things this,” said the talkative young man, as
+if continuing an interrupted conversation, as he descended the stairs
+side by side with Nekhludoff. “Yet we have reason to be grateful to the
+inspector who does not keep strictly to the rules, kind-hearted fellow.
+If they can get a talk it does relieve their hearts a bit, after all!”
+
+While talking to the young man, who introduced himself as Medinzeff,
+Nekhludoff reached the hall. There the inspector came up to them with
+weary step.
+
+“If you wish to see Maslova,” he said, apparently desiring to be polite
+to Nekhludoff, “please come to-morrow.”
+
+“Very well,” answered Nekhludoff, and hurried away, experiencing
+more than ever that sensation of moral nausea which he always felt on
+entering the prison.
+
+The sufferings of the evidently innocent Menshoff seemed terrible, and
+not so much his physical suffering as the perplexity, the distrust in
+the good and in God which he must feel, seeing the cruelty of the people
+who tormented him without any reason.
+
+Terrible were the disgrace and sufferings cast on these hundreds of
+guiltless people simply because something was not written on paper as it
+should have been. Terrible were the brutalised jailers, whose occupation
+is to torment their brothers, and who were certain that they were
+fulfilling an important and useful duty; but most terrible of all seemed
+this sickly, elderly, kind-hearted inspector, who was obliged to part
+mother and son, father and daughter, who were just the same sort of
+people as he and his own children.
+
+“What is it all for?” Nekhludoff asked himself, and could not find an
+answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+THE VICE-GOVERNOR’S “AT-HOME”.
+
+The next day Nekhludoff went to see the advocate, and spoke to him
+about the Menshoffs’ case, begging him to undertake their defence. The
+advocate promised to look into the case, and if it turned out to be as
+Nekhludoff said he would in all probability undertake the defence free
+of charge. Then Nekhludoff told him of the 130 men who were kept in
+prison owing to a mistake. “On whom did it depend? Whose fault was it?”
+
+The advocate was silent for a moment, evidently anxious to give a
+correct reply.
+
+“Whose fault is it? No one’s,” he said, decidedly. “Ask the Procureur,
+he’ll say it is the Governor’s; ask the Governor, he’ll say it is the
+Procureur’s fault. No one is in fault.”
+
+“I am just going to see the Vice-Governor. I shall tell him.”
+
+“Oh, that’s quite useless,” said the advocate, with a smile. “He is such
+a--he is not a relation or friend of yours?--such a blockhead, if I may
+say so, and yet a crafty animal at the same time.”
+
+Nekhludoff remembered what Maslennikoff had said about the advocate, and
+did not answer, but took leave and went on to Maslennikoff’s. He had
+to ask Maslennikoff two things: about Maslova’s removal to the prison
+hospital, and about the 130 passportless men innocently imprisoned.
+Though it was very hard to petition a man whom he did not respect, and
+by whose orders men were flogged, yet it was the only means of gaining
+his end, and he had to go through with it.
+
+As he drove up to Maslennikoff’s house Nekhludoff saw a number of
+different carriages by the front door, and remembered that it was
+Maslennikoff’s wife’s “at-home” day, to which he had been invited. At
+the moment Nekhludoff drove up there was a carriage in front of the
+door, and a footman in livery, with a cockade in his hat, was helping
+a lady down the doorstep. She was holding up her train, and showing her
+thin ankles, black stockings, and slippered feet. Among the carriages
+was a closed landau, which he knew to be the Korchagins’.
+
+The grey-haired, red-checked coachman took off his hat and bowed in a
+respectful yet friendly manner to Nekhludoff, as to a gentleman he knew
+well. Nekhludoff had not had time to inquire for Maslennikoff, when the
+latter appeared on the carpeted stairs, accompanying a very important
+guest not only to the first landing but to the bottom of the stairs.
+This very important visitor, a military man, was speaking in French
+about a lottery for the benefit of children’s homes that were to be
+founded in the city, and expressed the opinion that this was a good
+occupation for the ladies. “It amuses them, and the money comes.”
+
+_“Qu’elles s’amusent et que le bon dieu les benisse. M. Nekhludoff!_ How
+d’you do? How is it one never sees you?” he greeted Nekhludoff. “_Allez
+presenter vos devoirs a Madame._ And the Korchagins are here et Nadine
+Bukshevden. _Toutes les jolies femmes de la ville,_” said the important
+guest, slightly raising his uniformed shoulders as he presented them to
+his own richly liveried servant to have his military overcoat put on.
+“_Au revoir, mon cher._” And he pressed Maslennikoff’s hand.
+
+“Now, come up; I am so glad,” said Maslennikoff, grasping Nekhludoff’s
+hand. In spite of his corpulency Maslennikoff hurried quickly up the
+stairs. He was in particularly good spirits, owing to the attention paid
+him by the important personage. Every such attention gave him the same
+sense of delight as is felt by an affectionate dog when its master pats
+it, strokes it, or scratches its ears. It wags its tail, cringes,
+jumps about, presses its ears down, and madly rushes about in a circle.
+Maslennikoff was ready to do the same. He did not notice the serious
+expression on Nekhludoff’s face, paid no heed to his words, but pulled
+him irresistibly towards the drawing-room, so that it was impossible for
+Nekhludoff not to follow. “Business after wards. I shall do whatever
+you want,” said Meslennikoff, as he drew Nekhludoff through the dancing
+hall. “Announce Prince Nekhludoff,” he said to a footman, without
+stopping on his way. The footman started off at a trot and passed them.
+
+“_Vous n’avez qu’ a ordonner._ But you must see my wife. As it is, I got
+it for letting you go without seeing her last time.”
+
+By the time they reached the drawing-room the footman had already
+announced Nekhludoff, and from between the bonnets and heads that
+surrounded it the smiling face of Anna Ignatievna, the Vice-Governor’s
+wife, beamed on Nekhludoff. At the other end of the drawing-room several
+ladies were seated round the tea-table, and some military men and some
+civilians stood near them. The clatter of male and female voices went on
+unceasingly.
+
+“Enfin! you seem to have quite forgotten us. How have we offended?”
+ With these words, intended to convey an idea of intimacy which had never
+existed between herself and Nekhludoff, Anna Ignatievna greeted the
+newcomer.
+
+“You are acquainted?--Madam Tilyaevsky, M. Chernoff. Sit down a bit
+nearer. Missy _vene donc a notre table on vous apportera votre_ the
+. . . And you,” she said, having evidently forgotten his name, to an officer
+who was talking to Missy, “do come here. A cup of tea, Prince?”
+
+“I shall never, never agree with you. It’s quite simple; she did not
+love,” a woman’s voice was heard saying.
+
+“But she loved tarts.”
+
+“Oh, your eternal silly jokes!” put in, laughingly, another lady
+resplendent in silks, gold, and jewels.
+
+“C’est excellent these little biscuits, and so light. I think I’ll take
+another.”
+
+“Well, are you moving soon?”
+
+“Yes, this is our last day. That’s why we have come. Yes, it must be
+lovely in the country; we are having a delightful spring.”
+
+Missy, with her hat on, in a dark-striped dress of some kind that fitted
+her like a skin, was looking very handsome. She blushed when she saw
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“And I thought you had left,” she said to him.
+
+“I am on the point of leaving. Business is keeping me in town, and it is
+on business I have come here.”
+
+“Won’t you come to see mamma? She would like to see you,” she said, and
+knowing that she was saying what was not true, and that he knew it also,
+she blushed still more.
+
+“I fear I shall scarcely have time,” Nekhludoff said gloomily, trying
+to appear as if he had not noticed her blush. Missy frowned angrily,
+shrugged her shoulders, and turned towards an elegant officer, who
+grasped the empty cup she was holding, and knocking his sword against
+the chairs, manfully carried the cup across to another table.
+
+“You must contribute towards the Home fund.”
+
+“I am not refusing, but only wish to keep my bounty fresh for the
+lottery. There I shall let it appear in all its glory.”
+
+“Well, look out for yourself,” said a voice, followed by an evidently
+feigned laugh.
+
+Anna Ignatievna was in raptures; her “at-home” had turned out a
+brilliant success. “Micky tells me you are busying yourself with prison
+work. I can understand you so well,” she said to Nekhludoff. “Micky (she
+meant her fat husband, Maslennikoff) may have other defects, but you
+know how kind-hearted he is. All these miserable prisoners are his
+children. He does not regard them in any other light. _Il est d’une
+bonte---_” and she stopped, finding no words to do justice to this bonte
+of his, and quickly turned to a shrivelled old woman with bows of lilac
+ribbon all over, who came in just then.
+
+Having said as much as was absolutely necessary, and with as little
+meaning as conventionality required, Nekhludoff rose and went up to
+Meslennikoff. “Can you give me a few minutes’ hearing, please?”
+
+“Oh, yes. Well, what is it?”
+
+“Let us come in here.”
+
+They entered a small Japanese sitting-room, and sat down by the window.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+THE VICE-GOVERNOR SUSPICIOUS.
+
+“Well? _Je suis a vous_. Will you smoke? But wait a bit; we must be
+careful and not make a mess here,” said Maslennikoff, and brought an
+ashpan. “Well?”
+
+“There are two matters I wish to ask you about.”
+
+“Dear me!”
+
+An expression of gloom and dejection came over Maslennikoff’s
+countenance, and every trace of the excitement, like that of the dog’s
+whom its master has scratched behind the cars, vanished completely. The
+sound of voices reached them from the drawing-room. A woman’s voice was
+heard, saying, _“Jamais je ne croirais,”_ and a man’s voice from
+the other side relating something in which the names of la Comtesse
+Voronzoff and Victor Apraksine kept recurring. A hum of voices, mixed
+with laughter, came from another side. Maslennikoff tried to listen to
+what was going on in the drawing-room and to what Nekhludoff was saying
+at the same time.
+
+“I am again come about that same woman,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Oh, yes; I know. The one innocently condemned.”
+
+“I would like to ask that she should be appointed to serve in the prison
+hospital. I have been told that this could be arranged.”
+
+Maslennikoff compressed his lips and meditated. “That will be scarcely
+possible,” he said. “However, I shall see what can be done, and shall
+wire you an answer tomorrow.”
+
+“I have been told that there were many sick, and help was needed.”
+
+“All right, all right. I shall let you know in any case.”
+
+“Please do,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+The sound of a general and even a natural laugh came from the
+drawing-room.
+
+“That’s all that Victor. He is wonderfully sharp when he is in the right
+vein,” said Maslennikoff.
+
+“The next thing I wanted to tell you,” said Nekhludoff, “is that 130
+persons are imprisoned only because their passports are overdue. They
+have been kept here a month.”
+
+And he related the circumstances of the case.
+
+“How have you come to know of this?” said Maslennikoff, looking uneasy
+and dissatisfied.
+
+“I went to see a prisoner, and these men came and surrounded me in the
+corridor, and asked . . .”
+
+“What prisoner did you go to see?”
+
+“A peasant who is kept in prison, though innocent. I have put his case
+into the hands of a lawyer. But that is not the point.”
+
+“Is it possible that people who have done no wrong are imprisoned only
+because their passports are overdue? And . . .”
+
+“That’s the Procureur’s business,” Maslennikoff interrupted, angrily.
+“There, now, you see what it is you call a prompt and just form of
+trial. It is the business of the Public Prosecutor to visit the prison
+and to find out if the prisoners are kept there lawfully. But that set
+play cards; that’s all they do.”
+
+“Am I to understand that you can do nothing?” Nekhludoff said,
+despondently, remembering that the advocate had foretold that the
+Governor would put the blame on the Procureur.
+
+“Oh, yes, I can. I shall see about it at once.”
+
+“So much the worse for her. _C’est un souffre douleur_,” came the voice
+of a woman, evidently indifferent to what she was saying, from the
+drawing-room.
+
+“So much the better. I shall take it also,” a man’s voice was heard to
+say from the other side, followed by the playful laughter of a woman,
+who was apparently trying to prevent the man from taking something away
+from her.
+
+“No, no; not on any account,” the woman’s voice said.
+
+“All right, then. I shall do all this,” Maslennikoff repeated, and put
+out the cigarette he held in his white, turquoise-ringed hand. “And now
+let us join the ladies.”
+
+“Wait a moment,” Nekhludoff said, stopping at the door of the
+drawing-room. “I was told that some men had received corporal punishment
+in the prison yesterday. Is this true?”
+
+Maslennikoff blushed.
+
+“Oh, that’s what you are after? No, mon cher, decidedly it won’t do to
+let you in there; you want to get at everything. Come, come; Anna is
+calling us,” he said, catching Nekhludoff by the arm, and again becoming
+as excited as after the attention paid him by the important person, only
+now his excitement was not joyful, but anxious.
+
+Nekhludoff pulled his arm away, and without taking leave of any one
+and without saying a word, he passed through the drawing-room with a
+dejected look, went down into the hall, past the footman, who sprang
+towards him, and out at the street door.
+
+“What is the matter with him? What have you done to him?” asked Anna of
+her husband.
+
+“This is _a la Francaise_,” remarked some one.
+
+“_A la Francaise_, indeed--it is _a la Zoulou_.”
+
+“Oh, but he’s always been like that.”
+
+Some one rose, some one came in, and the clatter went on its course.
+The company used this episode with Nekhludoff as a convenient topic of
+conversation for the rest of the “at-home.”
+
+On the day following his visit to Maslennikoff, Nekhludoff received a
+letter from him, written in a fine, firm hand, on thick, glazed paper,
+with a coat-of-arms, and sealed with sealing-wax. Maslennikoff said
+that he had written to the doctor concerning Maslova’s removal to the
+hospital, and hoped Nekhludoff’s wish would receive attention. The
+letter was signed, “Your affectionate elder comrade,” and the signature
+ended with a large, firm, and artistic flourish. “Fool!” Nekhludoff
+could not refrain from saying, especially because in the word
+“comrade” he felt Maslennikoff’s condescension towards him, i.e., while
+Maslennikoff was filling this position, morally most dirty and shameful,
+he still thought himself a very important man, and wished, if not
+exactly to flatter Nekhludoff, at least to show that he was not too
+proud to call him comrade.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF’S THIRD INTERVIEW WITH MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+
+One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own
+special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid,
+energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man
+that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener
+energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say
+of one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is wicked and
+foolish. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is
+untrue. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in
+all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower,
+there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same
+with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality,
+and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often
+becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man, In some
+people these changes are very rapid, and Nekhludoff was such a man.
+These changes in him were due to physical and to spiritual causes. At
+this time he experienced such a change.
+
+That feeling of triumph and joy at the renewal of life which he had
+experienced after the trial and after the first interview with Katusha,
+vanished completely, and after the last interview fear and revulsion
+took the place of that joy. He was determined not to leave her, and not
+to change his decision of marrying her, if she wished it; but it seemed
+very hard, and made him suffer.
+
+On the day after his visit to Maslennikoff, he again went to the prison
+to see her.
+
+The inspector allowed him to speak to her, only not in the advocate’s
+room nor in the office, but in the women’s visiting-room. In spite
+of his kindness, the inspector was more reserved with Nekhludoff than
+hitherto.
+
+An order for greater caution had apparently been sent, as a result of
+his conversation with Meslennikoff.
+
+“You may see her,” the inspector said; “but please remember what I
+said as regards money. And as to her removal to the hospital, that his
+excellency wrote to me about, it can be done; the doctor would agree.
+Only she herself does not wish it. She says, ‘Much need have I to carry
+out the slops for the scurvy beggars.’ You don’t know what these people
+are, Prince,” he added.
+
+Nekhludoff did not reply, but asked to have the interview. The
+inspector called a jailer, whom Nekhludoff followed into the women’s
+visiting-room, where there was no one but Maslova waiting. She came from
+behind the grating, quiet and timid, close up to him, and said, without
+looking at him:
+
+“Forgive me, Dmitri Ivanovitch, I spoke hastily the day before
+yesterday.”
+
+“It is not for me to forgive you,” Nekhludoff began.
+
+“But all the same, you must leave me,” she interrupted, and in the
+terribly squinting eyes with which she looked at him Nekhludoff read the
+former strained, angry expression.
+
+“Why should I leave you?”
+
+“So.”
+
+“But why so?”
+
+She again looked up, as it seemed to him, with the same angry look.
+
+“Well, then, thus it is,” she said. “You must leave me. It is true
+what I am saying. I cannot. You just give it up altogether.” Her lips
+trembled and she was silent for a moment. “It is true. I’d rather hang
+myself.”
+
+Nekhludoff felt that in this refusal there was hatred and unforgiving
+resentment, but there was also something besides, something good. This
+confirmation of the refusal in cold blood at once quenched all the
+doubts in Nekhludoff’s bosom, and brought back the serious, triumphant
+emotion he had felt in relation to Katusha.
+
+“Katusha, what I have said I will again repeat,” he uttered, very
+seriously. “I ask you to marry me. If you do not wish it, and for as
+long as you do not wish it, I shall only continue to follow you, and
+shall go where you are taken.”
+
+“That is your business. I shall not say anything more,” she answered,
+and her lips began to tremble again.
+
+He, too, was silent, feeling unable to speak.
+
+“I shall now go to the country, and then to Petersburg,” he said, when
+he was quieter again. “I shall do my utmost to get your--our case, I
+mean, reconsidered, and by the help of God the sentence may be revoked.”
+
+“And if it is not revoked, never mind. I have deserved it, if not in
+this case, in other ways,” she said, and he saw how difficult it was for
+her to keep down her tears.
+
+“Well, have you seen Menshoff?” she suddenly asked, to hide her emotion.
+“It’s true they are innocent, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes, I think so.”
+
+“Such a splendid old woman,” she said.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+“Well, and as to the hospital?” she suddenly said, and looking at him
+with her squinting eyes. “If you like, I will go, and I shall not drink
+any spirits, either.”
+
+Nekhludoff looked into her eyes. They were smiling.
+
+“Yes, yes, she is quite a different being,” Nekhludoff thought. After
+all his former doubts, he now felt something he had never before
+experienced--the certainty that love is invincible.
+
+When Maslova returned to her noisome cell after this interview, she took
+off her cloak and sat down in her place on the shelf bedstead with her
+hands folded on her lap. In the cell were only the consumptive woman,
+the Vladimir woman with her baby, Menshoff’s old mother, and the
+watchman’s wife. The deacon’s daughter had the day before been declared
+mentally diseased and removed to the hospital. The rest of the women
+were away, washing clothes. The old woman was asleep, the cell door
+stood open, and the watchman’s children were in the corridor outside.
+The Vladimir woman, with her baby in her arms, and the watchman’s
+wife, with the stocking she was knitting with deft fingers, came up to
+Maslova. “Well, have you had a chat?” they asked. Maslova sat silent on
+the high bedstead, swinging her legs, which did not reach to the floor.
+
+“What’s the good of snivelling?” said the watchman’s wife. “The chief
+thing’s not to go down into the dumps. Eh, Katusha? Now, then!” and she
+went on, quickly moving her fingers.
+
+Maslova did not answer.
+
+“And our women have all gone to wash,” said the Vladimir woman. “I
+heard them say much has been given in alms to-day. Quite a lot has been
+brought.”
+
+“Finashka,” called out the watchman’s wife, “where’s the little imp gone
+to?”
+
+She took a knitting needle, stuck it through both the ball and the
+stocking, and went out into the corridor.
+
+At this moment the sound of women’s voices was heard from the corridor,
+and the inmates of the cell entered, with their prison shoes, but
+no stockings on their feet. Each was carrying a roll, some even two.
+Theodosia came at once up to Maslova.
+
+“What’s the matter; is anything wrong?” Theodosia asked, looking
+lovingly at Maslova with her clear, blue eyes. “This is for our tea,”
+ and she put the rolls on a shelf.
+
+“Why, surely he has not changed his mind about marrying?” asked
+Korableva.
+
+“No, he has not, but I don’t wish to,” said Maslova, “and so I told
+him.”
+
+“More fool you!” muttered Korableva in her deep tones.
+
+“If one’s not to live together, what’s the use of marrying?” said
+Theodosia.
+
+“There’s your husband--he’s going with you,” said the watchman’s wife.
+
+“Well, of course, we’re married,” said Theodosia. “But why should he go
+through the ceremony if he is not to live with her?”
+
+“Why, indeed! Don’t be a fool! You know if he marries her she’ll roll in
+wealth,” said Korableva.
+
+“He says, ‘Wherever they take you, I’ll follow,’” said Maslova. “If he
+does, it’s well; if he does not, well also. I am not going to ask him
+to. Now he is going to try and arrange the matter in Petersburg. He is
+related to all the Ministers there. But, all the same, I have no need of
+him,” she continued.
+
+“Of course not,” suddenly agreed Korableva, evidently thinking about
+something else as she sat examining her bag. “Well, shall we have a
+drop?”
+
+“You have some,” replied Maslova. “I won’t.”
+
+END OF BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PROPERTY IN LAND.
+
+It was possible for Maslova’s case to come before the Senate in a
+fortnight, at which time Nekhludoff meant to go to Petersburg, and, if
+need be, to appeal to the Emperor (as the advocate who had drawn up the
+petition advised) should the appeal be disregarded (and, according to
+the advocate, it was best to be prepared for that, since the causes for
+appeal were so slight). The party of convicts, among whom was Maslova,
+would very likely leave in the beginning of June. In order to be able to
+follow her to Siberia, as Nekhludoff was firmly resolved to do, he was
+now obliged to visit his estates, and settle matters there. Nekhludoff
+first went to the nearest, Kousminski, a large estate that lay in the
+black earth district, and from which he derived the greatest part of his
+income.
+
+He had lived on that estate in his childhood and youth, and had been
+there twice since, and once, at his mother’s request, he had taken a
+German steward there, and had with him verified the accounts. The state
+of things there and the peasants’ relations to the management, i.e.,
+the landlord, had therefore been long known to him. The relations of the
+peasants to the administration were those of utter dependence on that
+management. Nekhludoff knew all this when still a university student,
+he had confessed and preached Henry Georgeism, and, on the basis of that
+teaching, had given the land inherited from his father to the peasants.
+It is true that after entering the army, when he got into the habit of
+spending 20,000 roubles a year, those former occupations ceased to be
+regarded as a duty, and were forgotten, and he not only left off asking
+himself where the money his mother allowed him came from, but even
+avoided thinking about it. But his mother’s death, the coming into the
+property, and the necessity of managing it, again raised the question
+as to what his position in reference to private property in land was. A
+month before Nekhludoff would have answered that he had not the strength
+to alter the existing order of things; that it was not he who was
+administering the estate; and would one way or another have eased his
+conscience, continuing to live far from his estates, and having the
+money sent him. But now he decided that he could not leave things to go
+on as they were, but would have to alter them in a way unprofitable
+to himself, even though he had all these complicated and difficult
+relations with the prison world which made money necessary, as well as a
+probable journey to Siberia before him. Therefore he decided not to farm
+the land, but to let it to the peasants at a low rent, to enable them
+to cultivate it without depending on a landlord. More than once, when
+comparing the position of a landowner with that of an owner of serfs,
+Nekhludoff had compared the renting of land to the peasants instead
+of cultivating it with hired labour, to the old system by which serf
+proprietors used to exact a money payment from their serfs in place of
+labour. It was not a solution of the problem, and yet a step towards the
+solution; it was a movement towards a less rude form of slavery. And it
+was in this way he meant to act.
+
+Nekhludoff reached Kousminski about noon. Trying to simplify his life
+in every way, he did not telegraph, but hired a cart and pair at the
+station. The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen coat, with a belt
+below his long waist. He was glad to talk to the gentleman, especially
+because while they were talking his broken-winded white horse and the
+emaciated spavined one could go at a foot-pace, which they always liked
+to do.
+
+The driver spoke about the steward at Kousminski without knowing that he
+was driving “the master.” Nekhludoff had purposely not told him who he
+was.
+
+“That ostentatious German,” said the driver (who had been to town and
+read novels) as he sat sideways on the box, passing his hand from
+the top to the bottom of his long whip, and trying to show off his
+accomplishments--“that ostentatious German has procured three light
+bays, and when he drives out with his lady---oh, my! At Christmas he had
+a Christmas-tree in the big house. I drove some of the visitors there.
+It had ‘lectric lights; you could not see the like of it in the whole
+of the government. What’s it to him, he has cribbed a heap of money. I
+heard say he has bought an estate.”
+
+Nekhludoff had imagined that he was quite indifferent to the way the
+steward managed his estate, and what advantages the steward derived from
+it. The words of the long-waisted driver, however, were not pleasant to
+hear.
+
+A dark cloud now and then covered the sun; the larks were soaring above
+the fields of winter corn; the forests were already covered with fresh
+young green; the meadows speckled with grazing cattle and horses. The
+fields were being ploughed, and Nekhludoff enjoyed the lovely day. But
+every now and then he had an unpleasant feeling, and, when he asked
+himself what it was caused by, he remembered what the driver had told
+him about the way the German was managing Kousminski. When he got to his
+estate and set to work this unpleasant feeling vanished.
+
+Looking over the books in the office, and a talk with the foreman, who
+naively pointed out the advantages to be derived from the facts that the
+peasants had very little land of their own and that it lay in the midst
+of the landlord’s fields, made Nekhludoff more than ever determined to
+leave off farming and to let his land to the peasants.
+
+From the office books and his talk with the foreman, Nekhludoff found
+that two-thirds of the best of the cultivated land was still being
+tilled with improved machinery by labourers receiving fixed wages, while
+the other third was tilled by the peasants at the rate of five roubles
+per desiatin [about two and three-quarter acres]. So that the peasants
+had to plough each desiatin three times, harrow it three times, sow
+and mow the corn, make it into sheaves, and deliver it on the threshing
+ground for five roubles, while the same amount of work done by wage
+labour came to at least 10 roubles. Everything the peasants got from the
+office they paid for in labour at a very high price. They paid in labour
+for the use of the meadows, for wood, for potato-stalks, and were nearly
+all of them in debt to the office. Thus, for the land that lay beyond
+the cultivated fields, which the peasants hired, four times the price
+that its value would bring in if invested at five per cent was taken
+from the peasants.
+
+Nekhludoff had known all this before, but he now saw it in a new light,
+and wondered how he and others in his position could help seeing how
+abnormal such conditions are. The steward’s arguments that if the land
+were let to the peasants the agricultural implements would fetch next to
+nothing, as it would be impossible to get even a quarter of their value
+for them, and that the peasants would spoil the land, and how great a
+loser Nekhludoff would be, only strengthened Nekhludoff in the opinion
+that he was doing a good action in letting the land to the peasants
+and thus depriving himself of a large part of his income. He decided to
+settle this business now, at once, while he was there. The reaping and
+selling of the corn he left for the steward to manage in due season, and
+also the selling of the agricultural implements and useless buildings.
+But he asked his steward to call the peasants of the three neighbouring
+villages that lay in the midst of his estate (Kousminski) to a meeting,
+at which he would tell them of his intentions and arrange about the
+price at which they were to rent the land.
+
+With the pleasant sense of the firmness he had shown in the face of the
+steward’s arguments, and his readiness to make a sacrifice, Nekhludoff
+left the office, thinking over the business before him, and strolled
+round the house, through the neglected flower-garden--this year the
+flowers were planted in front of the steward’s house--over the tennis
+ground, now overgrown with dandelions, and along the lime-tree walk,
+where he used to smoke his cigar, and where he had flirted with the
+pretty Kirimova, his mother’s visitor. Having briefly prepared in his
+mind the speech he was going to make to the peasants, he again went in
+to the steward, and, after tea, having once more arranged his thoughts,
+he went into the room prepared for him in the big house, which used to
+be a spare bedroom.
+
+In this clean little room, with pictures of Venice on the walls, and a
+mirror between the two windows, there stood a clean bed with a spring
+mattress, and by the side of it a small table, with a decanter of water,
+matches, and an extinguisher. On a table by the looking-glass lay his
+open portmanteau, with his dressing-case and some books in it; a Russian
+book, The Investigation of the Laws of Criminality, and a German and
+an English book on the same subject, which he meant to read while
+travelling in the country. But it was too late to begin to-day, and he
+began preparing to go to bed.
+
+An old-fashioned inlaid mahogany arm-chair stood in the corner of
+the room, and this chair, which Nekhludoff remembered standing in his
+mother’s bedroom, suddenly raised a perfectly unexpected sensation in
+his soul. He was suddenly filled with regret at the thought of the house
+that would tumble to ruin, and the garden that would run wild, and the
+forest that would be cut down, and all these farmyards, stables, sheds,
+machines, horses, cows which he knew had cost so much effort, though not
+to himself, to acquire and to keep. It had seemed easy to give up all
+this, but now it was hard, not only to give this, but even to let the
+land and lose half his income. And at once a consideration, which proved
+that it was unreasonable to let the land to the peasants, and thus to
+destroy his property, came to his service. “I must not hold property in
+land. If I possess no property in land, I cannot keep up the house and
+farm. And, besides, I am going to Siberia, and shall not need either
+the house or the estate,” said one voice. “All this is so,” said another
+voice, “but you are not going to spend all your life in Siberia. You may
+marry, and have children, and must hand the estate on to them in as good
+a condition as you received it. There is a duty to the land, too.
+To give up, to destroy everything is very easy; to acquire it very
+difficult. Above all, you must consider your future life, and what
+you will do with yourself, and you must dispose of your property
+accordingly. And are you really firm in your resolve? And then, are you
+really acting according to your conscience, or are you acting in order
+to be admired of men?” Nekhludoff asked himself all this, and had to
+acknowledge that he was influenced by the thought of what people would
+say about him. And the more he thought about it the more questions
+arose, and the more unsolvable they seemed.
+
+In hopes of ridding himself of these thoughts by falling asleep, and
+solving them in the morning when his head would be fresh, he lay down on
+his clean bed. But it was long before he could sleep. Together with the
+fresh air and the moonlight, the croaking of the frogs entered the room,
+mingling with the trills of a couple of nightingales in the park and
+one close to the window in a bush of lilacs in bloom. Listening to
+the nightingales and the frogs, Nekhludoff remembered the inspector’s
+daughter, and her music, and the inspector; that reminded him of
+Maslova, and how her lips trembled, like the croaking of the frogs, when
+she said, “You must just leave it.” Then the German steward began going
+down to the frogs, and had to be held back, but he not only went down
+but turned into Maslova, who began reproaching Nekhludoff, saying, “You
+are a prince, and I am a convict.” “No, I must not give in,” thought
+Nekhludoff, waking up, and again asking himself, “Is what I am doing
+right? I do not know, and no matter, no matter, I must only fall asleep
+now.” And he began himself to descend where he had seen the inspector
+and Maslova climbing down to, and there it all ended.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+EFFORTS AT LAND RESTORATION.
+
+The next day Nekhludoff awoke at nine o’clock. The young office clerk
+who attended on “the master” brought him his boots, shining as they had
+never shone before, and some cold, beautifully clear spring water, and
+informed him that the peasants were already assembling.
+
+Nekhludoff jumped out of bed, and collected his thoughts. Not a trace
+of yesterday’s regret at giving up and thus destroying his property
+remained now. He remembered this feeling of regret with surprise; he was
+now looking forward with joy to the task before him, and could not help
+being proud of it. He could see from the window the old tennis ground,
+overgrown with dandelions, on which the peasants were beginning to
+assemble. The frogs had not croaked in vain the night before; the day
+was dull. There was no wind; a soft warm rain had begun falling in the
+morning, and hung in drops on leaves, twigs, and grass. Besides the
+smell of the fresh vegetation, the smell of damp earth, asking for more
+rain, entered in at the window. While dressing, Nekhludoff several times
+looked out at the peasants gathered on the tennis ground. One by one
+they came, took off their hats or caps to one another, and took their
+places in a circle, leaning on their sticks. The steward, a stout,
+muscular, strong young man, dressed in a short pea-jacket, with a
+green stand-up collar, and enormous buttons, came to say that all had
+assembled, but that they might wait until Nekhludoff had finished his
+breakfast--tea and coffee, whichever he pleased; both were ready.
+
+“No, I think I had better go and see them at once,” said Nekhludoff,
+with an unexpected feeling of shyness and shame at the thought of the
+conversation he was going to have with the peasants. He was going to
+fulfil a wish of the peasants, the fulfilment of which they did not
+even dare to hope for--to let the land to them at a low price, i.e.,
+to confer a great boon; and yet he felt ashamed of something. When
+Nekhludoff came up to the peasants, and the fair, the curly, the bald,
+the grey heads were bared before him, he felt so confused that he
+could say nothing. The rain continued to come down in small drops,
+that remained on the hair, the beards, and the fluff of the men’s rough
+coats. The peasants looked at “the master,” waiting for him to speak,
+and he was so abashed that he could not speak. This confused silence
+was broken by the sedate, self-assured German steward, who considered
+himself a good judge of the Russian peasant, and who spoke Russian
+remarkably well. This strong, over-fed man, and Nekhludoff himself,
+presented a striking contrast to the peasants, with their thin, wrinkled
+faces and the shoulder blades protruding beneath their coarse coats.
+
+“Here’s the Prince wanting to do you a favor, and to let the land to
+you; only you are not worthy of it,” said the steward.
+
+“How are we not worthy of it, Vasili Karlovitch? Don’t we work for you?
+We were well satisfied with the deceased lady--God have mercy on her
+soul--and the young Prince will not desert us now. Our thanks to him,”
+ said a redhaired, talkative peasant.
+
+“Yes, that’s why I have called you together. I should like to let you
+have all the land, if you wish it.”
+
+The peasants said nothing, as if they did not understand or did not
+believe it.
+
+“Let’s see. Let us have the land? What do you mean?” asked a middle-aged
+man.
+
+“To let it to you, that you might have the use of it, at a low rent.”
+
+“A very agreeable thing,” said an old man.
+
+“If only the pay is such as we can afford,” said another.
+
+“There’s no reason why we should not rent the land.”
+
+“We are accustomed to live by tilling the ground.”
+
+“And it’s quieter for you, too, that way. You’ll have to do nothing
+but receive the rent. Only think of all the sin and worry now!” several
+voices were heard saying.
+
+“The sin is all on your side,” the German remarked. “If only you did
+your work, and were orderly.”
+
+“That’s impossible for the likes of us,” said a sharp-nosed old man.
+“You say, ‘Why do you let the horse get into the corn?’ just as if I
+let it in. Why, I was swinging my scythe, or something of the kind,
+the livelong day, till the day seemed as long as a year, and so I fell
+asleep while watching the herd of horses at night, and it got into your
+oats, and now you’re skinning me.”
+
+“And you should keep order.”
+
+“It’s easy for you to talk about order, but it’s more than our strength
+will bear,” answered a tall, dark, hairy middleaged man.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you to put up a fence?”
+
+“You give us the wood to make it of,” said a short, plain-looking
+peasant. “I was going to put up a fence last year, and you put me to
+feed vermin in prison for three months. That was the end of that fence.”
+
+“What is it he is saying?” asked Nekhludoff, turning to the steward.
+
+“Der ersto Dieb im Dorfe,” [The greatest thief in the village] answered
+the steward in German. “He is caught stealing wood from the forest every
+year.” Then turning to the peasant, he added, “You must learn to respect
+other people’s property.”
+
+“Why, don’t we respect you?” said an old man. “We are obliged to respect
+you. Why, you could twist us into a rope; we are in your hands.”
+
+“Eh, my friend, it’s impossible to do you. It’s you who are ever ready
+to do us,” said the steward.
+
+“Do you, indeed. Didn’t you smash my jaw for me, and I got nothing for
+it? No good going to law with the rich, it seems.”
+
+“You should keep to the law.”
+
+A tournament of words was apparently going on without those who took
+part in it knowing exactly what it was all about; but it was noticeable
+that there was bitterness on one side, restricted by fear, and on the
+other a consciousness of importance and power. It was very trying to
+Nekhludoff to listen to all this, so he returned to the question of
+arranging the amount and the terms of the rent.
+
+“Well, then, how about the land? Do you wish to take it, and what price
+will you pay if I let you have the whole of it?”
+
+“The property is yours: it is for you to fix the price.”
+
+Nekhludoff named the price. Though it was far below that paid in the
+neighbourhood, the peasants declared it too high, and began bargaining,
+as is customary among them. Nekhludoff thought his offer would be
+accepted with pleasure, but no signs of pleasure were visible.
+
+One thing only showed Nekhludoff that his offer was a profitable one
+to the peasants. The question as to who would rent the land, the whole
+commune or a special society, was put, and a violent dispute arose among
+those peasants who were in favour of excluding the weak and those not
+likely to pay the rent regularly, and the peasants who would have to be
+excluded on that score. At last, thanks to the steward, the amount and
+the terms of the rent were fixed, and the peasants went down the hill
+towards their villages, talking noisily, while Nekhludoff and the
+steward went into the office to make up the agreement. Everything was
+settled in the way Nekhludoff wished and expected it to be. The peasants
+had their land 30 per cent. cheaper than they could have got it anywhere
+in the district, the revenue from the land was diminished by half, but
+was more than sufficient for Nekhludoff, especially as there would be
+money coming in for a forest he sold, as well as for the agricultural
+implements, which would be sold, too. Everything seemed excellently
+arranged, yet he felt ashamed of something. He could see that the
+peasants, though they spoke words of thanks, were not satisfied, and
+had expected something greater. So it turned out that he had deprived
+himself of a great deal, and yet not done what the peasants had
+expected.
+
+The next day the agreement was signed, and accompanied by several old
+peasants, who had been chosen as deputies, Nekhludoff went out, got
+into the steward’s elegant equipage (as the driver from the station had
+called it), said “good-bye” to the peasants, who stood shaking their
+heads in a dissatisfied and disappointed manner, and drove off to the
+station. Nekhludoff was dissatisfied with himself without knowing why,
+but all the time he felt sad and ashamed of something.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+OLD ASSOCIATIONS.
+
+From Kousminski Nekhludoff went to the estate he had inherited from his
+aunts, the same where he first met Katusha. He meant to arrange about
+the land there in the way he had done in Kousminski. Besides this, he
+wished to find out all he could about Katusha and her baby, and when and
+how it had died. He got to Panovo early one morning, and the first thing
+that struck him when he drove up was the look of decay and dilapidation
+that all the buildings bore, especially the house itself. The iron
+roofs, which had once been painted green, looked red with rust, and
+a few sheets of iron were bent back, probably by a storm. Some of the
+planks which covered the house from outside were torn away in several
+places; these were easier to get by breaking the rusty nails that held
+them. Both porches, but especially the side porch he remembered so well,
+were rotten and broken; only the banister remained. Some of the windows
+were boarded up, and the building in which the foreman lived, the
+kitchen, the stables--all were grey and decaying. Only the garden had
+not decayed, but had grown, and was in full bloom; from over the fence
+the cherry, apple, and plum trees looked like white clouds. The lilac
+bushes that formed the hedge were in full bloom, as they had been
+when, 14 years ago, Nekhludoff had played gorelki with the 15-year-old
+Katusha, and had fallen and got his hand stung by the nettles behind one
+of those lilac bushes. The larch that his aunt Sophia had planted near
+the house, which then was only a short stick, had grown into a tree,
+the trunk of which would have made a beam, and its branches were covered
+with soft yellow green needles as with down. The river, now within its
+banks, rushed noisily over the mill dam. The meadow the other side of
+the river was dotted over by the peasants’ mixed herds. The foreman,
+a student, who had left the seminary without finishing the course, met
+Nekhludoff in the yard, with a smile on his face, and, still smiling,
+asked him to come into the office, and, as if promising something
+exceptionally good by this smile, he went behind a partition. For a
+moment some whispering was heard behind the partition. The isvostchik
+who had driven Nekhludoff from the station, drove away after receiving
+a tip, and all was silent. Then a barefooted girl passed the window;
+she had on an embroidered peasant blouse, and long earrings in her ears;
+then a man walked past, clattering with his nailed boots on the trodden
+path.
+
+Nekhludoff sat down by the little casement, and looked out into the
+garden and listened. A soft, fresh spring breeze, smelling of newly-dug
+earth, streamed in through the window, playing with the hair on his damp
+forehead and the papers that lay on the window-sill, which was all cut
+about with a knife.
+
+“Tra-pa-trop, tra-pa-trop,” comes a sound from the river, as the women
+who were washing clothes there slapped them in regular measure with
+their wooden bats, and the sound spread over the glittering surface of
+the mill pond while the rhythmical sound of the falling water came from
+the mill, and a frightened fly suddenly flew loudly buzzing past his
+ear.
+
+And all at once Nekhludoff remembered how, long ago, when he was young
+and innocent, he had heard the women’s wooden bats slapping the wet
+clothes above the rhythmical sound from the mill, and in the same way
+the spring breeze had blown about the hair on his wet forehead and the
+papers on the window-sill, which was all cut about with a knife, and
+just in the same way a fly had buzzed loudly past his car.
+
+It was not exactly that he remembered himself as a lad of 15, but he
+seemed to feel himself the same as he was then, with the same freshness
+and purity, and full of the same grand possibilities for the future, and
+at the same time, as it happens in a dream, he knew that all this could
+be no more, and he felt terribly sad. “At what time would you like
+something to eat?” asked the foreman, with a smile.
+
+“When you like; I am not hungry. I shall go for a walk through the
+village.”
+
+“Would you not like to come into the house? Everything is in order
+there. Have the goodness to look in. If the outside---”
+
+“Not now; later on. Tell me, please, have you got a woman here called
+Matrona Kharina?” (This was Katusha’s aunt, the village midwife.)
+
+“Oh, yes; in the village she keeps a secret pot-house. I know she does,
+and I accuse her of it and scold her; but as to taking her up, it would
+be a pity. An old woman, you know; she has grandchildren,” said the
+foreman, continuing to smile in the same manner, partly wishing to
+be pleasant to the master, and partly because he was convinced that
+Nekhludoff understood all these matters just as well as he did himself.
+
+“Where does she live? I shall go across and see her.”
+
+“At the end of the village; the further side, the third from the end. To
+the left there is a brick cottage, and her hut is beyond that. But I’d
+better see you there,” the foreman said with a graceful smile.
+
+“No, thanks, I shall find it; and you be so good as to call a meeting
+of the peasants, and tell them that I want to speak to them about
+the land,” said Nekhludoff, with the intention of coming to the same
+agreement with the peasants here as he had done in Kousminski, and, if
+possible, that same evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE PEASANTS’ LOT.
+
+When Nekhludoff came out of the gate he met the girl with the long
+earrings on the well-trodden path that lay across the pasture
+ground, overgrown with dock and plantain leaves. She had a long,
+brightly-coloured apron on, and was quickly swinging her left arm in
+front of herself as she stepped briskly with her fat, bare feet. With
+her right arm she was pressing a fowl to her stomach. The fowl, with
+red comb shaking, seemed perfectly calm; he only rolled up his eyes and
+stretched out and drew in one black leg, clawing the girl’s apron. When
+the girl came nearer to “the master,” she began moving more slowly, and
+her run changed into a walk. When she came up to him she stopped, and,
+after a backward jerk with her head, bowed to him; and only when he had
+passed did she recommence to run homeward with the cock. As he went down
+towards the well, he met an old woman, who had a coarse dirty blouse on,
+carrying two pails full of water, that hung on a yoke across her bent
+back. The old woman carefully put down the pails and bowed, with the
+same backward jerk of her head.
+
+After passing the well Nekhludoff entered the village. It was a bright,
+hot day, and oppressive, though only ten o’clock. At intervals the sun
+was hidden by the gathering clouds. An unpleasant, sharp smell of manure
+filled the air in the street. It came from carts going up the hillside,
+but chiefly from the disturbed manure heaps in the yards of the huts,
+by the open gates of which Nekhludoff had to pass. The peasants,
+barefooted, their shirts and trousers soiled with manure, turned to look
+at the tall, stout gentleman with the glossy silk ribbon on his grey hat
+who was walking up the village street, touching the ground every other
+step with a shiny, bright-knobbed walking-stick. The peasants returning
+from the fields at a trot and jotting in their empty carts, took
+off their hats, and, in their surprise, followed with their eyes the
+extraordinary man who was walking up their street. The women came out
+of the gates or stood in the porches of their huts, pointing him out to
+each other and gazing at him as he passed.
+
+When Nekhludoff was passing the fourth gate, he was stopped by a cart
+that was coming out, its wheels creaking, loaded high with manure, which
+was pressed down, and was covered with a mat to sit on. A six-year-old
+boy, excited by the prospect of a drive, followed the cart. A young
+peasant, with shoes plaited out of bark on his feet, led the horse out
+of the yard. A long-legged colt jumped out of the gate; but, seeing
+Nekhludoff, pressed close to the cart, and scraping its legs against the
+wheels, jumped forward, past its excited, gently-neighing mother, as she
+was dragging the heavy load through the gateway. The next horse was led
+out by a barefooted old man, with protruding shoulder-blades, in a dirty
+shirt and striped trousers.
+
+When the horses got out on to the hard road, strewn over with bits
+of dry, grey manure, the old man returned to the gate, and bowed to
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“You are our ladies’ nephew, aren’t you?”
+
+“Yes, I am their nephew.”
+
+“You’ve kindly come to look us up, eh?” said the garrulous old man.
+
+“Yes, I have. Well, how are you getting on?”
+
+“How do we get on? We get on very badly,” the old man drawled, as if it
+gave him pleasure.
+
+“Why so badly?” Nekhludoff asked, stepping inside the gate.
+
+“What is our life but the very worst life?” said the old man, following
+Nekhludoff into that part of the yard which was roofed over.
+
+Nekhludoff stopped under the roof.
+
+“I have got 12 of them there,” continued the old man, pointing to two
+women on the remainder of the manure heap, who stood perspiring with
+forks in their hands, the kerchiefs tumbling off their heads, with their
+skirts tucked up, showing the calves of their dirty, bare legs. “Not a
+month passes but I have to buy six poods [a pood is 36 English pounds]
+of corn, and where’s the money to come from?”
+
+“Have you not got enough corn of your own?”
+
+“My own?” repeated the old man, with a smile of contempt; “why I have
+only got land for three, and last year we had not enough to last till
+Christmas.”
+
+“What do you do then?”
+
+“What do we do? Why, I hire out as a labourer; and then I borrowed some
+money from your honour. We spent it all before Lent, and the tax is not
+paid yet.”
+
+“And how much is the tax?”
+
+“Why, it’s 17 roubles for my household. Oh, Lord, such a life! One
+hardly knows one’s self how one manages to live it.”
+
+“May I go into your hut?” asked Nekhludoff, stepping across the yard
+over the yellow-brown layers of manure that had been raked up by the
+forks, and were giving off a strong smell.
+
+“Why not? Come in,” said the old man, and stepping quickly with his
+bare feet over the manure, the liquid oozing between his toes, he passed
+Nekhludoff and opened the door of the hut.
+
+The women arranged the kerchiefs on their heads and let down their
+skirts, and stood looking with surprise at the clean gentleman with gold
+studs to his sleeves who was entering their house. Two little girls,
+with nothing on but coarse chemises, rushed out of the hut. Nekhludoff
+took off his hat, and, stooping to get through the low door, entered,
+through a passage into the dirty, narrow hut, that smelt of sour food,
+and where much space was taken up by two weaving looms. In the hut an
+old woman was standing by the stove, with the sleeves rolled up over her
+thin, sinewy brown arms.
+
+“Here is our master come to see us,” said the old man.
+
+“I’m sure he’s very welcome,” said the old woman, kindly.
+
+“I would like to see how you live.”
+
+“Well, you see how we live. The hut is coming down, and might kill one
+any day; but my old man he says it’s good enough, and so we live like
+kings,” said the brisk old woman, nervously jerking her head. “I’m
+getting the dinner; going to feed the workers.”
+
+“And what are you going to have for dinner?”
+
+“Our food is very good. First course, bread and kvas; [kvas is a kind of
+sour, non-intoxicant beer made of rye] second course, kvas and bread,”
+ said the old woman, showing her teeth, which were half worn away.
+
+“No,” seriously; “let me see what you are going to eat.”
+
+“To eat?” said the old man, laughing. “Ours is not a very cunning meal.
+You just show him, wife.”
+
+“Want to see our peasant food? Well, you are an inquisitive gentleman,
+now I come to look at you. He wants to know everything. Did I not tell
+you bread and kvas and then we’ll have soup. A woman brought us some
+fish, and that’s what the soup is made of, and after that, potatoes.”
+
+“Nothing more?”
+
+“What more do you want? We’ll also have a little milk,” said the old
+woman, looking towards the door. The door stood open, and the passage
+outside was full of people--boys, girls, women with babies--thronged
+together to look at the strange gentleman who wanted to see the
+peasants’ food. The old woman seemed to pride herself on the way she
+behaved with a gentleman.
+
+“Yes, it’s a miserable life, ours; that goes without saying, sir,” said
+the old man. “What are you doing there?” he shouted to those in the
+passage. “Well, good-bye,” said Nekhludoff, feeling ashamed and uneasy,
+though unable to account for the feeling.
+
+“Thank you kindly for having looked us up,” said the old man.
+
+The people in the passage pressed closer together to let Nekhludoff
+pass, and he went out and continued his way up the street.
+
+Two barefooted boys followed him out of the passage the elder in a
+shirt that had once been white, the other in a worn and faded pink one.
+Nekhludoff looked back at them.
+
+“And where are you going now?” asked the boy with the white shirt.
+Nekhludoff answered: “To Matrona Kharina. Do you know her?” The boy
+with the pink shirt began laughing at something; but the elder asked,
+seriously:
+
+“What Matrona is that? Is she old?”
+
+“Yes, she is old.”
+
+“Oh--oh,” he drawled; “that one; she’s at the other end of the village;
+we’ll show you. Yes, Fedka, we’ll go with him. Shall we?”
+
+“Yes, but the horses?”
+
+“They’ll be all right, I dare say.”
+
+Fedka agreed, and all three went up the street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MASLOVA’S AUNT.
+
+Nekhludoff felt more at ease with the boys than with the grown-up
+people, and he began talking to them as they went along. The little
+one with the pink shirt stopped laughing, and spoke as sensibly and as
+exactly as the elder one.
+
+“Can you tell me who are the poorest people you have got here?” asked
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“The poorest? Michael is poor, Simon Makhroff, and Martha, she is very
+poor.”
+
+“And Anisia, she is still poorer; she’s not even got a cow. They go
+begging,” said little Fedka.
+
+“She’s not got a cow, but they are only three persons, and Martha’s
+family are five,” objected the elder boy.
+
+“But the other’s a widow,” the pink boy said, standing up for Anisia.
+
+“You say Anisia is a widow, and Martha is no better than a widow,” said
+the elder boy; “she’s also no husband.”
+
+“And where is her husband?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“Feeding vermin in prison,” said the elder boy, using this expression,
+common among the peasants.
+
+“A year ago he cut down two birch trees in the land-lord’s forest,” the
+little pink boy hurried to say, “so he was locked up; now he’s sitting
+the sixth month there, and the wife goes begging. There are three
+children and a sick grandmother,” he went on with his detailed account.
+
+“And where does she live?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“In this very house,” answered the boy, pointing to a hut, in front
+of which, on the footpath along which Nekhludoff was walking, a tiny,
+flaxen-headed infant stood balancing himself with difficulty on his
+rickety legs.
+
+“Vaska! Where’s the little scamp got to?” shouted a woman, with a dirty
+grey blouse, and a frightened look, as she ran out of the house, and,
+rushing forward, seized the baby before Nekhludoff came up to it, and
+carried it in, just as if she were afraid that Nekhludoff would hurt her
+child.
+
+This was the woman whose husband was imprisoned for Nekhludoff’s birch
+trees.
+
+“Well, and this Matrona, is she also poor?” Nekhludoff asked, as they
+came up to Matrona’s house.
+
+“She poor? No. Why, she sells spirits,” the thin, pink little boy
+answered decidedly.
+
+When they reached the house Nekhludoff left the boys outside and went
+through the passage into the hut. The hut was 14 feet long. The bed
+that stood behind the big stove was not long enough for a tall person
+to stretch out on. “And on this very bed,” Nekhludoff thought, “Katusha
+bore her baby and lay ill afterwards.” The greater part of the hut was
+taken up by a loom, on which the old woman and her eldest granddaughter
+were arranging the warp when Nekhludoff came in, striking his forehead
+against the low doorway. Two other grandchildren came rushing in after
+Nekhludoff, and stopped, holding on to the lintels of the door.
+
+“Whom do you want?” asked the old woman, crossly. She was in a bad
+temper because she could not manage to get the warp right, and, besides,
+carrying on an illicit trade in spirits, she was always afraid when any
+stranger came in.
+
+“I am--the owner of the neighbouring estates, and should like to speak
+to you.”
+
+“Dear me; why, it’s you, my honey; and I, fool, thought it was just some
+passer-by. Dear me, you--it’s you, my precious,” said the old woman,
+with simulated tenderness in her voice.
+
+“I should like to speak to you alone,” said Nekhludoff, with a glance
+towards the door, where the children were standing, and behind them a
+woman holding a wasted, pale baby, with a sickly smile on its face, who
+had a little cap made of different bits of stuff on its head.
+
+“What are you staring at? I’ll give it you. Just hand me my crutch,” the
+old woman shouted to those at the door.
+
+“Shut the door, will you!” The children went away, and the woman closed
+the door.
+
+“And I was thinking, who’s that? And it’s ‘the master’ himself. My
+jewel, my treasure. Just think,” said the old woman, “where he has
+deigned to come. Sit down here, your honour,” she said, wiping the seat
+with her apron. “And I was thinking what devil is it coming in, and it’s
+your honour, ‘the master’ himself, the good gentleman, our benefactor.
+Forgive me, old fool that I am; I’m getting blind.”
+
+Nekhludoff sat down, and the old woman stood in front of him, leaning
+her cheek on her right hand, while the left held up the sharp elbow of
+her right arm.
+
+“Dear me, you have grown old, your honour; and you used to be as fresh
+as a daisy. And now! Cares also, I expect?”
+
+“This is what I have come about: Do you remember Katusha Maslova?”
+
+“Katerina? I should think so. Why, she is my niece. How could I help
+remembering; and the tears I have shed because of her. Why, I know all
+about it. Eh, sir, who has not sinned before God? who has not offended
+against the Tsar? We know what youth is. You used to be drinking tea and
+coffee, so the devil got hold of you. He is strong at times. What’s to
+be done? Now, if you had chucked her; but no, just see how you rewarded
+her, gave her a hundred roubles. And she? What has she done? Had she
+but listened to me she might have lived all right. I must say the truth,
+though she is my niece: that girl’s no good. What a good place I found
+her! She would not submit, but abused her master. Is it for the likes
+of us to scold gentlefolk? Well, she was sent away. And then at the
+forester’s. She might have lived there; but no, she would not.”
+
+“I want to know about the child. She was confined at your house, was she
+not? Where’s the child?”
+
+“As to the child, I considered that well at the time. She was so bad
+I never thought she would get up again. Well, so I christened the baby
+quite properly, and we sent it to the Foundlings’. Why should one let
+an innocent soul languish when the mother is dying? Others do like this:
+they just leave the baby, don’t feed it, and it wastes away. But, thinks
+I, no; I’d rather take some trouble, and send it to the Foundlings’.
+There was money enough, so I sent it off.”
+
+“Did you not get its registration number from the Foundlings’ Hospital?”
+
+“Yes, there was a number, but the baby died,” she said. “It died as soon
+as she brought it there.”
+
+“Who is she?”
+
+“That same woman who used to live in Skorodno. She made a business of
+it. Her name was Malania. She’s dead now. She was a wise woman. What do
+you think she used to do? They’d bring her a baby, and she’d keep it and
+feed it; and she’d feed it until she had enough of them to take to the
+Foundlings’. When she had three or four, she’d take them all at once.
+She had such a clever arrangement, a sort of big cradle--a double one
+she could put them in one way or the other. It had a handle. So she’d
+put four of them in, feet to feet and the heads apart, so that they
+should not knock against each other. And so she took four at once. She’d
+put some pap in a rag into their mouths to keep ‘em silent, the pets.”
+
+“Well, go on.”
+
+“Well, she took Katerina’s baby in the same way, after keeping it a
+fortnight, I believe. It was in her house it began to sicken.”
+
+“And was it a fine baby?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“Such a baby, that if you wanted a finer you could not find one. Your
+very image,” the old woman added, with a wink.
+
+“Why did it sicken? Was the food bad?”
+
+“Eh, what food? Only just a pretence of food. Naturally, when it’s not
+one’s own child. Only enough to get it there alive. She said she
+just managed to get it to Moscow, and there it died. She brought a
+certificate--all in order. She was such a wise woman.”
+
+That was all Nekhludoff could find out concerning his child.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+REFLECTIONS OF A LANDLORD.
+
+Again striking his head against both doors, Nekhludoff went out into the
+street, where the pink and the white boys were waiting for him. A few
+newcomers were standing with them. Among the women, of whom several
+had babies in their arms, was the thin woman with the baby who had the
+patchwork cap on its head. She held lightly in her arms the bloodless
+infant, who kept strangely smiling all over its wizened little face, and
+continually moving its crooked thumbs.
+
+Nekhludoff knew the smile to be one of suffering. He asked who the woman
+was.
+
+“It is that very Anisia I told you about,” said the elder boy.
+
+Nekhludoff turned to Anisia.
+
+“How do you live?” he asked. “By what means do you gain your
+livelihood?”
+
+“How do I live? I go begging,” said Anisia, and began to cry.
+
+Nekhludoff took out his pocket-book, and gave the woman a 10-rouble
+note. He had not had time to take two steps before another woman with
+a baby caught him up, then an old woman, then another young one. All of
+them spoke of their poverty, and asked for help. Nekhludoff gave them
+the 60 roubles--all in small notes--which he had with him, and, terribly
+sad at heart, turned home, i.e., to the foreman’s house.
+
+The foreman met Nekhludoff with a smile, and informed him that the
+peasants would come to the meeting in the evening. Nekhludoff thanked
+him, and went straight into the garden to stroll along the paths strewn
+over with the petals of apple-blossom and overgrown with weeds, and to
+think over all he had seen.
+
+At first all was quiet, but soon Nekhludoff heard from behind the
+foreman’s house two angry women’s voices interrupting each other, and
+now and then the voice of the ever-smiling foreman. Nekhludoff listened.
+
+“My strength’s at an end. What are you about, dragging the very cross
+[those baptized in the Russo-Greek Church always wear a cross round
+their necks] off my neck,” said an angry woman’s voice.
+
+“But she only got in for a moment,” said another voice. “Give it her
+back, I tell you. Why do you torment the beast, and the children, too,
+who want their milk?”
+
+“Pay, then, or work it off,” said the foreman’s voice.
+
+Nekhludoff left the garden and entered the porch, near which stood two
+dishevelled women--one of them pregnant and evidently near her time.
+On one of the steps of the porch, with his hands in the pockets of his
+holland coat, stood the foreman. When they saw the master, the women
+were silent, and began arranging the kerchiefs on their heads, and the
+foreman took his hands out of his pockets and began to smile.
+
+This is what had happened. From the foreman’s words, it seemed that the
+peasants were in the habit of letting their calves and even their cows
+into the meadow belonging to the estate. Two cows belonging to the
+families of these two women were found in the meadow, and driven into
+the yard. The foreman demanded from the women 30 copecks for each cow
+or two days’ work. The women, however, maintained that the cows had got
+into the meadow of their own accord; that they had no money, and asked
+that the cows, which had stood in the blazing sun since morning without
+food, piteously lowing, should be returned to them, even if it had to be
+on the understanding that the price should be worked off later on.
+
+“How often have I not begged of you,” said the smiling foreman, looking
+back at Nekhludoff as if calling upon him to be a witness, “if you drive
+your cattle home at noon, that you should have an eye on them?”
+
+“I only ran to my little one for a bit, and they got away.”
+
+“Don’t run away when you have undertaken to watch the cows.”
+
+“And who’s to feed the little one? You’d not give him the breast, I
+suppose?” said the other woman. “Now, if they had really damaged the
+meadow, one would not take it so much to heart; but they only strayed in
+a moment.”
+
+“All the meadows are damaged,” the foreman said, turning to Nekhludoff.
+“If I exact no penalty there will be no hay.”
+
+“There, now, don’t go sinning like that; my cows have never been caught
+there before,” shouted the pregnant woman.
+
+“Now that one has been caught, pay up or work it off.”
+
+“All right, I’ll work it off; only let me have the cow now, don’t
+torture her with hunger,” she cried, angrily. “As it is, I have no rest
+day or night. Mother-in-law is ill, husband taken to drink; I’m all
+alone to do all the work, and my strength’s at an end. I wish you’d
+choke, you and your working it off.”
+
+Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and went
+back into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but there was
+nothing more to think about.
+
+Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering
+how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for
+such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were
+dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed
+habits of life adapted to this process: there was the great mortality
+among the children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding,
+especially of the aged. And so gradually had the people come to this
+condition that they did not realise the full horrors of it, and did
+not complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it
+should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of
+the people’s great want was one that they themselves knew and always
+pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been
+taken from them by the landlords.
+
+And how evident it was that the children and the aged died because they
+had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no pasture land, and
+no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was quite evident that all the
+misery of the people or, at least by far the greater part of it, was
+caused by the fact that the land which should feed them was not in their
+hands, but in the hands of those who, profiting by their rights to the
+land, live by the work of these people. The land so much needed by men
+was tilled by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so
+that the corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy
+themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. He understood
+this as clearly as he understood that horses when they have eaten all
+the grass in the inclosure where they are kept will have to grow thin
+and starve unless they are put where they can get food off other land.
+
+This was terrible, and must not go on. Means must be found to alter it,
+or at least not to take part in it. “And I will find them,” he thought,
+as he walked up and down the path under the birch trees.
+
+In scientific circles, Government institutions, and in the papers we
+talk about the causes of the poverty among the people and the means of
+ameliorating their condition; but we do not talk of the only sure means
+which would certainly lighten their condition, i.e., giving back to them
+the land they need so much.
+
+Henry George’s fundamental position recurred vividly to his mind and how
+he had once been carried away by it, and he was surprised that he could
+have forgotten it. The earth cannot be any one’s property; it cannot be
+bought or sold any more than water, air, or sunshine. All have an equal
+right to the advantages it gives to men. And now he knew why he had felt
+ashamed to remember the transaction at Kousminski. He had been deceiving
+himself. He knew that no man could have a right to own land, yet he had
+accepted this right as his, and had given the peasants something which,
+in the depth of his heart, he knew he had no right to. Now he would not
+act in this way, and would alter the arrangement in Kousminski also. And
+he formed a project in his mind to let the land to the peasants, and to
+acknowledge the rent they paid for it to be their property, to be kept
+to pay the taxes and for communal uses. This was, of course, not the
+single-tax system, still it was as near an approach to it as could be
+had under existing circumstances. His chief consideration, however, was
+that in this way he would no longer profit by the possession of landed
+property.
+
+When he returned to the house the foreman, with a specially pleasant
+smile, asked him if he would not have his dinner now, expressing the
+fear that the feast his wife was preparing, with the help of the girl
+with the earrings, might be overdone.
+
+The table was covered with a coarse, unbleached cloth and an embroidered
+towel was laid on it in lieu of a napkin. A vieux-saxe soup tureen with
+a broken handle stood on the table, full of potato soup, the stock made
+of the fowl that had put out and drawn in his black leg, and was now
+cut, or rather chopped, in pieces, which were here and there covered
+with hairs. After the soup more of the same fowl with the hairs was
+served roasted, and then curd pasties, very greasy, and with a great
+deal of sugar. Little appetising as all this was, Nekhludoff hardly
+noticed what he was eating; he was occupied with the thought which had
+in a moment dispersed the sadness with which he had returned from the
+village.
+
+The foreman’s wife kept looking in at the door, whilst the frightened
+maid with the earrings brought in the dishes; and the foreman smiled
+more and more joyfully, priding himself on his wife’s culinary skill.
+After dinner, Nekhludoff succeeded, with some trouble, in making the
+foreman sit down. In order to revise his own thoughts, and to express
+them to some one, he explained his project of letting the land to the
+peasants, and asked the foreman for his opinion. The foreman, smiling
+as if he had thought all this himself long ago, and was very pleased
+to hear it, did not really understand it at all. This was not because
+Nekhludoff did not express himself clearly, but because according to
+this project it turned out that Nekhludoff was giving up his own
+profit for the profit of others, and the thought that every one is only
+concerned about his own profit, to the harm of others, was so deeply
+rooted in the foreman’s conceptions that he imagined he did not
+understand something when Nekhludoff said that all the income from the
+land must be placed to form the communal capital of the peasants.
+
+“Oh, I see; then you, of course, will receive the percentages from that
+capital,” said the foreman, brightening up.
+
+“Dear me! no. Don’t you see, I am giving up the land altogether.”
+
+“But then you will not get any income,” said the foreman, smiling no
+longer.
+
+“Yes, I am going to give it up.”
+
+The foreman sighed heavily, and then began smiling again. Now he
+understood. He understood that Nekhludoff was not quite normal, and
+at once began to consider how he himself could profit by Nekhludoff’s
+project of giving up the land, and tried to see this project in such a
+way that he might reap some advantage from it. But when he saw that this
+was impossible he grew sorrowful, and the project ceased to interest
+him, and he continued to smile only in order to please the master.
+
+Seeing that the foreman did not understand him, Nekhludoff let him go
+and sat down by the window-sill, that was all cut about and inked over,
+and began to put his project down on paper.
+
+The sun went down behind the limes, that were covered with fresh green,
+and the mosquitoes swarmed in, stinging Nekhludoff. Just as he finished
+his notes, he heard the lowing of cattle and the creaking of opening
+gates from the village, and the voices of the peasants gathering
+together for the meeting. He told the foreman not to call the peasants
+up to the office, as he meant to go into the village himself and meet
+the men where they would assemble. Having hurriedly drank a cup of tea
+offered him by the foreman, Nekhludoff went to the village.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE DISINHERITED.
+
+From the crowd assembled in front of the house of the village elder
+came the sound of voices; but as soon as Nekhludoff came up the talking
+ceased, and all the peasants took off their caps, just as those in
+Kousminski had done. The peasants here were of a much poorer class than
+those in Kousminski. The men wore shoes made of bark and homespun shirts
+and coats. Some had come straight from their work in their shirts and
+with bare feet.
+
+Nekhludoff made an effort, and began his speech by telling the peasants
+of his intention to give up his land to them altogether. The peasants
+were silent, and the expression on their faces did not undergo any
+change.
+
+“Because I hold,” said Nekhludoff, “and believe that every one has a
+right to the use of the land.”
+
+“That’s certain. That’s so, exactly,” said several voices.
+
+Nekhludoff went on to say that the revenue from the land ought to be
+divided among all, and that he would therefore suggest that they
+should rent the land at a price fixed by themselves, the rent to form
+a communal fund for their own use. Words of approval and agreement were
+still to be heard, but the serious faces of the peasants grew still more
+serious, and the eyes that had been fixed on the gentleman dropped, as
+if they were unwilling to put him to shame by letting him see that every
+one had understood his trick, and that no one would be deceived by him.
+
+Nekhludoff spoke clearly, and the peasants were intelligent, but they
+did not and could not understand him, for the same reason that the
+foreman had so long been unable to understand him.
+
+They were fully convinced that it is natural for every man to consider
+his own interest. The experience of many generations had proved to them
+that the landlords always considered their own interest to the detriment
+of the peasants. Therefore, if a landlord called them to a meeting and
+made them some kind of a new offer, it could evidently only be in order
+to swindle them more cunningly than before.
+
+“Well, then, what are you willing to rent the land at?” asked
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“How can we fix a price? We cannot do it. The land is yours, and the
+power is in your hands,” answered some voices from among the crowd.
+
+“Oh, not at all. You will yourselves have the use of the money for
+communal purposes.”
+
+“We cannot do it; the commune is one thing, and this is another.”
+
+“Don’t you understand?” said the foreman, with a smile (he had followed
+Nekhludoff to the meeting), “the Prince is letting the land to you
+for money, and is giving you the money back to form a capital for the
+commune.”
+
+“We understand very well,” said a cross, toothless old man, without
+raising his eyes. “Something like a bank; we should have to pay at a
+fixed time. We do not wish it; it is hard enough as it is, and that
+would ruin us completely.”
+
+“That’s no go. We prefer to go on the old way,” began several
+dissatisfied, and even rude, voices.
+
+The refusals grew very vehement when Nekhludoff mentioned that he would
+draw up an agreement which would have to be signed by him and by them.
+
+“Why sign? We shall go on working as we have done hitherto. What is all
+this for? We are ignorant men.”
+
+“We can’t agree, because this sort of thing is not what we have been
+used to. As it was, so let it continue to be. Only the seeds we should
+like to withdraw.”
+
+This meant that under the present arrangement the seeds had to be
+provided by the peasants, and they wanted the landlord to provide them.
+
+“Then am I to understand that you refuse to accept the land?” Nekhludoff
+asked, addressing a middle-aged, barefooted peasant, with a tattered
+coat, and a bright look on his face, who was holding his worn cap
+with his left hand, in a peculiarly straight position, in the same way
+soldiers hold theirs when commanded to take them off.
+
+“Just so,” said this peasant, who had evidently not yet rid himself of
+the military hypnotism he had been subjected to while serving his time.
+
+“It means that you have sufficient land,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“No, sir, we have not,” said the ex-soldier, with an artificially
+pleased look, carefully holding his tattered cap in front of him, as if
+offering it to any one who liked to make use of it.
+
+“Well, anyhow, you’d better think over what I have said.” Nekhludoff
+spoke with surprise, and again repeated his offer.
+
+“We have no need to think about it; as we have said, so it will be,”
+ angrily muttered the morose, toothless old man.
+
+“I shall remain here another day, and if you change your minds, send to
+let me know.”
+
+The peasants gave no answer.
+
+So Nekhludoff did not succeed in arriving at any result from this
+interview.
+
+“If I might make a remark, Prince,” said the foreman, when they got
+home, “you will never come to any agreement with them; they are so
+obstinate. At a meeting these people just stick in one place, and there
+is no moving them. It is because they are frightened of everything. Why,
+these very peasants--say that white-haired one, or the dark one, who
+were refusing, are intelligent peasants. When one of them comes to the
+office and one makes him sit down to cup of tea it’s like in the Palace
+of Wisdom--he is quite diplomatist,” said the foreman, smiling; “he will
+consider everything rightly. At a meeting it’s a different man--he keeps
+repeating one and the same . . .”
+
+“Well, could not some of the more intelligent men be asked to come
+here?” said Nekhludoff. “I would carefully explain it to them.”
+
+“That can be done,” said the smiling foreman.
+
+“Well, then, would you mind calling them here to-morrow?”
+
+“Oh, certainly I will,” said the foreman, and smiled still more
+joyfully. “I shall call them to-morrow.”
+
+“Just hear him; he’s not artful, not he,” said a blackhaired peasant,
+with an unkempt beard, as he sat jolting from side to side on a well-fed
+mare, addressing an old man in a torn coat who rode by his side. The two
+men were driving a herd of the peasants’ horses to graze in the night,
+alongside the highroad and secretly, in the landlord’s forest.
+
+“Give you the land for nothing--you need only sign--have they not
+done the likes of us often enough? No, my friend, none of your humbug.
+Nowadays we have a little sense,” he added, and began shouting at a colt
+that had strayed.
+
+He stopped his horse and looked round, but the colt had not remained
+behind; it had gone into the meadow by the roadside. “Bother that son
+of a Turk; he’s taken to getting into the landowner’s meadows,” said the
+dark peasant with the unkempt beard, hearing the cracking of the sorrel
+stalks that the neighing colt was galloping over as he came running back
+from the scented meadow.
+
+“Do you hear the cracking? We’ll have to send the women folk to weed
+the meadow when there’s a holiday,” said the thin peasant with the torn
+coat, “or else we’ll blunt our scythes.”
+
+“Sign,” he says. The unkempt man continued giving his opinion of the
+landlord’s speech. “‘Sign,’ indeed, and let him swallow you up.”
+
+“That’s certain,” answered the old man. And then they were silent, and
+the tramping of the horses’ feet along the highroad was the only sound
+to be heard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GOD’S PEACE IN THE HEART.
+
+When Nekhludoff returned he found that the office had been arranged as
+a bedroom for him. A high bedstead, with a feather bed and two large
+pillows, had been placed in the room. The bed was covered with a dark
+red doublebedded silk quilt, which was elaborately and finely quilted,
+and very stiff. It evidently belonged to the trousseau of the foreman’s
+wife. The foreman offered Nekhludoff the remains of the dinner, which
+the latter refused, and, excusing himself for the poorness of the fare
+and the accommodation, he left Nekhludoff alone.
+
+The peasants’ refusal did not at all bother Nekhludoff. On the contrary,
+though at Kousminski his offer had been accepted and he had even been
+thanked for it, and here he was met with suspicion and even enmity, he
+felt contented and joyful.
+
+It was close and dirty in the office. Nekhludoff went out into the yard,
+and was going into the garden, but he remembered: that night, the window
+of the maid-servant’s room, the side porch, and he felt uncomfortable,
+and did not like to pass the spot desecrated by guilty memories. He
+sat down on the doorstep, and breathing in the warm air, balmy with the
+strong scent of fresh birch leaves, he sat for a long time looking into
+the dark garden and listening to the mill, the nightingales, and some
+other bird that whistled monotonously in the bush close by. The light
+disappeared from the foreman’s window; in the cast, behind the barn,
+appeared the light of the rising moon, and sheet lightning began to
+light up the dilapidated house, and the blooming, over-grown garden more
+and more frequently. It began to thunder in the distance, and a black
+cloud spread over one-third of the sky. The nightingales and the other
+birds were silent. Above the murmur of the water from the mill came the
+cackling of geese, and then in the village and in the foreman’s yard
+the first cocks began to crow earlier than usual, as they do on warm,
+thundery nights. There is a saying that if the cocks crow early the
+night will be a merry one. For Nekhludoff the night was more than merry;
+it was a happy, joyful night. Imagination renewed the impressions of
+that happy summer which he had spent here as an innocent lad, and he
+felt himself as he had been not only at that but at all the best moments
+of his life. He not only remembered but felt as he had felt when, at
+the age of 14, he prayed that God would show him the truth; or when as
+a child he had wept on his mother’s lap, when parting from her, and
+promising to be always good, and never give her pain; he felt as he did
+when he and Nikolenka Irtenieff resolved always to support each other in
+living a good life and to try to make everybody happy.
+
+He remembered how he had been tempted in Kousminski, so that he had
+begun to regret the house and the forest and the farm and the land, and
+he asked himself if he regretted them now, and it even seemed strange to
+think that he could regret them. He remembered all he had seen to-day;
+the woman with the children, and without her husband, who was in prison
+for having cut down trees in his (Nekhludoff’s) forest, and the terrible
+Matrona, who considered, or at least talked as if she considered,
+that women of her position must give themselves to the gentlefolk; he
+remembered her relation to the babies, the way in which they were taken
+to the Foundlings’ Hospital, and the unfortunate, smiling, wizened
+baby with the patchwork cap, dying of starvation. And then he suddenly
+remembered the prison, the shaved heads, the cells, the disgusting
+smells, the chains, and, by the side of it all, the madly lavish city
+lift of the rich, himself included.
+
+The bright moon, now almost full, rose above the barn. Dark shadows fell
+across the yard, and the iron roof of the ruined house shone bright.
+As if unwilling to waste this light, the nightingales again began their
+trills.
+
+Nekhludoff called to mind how he had begun to consider his life in
+the garden of Kousminski when deciding what he was going to do, and
+remembered how confused he had become, how he could not arrive at any
+decision, how many difficulties each question had presented. He asked
+himself these questions now, and was surprised how simple it all was. It
+was simple because he was not thinking now of what would be the results
+for himself, but only thought of what he had to do. And, strange to say,
+what he had to do for himself he could not decide, but what he had to do
+for others he knew without any doubt. He had no doubt that he must
+not leave Katusha, but go on helping her. He had no doubt that he must
+study, investigate, clear up, understand all this business concerning
+judgment and punishment, which he felt he saw differently to other
+people. What would result from it all he did not know, but he knew for
+certain that he must do it. And this firm assurance gave him joy.
+
+The black cloud had spread all over the sky; the lightning flashed
+vividly across the yard and the old house with its tumble-down porches,
+the thunder growled overhead. All the birds were silent, but the leaves
+rustled and the wind reached the step where Nekhludoff stood and played
+with his hair. One drop came down, then another; then they came drumming
+on the dock leaves and on the iron of the roof, and all the air was
+filled by a bright flash, and before Nekhludoff could count three a
+fearful crash sounded over head and spread pealing all over the sky.
+
+Nekhludoff went in.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he thought. “The work that our life accomplishes, the whole
+of this work, the meaning of it is not, nor can be, intelligible to
+me. What were my aunts for? Why did Nikolenka Irtenieff die? Why am
+I living? What was Katusha for? And my madness? Why that war? Why my
+subsequent lawless life? To understand it, to understand the whole
+of the Master’s will is not in my power. But to do His will, that is
+written down in my conscience, is in my power; that I know for certain.
+And when I am fulfilling it I have sureness and peace.”
+
+The rain came down in torrents and rushed from the roof into a tub
+beneath; the lightning lit up the house and yard less frequently.
+Nekhludoff went into his room, undressed, and lay down, not without
+fear of the bugs, whose presence the dirty, torn wall-papers made him
+suspect.
+
+“Yes, to feel one’s self not the master but a servant,” he thought, and
+rejoiced at the thought. His fears were not vain. Hardly had he put out
+his candle when the vermin attacked and stung him. “To give up the land
+and go to Siberia. Fleas, bugs, dirt! Ah, well; if it must be borne, I
+shall bear it.” But, in spite of the best of intentions, he could not
+bear it, and sat down by the open window and gazed with admiration at
+the retreating clouds and the reappearing moon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE LAND SETTLEMENT.
+
+It was morning before Nekhludoff could fall asleep, and therefore he
+woke up late. At noon seven men, chosen from among the peasants at
+the foreman’s invitation, came into the orchard, where the foreman
+had arranged a table and benches by digging posts into the ground,
+and fixing boards on the top, under the apple trees. It took some time
+before the peasants could be persuaded to put on their caps and to sit
+down on the benches. Especially firm was the ex-soldier, who to-day had
+bark shoes on. He stood erect, holding his cap as they do at
+funerals, according to military regulation. When one of them, a
+respectable-looking, broad-shouldered old man, with a curly, grizzly
+beard like that of Michael Angelo’s “Moses,” and grey hair that curled
+round the brown, bald forehead, put on his big cap, and, wrapping his
+coat round him, got in behind the table and sat down, the rest followed
+his example. When all had taken their places Nekhludoff sat down
+opposite them, and leaning on the table over the paper on which he had
+drawn up his project, he began explaining it.
+
+Whether it was that there were fewer present, or that he was occupied
+with the business in hand and not with himself, anyhow, this
+time Nekhludoff felt no confusion. He involuntarily addressed the
+broad-shouldered old man with white ringlets in his grizzly beard,
+expecting approbation or objections from him. But Nekhludoff’s
+conjecture was wrong. The respectable-looking old patriarch, though he
+nodded his handsome head approvingly or shook it, and frowned when the
+others raised an objection, evidently understood with great difficulty,
+and only when the others repeated what Nekhludoff had said in their own
+words. A little, almost beardless old fellow, blind in one eye, who sat
+by the side of the patriarch, and had a patched nankeen coat and old
+boots on, and, as Nekhludoff found out later, was an oven-builder,
+understood much better. This man moved his brows quickly, attending to
+Nekhludoff’s words with an effort, and at once repeated them in his
+own way. An old, thick-set man with a white beard and intelligent eyes
+understood as quickly, and took every opportunity to put in an ironical
+joke, clearly wishing to show off. The ex-soldier seemed also to
+understand matters, but got mixed, being used to senseless soldiers’
+talk. A tall man with a small beard, a long nose, and a bass voice, who
+wore clean, home-made clothes and new bark-plaited shoes, seemed to be
+the one most seriously interested. This man spoke only when there
+was need of it. The two other old men, the same toothless one who
+had shouted a distinct refusal at the meeting the day before to every
+proposal of Nekhludoff’s, and a tall, white lame old man with a kind
+face, his thin legs tightly wrapped round with strips of linen, said
+little, though they listened attentively. First of all Nekhludoff
+explained his views in regard to personal property in land. “The land,
+according to my idea, can neither be bought nor sold, because if it
+could be, he who has got the money could buy it all, and exact anything
+he liked for the use of the land from those who have none.”
+
+“That’s true,” said the long-nosed man, in a deep bass.
+
+“Just so,” said the ex-soldier.
+
+“A woman gathers a little grass for her cow; she’s caught and
+imprisoned,” said the white-bearded old man.
+
+“Our own land is five versts away, and as to renting any it’s
+impossible; the price is raised so high that it won’t pay,” added the
+cross, toothless old man. “They twist us into ropes, worse than during
+serfdom.”
+
+“I think as you do, and I count it a sin to possess land, so I wish to
+give it away,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Well, that’s a good thing,” said the old man, with curls like Angelo’s
+“Moses,” evidently thinking that Nekhludoff meant to let the land.
+
+“I have come here because I no longer wish to possess any land, and now
+we must consider the best way of dividing it.”
+
+“Just give it to the peasants, that’s all,” said the cross, toothless
+old man.
+
+Nekhludoff was abashed for a moment, feeling a suspicion of his not
+being honest in these words, but he instantly recovered, and made use of
+the remark, in order to express what was in his mind, in reply.
+
+“I should be glad to give it them,” he said, “but to whom, and how?
+To which of the peasants? Why, to your commune, and not to that of
+Deminsk.” (That was the name of a neighbouring village with very little
+land.) All were silent. Then the ex-soldier said, “Just so.”
+
+“Now, then, tell me how would you divide the land among the peasants if
+you had to do it?” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“We should divide it up equally, so much for every man,” said the
+oven-builder, quickly raising and lowering his brows.
+
+“How else? Of course, so much per man,” said the good natured lame man
+with the white strips of linen round his legs.
+
+Every one confirmed this statement, considering it satisfactory.
+
+“So much per man? Then are the servants attached to the house also to
+have a share?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“Oh, no,” said the ex-soldier, trying to appear bold and merry. But the
+tall, reasonable man would not agree with him.
+
+“If one is to divide, all must share alike,” he said, in his deep bass,
+after a little consideration.
+
+“It can’t be done,” said Nekhludoff, who had already prepared his reply.
+“If all are to share alike, then those who do not work themselves--do
+not plough--will sell their shares to the rich. The rich will again get
+at the land. Those who live by working the land will multiply, and land
+will again be scarce. Then the rich will again get those who need land
+into their power.”
+
+“Just so,” quickly said the ex-soldier.
+
+“Forbid to sell the land; let only him who ploughs it have it,” angrily
+interrupted the oven-builder.
+
+To this Nekhludoff replied that it was impossible to know who was
+ploughing for himself and who for another.
+
+The tall, reasonable man proposed that an arrangement be made so that
+they should all plough communally, and those who ploughed should get the
+produce and those who did not should get nothing.
+
+To this communistic project Nekhludoff had also an answer ready. He said
+that for such an arrangement it would be necessary that all should have
+ploughs, and that all the horses should be alike, so that none should
+be left behind, and that ploughs and horses and all the implements would
+have to be communal property, and that in order to get that, all the
+people would have to agree.
+
+“Our people could not be made to agree in a lifetime,” said the cross
+old man.
+
+“We should have regular fights,” said the white-bearded old man with the
+laughing eyes. “So that the thing is not as simple as it looks,”
+ said Nekhludoff, “and this is a thing not only we but many have been
+considering. There is an American, Henry George. This is what he has
+thought out, and I agree with him.”
+
+“Why, you are the master, and you give it as you like. What’s it to you?
+The power is yours,” said the cross old man.
+
+This confused Nekhludoff, but he was pleased to see that not he alone
+was dissatisfied with this interruption.
+
+“You wait a bit, Uncle Simon; let him tell us about it,” said the
+reasonable man, in his imposing bass.
+
+This emboldened Nekhludoff, and he began to explain Henry George’s
+single-tax system “The earth is no man’s; it is God’s,” he began.
+
+“Just so; that it is,” several voices replied.
+
+“The land is common to all. All have the same right to it, but there is
+good land and bad land, and every one would like to take the good land.
+How is one to do in order to get it justly divided? In this way: he that
+will use the good land must pay those who have got no land the value of
+the land he uses,” Nekhludoff went on, answering his own question. “As
+it would be difficult to say who should pay whom, and money is needed
+for communal use, it should be arranged that he who uses the good land
+should pay the amount of the value of his land to the commune for its
+needs. Then every one would share equally. If you want to use land pay
+for it--more for the good, less for the bad land. If you do not wish to
+use land, don’t pay anything, and those who use the land will pay the
+taxes and the communal expenses for you.”
+
+“Well, he had a head, this George,” said the oven-builder, moving his
+brows. “He who has good land must pay more.”
+
+“If only the payment is according to our strength,” said the tall man
+with the bass voice, evidently foreseeing how the matter would end.
+
+“The payment should be not too high and not too low. If it is too high
+it will not get paid, and there will be a loss; and if it is too low it
+will be bought and sold. There would be a trading in land. This is what
+I wished to arrange among you here.”
+
+“That is just, that is right; yes, that would do,” said the peasants.
+
+“He has a head, this George,” said the broad-shouldered old man with the
+curls. “See what he has invented.”
+
+“Well, then, how would it be if I wished to take some land?” asked the
+smiling foreman.
+
+“If there is an allotment to spare, take it and work it,” said
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“What do you want it for? You have sufficient as it is,” said the old
+man with the laughing eyes.
+
+With this the conference ended.
+
+Nekhludoff repeated his offer, and advised the men to talk it over with
+the rest of the commune and to return with the answer.
+
+The peasants said they would talk it over and bring an answer, and left
+in a state of excitement. Their loud talk was audible as they went along
+the road, and up to late in the night the sound of voices came along the
+river from the village.
+
+The next day the peasants did not go to work, but spent it in
+considering the landlord’s offer. The commune was divided into two
+parties--one which regarded the offer as a profitable one to themselves
+and saw no danger in agreeing with it, and another which suspected and
+feared the offer it did not understand. On the third day, however, all
+agreed, and some were sent to Nekhludoff to accept his offer. They were
+influenced in their decision by the explanation some of the old men gave
+of the landlord’s conduct, which did away with all fear of deceit. They
+thought the gentleman had begun to consider his soul, and was acting as
+he did for its salvation. The alms which Nekhludoff had given away while
+in Panovo made his explanation seem likely. The fact that Nekhludoff
+had never before been face to face with such great poverty and so bare
+a life as the peasants had come to in this place, and was so appalled
+by it, made him give away money in charity, though he knew that this was
+not reasonable. He could not help giving the money, of which he now had
+a great deal, having received a large sum for the forest he had sold
+the year before, and also the hand money for the implements and stock in
+Kousminski. As soon as it was known that the master was giving money in
+charity, crowds of people, chiefly women, began to come to ask him for
+help. He did not in the least know how to deal with them, how to decide,
+how much, and whom to give to. He felt that to refuse to give money, of
+which he had a great deal, to poor people was impossible, yet to give
+casually to those who asked was not wise. The last day he spent in
+Panovo, Nekhludoff looked over the things left in his aunts’ house, and
+in the bottom drawer of the mahogany wardrobe, with the brass lions’
+heads with rings through them, he found many letters, and amongst them a
+photograph of a group, consisting of his aunts, Sophia Ivanovna and Mary
+Ivanovna, a student, and Katusha. Of all the things in the house he took
+only the letters and the photograph. The rest he left to the miller who,
+at the smiling foreman’s recommendation, had bought the house and all it
+contained, to be taken down and carried away, at one-tenth of the real
+value.
+
+Recalling the feeling of regret at the loss of his property which he had
+felt in Kousminski, Nekhludoff was surprised how he could have felt this
+regret. Now he felt nothing but unceasing joy at the deliverance, and
+a sensation of newness something like that which a traveller must
+experience when discovering new countries.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF RETURNS TO TOWN.
+
+The town struck Nekhludoff in a new and peculiar light on his return.
+He came back in the evening, when the gas was lit, and drove from
+the railway station to his house, where the rooms still smelt of
+naphthaline. Agraphena Petrovna and Corney were both feeling tired and
+dissatisfied, and had even had a quarrel over those things that seemed
+made only to be aired and packed away. Nekhludoff’s room was empty, but
+not in order, and the way to it was blocked up with boxes, so that his
+arrival evidently hindered the business which, owing to a curious kind
+of inertia, was going on in this house. The evident folly of these
+proceedings, in which he had once taken part, was so distasteful to
+Nekhludoff after the impressions the misery of the life of the peasants
+had made on him, that he decided to go to a hotel the next day, leaving
+Agraphena Petrovna to put away the things as she thought fit until his
+sister should come and finally dispose of everything in the house.
+
+Nekhludoff left home early and chose a couple of rooms in a very modest
+and not particularly clean lodging-house within easy reach of the
+prison, and, having given orders that some of his things should be sent
+there, he went to see the advocate. It was cold out of doors. After some
+rainy and stormy weather it had turned out cold, as it often does in
+spring. It was so cold that Nekhludoff felt quite chilly in his light
+overcoat, and walked fast hoping to get warmer. His mind was filled
+with thoughts of the peasants, the women, children, old men, and all the
+poverty and weariness which he seemed to have seen for the first time,
+especially the smiling, old-faced infant writhing with his calfless
+little legs, and he could not help contrasting what was going on in the
+town. Passing by the butchers’, fishmongers’, and clothiers’ shops, he
+was struck, as if he saw them for the first time, by the appearance
+of the clean, well-fed shopkeepers, like whom you could not find one
+peasant in the country. These men were apparently convinced that the
+pains they took to deceive the people who did not know much about their
+goods was not a useless but rather an important business. The coachmen
+with their broad hips and rows of buttons down their sides, and the
+door-keepers with gold cords on their caps, the servant-girls with their
+aprons and curly fringes, and especially the smart isvostchiks with
+the nape of their necks clean shaved, as they sat lolling back in their
+traps, and examined the passers-by with dissolute and contemptuous
+air, looked well fed. In all these people Nekhludoff could not now help
+seeing some of these very peasants who had been driven into the town by
+lack of land. Some of the peasants driven to the town had found means
+of profiting by the conditions of town life and had become like the
+gentlefolk and were pleased with their position; others were in a worse
+position than they had been in the country and were more to be pitied
+than the country people.
+
+Such seemed the bootmakers Nekhludoff saw in the cellar, the pale,
+dishevelled washerwomen with their thin, bare, arms ironing at an open
+window, out of which streamed soapy steam; such the two house-painters
+with their aprons, stockingless feet, all bespattered and smeared with
+paint, whom Nekhludoff met--their weak, brown arms bared to above the
+elbows--carrying a pailful of paint, and quarrelling with each other.
+Their faces looked haggard and cross. The dark faces of the carters
+jolting along in their carts bore the same expression, and so did the
+faces of the tattered men and women who stood begging at the street
+corners. The same kind of faces were to be seen at the open, windows of
+the eating-houses which Nekhludoff passed. By the dirty tables on which
+stood tea things and bottles, and between which waiters dressed in white
+shirts were rushing hither and thither, sat shouting and singing red,
+perspiring men with stupefied faces. One sat by the window with
+lifted brows and pouting lips and fixed eyes as if trying to remember
+something.
+
+“And why are they all gathered here?” Nekhludoff thought, breathing
+in together with the dust which the cold wind blew towards him the air
+filled with the smell of rank oil and fresh paint.
+
+In one street he met a row of carts loaded with something made of iron,
+that rattled so on the uneven pavement that it made his ears and head
+ache. He started walking still faster in order to pass the row of carts,
+when he heard himself called by name. He stopped and saw an officer with
+sharp pointed moustaches and shining face who sat in the trap of a swell
+isvostchik and waved his hand in a friendly manner, his smile disclosing
+unusually long, white teeth.
+
+“Nekhludoff! Can it be you?”
+
+Nekhludoff’s first feeling was one of pleasure. “Ah, Schonbock!” he
+exclaimed joyfully; but he knew the next moment that there was nothing
+to be joyful about.
+
+This was that Schonbock who had been in the house of Nekhludoff’s aunts
+that day, and whom Nekhludoff had quite lost out of sight, but about
+whom he had heard that in spite of his debts he had somehow managed to
+remain in the cavalry, and by some means or other still kept his place
+among the rich. His gay, contented appearance corroborated this report.
+
+“What a good thing that I have caught you. There is no one in town. Ah,
+old fellow; you have grown old,” he said, getting out of the trap and
+moving his shoulders about. “I only knew you by your walk. Look here, we
+must dine together. Is there any place where they feed one decently?”
+
+“I don’t think I can spare the time,” Nekhludoff answered, thinking only
+of how he could best get rid of his companion without hurting him.
+
+“And what has brought you here?” he asked.
+
+“Business, old fellow. Guardianship business. I am a guardian now. I am
+managing Samanoff’s affairs--the millionaire, you know. He has softening
+of the brain, and he’s got fifty-four thousand desiatins of land,”
+ he said, with peculiar pride, as if he had himself made all these
+desiatins. “The affairs were terribly neglected. All the land was let
+to the peasants. They did not pay anything. There were more than eighty
+thousand roubles debts. I changed it all in one year, and have got 70
+per cent. more out of it. What do you think of that?” he asked proudly.
+
+Nekhludoff remembered having heard that this Schonbock, just because, he
+had spent all he had, had attained by some special influence the post of
+guardian to a rich old man who was squandering his property--and was now
+evidently living by this guardianship.
+
+“How am I to get rid of him without offending him?” thought Nekhludoff,
+looking at this full, shiny face with the stiffened moustache and
+listening to his friendly, good-humoured chatter about where one gets
+fed best, and his bragging about his doings as a guardian.
+
+“Well, then, where do we dine?”
+
+“Really, I have no time to spare,” said Nekhludoff, glancing at his
+watch.
+
+“Then, look here. To-night, at the races--will you be there?”
+
+“No, I shall not be there.”
+
+“Do come. I have none of my own now, but I back Grisha’s horses. You
+remember; he has a fine stud. You’ll come, won’t you? And we’ll have
+some supper together.”
+
+“No, I cannot have supper with you either,” said Nekhludoff with a
+smile.
+
+“Well, that’s too bad! And where are you off to now? Shall I give you a
+lift?”
+
+“I am going to see an advocate, close to here round the corner.”
+
+“Oh, yes, of course. You have got something to do with the prisons--have
+turned into a prisoners’ mediator, I hear,” said Schonbock, laughing.
+“The Korchagins told me. They have left town already. What does it all
+mean? Tell me.”
+
+“Yes, yes, it is quite true,” Nekhludoff answered; “but I cannot tell
+you about it in the street.”
+
+“Of course; you always were a crank. But you will come to the races?”
+
+“No. I neither can nor wish to come. Please do not be angry with me.”
+
+“Angry? Dear me, no. Where do you live?” And suddenly his face became
+serious, his eyes fixed, and he drew up his brows. He seemed to be
+trying to remember something, and Nekhludoff noticed the same dull
+expression as that of the man with the raised brows and pouting lips
+whom he had seen at the window of the eating-house.
+
+“How cold it is! Is it not? Have you got the parcels?” said Schonbock,
+turning to the isvostchik.
+
+“All right. Good-bye. I am very glad indeed to have met you,” and
+warmly pressing Nekhludoff’s hand, he jumped into the trap and waved
+his white-gloved hand in front of his shiny face, with his usual smile,
+showing his exceptionally white teeth.
+
+“Can I have also been like that?” Nekhludoff thought, as he continued
+his way to the advocate’s. “Yes, I wished to be like that, though I was
+not quite like it. And I thought of living my life in that way.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+AN ADVOCATE’S VIEWS ON JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS.
+
+Nekhludoff was admitted by the advocate before his turn. The advocate at
+once commenced to talk about the Menshoffs’ case, which he had read with
+indignation at the inconsistency of the accusation.
+
+“This case is perfectly revolting,” he said; “it is very likely that
+the owner himself set fire to the building in order to get the insurance
+money, and the chief thing is that there is no evidence to prove the
+Menshoffs’ guilt. There are no proofs whatever. It is all owing to the
+special zeal of the examining magistrate and the carelessness of the
+prosecutor. If they are tried here, and not in a provincial court, I
+guarantee that they will be acquitted, and I shall charge nothing.
+Now then, the next case, that of Theodosia Birukoff. The appeal to the
+Emperor is written. If you go to Petersburg, you’d better take it with
+you, and hand it in yourself, with a request of your own, or else they
+will only make a few inquiries, and nothing will come of it. You must
+try and get at some of the influential members of the Appeal Committee.”
+
+“Well, is this all?”
+
+“No; here I have a letter . . . I see you have turned into a pipe--a
+spout through which all the complaints of the prison are poured,” said
+the advocate, with a smile. “It is too much; you’ll not be able to
+manage it.”
+
+“No, but this is a striking case,” said Nekhludoff, and gave a brief
+outline of the case of a peasant who began to read the Gospels to the
+peasants in the village, and to discuss them with his friends. The
+priests regarded this as a crime and informed the authorities. The
+magistrate examined him and the public prosecutor drew up an act of
+indictment, and the law courts committed him for trial.
+
+“This is really too terrible,” Nekhludoff said. “Can it be true?”
+
+“What are you surprised at?”
+
+“Why, everything. I can understand the police-officer, who simply obeys
+orders, but the prosecutor drawing up an act of that kind. An educated
+man . . .”
+
+“That is where the mistake lies, that we are in the habit of considering
+that the prosecutors and the judges in general are some kind of liberal
+persons. There was a time when they were such, but now it is quite
+different. They are just officials, only troubled about pay-day.
+They receive their salaries and want them increased, and there their
+principles end. They will accuse, judge, and sentence any one you like.”
+
+“Yes; but do laws really exist that can condemn a man to Siberia for
+reading the Bible with his friends?”
+
+“Not only to be exiled to the less remote parts of Siberia, but even to
+the mines, if you can only prove that reading the Bible they took the
+liberty of explaining it to others not according to orders, and in this
+way condemned the explanations given by the Church. Blaming the Greek
+orthodox religion in the presence of the common people means, according
+to Statute . . . the mines.”
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“I assure you it is so. I always tell these gentlemen, the judges,”
+ the advocate continued, “that I cannot look at them without gratitude,
+because if I am not in prison, and you, and all of us, it is only owing
+to their kindness. To deprive us of our privileges, and send us all to
+the less remote parts of Siberia, would be an easy thing for them.”
+
+“Well, if it is so, and if everything depends on the Procureur and
+others who can, at will, either enforce the laws or not, what are the
+trials for?”
+
+The advocate burst into a merry laugh. “You do put strange questions.
+My dear sir, that is philosophy. Well, we might have a talk about that,
+too. Could you come on Saturday? You will meet men of science, literary
+men, and artists at my house, and then we might discuss these general
+questions,” said the advocate, pronouncing the words “general questions”
+ with ironical pathos. “You have met my wife? Do come.”
+
+“Thank you; I will try to,” said Nekhludoff, and felt that he was saying
+an untruth, and knew that if he tried to do anything it would be to keep
+away froth the advocate’s literary evening, and the circle of the men of
+science, art, and literature.
+
+The laugh with which the advocate met Nekhludoff’s remark that trials
+could have no meaning if the judges might enforce the laws or not,
+according to their notion, and the tone with which he pronounced the
+words “philosophy” and “general questions” proved to Nekhludoff how very
+differently he and the advocate and, probably, the advocate’s friends,
+looked at things; and he felt that in spite of the distance that now
+existed between himself and his former companions, Schonbock, etc.,
+the difference between himself and the circle of the advocate and his
+friends was still greater.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+WHY THE PEASANTS FLOCK TO TOWN.
+
+The prison was a long way off and it was getting late, so Nekhludoff
+took an isvostchik. The isvostchik, a middle-aged man with an
+intelligent and kind face, turned round towards Nekhludoff as they were
+driving along one of the streets and pointed to a huge house that was
+being built there.
+
+“Just see what a tremendous house they have begun to build,” he said, as
+if he was partly responsible for the building of the house and proud of
+it. The house was really immense and was being built in a very original
+style. The strong pine beams of the scaffolding were firmly fixed
+together with iron bands and a plank wall separated the building from
+the street.
+
+On the boards of the scaffolding workmen, all bespattered with plaster,
+moved hither and thither like ants. Some were laying bricks, some hewing
+stones, some carrying up the heavy hods and pails and bringing them down
+empty. A fat and finely-dressed gentleman--probably the architect--stood
+by the scaffolding, pointing upward and explaining something to a
+contractor, a peasant from the Vladimir Government, who was respectfully
+listening to him. Empty carts were coming out of the gate by which the
+architect and the contractor were standing, and loaded ones were going
+in. “And how sure they all are--those that do the work as well as those
+that make them do it--that it ought to be; that while their wives at
+home, who are with child, are labouring beyond their strength, and their
+children with the patchwork caps, doomed soon to the cold grave, smile
+with suffering and contort their little legs, they must be building this
+stupid and useless palace for some stupid and useless person--one of
+those who spoil and rob them,” Nekhludoff thought, while looking at the
+house.
+
+“Yes, it is a stupid house,” he said, uttering his thought out aloud.
+
+“Why stupid?” replied the isvostchik, in an offended tone. “Thanks to
+it, the people get work; it’s not stupid.”
+
+“But the work is useless.”
+
+“It can’t be useless, or why should it be done?” said the isvostchik.
+“The people get bread by it.”
+
+Nekhludoff was silent, and it would have been difficult to talk because
+of the clatter the wheels made.
+
+When they came nearer the prison, and the isvostchik turned off the
+paved on to the macadamised road, it became easier to talk, and he again
+turned to Nekhludoff.
+
+“And what a lot of these people are flocking to the town nowadays; it’s
+awful,” he said, turning round on the box and pointing to a party of
+peasant workmen who were coming towards them, carrying saws, axes,
+sheepskins, coats, and bags strapped to their shoulders.
+
+“More than in other years?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“By far. This year every place is crowded, so that it’s just terrible.
+The employers just fling the workmen about like chaff. Not a job to be
+got.”
+
+“Why is that?”
+
+“They’ve increased. There’s no room for them.”
+
+“Well, what if they have increased? Why do not they stay in the
+village?”
+
+“There’s nothing for them to do in the village--no land to be had.”
+
+Nekhludoff felt as one does when touching a sore place. It feels as if
+the bruised part was always being hit; yet it is only because the place
+is sore that the touch is felt.
+
+“Is it possible that the same thing is happening everywhere?” he
+thought, and began questioning the isvostchik about the quantity of land
+in his village, how much land the man himself had, and why he had left
+the country.
+
+“We have a desiatin per man, sir,” he said. “Our family have three men’s
+shares of the land. My father and a brother are at home, and manage the
+land, and another brother is serving in the army. But there’s nothing to
+manage. My brother has had thoughts of coming to Moscow, too.”
+
+“And cannot land be rented?”
+
+“How’s one to rent it nowadays? The gentry, such as they were, have
+squandered all theirs. Men of business have got it all into their own
+hands. One can’t rent it from them. They farm it themselves. We have
+a Frenchman ruling in our place; he bought the estate from our former
+landlord, and won’t let it--and there’s an end of it.”
+
+“Who’s that Frenchman?”
+
+“Dufour is the Frenchman’s name. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He makes
+wigs for the actors in the big theatre; it is a good business, so he’s
+prospering. He bought it from our lady, the whole of the estate, and now
+he has us in his power; he just rides on us as he pleases. The Lord be
+thanked, he is a good man himself; only his wife, a Russian, is such a
+brute that--God have mercy on us. She robs the people. It’s awful. Well,
+here’s the prison. Am I to drive you to the entrance? I’m afraid they’ll
+not let us do it, though.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+NURSE MASLOVA.
+
+When he rang the bell at the front entrance Nekhludoff’s heart stood
+still with horror as he thought of the state he might find Maslova in
+to-day, and at the mystery that he felt to be in her and in the people
+that were collected in the prison. He asked the jailer who opened the
+door for Maslova. After making the necessary inquiry the jailer informed
+him that she was in the hospital. Nekhludoff went there. A kindly old
+man, the hospital doorkeeper, let him in at once and, after asking
+Nekhludoff whom he wanted, directed him to the children’s ward. A young
+doctor saturated with carbolic acid met Nekhludoff in the passage and
+asked him severely what he wanted. This doctor was always making all
+sorts of concessions to the prisoners, and was therefore continually
+coming into conflict with the prison authorities and even with the head
+doctor. Fearing lest Nekhludoff should demand something unlawful, and
+wishing to show that he made no exceptions for any one, he pretended to
+be cross. “There are no women here; it is the children’s ward,” he said.
+
+“Yes, I know; but a prisoner has been removed here to be an assistant
+nurse.”
+
+“Yes, there are two such here. Then whom do you want?”
+
+“I am closely connected with one of them, named Maslova,” Nekhludoff
+answered, “and should like to speak to her. I am going to Petersburg to
+hand in an appeal to the Senate about her case and should like to give
+her this. It is only a photo,” Nekhludoff said, taking an envelope out
+of his pocket.
+
+“All right, you may do that,” said the doctor, relenting, and turning to
+an old woman with a white apron, he told her to call the prisoner--Nurse
+Maslova.
+
+“Will you take a seat, or go into the waiting-room?”
+
+“Thanks,” said Nekhludoff, and profiting by the favourable change in
+the manner of the doctor towards him asked how they were satisfied with
+Maslova in the hospital.
+
+“Oh, she is all right. She works fairly well, if you the conditions of
+her former life into account. But here she is.”
+
+The old nurse came in at one of the doors, followed by Maslova, who wore
+a blue striped dress, a white apron, a kerchief that quite covered her
+hair. When she saw Nekhludoff her face flushed, and she stopped as if
+hesitating, then frowned, and with downcast eyes went quickly towards
+him along the strip of carpet in the middle of the passage. When she
+came up to Nekhludoff she did not wish to give him her hand, and then
+gave it, growing redder still. Nekhludoff had not seen her since the
+day when she begged forgiveness for having been in a passion, and he
+expected to find her the same as she was then. But to-day she was
+quite different. There was something new in the expression of her face,
+reserve and shyness, and, as it seemed to him, animosity towards him. He
+told her what he had already said to the doctor, i.e., that he was going
+to Petersburg, and he handed her the envelope with the photograph which
+he had brought from Panovo.
+
+“I found this in Panovo--it’s an old photo; perhaps you would like it.
+Take it.”
+
+Lifting her dark eyebrows, she looked at him with surprise in her
+squinting eyes, as if asking, “What is this for?” took the photo
+silently and put it in the bib of her apron.
+
+“I saw your aunt there,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Did you?” she said, indifferently.
+
+“Are you all right here?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“Oh, yes, it’s all right,” she said.
+
+“Not too difficult?”
+
+“Oh, no. But I am not used to it yet.”
+
+“I am glad, for your sake. Anyhow, it is better than there.”
+
+“Than where--there?” she asked, her face flushing again.
+
+“There--in the prison,” Nekhludoff hurriedly answered.
+
+“Why better?” she asked.
+
+“I think the people are better. Here are none such as there must be
+there.”
+
+“There are many good ones there,” she said.
+
+“I have been seeing about the Menshoffs, and hope they will be
+liberated,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“God grant they may. Such a splendid old woman,” she said, again
+repeating her opinion of the old woman, and slightly smiling.
+
+“I am going to Petersburg to-day. Your case will come on soon, and I
+hope the sentence will be repealed.”
+
+“Whether it is repealed or not won’t matter now,” she said.
+
+“Why not now?”
+
+“So,” she said, looking with a quick, questioning glance into his eyes.
+
+Nekhludoff understood the word and the look to mean that she wished
+to know whether he still kept firm to his decision or had accepted her
+refusal.
+
+“I do not know why it does not matter to you,” he said. “It certainly
+does not matter as far as I am concerned whether you are acquitted or
+not. I am ready to do what I told you in any case,” he said decidedly.
+
+She lifted her head and her black squinting eyes remained fixed on him
+and beyond him, and her face beamed with joy. But the words she spoke
+were very different from what her eyes said.
+
+“You should not speak like that,” she said.
+
+“I am saying it so that you should know.”
+
+“Everything has been said about that, and there is no use speaking,” she
+said, with difficulty repressing a smile.
+
+A sudden noise came from the hospital ward, and the sound of a child
+crying.
+
+“I think they are calling me,” she said, and looked round uneasily.
+
+“Well, good-bye, then,” he said. She pretended not to see his extended
+hand, and, without taking it, turned away and hastily walked along the
+strip of carpet, trying to hide the triumph she felt.
+
+“What is going on in her? What is she thinking? What does she feel? Does
+she mean to prove me, or can she really not forgive me? Is it that she
+cannot or that she will not express what she feels and thinks? Has she
+softened or hardened?” he asked himself, and could find no answer. He
+only knew that she had altered and that an important change was going on
+in her soul, and this change united him not only to her but also to Him
+for whose sake that change was being wrought. And this union brought on
+a state of joyful animation and tenderness.
+
+When she returned to the ward, in which there stood eight small beds,
+Maslova began, in obedience to the nurse’s order, to arrange one of the
+beds; and, bending over too far with the sheet, she slipped and nearly
+fell down.
+
+A little convalescent boy with a bandaged neck, who was looking at her,
+laughed. Maslova could no longer contain herself and burst into loud
+laughter, and such contagious laughter that several of the children also
+burst out laughing, and one of the sisters rebuked her angrily.
+
+“What are you giggling at? Do you think you are where you used to be?
+Go and fetch the food.” Maslova obeyed and went where she was sent; but,
+catching the eye of the bandaged boy who was not allowed to laugh, she
+again burst out laughing.
+
+Whenever she was alone Maslova again and again pulled the photograph
+partly out of the envelope and looked at it admiringly; but only in the
+evening when she was off duty and alone in the bedroom which she shared
+with a nurse, did she take it quite out of the envelope and gaze long
+at the faded yellow photograph, caressing with, her eyes every detail
+of faces and clothing, the steps of the veranda, and the bushes which
+served as a background to his and hers and his aunts’ faces, and could
+not cease from admiring especially herself--her pretty young face with
+the curly hair round the forehead. She was so absorbed that she did not
+hear her fellow-nurse come into the room.
+
+“What is it that he’s given you?” said the good-natured, fat nurse,
+stooping over the photograph.
+
+“Who’s this? You?”
+
+“Who else?” said Maslova, looking into her companion’s face with a
+smile.
+
+“And who’s this?”
+
+“Himself.”
+
+“And is this his mother?”
+
+“No, his aunt. Would you not have known me?”
+
+“Never. The whole face is altered. Why, it must be 10 years since then.”
+
+“Not years, but a lifetime,” said Maslova. And suddenly her animation
+went, her face grew gloomy, and a deep line appeared between her brows.
+
+“Why so? Your way of life must have been an easy one.”
+
+“Easy, indeed,” Maslova reiterated, closing her eyes and shaking her
+head. “It is hell.”
+
+“Why, what makes it so?”
+
+“What makes it so! From eight till four in the morning, and every night
+the same!”
+
+“Then why don’t they give it up?”
+
+“They can’t give it up if they want to. But what’s the use of talking?”
+ Maslova said, jumping up and throwing the photograph into the drawer of
+the table. And with difficulty repressing angry tears, she ran out into
+the passage and slammed the door.
+
+While looking at the group she imagined herself such as she was there
+and dreamt of her happiness then and of the possibility of happiness
+with him now. But her companion’s words reminded her of what she was now
+and what she had been, and brought back all the horrors of that life,
+which she had felt but dimly, and not allowed herself to realise.
+
+It was only now that the memory of all those terrible nights came
+vividly back to her, especially one during the carnival when she was
+expecting a student who had promised to buy her out. She remembered how
+she--wearing her low necked silk dress stained with wine, a red bow in
+her untidy hair, wearied, weak, half tipsy, having seen her visitors
+off, sat down during an interval in the dancing by the piano beside the
+bony pianiste with the blotchy face, who played the accompaniments
+to the violin, and began complaining of her hard fate; and how this
+pianiste said that she, too, was feeling how heavy her position was and
+would like to change it; and how Clara suddenly came up to them; and how
+they all three decided to change their life. They thought that the night
+was over, and were about to go away, when suddenly the noise of tipsy
+voices was heard in the ante-room. The violinist played a tune and the
+pianiste began hammering the first figure of a quadrille on the piano,
+to the tune of a most merry Russian song. A small, perspiring man,
+smelling of spirits, with a white tie and swallow-tail coat, which he
+took off after the first figure, came up to her, hiccoughing, and
+caught her up, while another fat man, with a beard, and also wearing a
+dress-coat (they had come straight from a ball) caught Clara up, and for
+a long time they turned, danced, screamed, drank. . . . And so it
+went on for another year, and another, and a third. How could she help
+changing? And he was the cause of it all. And, suddenly, all her former
+bitterness against him reawoke; she wished to scold, to reproach him.
+She regretted having neglected the opportunity of repeating to him once
+more that she knew him, and would not give in to him--would not let him
+make use of her spiritually as he had done physically.
+
+And she longed for drink in order to stifle the feeling of pity to
+herself and the useless feeling of reproach to him. And she would have
+broken her word if she had been inside the prison. Here she could not
+get any spirits except by applying to the medical assistant, and she was
+afraid of him because he made up to her, and intimate relations with
+men were disgusting to her now. After sitting a while on a form in the
+passage she returned to her little room, and without paying any heed to
+her companion’s words, she wept for a long time over her wrecked life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+AN ARISTOCRATIC CIRCLE.
+
+Nekhludoff had four matters to attend to in Petersburg. The first was
+the appeal to the Senate in Maslova’s case; the second, to hand in
+Theodosia Birukoff’s petition to the committee; the third, to comply
+with Vera Doukhova’s requests--i.e., try to get her friend Shoustova
+released from prison, and get permission for a mother to visit her son
+in prison. Vera Doukhova had written to him about this, and he was
+going to the Gendarmerie Office to attend to these two matters, which he
+counted as one.
+
+The fourth matter he meant to attend to was the case of some sectarians
+who had been separated from their families and exiled to the Caucasus
+because they read and discussed the Gospels. It was not so much to
+them as to himself he had promised to do all he could to clear up this
+affair.
+
+Since his last visit to Maslennikoff, and especially since he had been
+in the country, Nekhludoff had not exactly formed a resolution but felt
+with his whole nature a loathing for that society in which he had lived
+till then, that society which so carefully hides the sufferings of
+millions in order to assure ease and pleasure to a small number of
+people, that the people belonging to this society do not and cannot
+see these sufferings, nor the cruelty and wickedness of their life.
+Nekhludoff could no longer move in this society without feeling ill at
+ease and reproaching himself. And yet all the ties of relationship and
+friendship, and his own habits, were drawing him back into this society.
+Besides, that which alone interested him now, his desire to help Maslova
+and the other sufferers, made it necessary to ask for help and service
+from persons belonging to that society, persons whom he not only could
+not respect, but who often aroused in him indignation and a feeling of
+contempt.
+
+When he came to Petersburg and stopped at his aunt’s--his mother’s
+sister, the Countess Tcharsky, wife of a former minister--Nekhludoff at
+once found himself in the very midst of that aristocratic circle which
+had grown so foreign to him. This was very unpleasant, but there was no
+possibility of getting out of it. To put up at an hotel instead of at
+his aunt’s house would have been to offend his aunt, and, besides, his
+aunt had important connections and might be extremely useful in all
+these matters he meant to attend to.
+
+“What is this I hear about you? All sorts of marvels,” said the Countess
+Katerina Ivanovna Tcharsky, as she gave him his coffee immediately after
+his arrival. “_Vous posez pour un Howard_. Helping criminals, going the
+round of prisons, setting things right.”
+
+“Oh, no. I never thought of it.”
+
+“Why not? It is a good thing, only there seems to be some romantic story
+connected with it. Let us hear all about it.”
+
+Nekhludoff told her the whole truth about his relations to Maslova.
+
+“Yes, yes, I remember your poor mother telling me about it. That was
+when you were staying with those old women. I believe they wished to
+marry you to their ward (the Countess Katerina Ivanovna had always
+despised Nekhludoff’s aunts on his father’s side). So it’s she. _Elle
+est encore jolie?_”
+
+Katerina Ivanovna was a strong, bright, energetic, talkative woman of
+60. She was tall and very stout, and had a decided black moustache
+on her lip. Nekhludoff was fond of her and had even as a child been
+infected by her energy and mirth.
+
+“No, ma tante, that’s at an end. I only wish to help her, because she is
+innocently accused. I am the cause of it and the cause of her fate being
+what it is. I feel it my duty to do all I can for her.”
+
+“But what is this I have heard about your intention of marrying her?”
+
+“Yes, it was my intention, but she does not wish it.”
+
+Katerina Ivanovna looked at her nephew with raised brows and drooping
+eyeballs, in silent amazement. Suddenly her face changed, and with a
+look of pleasure she said: “Well, she is wiser than you. Dear me, you
+are a fool. And you would have married her?”
+
+“Most certainly.”
+
+“After her having been what she was?”
+
+“All the more, since I was the cause of it.”
+
+“Well, you are a simpleton,” said his aunt, repressing a smile, “a
+terrible simpleton; but it is just because you are such a terrible
+simpleton that I love you.” She repeated the word, evidently liking it,
+as it seemed to correctly convey to her mind the idea of her nephew’s
+moral state. “Do you know--What a lucky chance. Aline has a wonderful
+home--the Magdalene Home. I went there once. They are terribly
+disgusting. After that I had to pray continually. But Aline is devoted
+to it, body and soul, so we shall place her there--yours, I mean.”
+
+“But she is condemned to Siberia. I have come on purpose to appeal about
+it. This is one of my requests to you.”
+
+“Dear me, and where do you appeal to in this case?”
+
+“To the Senate.”
+
+“Ah, the Senate! Yes, my dear Cousin Leo is in the Senate, but he is in
+the heraldry department, and I don’t know any of the real ones. They are
+all some kind of Germans--Gay, Fay, Day--tout l’alphabet, or else all
+sorts of Ivanoffs, Simenoffs, Nikitines, or else Ivanenkos, Simonenkos,
+Nikitenkos, pour varier. Des gens de l’autre monde. Well, it is all the
+same. I’ll tell my husband, he knows them. He knows all sorts of people.
+I’ll tell him, but you will have to explain, he never understands me.
+Whatever I may say, he always maintains he does not understand it. C’est
+un parti pris, every one understands but only not he.”
+
+At this moment a footman with stockinged legs came in with a note on a
+silver platter.
+
+“There now, from Aline herself. You’ll have a chance of hearing
+Kiesewetter.”
+
+“Who is Kiesewetter?”
+
+“Kiesewetter? Come this evening, and you will find out who he is. He
+speaks in such a way that the most hardened criminals sink on their
+knees and weep and repent.”
+
+The Countess Katerina Ivanovna, however strange it may seem, and however
+little it seemed in keeping with the rest of her character, was a
+staunch adherent to that teaching which holds that the essence of
+Christianity lies in the belief in redemption. She went to meetings
+where this teaching, then in fashion, was being preached, and assembled
+the “faithful” in her own house. Though this teaching repudiated all
+ceremonies, icons, and sacraments, Katerina Ivanovna had icons in every
+room, and one on the wall above her bed, and she kept all that the
+Church prescribed without noticing any contradiction in that.
+
+“There now; if your Magdalene could hear him she would be converted,”
+ said the Countess. “Do stay at home to-night; you will hear him. He is a
+wonderful man.”
+
+“It does not interest me, ma tante.”
+
+“But I tell you that it is interesting, and you must come home. Now you
+may go. What else do you want of me? _Videz votre sac_.”
+
+“The next is in the fortress.”
+
+“In the fortress? I can give you a note for that to the Baron
+Kriegsmuth. _Cest un tres brave homme_. Oh, but you know him; he was a
+comrade of your father’s. _Il donne dans le spiritisme_. But that does
+not matter, he is a good fellow. What do you want there?”
+
+“I want to get leave for a mother to visit her son who is imprisoned
+there. But I was told that this did not depend on Kriegsmuth but on
+Tcherviansky.”
+
+“I do not like Tcherviansky, but he is Mariette’s husband; we might ask
+her. She will do it for me. _Elle est tres gentille_.”
+
+“I have also to petition for a woman who is imprisoned there without
+knowing what for.”
+
+“No fear; she knows well enough. They all know it very well, and it
+serves them right, those short-haired [many advanced women wear their
+hair short, like men] ones.”
+
+“We do not know whether it serves them right or not. But they suffer.
+You are a Christian and believe in the Gospel teaching and yet you are
+so pitiless.”
+
+“That has nothing to do with it. The Gospels are the Gospels, but what
+is disgusting remains disgusting. It would be worse if I pretended to
+love Nihilists, especially short-haired women Nihilists, when I cannot
+bear them.”
+
+“Why can you not bear them?”
+
+“You ask why, after the 1st of March?” [The Emperor Alexander II was
+killed on the first of March, old style.]
+
+“They did not all take part in it on the 1st of March.”
+
+“Never mind; they should not meddle with what is no business of theirs.
+It’s not women’s business.”
+
+“Yet you consider that Mariette may take part in business.”
+
+“Mariette? Mariette is Mariette, and these are goodness knows what. Want
+to teach everybody.”
+
+“Not to teach but simply to help the people.”
+
+“One knows whom to help and whom not to help without them.”
+
+“But the peasants are in great need. I have just returned from the
+country. Is it necessary, that the peasants should work to the very
+limits of their strength and never have sufficient to eat while we are
+living in the greatest luxury?” said Nekhludoff, involuntarily led on by
+his aunt’s good nature into telling her what he was in his thoughts.
+
+“What do you want, then? That I should work and not eat anything?”
+
+“No, I do not wish you not to eat. I only wish that we should all work
+and all eat.” He could not help smiling as he said it.
+
+Again raising her brow and drooping her eyeballs his aunt looked at him
+curiously. “_Mon cher vous finirez mal_,” she said.
+
+Just then the general, and former minister, Countess Tcharsky’s husband,
+a tall, broad-shouldered man, came into the room.
+
+“Ah, Dmitri, how d’you do?” he said, turning his freshly-shaved cheek to
+Nekhludoff to be kissed. “When did you get here?” And he silently kissed
+his wife on the forehead.
+
+“_Non il est impayable_,” the Countess said, turning to her husband.
+“He wants me to go and wash clothes and live on potatoes. He is an awful
+fool, but all the same do what he is going to ask of you. A terrible
+simpleton,” she added. “Have you heard? Kamenskaya is in such despair
+that they fear for her life,” she said to her husband. “You should go
+and call there.”
+
+“Yes; it is dreadful,” said her husband.
+
+“Go along, then, and talk to him. I must write some letters.”
+
+Hardly had Nekhludoff stepped into the room next the drawing-room than
+she called him back.
+
+“Shall I write to Mariette, then?”
+
+“Please, ma tante.”
+
+“I shall leave a blank for what you want to say about the short-haired
+one, and she will give her husband his orders, and he’ll do it. Do not
+think me wicked; they are all so disgusting, your prologues, but _je
+ne leur veux pas de mal_, bother them. Well, go, but be sure to stay at
+home this evening to hear Kiesewetter, and we shall have some prayers.
+And if only you do not resist _cela vous fera beaucoup de bien_. I
+know your poor mother and all of you were always very backward in these
+things.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+AN AVERAGE STATESMAN.
+
+Count Ivan Michaelovitch had been a minister, and was a man of strong
+convictions. The convictions of Count Ivan Michaelovitch consisted in
+the belief that, just as it was natural for a bird to feed on worms,
+to be clothed in feathers and down, and to fly in the air, so it
+was natural for him to feed on the choicest and most expensive food,
+prepared by highly-paid cooks, to wear the most comfortable and most
+expensive clothing, to drive with the best and fastest horses, and that,
+therefore, all these things should be ready found for him. Besides this,
+Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered that the more money he could get out
+of the treasury by all sorts of means, the more orders he had, including
+different diamond insignia of something or other, and the oftener he
+spoke to highly-placed individuals of both sexes, so much the better it
+was.
+
+All the rest Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered insignificant and
+uninteresting beside these dogmas. All the rest might be as it was, or
+just the reverse. Count Ivan Michaelovitch lived and acted according
+to these lights for 40 years, and at the end of 40 years reached the
+position of a Minister of State. The chief qualities that enabled
+Count Ivan Michaelovitch to reach this position were his capacity of
+understanding the meaning of documents and laws and of drawing up,
+though clumsily, intelligible State papers, and of spelling them
+correctly; secondly, his very stately appearance, which enabled him,
+when necessary, to seem not only extremely proud, but unapproachable
+and majestic, while at other times he could be abjectly and almost
+passionately servile; thirdly, the absence of any general principles
+or rules, either of personal or administrative morality, which made it
+possible for him either to agree or disagree with anybody according to
+what was wanted at the time. When acting thus his only endeavour was
+to sustain the appearance of good breeding and not to seem too plainly
+inconsistent. As for his actions being moral or not, in themselves, or
+whether they were going to result in the highest welfare or greatest
+evil for the whole of the Russian Empire, or even the entire world, that
+was quite indifferent to him. When he became minister, not only
+those dependent on him (and there were great many of them) and people
+connected with him, but many strangers and even he himself were
+convinced that he was a very clever statesman. But after some time had
+elapsed and he had done nothing and had nothing to show, and when in
+accordance with the law of the struggle for existence others, like
+himself, who had learnt to write and understand documents, stately and
+unprincipled officials, had displaced him, he turned out to be not
+only far from clever but very limited and badly educated. Though
+self-assured, his views hardly reaching the level of those in the
+leading articles of the Conservative papers, it became apparent
+that there was nothing in him to distinguish him from those other
+badly-educated and self-assured officials who had pushed him out, and
+he himself saw it. But this did not shake his conviction that he had to
+receive a great deal of money out of the Treasury every year, and new
+decorations for his dress clothes. This conviction was so firm that no
+one had the pluck to refuse these things to him, and he received yearly,
+partly in form of a pension, partly as a salary for being a member in
+a Government institution and chairman of all sorts of committees
+and councils, several tens of thousands of roubles, besides the
+right--highly prized by him--of sewing all sorts of new cords to his
+shoulders and trousers, and ribbons to wear under and enamel stars
+to fix on to his dress coat. In consequence of this Count Ivan
+Michaelovitch had very high connections.
+
+Count Ivan Michaelovitch listened to Nekhludoff as he was wont to listen
+to the reports of the permanent secretary of his department, and, having
+heard him, said he would give him two notes, one to the Senator Wolff,
+of the Appeal Department. “All sorts of things are reported of him, but
+dans tous les cas c’est un homme tres comme ii faut,” he said. “He is
+indebted to me, and will do all that is possible.” The other note Count
+Ivan Michaelovitch gave Nekhludoff was to an influential member of
+the Petition Committee. The story of Theodosia Birukoff as told by
+Nekhludoff interested him very much. When Nekhludoff said that he
+thought of writing to the Empress, the Count replied that it certainly
+was a very touching story, and might, if occasion presented itself, he
+told her, but he could not promise. Let the petition be handed in in due
+form.
+
+Should there be an opportunity, and if a petit comite were called on
+Thursday, he thought he would tell her the story. As soon as Nekhludoff
+had received these two notes, and a note to Mariette from his aunt, he
+at once set off to these different places.
+
+First he went to Mariette’s. He had known her as a half-grown girl, the
+daughter of an aristocratic but not wealthy family, and had heard how
+she had married a man who was making a career, whom Nekhludoff had heard
+badly spoken of; and, as usual, he felt it hard to ask a favour of a man
+he did not esteem. In these cases he always felt an inner dissension
+and dissatisfaction, and wavered whether to ask the favour or not, and
+always resolved to ask. Besides feeling himself in a false position
+among those to whose set he no longer regarded himself as belonging, who
+yet regarded him as belonging to them, he felt himself getting into the
+old accustomed rut, and in spite of himself fell into the thoughtless
+and immoral tone that reigned in that circle. He felt that from the
+first, with his aunt, he involuntarily fell into a bantering tone while
+talking about serious matters.
+
+Petersburg in general affected him with its usual physically
+invigorating and mentally dulling effect.
+
+Everything so clean, so comfortably well-arranged and the people so
+lenient in moral matters, that life seemed very easy.
+
+A fine, clean, and polite isvostchik drove him past fine, clean, polite
+policemen, along the fine, clean, watered streets, past fine, clean
+houses to the house in which Mariette lived. At the front door stood
+a pair of English horses, with English harness, and an English-looking
+coachman on the box, with the lower part of his face shaved, proudly
+holding a whip. The doorkeeper, dressed in a wonderfully clean livery,
+opened the door into the hall, where in still cleaner livery with gold
+cords stood the footman with his splendid whiskers well combed out,
+and the orderly on duty in a brand-new uniform. “The general does not
+receive, and the generaless does not receive either. She is just going
+to drive out.”
+
+Nekhludoff took out Katerina Ivanovna’s letter, and going up to a table
+on which lay a visitors’ book, began to write that he was sorry not to
+have been able to see any one; when the footman went up the staircase
+the doorkeeper went out and shouted to the coachman, and the orderly
+stood up rigid with his arms at his sides following with his eyes a
+little, slight lady, who was coming down the stairs with rapid steps not
+in keeping with all the grandeur.
+
+Mariette had a large hat on, with feathers, a black dress and cape, and
+new black gloves. Her face was covered by a veil.
+
+When she saw Nekhludoff she lifted the veil off a very pretty face with
+bright eyes that looked inquiringly at him.
+
+“Ah, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff,” she said, with a soft,
+pleasant voice. “I should have known--”
+
+“What! you even remember my name?”
+
+“I should think so. Why, I and my sisters have even been in love with
+you,” she said, in French. “But, dear me, how you have altered. Oh, what
+a pity I have to go out. But let us go up again,” she said and stopped
+hesitatingly. Then she looked at the clock. “No, I can’t. I am going to
+Kamenskaya’s to attend a mass for the dead. She is terribly afflicted.”
+
+“Who is this Kamenskaya?”
+
+“Have you not heard? Her son was killed in a duel. He fought Posen. He
+was the only son. Terrible I The mother is very much afflicted.”
+
+“Yes. I have heard of it.”
+
+“No, I had better go, and you must come again, to-night or to-morrow,”
+ she said, and went to the door with quick, light steps.
+
+“I cannot come to-night,” he said, going out after her; “but I have
+a request to make you,” and he looked at the pair of bays that were
+drawing up to the front door.
+
+“What is this?”
+
+“This is a letter from aunt to you,” said Nekhludoff, handing her
+a narrow envelope, with a large crest. “You’ll find all about it in
+there.”
+
+“I know Countess Katerina Ivanovna thinks I have some influence with my
+husband in business matters. She is mistaken. I can do nothing and do
+not like to interfere. But, of course, for you I am willing to be false
+to my principle. What is this business about?” she said, searching in
+vain for her pocket with her little black gloved hand.
+
+“There is a girl imprisoned in the fortress, and she is ill and
+innocent.”
+
+“What is her name?”
+
+“Lydia Shoustova. It’s in the note.”
+
+“All right; I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and lightly jumped into
+her little, softly upholstered, open carriage, its brightly-varnished
+splash-guards glistening in the sunshine, and opened her parasol. The
+footman got on the box and gave the coachman a sign. The carriage moved,
+but at that moment she touched the coachman with her parasol and the
+slim-legged beauties, the bay mares, stopped, bending their beautiful
+necks and stepping from foot to foot.
+
+“But you must come, only, please, without interested motives,” and she
+looked at him with a smile, the force of which she well knew, and, as if
+the performance over and she were drawing the curtain, she dropped
+the veil over her face again. “All right,” and she again touched the
+coachman.
+
+Nekhludoff raised his hat, and the well-bred bays, slightly snorting,
+set off, their shoes clattering on the pavement, and the carriage rolled
+quickly and smoothly on its new rubber tyres, giving a jump only now and
+then over some unevenness of the road.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+AN UP-TO-DATE SENATOR.
+
+When Nekhludoff remembered the smiles that had passed between him and
+Mariette, he shook his head.
+
+“You have hardly time to turn round before you are again drawn into
+this life,” he thought, feeling that discord and those doubts which the
+necessity to curry favour from people he did not esteem caused.
+
+After considering where to go first, so as not to have to retrace his
+steps, Nekhludoff set off for the Senate. There he was shown into the
+office where he found a great many very polite and very clean officials
+in the midst of a magnificent apartment. Maslova’s petition was received
+and handed on to that Wolf, to whom Nekhludoff had a letter from his
+uncle, to be examined and reported on.
+
+“There will be a meeting of the Senate this week,” the official said to
+Nekhludoff, “but Maslova’s case will hardly come before that meeting.”
+
+“It might come before the meeting on Wednesday, by special request,” one
+of the officials remarked.
+
+During the time Nekhludoff waited in the office, while some information
+was being taken, he heard that the conversation in the Senate was all
+about the duel, and he heard a detailed account of how a young man,
+Kaminski, had been killed. It was here he first heard all the facts of
+the case which was exciting the interest of all Petersburg. The story
+was this: Some officers were eating oysters and, as usual, drinking very
+much, when one of them said something ill-natured about the regiment to
+which Kaminski belonged, and Kaminski called him a liar. The other hit
+Kaminski. The next day they fought. Kaminski was wounded in the stomach
+and died two hours later. The murderer and the seconds were arrested,
+but it was said that though they were arrested and in the guardhouse
+they would be set free in a fortnight.
+
+From the Senate Nekhludoff drove to see an influential member of the
+petition Committee, Baron Vorobioff, who lived in a splendid house
+belonging to the Crown. The doorkeeper told Nekhludoff in a severe tone
+that the Baron could not be seen except on his reception days; that he
+was with His Majesty the Emperor to-day, and the next day he would again
+have to deliver a report. Nekhludoff left his uncle’s letter with the
+doorkeeper and went on to see the Senator Wolf. Wolf had just had his
+lunch, and was as usual helping digestion by smoking a cigar and pacing
+up and down the room, when Nekhludoff came in. Vladimir Vasilievitch
+Wolf was certainly _un homme tres comme il faut_, and prized this
+quality very highly, and from that elevation he looked down at everybody
+else. He could not but esteem this quality of his very highly, because
+it was thanks to it alone that he had made a brilliant career, the very
+career he desired, i.e., by marriage he obtained a fortune which brought
+him in 18,000 roubles a year, and by his own exertions the post of a
+senator. He considered himself not only _un homme tres comme il faut_,
+but also a man of knightly honour. By honour he understood not accepting
+secret bribes from private persons. But he did not consider it dishonest
+to beg money for payment of fares and all sorts of travelling expenses
+from the Crown, and to do anything the Government might require of him
+in return. To ruin hundreds of innocent people, to cause them to be
+imprisoned, to be exiled because of their love for their people and the
+religion of their fathers, as he had done in one of the governments of
+Poland when he was governor there. He did not consider it dishonourable,
+but even thought it a noble, manly and patriotic action. Nor did he
+consider it dishonest to rob his wife and sister-in-law, as he had
+done, but thought it a wise way of arranging his family life. His family
+consisted of his commonplace wife, his sister-in-law, whose fortune
+he had appropriated by selling her estate and putting the money to his
+account, and his meek, frightened, plain daughter, who lived a lonely,
+weary life, from which she had lately begun to look for relaxation in
+evangelicism, attending meetings at Aline’s, and the Countess Katerina
+Ivanovna. Wolf’s son, who had grown a beard at the age of 15, and had at
+that age begun to drink and lead a depraved life, which he continued to
+do till the age of 20, when he was turned out by his father because
+he never finished his studies, moved in a low set and made debts which
+committed the father. The father had once paid a debt of 250 roubles for
+his son, then another of 600 roubles, but warned the son that he did it
+for the last time, and that if the son did not reform he would be turned
+out of the house and all further intercourse between him and his family
+would he put a stop to. The son did not reform, but made a debt of a
+thousand roubles, and took the liberty of telling his father that life
+at home was a torment anyhow. Then Wolf declared to his son that he
+might go where he pleased--that he was no son of his any longer. Since
+then Wolf pretended he had no son, and no one at home dared speak to him
+about his son, and Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was firmly convinced that
+he had arranged his family life in the best way. Wolf stopped pacing
+up and down his study, and greeted Nekhludoff with a friendly though
+slightly ironical smile. This was his way of showing how comme il faut
+he was, and how superior to the majority of men. He read the note which
+Nekhludoff handed to him.
+
+“Please take a seat, and excuse me if I continue to walk up and down,
+with your permission,” he said, putting his hands into his coat pockets,
+and began again to walk with light, soft steps across his large, quietly
+and stylishly furnished study. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance
+and of course very glad to do anything that Count Ivan Michaelovitch
+wishes,” he said, blowing the fragrant blue smoke out of his mouth and
+removing his cigar carefully so as not to drop the ash.
+
+“I should only like to ask that the case might come on soon, so that
+if the prisoner has to go to Siberia she might set off early,” said
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“Yes, yes, with one of the first steamers from Nijni. I know,” said
+Wolf, with his patronising smile, always knowing in advance whatever one
+wanted to tell him.
+
+“What is the prisoner’s name?”
+
+“Maslova.”
+
+Wolf went up to the table and looked at a paper that lay on a piece of
+cardboard among other business papers.
+
+“Yes, yes. Maslova. All right, I will ask the others. We shall hear the
+case on Wednesday.”
+
+“Then may I telegraph to the advocate?”
+
+“The advocate! What’s that for? But if you like, why not?”
+
+“The causes for appeal may be insufficient,” said Nekhludoff, “but
+I think the case will show that the sentence was passed owing to a
+misunderstanding.”
+
+“Yes, yes; it may be so, but the Senate cannot decide the case on its
+merits,” said Wolf, looking seriously at the ash of his cigar. “The
+Senate only considers the exactness of the application of the laws and
+their right interpretation.”
+
+“But this seems to me to be an exceptional case.”
+
+“I know, I know! All cases are exceptional. We shall do our duty. That’s
+all.” The ash was still holding on, but had began breaking, and was in
+danger of falling.
+
+“Do you often come to Petersburg?” said Wolf, holding his cigar so that
+the ash should not fall. But the ash began to shake, and Wolf carefully
+carried it to the ashpan, into which it fell.
+
+“What a terrible thing this is with regard to Kaminski,” he said. “A
+splendid young man. The only son. Especially the mother’s position,” he
+went on, repeating almost word for word what every one in Petersburg
+was at that time saying about Kaminski. Wolf spoke a little about the
+Countess Katerina Ivanovna and her enthusiasm for the new religious
+teaching, which he neither approved nor disapproved of, but which was
+evidently needless to him who was so comme il faut, and then rang the
+bell.
+
+Nekhludoff bowed.
+
+“If it is convenient, come and dine on Wednesday, and I will give you a
+decisive answer,” said Wolf, extending his hand.
+
+It was late, and Nekhludoff returned to his aunt’s.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+COUNTESS KATERINA IVANOVNA’S DINNER PARTY.
+
+Countess Katerina Ivanovna’s dinner hour was half-past seven, and the
+dinner was served in a new manner that Nekhludoff had not yet seen
+anywhere. After they had placed the dishes on the table the waiters left
+the room and the diners helped themselves. The men would not let the
+ladies take the trouble of moving, and, as befitted the stronger sex,
+they manfully took on themselves the burden of putting the food on
+the ladies’ plates and of filling their glasses. When one course was
+finished, the Countess pressed the button of an electric bell fitted
+to the table and the waiters stepped in noiselessly and quickly carried
+away the dishes, changed the plates, and brought in the next course.
+The dinner was very refined, the wines very costly. A French chef was
+working in the large, light kitchens, with two white-clad assistants.
+There were six persons at dinner, the Count and Countess, their son
+(a surly officer in the Guards who sat with his elbows on the table),
+Nekhludoff, a French lady reader, and the Count’s chief steward, who
+had come up from the country. Here, too, the conversation was about the
+duel, and opinions were given as to how the Emperor regarded the case.
+It was known that the Emperor was very much grieved for the mother’s
+sake, and all were grieved for her, and as it was also known that the
+Emperor did not mean to be very severe to the murderer, who defended
+the honour of his uniform, all were also lenient to the officer who had
+defended the honour of his uniform. Only the Countess Katerina Ivanovna,
+with her free thoughtlessness, expressed her disapproval.
+
+“They get drunk, and kill unobjectionable young men. I should not
+forgive them on any account,” she said.
+
+“Now, that’s a thing I cannot understand,” said the Count.
+
+“I know that you never can understand what I say,” the Countess began,
+and turning to Nekhludoff, she added:
+
+“Everybody understands except my husband. I say I am sorry for the
+mother, and I do not wish him to be contented, having killed a man.”
+ Then her son, who had been silent up to then, took the murderer’s part,
+and rudely attacked his mother, arguing that an officer could not behave
+in any other way, because his fellow-officers would condemn him and turn
+him out of the regiment. Nekhludoff listened to the conversation without
+joining in. Having been an officer himself, he understood, though he
+did not agree with, young Tcharsky’s arguments, and at the same time
+he could not help contrasting the fate of the officer with that of a
+beautiful young convict whom he had seen in the prison, and who was
+condemned to the mines for having killed another in a fight. Both had
+turned murderers through drunkenness. The peasant had killed a man in
+a moment of irritation, and he was parted from his wife and family, had
+chains on his legs, and his head shaved, and was going to hard labour in
+Siberia, while the officer was sitting in a fine room in the guardhouse,
+eating a good dinner, drinking good wine, and reading books, and would
+be set free in a day or two to live as he had done before, having only
+become more interesting by the affair. Nekhludoff said what he had been
+thinking, and at first his aunt, Katerina Ivanovna, seemed to agree with
+him, but at last she became silent as the rest had done, and Nekhludoff
+felt that he had committed something akin to an impropriety. In the
+evening, soon after dinner, the large hall, with high-backed carved
+chairs arranged in rows as for a meeting, and an armchair next to a
+little table, with a bottle of water for the speaker, began to fill
+with people come to hear the foreigner, Kiesewetter, preach. Elegant
+equipages stopped at the front entrance. In the hall sat richly-dressed
+ladies in silks and velvets and lace, with false hair and false busts
+and drawn-in waists, and among them men in uniform and evening dress,
+and about five persons of the common class, i.e., two men-servants, a
+shop-keeper, a footman, and a coachman. Kiesewetter, a thick-set, grisly
+man, spoke English, and a thin young girl, with a pince-nez, translated
+it into Russian promptly and well. He was saying that our sins were so
+great, the punishment for them so great and so unavoidable, that it was
+impossible to live anticipating such punishment. “Beloved brothers and
+sisters, let us for a moment consider what we are doing, how we are
+living, how we have offended against the all-loving Lord, and how
+we make Christ suffer, and we cannot but understand that there is no
+forgiveness possible for us, no escape possible, that we are all doomed
+to perish. A terrible fate awaits us---everlasting torment,” he said,
+with tears in his trembling voice. “Oh, how can we be saved, brothers?
+How can we be saved from this terrible, unquenchable fire? The house is
+in flames; there is no escape.”
+
+He was silent for a while, and real tears flowed down his cheeks. It
+was for about eight years that each time when he got to this part of his
+speech, which he himself liked so well, he felt a choking in his throat
+and an irritation in his nose, and the tears came in his eyes, and these
+tears touched him still more. Sobs were heard in the room. The Countess
+Katerina Ivanovna sat with her elbows on an inlaid table, leaning her
+head on her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. The coachman looked
+with fear and surprise at the foreigner, feeling as if he was about to
+run him down with the pole of his carriage and the foreigner would
+not move out of his way. All sat in positions similar to that Katerina
+Ivanovna had assumed. Wolf’s daughter, a thin, fashionably-dressed girl,
+very like her father, knelt with her face in her hands.
+
+The orator suddenly uncovered his face, and smiled a very real-looking
+smile, such as actors express joy with, and began again with a sweet,
+gentle voice:
+
+“Yet there is a way to be saved. Here it is--a joyful, easy way. The
+salvation is the blood shed for us by the only son of God, who gave
+himself up to torments for our sake. His sufferings, His blood, will
+save us. Brothers and sisters,” he said, again with tears in his voice,
+“let us praise the Lord, who has given His only begotten son for the
+redemption of mankind. His holy blood . . .”
+
+Nekhludoff felt so deeply disgusted that he rose silently, and frowning
+and keeping back a groan of shame, he left on tiptoe, and went to his
+room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+OFFICIALDOM.
+
+Hardly had Nekhludoff finished dressing the next morning, just as he
+was about to go down, the footman brought him a card from the Moscow
+advocate. The advocate had come to St. Petersburg on business of his
+own, and was going to be present when Maslova’s case was examined in the
+Senate, if that would be soon. The telegram sent by Nekhludoff crossed
+him on the way. Having found out from Nekhludoff when the case was going
+to be heard, and which senators were to be present, he smiled. “Exactly,
+all the three types of senators,” he said. “Wolf is a Petersburg
+official; Skovorodnikoff is a theoretical, and Bay a practical lawyer,
+and therefore the most alive of them all,” said the advocate. “There is
+most hope of him. Well, and how about the Petition Committee?”
+
+“Oh, I’m going to Baron Vorobioff to-day. I could not get an audience
+with him yesterday.”
+
+“Do you know why he is _Baron_ Vorobioff?” said the advocate, noticing
+the slightly ironical stress that Nekhludoff put on this foreign title,
+followed by so very Russian a surname.
+
+“That was because the Emperor Paul rewarded the grandfather--I think he
+was one of the Court footmen--by giving him this title. He managed to
+please him in some way, so he made him a baron. ‘It’s my wish, so don’t
+gainsay me!’ And so there’s a _Baron_ Vorobioff, and very proud of the
+title. He is a dreadful old humbug.”
+
+“Well, I’m going to see him,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“That’s good; we can go together. I shall give you a lift.”
+
+As they were going to start, a footman met Nekhludoff in the ante-room,
+and handed him a note from Mariette:
+
+_Pour vous faire plaisir, f’ai agi tout a fait contre mes principes et
+j’ai intercede aupres de mon mari pour votre protegee. Il se trouve
+que cette personne pout etre relaxee immediatement. Mon mari a ecrit au
+commandant. Venez donc disinterestedly. Je vous attends._
+
+                          _M._
+
+“Just fancy!” said Nekhludoff to the advocate. “Is this not dreadful?
+A woman whom they are keeping in solitary confinement for seven months
+turns out to be quite innocent, and only a word was needed to get her
+released.”
+
+“That’s always so. Well, anyhow, you have succeeded in getting what you
+wanted.”
+
+“Yes, but this success grieves me. Just think what must be going on
+there. Why have they been keeping her?”
+
+“Oh, it’s best not to look too deeply into it. Well, then, I shall give
+you a lift, if I may,” said the advocate, as they left the house, and
+a fine carriage that the advocate had hired drove up to the door. “It’s
+Baron Vorobioff you are going to see?”
+
+The advocate gave the driver his directions, and the two good horses
+quickly brought Nekhludoff to the house in which the Baron lived. The
+Baron was at home. A young official in uniform, with a long, thin neck,
+a much protruding Adam’s apple, and an extremely light walk, and two
+ladies were in the first room.
+
+“Your name, please?” the young man with the Adam’s apple asked, stepping
+with extreme lightness and grace across from the ladies to Nekhludoff.
+
+Nekhludoff gave his name.
+
+“The Baron was just mentioning you,” said the young man, the Baron’s
+adjutant, and went out through an inner door. He returned, leading a
+weeping lady dressed in mourning. With her bony fingers the lady was
+trying to pull her tangled veil over her face in order to hide her
+tears.
+
+“Come in, please,” said the young man to Nekhludoff, lightly stepping up
+to the door of the study and holding it open. When Nekhludoff came in,
+he saw before him a thick-set man of medium height, with short hair,
+in a frock coat, who was sitting in an armchair opposite a large
+writing-table, and looking gaily in front of himself. The kindly, rosy
+red face, striking by its contrast with the white hair, moustaches, and
+beard, turned towards Nekhludoff with a friendly smile.
+
+“Very glad to see you. Your mother and I were old acquaintances and
+friends. I have seen you as a boy, and later on as an officer. Sit
+down and tell me what I can do for you. Yes, yes,” he said, shaking his
+cropped white head, while Nekhludoff was telling him Theodosia’s story.
+“Go on, go on. I quite understand. It is certainly very touching. And
+have you handed in the petition?”
+
+“I have got the petition ready,” Nekhludoff said, getting it out of his
+pocket; “but I thought of speaking to you first in hopes that the case
+would then get special attention paid to it.”
+
+“You have done very well. I shall certainly report it myself,” said the
+Baron, unsuccessfully trying to put an expression of pity on his merry
+face. “Very touching! It is clear she was but a child; the husband
+treated her roughly, this repelled her, but as time went on they fell in
+love with each other. Yes I will report the case.”
+
+“Count Ivan Michaelovitch was also going to speak about it.”
+
+Nekhludoff had hardly got these words out when the Baron’s face changed.
+
+“You had better hand in the petition into the office, after all, and I
+shall do what I can,” he said.
+
+At this moment the young official again entered the room, evidently
+showing off his elegant manner of walking.
+
+“That lady is asking if she may say a few words more.”
+
+“Well, ask her in. Ah, mon cher, how many tears we have to see shed! If
+only we could dry them all. One does all that lies within one’s power.”
+
+The lady entered.
+
+“I forgot to ask you that he should not be allowed to give up the
+daughter, because he is ready . . .”
+
+“But I have already told you that I should do all I can.”
+
+“Baron, for the love of God! You will save the mother?”
+
+She seized his hand, and began kissing it.
+
+“Everything shall be done.”
+
+When the lady went out Nekhludoff also began to take leave.
+
+“We shall do what we can. I shall speak about it at the Ministry of
+Justice, and when we get their answer we shall do what we can.”
+
+Nekhludoff left the study, and went into the office again. Just as in
+the Senate office, he saw, in a splendid apartment, a number of very
+elegant officials, clean, polite, severely correct and distinguished in
+dress and in speech.
+
+“How many there are of them; how very many and how well fed they all
+look! And what clean shirts and hands they all have, and how well all
+their boots are polished! Who does it for them? How comfortable they
+all are, as compared not only with the prisoners, but even with the
+peasants!” These thoughts again involuntarily came to Nekhludoff’s mind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+AN OLD GENERAL OF REPUTE.
+
+The man on whom depended the easing of the fate of the Petersburg
+prisoners was an old General of repute--a baron of German descent,
+who, as it was said of him, had outlived his wits. He had received a
+profusion of orders, but only wore one of them, the Order of the White
+Cross. He had received this order, which he greatly valued, while
+serving in the Caucasus, because a number of Russian peasants, with
+their hair cropped, and dressed in uniform and armed with guns and
+bayonets, had killed at his command more than a thousand men who were
+defending their liberty, their homes, and their families. Later on
+he served in Poland, and there also made Russian peasants commit many
+different crimes, and got more orders and decorations for his uniform.
+Then he served somewhere else, and now that he was a weak, old man
+he had this position, which insured him a good house, an income and
+respect. He strictly observed all the regulations which were prescribed
+“from above,” and was very zealous in the fulfilment of these
+regulations, to which he ascribed a special importance, considering that
+everything else in the world might be changed except the regulations
+prescribed “from above.” His duty was to keep political prisoners,
+men and women, in solitary confinement in such a way that half of them
+perished in 10 years’ time, some going out of their minds, some dying
+of consumption, some committing suicide by starving themselves to death,
+cutting their veins with bits of glass, hanging, or burning themselves
+to death.
+
+The old General was not ignorant of this; it all happened within his
+knowledge; but these cases no more touched his conscience than accidents
+brought on by thunderstorms, floods, etc. These cases occurred as a
+consequence of the fulfilment of regulations prescribed “from above” by
+His Imperial Majesty. These regulations had to be carried out
+without fail, and therefore it was absolutely useless to think of the
+consequences of their fulfilment. The old General did not even allow
+himself to think of such things, counting it his patriotic duty as a
+soldier not to think of them for fear of getting weak in the carrying
+out of these, according to his opinion, very important obligations. Once
+a week the old General made the round of the cells, one of the duties of
+his position, and asked the prisoners if they had any requests to make.
+The prisoners had all sorts of requests. He listened to them quietly, in
+impenetrable silence, and never fulfilled any of their requests, because
+they were all in disaccord with the regulations. Just as Nekhludoff
+drove up to the old General’s house, the high notes of the bells on the
+belfry clock chimed “Great is the Lord,” and then struck two. The sound
+of these chimes brought back to Nekhludoff’s mind what he had read
+in the notes of the Decembrists [the Decembrists were a group who
+attempted, but failed, to put an end to absolutism in Russia at the time
+of the accession of Nicholas the First] about the way this sweet music
+repeated every hour re-echoes in the hearts of those imprisoned for
+life.
+
+Meanwhile the old General was sitting in his darkened drawing-room at
+an inlaid table, turning a saucer on a piece of paper with the aid of
+a young artist, the brother of one of his subordinates. The thin,
+weak, moist fingers of the artist were pressed against the wrinkled and
+stiff-jointed fingers of the old General, and the hands joined in this
+manner were moving together with the saucer over a paper that had all
+the letters of the alphabet written on it. The saucer was answering the
+questions put by the General as to how souls will recognise each other
+after death.
+
+When Nekhludoff sent in his card by an orderly acting as footman, the
+soul of Joan of Arc was speaking by the aid of the saucer. The soul of
+Joan of Arc had already spelt letter by letter the words: “They well
+knew each other,” and these words had been written down. When the
+orderly came in the saucer had stopped first on b, then on y, and began
+jerking hither and thither. This jerking was caused by the General’s
+opinion that the next letter should be b, i.e., Joan of Arc ought to
+say that the souls will know each other by being cleansed of all that
+is earthly, or something of the kind, clashing with the opinion of the
+artist, who thought the next letter should be l, i.e., that the souls
+should know each other by light emanating from their astral bodies. The
+General, with his bushy grey eyebrows gravely contracted, sat gazing at
+the hands on the saucer, and, imagining that it was moving of its own
+accord, kept pulling the saucer towards b. The pale-faced young artist,
+with his thin hair combed back behind his cars, was looking with his
+lifeless blue eyes into a dark corner of the drawing-room, nervously
+moving his lips and pulling the saucer towards l.
+
+The General made a wry face at the interruption, but after a moment’s
+pause he took the card, put on his pince-nez, and, uttering a groan,
+rose, in spite of the pain in his back, to his full height, rubbing his
+numb fingers.
+
+“Ask him into the study.”
+
+“With your excellency’s permission I will finish it alone,” said the
+artist, rising. “I feel the presence.”
+
+“All right, finish alone,” the General said, severely and decidedly, and
+stepped quickly, with big, firm and measured strides, into his study.
+
+“Very pleased to see you,” said the General to Nekhludoff, uttering the
+friendly words in a gruff tone, and pointing to an armchair by the side
+of the writing-table. “Have you been in Petersburg long?”
+
+Nekhludoff replied that he had only lately arrived.
+
+“Is the Princess, your mother, well?”
+
+“My mother is dead.”
+
+“Forgive me; I am very sorry. My son told me he had met you.”
+
+The General’s son was making the same kind of career for himself that
+the father had done, and, having passed the Military Academy, was now
+serving in the Inquiry Office, and was very proud of his duties there.
+His occupation was the management of Government spies.
+
+“Why, I served with your father. We were friends--comrades. And you; are
+you also in the Service?”
+
+“No, I am not.”
+
+The General bent his head disapprovingly.
+
+“I have a request to make, General.”
+
+“Very pleased. In what way can I be of service to you?”
+
+“If my request is out of place pray pardon me. But I am obliged to make
+it.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“There is a certain Gourkevitch imprisoned in the fortress; his mother
+asks for an interview with him, or at least to be allowed to send him
+some books.”
+
+The General expressed neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction at
+Nekhludoff’s request, but bending his head on one side he closed his
+eyes as if considering. In reality he was not considering anything, and
+was not even interested in Nekhludoff’s questions, well knowing that he
+would answer them according to the law. He was simply resting mentally
+and not thinking at all.
+
+“You see,” he said at last, “this does not depend on me. There is a
+regulation, confirmed by His Majesty, concerning interviews; and as to
+books, we have a library, and they may have what is permitted.”
+
+“Yes, but he wants scientific books; he wishes to study.”
+
+“Don’t you believe it,” growled the General. “It’s not study he wants;
+it is just only restlessness.”
+
+“But what is to be done? They must occupy their time somehow in their
+hard condition,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“They are always complaining,” said the General. “We know them.”
+
+He spoke of them in a general way, as if they were all a specially bad
+race of men. “They have conveniences here which can be found in few
+places of confinement,” said the General, and he began to enumerate the
+comforts the prisoners enjoyed, as if the aim of the institution was to
+give the people imprisoned there a comfortable home.
+
+“It is true it used to be rather rough, but now they are very well kept
+here,” he continued. “They have three courses for dinner--and one of
+them meat--cutlets, or rissoles; and on Sundays they get a fourth--a
+sweet dish. God grant every Russian may eat as well as they do.”
+
+Like all old people, the General, having once got on to a familiar
+topic, enumerated the various proofs he had often given before of the
+prisoners being exacting and ungrateful.
+
+“They get books on spiritual subjects and old journals. We have a
+library. Only they rarely read. At first they seem interested, later on
+the new books remain uncut, and the old ones with their leaves unturned.
+We tried them,” said the old General, with the dim likeness of a smile.
+“We put bits of paper in on purpose, which remained just as they had
+been placed. Writing is also not forbidden,” he continued. “A slate is
+provided, and a slate pencil, so that they can write as a pastime. They
+can wipe the slate and write again. But they don’t write, either. Oh,
+they very soon get quite tranquil. At first they seem restless, but
+later on they even grow fat and become very quiet.” Thus spoke the
+General, never suspecting the terrible meaning of his words.
+
+Nekhludoff listened to the hoarse old voice, looked at the stiff limbs,
+the swollen eyelids under the grey brows, at the old, clean-shaved,
+flabby jaw, supported by the collar of the military uniform, at the
+white cross that this man was so proud of, chiefly because he had gained
+it by exceptionally cruel and extensive slaughter, and knew that it was
+useless to reply to the old man or to explain the meaning of his own
+words to him.
+
+He made another effort, and asked about the prisoner Shoustova, for
+whose release, as he had been informed that morning, orders were given.
+
+“Shoustova--Shoustova? I cannot remember all their names, there are so
+many of them,” he said, as if reproaching them because there were so
+many. He rang, and ordered the secretary to be called. While waiting for
+the latter, he began persuading Nekhludoff to serve, saying that “honest
+noblemen,” counting himself among the number, “were particularly needed
+by the Tsar and--the country,” he added, evidently only to round off
+his sentence. “I am old, yet I am serving still, as well as my strength
+allows.”
+
+The secretary, a dry, emaciated man, with restless, intelligent eyes,
+came in and reported that Shoustova was imprisoned in some queer,
+fortified place, and that he had received no orders concerning her.
+
+“When we get the order we shall let her out the same day. We do not keep
+them; we do not value their visits much,” said the General, with another
+attempt at a playful smile, which only distorted his old face.
+
+Nekhludoff rose, trying to keep from expressing the mixed feelings of
+repugnance and pity which he felt towards this terrible old man. The
+old man on his part considered that he should not be too severe on the
+thoughtless and evidently misguided son of his old comrade, and should
+not leave him without advice.
+
+“Good-bye, my dear fellow; do not take it amiss. It is my affection that
+makes me say it. Do not keep company with such people as we have at our
+place here. There are no innocent ones among them. All these people
+are most immoral. We know them,” he said, in a tone that admitted no
+possibility of doubt. And he did not doubt, not because the thing was
+so, but because if it was not so, he would have to admit himself to
+be not a noble hero living out the last days of a good life, but a
+scoundrel, who sold, and still continued in his old age to sell, his
+conscience.
+
+“Best of all, go and serve,” he continued; “the Tsar needs honest
+men--and the country,” he added. “Well, supposing I and the others
+refused to serve, as you are doing? Who would be left? Here we are,
+finding fault with the order of things, and yet not wishing to help the
+Government.”
+
+With a deep sigh Nekhludoff made a low bow, shook the large, bony hand
+condescendingly stretched out to him and left the room.
+
+The General shook his head reprovingly, and rubbing his back, he again
+went into the drawing-room where the artist was waiting for him. He had
+already written down the answer given by the soul of Joan of Arc. The
+General put on his pince-nez and read, “Will know one another by light
+emanating from their astral bodies.”
+
+“Ah,” said the General, with approval, and closed his eyes. “But how is
+one to know if the light of all is alike?” he asked, and again crossed
+fingers with the artist on the saucer.
+
+The isvostchik drove Nekhludoff out of the gate.
+
+It is dull here, sir, he said, turning to Nekhludoff. “I almost wished
+to drive off without waiting for you.”
+
+Nekhludoff agreed. “Yes, it is dull,” and he took a deep breath, and
+looked up with a sense of relief at the grey clouds that were floating
+in the sky, and at the glistening ripples made by the boats and steamers
+on the Neva.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+MASLOVA’S APPEAL.
+
+The next day Maslova’s case was to be examined at the Senate, and
+Nekhludoff and the advocate met at the majestic portal of the building,
+where several carriages were waiting. Ascending the magnificent and
+imposing staircase to the first floor, the advocate, who knew all the
+ins and outs of the place, turned to the left and entered through a door
+which had the date of the introduction of the Code of Laws above it.
+
+After taking off his overcoat in the first narrow room, he found out
+from the attendant that the Senators had all arrived, and that the last
+had just come in. Fanarin, in his swallow-tail coat, a white tie above
+the white shirt-front, and a self-confident smile on his lips, passed
+into the next room. In this room there were to the right a large
+cupboard and a table, and to the left a winding staircase, which an
+elegant official in uniform was descending with a portfolio under his
+arm. In this room an old man with long, white hair and a patriarchal
+appearance attracted every one’s attention. He wore a short coat and
+grey trousers. Two attendants stood respectfully beside him. The old man
+with white hair entered the cupboard and shut himself in.
+
+Fanarin noticed a fellow-advocate dressed in the same way as himself,
+with a white tie and dress coat, and at once entered into an animated
+conversation with him.
+
+Nekhludoff was meanwhile examining the people in the room. The public
+consisted of about 15 persons, of whom two were ladies--a young one with
+a pince-nez, and an old, grey-haired one.
+
+A case of libel was to be heard that day, and therefore the public were
+more numerous than usual--chiefly persons belonging to the journalistic
+world.
+
+The usher, a red-cheeked, handsome man in a fine uniform, came up to
+Fanarin and asked him what his business was. When he heard that it was
+the case of Maslova, he noted something down and walked away. Then the
+cupboard door opened and the old man with the patriarchal appearance
+stepped out, no longer in a short coat but in a gold-trimmed attire,
+which made him look like a bird, and with metal plates on his
+breast. This funny costume seemed to make the old man himself feel
+uncomfortable, and, walking faster than his wont, he hurried out of the
+door opposite the entrance.
+
+“That is Bay, a most estimable man,” Fanarin said to Nekhludoff, and
+then having introduced him to his colleague, he explained the case that
+was about to be heard, which he considered very interesting.
+
+The hearing of the case soon commenced, and Nekhludoff, with the
+public, entered the left side of the Senate Chamber. They all, including
+Fanarin, took their places behind a grating. Only the Petersburg
+advocate went up to a desk in front of the grating.
+
+The Senate Chamber was not so big as the Criminal Court; and was more
+simply furnished, only the table in front of the senators was covered
+with crimson, gold-trimmed velvet, instead of green cloth; but the
+attributes of all places of judgment, i.e., the mirror of justice, the
+icon, the emblem of hypocrisy, and the Emperor’s portrait, the emblem of
+servility, were there.
+
+The usher announced, in the same solemn manner: “The Court is coming.”
+ Every one rose in the same way, and the senators entered in their
+uniforms and sat down on highbacked chairs and leant on the table,
+trying to appear natural, just in the same way as the judges in the
+Court of Law. There were four senators present--Nikitin, who took the
+chair, a clean-shaved man with a narrow face and steely eyes; Wolf, with
+significantly compressed lips, and little white hands, with which he
+kept turning over the pages of the business papers; Skovorodnikoff,
+a heavy, fat, pockmarked man--the learned lawyer; and Bay, the
+patriarchal-looking man who had arrived last.
+
+With the advocates entered the chief secretary and public prosecutor, a
+lean, clean-shaven young man of medium height, a very dark complexion,
+and sad, black eyes. Nekhludoff knew him at once, in spite of his
+curious uniform and the fact that he had not seen him for six years. He
+had been one of his best friends in Nekhludoff’s student days.
+
+“The public prosecutor Selenin?” Nekhludoff asked, turning to the
+advocate.
+
+“Yes. Why?”
+
+“I know him well. He is a fine fellow.”
+
+“And a good public prosecutor; business-like. Now he is the man you
+should have interested.”
+
+“He will act according to his conscience in any case,” said Nekhludoff,
+recalling the intimate relations and friendship between himself and
+Selenin, and the attractive qualities of the latter--purity, honesty,
+and good breeding in its best sense.
+
+“Yes, there is no time now,” whispered Fanarin, who was listening to the
+report of the case that had commenced.
+
+The Court of Justice was accused of having left a decision of the Court
+of Law unaltered.
+
+Nekhludoff listened and tried to make out the meaning of what was going
+on; but, just as in the Criminal Court, his chief difficulty was
+that not the evidently chief point, but some side issues, were being
+discussed. The case was that of a newspaper which had published the
+account of a swindle arranged by a director of a limited liability
+company. It seemed that the only important question was whether the
+director of the company really abused his trust, and how to stop him
+from doing it. But the questions under consideration were whether the
+editor had a right to publish this article of his contributor, and what
+he had been guilty of in publishing it: slander or libel, and in what
+way slander included libel, or libel included slander, and something
+rather incomprehensible to ordinary people about all sorts of statutes
+and resolutions passed by some General Department.
+
+The only thing clear to Nekhludoff was that, in spite of what Wolf had
+so strenuously insisted on, the day before, i.e., that the Senate could
+not try a case on its merits, in this case he was evidently strongly
+in favour of repealing the decision of the Court of Justice, and that
+Selenin, in spite of his characteristic reticence, stated the opposite
+opinion with quite unexpected warmth. The warmth, which surprised
+Nekhludoff, evinced by the usually self-controlled Selenin, was due to
+his knowledge of the director’s shabbiness in money matters, and the
+fact, which had accidentally come to his cars, that Wolf had been to a
+swell dinner party at the swindler’s house only a few days before.
+
+Now that Wolf spoke on the case, guardedly enough, but with evident
+bias, Selenin became excited, and expressed his opinion with too much
+nervous irritation for an ordinary business transaction.
+
+It was clear that Selenin’s speech had offended Wolf. He grew red, moved
+in his chair, made silent gestures of surprise, and at last rose, with
+a very dignified and injured look, together with the other senators, and
+went out into the debating-room.
+
+“What particular case have you come about?” the usher asked again,
+addressing Fanarin.
+
+“I have already told you: Maslova’s case.”
+
+“Yes, quite so. It is to be heard to-day, but--”
+
+“But what?” the advocate asked.
+
+“Well, you see, this case was to be examined without taking sides,
+so that the senators will hardly come out again after passing the
+resolution. But I will inform them.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I’ll inform them; I’ll inform them.” And the usher again put something
+down on his paper.
+
+The Senators really meant to pronounce their decision concerning the
+libel case, and then to finish the other business, Maslova’s case among
+it, over their tea and cigarettes, without leaving the debating-room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE APPEAL DISMISSED.
+
+As soon as the Senators were seated round the table in the
+debating-room, Wolf began to bring forward with great animation all the
+motives in favour of a repeal. The chairman, an ill-natured man at
+best, was in a particularly bad humour that day. His thoughts were
+concentrated on the words he had written down in his memoranda on the
+occasion when not he but Viglanoff was appointed to the important post
+he had long coveted. It was the chairman, Nikitin’s, honest conviction
+that his opinions of the officials of the two upper classes with which
+he was in connection would furnish valuable material for the historians.
+He had written a chapter the day before in which the officials of the
+upper classes got it hot for preventing him, as he expressed it, from
+averting the ruin towards which the present rulers of Russia were
+driving it, which simply meant that they had prevented his getting a
+better salary. And now he was considering what a new light to posterity
+this chapter would shed on events.
+
+“Yes, certainly,” he said, in reply to the words addressed to him by
+Wolf, without listening to them.
+
+Bay was listening to Wolf with a sad face and drawing a garland on the
+paper that lay before him. Bay was a Liberal of the very first water. He
+held sacred the Liberal traditions of the sixth decade of this century,
+and if he ever overstepped the limits of strict neutrality it was always
+in the direction of Liberalism. So in this case; beside the fact that
+the swindling director, who was prosecuting for libel, was a bad lot,
+the prosecution of a journalist for libel in itself tending, as it did,
+to restrict the freedom of the press, inclined Bay to reject the appeal.
+
+When Wolf concluded his arguments Bay stopped drawing his garland and
+began in a sad and gentle voice (he was sad because he was obliged to
+demonstrate such truisms) concisely, simply and convincingly to show
+how unfounded the accusation was, and then, bending his white head, he
+continued drawing his garland.
+
+Skovorodnikoff, who sat opposite Wolf, and, with his fat fingers, kept
+shoving his beard and moustaches into his mouth, stopped chewing his
+beard as soon as Bay was silent, and said with a loud, grating voice,
+that, notwithstanding the fact of the director being a terrible
+scoundrel, he would have been for the repeal of the sentence if there
+were any legal reasons for it; but, as there were none, he was of Bay’s
+opinion. He was glad to put this spoke in Wolf’s wheel.
+
+The chairman agreed with Skovorodnikoff, and the appeal was rejected.
+
+Wolf was dissatisfied, especially because it was like being caught
+acting with dishonest partiality; so he pretended to be indifferent,
+and, unfolding the document which contained Maslova’s case, he became
+engrossed in it. Meanwhile the Senators rang and ordered tea, and began
+talking about the event that, together with the duel, was occupying the
+Petersburgers.
+
+It was the case of the chief of a Government department, who was accused
+of the crime provided for in Statute 995.
+
+“What nastiness,” said Bay, with disgust.
+
+“Why; where is the harm of it? I can show you a Russian book containing
+the project of a German writer, who openly proposes that it should not
+be considered a crime,” said Skovorodnikoff, drawing in greedily the
+fumes of the crumpled cigarette, which he held between his fingers close
+to the palm, and he laughed boisterously.
+
+“Impossible!” said Bay.
+
+“I shall show it you,” said Skovorodnikoff, giving the full title of the
+book, and even its date and the name of its editor.
+
+“I hear he has been appointed governor to some town in Siberia.”
+
+“That’s fine. The archdeacon will meet him with a crucifix. They ought
+to appoint an archdeacon of the same sort,” said Skovorodnikoff. “I
+could recommend them one,” and he threw the end of his cigarette into
+his saucer, and again shoved as much of his beard and moustaches as he
+could into his mouth and began chewing them.
+
+The usher came in and reported the advocate’s and Nekhludoff’s desire to
+be present at the examination of Maslova’s case.
+
+“This case,” Wolf said, “is quite romantic,” and he told them what he
+knew about Nekhludoff’s relations with Maslova. When they had spoken
+a little about it and finished their tea and cigarettes, the Senators
+returned into the Senate Chamber and proclaimed their decision in the
+libel case, and began to hear Maslova’s case.
+
+Wolf, in his thin voice, reported Maslova’s appeal very fully, but
+again not without some bias and an evident wish for the repeal of the
+sentence.
+
+“Have you anything to add?” the chairman said, turning to Fanarin.
+Fanarin rose, and standing with his broad white chest expanded, proved
+point by point, with wonderful exactness and persuasiveness, how the
+Court had in six points strayed from the exact meaning of the law; and
+besides this he touched, though briefly, on the merits of the case, and
+on the crying injustice of the sentence. The tone of his speech was one
+of apology to the Senators, who, with their penetration and judicial
+wisdom, could not help seeing and understanding it all better than he
+could. He was obliged to speak only because the duty he had undertaken
+forced him to do so.
+
+After Fanarin’s speech one might have thought that there could not
+remain the least doubt that the Senate ought to repeal the decision of
+the Court. When he had finished his speech, Fanarin looked round with a
+smile of triumph, seeing which Nekhludoff felt certain that the case was
+won. But when he looked at the Senators he saw that Fanarin smiled and
+triumphed all alone. The Senators and the Public Prosecutor did not
+smile nor triumph, but looked like people wearied, and who were thinking
+“We have often heard the like of you; it is all in vain,” and were only
+too glad when he stopped and ceased uselessly detaining them there.
+Immediately after the end of the advocate’s speech the chairman turned
+to the Public Prosecutor. Selenin briefly and clearly expressed
+himself in favour of leaving the decision of the Court unaltered, as
+he considered all the reasons for appealing inadequate. After this the
+Senators went out into the debating-room. They were divided in their
+opinions. Wolf was in favour of altering the decision. Bay, when he
+had understood the case, took up the same side with fervour, vividly
+presenting the scene at the court to his companions as he clearly saw it
+himself. Nikitin, who always was on the side of severity and formality,
+took up the other side. All depended on Skovorodnikoff’s vote, and he
+voted for rejecting the appeal, because Nekhludoff’s determination to
+marry the woman on moral grounds was extremely repugnant to him.
+
+Skovorodnikoff was a materialist, a Darwinian, and counted every
+manifestation of abstract morality, or, worse still, religion, not only
+as a despicable folly, but as a personal affront to himself. All this
+bother about a prostitute, and the presence of a celebrated advocate and
+Nekhludoff in the Senate were in the highest degree repugnant to him.
+So he shoved his beard into his mouth and made faces, and very skilfully
+pretended to know nothing of this case, excepting that the reasons for
+an appeal were insufficient, and that he, therefore, agreed with the
+chairman to leave the decision of the Court unaltered.
+
+So the sentence remained unrepealed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+AN OLD FRIEND.
+
+“Terrible,” said Nekhludoff, as he went out into the waiting-room with
+the advocate, who was arranging the papers in his portfolio. “In a
+matter which is perfectly clear they attach all the importance to the
+form and reject the appeal. Terrible!”
+
+“The case was spoiled in the Criminal Court,” said the advocate.
+
+“And Selenin, too, was in favour of the rejection. Terrible! terrible!”
+ Nekhludoff repeated. “What is to be done now?”
+
+“We will appeal to His Majesty, and you can hand in the petition
+yourself while you are here. I will write it for you.”
+
+At this moment little Wolf, with his stars and uniform, came out into
+the waiting-room and approached Nekhludoff. “It could not be helped,
+dear Prince. The reasons for an appeal were not sufficient,” he said,
+shrugging his narrow shoulders and closing his eyes, and then he went
+his way.
+
+After Wolf, Selenin came out too, having heard from the Senators that
+his old friend Nekhludoff was there.
+
+“Well, I never expected to see you here,” he said, coming up to
+Nekhludoff, and smiling only with his lips while his eyes remained sad.
+“I did not know you were in Petersburg.”
+
+“And I did not know you were Public Prosecutor-in-Chief.”
+
+“How is it you are in the Senate?” asked Selenin. “I had heard, by the
+way, that you were in Petersburg. But what are you doing here?”
+
+“Here? I am here because I hoped to find justice and save a woman
+innocently condemned.”
+
+“What woman?”
+
+“The one whose case has just been decided.”
+
+“Oh! Maslova’s case,” said Selenin, suddenly remembering it. “The appeal
+had no grounds whatever.”
+
+“It is not the appeal; it’s the woman who is innocent, and is being
+punished.”
+
+Selenin sighed. “That may well be, but----”
+
+“Not _may be_, but is.”
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“Because I was on the jury. I know how we made the mistake.”
+
+Selenin became thoughtful. “You should have made a statement at the
+time,” he said.
+
+“I did make the statement.”
+
+“It should have been put down in an official report. If this had been
+added to the petition for the appeal--”
+
+“Yes, but still, as it is, the verdict is evidently absurd.”
+
+“The Senate has no right to say so. If the Senate took upon itself to
+repeal the decision of the law courts according to its own views as
+to the justice of the decisions in themselves, the verdict of the jury
+would lose all its meaning, not to mention that the Senate would have
+no basis to go upon, and would run the risk of infringing justice rather
+than upholding it,” said Selenin, calling to mind the case that had just
+been heard.
+
+“All I know is that this woman is quite innocent, and that the last
+hope of saving her from an unmerited punishment is gone. The grossest
+injustice has been confirmed by the highest court.”
+
+“It has not been confirmed. The Senate did not and cannot enter into
+the merits of the case in itself,” said Selenin. Always busy and rarely
+going out into society, he had evidently heard nothing of Nekhludoff’s
+romance. Nekhludoff noticed it, and made up his mind that it was best to
+say nothing about his special relations with Maslova.
+
+“You are probably staying with your aunt,” Selenin remarked, apparently
+wishing to change the subject. “She told me you were here yesterday, and
+she invited me to meet you in the evening, when some foreign preacher
+was to lecture,” and Selenin again smiled only with his lips.
+
+“Yes, I was there, but left in disgust,” said Nekhludoff angrily, vexed
+that Selenin had changed the subject.
+
+“Why with disgust? After all, it is a manifestation of religious
+feeling, though one-sided and sectarian,” said Selenin.
+
+“Why, it’s only some kind of whimsical folly.”
+
+“Oh, dear, no. The curious thing is that we know the teaching of our
+church so little that we see some new kind of revelation in what are,
+after all, our own fundamental dogmas,” said Selenin, as if hurrying to
+let his old friend know his new views.
+
+Nekhludoff looked at Selenin scrutinisingly and with surprise, and
+Selenin dropped his eyes, in which appeared an expression not only of
+sadness but also of ill-will.
+
+“Do you, then, believe in the dogmas of the church?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“Of course I do,” replied Selenin, gazing straight into Nekhludoff’s
+eyes with a lifeless look.
+
+Nekhludoff sighed. “It is strange,” he said.
+
+“However, we shall have a talk some other time,” said Selenin. “I
+am coming,” he added, in answer to the usher, who had respectfully
+approached him. “Yes, we must meet again,” he went on with a sigh. “But
+will it be possible for me to find you? You will always find me in at
+seven o’clock. My address is Nadejdinskaya,” and he gave the number.
+“Ah, time does not stand still,” and he turned to go, smiling only with
+his lips.
+
+“I will come if I can,” said Nekhludoff, feeling that a man once
+near and dear to him had, by this brief conversation, suddenly become
+strange, distant, and incomprehensible, if not hostile to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR.
+
+When Nekhludoff knew Selenin as a student, he was a good son, a true
+friend, and for his years an educated man of the world, with much tact;
+elegant, handsome, and at the same time truthful and honest. He learned
+well, without much exertion and with no pedantry, receiving gold medals
+for his essays. He considered the service of mankind, not only in words
+but in acts, to be the aim of his young life. He saw no other way of
+being useful to humanity than by serving the State. Therefore, as soon
+as he had completed his studies, he systematically examined all the
+activities to which he might devote his life, and decided to enter the
+Second Department of the Chancellerie, where the laws are drawn up, and
+he did so. But, in spite of the most scrupulous and exact discharge of
+the duties demanded of him, this service gave no satisfaction to his
+desire of being useful, nor could he awake in himself the consciousness
+that he was doing “the right thing.”
+
+This dissatisfaction was so much increased by the friction with his very
+small-minded and vain fellow officials that he left the Chancellerie and
+entered the Senate. It was better there, but the same dissatisfaction
+still pursued him; he felt it to be very different from what he had
+expected, and from what ought to be.
+
+And now that he was in the Senate his relatives obtained for him the
+post of Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and he had to go in a carriage,
+dressed in an embroidered uniform and a white linen apron, to thank
+all sorts of people for having placed him in the position of a lackey.
+However much he tried he could find no reasonable explanation for the
+existence of this post, and felt, more than in the Senate, that it
+was not “the right thing,” and yet he could not refuse it for fear of
+hurting those who felt sure they were giving him much pleasure by this
+appointment, and because it flattered the lowest part of his nature. It
+pleased him to see himself in a mirror in his gold-embroidered uniform,
+and to accept the deference paid him by some people because of his
+position.
+
+Something of the same kind happened when he married. A very brilliant
+match, from a worldly point of view, was arranged for him, and he
+married chiefly because by refusing he would have had to hurt the
+young lady who wished to be married to him, and those who arranged the
+marriage, and also because a marriage with a nice young girl of noble
+birth flattered his vanity and gave him pleasure. But this marriage
+very soon proved to be even less “the right thing” than the Government
+service and his position at Court.
+
+After the birth of her first child the wife decided to have no more,
+and began leading that luxurious worldly life in which he now had to
+participate whether he liked or not.
+
+She was not particularly handsome, and was faithful to him, and she
+seemed, in spite of all the efforts it cost her, to derive nothing but
+weariness from the life she led, yet she perseveringly continued to live
+it, though it was poisoning her husband’s life. And all his efforts
+to alter this life was shattered, as against a stone wall, by her
+conviction, which all her friends and relatives supported, that all was
+as it should be.
+
+The child, a little girl with bare legs and long golden curls, was a
+being perfectly foreign to him, chiefly because she was trained quite
+otherwise than he wished her to be. There sprung up between the husband
+and wife the usual misunderstanding, without even the wish to understand
+each other, and then a silent warfare, hidden from outsiders and
+tempered by decorum. All this made his life at home a burden, and became
+even less “the right thing” than his service and his post.
+
+But it was above all his attitude towards religion which was not “the
+right thing.” Like every one of his set and his time, by the growth of
+his reason he broke without the least effort the nets of the religious
+superstitions in which he was brought up, and did not himself exactly
+know when it was that he freed himself of them. Being earnest and
+upright, he did not, during his youth and intimacy with Nekhludoff as a
+student, conceal his rejection of the State religion. But as years
+went on and he rose in the service, and especially at the time of the
+reaction towards conservatism in society, his spiritual freedom stood in
+his way.
+
+At home, when his father died, he had to be present at the masses
+said for his soul, and his mother wished him to go to confession or to
+communion, and it was in a way expected, by public opinion, but above
+all, Government service demanded that he should be present at all sorts
+of services, consecrations, thanksgivings, and the like. Hardly a day
+passed without some outward religious form having to be observed.
+
+When present at these services he had to pretend that he believed in
+something which he did not believe in, and being truthful he could not
+do this. The alternative was, having made up his mind that all these
+outward signs were deceitful, to alter his life in such a way that he
+would not have to be present at such ceremonials. But to do what
+seemed so simple would have cost a great deal. Besides encountering the
+perpetual hostility of all those who were near to him, he would have to
+give up the service and his position, and sacrifice his hopes of being
+useful to humanity by his service, now and in the future. To make such a
+sacrifice one would have to be firmly convinced of being right.
+
+And he was firmly convinced he was right, as no educated man of our
+time can help being convinced who knows a little history and how the
+religions, and especially Church Christianity, originated.
+
+But under the stress of his daily life he, a truthful man, allowed a
+little falsehood to creep in. He said that in order to do justice to
+an unreasonable thing one had to study the unreasonable thing. It was a
+little falsehood, but it sunk him into the big falsehood in which he was
+now caught.
+
+Before putting to himself the question whether the orthodoxy in which
+he was born and bred, and which every one expected him to accept, and
+without which he could not continue his useful occupation, contained the
+truth, he had already decided the answer. And to clear up the question
+he did not read Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, or Comte, but
+the philosophical works of Hegel and the religious works of Vinet and
+Khomyakoff, and naturally found in them what he wanted, i.e., something
+like peace of mind and a vindication of that religious teaching in which
+he was educated, which his reason had long ceased to accept, but without
+which his whole life was filled with unpleasantness which could all be
+removed by accepting the teaching.
+
+And so he adopted all the usual sophistries which go to prove that
+a single human reason cannot know the truth, that the truth is only
+revealed to an association of men, and can only be known by revelation,
+that revelation is kept by the church, etc. And so he managed to be
+present at prayers, masses for the dead, to confess, make signs of the
+cross in front of icons, with a quiet mind, without being conscious of
+the lie, and to continue in the service which gave him the feeling of
+being useful and some comfort in his joyless family life. Although he
+believed this, he felt with his entire being that this religion of his,
+more than all else, was not “the right thing,” and that is why his eyes
+always looked sad.
+
+And seeing Nekhludoff, whom he had known before all these lies had
+rooted themselves within him, reminded him of what he then was. It was
+especially after he had hurried to hint at his religious views that he
+had most strongly felt all this “not the right thing,” and had become
+painfully sad. Nekhludoff felt it also after the first joy of meeting
+his old friend had passed, and therefore, though they promised each
+other to meet, they did not take any steps towards an interview, and did
+not again see each other during this stay of Nekhludoff’s in Petersburg.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MARIETTE TEMPTS NEKHLUDOFF.
+
+When they left the Senate, Nekhludoff and the advocate walked on
+together, the advocate having given the driver of his carriage orders
+to follow them. The advocate told Nekhludoff the story of the chief of a
+Government department, about whom the Senators had been talking: how the
+thing was found out, and how the man, who according to law should
+have been sent to the mines, had been appointed Governor of a town
+in Siberia. Then he related with particular pleasure how several
+high-placed persons stole a lot of money collected for the erection of
+the still unfinished monument which they had passed that morning; also,
+how the mistress of So-and-so got a lot of money at the Stock Exchange,
+and how So-and-so agreed with So-and-so to sell him his wife. The
+advocate began another story about a swindle, and all sorts of crimes
+committed by persons in high places, who, instead of being in prison,
+sat on presidential chairs in all sorts of Government institutions.
+These tales, of which the advocate seemed to have an unending supply,
+gave him much pleasure, showing as they did, with perfect clearness,
+that his means of getting money were quite just and innocent compared
+to the means which the highest officials in Petersburg made use of.
+The advocate was therefore surprised when Nekhludoff took an isvostchik
+before hearing the end of the story, said good-bye, and left him.
+Nekhludoff felt very sad. It was chiefly the rejection of the appeal by
+the Senate, confirming the senseless torments that the innocent Maslova
+was enduring, that saddened him, and also the fact that this rejection
+made it still harder for him to unite his fate with hers. The stories
+about existing evils, which the advocate recounted with such relish,
+heightened his sadness, and so did the cold, unkind look that the
+once sweet-natured, frank, noble Selenin had given him, and which kept
+recurring to his mind.
+
+On his return the doorkeeper handed him a note, and said, rather
+scornfully, that some kind of woman had written it in the hall. It was
+a note from Shoustova’s mother. She wrote that she had come to thank
+her daughter’s benefactor and saviour, and to implore him to come to see
+them on the Vasilievsky, 5th Line, house No. --. This was very necessary
+because of Vera Doukhova. He need not be afraid that they would weary
+him with expressions of gratitude. They would not speak their gratitude,
+but be simply glad to see him. Would he not come next morning, if he
+could?
+
+There was another note from Bogotyreff, a former fellow-officer,
+aide-de-camp to the Emperor, whom Nekhludoff had asked to hand
+personally to the Emperor his petition on behalf of the sectarians.
+Bogotyreff wrote, in his large, firm hand, that he would put the
+petition into the Emperor’s own hands, as he had promised; but that it
+had occurred to him that it might be better for Nekhludoff first to go
+and see the person on whom the matter depended.
+
+After the impressions received during the last few days, Nekhludoff felt
+perfectly hopeless of getting anything done. The plans he had formed
+in Moscow seemed now something like the dreams of youth, which are
+inevitably followed by disillusion when life comes to be faced. Still,
+being now in Petersburg, he considered it his duty to do all he had
+intended, and he resolved next day, after consulting Bogotyreff, to
+act on his advice and see the person on whom the case of the sectarians
+depended.
+
+He got out the sectarians’ petition from his portfolio, and began
+reading it over, when there was a knock at his door, and a footman came
+in with a message from the Countess Katerina Ivanovna, who asked him to
+come up and have a cup of tea with her.
+
+Nekhludoff said he would come at once, and having put the papers back
+into the portfolio, he went up to his aunt’s. He looked out of a window
+on his way, and saw Mariette’s pair of bays standing in front of the
+house, and he suddenly brightened and felt inclined to smile.
+
+Mariette, with a hat on her head, not in black but with a light dress
+of many shades, sat with a cup in her hand beside the Countess’s easy
+chair, prattling about something while her beautiful, laughing
+eyes glistened. She had said something funny--something indecently
+funny--just as Nekhludoff entered the room. He knew it by the way she
+laughed, and by the way the good-natured Countess Katerina Ivanovna’s
+fat body was shaking with laughter; while Mariette, her smiling mouth
+slightly drawn to one side, her head a little bent, a peculiarly
+mischievous expression in her merry, energetic face, sat silently
+looking at her companion. From a few words which he overheard,
+Nekhludoff guessed that they were talking of the second piece of
+Petersburg news, the episode of the Siberian Governor, and that it was
+in reference to this subject that Mariette had said something so funny
+that the Countess could not control herself for a long time.
+
+“You will kill me,” she said, coughing.
+
+After saying “How d’you do?” Nekhludoff sat down. He was about to
+censure Mariette in his mind for her levity when, noticing the serious
+and even slightly dissatisfied look in his eyes, she suddenly, to please
+him, changed not only the expression of her face, but also the attitude
+of her mind; for she felt the wish to please him as soon as she looked
+at him. She suddenly turned serious, dissatisfied with her life, as if
+seeking and striving after something; it was not that she pretended, but
+she really reproduced in herself the very same state of mind that he was
+in, although it would have been impossible for her to express in words
+what was the state of Nekhludoff’s mind at that moment.
+
+She asked him how he had accomplished his tasks. He told her about his
+failure in the Senate and his meeting Selenin.
+
+“Oh, what a pure soul! He is, indeed, a chevalier sans peur et sans
+reproche. A pure soul!” said both ladies, using the epithet commonly
+applied to Selenin in Petersburg society.
+
+“What is his wife like?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“His wife? Well, I do not wish to judge, but she does not understand
+him.”
+
+“Is it possible that he, too, was for rejecting the appeal?” Mariette
+asked with real sympathy. “It is dreadful. How sorry I am for her,” she
+added with a sigh.
+
+He frowned, and in order to change the subject began to speak about
+Shoustova, who had been imprisoned in the fortress and was now set free
+through the influence of Mariette’s husband. He thanked her for her
+trouble, and was going on to say how dreadful he thought it, that this
+woman and the whole of her family had suffered merely, because no one
+had reminded the authorities about them, but Mariette interrupted him
+and expressed her own indignation.
+
+“Say nothing about it to me,” she said. “When my husband told me she
+could be set free, it was this that struck me, ‘What was she kept in
+prison for if she is innocent?’” She went on expressing what Nekhludoff
+was about to say.
+
+“It is revolting--revolting.”
+
+Countess Katerina Ivanovna noticed that Mariette was coquetting with her
+nephew, and this amused her. “What do you think?” she said, when they
+were silent. “Supposing you come to Aline’s to-morrow night. Kiesewetter
+will be there. And you, too,” she said, turning to Mariette. “_Il vous a
+remarque_,” she went on to her nephew. “He told me that what you say (I
+repeated it all to him) is a very good sign, and that you will certainly
+come to Christ. You must come absolutely. Tell him to, Mariette, and
+come yourself.”
+
+“Countess, in the first place, I have no right whatever to give any kind
+of advice to the Prince,” said Mariette, and gave Nekhludoff a look that
+somehow established a full comprehension between them of their attitude
+in relation to the Countess’s words and evangelicalism in general.
+“Secondly, I do not much care, you know.”
+
+“Yes, I know you always do things the wrong way round, and according to
+your own ideas.”
+
+“My own ideas? I have faith like the most simple peasant woman,” said
+Mariette with a smile. “And, thirdly, I am going to the French Theatre
+to-morrow night.”
+
+“Ah! And have you seen that--What’s her name?” asked Countess Katerina
+Ivanovna. Mariette gave the name of a celebrated French actress.
+
+“You must go, most decidedly; she is wonderful.”
+
+“Whom am I to see first, ma tante--the actress or the preacher?”
+ Nekhludoff said with a smile.
+
+“Please don’t catch at my words.”
+
+“I should think the preacher first and then the actress, or else the
+desire for the sermon might vanish altogether,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“No; better begin with the French Theatre, and do penance afterwards.”
+
+“Now, then, you are not to hold me up for ridicule. The preacher is the
+preacher and the theatre is the theatre. One need not weep in order to
+be saved. One must have faith, and then one is sure to be gay.”
+
+“You, ma tante, preach better than any preacher.”
+
+“Do you know what?” said Mariette. “Come into my box to-morrow.”
+
+“I am afraid I shall not be able to.”
+
+The footman interrupted the conversation by announcing a visitor. It
+was the secretary of a philanthropic society of which the Countess was
+president.
+
+“Oh, that is the dullest of men. I think I shall receive him out there,
+and return to you later on. Mariette, give him his tea,” said the
+Countess, and left the room, with her quick, wriggling walk.
+
+Mariette took the glove off her firm, rather flat hand, the fourth
+finger of which was covered with rings.
+
+“Want any?” she said, taking hold of the silver teapot, under which a
+spirit lamp was burning, and extending her little finger curiously. Her
+face looked sad and serious.
+
+“It is always terribly painful to me to notice that people whose opinion
+I value confound me with the position I am placed in.” She seemed ready
+to cry as she said these last words. And though these words had no
+meaning, or at any rate a very indefinite meaning, they seemed to be of
+exceptional depth, meaning, or goodness to Nekhludoff, so much was he
+attracted by the look of the bright eyes which accompanied the words of
+this young, beautiful, and well-dressed woman.
+
+Nekhludoff looked at her in silence, and could not take his eyes from
+her face.
+
+“You think I do not understand you and all that goes on in you. Why,
+everybody knows what you are doing. _C’est le secret de polichinelle_.
+And I am delighted with your work, and think highly of you.”
+
+“Really, there is nothing to be delighted with; and I have done so
+little as Yet.”
+
+“No matter. I understand your feelings, and I understand her. All
+right, all right. I will say nothing more about it,” she said, noticing
+displeasure on his face. “But I also understand that after seeing all
+the suffering and the horror in the prisons,” Mariette went on, her only
+desire that of attracting him, and guessing with her woman’s instinct
+what was dear and important to him, “you wish to help the sufferers,
+those who are made to suffer so terribly by other men, and their cruelty
+and indifference. I understand the willingness to give one’s life, and
+could give mine in such a cause, but we each have our own fate.”
+
+“Are you, then, dissatisfied with your fate?”
+
+“I?” she asked, as if struck with surprise that such a question could
+be put to her. “I have to be satisfied, and am satisfied. But there is a
+worm that wakes up--”
+
+“And he must not be allowed to fall asleep again. It is a voice that
+must be obeyed,” Nekhludoff said, falling into the trap.
+
+Many a time later on Nekhludoff remembered with shame his talk with her.
+He remembered her words, which were not so much lies as imitations of
+his own, and her face, which seemed looking at him with sympathetic
+attention when he told her about the terrors of the prison and of his
+impressions in the country.
+
+When the Countess returned they were talking not merely like old, but
+like exclusive friends who alone understood one another. They were
+talking about the injustice of power, of the sufferings of the
+unfortunate, the poverty of the people, yet in reality in the midst of
+the sound of their talk their eyes, gazing at each other, kept asking,
+“Can you love me?” and answering, “I can,” and the sex-feeling, taking
+the most unexpected and brightest forms, drew them to each other. As she
+was going away she told him that she would always be willing to serve
+him in any way she could, and asked him to come and see her, if only for
+a moment, in the theatre next day, as she had a very important thing to
+tell him about.
+
+“Yes, and when shall I see you again?” she added, with a sigh, carefully
+drawing the glove over her jewelled hand.
+
+“Say you will come.”
+
+Nekhludoff promised.
+
+That night, when Nekhludoff was alone in his room, and lay down after
+putting out his candle, he could not sleep. He thought of Maslova, of
+the decision of the Senate, of his resolve to follow her in any case, of
+his having given up the land. The face of Mariette appeared to him as if
+in answer to those thoughts--her look, her sigh, her words, “When shall
+I see you again?” and her smile seemed vivid as if he really saw her,
+and he also smiled. “Shall I be doing right in going to Siberia? And
+have I done right in divesting myself of my wealth?” And the answers to
+the questions on this Petersburg night, on which the daylight streamed
+into the window from under the blind, were quite indefinite. All seemed
+mixed in his head. He recalled his former state of mind, and the former
+sequence of his thoughts, but they had no longer their former power or
+validity.
+
+“And supposing I have invented all this, and am unable to live it
+through--supposing I repent of having acted right,” he thought; and
+unable to answer he was seized with such anguish and despair as he had
+long not felt. Unable to free himself from his perplexity, he fell into
+a heavy sleep, such as he had slept after a heavy loss at cards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+LYDIA SHOUSTOVA’S HOME.
+
+Nekhludoff awoke next morning feeling as if he had been guilty of some
+iniquity the day before. He began considering. He could not remember
+having done anything wrong; he had committed no evil act, but he had had
+evil thoughts. He had thought that all his present resolutions to marry
+Katusha and to give up his land were unachievable dreams; that he should
+be unable to bear it; that it was artificial, unnatural; and that he
+would have to go on living as he lived.
+
+He had committed no evil action, but, what was far worse than an
+evil action, he had entertained evil thoughts whence all evil actions
+proceed. An evil action may not be repeated, and can be repented of; but
+evil thoughts generate all evil actions.
+
+An evil action only smooths the path for other evil acts; evil thoughts
+uncontrollably drag one along that path.
+
+When Nekhludoff repeated in his mind the thoughts of the day before, he
+was surprised that he could for a moment have believed these thoughts.
+However new and difficult that which he had decided to do might be, he
+knew that it was the only possible way of life for him now, and however
+easy and natural it might have been to return to his former state, he
+knew that state to be death.
+
+Yesterday’s temptation seemed like the feeling when one awakes from deep
+sleep, and, without feeling sleepy, wants to lie comfortably in bed a
+little longer, yet knows that it is time to rise and commence the glad
+and important work that awaits one.
+
+On that, his last day in Petersburg, he went in the morning to the
+Vasilievski Ostrov to see Shoustova. Shoustova lived on the second
+floor, and having been shown the back stairs, Nekhludoff entered
+straight into the hot kitchen, which smelt strongly of food. An elderly
+woman, with turned-up sleeves, with an apron and spectacles, stood by
+the fire stirring something in a steaming pan.
+
+“Whom do you want?” she asked severely, looking at him over her
+spectacles.
+
+Before Nekhludoff had time to answer, an expression of fright and joy
+appeared on her face.
+
+“Oh, Prince!” she exclaimed, wiping her hands on her apron. “But why
+have you come the back way? Our Benefactor! I am her mother. They have
+nearly killed my little girl. You have saved us,” she said, catching
+hold of Nekhludoff’s hand and trying to kiss it.
+
+“I went to see you yesterday. My sister asked me to. She is here. This
+way, this way, please,” said Shoustova’s mother, as she led the way
+through a narrow door, and a dark passage, arranging her hair and
+pulling at her tucked-up skirt. “My sister’s name is Kornilova. You must
+have heard of her,” she added, stopping before a closed door. “She was
+mixed up in a political affair. An extremely clever woman!”
+
+Shoustova’s mother opened the door and showed Nekhludoff into a little
+room where on a sofa with a table before it sat a plump, short girl with
+fair hair that curled round her pale, round face, which was very like
+her mother’s. She had a striped cotton blouse on.
+
+Opposite her, in an armchair, leaning forward, so that he was nearly
+bent double, sat a young fellow with a slight, black beard and
+moustaches.
+
+“Lydia, Prince Nekhludoff!” he said.
+
+The pale girl jumped up, nervously pushing back a lock of hair behind
+her ear, and gazing at the newcomer with a frightened look in her large,
+grey eyes.
+
+“So you are that dangerous woman whom Vera Doukhova wished me to
+intercede for?” Nekhludoff asked, with a smile.
+
+“Yes, I am,” said Lydia Shoustova, her broad, kind, child-like smile
+disclosing a row of beautiful teeth. “It was aunt who was so anxious to
+see you. Aunt!” she called out, in a pleasant, tender voice through a
+door.
+
+“Your imprisonment grieved Vera Doukhova very much,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Take a seat here, or better here,” said Shoustova, pointing to the
+battered easy-chair from which the young man had just risen.
+
+“My cousin, Zakharov,” she said, noticing that Nekhludoff looked at the
+young man.
+
+The young man greeted the visitor with a smile as kindly as Shoustova’s,
+and when Nekhludoff sat down he brought himself another chair, and sat
+by his side. A fair-haired schoolboy of about 10 also came into the room
+and silently sat down on the window-sill.
+
+“Vera Doukhova is a great friend of my aunt’s, but I hardly know her,”
+ said Shoustova.
+
+Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather
+belt, came in from the next room.
+
+“How do you do? Thanks for coming,” she began as soon as she had taken
+the place next Shoustova’s on the sofa.
+
+“Well, and how is Vera. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?”
+
+“She does not complain,” said Nekhludoff. “She says she feels perfectly
+happy.”’
+
+“Ah, that’s like Vera. I know her,” said the aunt, smiling and shaking
+her head. “One must know her. She has a fine character. Everything for
+others; nothing for herself.”
+
+“No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your
+niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece
+was imprisoned for nothing.”
+
+“Yes, that’s true,” said the aunt. “It is a dreadful business. She
+suffered, in reality, because of me.”
+
+“Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the
+same.”
+
+“Allow me to know better,” said the aunt. “You see,” she went on to
+Nekhludoff, “it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep
+his papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them
+to her. And that very night the police searched her room and took her
+and the papers, and have kept her up to now, demanding that she should
+say from whom she had them.”
+
+“But I never told them,” said Shoustova quickly, pulling nervously at a
+lock that was not even out of place.
+
+“I never said you did,” answered the aunt.
+
+“If they took Mitin up it was certainly not through me,” said Shoustova,
+blushing, and looking round uneasily.
+
+“Don’t speak about it, Lydia dear,” said her mother.
+
+“Why not? I should like to relate it,” said Shoustova, no longer smiling
+nor pulling her lock, but twisting it round her finger and getting
+redder.
+
+“Don’t forget what happened yesterday when you began talking about it.”
+
+“Not at all---Leave me alone, mamma. I did not tell, I only kept quiet.
+When he examined me about Mitin and about aunt, I said nothing, and told
+him I would not answer.”
+
+“Then this--Petrov--”
+
+“Petrov is a spy, a gendarme, and a blackguard,” put in the aunt, to
+explain her niece’s words to Nekhludoff.
+
+“Then he began persuading,” continued Shoustova, excitedly and
+hurriedly. “‘Anything you tell me,’ he said, ‘can harm no one; on the
+contrary, if you tell me, we may be able to set free innocent people
+whom we may be uselessly tormenting.’ Well, I still said I would not
+tell. Then he said, ‘All right, don’t tell, but do not deny what I am
+going to say.’ And he named Mitin.”
+
+“Don’t talk about it,” said the aunt.
+
+“Oh, aunt, don’t interrupt,” and she went on pulling the lock of hair
+and looking round. “And then, only fancy, the next day I hear--they let
+me know by knocking at the wall--that Mitin is arrested. Well, I think
+I have betrayed him, and this tormented me so--it tormented me so that I
+nearly went mad.”
+
+“And it turned out that it was not at all because of you he was taken
+up?”
+
+“Yes, but I didn’t know. I think, ‘There, now, I have betrayed him.’ I
+walk and walk up and down from wall to wall, and cannot help thinking.
+I think, ‘I have betrayed him.’ I lie down and cover myself up, and hear
+something whispering, ‘Betrayed! betrayed Mitin! Mitin betrayed!’ I
+know it is an hallucination, but cannot help listening. I wish to
+fall asleep, I cannot. I wish not to think, and cannot cease. That is
+terrible!” and as Shoustova spoke she got more and more excited, and
+twisted and untwisted the lock of hair round her finger.
+
+“Lydia, dear, be calm,” the mother said, touching her shoulder.
+
+But Shoustova could not stop herself.
+
+“It is all the more terrible--” she began again, but did not finish, and
+jumping up with a cry rushed out of the room.
+
+Her mother turned to follow her.
+
+“They ought to be hanged, the rascals!” said the schoolboy who was
+sitting on the window-sill.
+
+“What’s that?” said the mother.
+
+“I only said--Oh, it’s nothing,” the schoolboy answered, and taking a
+cigarette that lay on the table, he began to smoke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+LYDIA’S AUNT.
+
+“Yes, that solitary confinement is terrible for the young,” said the
+aunt, shaking her head and also lighting a cigarette.
+
+“I should say for every one,” Nekhludoff replied.
+
+“No, not for all,” answered the aunt. “For the real revolutionists, I
+have been told, it is rest and quiet. A man who is wanted by the police
+lives in continual anxiety, material want, and fear for himself and
+others, and for his cause, and at last, when he is taken up and it is
+all over, and all responsibility is off his shoulders, he can sit and
+rest. I have been told they actually feel joyful when taken up. But the
+young and innocent (they always first arrest the innocent, like Lydia),
+for them the first shock is terrible. It is not that they deprive you of
+freedom; and the bad food and bad air--all that is nothing. Three times
+as many privations would be easily borne if it were not for the moral
+shock when one is first taken.”
+
+“Have you experienced it?”
+
+“I? I was twice in prison,” she answered, with a sad, gentle smile.
+“When I was arrested for the first time I had done nothing. I was 22,
+had a child, and was expecting another. Though the loss of freedom and
+the parting with my child and husband were hard, they were nothing when
+compared with what I felt when I found out that I had ceased being a
+human creature and had become a thing. I wished to say good-bye to my
+little daughter. I was told to go and get into the trap. I asked where I
+was being taken to. The answer was that I should know when I got there.
+I asked what I was accused of, but got no reply. After I had been
+examined, and after they had undressed me and put numbered prison
+clothes on me, they led me to a vault, opened a door, pushed me in, and
+left me alone; a sentinel, with a loaded gun, paced up and down in front
+of my door, and every now and then looked in through a crack--I felt
+terribly depressed. What struck me most at the time was that the
+gendarme officer who examined me offered me a cigarette. So he knew that
+people liked smoking, and must know that they liked freedom and light;
+and that mothers love their children, and children their mothers. Then
+how could they tear me pitilessly from all that was dear to me, and
+lock me up in prison like a wild animal? That sort of thing could not
+be borne without evil effects. Any one who believes in God and men, and
+believes that men love one another, will cease to believe it after all
+that. I have ceased to believe in humanity since then, and have grown
+embittered,” she finished, with a smile.
+
+Shoustova’s mother came in at the door through which her daughter had
+gone out, and said that Lydia was very much upset, and would not come in
+again.
+
+“And what has this young life been ruined for?” said the aunt. “What is
+especially painful to me is that I am the involuntary cause of it.”
+
+“She will recover in the country, with God’s help,” said the mother. “We
+shall send her to her father.”
+
+“Yes, if it were not for you she would have perished altogether,” said
+the aunt. “Thank you. But what I wished to see you for is this: I wished
+to ask you to take a letter to Vera Doukhova,” and she got the letter
+out of her pocket.
+
+“The letter is not closed; you may read and tear it up, or hand it to
+her, according to how far it coincides with your principles,” she said.
+“It contains nothing compromising.”
+
+Nekhludoff took the letter, and, having promised to give it to Vera
+Doukhova, he took his leave and went away. He sealed the letter without
+reading it, meaning to take it to its destination.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+THE STATE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.
+
+The last thing that kept Nekhludoff in Petersburg was the case of the
+sectarians, whose petition he intended to get his former fellow-officer,
+Aide-de-camp Bogatyreff, to hand to the Tsar. He came to Bogatyreff in
+the morning, and found him about to go out, though still at breakfast.
+Bogatyreff was not tall, but firmly built and wonderfully strong (he
+could bend a horseshoe), a kind, honest, straight, and even liberal man.
+In spite of these qualities, he was intimate at Court, and very fond of
+the Tsar and his family, and by some strange method he managed, while
+living in that highest circle, to see nothing but the good in it and to
+take no part in the evil and corruption. He never condemned anybody
+nor any measure, and either kept silent or spoke in a bold, loud voice,
+almost shouting what he had to say, and often laughing in the same
+boisterous manner. And he did not do it for diplomatic reasons, but
+because such was his character.
+
+“Ah, that’s right that you have come. Would you like some breakfast?
+Sit down, the beefsteaks are fine! I always begin with something
+substantial--begin and finish, too. Ha! ha! ha! Well, then, have a glass
+of wine,” he shouted, pointing to a decanter of claret. “I have been
+thinking of you. I will hand on the petition. I shall put it into his
+own hands. You may count on that, only it occurred to me that it would
+be best for you to call on Toporoff.”
+
+Nekhludoff made a wry face at the mention of Toporoff.
+
+“It all depends on him. He will be consulted, anyhow. And perhaps he may
+himself meet your wishes.”
+
+“If you advise it I shall go.”
+
+“That’s right. Well, and how does Petersburg agree with you?” shouted
+Bogatyreff. “Tell me. Eh?”
+
+“I feel myself getting hypnotised,” replied Nekhludoff.
+
+“Hypnotised!” Bogatyreff repeated, and burst out laughing. “You won’t
+have anything? Well, just as you please,” and he wiped his moustaches
+with his napkin. “Then you’ll go? Eh? If he does not do it, give the
+petition to me, and I shall hand it on to-morrow.” Shouting these words,
+he rose, crossed himself just as naturally as he had wiped his mouth,
+and began buckling on his sword.
+
+“And now good-bye; I must go. We are both going out,” said Nekhludoff,
+and shaking Bogatyreff’s strong, broad hand, and with the sense of
+pleasure which the impression of something healthy and unconsciously
+fresh always gave him, Nekhludoff parted from Bogatyreff on the
+door-steps.
+
+Though he expected no good result from his visit, still Nekhludoff,
+following Bogatyreff’s advice, went to see Toporoff, on whom the
+sectarians’ fate depended.
+
+The position occupied by Toporoff, involving as it did an incongruity of
+purpose, could only be held by a dull man devoid of moral sensibility.
+Toporoff possessed both these negative qualities. The incongruity of the
+position he occupied was this. It was his duty to keep up and to defend,
+by external measures, not excluding violence, that Church which, by its
+own declaration, was established by God Himself and could not be shaken
+by the gates of hell nor by anything human. This divine and immutable
+God-established institution had to be sustained and defended by a human
+institution--the Holy Synod, managed by Toporoff and his officials.
+Toporoff did not see this contradiction, nor did he wish to see it, and
+he was therefore much concerned lest some Romish priest, some pastor, or
+some sectarian should destroy that Church which the gates of hell could
+not conquer.
+
+Toporoff, like all those who are quite destitute of the fundamental
+religious feeling that recognises the equality and brotherhood of men,
+was fully convinced that the common people were creatures entirely
+different from himself, and that the people needed what he could very
+well do without, for at the bottom of his heart he believed in nothing,
+and found such a state very convenient and pleasant. Yet he feared lest
+the people might also come to such a state, and looked upon it as his
+sacred duty, as he called it, to save the people therefrom.
+
+A certain cookery book declares that some crabs like to be boiled alive.
+In the same way he thought and spoke as if the people liked being kept
+in superstition; only he meant this in a literal sense, whereas the
+cookery book did not mean its words literally.
+
+His feelings towards the religion he was keeping up were the same as
+those of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his fowls on.
+Carrion was very disgusting, but the fowls liked it; therefore it was
+right to feed the fowls on carrion. Of course all this worship of the
+images of the Iberian, Kasan and Smolensk Mothers of God was a gross
+superstition, but the people liked it and believed in it, and therefore
+the superstition must be kept up.
+
+Thus thought Toporoff, not considering that the people only liked
+superstition because there always have been, and still are, men like
+himself who, being enlightened, instead of using their light to help
+others to struggle out of their dark ignorance, use it to plunge them
+still deeper into it.
+
+When Nekhludoff entered the reception-room Toporoff was in his study
+talking with an abbess, a lively and aristocratic lady, who was
+spreading the Greek orthodox faith in Western Russia among the Uniates
+(who acknowledge the Pope of Rome), and who have the Greek religion
+enforced on them. An official who was in the reception-room inquired
+what Nekhludoff wanted, and when he heard that Nekhludoff meant to
+hand in a petition to the Emperor, he asked him if he would allow the
+petition to be read first. Nekhludoff gave it him, and the official took
+it into the study. The abbess, with her hood and flowing veil and her
+long train trailing behind, left the study and went out, her white hands
+(with their well-tended nails) holding a topaz rosary. Nekhludoff was
+not immediately asked to come in. Toporoff was reading the petition
+and shaking his head. He was unpleasantly surprised by the clear and
+emphatic wording of it.
+
+“If it gets into the hands of the Emperor it may cause
+misunderstandings, and unpleasant questions may be asked,” he thought
+as he read. Then he put the petition on the table, rang, and ordered
+Nekhludoff to be asked in.
+
+He remembered the case of the sectarians; he had had a petition from
+them before. The case was this: These Christians, fallen away from the
+Greek Orthodox Church, were first exhorted and then tried by law, but
+were acquitted. Then the Archdeacon and the Governor arranged, on the
+plea that their marriages were illegal, to exile these sectarians,
+separating the husbands, wives, and children. These fathers and
+wives were now petitioning that they should not be parted. Toporoff
+recollected the first time the case came to his notice: he had at that
+time hesitated whether he had not better put a stop to it. But then
+he thought no harm could result from his confirming the decision to
+separate and exile the different members of the sectarian families,
+whereas allowing the peasant sect to remain where it was might have a
+bad effect on the rest of the inhabitants of the place and cause them
+to fall away from Orthodoxy. And then the affair also proved the zeal
+of the Archdeacon, and so he let the case proceed along the lines it had
+taken. But now that they had a defender such as Nekhludoff, who had some
+influence in Petersburg, the case might be specially pointed out to the
+Emperor as something cruel, or it might get into the foreign papers.
+Therefore he at once took an unexpected decision.
+
+“How do you do?” he said, with the air of a very busy man, receiving
+Nekhludoff standing, and at once starting on the business. “I know
+this case. As soon as I saw the names I recollected this unfortunate
+business,” he said, taking up the petition and showing it to Nekhludoff.
+“And I am much indebted to you for reminding me of it. It is the
+over-zealousness of the provincial authorities.”
+
+Nekhludoff stood silent, looking with no kindly feelings at the
+immovable, pale mask of a face before him.
+
+“And I shall give orders that these measures should be revoked and the
+people reinstated in their homes.”
+
+“So that I need not make use of this petition?”
+
+“I promise you most assuredly,” answered Toporoff, laying a stress on
+the word I, as if quite convinced that his honesty, his word was the
+best guarantee. “It will be best if I write at once. Take a seat,
+please.”
+
+He went up to the table and began to write. As Nekhludoff sat down he
+looked at the narrow, bald skull, at the fat, blue-veined hand that was
+swiftly guiding the pen, and wondered why this evidently indifferent man
+was doing what he did and why he was doing it with such care.
+
+“Well, here you are,” said Toporoff, sealing the envelope; “you may let
+your clients know,” and he stretched his lips to imitate a smile.
+
+“Then what did these people suffer for?” Nekhludoff asked, as he took
+the envelope.
+
+Toporoff raised his head and smiled, as if Nekhludoff’s question gave
+him pleasure. “That I cannot tell. All I can say is that the interests
+of the people guarded by us are so important that too great a zeal
+in matters of religion is not so dangerous or so harmful as the
+indifference which is now spreading--”
+
+“But how is it that in the name of religion the very first demands of
+righteousness are violated--families are separated?”
+
+Toporoff continued to smile patronisingly, evidently thinking what
+Nekhludoff said very pretty. Anything that Nekhludoff could say he would
+have considered very pretty and very one-sided, from the height of what
+he considered his far-reaching office in the State.
+
+“It may seem so from the point of view of a private individual,” he
+said, “but from an administrative point of view it appears in a rather
+different light. However, I must bid you good-bye, now,” said Toporoff,
+bowing his head and holding out his hand, which Nekhludoff pressed.
+
+“The interests of the people! Your interests is what you mean!” thought
+Nekhludoff as he went out. And he ran over in his mind the people in
+whom is manifested the activity of the institutions that uphold religion
+and educate the people. He began with the woman punished for the
+illicit sale of spirits, the boy for theft, the tramp for tramping, the
+incendiary for setting a house on fire, the banker for fraud, and that
+unfortunate Lydia Shoustova imprisoned only because they hoped to get
+such information as they required from her. Then he thought of the
+sectarians punished for violating Orthodoxy, and Gourkevitch for wanting
+constitutional government, and Nekhludoff clearly saw that all these
+people were arrested, locked up, exiled, not really because they
+transgressed against justice or behaved unlawfully, but only because
+they were an obstacle hindering the officials and the rich from enjoying
+the property they had taken away from the people. And the woman who sold
+wine without having a license, and the thief knocking about the town,
+and Lydia Shoustova hiding proclamations, and the sectarians upsetting
+superstitions, and Gourkevitch desiring a constitution, were a real
+hindrance. It seemed perfectly clear to Nekhludoff that all these
+officials, beginning with his aunt’s husband, the Senators, and
+Toporoff, down to those clean and correct gentlemen who sat at the
+tables in the Ministry Office, were not at all troubled by the fact that
+that in such a state of things the innocent had to suffer, but were only
+concerned how to get rid of the really dangerous, so that the rule
+that ten guilty should escape rather than that one innocent should
+be condemned was not observed, but, on the contrary, for the sake of
+getting rid of one really dangerous person, ten who seemed dangerous
+were punished, as, when cutting a rotten piece out of anything, one has
+to cut away some that is good.
+
+This explanation seemed very simple and clear to Nekhludoff; but its
+very simplicity and clearness made him hesitate to accept it. Was it
+possible that so complicated a phenomenon could have so simple and
+terrible an explanation? Was it possible that all these words about
+justice, law, religion, and God, and so on, were mere words, hiding the
+coarsest cupidity and cruelty?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+THE MEANING OF MARIETTE’S ATTRACTION.
+
+Nekhludoff would have left Petersburg on the evening of the same day,
+but he had promised Mariette to meet her at the theatre, and though he
+knew that he ought not to keep that promise, he deceived himself into
+the belief that it would not be right to break his word.
+
+“Am I capable of withstanding these temptations?” he asked himself not
+quite honestly. “I shall try for the last time.”
+
+He dressed in his evening clothes, and arrived at the theatre during the
+second act of the eternal Dame aux Camelias, in which a foreign actress
+once again, and in a novel manner, showed how women die of consumption.
+
+The theatre was quite full. Mariette’s box was at once, and with great
+deference, shown to Nekhludoff at his request. A liveried servant stood
+in the corridor outside; he bowed to Nekhludoff as to one whom he knew,
+and opened the door of the box.
+
+All the people who sat and stood in the boxes on the opposite side,
+those who sat near and those who were in the parterre, with their grey,
+grizzly, bald, or curly heads--all were absorbed in watching the thin,
+bony actress who, dressed in silks and laces, was wriggling before them,
+and speaking in an unnatural voice.
+
+Some one called “Hush!” when the door opened, and two streams, one of
+cool, the other of hot, air touched Nekhludoff’s face.
+
+Mariette and a lady whom he did not know, with a red cape and a big,
+heavy head-dress, were in the box, and two men also, Mariette’s
+husband, the General, a tall, handsome man with a severe, inscrutable
+countenance, a Roman nose, and a uniform padded round the chest, and a
+fair man, with a bit of shaved chin between pompous whiskers.
+
+Mariette, graceful, slight, elegant, her low-necked dress showing her
+firm, shapely, slanting shoulders, with a little black mole where they
+joined her neck, immediately turned, and pointed with her face to a
+chair behind her in an engaging manner, and smiled a smile that seemed
+full of meaning to Nekhludoff.
+
+The husband looked at him in the quiet way in which he did everything,
+and bowed. In the look he exchanged with his wife, the master, the owner
+of a beautiful woman, was to be seen at once.
+
+When the monologue was over the theatre resounded with the clapping of
+hands. Mariette rose, and holding up her rustling silk skirt, went into
+the back of the box and introduced Nekhludoff to her husband.
+
+The General, without ceasing to smile with his eyes, said he was very
+pleased, and then sat inscrutably silent.
+
+“I ought to have left to-day, had I not promised,” said Nekhludoff to
+Mariette.
+
+“If you do not care to see me,” said Mariette, in answer to what his
+words implied, “you will see a wonderful actress. Was she not splendid
+in the last scene?” she asked, turning to her husband.
+
+The husband bowed his head.
+
+“This sort of thing does not touch me,” said Nekhludoff. “I have seen so
+much real suffering lately that--”
+
+“Yes, sit down and tell me.”
+
+The husband listened, his eyes smiling more and more ironically. “I have
+been to see that woman whom they have set free, and who has been kept in
+prison for so long; she is quite broken down.”
+
+“That is the woman I spoke to you about,” Mariette said to her husband.
+
+“Oh, yes, I was very pleased that she could be set free,” said the
+husband quietly, nodding and smiling under his moustache with evident
+irony, so it seemed to Nekhludoff. “I shall go and have a smoke.”
+
+Nekhludoff sat waiting to hear what the something was that Mariette had
+to tell him. She said nothing, and did not even try to say anything, but
+joked and spoke about the performance, which she thought ought to touch
+Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff saw that she had nothing to tell, but only wished
+to show herself to him in all the splendour of her evening toilet, with
+her shoulders and little mole; and this was pleasant and yet repulsive
+to him.
+
+The charm that had veiled all this sort of thing from Nekhludoff was
+not removed, but it was as if he could see what lay beneath. Looking at
+Mariette, he admired her, and yet he knew that she was a liar, living
+with a husband who was making his career by means of the tears and lives
+of hundreds and hundreds of people, and that she was quite indifferent
+about it, and that all she had said the day before was untrue. What she
+wanted--neither he nor she knew why--was to make him fall in love with
+her. This both attracted and disgusted him. Several times, on the point
+of going away, he took up his hat, and then stayed on.
+
+But at last, when the husband returned with a strong smell of tobacco
+in his thick moustache, and looked at Nekhludoff with a patronising,
+contemptuous air, as if not recognising him, Nekhludoff left the box
+before the door was closed again, found his overcoat, and went out of
+the theatre. As he was walking home along the Nevski, he could not help
+noticing a well-shaped and aggressively finely-dressed woman, who was
+quietly walking in front of him along the broad asphalt pavement. The
+consciousness of her detestable power was noticeable in her face and
+the whole of her figure. All who met or passed that woman looked at her.
+Nekhludoff walked faster than she did and, involuntarily, also looked
+her in the face. The face, which was probably painted, was handsome,
+and the woman looked at him with a smile and her eyes sparkled. And,
+curiously enough, Nekhludoff was suddenly reminded of Mariette, because
+he again felt both attracted and disgusted just as when in the theatre.
+
+Having hurriedly passed her, Nekhludoff turned off on to the Morskaya,
+and passed on to the embankment, where, to the surprise of a policeman,
+he began pacing up and down the pavement.
+
+“The other one gave me just such a smile when I entered the theatre,” he
+thought, “and the meaning of the smile was the same. The only difference
+is, that this one said plainly, ‘If you want me, take me; if not, go
+your way,’ and the other one pretended that she was not thinking of
+this, but living in some high and refined state, while this was really
+at the root. Besides, this one was driven to it by necessity, while
+the other amused herself by playing with that enchanting, disgusting,
+frightful passion. This woman of the street was like stagnant, smelling
+water offered to those whose thirst was greater than their disgust; that
+other one in the theatre was like the poison which, unnoticed, poisons
+everything it gets into.”
+
+Nekhludoff recalled his liaison with the Marechal’s wife, and shameful
+memories rose before him.
+
+“The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting,” thought he,
+“but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the
+height of our spiritual life and despise it; and--whether one has
+fallen or resisted--one remains what one was before. But when that
+same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and
+demands our worship--then we are swallowed up by it completely, and
+worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is
+awful.”
+
+Nekhludoff perceived all this now as clearly as he saw the palace, the
+sentinels, the fortress, the river, the boats, and the Stock Exchange.
+And just as on this northern summer night there was no restful darkness
+on the earth, but only a dismal, dull light coming from an invisible
+source, so in Nekhludoff’s soul there was no longer the restful
+darkness, ignorance. Everything seemed clear. It was clear that
+everything considered important and good was insignificant and
+repulsive, and that all the glamour and luxury hid the old, well-known
+crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the
+splendour which men were capable of inventing.
+
+Nekhludoff wished to forget all this, not to see it, but he could no
+longer help seeing it. Though he could not see the source of the light
+which revealed it to him any more than he could see the source of the
+light which lay over Petersburg; and though the light appeared to
+him dull, dismal, and unnatural, yet he could not help seeing what it
+revealed, and he felt both joyful and anxious.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+FOR HER SAKE AND FOR GOD’S.
+
+On his return to Moscow Nekhludoff went at once to the prison hospital
+to bring Maslova the sad news that the Senate had confirmed the decision
+of the Court, and that she must prepare to go to Siberia. He had little
+hope of the success of his petition to the Emperor, which the advocate
+had written for him, and which he now brought with him for Maslova to
+sign. And, strange to say, he did not at present even wish to succeed;
+he had got used to the thought of going to Siberia and living among the
+exiled and the convicts, and he could not easily picture to himself how
+his life and Maslova’s would shape if she were acquitted. He remembered
+the thought of the American writer, Thoreau, who at the time when
+slavery existed in America said that “under a government that
+imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
+ Nekhludoff, especially after his visit to Petersburg and all he
+discovered there, thought in the same way.
+
+“Yes, the only place befitting an honest man in Russia at the present
+time is a prison,” he thought, and even felt that this applied to him
+personally, when he drove up to the prison and entered its walls.
+
+The doorkeeper recognised Nekhludoff, and told him at once that Maslova
+was no longer there.
+
+“Where is she, then?”
+
+“In the cell again.”
+
+“Why has she been removed?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“Oh, your excellency, what are such people?” said the doorkeeper,
+contemptuously. “She’s been carrying on with the medical assistant, so
+the head doctor ordered her back.”
+
+Nekhludoff had had no idea how near Maslova and the state of her mind
+were to him. He was stunned by the news.
+
+He felt as one feels at the news of a great and unforeseen misfortune,
+and his pain was very severe. His first feeling was one of shame. He,
+with his joyful idea of the change that he imagined was going on in her
+soul, now seemed ridiculous in his own eyes. He thought that all her
+pretence of not wishing to accept his sacrifice, all the reproaches and
+tears, were only the devices of a depraved woman, who wished to use
+him to the best advantage. He seemed to remember having seen signs of
+obduracy at his last interview with her. All this flashed through his
+mind as he instinctively put on his hat and left the hospital.
+
+“What am I to do now? Am I still bound to her? Has this action of hers
+not set me free?” And as he put these questions to himself he knew at
+once that if he considered himself free, and threw her up, he would be
+punishing himself, and not her, which was what he wished to do, and he
+was seized with fear.
+
+“No, what has happened cannot alter--it can only strengthen my resolve.
+Let her do what flows from the state her mind is in. If it is carrying
+on with the medical assistant, let her carry on with the medical
+assistant; that is her business. I must do what my conscience demands of
+me. And my conscience expects me to sacrifice my freedom. My resolution
+to marry her, if only in form, and to follow wherever she may be sent,
+remains unalterable.” Nekhludoff said all this to himself with vicious
+obstinacy as he left the hospital and walked with resolute steps towards
+the big gates of the prison. He asked the warder on duty at the gate
+to inform the inspector that he wished to see Maslova. The warder knew
+Nekhludoff, and told him of an important change that had taken place
+in the prison. The old inspector had been discharged, and a new, very
+severe official appointed in his place.
+
+“They are so strict nowadays, it’s just awful,” said the jailer. “He is
+in here; they will let him know directly.”
+
+The new inspector was in the prison and soon came to Nekhludoff. He was
+a tall, angular man, with high cheek bones, morose, and very slow in his
+movements.
+
+“Interviews are allowed in the visiting room on the appointed days,” he
+said, without looking at Nekhludoff.
+
+“But I have a petition to the Emperor, which I want signed.”
+
+“You can give it to me.”
+
+“I must see the prisoner myself. I was always allowed to before.”
+
+“That was so, before,” said the inspector, with a furtive glance at
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“I have a permission from the governor,” insisted Nekhludoff, and took
+out his pocket-book.
+
+“Allow me,” said the inspector, taking the paper from Nekhludoff with
+his long, dry, white fingers, on the first of which was a gold ring,
+still without looking him in the eyes. He read the paper slowly. “Step
+into the office, please.”
+
+This time the office was empty. The inspector sat down by the table
+and began sorting some papers that lay on it, evidently intending to be
+present at the interview.
+
+When Nekhludoff asked whether he might see the political prisoner,
+Doukhova, the inspector answered, shortly, that he could not.
+“Interviews with political prisoners are not permitted,” he said, and
+again fixed his attention on his papers. With a letter to Doukhova in
+his pocket, Nekhludoff felt as if he had committed some offence, and his
+plans had been discovered and frustrated.
+
+When Maslova entered the room the inspector raised his head, and,
+without looking at either her or Nekhludoff, remarked: “You may talk,”
+ and went on sorting his papers. Maslova had again the white jacket,
+petticoat and kerchief on. When she came up to Nekhludoff and saw his
+cold, hard look, she blushed scarlet, and crumbling the hem of her
+jacket with her hand, she cast down her eyes. Her confusion, so it
+seemed to Nekhludoff, confirmed the hospital doorkeeper’s words.
+
+Nekhludoff had meant to treat her in the same way as before, but could
+not bring himself to shake hands with her, so disgusting was she to him
+now.
+
+“I have brought you bad news,” he said, in a monotonous voice, without
+looking at her or taking her hand. “The Senate has refused.”
+
+“I knew it would,” she said, in a strange tone, as if she were gasping
+for breath.
+
+Formerly Nekhludoff would have asked why she said she knew it would;
+now he only looked at her. Her eyes were full of tears. But this did not
+soften him; it roused his irritation against her even more.
+
+The inspector rose and began pacing up and down the room.
+
+In spite of the disgust Nekhludoff was feeling at the moment, he
+considered it right to express his regret at the Senate’s decision.
+
+“You must not despair,” he said. “The petition to the Emperor may meet
+with success, and I hope---”
+
+“I’m not thinking of that,” she said, looking piteously at him with her
+wet, squinting eyes.
+
+“What is it, then?”
+
+“You have been to the hospital, and they have most likely told you about
+me--”
+
+“What of that? That is your affair,” said Nekhludoff coldly, and
+frowned. The cruel feeling of wounded pride that had quieted down rose
+with renewed force when she mentioned the hospital.
+
+“He, a man of the world, whom any girl of the best families would think
+it happiness to marry, offered himself as a husband to this woman,
+and she could not even wait, but began intriguing with the medical
+assistant,” thought he, with a look of hatred.
+
+“Here, sign this petition,” he said, taking a large envelope from his
+pocket, and laying the paper on the table. She wiped the tears with a
+corner of her kerchief, and asked what to write and where.
+
+He showed her, and she sat down and arranged the cuff of her right
+sleeve with her left hand; he stood behind her, and silently looked
+at her back, which shook with suppressed emotion, and evil and good
+feelings were fighting in his breast--feelings of wounded pride and of
+pity for her who was suffering--and the last feeling was victorious.
+
+He could not remember which came first; did the pity for her first enter
+his heart, or did he first remember his own sins--his own repulsive
+actions, the very same for which he was condemning her? Anyhow, he both
+felt himself guilty and pitied her.
+
+Having signed the petition and wiped her inky finger on her petticoat,
+she got up and looked at him.
+
+“Whatever happens, whatever comes of it, my resolve remains unchanged,”
+ said Nekhludoff. The thought that he had forgiven her heightened his
+feeling of pity and tenderness for her, and he wished to comfort her. “I
+will do what I have said; wherever they take you I shall be with you.”
+
+“What’s the use?” she interrupted hurriedly, though her whole face
+lighted up.
+
+“Think what you will want on the way--”
+
+“I don’t know of anything in particular, thank you.”
+
+The inspector came up, and without waiting for a remark from him
+Nekhludoff took leave, and went out with peace, joy, and love towards
+everybody in his heart such as he had never felt before. The certainty
+that no action of Maslova could change his love for her filled him with
+joy and raised him to a level which he had never before attained. Let
+her intrigue with the medical assistant; that was her business. He loved
+her not for his own but for her sake and for God’s.
+
+And this intrigue, for which Maslova was turned out of the hospital,
+and of which Nekhludoff believed she was really guilty, consisted of the
+following:
+
+Maslova was sent by the head nurse to get some herb tea from the
+dispensary at the end of the corridor, and there, all alone, she found
+the medical assistant, a tall man, with a blotchy face, who had for a
+long time been bothering her. In trying to get away from him Maslova
+gave him such a push that he knocked his head against a shelf, from
+which two bottles fell and broke. The head doctor, who was passing at
+that moment, heard the sound of breaking glass, and saw Maslova run out,
+quite red, and shouted to her:
+
+“Ah, my good woman, if you start intriguing here, I’ll send you about
+your business. What is the meaning of it?” he went on, addressing the
+medical assistant, and looking at him over his spectacles.
+
+The assistant smiled, and began to justify himself. The doctor gave no
+heed to him, but, lifting his head so that he now looked through his
+spectacles, he entered the ward. He told the inspector the same day to
+send another more sedate assistant-nurse in Maslova’s place. And this
+was her “intrigue” with the medical assistant.
+
+Being turned out for a love intrigue was particularly painful to
+Maslova, because the relations with men, which had long been repulsive
+to her, had become specially disgusting after meeting Nekhludoff. The
+thought that, judging her by her past and present position, every man,
+the blotchy assistant among them, considered he had a right to offend
+her, and was surprised at her refusal, hurt her deeply, and made her
+pity herself and brought tears to her eyes.
+
+When she went out to Nekhludoff this time she wished to clear herself of
+the false charge which she knew he would certainly have heard about. But
+when she began to justify herself she felt he did not believe her, and
+that her excuses would only strengthen his suspicions; tears choked her,
+and she was silent.
+
+Maslova still thought and continued to persuade herself that she had
+never forgiven him, and hated him, as she told him at their second
+interview, but in reality she loved him again, and loved him so that she
+did all he wished her to do; left off drinking, smoking, coquetting, and
+entered the hospital because she knew he wished it. And if every time he
+reminded her of it, she refused so decidedly to accept his sacrifice and
+marry him, it was because she liked repeating the proud words she had
+once uttered, and because she knew that a marriage with her would be a
+misfortune for him.
+
+She had resolutely made up her mind that she would not accept his
+sacrifice, and yet the thought that he despised her and believed that
+she still was what she had been, and did not notice the change that had
+taken place in her, was very painful. That he could still think she had
+done wrong while in the hospital tormented her more than the news that
+her sentence was confirmed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE ASTONISHING INSTITUTION CALLED CRIMINAL LAW.
+
+Maslova might be sent off with the first gang of prisoners, therefore
+Nekhludoff got ready for his departure. But there was so much to be done
+that he felt that he could not finish it, however much time he might
+have. It was quite different now from what it had been. Formerly he used
+to be obliged to look for an occupation, the interest of which always
+centred in one person, i.e., Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, and
+yet, though every interest of his life was thus centred, all these
+occupations were very wearisome. Now all his occupations related to
+other people and not to Dmitri Ivanovitch, and they were all interesting
+and attractive, and there was no end to them. Nor was this all. Formerly
+Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff’s occupations always made him feel vexed
+and irritable; now they produced a joyful state of mind. The business at
+present occupying Nekhludoff could be divided under three headings.
+He himself, with his usual pedantry, divided it in that way, and
+accordingly kept the papers referring to it in three different
+portfolios. The first referred to Maslova, and was chiefly that of
+taking steps to get her petition to the Emperor attended to, and
+preparing for her probable journey to Siberia.
+
+The second was about his estates. In Panovo he had given the land to
+the peasants on condition of their paying rent to be put to their own
+communal use. But he had to confirm this transaction by a legal deed,
+and to make his will, in accordance with it. In Kousminski the state of
+things was still as he had first arranged it, i.e., he was to receive
+the rent; but the terms had to be fixed, and also how much of the money
+he would use to live on, and how much he would leave for the peasants’
+use. As he did not know what his journey to Siberia would cost him, he
+could not decide to lose this revenue altogether, though he reduced the
+income from it by half.
+
+The third part of his business was to help the convicts, who applied
+more and more often to him. At first when he came in contact with
+the prisoners, and they appealed to him for help, he at once began
+interceding for them, hoping to lighten their fate, but he soon had so
+many applications that he felt the impossibility of attending to all of
+them, and that naturally led him to take up another piece of work, which
+at last roused his interest even more than the three first. This new
+part of his business was finding an answer to the following questions:
+What was this astonishing institution called criminal law, of which the
+results were that in the prison, with some of the inmates of which
+he had lately become acquainted, and in all those other places of
+confinement, from the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petersburg to the
+island of Sakhalin, hundreds and thousands of victims were pining? What
+did this strange criminal law exist for? How had it originated?
+
+From his personal relations with the prisoners, from notes by some of
+those in confinement, and by questioning the advocate and the prison
+priest, Nekhludoff came to the conclusion that the convicts, the
+so-called criminals, could be divided into five classes. The first were
+quite innocent people, condemned by judicial blunder. Such were the
+Menshoffs, supposed to be incendiaries, Maslova, and others. There
+were not many of these; according to the priest’s words, only seven per
+cent., but their condition excited particular interest.
+
+To the second class belong persons condemned for actions done under
+peculiar circumstances, i.e., in a fit of passion, jealousy, or
+drunkenness, circumstances under which those who judged them would
+surely have committed the same actions.
+
+The third class consisted of people punished for having committed
+actions which, according to their understanding, were quite natural,
+and even good, but which those other people, the men who made the laws,
+considered to be crimes. Such were the persons who sold spirits without
+a license, smugglers, those who gathered grass and wood on large estates
+and in the forests belonging to the Crown; the thieving miners; and
+those unbelieving people who robbed churches.
+
+To the fourth class belonged those who were imprisoned only because they
+stood morally higher than the average level of society. Such were the
+Sectarians, the Poles, the Circassians rebelling in order to regain
+their independence, the political prisoners, the Socialists, the
+strikers condemned for withstanding the authorities. There was,
+according to Nekhludoff’s observations, a very large percentage
+belonging to this class; among them some of the best of men.
+
+The fifth class consisted of persons who had been far more sinned
+against by society than they had sinned against it. These were
+castaways, stupefied by continual oppression and temptation, such as the
+boy who had stolen the rugs, and hundreds of others whom Nekhludoff had
+seen in the prison and out of it. The conditions under which they lived
+seemed to lead on systematically to those actions which are termed
+crimes. A great many thieves and murderers with whom he had lately come
+in contact, according to Nekhludoff’s estimate, belonged to this class.
+To this class Nekhludoff also reckoned those depraved, demoralised
+creatures whom the new school of criminology classify as the criminal
+type, and the existence of which is considered to be the chief proof
+of the necessity of criminal law and punishment. This demoralised,
+depraved, abnormal type was, according to Nekhludoff, exactly the same
+as that against whom society had sinned, only here society had sinned
+not directly against them, but against their parents and forefathers.
+
+Among this latter class Nekhludoff was specially struck by one Okhotin,
+an inveterate thief, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, brought up
+in a doss-house, who, up to the age of 30, had apparently never met with
+any one whose morality was above that of a policeman, and who had
+got into a band of thieves when quite young. He was gifted with an
+extraordinary sense of humour, by means of which he made himself very
+attractive. He asked Nekhludoff for protection, at the same time making
+fun of himself, the lawyers, the prison, and laws human and divine.
+
+Another was the handsome Fedoroff, who, with a band of robbers, of
+whom he was the chief, had robbed and murdered an old man, an official.
+Fedoroff was a peasant, whose father had been unlawfully deprived of his
+house, and who, later on, when serving as a soldier, had suffered much
+because he had fallen in love with an officer’s mistress. He had a
+fascinating, passionate nature, that longed for enjoyment at any cost.
+He had never met anybody who restrained himself for any cause whatever,
+and had never heard a word about any aim in life other than enjoyment.
+
+Nekhludoff distinctly saw that both these men were richly endowed by
+nature, but had been neglected and crippled like uncared-for plants.
+
+He had also met a tramp and a woman who had repelled him by their
+dulness and seeming cruelty, but even in them he could find no trace of
+the criminal type written about by the Italian school, but only saw in
+them people who were repulsive to him personally, just in the same way
+as some he had met outside the prison, in swallow-tail coats wearing
+epaulettes, or bedecked with lace. And so the investigation of the
+reasons why all these very different persons were put in prison, while
+others just like them were going about free and even judging them,
+formed a fourth task for Nekhludoff.
+
+He hoped to find an answer to this question in books, and bought all
+that referred to it. He got the works of Lombroso, Garofalo, Ferry,
+List, Maudsley, Tard, and read them carefully. But as he read he became
+more and more disappointed. It happened to him as it always happens
+to those who turn to science not in order to play a part in it, nor
+to write, nor to dispute, nor to teach, but simply for an answer to an
+every-day question of life. Science answered thousands of different very
+subtle and ingenious questions touching criminal law, but not the one
+he was trying to solve. He asked a very simple question: “Why, and
+with what right, do some people lock up, torment, exile, flog, and kill
+others, while they are themselves just like those whom they torment,
+flog, and kill?” And in answer he got deliberations as to whether human
+beings had free will or not. Whether signs of criminality could be
+detected by measuring the skulls or not. What part heredity played in
+crime. Whether immorality could be inherited. What madness is, what
+degeneration is, and what temperament is. How climate, food, ignorance,
+imitativeness, hypnotism, or passion act. What society is. What are its
+duties, etc., etc.
+
+These disquisitions reminded him of the answer he once got from a little
+boy whom he met coming home from school. Nekhludoff asked him if he had
+learned his spelling.
+
+“I have,” answered the boy.
+
+“Well, then, tell me, how do you spell ‘leg’?”
+
+“A dog’s leg, or what kind of leg?” the boy answered, with a sly look.
+
+Answers in the form of new questions, like the boy’s, was all Nekhludoff
+got in reply to his one primary question. He found much that was clever,
+learned much that was interesting, but what he did not find was an
+answer to the principal question: By what right some people punish
+others?
+
+Not only did he not find any answer, but all the arguments were brought
+forward in order to explain and vindicate punishment, the necessity of
+which was taken as an axiom.
+
+Nekhludoff read much, but only in snatches, and putting down his failure
+to this superficial way of reading, hoped to find the answer later on.
+He would not allow himself to believe in the truth of the answer which
+began, more and more often, to present itself to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF’S SISTER AND HER HUSBAND.
+
+The gang of prisoners, with Maslova among them, was to start on the 5th
+July. Nekhludoff arranged to start on the same day.
+
+The day before, Nekhludoff’s sister and her husband came to town to see
+him.
+
+Nekhludoff’s sister, Nathalie Ivanovna Rogozhinsky, was 10 years older
+than her brother. She had been very fond of him when he was a boy, and
+later on, just before her marriage, they grew very close to each other,
+as if they were equals, she being a young woman of 25, he a lad of 15.
+At that time she was in love with his friend, Nikolenka Irtenieff, since
+dead. They both loved Nikolenka, and loved in him and in themselves that
+which is good, and which unites all men. Since then they had both been
+depraved, he by military service and a vicious life, she by marriage
+with a man whom she loved with a sensual love, who did not care for the
+things that had once been so dear and holy to her and to her brother,
+nor even understand the meaning of those aspirations towards moral
+perfection and the service of mankind, which once constituted her life,
+and put them down to ambition and the wish to show off; that being the
+only explanation comprehensible to him.
+
+Nathalie’s husband had been a man without a name and without means, but
+cleverly steering towards Liberalism or Conservatism, according to which
+best suited his purpose, he managed to make a comparatively brilliant
+judicial career. Some peculiarity which made him attractive to women
+assisted him when he was no longer in his first youth. While travelling
+abroad he made Nekhludoff’s acquaintance, and managed to make Nathalie,
+who was also no longer a girl, fall in love with him, rather against her
+mother’s wishes who considered a marriage with him to be a misalliance
+for her daughter. Nekhludoff, though he tried to hide it from himself,
+though he fought against it, hated his brother-in-law.
+
+Nekhludoff had a strong antipathy towards him because of the vulgarity
+of his feelings, his assurance and narrowness, but chiefly because of
+Nathalie, who managed to love him in spite of the narrowness of his
+nature, and loved him so selfishly, so sensually, and stifled for his
+sake all the good that had been in her.
+
+It always hurt Nekhludoff to think of Nathalie as the wife of that
+hairy, self-assured man with the shiny, bald patch on his head. He could
+not even master a feeling of revulsion towards their children, and when
+he heard that she was again going to have a baby, he felt something like
+sorrow that she had once more been infected with something bad by this
+man who was so foreign to him. The Rogozhinskys had come to Moscow
+alone, having left their two children--a boy and a girl--at home, and
+stopped in the best rooms of the best hotel. Nathalie at once went to
+her mother’s old house, but hearing from Agraphena Petrovna that her
+brother had left, and was living in a lodging-house, she drove there.
+The dirty servant met her in the stuffy passage, dark but for a lamp
+which burnt there all day. He told her that the Prince was not in.
+
+Nathalie asked to be shown into his rooms, as she wished to leave a note
+for him, and the man took her up.
+
+Nathalie carefully examined her brother’s two little rooms. She noticed
+in everything the love of cleanliness and order she knew so well in
+him, and was struck by the novel simplicity of the surroundings. On his
+writing-table she saw the paper-weight with the bronze dog on the top
+which she remembered; the tidy way in which his different portfolios and
+writing utensils were placed on the table was also familiar, and so was
+the large, crooked ivory paper knife which marked the place in a French
+book by Tard, which lay with other volumes on punishment and a book
+in English by Henry George. She sat down at the table and wrote a note
+asking him to be sure to come that same day, and shaking her head in
+surprise at what she saw, she returned to her hotel.
+
+Two questions regarding her brother now interested Nathalie: his
+marriage with Katusha, which she had heard spoken about in their
+town--for everybody was speaking about it--and his giving away the land
+to the peasants, which was also known, and struck many as something of
+a political nature, and dangerous. The marriage with Katusha pleased
+her in a way. She admired that resoluteness which was so like him and
+herself as they used to be in those happy times before her marriage. And
+yet she was horrified when she thought her brother was going to marry
+such a dreadful woman. The latter was the stronger feeling of the two,
+and she decided to use all her influence to prevent him from doing it,
+though she knew how difficult this would be.
+
+The other matter, the giving up of the land to the peasants, did not
+touch her so nearly, but her husband was very indignant about it, and
+expected her to influence her brother against it.
+
+Rogozhinsky said that such an action was the height of inconsistency,
+flightiness, and pride, the only possible explanation of which was the
+desire to appear original, to brag, to make one’s self talked about.
+
+“What sense could there be in letting the land to the peasants, on
+condition that they pay the rent to themselves?” he said. “If he was
+resolved to do such a thing, why not sell the land to them through the
+Peasants’ Bank? There might have been some sense in that. In fact, this
+act verges on insanity.”
+
+And Rogozhinsky began seriously thinking about putting Nekhludoff under
+guardianship, and demanded of his wife that she should speak seriously
+to her brother about his curious intention.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF’S ANARCHISM.
+
+As soon as Nekhludoff returned that evening and saw his sister’s note
+on the table he started to go and see her. He found Nathalie alone,
+her husband having gone to take a rest in the next room. She wore a
+tightly-fitting black silk dress, with a red bow in front. Her black
+hair was crimped and arranged according to the latest fashion.
+
+The pains she took to appear young, for the sake of her husband, whose
+equal she was in years, were very obvious.
+
+When she saw her brother she jumped up and hurried towards him, with her
+silk dress rustling. They kissed, and looked smilingly at each other.
+There passed between them that mysterious exchange of looks, full of
+meaning, in which all was true, and which cannot be expressed in words.
+Then came words which were not true. They had not met since their
+mother’s death.
+
+“You have grown stouter and younger,” he said, and her lips puckered up
+with pleasure.
+
+“And you have grown thinner.”
+
+“Well, and how is your husband?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“He is taking a rest; he did not sleep all night.” There was much to
+say, but it was not said in words; only their looks expressed what their
+words failed to say.
+
+“I went to see you.”
+
+“Yes, I know. I moved because the house is too big for me. I was lonely
+there, and dull. I want nothing of all that is there, so that you had
+better take it all--the furniture, I mean, and things.”
+
+“Yes, Agraphena Petrovna told me. I went there. Thanks, very much.
+But--”
+
+At this moment the hotel waiter brought in a silver tea-set. While he
+set the table they were silent. Then Nathalie sat down at the table and
+made the tea, still in silence. Nekhludoff also said nothing.
+
+At last Nathalie began resolutely. “Well, Dmitri, I know all about it.”
+ And she looked at him.
+
+“What of that? l am glad you know.”
+
+“How can you hope to reform her after the life she has led?” she asked.
+
+He sat quite straight on a small chair, and listened attentively, trying
+to understand her and to answer rightly. The state of mind called forth
+in him by his last interview with Maslova still filled his soul with
+quiet joy and good will to all men.
+
+“It is not her but myself I wish to reform,” he replied.
+
+Nathalie sighed.
+
+“There are other means besides marriage to do that.”
+
+“But I think it is the best. Besides, it leads me into that world in
+which I can be of use.”
+
+“I cannot believe you will be happy,” said Nathalie.
+
+“It’s not my happiness that is the point.”
+
+“Of course, but if she has a heart she cannot be happy--cannot even wish
+it.”
+
+“She does not wish it.”
+
+“I understand; but life--”
+
+“Yes--life?”
+
+“Demands something different.”
+
+“It demands nothing but that we should do what is right,” said
+Nekhludoff, looking into her face, still handsome, though slightly
+wrinkled round eyes and mouth.
+
+“I do not understand,” she said, and sighed.
+
+“Poor darling; how could she change so?” he thought, calling back to his
+mind Nathalie as she had been before her marriage, and feeling towards
+her a tenderness woven out of innumerable memories of childhood. At that
+moment Rogozhinsky entered the room, with head thrown back and expanded
+chest, and stepping lightly and softly in his usual manner, his
+spectacles, his bald patch, and his black beard all glistening.
+
+“How do you do? How do you do?” he said, laying an unnatural and
+intentional stress on his words. (Though, soon after the marriage,
+they had tried to be more familiar with each other, they had never
+succeeded.)
+
+They shook hands, and Rogozhinsky sank softly into an easy-chair.
+
+“Am I not interrupting your conversation?”
+
+“No, I do not wish to hide what I am saying or doing from any one.”
+
+As soon as Nekhludoff saw the hairy hands, and heard the patronising,
+self-assured tones, his meekness left him in a moment.
+
+“Yes, we were talking about his intentions,” said Nathalie. “Shall I
+give you a cup of tea?” she added, taking the teapot.
+
+“Yes, please. What particular intentions do you mean?”
+
+“That of going to Siberia with the gang of prisoners, among whom is the
+woman I consider myself to have wronged,” uttered Nekhludoff.
+
+“I hear not only to accompany her, but more than that.”
+
+“Yes, and to marry her if she wishes it.”
+
+“Dear me! But if you do not object I should like to ask you to explain
+your motives. I do not understand them.”
+
+“My motives are that this woman--that this woman’s first step on her way
+to degradation--” Nekhludoff got angry with himself, and was unable to
+find the right expression. “My motives are that I am the guilty one, and
+she gets the punishment.”
+
+“If she is being punished she cannot be innocent, either.”
+
+“She is quite innocent.” And Nekhludoff related the whole incident with
+unnecessary warmth.
+
+“Yes, that was a case of carelessness on the part of the president, the
+result of which was a thoughtless answer on the part of the jury; but
+there is the Senate for cases like that.”
+
+“The Senate has rejected the appeal.”
+
+“Well, if the Senate has rejected it, there cannot have been sufficient
+reasons for an appeal,” said Rogozhinsky, evidently sharing the
+prevailing opinion that truth is the product of judicial decrees. “The
+Senate cannot enter into the question on its merits. If there is a real
+mistake, the Emperor should be petitioned.”
+
+“That has been done, but there is no probability of success. They will
+apply to the Department of the Ministry, the Department will consult the
+Senate, the Senate will repeat its decision, and, as usual, the innocent
+will get punished.”
+
+“In the first place, the Department of the Ministry won’t consult the
+Senate,” said Rogozhinsky, with a condescending smile; “it will give
+orders for the original deeds to be sent from the Law Court, and if
+it discovers a mistake it will decide accordingly. And, secondly, the
+innocent are never punished, or at least in very rare, exceptional
+cases. It is the guilty who are punished,” Rogozhinsky said
+deliberately, and smiled self-complacently.
+
+“And I have become fully convinced that most of those condemned by law
+are innocent.”
+
+“How’s that?”
+
+“Innocent in the literal sense. Just as this woman is innocent of
+poisoning any one; as innocent as a peasant I have just come to know, of
+the murder he never committed; as a mother and son who were on the point
+of being condemned for incendiarism, which was committed by the owner of
+the house that was set on fire.”
+
+“Well, of course there always have been and always will be judicial
+errors. Human institutions cannot be perfect.”
+
+“And, besides, there are a great many people convicted who are innocent
+of doing anything considered wrong by the society they have grown up
+in.”
+
+“Excuse me, this is not so; every thief knows that stealing is wrong,
+and that we should not steal; that it is immoral,” said Rogozhinsky,
+with his quiet, self-assured, slightly contemptuous smile, which
+specially irritated Nekhludoff.
+
+“No, he does not know it; they say to him ‘don’t steal,’ and he knows
+that the master of the factory steals his labour by keeping back his
+wages; that the Government, with its officials, robs him continually by
+taxation.”
+
+“Why, this is anarchism,” Rogozhinsky said, quietly defining his
+brother-in-law’s words.
+
+“I don’t know what it is; I am only telling you the truth,” Nekhludoff
+continued. “He knows that the Government is robbing him, knows that we
+landed proprietors have robbed him long since, robbed him of the land
+which should be the common property of all, and then, if he picks up dry
+wood to light his fire on that land stolen from him, we put him in jail,
+and try to persuade him that he is a thief. Of course he knows that not
+he but those who robbed him of the land are thieves, and that to get any
+restitution of what has been robbed is his duty towards his family.”
+
+“I don’t understand, or if I do I cannot agree with it. The land must
+be somebody’s property,” began Rogozhinsky quietly, and, convinced that
+Nekhludoff was a Socialist, and that Socialism demands that all the land
+should be divided equally, that such a division would be very foolish,
+and that he could easily prove it to be so, he said. “If you divided
+it equally to-day, it would to-morrow be again in the hands of the most
+industrious and clever.”
+
+“Nobody is thinking of dividing the land equally. The land must not
+be anybody’s property; must not be a thing to be bought and sold or
+rented.”
+
+“The rights of property are inborn in man; without them the cultivation
+of land would present no interest. Destroy the rights of property and
+we lapse into barbarism.” Rogozhinsky uttered this authoritatively,
+repeating the usual argument in favour of private ownership of land
+which is supposed to be irrefutable, based on the assumption that
+people’s desire to possess land proves that they need it.
+
+“On the contrary, only when the land is nobody’s property will it cease
+to lie idle, as it does now, while the landlords, like dogs in the
+manger, unable themselves to put it to use, will not let those use it
+who are able.”
+
+“But, Dmitri Ivanovitch, what you are saying is sheer madness. Is it
+possible to abolish property in land in our age? I know it is your old
+hobby. But allow me to tell you straight,” and Rogozhinsky grew pale,
+and his voice trembled. It was evident that this question touched him
+very nearly. “I should advise you to consider this question well before
+attempting to solve it practically.”
+
+“Are you speaking of my personal affairs?”
+
+“Yes, I hold that we who are placed in special circumstances should
+bear the responsibilities which spring from those circumstances, should
+uphold the conditions in which we were born, and which we have
+inherited from our predecessors, and which we ought to pass on to our
+descendants.”
+
+“I consider it my duty--”
+
+“Wait a bit,” said Rogozhinsky, not permitting the interruption. “I am
+not speaking for myself or my children. The position of my children is
+assured, and I earn enough for us to live comfortably, and I expect my
+children will live so too, so that my interest in your action--which,
+if you will allow me to say so, is not well considered--is not based
+on personal motives; it is on principle that I cannot agree with you. I
+should advise you to think it well over, to read---?”
+
+“Please allow me to settle my affairs, and to choose what to read and
+what not to read, myself,” said Nekhludoff, turning pale. Feeling
+his hands grow cold, and that he was no longer master of himself, he
+stopped, and began drinking his tea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE AIM OF THE LAW.
+
+“Well, and how are the children?” Nekhludoff asked his sister when he
+was calmer. The sister told him about the children. She said they were
+staying with their grandmother (their father’s mother), and, pleased
+that his dispute with her husband had come to an end, she began telling
+him how her children played that they were travelling, just as he used
+to do with his three dolls, one of them a negro and another which he
+called the French lady.
+
+“Can you really remember it all?” said Nekhludoff, smiling.
+
+“Yes, and just fancy, they play in the very same way.”
+
+The unpleasant conversation had been brought to an end, and Nathalie was
+quieter, but she did not care to talk in her husband’s presence of what
+could be comprehensible only to her brother, so, wishing to start a
+general conversation, she began talking about the sorrow of Kamenski’s
+mother at losing her only son, who had fallen in a duel, for this
+Petersburg topic of the day had now reached Moscow. Rogozhinsky
+expressed disapproval at the state of things that excluded murder in a
+duel from the ordinary criminal offences. This remark evoked a rejoinder
+from Nekhludoff, and a new dispute arose on the subject. Nothing was
+fully explained, neither of the antagonists expressed all he had in
+his mind, each keeping to his conviction, which condemned the other.
+Rogozhinsky felt that Nekhludoff condemned him and despised his
+activity, and he wished to show him the injustice of his opinions.
+
+Nekhludoff, on the other hand, felt provoked by his brother-in-law’s
+interference in his affairs concerning the land. And knowing in his
+heart of hearts that his sister, her husband, and their children, as his
+heirs, had a right to do so, was indignant that this narrow-minded
+man persisted with calm assurance to regard as just and lawful what
+Nekhludoff no longer doubted was folly and crime.
+
+This man’s arrogance annoyed Nekhludoff.
+
+“What could the law do?” he asked.
+
+“It could sentence one of the two duellists to the mines like an
+ordinary murderer.”
+
+Nekhludoff’s hands grew cold.
+
+“Well, and what good would that be?” he asked, hotly.
+
+“It would be just.”
+
+“As if justice were the aim of the law,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“What else?”
+
+“The upholding of class interests! I think the law is only an instrument
+for upholding the existing order of things beneficial to our class.”
+
+“This is a perfectly new view,” said Rogozhinsky with a quiet smile;
+“the law is generally supposed to have a totally different aim.”
+
+“Yes, so it has in theory but not in practice, as I have found out. The
+law aims only at preserving the present state of things, and therefore
+it persecutes and executes those who stand above the ordinary level and
+wish to raise it--the so-called political prisoners, as well as those
+who are below the average--the so-called criminal types.”
+
+“I do not agree with you. In the first place, I cannot admit that the
+criminals classed as political are punished because they are above the
+average. In most cases they are the refuse of society, just as much
+perverted, though in a different way, as the criminal types whom you
+consider below the average.”
+
+“But I happen to know men who are morally far above their judges; all
+the sectarians are moral, from--”
+
+But Rogozhinsky, a man not accustomed to be interrupted when he spoke,
+did not listen to Nekhludoff, but went on talking at the same time,
+thereby irritating him still more.
+
+“Nor can I admit that the object of the law is the upholding of the
+present state of things. The law aims at reforming--”
+
+“A nice kind of reform, in a prison!” Nekhludoff put in.
+
+“Or removing,” Rogozhinsky went on, persistently, “the perverted and
+brutalised persons that threaten society.”
+
+“That’s just what it doesn’t do. Society has not the means of doing
+either the one thing or the other.”
+
+“How is that? I don’t understand,” said Rogozhinsky with a forced smile.
+
+“I mean that only two reasonable kinds of punishment exist. Those used
+in the old days: corporal and capital punishment, which, as human nature
+gradually softens, come more and more into disuse,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“There, now, this is quite new and very strange to hear from your lips.”
+
+“Yes, it is reasonable to hurt a man so that he should not do in future
+what he is hurt for doing, and it is also quite reasonable to cut a
+man’s head off when he is injurious or dangerous to society. These
+punishments have a reasonable meaning. But what sense is there in
+locking up in a prison a man perverted by want of occupation and bad
+example; to place him in a position where he is provided for, where
+laziness is imposed on him, and where he is in company with the most
+perverted of men? What reason is there to take a man at public cost (it
+comes to more than 500 roubles per head) from the Toula to the Irkoatsk
+government, or from Koursk--”
+
+“Yes, but all the same, people are afraid of those journeys at public
+cost, and if it were not for such journeys and the prisons, you and I
+would not be sitting here as we are.”
+
+“The prisons cannot insure our safety, because these people do not
+stay there for ever, but are set free again. On the contrary, in those
+establishments men are brought to the greatest vice and degradation, so
+that the danger is increased.”
+
+“You mean to say that the penitentiary system should be improved.”
+
+“It cannot be improved. Improved prisons would cost more than all that
+is being now spent on the people’s education, and would lay a still
+heavier burden on the people.”
+
+“The shortcomings of the penitentiary system in nowise invalidate
+the law itself,” Rogozhinsky continued again, without heeding his
+brother-in-law.
+
+“There is no remedy for these shortcomings,” said Nekhludoff, raising
+his voice.
+
+“What of that? Shall we therefore go and kill, or, as a certain
+statesman proposed, go putting out people’s eyes?” Rogozhinsky remarked.
+
+“Yes; that would be cruel, but it would be effective. What is done
+now is cruel, and not only ineffective, but so stupid that one cannot
+understand how people in their senses can take part in so absurd and
+cruel a business as criminal law.”
+
+“But I happen to take part in it,” said Rogozhinsky, growing pale.
+
+“That is your business. But to me it is incomprehensible.”
+
+“I think there are a good many things incomprehensible to you,” said
+Rogozhinsky, with a trembling voice.
+
+“I have seen how one public prosecutor did his very best to get an
+unfortunate boy condemned, who could have evoked nothing but sympathy in
+an unperverted mind. I know how another cross-examined a sectarian and
+put down the reading of the Gospels as a criminal offence; in fact, the
+whole business of the Law Courts consists in senseless and cruel actions
+of that sort.”
+
+“I should not serve if I thought so,” said Rogozhinsky, rising.
+
+Nekhludoff noticed a peculiar glitter under his brother-in-law’s
+spectacles. “Can it be tears?” he thought. And they were really tears
+of injured pride. Rogozhinsky went up to the window, got out his
+handkerchief, coughed and rubbed his spectacles, took them off, and
+wiped his eyes.
+
+When he returned to the sofa he lit a cigar, and did not speak any more.
+
+Nekhludoff felt pained and ashamed of having offended his brother-in-law
+and his sister to such a degree, especially as he was going away the
+next day.
+
+He parted with them in confusion, and drove home.
+
+“All I have said may be true--anyhow he did not reply. But it was not
+said in the right way. How little I must have changed if I could be
+carried away by ill-feeling to such an extent as to hurt and wound poor
+Nathalie in such a way!” he thought.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE PRISONERS START FOR SIBERIA.
+
+The gang of prisoners, among whom was Maslova, was to leave Moscow by
+rail at 3 p.m.; therefore, in order to see the gang start, and walk
+to the station with the prisoners Nekhludoff meant to reach the prison
+before 12 o’clock.
+
+The night before, as he was packing up and sorting his papers, he came
+upon his diary, and read some bits here and there. The last bit written
+before he left for Petersburg ran thus: “Katusha does not wish to accept
+my sacrifice; she wishes to make a sacrifice herself. She has conquered,
+and so have I. She makes me happy by the inner change, which seems
+to me, though I fear to believe it, to be going on in her. I fear to
+believe it, yet she seems to be coming back to life.” Then further on
+he read. “I have lived through something very hard and very joyful. I
+learnt that she has behaved very badly in the hospital, and I suddenly
+felt great pain. I never expected that it could be so painful. I spoke
+to her with loathing and hatred, then all of a sudden I called to mind
+how many times I have been, and even still am, though but in thought,
+guilty of the thing that I hated her for, and immediately I became
+disgusting to myself, and pitied her and felt happy again. If only we
+could manage to see the beam in our own eye in time, how kind we
+should be.” Then he wrote: “I have been to see Nathalie, and again
+self-satisfaction made me unkind and spiteful, and a heavy feeling
+remains. Well, what is to be done? Tomorrow a new life will begin. A
+final good-bye to the old! Many new impressions have accumulated, but I
+cannot yet bring them to unity.”
+
+When he awoke the next morning Nekhludoff’s first feeling was regret
+about the affair between him and his brother-in-law.
+
+“I cannot go away like this,” he thought. “I must go and make it up with
+them.” But when he looked at his watch he saw that he had not time to
+go, but must hurry so as not to be too late for the departure of the
+gang. He hastily got everything ready, and sent the things to the
+station with a servant and Taras, Theodosia’s husband, who was going
+with them. Then he took the first isvostchik he could find and drove off
+to the prison.
+
+The prisoners’ train started two hours before the train by which he was
+going, so Nekhludoff paid his bill in the lodgings and left for good.
+
+It was July, and the weather was unbearably hot. From the stones, the
+walls, the iron of the roofs, which the sultry night had not cooled, the
+heat streamed into the motionless air. When at rare intervals a slight
+breeze did arise, it brought but a whiff of hot air filled with dust and
+smelling of oil paint.
+
+There were few people in the streets, and those who were out tried to
+keep on the shady side. Only the sunburnt peasants, with their bronzed
+faces and bark shoes on their feet, who were mending the road, sat
+hammering the stones into the burning sand in the sun; while the
+policemen, in their holland blouses, with revolvers fastened with
+orange cords, stood melancholy and depressed in the middle of the road,
+changing from foot to foot; and the tramcars, the horses of which wore
+holland hoods on their heads, with slits for the ears, kept passing up
+and down the sunny road with ringing bells.
+
+When Nekhludoff drove up to the prison the gang had not left the yard.
+The work of delivering and receiving the prisoners that had commenced
+at 4 A.M. was still going on. The gang was to consist of 623 men and 64
+women; they had all to be received according to the registry lists.
+The sick and the weak to be sorted out, and all to be delivered to the
+convoy. The new inspector, with two assistants, the doctor and medical
+assistant, the officer of the convoy, and the clerk, were sitting in the
+prison yard at a table covered with writing materials and papers, which
+was placed in the shade of a wall. They called the prisoners one by one,
+examined and questioned them, and took notes. The rays of the sun had
+gradually reached the table, and it was growing very hot and oppressive
+for want of air and because of the breathing crowd of prisoners that
+stood close by.
+
+“Good gracious, will this never come to an end!” the convoy officer,
+a tall, fat, red-faced man with high shoulders, who kept puffing the
+smoke, of his cigarette into his thick moustache, asked, as he drew in
+a long puff. “You are killing me. From where have you got them all? Are
+there many more?” the clerk inquired.
+
+“Twenty-four men and the women.”
+
+“What are you standing there for? Come on,” shouted the convoy officer
+to the prisoners who had not yet passed the revision, and who stood
+crowded one behind the other. The prisoners had been standing there more
+than three hours, packed in rows in the full sunlight, waiting their
+turns.
+
+While this was going on in the prison yard, outside the gate, besides
+the sentinel who stood there as usual with a gun, were drawn up about 20
+carts, to carry the luggage of the prisoners and such prisoners as were
+too weak to walk, and a group of relatives and friends waiting to see
+the prisoners as they came out and to exchange a few words if a chance
+presented itself and to give them a few things. Nekhludoff took his
+place among the group. He had stood there about an hour when the
+clanking of chains, the noise of footsteps, authoritative voices, the
+sound of coughing, and the low murmur of a large crowd became audible.
+
+This continued for about five minutes, during which several jailers went
+in and out of the gateway. At last the word of command was given. The
+gate opened with a thundering noise, the clattering of the chains became
+louder, and the convoy soldiers, dressed in white blouses and carrying
+guns, came out into the street and took their places in a large, exact
+circle in front of the gate; this was evidently a usual, often-practised
+manoeuvre. Then another command was given, and the prisoners began
+coming out in couples, with flat, pancake-shaped caps on their shaved
+heads and sacks over their shoulders, dragging their chained legs and
+swinging one arm, while the other held up a sack.
+
+First came the men condemned to hard labour, all dressed alike in grey
+trousers and cloaks with marks on the back. All of them--young and old,
+thin and fat, pale and red, dark and bearded and beardless, Russians,
+Tartars, and Jews--came out, clattering with their chains and briskly
+swinging their arms as if prepared to go a long distance, but stopped
+after having taken ten steps, and obediently took their places behind
+each other, four abreast. Then without interval streamed out more shaved
+men, dressed in the same manner but with chains only on their legs.
+These were condemned to exile. They came out as briskly and stopped as
+suddenly, taking their places four in a row. Then came those exiled by
+their Communes. Then the women in the same order, first those condemned
+to hard labour, with grey cloaks and kerchiefs; then the exiled women,
+and those following their husbands of their own free will, dressed in
+their own town or village clothing. Some of the women were carrying
+babies wrapped in the fronts of their grey cloaks.
+
+With the women came the children, boys and girls, who, like colts in a
+herd of horses, pressed in among the prisoners.
+
+The men took their places silently, only coughing now and then, or
+making short remarks.
+
+The women talked without intermission. Nekhludoff thought he saw Maslova
+as they were coming out, but she was at once lost in the large crowd,
+and he could only see grey creatures, seemingly devoid of all that was
+human, or at any rate of all that was womanly, with sacks on their backs
+and children round them, taking their places behind the men.
+
+Though all the prisoners had been counted inside the prison walls, the
+convoy counted them again, comparing the numbers with the list. This
+took very long, especially as some of the prisoners moved and changed
+places, which confused the convoy.
+
+The convoy soldiers shouted and pushed the prisoners (who complied
+obediently, but angrily) and counted them over again. When all had
+been counted, the convoy officer gave a command, and the crowd became
+agitated. The weak men and women and children rushed, racing each
+other, towards the carts, and began placing their bags on the carts
+and climbing up themselves. Women with crying babies, merry children
+quarrelling for places, and dull, careworn prisoners got into the carts.
+
+Several of the prisoners took off their caps and came up to the convoy
+officer with some request. Nekhludoff found out later that they were
+asking for places on the carts. Nekhludoff saw how the officer, without
+looking at the prisoners, drew in a whiff from his cigarette, and then
+suddenly waved his short arm in front of one of the prisoners, who
+quickly drew his shaved head back between his shoulders as if afraid of
+a blow, and sprang back.
+
+“I will give you a lift such that you’ll remember. You’ll get there on
+foot right enough,” shouted the officer. Only one of the men was granted
+his request--an old man with chains on his legs; and Nekhludoff saw the
+old man take off his pancake-shaped cap, and go up to the cart crossing
+himself. He could not manage to get up on the cart because of the chains
+that prevented his lifting his old legs, and a woman who was sitting in
+the cart at last pulled him in by the arm.
+
+When all the sacks were in the carts, and those who were allowed to get
+in were seated, the officer took off his cap, wiped his forehead, his
+bald head and fat, red neck, and crossed himself.
+
+“March,” commanded the officer. The soldiers’ guns gave a click; the
+prisoners took off their caps and crossed themselves, those who were
+seeing them off shouted something, the prisoners shouted in answer, a
+row arose among the women, and the gang, surrounded by the soldiers in
+their white blouses, moved forward, raising the dust with their chained
+feet. The soldiers went in front; then came the convicts condemned to
+hard labour, clattering with their chains; then the exiled and those
+exiled by the Communes, chained in couples by their wrists; then the
+women. After them, on the carts loaded with sacks, came the weak. High
+up on one of the carts sat a woman closely wrapped up, and she kept
+shrieking and sobbing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+NOT MEN BUT STRANGE AND TERRIBLE CREATURES?
+
+The procession was such a long one that the carts with the luggage and
+the weak started only when those in front were already out of sight.
+When the last of the carts moved, Nekhludoff got into the trap that
+stood waiting for him and told the isvostchik to catch up the prisoners
+in front, so that he could see if he knew any of the men in the gang,
+and then try and find out Maslova among the women and ask her if she had
+received the things he sent.
+
+It was very hot, and a cloud of dust that was raised by a thousand
+tramping feet stood all the time over the gang that was moving down
+the middle of the street. The prisoners were walking quickly, and the
+slow-going isvostchik’s horse was some time in catching them up. Row
+upon row they passed, those strange and terrible-looking creatures, none
+of whom Nekhludoff knew.
+
+On they went, all dressed alike, moving a thousand feet all shod alike,
+swinging their free arms as if to keep up their spirits. There were so
+many of them, they all looked so much alike, and they were all placed in
+such unusual, peculiar circumstances, that they seemed to Nekhludoff
+to be not men but some sort of strange and terrible creatures. This
+impression passed when he recognised in the crowd of convicts the
+murderer Federoff, and among the exiles Okhotin the wit, and another
+tramp who had appealed to him for assistance. Almost all the prisoners
+turned and looked at the trap that was passing them and at the gentleman
+inside. Federoff tossed his head backwards as a sign that he had
+recognised Nekhludoff, Okhotin winked, but neither of them bowed,
+considering it not the thing.
+
+As soon as Nekhludoff came up to the women he saw Maslova; she was in
+the second row. The first in the row was a short-legged, black-eyed,
+hideous woman, who had her cloak tucked up in her girdle. This was
+Koroshavka. The next was a pregnant woman, who dragged herself along
+with difficulty. The third was Maslova; she was carrying her sack on
+her shoulder, and looking straight before her. Her face looked calm
+and determined. The fourth in the row was a young, lovely woman who was
+walking along briskly, dressed in a short cloak, her kerchief tied in
+peasant fashion. This was Theodosia.
+
+Nekhludoff got down and approached the women, meaning to ask Maslova if
+she had got the things he had sent her, and how she was feeling, but the
+convoy sergeant, who was walking on that side, noticed him at once, and
+ran towards him.
+
+“You must not do that, sir. It is against the regulations to approach
+the gang,” shouted the sergeant as he came up.
+
+But when he recognised Nekhludoff (every one in the prison knew
+Nekhludoff) the sergeant raised his fingers to his cap, and, stopping
+in front of Nekhludoff, said: “Not now; wait till we get to the railway
+station; here it is not allowed. Don’t lag behind; march!” he shouted to
+the convicts, and putting on a brisk air, he ran back to his place at a
+trot, in spite of the heat and the elegant new boots on his feet.
+
+Nekhludoff went on to the pavement and told the isvostchik to follow
+him; himself walking, so as to keep the convicts in sight. Wherever the
+gang passed it attracted attention mixed with horror and compassion.
+Those who drove past leaned out of the vehicles and followed the
+prisoners with their eyes. Those on foot stopped and looked with fear
+and surprise at the terrible sight. Some came up and gave alms to the
+prisoners. The alms were received by the convoy. Some, as if they were
+hypnotised, followed the gang, but then stopped, shook their heads, and
+followed the prisoners only with their eyes. Everywhere the people
+came out of the gates and doors, and called others to come out, too,
+or leaned out of the windows looking, silent and immovable, at the
+frightful procession. At a cross-road a fine carriage was stopped by the
+gang. A fat coachman, with a shiny face and two rows of buttons on his
+back, sat on the box; a married couple sat facing the horses, the wife,
+a pale, thin woman, with a light-coloured bonnet on her head and a
+bright sunshade in her hand, the husband with a top-hat and a well-cut
+light-coloured overcoat. On the seat in front sat their children--a
+well-dressed little girl, with loose, fair hair, and as fresh as a
+flower, who also held a bright parasol, and an eight-year-old boy, with
+a long, thin neck and sharp collarbones, a sailor hat with long ribbons
+on his head.
+
+The father was angrily scolding the coachman because he had not passed
+in front of the gang when he had a chance, and the mother frowned and
+half closed her eyes with a look of disgust, shielding herself from the
+dust and the sun with her silk sunshade, which she held close to her
+face.
+
+The fat coachman frowned angrily at the unjust rebukes of his
+master--who had himself given the order to drive along that street--and
+with difficulty held in the glossy, black horses, foaming under their
+harness and impatient to go on.
+
+The policeman wished with all his soul to please the owner of the fine
+equipage by stopping the gang, yet felt that the dismal solemnity of
+the procession could not be broken even for so rich a gentleman. He only
+raised his fingers to his cap to show his respect for riches, and looked
+severely at the prisoners as if promising in any case to protect the
+owners of the carriage from them. So the carriage had to wait till the
+whole of the procession had passed, and could only move on when the last
+of the carts, laden with sacks and prisoners, rattled by. The hysterical
+woman who sat on one of the carts, and had grown calm, again began
+shrieking and sobbing when she saw the elegant carriage. Then the
+coachman tightened the reins with a slight touch, and the black
+trotters, their shoes ringing against the paving stones, drew the
+carriage, softly swaying on its rubber tires, towards the country
+house where the husband, the wife, the girl, and the boy with the sharp
+collar-bones were going to amuse themselves. Neither the father nor the
+mother gave the girl and boy any explanation of what they had seen, so
+that the children had themselves to find out the meaning of this curious
+sight. The girl, taking the expression of her father’s and mother’s
+faces into consideration, solved the problem by assuming that these
+people were quite another kind of men and women than her father and
+mother and their acquaintances, that they were bad people, and that they
+had therefore to be treated in the manner they were being treated.
+
+Therefore the girl felt nothing but fear, and was glad when she could no
+longer see those people.
+
+But the boy with the long, thin neck, who looked at the procession
+of prisoners without taking his eyes off them, solved the question
+differently.
+
+He still knew, firmly and without any doubt, for he had it from God,
+that these people were just the same kind of people as he was, and like
+all other people, and therefore some one had done these people some
+wrong, something that ought not to have been done, and he was sorry for
+them, and felt no horror either of those who were shaved and chained or
+of those who had shaved and chained them. And so the boy’s lips pouted
+more and more, and he made greater and greater efforts not to cry,
+thinking it a shame to cry in such a case.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE LORD.
+
+Nekhludoff kept up with the quick pace of the convicts. Though lightly
+clothed he felt dreadfully hot, and it was hard to breathe in the
+stifling, motionless, burning air filled with dust.
+
+When he had walked about a quarter of a mile he again got into the trap,
+but it felt still hotter in the middle of the street. He tried to recall
+last night’s conversation with his brother-in-law, but the recollections
+no longer excited him as they had done in the morning. They were dulled
+by the impressions made by the starting and procession of the gang, and
+chiefly by the intolerable heat.
+
+On the pavement, in the shade of some trees overhanging a fence, he saw
+two schoolboys standing over a kneeling man who sold ices. One of the
+boys was already sucking a pink spoon and enjoying his ices, the other
+was waiting for a glass that was being filled with something yellowish.
+
+“Where could I get a drink?” Nekhludoff asked his isvostchik, feeling an
+insurmountable desire for some refreshment.
+
+“There is a good eating-house close by,” the isvostchik answered, and
+turning a corner, drove up to a door with a large signboard. The plump
+clerk in a Russian shirt, who stood behind the counter, and the waiters
+in their once white clothing who sat at the tables (there being hardly
+any customers) looked with curiosity at the unusual visitor and offered
+him their services. Nekhludoff asked for a bottle of seltzer water and
+sat down some way from the window at a small table covered with a dirty
+cloth. Two men sat at another table with tea-things and a white bottle
+in front of them, mopping their foreheads, and calculating something in
+a friendly manner. One of them was dark and bald, and had just such a
+border of hair at the back as Rogozhinsky. This sight again reminded
+Nekhludoff of yesterday’s talk with his brother-in-law and his wish to
+see him and Nathalie.
+
+“I shall hardly be able to do it before the train starts,” he thought;
+“I’d better write.” He asked for paper, an envelope, and a stamp, and as
+he was sipping the cool, effervescent water he considered what he should
+say. But his thoughts wandered, and he could not manage to compose a
+letter.
+
+“My dear Nathalie,--I cannot go away with the heavy impression that
+yesterday’s talk with your husband has left,” he began. “What next?
+Shall I ask him to forgive me what I said yesterday? But I only said
+what I felt, and he will think that I am taking it back. Besides, this
+interference of his in my private matters. . . . No, I cannot,” and
+again he felt hatred rising in his heart towards that man so foreign
+to him. He folded the unfinished letter and put it in his pocket, paid,
+went out, and again got into the trap to catch up the gang. It had grown
+still hotter. The stones and the walls seemed to be breathing out hot
+air. The pavement seemed to scorch the feet, and Nekhludoff felt a
+burning sensation in his hand when he touched the lacquered splashguard
+of his trap.
+
+The horse was jogging along at a weary trot, beating the uneven, dusty
+road monotonously with its hoofs, the isvostchik kept falling into a
+doze, Nekhludoff sat without thinking of anything.
+
+At the bottom of a street, in front of a large house, a group of people
+had collected, and a convoy soldier stood by.
+
+“What has happened?” Nekhludoff asked of a porter.
+
+“Something the matter with a convict.”
+
+Nekhludoff got down and came up to the group. On the rough stones,
+where the pavement slanted down to the gutter, lay a broadly-built,
+red-bearded, elderly convict, with his head lower than his feet, and
+very red in the face. He had a grey cloak and grey trousers on, and lay
+on his back with the palms of his freckled hands downwards, and at
+long intervals his broad, high chest heaved, and he groaned, while
+his bloodshot eyes were fixed on the sky. By him stood a cross-looking
+policeman, a pedlar, a postman, a clerk, an old woman with a parasol,
+and a short-haired boy with an empty basket.
+
+“They are weak. Having been locked up in prison they’ve got weak, and
+then they lead them through the most broiling heat,” said the clerk,
+addressing Nekhludoff, who had just come up.
+
+“He’ll die, most likely,” said the woman with the parasol, in a doleful
+tone.
+
+“His shirt should be untied,” said the postman.
+
+The policeman began, with his thick, trembling fingers, clumsily to
+untie the tapes that fastened the shirt round the red, sinewy neck. He
+was evidently excited and confused, but still thought it necessary to
+address the crowd.
+
+“What have you collected here for? It is hot enough without your keeping
+the wind off.”
+
+“They should have been examined by a doctor, and the weak ones left
+behind,” said the clerk, showing off his knowledge of the law.
+
+The policeman, having undone the tapes of the shirt, rose and looked
+round.
+
+“Move on, I tell you. It is not your business, is it? What’s there
+to stare at?” he said, and turned to Nekhludoff for sympathy, but not
+finding any in his face he turned to the convoy soldier.
+
+But the soldier stood aside, examining the trodden-down heel of his
+boot, and was quite indifferent to the policeman’s perplexity.
+
+“Those whose business it is don’t care. Is it right to do men to death
+like this? A convict is a convict, but still he is a man,” different
+voices were heard saying in the crowd.
+
+“Put his head up higher, and give him some water,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Water has been sent for,” said the policeman, and taking the prisoner
+under the arms he with difficulty pulled his body a little higher up.
+
+“What’s this gathering here?” said a decided, authoritative voice, and
+a police officer, with a wonderfully clean, shiny blouse, and still more
+shiny top-boots, came up to the assembled crowd.
+
+“Move on. No standing about here,” he shouted to the crowd, before he
+knew what had attracted it.
+
+When he came near and saw the dying convict, he made a sign of approval
+with his head, just as if he had quite expected it, and, turning to the
+policeman, said, “How is this?”
+
+The policeman said that, as a gang of prisoners was passing, one of the
+convicts had fallen down, and the convoy officer had ordered him to be
+left behind.
+
+“Well, that’s all right. He must be taken to the police station. Call an
+isvostchik.”
+
+“A porter has gone for one,” said the policeman, with his fingers raised
+to his cap.
+
+The shopman began something about the heat.
+
+“Is it your business, eh? Move on,” said the police officer, and looked
+so severely at him that the clerk was silenced.
+
+“He ought to have a little water,” said Nekhludoff. The police officer
+looked severely at Nekhludoff also, but said nothing. When the porter
+brought a mug full of water, he told the policeman to offer some to the
+convict. The policeman raised the drooping head, and tried to pour a
+little water down the mouth; but the prisoner could not swallow it, and
+it ran down his beard, wetting his jacket and his coarse, dirty linen
+shirt.
+
+“Pour it on his head,” ordered the officer; and the policeman took off
+the pancake-shaped cap and poured the water over the red curls and bald
+part of the prisoner’s head. His eyes opened wide as if in fear, but his
+position remained unchanged.
+
+Streams of dirt trickled down his dusty face, but the mouth continued to
+gasp in the same regular way, and his whole body shook.
+
+“And what’s this? Take this one,” said the police officer, pointing to
+Nekhludoff’s isvostchik. “You, there, drive up.”
+
+“I am engaged,” said the isvostchik, dismally, and without looking up.
+
+“It is my isvostchik; but take him. I will pay you,” said Nekhludoff,
+turning to the isvostchik.
+
+“Well, what are you waiting for?” shouted the officer. “Catch hold.”
+
+The policeman, the porter, and the convoy soldier lifted the dying man
+and carried him to the trap, and put him on the seat. But he could not
+sit up; his head fell back, and the whole of his body glided off the
+seat.
+
+“Make him lie down,” ordered the officer.
+
+“It’s all right, your honour; I’ll manage him like this,” said the
+policeman, sitting down by the dying man, and clasping his strong,
+right arm round the body under the arms. The convoy soldier lifted the
+stockingless feet, in prison shoes, and put them into the trap.
+
+The police officer looked around, and noticing the pancake-shaped hat of
+the convict lifted it up and put it on the wet, drooping head.
+
+“Go on,” he ordered.
+
+The isvostchik looked angrily round, shook his head, and, accompanied
+by the convoy soldier, drove back to the police station. The policeman,
+sitting beside the convict, kept dragging up the body that was
+continually sliding down from the seat, while the head swung from side
+to side.
+
+The convoy soldier, who was walking by the side of the trap, kept
+putting the legs in their place. Nekhludoff followed the trap.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+SPILLED LIKE WATER ON THE GROUND.
+
+The trap passed the fireman who stood sentinel at the entrance, [the
+headquarters of the fire brigade and the police stations are generally
+together in Moscow] drove into the yard of the police station, and
+stopped at one of the doors. In the yard several firemen with their
+sleeves tucked up were washing some kind of cart and talking loudly.
+When the trap stopped, several policemen surrounded it, and taking the
+lifeless body of the convict under the arms, took him out of the trap,
+which creaked under him. The policeman who had brought the body got
+down, shook his numbed arm, took off his cap, and crossed himself.
+The body was carried through the door and up the stairs. Nekhludoff
+followed. In the small, dirty room where the body was taken there stood
+four beds. On two of them sat a couple of sick men in dressing-gowns,
+one with a crooked mouth, whose neck was bandaged, the other one in
+consumption. Two of the beds were empty; the convict was laid on one of
+them. A little man, with glistening eyes and continually moving brows,
+with only his underclothes and stockings on, came up with quick, soft
+steps, looked at the convict and then at Nekhludoff, and burst into loud
+laughter. This was a madman who was being kept in the police hospital.
+
+“They wish to frighten me, but no, they won’t succeed,” he said.
+
+The policemen who carried the corpse were followed by a police officer
+and a medical assistant. The medical assistant came up to the body and
+touched the freckled hand, already growing cold, which, though still
+soft, was deadly pale. He held it for a moment, and then let it go. It
+fell lifelessly on the stomach of the dead man.
+
+“He’s ready,” said the medical assistant, but, evidently to be quite in
+order, he undid the wet, brown shirt, and tossing back the curls from
+his ear, put it to the yellowish, broad, immovable chest of the convict.
+All were silent. The medical assistant raised himself again, shook his
+head, and touched with his fingers first one and then the other lid over
+the open, fixed blue eyes.
+
+“I’m not frightened, I’m not frightened.” The madman kept repeating
+these words, and spitting in the direction of the medical assistant.
+
+“Well?” asked the police officer.
+
+“Well! He must be put into the mortuary.”
+
+“Are you sure? Mind,” said the police officer.
+
+“It’s time I should know,” said the medical assistant, drawing the shirt
+over the body’s chest. “However, I will send for Mathew Ivanovitch. Let
+him have a look. Petrov, call him,” and the medical assistant stepped
+away from the body.
+
+“Take him to the mortuary,” said the police officer. “And then you must
+come into the office and sign,” he added to the convoy soldier, who had
+not left the convict for a moment.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the soldier.
+
+The policemen lifted the body and carried it down again. Nekhludoff
+wished to follow, but the madman kept him back.
+
+“You are not in the plot! Well, then, give me a cigarette,” he said.
+Nekhludoff got out his cigarette case and gave him one.
+
+The madman, quickly moving his brows all the time, began relating how
+they tormented him by thought suggestion.
+
+“Why, they are all against me, and torment and torture me through their
+mediums.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Nekhludoff, and without listening any further
+he left the room and went out into the yard, wishing to know where the
+body would be put.
+
+The policemen with their burden had already crossed the yard, and were
+coming to the door of a cellar. Nekhludoff wished to go up to them, but
+the police officer stopped him.
+
+“What do you want?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Nothing? Then go away.”
+
+Nekhludoff obeyed, and went back to his isvostchik, who was dozing. He
+awoke him, and they drove back towards the railway station.
+
+They had not made a hundred steps when they met a cart accompanied by
+a convoy soldier with a gun. On the cart lay another convict, who was
+already dead. The convict lay on his back in the cart, his shaved head,
+from which the pancake-shaped cap had slid over the black-bearded face
+down to the nose, shaking and thumping at every jolt. The driver, in
+his heavy boots, walked by the side of the cart, holding the reins;
+a policeman followed on foot. Nekhludoff touched his isvostchik’s
+shoulder.
+
+“Just look what they are doing,” said the isvostchik, stopping his
+horse.
+
+Nekhludoff got down and, following the cart, again passed the sentinel
+and entered the gate of the police station. By this time the firemen had
+finished washing the cart, and a tall, bony man, the chief of the fire
+brigade, with a coloured band round his cap, stood in their place, and,
+with his hands in his pockets, was severely looking at a fat-necked,
+well-fed, bay stallion that was being led up and down before him by a
+fireman. The stallion was lame on one of his fore feet, and the chief of
+the firemen was angrily saying something to a veterinary who stood by.
+
+The police officer was also present. When he saw the cart he went up to
+the convoy soldier.
+
+“Where did you bring him from?” he asked, shaking his head
+disapprovingly.
+
+“From the Gorbatovskaya,” answered the policeman.
+
+“A prisoner?” asked the chief of the fire brigade.
+
+“Yes. It’s the second to-day.”
+
+“Well, I must say they’ve got some queer arrangements. Though of course
+it’s a broiling day,” said the chief of the fire brigade; then, turning
+to the fireman who was leading the lame stallion, he shouted: “Put him
+into the corner stall. And as to you, you hound, I’ll teach you how to
+cripple horses which are worth more than you are, you scoundrel.”
+
+The dead man was taken from the cart by the policemen just in the same
+way as the first had been, and carried upstairs into the hospital.
+Nekhludoff followed them as if he were hypnotised.
+
+“What do you want?” asked one of the policemen. But Nekhludoff did
+not answer, and followed where the body was being carried. The madman,
+sitting on a bed, was smoking greedily the cigarette Nekhludoff had
+given him.
+
+“Ah, you’ve come back,” he said, and laughed. When he saw the body he
+made a face, and said, “Again! I am sick of it. I am not a boy, am I,
+eh?” and he turned to Nekhludoff with a questioning smile.
+
+Nekhludoff was looking at the dead man, whose face, which had been
+hidden by his cap, was now visible. This convict was as handsome in face
+and body as the other was hideous. He was a man in the full bloom of
+life. Notwithstanding that he was disfigured by the half of his head
+being shaved, the straight, rather low forehead, raised a bit over the
+black, lifeless eyes, was very fine, and so was the nose above the
+thin, black moustaches. There was a smile on the lips that were already
+growing blue, a small beard outlined the lower part of the face, and on
+the shaved side of the head a firm, well-shaped ear was visible.
+
+One could see what possibilities of a higher life had been destroyed
+in this man. The fine bones of his hands and shackled feet, the strong
+muscles of all his well-proportioned limbs, showed what a beautiful,
+strong, agile human animal this had been. As an animal merely he had
+been a far more perfect one of his kind than the bay stallion, about the
+laming of which the fireman was so angry.
+
+Yet he had been done to death, and no one was sorry for him as a man,
+nor was any one sorry that so fine a working animal had perished. The
+only feeling evinced was that of annoyance because of the bother caused
+by the necessity of getting this body, threatening putrefaction, out of
+the way. The doctor and his assistant entered the hospital, accompanied
+by the inspector of the police station. The doctor was a thick-set man,
+dressed in pongee silk coat and trousers of the same material, closely
+fitting his muscular thighs. The inspector was a little fat fellow, with
+a red face, round as a ball, which he made still broader by a habit he
+had of filling his cheeks with air, and slowly letting it out again. The
+doctor sat down on the bed by the side of the dead man, and touched
+the hands in the same way as his assistant had done, put his ear to the
+heart, rose, and pulled his trousers straight. “Could not be more dead,”
+ he said.
+
+The inspector filled his mouth with air and slowly blew it out again.
+
+“Which prison is he from?” he asked the convoy soldier.
+
+The soldier told him, and reminded him of the chains on the dead man’s
+feet.
+
+“I’ll have them taken off; we have got a smith about, the Lord be
+thanked,” said the inspector, and blew up his cheeks again; he went
+towards the door, slowly letting out the air.
+
+“Why has this happened?” Nekhludoff asked the doctor.
+
+The doctor looked at him through his spectacles.
+
+“Why has what happened? Why they die of sunstroke, you mean? This is
+why: They sit all through the winter without exercise and without light,
+and suddenly they are taken out into the sunshine, and on a day like
+this, and they march in a crowd so that they get no air, and sunstroke
+is the result.”
+
+“Then why are they sent out?”
+
+“Oh, as to that, go and ask those who send them. But may I ask who are
+you?”
+
+“I am a stranger.”
+
+“Ah, well, good-afternoon; I have no time.” The doctor was vexed; he
+gave his trousers a downward pull, and went towards the beds of the
+sick.
+
+“Well, how are you getting on?” he asked the pale man with the crooked
+mouth and bandaged neck.
+
+Meanwhile the madman sat on a bed, and having finished his cigarette,
+kept spitting in the direction of the doctor.
+
+Nekhludoff went down into the yard and out of the gate past the
+firemen’s horses and the hens and the sentinel in his brass helmet, and
+got into the trap, the driver of which had again fallen asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE CONVICT TRAIN.
+
+When Nekhludoff came to the station, the prisoners were all seated in
+railway carriages with grated windows. Several persons, come to see
+them off, stood on the platform, but were not allowed to come up to the
+carriages.
+
+The convoy was much troubled that day. On the way from the prison to the
+station, besides the two Nekhludoff had seen, three other prisoners
+had fallen and died of sunstroke. One was taken to the nearest police
+station like the first two, and the other two died at the railway
+station. [In Moscow, in the beginning of the eighth decade of this
+century, five convicts died of sunstroke in one day on their way from
+the Boutyrki prison to the Nijni railway station.] The convoy men were
+not troubled because five men who might have been alive died while in
+their charge. This did not trouble them, but they were concerned lest
+anything that the law required in such cases should be omitted. To
+convey the bodies to the places appointed, to deliver up their papers,
+to take them off the lists of those to be conveyed to Nijni--all this
+was very troublesome, especially on so hot a day.
+
+It was this that occupied the convoy men, and before it could all be
+accomplished Nekhludoff and the others who asked for leave to go up to
+the carriages were not allowed to do so. Nekhludoff, however, was soon
+allowed to go up, because he tipped the convoy sergeant. The sergeant
+let Nekhludoff pass, but asked him to be quick and get his talk over
+before any of the authorities noticed. There were 15 carriages in all,
+and except one carriage for the officials, they were full of prisoners.
+As Nekhludoff passed the carriages he listened to what was going on in
+them. In all the carriages was heard the clanging of chains, the sound
+of bustle, mixed with loud and senseless language, but not a word was
+being said about their dead fellow-prisoners. The talk was all about
+sacks, drinking water, and the choice of seats.
+
+Looking into one of the carriages, Nekhludoff saw convoy soldiers taking
+the manacles off the hands of the prisoners. The prisoners held out
+their arms, and one of the soldiers unlocked the manacles with a key and
+took them off; the other collected them.
+
+After he had passed all the other carriages, Nekhludoff came up to the
+women’s carriages. From the second of these he heard a woman’s groans:
+“Oh, oh, oh! O God! Oh, oh! O God!”
+
+Nekhludoff passed this carriage and went up to a window of the third
+carriage, which a soldier pointed out to him. When he approached his
+face to the window, he felt the hot air, filled with the smell of
+perspiration, coming out of it, and heard distinctly the shrill sound
+of women’s voices. All the seats were filled with red, perspiring,
+loudly-talking women, dressed in prison cloaks and white jackets.
+Nekhludoff’s face at the window attracted their attention. Those nearest
+ceased talking and drew closer. Maslova, in her white jacket and her
+head uncovered, sat by the opposite window. The white-skinned, smiling
+Theodosia sat a little nearer. When she recognised Nekhludoff, she
+nudged Maslova and pointed to the window. Maslova rose hurriedly, threw
+her kerchief over her black hair, and with a smile on her hot, red face
+came up to the window and took hold of one of the bars.
+
+“Well, it is hot,” she said, with a glad smile.
+
+“Did you get the things?”
+
+“Yes, thank you.”
+
+“Is there anything more you want?” asked Nekhludoff, while the air came
+out of the hot carriage as out of an oven.
+
+“I want nothing, thank you.”
+
+“If we could get a drink?” said Theodosia.
+
+“Yes, if we could get a drink,” repeated Maslova.
+
+“Why, have you not got any water?”
+
+“They put some in, but it is all gone.”
+
+“Directly, I will ask one of the convoy men. Now we shall not see each
+other till we get to Nijni.”
+
+“Why? Are you going?” said Maslova, as if she did not know it, and
+looked joyfully at Nekhludoff.
+
+“I am going by the next train.”
+
+Maslova said nothing, but only sighed deeply.
+
+“Is it true, sir, that 12 convicts have been done to death?” said a
+severe-looking old prisoner with a deep voice like a man’s.
+
+It was Korableva.
+
+“I did not hear of 12; I have seen two,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“They say there were 12 they killed. And will nothing be done to them?
+Only think! The fiends!”
+
+“And have none of the women fallen ill?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“Women are stronger,” said another of the prisoners--a short little
+woman, and laughed; “only there’s one that has taken it into her head to
+be delivered. There she goes,” she said, pointing to the next carriage,
+whence proceeded the groans.
+
+“You ask if we want anything,” said Maslova, trying to keep the smile
+of joy from her lips; “could not this woman be left behind, suffering as
+she is? There, now, if you would tell the authorities.”
+
+“Yes, I will.”
+
+“And one thing more; could she not see her husband, Taras?” she added,
+pointing with her eyes to the smiling Theodosia.
+
+“He is going with you, is he not?”
+
+“Sir, you must not talk,” said a convoy sergeant, not the one who had
+let Nekhludoff come up. Nekhludoff left the carriage and went in search
+of an official to whom he might speak for the woman in travail and about
+Taras, but could not find him, nor get an answer from any of the convoy
+for a long time. They were all in a bustle; some were leading a prisoner
+somewhere or other, others running to get themselves provisions, some
+were placing their things in the carriages or attending on a lady
+who was going to accompany the convoy officer, and they answered
+Nekhludoff’s questions unwillingly. Nekhludoff found the convoy officer
+only after the second bell had been rung. The officer with his short
+arm was wiping the moustaches that covered his mouth and shrugging his
+shoulders, reproving the corporal for something or other.
+
+“What is it you want?” he asked Nekhludoff.
+
+“You’ve got a woman there who is being confined, so I thought best--”
+
+“Well, let her be confined; we shall see later on,” and briskly swinging
+his short arms, he ran up to his carriage. At the moment the guard
+passed with a whistle in his hand, and from the people on the platform
+and from the women’s carriages there arose a sound of weeping and words
+of prayer.
+
+Nekhludoff stood on the platform by the side of Taras, and looked how,
+one after the other, the carriages glided past him, with the shaved
+heads of the men at the grated windows. Then the first of the women’s
+carriages came up, with women’s heads at the windows, some covered with
+kerchiefs and some uncovered, then the second, whence proceeded the same
+groans, then the carriage where Maslova was. She stood with the others
+at the window, and looked at Nekhludoff with a pathetic smile.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+BROTHER AND SISTER.
+
+There were still two hours before the passenger train by which
+Nekhludoff was going would start. He had thought of using this interval
+to see his sister again; but after the impressions of the morning he
+felt much excited and so done up that, sitting down on a sofa in the
+first-class refreshment-room, he suddenly grew so drowsy that he turned
+over on to his side, and, laying his face on his hand, fell asleep at
+once. A waiter in a dress coat with a napkin in his hand woke him.
+
+“Sir, sir, are you not Prince Nekhludoff? There’s a lady looking for
+you.”
+
+Nekhludoff started up and recollected where he was and all that had
+happened in the morning.
+
+He saw in his imagination the procession of prisoners, the dead bodies,
+the railway carriages with barred windows, and the women locked up in
+them, one of whom was groaning in travail with no one to help her, and
+another who was pathetically smiling at him through the bars.
+
+The reality before his eyes was very different, i.e., a table with
+vases, candlesticks and crockery, and agile waiters moving round the
+table, and in the background a cupboard and a counter laden with fruit
+and bottles, behind it a barman, and in front the backs of passengers
+who had come up for refreshments. When Nekhludoff had risen and sat
+gradually collecting his thoughts, he noticed that everybody in the
+room was inquisitively looking at something that was passing by the open
+doors.
+
+He also looked, and saw a group of people carrying a chair on which sat
+a lady whose head was wrapped in a kind of airy fabric.
+
+Nekhludoff thought he knew the footman who was supporting the chair in
+front. And also the man behind, and a doorkeeper with gold cord on his
+cap, seemed familiar. A lady’s maid with a fringe and an apron, who was
+carrying a parcel, a parasol, and something round in a leather case,
+was walking behind the chair. Then came Prince Korchagin, with his thick
+lips, apoplectic neck, and a travelling cap on his head; behind him
+Missy, her cousin Misha, and an acquaintance of Nekhludoff’s--the
+long-necked diplomat Osten, with his protruding Adam’s apple and his
+unvarying merry mood and expression. He was saying something very
+emphatically, though jokingly, to the smiling Missy. The Korchagins were
+moving from their estate near the city to the estate of the Princess’s
+sister on the Nijni railway. The procession--the men carrying the
+chair, the maid, and the doctor--vanished into the ladies’ waiting-room,
+evoking a feeling of curiosity and respect in the onlookers. But the old
+Prince remained and sat down at the table, called a waiter, and ordered
+food and drink. Missy and Osten also remained in the refreshment-room
+and were about to sit down, when they saw an acquaintance in the
+doorway, and went up to her. It was Nathalie Rogozhinsky. Nathalie came
+into the refreshment-room accompanied by Agraphena Petrovna, and both
+looked round the room. Nathalie noticed at one and the same moment both
+her brother and Missy. She first went up to Missy, only nodding to her
+brother; but, having kissed her, at once turned to him.
+
+“At last I have found you,” she said. Nekhludoff rose to greet Missy,
+Misha, and Osten, and to say a few words to them. Missy told him about
+their house in the country having been burnt down, which necessitated
+their moving to her aunt’s. Osten began relating a funny story about a
+fire. Nekhludoff paid no attention, and turned to his sister.
+
+“How glad I am that you have come.”
+
+“I have been here a long time,” she said. “Agraphena Petrovna is with
+me.” And she pointed to Agraphena Petrovna, who, in a waterproof and
+with a bonnet on her head, stood some way off, and bowed to him with
+kindly dignity and some confusion, not wishing to intrude.
+
+“We looked for you everywhere.”
+
+“And I had fallen asleep here. How glad I am that you have come,”
+ repeated Nekhludoff. “I had begun to write to you.”
+
+“Really?” she said, looking frightened. “What about?”
+
+Missy and the gentleman, noticing that an intimate conversation was
+about to commence between the brother and sister, went away. Nekhludoff
+and his sister sat down by the window on a velvet-covered sofa, on which
+lay a plaid, a box, and a few other things.
+
+“Yesterday, after I left you, I felt inclined to return and express my
+regret, but I did not know how he would take it,” said Nekhludoff. “I
+spoke hastily to your husband, and this tormented me.”
+
+“I knew,” said his sister, “that you did not mean to. Oh, you know!” and
+the tears came to her eyes, and she touched his hand. The sentence was
+not clear, but he understood it perfectly, and was touched by what it
+expressed. Her words meant that, besides the love for her husband which
+held her in its sway, she prized and considered important the love she
+had for him, her brother, and that every misunderstanding between them
+caused her deep suffering.
+
+“Thank you, thank you. Oh! what I have seen to-day!” he said, suddenly
+recalling the second of the dead convicts. “Two prisoners have been done
+to death.”
+
+“Done to death? How?”
+
+“Yes, done to death. They led them in this heat, and two died of
+sunstroke.”
+
+“Impossible! What, to-day? just now?”
+
+“Yes, just now. I have seen their bodies.”
+
+“But why done to death? Who killed them?” asked Nathalie.
+
+“They who forced them to go killed them,” said Nekhludoff, with
+irritation, feeling that she looked at this, too, with her husband’s
+eyes.
+
+“Oh, Lord!” said Agraphena Petrovna, who had come up to them.
+
+“Yes, we have not the slightest idea of what is being done to these
+unfortunate beings. But it ought to be known,” added Nekhludoff, and
+looked at old Korchagin, who sat with a napkin tied round him and a
+bottle before him, and who looked round at Nekhludoff.
+
+“Nekhludoff,” he called out, “won’t you join me and take some
+refreshment? It is excellent before a journey.”
+
+Nekhludoff refused, and turned away.
+
+“But what are you going to do?” Nathalie continued.
+
+“What I can. I don’t know, but I feel I must do something. And I shall
+do what I am able to.”
+
+“Yes, I understand. And how about them?” she continued, with a smile and
+a look towards Korchagin. “Is it possible that it is all over?”
+
+“Completely, and I think without any regret on either side.”
+
+“It is a pity. I am sorry. I am fond of her. However, it’s all right.
+But why do you wish to bind yourself?” she added shyly. “Why are you
+going?”
+
+“I go because I must,” answered Nekhludoff, seriously and dryly, as if
+wishing to stop this conversation. But he felt ashamed of his coldness
+towards his sister at once. “Why not tell her all I am thinking?” he
+thought, “and let Agraphena Petrovna also hear it,” he thought, with
+a look at the old servant, whose presence made the wish to repeat his
+decision to his sister even stronger.
+
+“You mean my intention to marry Katusha? Well, you see, I made up my
+mind to do it, but she refuses definitely and firmly,” he said, and his
+voice shook, as it always did when he spoke of it. “She does not wish
+to accept my sacrifice, but is herself sacrificing what in her position
+means much, and I cannot accept this sacrifice, if it is only a
+momentary impulse. And so I am going with her, and shall be where she
+is, and shall try to lighten her fate as much as I can.”
+
+Nathalie said nothing. Agraphena Petrovna looked at her with a
+questioning look, and shook her head. At this moment the former
+procession issued from the ladies’ room. The same handsome footman
+(Philip). and the doorkeeper were carrying the Princess Korchagin. She
+stopped the men who were carrying her, and motioned to Nekhludoff to
+approach, and, with a pitiful, languishing air, she extended her white,
+ringed hand, expecting the firm pressure of his hand with a sense of
+horror.
+
+“Epouvantable!” she said, meaning the heat. “I cannot stand it! Ce
+climat me tue!” And, after a short talk about the horrors of the Russian
+climate, she gave the men a sign to go on.
+
+“Be sure and come,” she added, turning her long face towards Nekhludoff
+as she was borne away.
+
+The procession with the Princess turned to the right towards the
+first-class carriages. Nekhludoff, with the porter who was carrying his
+things, and Taras with his bag, turned to the left.
+
+“This is my companion,” said Nekhludoff to his sister, pointing to
+Taras, whose story he had told her before.
+
+“Surely not third class?” said Nathalie, when Nekhludoff stopped in
+front of a third-class carriage, and Taras and the porter with the
+things went in.
+
+“Yes; it is more convenient for me to be with Taras,” he said. “One
+thing more,” he added; “up to now I have not given the Kousminski
+land to the peasants; so that, in case of my death, your children will
+inherit it.”
+
+“Dmitri, don’t!” said Nathalie.
+
+“If I do give it away, all I can say is that the rest will be theirs,
+as it is not likely I shall marry; and if I do marry I shall have no
+children, so that--”
+
+“Dmitri, don’t talk like that!” said Nathalie. And yet Nekhludoff
+noticed that she was glad to hear him say it.
+
+Higher up, by the side of a first-class carriage, there stood a group of
+people still looking at the carriage into which the Princess Korchagin
+had been carried. Most of the passengers were already seated. Some of
+the late comers hurriedly clattered along the boards of the platform,
+the guard was closing the doors and asking the passengers to get in and
+those who were seeing them off to come out.
+
+Nekhludoff entered the hot, smelling carriage, but at once stepped out
+again on to the small platform at the back of the carriage. Nathalie
+stood opposite the carriage, with her fashionable bonnet and cape,
+by the side of Agraphena Petrovna, and was evidently trying to find
+something to say.
+
+She could not even say ecrivez, because they had long ago laughed
+at this word, habitually spoken by those about to part. The short
+conversation about money matters had in a moment destroyed the tender
+brotherly and sisterly feelings that had taken hold of them. They felt
+estranged, so that Nathalie was glad when the train moved; and she
+could only say, nodding her head with a sad and tender look, “Goodbye,
+good-bye, Dmitri.” But as soon as the carriage had passed her she
+thought of how she should repeat her conversation with her brother to
+her husband, and her face became serious and troubled.
+
+Nekhludoff, too, though he had nothing but the kindest feelings for
+his sister, and had hidden nothing from her, now felt depressed and
+uncomfortable with her, and was glad to part. He felt that the Nathalie
+who was once so near to him no longer existed, and in her place was only
+a slave of that hairy, unpleasant husband, who was so foreign to him. He
+saw it clearly when her face lit up with peculiar animation as he spoke
+of what would peculiarly interest her husband, i.e., the giving up of
+the land to the peasants and the inheritance.
+
+And this made him sad.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF HUMAN LIFE.
+
+The heat in the large third-class carriage, which had been standing in
+the burning sun all day, was so great that Nekhludoff did not go in,
+but stopped on the little platform behind the carriage which formed a
+passage to the next one. But there was not a breath of fresh air here
+either, and Nekhludoff breathed freely only when the train had passed
+the buildings and the draught blew across the platform.
+
+“Yes, killed,” he repeated to himself, the words he had used to his
+sister. And in his imagination in the midst of all other impressions
+there arose with wonderful clearness the beautiful face of the second
+dead convict, with the smile of the lips, the severe expression of the
+brows, and the small, firm ear below the shaved bluish skull.
+
+And what seemed terrible was that he had been murdered, and no one knew
+who had murdered him. Yet he had been murdered. He was led out like all
+the rest of the prisoners by Maslennikoff’s orders. Maslennikoff had
+probably given the order in the usual manner, had signed with his stupid
+flourish the paper with the printed heading, and most certainly would
+not consider himself guilty. Still less would the careful doctor who
+examined the convicts consider himself guilty. He had performed his duty
+accurately, and had separated the weak. How could he have foreseen this
+terrible heat, or the fact that they would start so late in the day and
+in such crowds? The prison inspector? But the inspector had only carried
+into execution the order that on a given day a certain number of exiles
+and convicts--men and women--had to be sent off. The convoy officer
+could not be guilty either, for his business was to receive a certain
+number of persons in a certain place, and to deliver up the same number.
+He conducted them in the usual manner, and could not foresee that two
+such strong men as those Nekhludoff saw would not be able to stand it
+and would die. No one is guilty, and yet the men have been murdered by
+these people who are not guilty of their murder.
+
+“All this comes,” Nekhludoff thought, “from the fact that all these
+people, governors, inspectors, police officers, and men, consider that
+there are circumstances in which human relations are not necessary
+between human beings. All these men, Maslennikoff, and the inspector,
+and the convoy officer, if they were not _governor, inspector, officer,_
+would have considered twenty times before sending people in such heat
+in such a mass--would have stopped twenty times on the way, and, seeing
+that a man was growing weak, gasping for breath, would have led him
+into the shade, would have given him water and let him rest, and if an
+accident had still occurred they would have expressed pity. But they
+not only did not do it, but hindered others from doing it, because they
+considered not men and their duty towards them but only the office they
+themselves filled, and held what that office demanded of them to be
+above human relations. That’s what it is,” Nekhludoff went on in his
+thoughts. “If one acknowledges but for a single hour that anything
+can be more important than love for one’s fellowmen, even in some
+one exceptional case, any crime can be committed without a feeling of
+guilt.”
+
+Nekhludoff was so engrossed by his thoughts that he did not notice how
+the weather changed. The sun was covered over by a low-hanging, ragged
+cloud. A compact, light grey cloud was rapidly coming from the west, and
+was already falling in heavy, driving rain on the fields and woods far
+in the distance. Moisture, coming from the cloud, mixed with the air.
+Now and then the cloud was rent by flashes of lightning, and peals of
+thunder mingled more and more often with the rattling of the train. The
+cloud came nearer and nearer, the rain-drops driven by the wind began
+to spot the platform and Nekhludoff’s coat; and he stepped to the other
+side of the little platform, and, inhaling the fresh, moist air--filled
+with the smell of corn and wet earth that had long been waiting for
+rain--he stood looking at the gardens, the woods, the yellow rye fields,
+the green oatfields, the dark-green strips of potatoes in bloom, that
+glided past. Everything looked as if covered over with varnish--the
+green turned greener, the yellow yellower, the black blacker.
+
+“More! more!” said Nekhludoff, gladdened by the sight of gardens and
+fields revived by the beneficent shower. The shower did not last long.
+Part of the cloud had come down in rain, part passed over, and the last
+fine drops fell straight on to the earth. The sun reappeared,
+everything began to glisten, and in the east--not very high above the
+horizon--appeared a bright rainbow, with the violet tint very distinct
+and broken only at one end.
+
+“Why, what was I thinking about?” Nekhludoff asked himself when all
+these changes in nature were over, and the train ran into a cutting
+between two high banks.
+
+“Oh! I was thinking that all those people (inspector, convoy men--all
+those in the service) are for the greater part kind people--cruel only
+because they are serving.” He recalled Maslennikoff’s indifference when
+he told him about what was being done in the prison, the inspector’s
+severity, the cruelty of the convoy officer when he refused places on
+the carts to those who asked for them, and paid no attention to the fact
+that there was a woman in travail in the train. All these people were
+evidently invulnerable and impregnable to the simplest feelings of
+compassion only because they held offices. “As officials they were
+impermeable to the feelings of humanity, as this paved ground is
+impermeable to the rain.” Thus thought Nekhludoff as he looked at the
+railway embankment paved with stones of different colours, down which
+the water was running in streams instead of soaking into the earth.
+“Perhaps it is necessary to pave the banks with stones, but it is sad
+to look at the ground, which might be yielding corn, grass, bushes, or
+trees in the same way as the ground visible up there is doing--deprived
+of vegetation, and so it is with men,” thought Nekhludoff. “Perhaps
+these governors, inspectors, policemen, are needed, but it is terrible
+to see men deprived of the chief human attribute, that of love and
+sympathy for one another. The thing is,” he continued, “that these
+people consider lawful what is not lawful, and do not consider the
+eternal, immutable law, written in the hearts of men by God, as law.
+That is why I feel so depressed when I am with these people. I am
+simply afraid of them, and really they are terrible, more terrible than
+robbers. A robber might, after all, feel pity, but they can feel
+no pity, they are inured against pity as these stones are against
+vegetation. That is what makes them terrible. It is said that the
+Pougatcheffs, the Razins [leaders of rebellions in Russia: Stonka Razin
+in the 17th and Pougatcheff in the 18th century] are terrible. These are
+a thousand times more terrible,” he continued, in his thoughts. “If
+a psychological problem were set to find means of making men of our
+time--Christian, humane, simple, kind people--perform the most horrible
+crimes without feeling guilty, only one solution could be devised: to
+go on doing what is being done. It is only necessary that these people
+should he governors, inspectors, policemen; that they should be fully
+convinced that there is a kind of business, called government service,
+which allows men to treat other men as things, without human brotherly
+relations with them, and also that these people should be so linked
+together by this government service that the responsibility for the
+results of their actions should not fall on any one of them separately.
+Without these conditions, the terrible acts I witnessed to-day would be
+impossible in our times. It all lies in the fact that men think there
+are circumstances in which one may deal with human beings without love;
+and there are no such circumstances. One may deal with things without
+love. One may cut down trees, make bricks, hammer iron without love; but
+you cannot deal with men without it, just as one cannot deal with bees
+without being careful. If you deal carelessly with bees you will injure
+them, and will yourself be injured. And so with men. It cannot be
+otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life. It
+is true that a man cannot force another to love him, as he can force
+him to work for him; but it does not follow that a man may deal with men
+without love, especially to demand anything from them. If you feel no
+love, sit still,” Nekhludoff thought; “occupy yourself with things, with
+yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. You can only eat
+without injuring yourself when you feel inclined to eat, so you can only
+deal with men usefully when you love. Only let yourself deal with a man
+without love, as I did yesterday with my brother-in-law, and there are
+no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself, as all my life
+proves. Yes, yes, it is so,” thought Nekhludoff; “it is good; yes, it is
+good,” he repeated, enjoying the freshness after the torturing heat, and
+conscious of having attained to the fullest clearness on a question that
+had long occupied him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+TARAS’S STORY.
+
+The carriage in which Nekhludoff had taken his place was half filled
+with people. There were in it servants, working men, factory hands,
+butchers, Jews, shopmen, workmen’s wives, a soldier, two ladies, a
+young one and an old one with bracelets on her arm, and a severe-looking
+gentleman with a cockade on his black cap. All these people were sitting
+quietly; the bustle of taking their places was long over; some sat
+cracking and eating sunflower seeds, some smoking, some talking.
+
+Taras sat, looking very happy, opposite the door, keeping a place for
+Nekhludoff, and carrying on an animated conversation with a man in
+a cloth coat who sat opposite to him, and who was, as Nekhludoff
+afterwards found out, a gardener going to a new situation. Before
+reaching the place where Taras sat Nekhludoff stopped between the seats
+near a reverend-looking old man with a white beard and nankeen coat, who
+was talking with a young woman in peasant dress. A little girl of about
+seven, dressed in a new peasant costume, sat, her little legs dangling
+above the floor, by the side of the woman, and kept cracking seeds.
+
+The old man turned round, and, seeing Nekhludoff, he moved the lappets
+of his coat off the varnished seat next to him, and said, in a friendly
+manner:
+
+“Please, here’s a seat.”
+
+Nekhludoff thanked him, and took the seat. As soon as he was seated the
+woman continued the interrupted conversation.
+
+She was returning to her village, and related how her husband, whom she
+had been visiting, had received her in town.
+
+“I was there during the carnival, and now, by the Lord’s help, I’ve been
+again,” she said. “Then, God willing, at Christmas I’ll go again.”
+
+“That’s right,” said the old man, with a look at Nekhludoff, “it’s the
+best way to go and see him, else a young man can easily go to the bad,
+living in a town.”
+
+“Oh, no, sir, mine is not such a man. No nonsense of any kind about him;
+his life is as good as a young maiden’s. The money he earns he sends
+home all to a copeck. And, as to our girl here, he was so glad to see
+her, there are no words for it,” said the woman, and smiled.
+
+The little girl, who sat cracking her seeds and spitting out the shells,
+listened to her mother’s words, and, as if to confirm them, looked up
+with calm, intelligent eyes into Nekhludoff’s and the old man’s faces.
+
+“Well, if he’s good, that’s better still,” said the old man. “And none
+of that sort of thing?” he added, with a look at a couple, evidently
+factory hands, who sat at the other side of the carriage. The husband,
+with his head thrown back, was pouring vodka down his throat out of a
+bottle, and the wife sat holding a bag, out of which they had taken the
+bottle, and watched him intently.
+
+“No, mine neither drinks nor smokes,” said the woman who was conversing
+with the old man, glad of the opportunity of praising her husband once
+more. “No, sir, the earth does not hold many such.” And, turning to
+Nekhludoff, she added, “That’s the sort of man he is.”
+
+“What could be better,” said the old man, looking at the factory worker,
+who had had his drink and had passed the bottle to his wife. The wife
+laughed, shook her head, and also raised the bottle to her lips.
+
+Noticing Nekhludoff’s and the old man’s look directed towards them, the
+factory worker addressed the former.
+
+“What is it, sir? That we are drinking? Ah, no one sees how we work,
+but every one sees how we drink. I have earned it, and I am drinking and
+treating my wife, and no one else.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Nekhludoff, not knowing what to say.
+
+“True, sir. My wife is a steady woman. I am satisfied with my wife,
+because she can feel for me. Is it right what I’m saying, Mavra?”
+
+“There you are, take it, I don’t want any more,” said the wife,
+returning the bottle to him. “And what are you jawing for like that?”
+ she added.
+
+“There now! She’s good--that good; and suddenly she’ll begin squeaking
+like a wheel that’s not greased. Mavra, is it right what I’m saying?”
+
+Mavra laughed and moved her hand with a tipsy gesture.
+
+“Oh, my, he’s at it again.”
+
+“There now, she’s that good--that good; but let her get her tail over
+the reins, and you can’t think what she’ll be up to. . . . Is it right
+what I’m saying? You must excuse me, sir, I’ve had a drop! What’s to be
+done?” said the factory worker, and, preparing to go to sleep, put his
+head in his wife’s lap.
+
+Nekhludoff sat a while with the old man, who told him all about himself.
+The old man was a stove builder, who had been working for 53 years, and
+had built so many stoves that he had lost count, and now he wanted to
+rest, but had no time. He had been to town and found employment for the
+young ones, and was now going to the country to see the people at home.
+After hearing the old man’s story, Nekhludoff went to the place that
+Taras was keeping for him.
+
+“It’s all right, sir; sit down; we’ll put the bag here,” said the
+gardener, who sat opposite Taras, in a friendly tone, looking up into
+Nekhludoff’s face.
+
+“Rather a tight fit, but no matter since we are friends,” said Taras,
+smiling, and lifting the bag, which weighed more than five stone, as if
+it were a feather, he carried it across to the window.
+
+“Plenty of room; besides, we might stand up a bit; and even under
+the seat it’s as comfortable as you could wish. What’s the good of
+humbugging?” he said, beaming with friendliness and kindness.
+
+Taras spoke of himself as being unable to utter a word when quite sober;
+but drink, he said, helped him to find the right words, and then he
+could express everything. And in reality, when he was sober Taras kept
+silent; but when he had been drinking, which happened rarely and only on
+special occasions, he became very pleasantly talkative. Then he spoke
+a great deal, spoke well and very simply and truthfully, and especially
+with great kindliness, which shone in his gentle, blue eyes and in the
+friendly smile that never left his lips. He was in such a state to-day.
+Nekhludoff’s approach interrupted the conversation; but when he had put
+the bag in its place, Taras sat down again, and with his strong hands
+folded in his lap, and looking straight into the gardener’s face,
+continued his story. He was telling his new acquaintance about his wife
+and giving every detail: what she was being sent to Siberia for, and why
+he was now following her. Nekhludoff had never heard a detailed account
+of this affair, and so he listened with interest. When he came up, the
+story had reached the point when the attempt to poison was already an
+accomplished fact, and the family had discovered that it was Theodosia’s
+doing.
+
+“It’s about my troubles that I’m talking,” said Taras, addressing
+Nekhludoff with cordial friendliness. “I have chanced to come across
+such a hearty man, and we’ve got into conversation, and I’m telling him
+all.”
+
+“I see,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Well, then in this way, my friend, the business became known. Mother,
+she takes that cake. ‘I’m going,’ says she, ‘to the police officer.’ My
+father is a just old man. ‘Wait, wife,’ says he, ‘the little woman is
+a mere child, and did not herself know what she was doing. We must have
+pity. She may come to her senses.’ But, dear me, mother would not hear
+of it. ‘While we keep her here,’ she says, ‘she may destroy us all like
+cockroaches.’ Well, friend, so she goes off for the police officer. He
+bounces in upon us at once. Calls for witnesses.”
+
+“Well, and you?” asked the gardener.
+
+“Well, I, you see, friend, roll about with the pain in my stomach, and
+vomit. All my inside is turned inside out; I can’t even speak. Well, so
+father he goes and harnesses the mare, and puts Theodosia into the cart,
+and is off to the police-station, and then to the magistrate’s. And she,
+you know, just as she had done from the first, so also there, confesses
+all to the magistrate--where she got the arsenic, and how she kneaded
+the cake. ‘Why did you do it?’ says he. ‘Why,’ says she, ‘because he’s
+hateful to me. I prefer Siberia to a life with him.’ That’s me,” and
+Taras smiled.
+
+“Well, so she confessed all. Then, naturally--the prison, and father
+returns alone. And harvest time just coming, and mother the only woman
+at home, and she no longer strong. So we think what we are to do. Could
+we not bail her out? So father went to see an official. No go. Then
+another. I think he went to five of them, and we thought of giving it
+up. Then we happened to come across a clerk--such an artful one as you
+don’t often find. ‘You give me five roubles, and I’ll get her out,’ says
+he. He agreed to do it for three. Well, and what do you think, friend? I
+went and pawned the linen she herself had woven, and gave him the money.
+As soon as he had written that paper,” drawled out Taras, just as if he
+were speaking of a shot being fired, “we succeeded at once. I went to
+fetch her myself. Well, friend, so I got to town, put up the mare, took
+the paper, and went to the prison. ‘What do you want?’ ‘This is what I
+want,’ say I, ‘you’ve got my wife here in prison.’ ‘And have you got a
+paper?’ I gave him the paper. He gave it a look. ‘Wait,’ says he. So I
+sat down on a bench. It was already past noon by the sun. An official
+comes out. ‘You are Vargoushoff?’ ‘I am.’ ‘Well, you may take her.’ The
+gates opened, and they led her out in her own clothes quite all right.
+‘Well, come along. Have you come on foot?’ ‘No, I have the horse here.’
+So I went and paid the ostler, and harnessed, put in all the hay that
+was left, and covered it with sacking for her to sit on. She got in and
+wrapped her shawl round her, and off we drove. She says nothing and I
+say nothing. Just as we were coming up to the house she says, ‘And how’s
+mother; is she alive?’ ‘Yes, she’s alive.’ ‘And father; is he alive?
+‘Yes, he is.’ ‘Forgive me, Taras,’ she says, ‘for my folly. I did not
+myself know what I was doing.’ So I say, ‘Words won’t mend matters. I
+have forgiven you long ago,’ and I said no more. We got home, and she
+just fell at mother’s feet. Mother says, ‘The Lord will forgive you.’
+And father said, ‘How d’you do?’ and ‘What’s past is past. Live as
+best you can. Now,’ says he, ‘is not the time for all that; there’s
+the harvest to be gathered in down at Skorodino,’ he says. ‘Down on the
+manured acre, by the Lord’s help, the ground has borne such rye that
+the sickle can’t tackle it. It’s all interwoven and heavy, and has sunk
+beneath its weight; that must be reaped. You and Taras had better go
+and see to it to-morrow.’ Well, friend, from that moment she took to the
+work and worked so that every one wondered. At that time we rented three
+desiatins, and by God’s help we had a wonderful crop both of oats and
+rye. I mow and she binds the sheaves, and sometimes we both of us
+reap. I am good at work and not afraid of it, but she’s better still at
+whatever she takes up. She’s a smart woman, young, and full of life; and
+as to work, friend, she’d grown that eager that I had to stop her. We
+get home, our fingers swollen, our arms aching, and she, instead of
+resting, rushes off to the barn to make binders for the sheaves for next
+day. Such a change!”
+
+“Well, and to you? Was she kinder, now?” asked the gardener.
+
+“That’s beyond question. She clings to me as if we were one soul.
+Whatever I think she understands. Even mother, angry as she was, could
+not help saying: ‘It’s as if our Theodosia had been transformed; she’s
+quite a different woman now!’ We were once going to cart the sheaves
+with two carts. She and I were in the first, and I say, ‘How could you
+think of doing that, Theodosia?’ and she says, ‘How could I think of it?
+just so, I did not wish to live with you. I thought I’d rather die
+than live with you!’ I say, ‘And now?’ and she says, ‘Now you’re in
+my heart!’” Taras stopped, and smiled joyfully, shook his head as if
+surprised. “Hardly had we got the harvest home when I went to soak the
+hemp, and when I got home there was a summons, she must go to be tried,
+and we had forgotten all about the matter that she was to be tried for.”
+
+“It can only be the evil one,” said the gardener. “Could any man of
+himself think of destroying a living soul? We had a fellow once--” and
+the gardener was about to commence his tale when the train began to
+stop.
+
+“It seems we are coming to a station,” he said. “I’ll go and have a
+drink.”
+
+The conversation stopped, and Nekhludoff followed the gardener out of
+the carriage onto the wet platform of the station.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+LE VRAI GRAND MONDE.
+
+Before Nekhludoff got out he had noticed in the station yard several
+elegant equipages, some with three, some with four, well-fed horses,
+with tinkling bells on their harness. When he stepped out on the wet,
+dark-coloured boards of the platform, he saw a group of people in front
+of the first-class carriage, among whom were conspicuous a stout
+lady with costly feathers on her hat, and a waterproof, and a tall,
+thin-legged young man in a cycling suit. The young man had by his side
+an enormous, well-fed dog, with a valuable collar. Behind them stood
+footmen, holding wraps and umbrellas, and a coachman, who had also come
+to meet the train.
+
+On the whole of the group, from the fat lady down to the coachman who
+stood holding up his long coat, there lay the stamp of wealth and quiet
+self-assurance. A curious and servile crowd rapidly gathered round this
+group--the station-master, in his red cap, a gendarme, a thin young lady
+in a Russian costume, with beads round her neck, who made a point of
+seeing the trains come in all through the summer, a telegraph clerk, and
+passengers, men and women.
+
+In the young man with the dog Nekhludoff recognised young Korchagin,
+a gymnasium student. The fat lady was the Princess’s sister, to whose
+estate the Korchagins were now moving. The guard, with his gold cord and
+shiny top-boots, opened the carriage door and stood holding it as a sign
+of deference, while Philip and a porter with a white apron carefully
+carried out the long-faced Princess in her folding chair. The sisters
+greeted each other, and French sentences began flying about. Would the
+Princess go in a closed or an open carriage? At last the procession
+started towards the exit, the lady’s maid, with her curly fringe,
+parasol and leather case in the rear.
+
+Nekhludoff not wishing to meet them and to have to take leave over
+again, stopped before he got to the door, waiting for the procession to
+pass.
+
+The Princess, her son, Missy, the doctor, and the maid went out first,
+the old Prince and his sister-in-law remained behind. Nekhludoff was too
+far to catch anything but a few disconnected French sentences of their
+conversation One of the sentences uttered by the Prince, as it often
+happens, for some unaccountable reason remained in his memory with all
+its intonations and the sound of the voice.
+
+“_Oh, il est du vrai grand monde, du vrai grand monde_,” said the Prince
+in his loud, self-assured tone as he went out of the station with his
+sister-in-law, accompanied by the respectful guards and porters.
+
+At this moment from behind the corner of the station suddenly appeared
+a crowd of workmen in bark shoes, wearing sheepskin coats and carrying
+bags on their backs. The workmen went up to the nearest carriage with
+soft yet determined steps, and were about to get in, but were at
+once driven away by a guard. Without stopping, the workmen passed
+on, hurrying and jostling one another, to the next carriage and began
+getting in, catching their bags against the corners and door of the
+carriage, but another guard caught sight of them from the door of the
+station, and shouted at them severely. The workmen, who had already got
+in, hurried out again and went on, with the same soft and firm steps,
+still further towards Nekhludoff’s carriage. A guard was again going to
+stop them, but Nekhludoff said there was plenty of room inside, and that
+they had better get in. They obeyed and got in, followed by Nekhludoff.
+
+The workmen were about to take their seats, when the gentleman with the
+cockade and the two ladies, looking at this attempt to settle in their
+carriage as a personal insult to themselves, indignantly protested and
+wanted to turn them out. The workmen--there were 20 of them, old men
+and quite young ones, all of them wearied, sunburnt, with haggard
+faces--began at once to move on through the carriage, catching the
+seats, the walls, and the doors with their bags. They evidently felt
+they had offended in some way, and seemed ready to go on indefinitely
+wherever they were ordered to go.
+
+“Where are you pushing to, you fiends? Sit down here,” shouted another
+guard they met.
+
+“Voila encore des nouvelles,” exclaimed the younger of the two ladies,
+quite convinced that she would attract Nekhludoff’s notice by her good
+French.
+
+The other lady with the bracelets kept sniffing and making faces,
+and remarked something about how pleasant it was to sit with smelly
+peasants.
+
+The workmen, who felt the joy and calm experienced by people who have
+escaped some kind of danger, threw off their heavy bags with a movement
+of their shoulders and stowed them away under the seats.
+
+The gardener had left his own seat to talk with Taras, and now went
+back, so that there were two unoccupied seats opposite and one next to
+Taras. Three of the workmen took these seats, but when Nekhludoff came
+up to them, in his gentleman’s clothing, they got so confused that they
+rose to go away, but Nekhludoff asked them to stay, and himself sat down
+on the arm of the seat, by the passage down the middle of the carriage.
+
+One of the workmen, a man of about 50, exchanged a surprised and even
+frightened look with a young man. That Nekhludoff, instead of scolding
+and driving them away, as was natural to a gentleman, should give up his
+seat to them, astonished and perplexed them. They even feared that this
+might have some evil result for them.
+
+However, they soon noticed that there was no underlying plot when they
+heard Nekhludoff talking quite simply with Taras, and they grew quiet
+and told one of the lads to sit down on his bag and give his seat to
+Nekhludoff. At first the elderly workman who sat opposite Nekhludoff
+shrank and drew back his legs for fear of touching the gentleman, but
+after a while he grew quite friendly, and in talking to him and Taras
+even slapped Nekhludoff on the knee when he wanted to draw special
+attention to what he was saying.
+
+He told them all about his position and his work in the peat bogs,
+whence he was now returning home. He had been working there for two and
+a half months, and was bringing home his wages, which only came to 10
+roubles, since part had been paid beforehand when he was hired. They
+worked, as he explained, up to their knees in water from sunrise to
+sunset, with two hours’ interval for dinner.
+
+“Those who are not used to it find it hard, of course,” he said; “but
+when one’s hardened it doesn’t matter, if only the food is right. At
+first the food was bad. Later the people complained, and they got good
+food, and it was easy to work.”
+
+Then he told them how, during 28 years he went out to work, and sent all
+his earnings home. First to his father, then to his eldest brother, and
+now to his nephew, who was at the head of the household. On himself he
+spent only two or three roubles of the 50 or 60 he earned a year, just
+for luxuries--tobacco and matches.
+
+“I’m a sinner, when tired I even drink a little vodka sometimes,” he
+added, with a guilty smile.
+
+Then he told them how the women did the work at home, and how the
+contractor had treated them to half a pail of vodka before they started
+to-day, how one of them had died, and another was returning home ill.
+The sick workman he was talking about was in a corner of the same
+carriage. He was a young lad, with a pale, sallow face and bluish lips.
+He was evidently tormented by intermittent fever. Nekhludoff went up to
+him, but the lad looked up with such a severe and suffering expression
+that Nekhludoff did not care to bother him with questions, but advised
+the elder man to give him quinine, and wrote down the name of the
+medicine. He wished to give him some money, but the old workman said he
+would pay for it himself.
+
+“Well, much as I have travelled, I have never met such a gentleman
+before. Instead of punching your head, he actually gives up his place
+to you,” said the old man to Taras. “It seems there are all sorts of
+gentlefolk, too.”
+
+“Yes, this is quite a new and different world,” thought Nekhludoff,
+looking at these spare, sinewy, limbs, coarse, home-made garments,
+and sunburnt, kindly, though weary-looking faces, and feeling himself
+surrounded on all sides with new people and the serious interests, joys,
+and sufferings of a life of labour.
+
+“Here is_ le vrai grand monde_,” thought Nekhludoff, remembering the
+words of Prince Korchagin and all that idle, luxurious world to which
+the Korchagins belonged, with their petty, mean interests. And he felt
+the joy of a traveller on discovering a new, unknown, and beautiful
+world.
+
+
+END OF BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MASLOVA MAKES NEW FRIENDS.
+
+The gang of prisoners to which Maslova belonged had walked about three
+thousand three hundred miles. She and the other prisoners condemned for
+criminal offences had travelled by rail and by steamboats as far as the
+town of Perm. It was only here that Nekhludoff succeeded in obtaining a
+permission for her to continue the journey with the political prisoners,
+as Vera Doukhova, who was among the latter, advised him to do. The
+journey up to Perm had been very trying to Maslova both morally and
+physically. Physically, because of the overcrowding, the dirt, and the
+disgusting vermin, which gave her no peace; morally, because of the
+equally disgusting men. The men, like the vermin, though they changed
+at each halting-place, were everywhere alike importunate; they swarmed
+round her, giving her no rest. Among the women prisoners and the men
+prisoners, the jailers and the convoy soldiers, the habit of a kind of
+cynical debauch was so firmly established that unless a female prisoner
+was willing to utilise her position as a woman she had to be constantly
+on the watch. To be continually in a state of fear and strife was very
+trying. And Maslova was specially exposed to attacks, her appearance
+being attractive and her past known to every one. The decided resistance
+with which she now met the importunity of all the men seemed offensive
+to them, and awakened another feeling, that of ill-will towards her. But
+her position was made a little easier by her intimacy with Theodosia,
+and Theodosia’s husband, who, having heard of the molestations his wife
+was subject to, had in Nijni been arrested at his own desire in order
+to be able to protect her, and was now travelling with the gang as a
+prisoner. Maslova’s position became much more bearable when she was
+allowed to join the political prisoners, who were provided with better
+accomodations, better food, and were treated less rudely, but besides
+all this Maslova’s condition was much improved because among the
+political prisoners she was no longer molested by the men, and could
+live without being reminded of that past which she was so anxious to
+forget. But the chief advantage of the change lay in the fact that she
+made the acquaintance of several persons who exercised a decided and
+most beneficial influence on her character. Maslova was allowed to stop
+with the political prisoners at all the halting-places, but being a
+strong and healthy woman she was obliged to march with the criminal
+convicts. In this way she walked all the way from Tomsk. Two political
+prisoners also marched with the gang, Mary Pavlovna Schetinina, the girl
+with the hazel eyes who had attracted Nekhludoff’s attention when he had
+been to visit Doukhova in prison, and one Simonson, who was on his
+way to the Takoutsk district, the dishevelled dark young fellow with
+deep-lying eyes, whom Nekhludoff had also noticed during that visit.
+Mary Pavlovna was walking because she had given her place on the cart
+to one of the criminals, a woman expecting to be confined, and Simonson
+because he did not dare to avail himself of a class privilege.
+
+These three always started early in the morning before the rest of the
+political prisoners, who followed later on in the carts.
+
+They were ready to start in this way just outside a large town, where a
+new convoy officer had taken charge of the gang.
+
+It was early on a dull September morning. It kept raining and snowing
+alternately, and the cold wind blew in sudden gusts. The whole gang of
+prisoners, consisting of four hundred men and fifty women, was already
+assembled in the court of the halting station. Some of them were
+crowding round the chief of the convoy, who was giving to specially
+appointed prisoners money for two days’ keep to distribute among the
+rest, while others were purchasing food from women who had been let into
+the courtyard. One could hear the voices of the prisoners counting their
+money and making their purchases, and the shrill voices of the women
+with the food.
+
+Simonson, in his rubber jacket and rubber overshoes fastened with a
+string over his worsted stockings (he was a vegetarian and would not
+wear the skin of slaughtered animals), was also in the courtyard waiting
+for the gang to start. He stood by the porch and jotted down in his
+notebook a thought that had occurred to him. This was what he wrote:
+“If a bacteria watched and examined a human nail it would pronounce
+it inorganic matter, and thus we, examining our globe and watching its
+crust, pronounce it to be inorganic. This is incorrect.”
+
+Katusha and Mary Pavlovna, both wearing top-boots and with shawls tied
+round their heads, came out of the building into the courtyard where the
+women sat sheltered from the wind by the northern wall of the court,
+and vied with one another, offering their goods, hot meat pie, fish,
+vermicelli, buckwheat porridge, liver, beef, eggs, milk. One had even a
+roast pig to offer.
+
+Having bought some eggs, bread, fish, and some rusks, Maslova was
+putting them into her bag, while Mary Pavlovna was paying the women,
+when a movement arose among the convicts. All were silent and took their
+places. The officer came out and began giving the last orders before
+starting. Everything was done in the usual manner. The prisoners were
+counted, the chains on their legs examined, and those who were to
+march in couples linked together with manacles. But suddenly the angry,
+authoritative voice of the officer shouting something was heard, also
+the sound of a blow and the crying of a child. All was silent for a
+moment and then came a hollow murmur from the crowd. Maslova and Mary
+Pavlovna advanced towards the spot whence the noise proceeded.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+AN INCIDENT OF THE MARCH.
+
+This is what Mary Pavlovna and Katusha saw when they came up to the
+scene whence the noise proceeded. The officer, a sturdy fellow, with
+fair moustaches, stood uttering words of foul and coarse abuse, and
+rubbing with his left the palm of his right hand, which he had hurt in
+hitting a prisoner on the face. In front of him a thin, tall convict,
+with half his head shaved and dressed in a cloak too short for him and
+trousers much too short, stood wiping his bleeding face with one hand,
+and holding a little shrieking girl wrapped in a shawl with the other.
+
+“I’ll give it you” (foul abuse); “I’ll teach you to reason” (more
+abuse); “you’re to give her to the women!” shouted the officer. “Now,
+then, on with them.”
+
+The convict, who was exiled by the Commune, had been carrying his little
+daughter all the way from Tomsk, where his wife had died of typhus, and
+now the officer ordered him to be manacled. The exile’s explanation that
+he could not carry the child if he was manacled irritated the officer,
+who happened to be in a bad temper, and he gave the troublesome prisoner
+a beating. [A fact described by Lineff in his “Transportation”.] Before
+the injured convict stood a convoy soldier, and a black-bearded prisoner
+with manacles on one hand and a look of gloom on his face, which he
+turned now to the officer, now to the prisoner with the little girl.
+
+The officer repeated his orders for the soldiers to take away the girl.
+The murmur among the prisoners grew louder.
+
+“All the way from Tomsk they were not put on,” came a hoarse voice from
+some one in the rear. “It’s a child, and not a puppy.”
+
+“What’s he to do with the lassie? That’s not the law,” said some one
+else.
+
+“Who’s that?” shouted the officer as if he had been stung, and rushed
+into the crowd.
+
+“I’ll teach you the law. Who spoke. You? You?”
+
+“Everybody says so, because-” said a short, broad-faced prisoner.
+
+Before he had finished speaking the officer hit him in the face.
+
+“Mutiny, is it? I’ll show you what mutiny means. I’ll have you all
+shot like dogs, and the authorities will be only too thankful. Take the
+girl.”
+
+The crowd was silent. One convoy soldier pulled away the girl, who was
+screaming desperately, while another manacled the prisoner, who now
+submissively held out his hand.
+
+“Take her to the women,” shouted the officer, arranging his sword belt.
+
+The little girl, whose face had grown quite red, was trying to disengage
+her arms from under the shawl, and screamed unceasingly. Mary Pavlovna
+stepped out from among the crowd and came up to the officer.
+
+“Will you allow me to carry the little girl?” she said.
+
+“Who are you?” asked the officer.
+
+“A political prisoner.”
+
+Mary Pavlovna’s handsome face, with the beautiful prominent eyes (he
+had noticed her before when the prisoners were given into his charge),
+evidently produced an effect on the officer. He looked at her in silence
+as if considering, then said: “I don’t care; carry her if you like. It
+is easy for you to show pity; if he ran away who would have to answer?”
+
+“How could he run away with the child in his arms?” said Mary Pavlovna.
+
+“I have no time to talk with you. Take her if you like.”
+
+“Shall I give her?” asked the soldier.
+
+“Yes, give her.”
+
+“Come to me,” said Mary Pavlovna, trying to coax the child to come to
+her.
+
+But the child in the soldier’s arms stretched herself towards her father
+and continued to scream, and would not go to Mary Pavlovna.
+
+“Wait a bit, Mary Pavlovna,” said Maslova, getting a rusk out of her
+bag; “she will come to me.”
+
+The little girl knew Maslova, and when she saw her face and the rusk
+she let her take her. All was quiet. The gates were opened, and the gang
+stepped out, the convoy counted the prisoners over again, the bags were
+packed and tied on to the carts, the weak seated on the top. Maslova
+with the child in her arms took her place among the women next to
+Theodosia. Simonson, who had all the time been watching what was going
+on, stepped with large, determined strides up to the officer, who,
+having given his orders, was just getting into a trap, and said, “You
+have behaved badly.”
+
+“Get to your place; it is no business of yours.”
+
+“It is my business to tell you that you have behaved badly and I have
+said it,” said Simonson, looking intently into the officer’s face from
+under his bushy eyebrows.
+
+“Ready? March!” the officer called out, paying no heed to Simonson, and,
+taking hold of the driver’s shoulder, he got into the trap. The gang
+started and spread out as it stepped on to the muddy high road with
+ditches on each side, which passed through a dense forest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MARY PAVLOVNA.
+
+In spite of the hard conditions in which they were placed, life among
+the political prisoners seemed very good to Katusha after the depraved,
+luxurious and effeminate life she had led in town for the last six
+years, and after two months’ imprisonment with criminal prisoners. The
+fifteen to twenty miles they did per day, with one day’s rest after two
+days’ marching, strengthened her physically, and the fellowship with her
+new companions opened out to her a life full of interests such as she
+had never dreamed of. People so wonderful (as she expressed it) as those
+whom she was now going with she had not only never met but could not
+even have imagined.
+
+“There now, and I cried when I was sentenced,” she said. “Why, I must
+thank God for it all the days of my life. I have learned to know what I
+never should have found out else.”
+
+The motives she understood easily and without effort that guided these
+people, and, being of the people, fully sympathised with them. She
+understood that these persons were for the people and against the
+upper classes, and though themselves belonging to the upper classes
+had sacrificed their privileges, their liberty and their lives for the
+people. This especially made her value and admire them. She was charmed
+with all the new companions, but particularly with Mary Pavlovna,
+and she was not only charmed with her, but loved her with a peculiar,
+respectful and rapturous love. She was struck by the fact that this
+beautiful girl, the daughter of a rich general, who could speak three
+languages, gave away all that her rich brother sent her, and lived like
+the simplest working girl, and dressed not only simply, but poorly,
+paying no heed to her appearance. This trait and a complete absence
+of coquetry was particularly surprising and therefore attractive to
+Maslova. Maslova could see that Mary Pavlovna knew, and was even pleased
+to know, that she was handsome, and yet the effect her appearance had on
+men was not at all pleasing to her; she was even afraid of it, and felt
+an absolute disgust to all love affairs. Her men companions knew it, and
+if they felt attracted by her never permitted themselves to show it to
+her, but treated her as they would a man; but with strangers, who often
+molested her, the great physical strength on which she prided herself
+stood her in good stead.
+
+“It happened once,” she said to Katusha, “that a man followed me in the
+street and would not leave me on any account. At last I gave him such a
+shaking that he was frightened and ran away.”
+
+She became a revolutionary, as she said, because she felt a dislike to
+the life of the well-to-do from childhood up, and loved the life of the
+common people, and she was always being scolded for spending her time
+in the servants’ hall, in the kitchen or the stables instead of the
+drawing-room.
+
+“And I found it amusing to be with cooks and the coachmen, and dull with
+our gentlemen and ladies,” she said. “Then when I came to understand
+things I saw that our life was altogether wrong; I had no mother and I
+did not care for my father, and so when I was nineteen I left home, and
+went with a girl friend to work as a factory hand.”
+
+After she left the factory she lived in the country, then returned to
+town and lived in a lodging, where they had a secret printing press.
+There she was arrested and sentenced to hard labour. Mary Pavlovna
+said nothing about it herself, but Katusha heard from others that Mary
+Pavlovna was sentenced because, when the lodging was searched by the
+police and one of the revolutionists fired a shot in the dark, she
+pleaded guilty.
+
+As soon as she had learned to know Mary Pavlovna, Katusha noticed
+that, whatever the conditions she found herself in, Mary Pavlovna never
+thought of herself, but was always anxious to serve, to help some one,
+in matters small or great. One of her present companions, Novodvoroff,
+said of her that she devoted herself to philanthropic amusements. And
+this was true. The interest of her whole life lay in the search for
+opportunities of serving others. This kind of amusement had become the
+habit, the business of her life. And she did it all so naturally that
+those who knew her no longer valued but simply expected it of her.
+
+When Maslova first came among them, Mary Pavlovna felt repulsed and
+disgusted. Katusha noticed this, but she also noticed that, having made
+an effort to overcome these feelings, Mary Pavlovna became particularly
+tender and kind to her. The tenderness and kindness of so uncommon
+a being touched Maslova so much that she gave her whole heart, and
+unconsciously accepting her views, could not help imitating her in
+everything.
+
+This devoted love of Katusha touched Mary Pavlovna in her turn, and she
+learned to love Katusha.
+
+These women were also united by the repulsion they both felt to sexual
+love. The one loathed that kind of love, having experienced all its
+horrors, the other, never having experienced it, looked on it as
+something incomprehensible and at the same time as something repugnant
+and offensive to human dignity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+SIMONSON.
+
+Mary Pavlovna’s influence was one that Maslova submitted to because she
+loved Mary Pavlovna. Simonson influenced her because he loved her.
+
+Everybody lives and acts partly according to his own, partly according
+to other people’s, ideas. This is what constitutes one of the great
+differences among men. To some, thinking is a kind of mental game; they
+treat their reason as if it were a fly-wheel without a connecting strap,
+and are guided in their actions by other people’s ideas, by custom or
+laws; while others look upon their own ideas as the chief motive power
+of all their actions, and always listen to the dictates of their own
+reason and submit to it, accepting other people’s opinions only on rare
+occasions and after weighing them critically. Simonson was a man of the
+latter sort; he settled and verified everything according to his own
+reason and acted on the decisions he arrived at. When a schoolboy
+he made up his mind that his father’s income, made as a paymaster in
+government office was dishonestly gained, and he told his father that it
+ought to be given to the people. When his father, instead of listening
+to him, gave him a scolding, he left his father’s house and would not
+make use of his father’s means. Having come to the conclusion that all
+the existing misery was a result of the people’s ignorance, he joined
+the socialists, who carried on propaganda among the people, as soon as
+he left the university and got a place as a village schoolmaster.
+He taught and explained to his pupils and to the peasants what he
+considered to be just, and openly blamed what he thought unjust. He was
+arrested and tried. During his trial he determined to tell his judges
+that his was a just cause, for which he ought not to be tried or
+punished. When the judges paid no heed to his words, but went on with
+the trial, he decided not to answer them and kept resolutely silent when
+they questioned him. He was exiled to the Government of Archangel. There
+he formulated a religious teaching which was founded on the theory that
+everything in the world was alive, that nothing is lifeless, and that
+all the objects we consider to be without life or inorganic are only
+parts of an enormous organic body which we cannot compass. A man’s task
+is to sustain the life of that huge organism and all its animate parts.
+Therefore he was against war, capital punishment and every kind of
+killing, not only of human beings, but also of animals. Concerning
+marriage, too, he had a peculiar idea of his own; he thought that
+increase was a lower function of man, the highest function being to
+serve the already existing lives. He found a confirmation of his
+theory in the fact that there were phacocytes in the blood. Celibates,
+according to his opinion, were the same as phacocytes, their function
+being to help the weak and the sickly particles of the organism. From
+the moment he came to this conclusion he began to consider himself as
+well as Mary Pavlovna as phacocytes, and to live accordingly, though
+as a youth he had been addicted to vice. His love for Katusha did not
+infringe this conception, because he loved her platonically, and such
+love he considered could not hinder his activity as a phacocytes, but
+acted, on the contrary, as an inspiration.
+
+Not only moral, but also most practical questions he decided in his own
+way. He applied a theory of his own to all practical business, had rules
+relating to the number of hours for rest and for work, to the kind of
+food to eat, the way to dress, to heat and light up the rooms. With all
+this Simonson was very shy and modest; and yet when he had once made
+up his mind nothing could make him waver. And this man had a decided
+influence on Maslova through his love for her. With a woman’s instinct
+Maslova very soon found out that he loved her. And the fact that
+she could awaken love in a man of that kind raised her in her own
+estimation. It was Nekhludoff’s magnanimity and what had been in the
+past that made him offer to marry her, but Simonson loved her such as
+she was now, loved her simply because of the love he bore her. And she
+felt that Simonson considered her to be an exceptional woman, having
+peculiarly high moral qualities. She did not quite know what the
+qualities he attributed to her were, but in order to be on the safe side
+and that he should not be disappointed in her, she tried with all her
+might to awaken in herself all the highest qualities she could conceive,
+and she tried to be as good as possible. This had begun while they
+were still in prison, when on a common visiting day she had noticed his
+kindly dark blue eyes gazing fixedly at her from under his projecting
+brow. Even then she had noticed that this was a peculiar man, and that
+he was looking at her in a peculiar manner, and had also noticed the
+striking combination of sternness--the unruly hair and the frowning
+forehead gave him this appearance--with the child-like kindness and
+innocence of his look. She saw him again in Tomsk, where she joined the
+political prisoners. Though they had not uttered a word, their looks
+told plainly that they had understood one another. Even after that they
+had had no serious conversation with each other, but Maslova felt that
+when he spoke in her presence his words were addressed to her, and that
+he spoke for her sake, trying to express himself as plainly as he could;
+but it was when he started walking with the criminal prisoners that they
+grew specially near to one another.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
+
+Until they left Perm Nekhludoff only twice managed to see Katusha, once
+in Nijni, before the prisoners were embarked on a barge surrounded with
+a wire netting, and again in Perm in the prison office. At both these
+interviews he found her reserved and unkind. She answered his questions
+as to whether she was in want of anything, and whether she was
+comfortable, evasively and bashfully, and, as he thought, with the same
+feeling of hostile reproach which she had shown several times
+before. Her depressed state of mind, which was only the result of the
+molestations from the men that she was undergoing at the time, tormented
+Nekhludoff. He feared lest, influenced by the hard and degrading
+circumstances in which she was placed on the journey, she should again
+get into that state of despair and discord with her own self which
+formerly made her irritable with him, and which had caused her to drink
+and smoke excessively to gain oblivion. But he was unable to help her in
+any way during this part of the journey, as it was impossible for him to
+be with her. It was only when she joined the political prisoners that he
+saw how unfounded his fears were, and at each interview he noticed that
+inner change he so strongly desired to see in her becoming more and more
+marked. The first time they met in Tomsk she was again just as she had
+been when leaving Moscow. She did not frown or become confused when she
+saw him, but met him joyfully and simply, thanking him for what he had
+done for her, especially for bringing her among the people with whom she
+now was.
+
+After two months’ marching with the gang, the change that had taken
+place within her became noticeable in her appearance. She grew sunburned
+and thinner, and seemed older; wrinkles appeared on her temples and
+round her mouth. She had no ringlets on her forehead now, and her hair
+was covered with the kerchief; in the way it was arranged, as well as in
+her dress and her manners, there was no trace of coquetry left. And this
+change, which had taken place and was still progressing in her, made
+Nekhludoff very happy.
+
+He felt for her something he had never experienced before. This feeling
+had nothing in common with his first poetic love for her, and even less
+with the sensual love that had followed, nor even with the satisfaction
+of a duty fulfilled, not unmixed with self-admiration, with which he
+decided to marry her after the trial. The present feeling was simply one
+of pity and tenderness. He had felt it when he met her in prison for
+the first time, and then again when, after conquering his repugnance,
+he forgave her the imagined intrigue with the medical assistant in the
+hospital (the injustice done her had since been discovered); it was the
+same feeling he now had, only with this difference, that formerly it was
+momentary, and that now it had become permanent. Whatever he was doing,
+whatever he was thinking now, a feeling of pity and tenderness dwelt
+with him, and not only pity and tenderness for her, but for everybody.
+This feeling seemed to have opened the floodgates of love, which had
+found no outlet in Nekhludoff’s soul, and the love now flowed out to
+every one he met.
+
+During this journey Nekhludoff’s feelings were so stimulated that he
+could not help being attentive and considerate to everybody, from the
+coachman and the convoy soldiers to the prison inspectors and governors
+whom he had to deal with. Now that Maslova was among the political
+prisoners, Nekhludoff could not help becoming acquainted with many of
+them, first in Ekaterinburg, where they had a good deal of freedom and
+were kept altogether in a large cell, and then on the road when Maslova
+was marching with three of the men and four of the women. Coming in
+contact with political exiles in this way made Nekhludoff completely
+change his mind concerning them.
+
+From the very beginning of the revolutionary movement in Russia, but
+especially since that first of March, when Alexander II was murdered,
+Nekhludoff regarded the revolutionists with dislike and contempt. He
+was repulsed by the cruelty and secrecy of the methods they employed
+in their struggles against the government, especially the cruel murders
+they committed, and their arrogance also disgusted him. But having
+learned more intimately to know them and all they had suffered at the
+hands of the government, he saw that they could not be other than they
+were.
+
+Terrible and endless as were the torments which were inflicted on the
+criminals, there was at least some semblance of justice shown them
+before and after they were sentenced, but in the case of the political
+prisoners there was not even that semblance, as Nekhludoff saw in the
+case of Sholostova and that of many and many of his new acquaintances.
+These people were dealt with like fish caught with a net; everything
+that gets into the nets is pulled ashore, and then the big fish which
+are required are sorted out and the little ones are left to perish
+unheeded on the shore. Having captured hundreds that were evidently
+guiltless, and that could not be dangerous to the government, they left
+them imprisoned for years, where they became consumptive, went out of
+their minds or committed suicide, and kept them only because they had
+no inducement to set them free, while they might be of use to elucidate
+some question at a judicial inquiry, safe in prison. The fate of these
+persons, often innocent even from the government point of view, depended
+on the whim, the humour of, or the amount of leisure at the disposal
+of some police officer or spy, or public prosecutor, or magistrate,
+or governor, or minister. Some one of these officials feels dull, or
+inclined to distinguish himself, and makes a number of arrests, and
+imprisons or sets free, according to his own fancy or that of the
+higher authorities. And the higher official, actuated by like motives,
+according to whether he is inclined to distinguish himself, or to what
+his relations to the minister are, exiles men to the other side of the
+world or keeps them in solitary confinement, condemns them to Siberia,
+to hard labour, to death, or sets them free at the request of some lady.
+
+They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the
+means that were used against them. And as the military men live in an
+atmosphere of public opinion that not only conceals from them the guilt
+of their actions, but sets these actions up as feats of heroism,
+so these political offenders were also constantly surrounded by
+an atmosphere of public opinion which made the cruel actions they
+committed, in the face of danger and at the risk of liberty and life,
+and all that is dear to men, seem not wicked but glorious actions.
+Nekhludoff found in this the explanation of the surprising phenomenon
+that men, with the mildest characters, who seemed incapable of
+witnessing the sufferings of any living creature, much less of
+inflicting pain, quietly prepared to murder men, nearly all of them
+considering murder lawful and just on certain occasions as a means
+for self-defence, for the attainment of higher aims or for the general
+welfare.
+
+The importance they attribute to their cause, and consequently to
+themselves, flowed naturally from the importance the government attached
+to their actions, and the cruelty of the punishments it inflicted on
+them. When Nekhludoff came to know them better he became convinced that
+they were not the right-down villains that some imagined them to be, nor
+the complete heroes that others thought them, but ordinary people, just
+the same as others, among whom there were some good and some bad, and
+some mediocre, as there are everywhere.
+
+There were some among them who had turned revolutionists because they
+honestly considered it their duty to fight the existing evils, but there
+were also those who chose this work for selfish, ambitious motives; the
+majority, however, was attracted to the revolutionary idea by the desire
+for danger, for risks, the enjoyment of playing with one’s life, which,
+as Nekhludoff knew from his military experiences, is quite common to
+the most ordinary people while they are young and full of energy. But
+wherein they differed from ordinary people was that their moral standard
+was a higher one than that of ordinary men. They considered not only
+self-control, hard living, truthfulness, but also the readiness to
+sacrifice everything, even life, for the common welfare as their duty.
+Therefore the best among them stood on a moral level that is not often
+reached, while the worst were far below the ordinary level, many of them
+being untruthful, hypocritical and at the same time self-satisfied and
+proud. So that Nekhludoff learned not only to respect but to love some
+of his new acquaintances, while he remained more than indifferent to
+others.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+KRYLTZOFF’S STORY.
+
+Nekhludoff grew especially fond of Kryltzoff, a consumptive young man
+condemned to hard labour, who was going with the same gang as Katusha.
+Nekhludoff had made his acquaintance already in Ekaterinburg, and
+talked with him several times on the road after that. Once, in summer,
+Nekhludoff spent nearly the whole of a day with him at a halting
+station, and Kryltzoff, having once started talking, told him his
+story and how he had become a revolutionist. Up to the time of his
+imprisonment his story was soon told. He lost his father, a rich landed
+proprietor in the south of Russia, when still a child. He was the only
+son, and his mother brought him up. He learned easily in the university,
+as well as the gymnasium, and was first in the mathematical faculty
+in his year. He was offered a choice of remaining in the university
+or going abroad. He hesitated. He loved a girl and was thinking of
+marriage, and taking part in the rural administration. He did not like
+giving up either offer, and could not make up his mind. At this time
+his fellow-students at the university asked him for money for a common
+cause. He did not know that this common cause was revolutionary, which
+he was not interested in at that time, but gave the money from a sense
+of comradeship and vanity, so that it should not be said that he was
+afraid. Those who received the money were caught, a note was found which
+proved that the money had been given by Kryltzoff, he was arrested, and
+first kept at the police station, then imprisoned.
+
+“The prison where I was put,” Kryltzoff went on to relate (he was
+sitting on the high shelf bedstead, his elbows on his knees, with
+sunken chest, the beautiful, intelligent eyes with which he looked at
+Nekhludoff glistening feverishly)--“they were not specially strict in
+that prison. We managed to converse, not only by tapping the wall, but
+could walk about the corridors, share our provisions and our tobacco,
+and in the evenings we even sang in chorus. I had a fine voice--yes, if
+it had not been for mother it would have been all right, even pleasant
+and interesting. Here I made the acquaintance of the famous Petroff--he
+afterwards killed himself with a piece of glass at the fortress--and
+also of others. But I was not yet a revolutionary. I also became
+acquainted with my neighbours in the cells next to mine. They were both
+caught with Polish proclamations and arrested in the same cause, and
+were tried for an attempt to escape from the convoy when they were being
+taken to the railway station. One was a Pole, Lozinsky; the other a
+Jew, Rozovsky. Yes. Well, this Rozovsky was quite a boy. He said he
+was seventeen, but he looked fifteen--thin, small, active, with black,
+sparkling eyes, and, like most Jews, very musical. His voice was still
+breaking, and yet he sang beautifully. Yes. I saw them both taken to be
+tried. They were taken in the morning. They returned in the evening, and
+said they were condemned to death. No one had expected it. Their case
+was so unimportant; they only tried to get away from the convoy, and had
+not even wounded any one. And then it was so unnatural to execute such
+a child as Rozovsky. And we in prison all came to the conclusion that it
+was only done to frighten them, and would not be confirmed. At first
+we were excited, and then we comforted ourselves, and life went on
+as before. Yes. Well, one evening, a watchman comes to my door and
+mysteriously announces to me that carpenters had arrived, and were
+putting up the gallows. At first I did not understand. What’s that? What
+gallows? But the watchman was so excited that I saw at once it was
+for our two. I wished to tap and communicate with my comrades, but was
+afraid those two would hear. The comrades were also silent. Evidently
+everybody knew. In the corridors and in the cells everything was as
+still as death all that evening. They did not tap the wall nor sing.
+At ten the watchman came again and announced that a hangman had arrived
+from Moscow. He said it and went away. I began calling him back.
+Suddenly I hear Rozovsky shouting to me across the corridor: ‘What’s the
+matter? Why do you call him?’ I answered something about asking him to
+get me some tobacco, but he seemed to guess, and asked me: ‘Why did we
+not sing to-night, why did we not tap the walls?’ I do not remember
+what I said, but I went away so as not to speak to him. Yes. It was a
+terrible night. I listened to every sound all night. Suddenly, towards
+morning, I hear doors opening and somebody walking--many persons. I went
+up to my window. There was a lamp burning in the corridor. The first
+to pass was the inspector. He was stout, and seemed a resolute,
+self-satisfied man, but he looked ghastly pale, downcast, and seemed
+frightened; then his assistant, frowning but resolute; behind them the
+watchman. They passed my door and stopped at the next, and I hear the
+assistant calling out in a strange voice: ‘Lozinsky, get up and put on
+clean linen.’ Yes. Then I hear the creaking of the door; they entered
+into his cell. Then I hear Lozinsky’s steps going to the opposite side
+of the corridor. I could only see the inspector. He stood quite pale,
+and buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, shrugging his shoulders. Yes.
+Then, as if frightened of something, he moved out of the way. It was
+Lozinsky, who passed him and came up to my door. A handsome young fellow
+he was, you know, of that nice Polish type: broad shouldered, his head
+covered with fine, fair, curly hair as with a cap, and with beautiful
+blue eyes. So blooming, so fresh, so healthy. He stopped in front of my
+window, so that I could see the whole of his face. A dreadful, gaunt,
+livid face. ‘Kryltzoff, have you any cigarettes?’ I wished to pass him
+some, but the assistant hurriedly pulled out his cigarette case and
+passed it to him. He took out one, the assistant struck a match, and he
+lit the cigarette and began to smoke and seemed to be thinking. Then,
+as if he had remembered something, he began to speak. ‘It is cruel and
+unjust. I have committed no crime. I--’ I saw something quiver in his
+white young throat, from which I could not take my eyes, and he stopped.
+Yes. At that moment I hear Rozovsky shouting in his fine, Jewish
+voice. Lozinsky threw away the cigarette and stepped from the door.
+And Rozovsky appeared at the window. His childish face, with the limpid
+black eyes, was red and moist. He also had clean linen on, the trousers
+were too wide, and he kept pulling them up and trembled all over. He
+approached his pitiful face to my window. ‘Kryltzoff, it’s true that the
+doctor has prescribed cough mixture for me, is it not? I am not well.
+I’ll take some more of the mixture.’ No one answered, and he looked
+inquiringly, now at me, now at the inspector. What he meant to say
+I never made out. Yes. Suddenly the assistant again put on a stern
+expression, and called out in a kind of squeaking tone: ‘Now, then, no
+nonsense. Let us go.’ Rozovsky seemed incapable of understanding what
+awaited him, and hurried, almost ran, in front of him all along the
+corridor. But then he drew back, and I could hear his shrill voice
+and his cries, then the trampling of feet, and general hubbub. He was
+shrieking and sobbing. The sounds came fainter and fainter, and at
+last the door rattled and all was quiet. Yes. And so they hanged them.
+Throttled them both with a rope. A watchman, another one, saw it done,
+and told me that Lozinsky did not resist, but Rozovsky struggled for
+a long time, so that they had to pull him up on to the scaffold and to
+force his head into the noose. Yes. This watchman was a stupid fellow.
+He said: ‘They told me, sir, that it would be frightful, but it was
+not at all frightful. After they were hanged they only shrugged their
+shoulders twice, like this.’ He showed how the shoulders convulsively
+rose and fell. ‘Then the hangman pulled a bit so as to tighten the
+noose, and it was all up, and they never budged.”’ And Kryltzoff
+repeated the watchman’s words, “Not at all frightful,” and tried to
+smile, but burst into sobs instead.
+
+For a long time after that he kept silent, breathing heavily, and
+repressing the sobs that were choking him.
+
+“From that time I became a revolutionist. Yes,” he said, when he was
+quieter and finished his story in a few words. He belonged to the
+Narodovoltzy party, and was even at the head of the disorganising group,
+whose object was to terrorise the government so that it should give
+up its power of its own accord. With this object he travelled
+to Petersburg, to Kiev, to Odessa and abroad, and was everywhere
+successful. A man in whom he had full confidence betrayed him. He was
+arrested, tried, kept in prison for two years, and condemned to death,
+but the sentence was mitigated to one of hard labour for life.
+
+He went into consumption while in prison, and in the conditions he was
+now placed he had scarcely more than a few months longer to live. This
+he knew, but did not repent of his action, but said that if he had
+another life he would use it in the same way to destroy the conditions
+in which such things as he had seen were possible.
+
+This man’s story and his intimacy with him explained to Nekhludoff much
+that he had not previously understood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF SEEKS AN INTERVIEW WITH MASLOVA.
+
+On the day when the convoy officer had the encounter with the prisoners
+at the halting station about the child, Nekhludoff, who had spent
+the night at the village inn, woke up late, and was some time writing
+letters to post at the next Government town, so that he left the inn
+later than usual, and did not catch up with the gang on the road as
+he had done previously, but came to the village where the next halting
+station was as it was growing dusk.
+
+Having dried himself at the inn, which was kept by an elderly woman who
+had an extraordinarily fat, white neck, he had his tea in a clean room
+decorated with a great number of icons and pictures and then hurried
+away to the halting station to ask the officer for an interview
+with Katusha. At the last six halting stations he could not get the
+permission for an interview from any of the officers. Though they had
+been changed several times, not one of them would allow Nekhludoff
+inside the halting stations, so that he had not seen Katusha for
+more than a week. This strictness was occasioned by the fact that
+an important prison official was expected to pass that way. Now this
+official had passed without looking in at the gang, after all, and
+Nekhludoff hoped that the officer who had taken charge of the gang in
+the morning would allow him an interview with the prisoners, as former
+officers had done.
+
+The landlady offered Nekhludoff a trap to drive him to the halting
+station, situated at the farther end of the village, but Nekhludoff
+preferred to walk. A young labourer, a broad-shouldered young fellow
+of herculean dimensions, with enormous top-boots freshly blackened with
+strongly smelling tar, offered himself as a guide.
+
+A dense mist obscured the sky, and it was so dark that when the young
+fellow was three steps in advance of him Nekhludoff could not see him
+unless the light of some window happened to fall on the spot, but he
+could hear the heavy boots wading through the deep, sticky slush. After
+passing the open place in front of the church and the long street,
+with its rows of windows shining brightly in the darkness, Nekhludoff
+followed his guide to the outskirts of the village, where it was pitch
+dark. But soon here, too, rays of light, streaming through the mist
+from the lamps in the front of the halting station, became discernible
+through the darkness. The reddish spots of light grew bigger and bigger;
+at last the stakes of the palisade, the moving figure of the sentinel, a
+post painted with white and black stripes and the sentinel’s box became
+visible.
+
+The sentinel called his usual “Who goes there?” as they approached, and
+seeing they were strangers treated them with such severity that he would
+not allow them to wait by the palisade; but Nekhludoff’s guide was not
+abashed by this severity.
+
+“Hallo, lad! why so fierce? You go and rouse your boss while we wait
+here?”
+
+The sentinel gave no answer, but shouted something in at the gate and
+stood looking at the broad-shouldered young labourer scraping the mud
+off Nekhludoff’s boots with a chip of wood by the light of the lamp.
+From behind the palisade came the hum of male and female voices. In
+about three minutes more something rattled, the gate opened, and a
+sergeant, with his cloak thrown over his shoulders, stepped out of the
+darkness into the lamplight.
+
+The sergeant was not as strict as the sentinel, but he was extremely
+inquisitive. He insisted on knowing what Nekhludoff wanted the officer
+for, and who he was, evidently scenting his booty and anxious not to let
+it escape. Nekhludoff said he had come on special business, and would
+show his gratitude, and would the sergeant take a note for him to the
+officer. The sergeant took the note, nodded, and went away. Some time
+after the gate rattled again, and women carrying baskets, boxes, jugs
+and sacks came out, loudly chattering in their peculiar Siberian dialect
+as they stepped over the threshold of the gate. None of them wore
+peasant costumes, but were dressed town fashion, wearing jackets and
+fur-lined cloaks. Their skirts were tucked up high, and their heads
+wrapped up in shawls. They examined Nekhludoff and his guide curiously
+by the light of the lamp. One of them showed evident pleasure at the
+sight of the broad-shouldered fellow, and affectionately administered to
+him a dose of Siberian abuse.
+
+“You demon, what are you doing here? The devil take you,” she said,
+addressing him.
+
+“I’ve been showing this traveller here the way,” answered the young
+fellow. “And what have you been bringing here?”
+
+“Dairy produce, and I am to bring more in the morning.”
+
+The guide said something in answer that made not only the women but even
+the sentinel laugh, and, turning to Nekhludoff, he said:
+
+“You’ll find your way alone? Won’t get lost, will you?”
+
+“I shall find it all right.”
+
+“When you have passed the church it’s the second from the two-storied
+house. Oh, and here, take my staff,” he said, handing the stick he
+was carrying, and which was longer than himself, to Nekhludoff; and
+splashing through the mud with his enormous boots, he disappeared in the
+darkness, together with the women.
+
+His voice mingling with the voices of the women was still audible
+through the fog, when the gate again rattled, and the sergeant appeared
+and asked Nekhludoff to follow him to the officer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF AND THE OFFICER.
+
+This halting station, like all such stations along the Siberian
+road, was surrounded by a courtyard, fenced in with a palisade of
+sharp-pointed stakes, and consisted of three one-storied houses. One of
+them, the largest, with grated windows, was for the prisoners, another
+for the convoy soldiers, and the third, in which the office was, for the
+officers.
+
+There were lights in the windows of all the three houses, and, like
+all such lights, they promised, here in a specially deceptive manner,
+something cosy inside the walls. Lamps were burning before the porches
+of the houses and about five lamps more along the walls lit up the yard.
+
+The sergeant led Nekhludoff along a plank which lay across the yard up
+to the porch of the smallest of the houses.
+
+When he had gone up the three steps of the porch he let Nekhludoff pass
+before him into the ante-room, in which a small lamp was burning, and
+which was filled with smoky fumes. By the stove a soldier in a coarse
+shirt with a necktie and black trousers, and with one top-boot on, stood
+blowing the charcoal in a somovar, using the other boot as bellows. [The
+long boots worn in Russia have concertina-like sides, and when held to
+the chimney of the somovar can be used instead of bellows to make the
+charcoal inside burn up.] When he saw Nekhludoff, the soldier left the
+somovar and helped him off with his waterproof; then went into the inner
+room.
+
+“He has come, your honour.”
+
+“Well, ask him in,” came an angry voice.
+
+“Go in at the door,” said the soldier, and went back to the somovar.
+
+In the next room an officer with fair moustaches and a very red face,
+dressed in an Austrian jacket that closely fitted his broad chest and
+shoulders, sat at a covered table, on which were the remains of his
+dinner and two bottles; there was a strong smell of tobacco and some
+very strong, cheap scent in the warm room. On seeing Nekhludoff the
+officer rose and gazed ironically and suspiciously, as it seemed, at the
+newcomer.
+
+“What is it you want?” he asked, and, not waiting for a reply, he
+shouted through the open door:
+
+“Bernoff, the somovar! What are you about?”
+
+“Coming at once.”
+
+“You’ll get it ‘at once’ so that you’ll remember it,” shouted the
+officer, and his eyes flashed.
+
+“I’m coming,” shouted the soldier, and brought in the somovar.
+Nekhludoff waited while the soldier placed the somovar on the table.
+When the officer had followed the soldier out of the room with his cruel
+little eyes looking as if they were aiming where best to hit him, he
+made the tea, got the four-cornered decanter out of his travelling case
+and some Albert biscuits, and having placed all this on the cloth he
+again turned to Nekhludoff. “Well, how can I be of service to you?”
+
+“I should like to be allowed to visit a prisoner,” said Nekhludoff,
+without sitting down.
+
+“A political one? That’s forbidden by the law,” said the officer.
+
+“The woman I mean is not a political prisoner,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Yes. But pray take a scat,” said the officer. Nekhludoff sat down.
+
+“She is not a political one, but at my request she has been allowed by
+the higher authorities to join the political prisoners--”
+
+“Oh, yes, I know,” interrupted the other; “a little dark one? Well,
+yes, that can be managed. Won’t you smoke?” He moved a box of cigarettes
+towards Nekhludoff, and, having carefully poured out two tumblers of
+tea, he passed one to Nekhludoff. “If you please,” he said.
+
+“Thank you; I should like to see--”
+
+“The night is long. You’ll have plenty of time. I shall order her to be
+sent out to you.”
+
+“But could I not see her where she is? Why need she be sent for?”
+ Nekhludoff said.
+
+“In to the political prisoners? It is against the law.”
+
+“I have been allowed to go in several times. If there is any danger of
+my passing anything in to them I could do it through her just as well.”
+
+“Oh, no; she would be searched,” said the officer, and laughed in an
+unpleasant manner.
+
+“Well, why not search me?”
+
+“All right; we’ll manage without that,” said the officer, opening the
+decanter, and holding it out towards Nekhludoff’s tumbler of tea. “May
+I? No? Well, just as you like. When you are living here in Siberia you
+are too glad to meet an educated person. Our work, as you know, is the
+saddest, and when one is used to better things it is very hard. The idea
+they have of us is that convoy officers are coarse, uneducated men, and
+no one seems to remember that we may have been born for a very different
+position.”
+
+This officer’s red face, his scents, his rings, and especially his
+unpleasant laughter disgusted Nekhludoff very much, but to-day, as
+during the whole of his journey, he was in that serious, attentive state
+which did not allow him to behave slightingly or disdainfully towards
+any man, but made him feel the necessity of speaking to every one
+“entirely,” as he expressed to himself, this relation to men. When he
+had heard the officer and understood his state of mind, he said in a
+serious manner:
+
+“I think that in your position, too, some comfort could be found in
+helping the suffering people,” he said.
+
+“What are their sufferings? You don’t know what these people are.”
+
+“They are not special people,” said Nekhludoff; “they are just such
+people as others, and some of them are quite innocent.”
+
+“Of course, there are all sorts among them, and naturally one pities
+them. Others won’t let anything off, but I try to lighten their
+condition where I can. It’s better that I should suffer, but not they.
+Others keep to the law in every detail, even as far as to shoot, but
+I show pity. May I?--Take another,” he said, and poured out another
+tumbler of tea for Nekhludoff.
+
+“And who is she, this woman that you want to see?” he asked.
+
+“It is an unfortunate woman who got into a brothel, and was there
+falsely accused of poisoning, and she is a very good woman,” Nekhludoff
+answered.
+
+The officer shook his head. “Yes, it does happen. I can tell you about
+a certain Emma who lived in Kasan. She was a Hungarian by birth, but she
+had quite Persian eyes,” he continued, unable to restrain a smile at the
+recollection; “there was so much chic about her that a countess--”
+
+Nekhludoff interrupted the officer and returned to the former topic of
+conversation.
+
+“I think that you could lighten the condition of the people while they
+are in your charge. And in acting that way I am sure you would find
+great joy!” said Nekhludoff, trying to pronounce as distinctly as
+possible, as he might if talking to a foreigner or a child.
+
+The officer looked at Nekhludoff impatiently, waiting for him to stop
+so as to continue the tale about the Hungarian with Persian eyes, who
+evidently presented herself very vividly to his imagination and quite
+absorbed his attention.
+
+“Yes, of course, this is all quite true,” he said, “and I do pity them;
+but I should like to tell you about Emma. What do you think she did--?”
+
+“It does not interest me,” said Nekhludoff, “and I will tell you
+straight, that though I was myself very different at one time, I now
+hate that kind of relation to women.”
+
+The officer gave Nekhludoff a frightened look.
+
+“Won’t you take some more tea?” he said.
+
+“No, thank you.”
+
+“Bernoff!” the officer called, “take the gentleman to Vakouloff. Tell
+him to let him into the separate political room. He may remain there
+till the inspection.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
+
+Accompanied by the orderly, Nekhludoff went out into the courtyard,
+which was dimly lit up by the red light of the lamps.
+
+“Where to?” asked the convoy sergeant, addressing the orderly.
+
+“Into the separate cell, No. 5.”
+
+“You can’t pass here; the boss has gone to the village and taken the
+keys.”
+
+“Well, then, pass this way.”
+
+The soldier led Nekhludoff along a board to another entrance. While
+still in the yard Nekhludoff could hear the din of voices and general
+commotion going on inside as in a beehive when the bees are preparing to
+swarm; but when he came nearer and the door opened the din grew louder,
+and changed into distinct sounds of shouting, abuse and laughter. He
+heard the clatter of chairs and smelt the well-known foul air. This din
+of voices and the clatter of the chairs, together with the close smell,
+always flowed into one tormenting sensation, and produced in Nekhludoff
+a feeling of moral nausea which grew into physical sickness, the two
+feelings mingling with and heightening each other.
+
+The first thing Nekhludoff saw, on entering, was a large, stinking tub.
+A corridor into which several doors opened led from the entrance. The
+first was the family room, then the bachelors’ room, and at the very end
+two small rooms were set apart for the political prisoners.
+
+The buildings, which were arranged to hold one hundred and fifty
+prisoners, now that there were four hundred and fifty inside, were so
+crowded that the prisoners could not all get into the rooms, but filled
+the passage, too. Some were sitting or lying on the floor, some were
+going out with empty teapots, or bringing them back filled with boiling
+water. Among the latter was Taras. He overtook Nekhludoff and greeted
+him affectionately. The kind face of Taras was disfigured by dark
+bruises on his nose and under his eye.
+
+“What has happened to you?” asked Nekhludoff.
+
+“Yes, something did happen,” Taras said, with a smile.
+
+“All because of the woman,” added a prisoner, who followed Taras; “he’s
+had a row with Blind Fedka.”
+
+“And how’s Theodosia?”
+
+“She’s all right. Here I am bringing her the water for her tea,” Taras
+answered, and went into the family room.
+
+Nekhludoff looked in at the door. The room was crowded with women and
+men, some of whom were on and some under the bedsteads; it was full of
+steam from the wet clothes that were drying, and the chatter of women’s
+voices was unceasing. The next door led into the bachelors’ room. This
+room was still more crowded; even the doorway and the passage in front
+of it were blocked by a noisy crowd of men, in wet garments, busy doing
+or deciding something or other.
+
+The convoy sergeant explained that it was the prisoner appointed to buy
+provisions, paying off out of the food money what was owing to a sharper
+who had won from or lent money to the prisoners, and receiving back
+little tickets made of playing cards. When they saw the convoy soldier
+and a gentleman, those who were nearest became silent, and followed
+them with looks of ill-will. Among them Nekhludoff noticed the criminal
+Fedoroff, whom he knew, and who always kept a miserable lad with
+a swelled appearance and raised eyebrows beside him, and also a
+disgusting, noseless, pock-marked tramp, who was notorious among the
+prisoners because he killed his comrade in the marshes while trying to
+escape, and had, as it was rumoured, fed on his flesh. The tramp stood
+in the passage with his wet cloak thrown over one shoulder, looking
+mockingly and boldly at Nekhludoff, and did not move out of the way.
+Nekhludoff passed him by.
+
+Though this kind of scene had now become quite familiar to him, though
+he had during the last three months seen these four hundred criminal
+prisoners over and over again in many different circumstances; in the
+heat, enveloped in clouds of dust which they raised as they dragged
+their chained feet along the road, and at the resting places by the way,
+where the most horrible scenes of barefaced debauchery had occurred, yet
+every time he came among them, and felt their attention fixed upon him
+as it was now, shame and consciousness of his sin against them tormented
+him. To this sense of shame and guilt was added an unconquerable feeling
+of loathing and horror. He knew that, placed in a position such as
+theirs, they could not be other than they were, and yet he was unable to
+stifle his disgust.
+
+“It’s well for them do-nothings,” Nekhludoff heard some one say in a
+hoarse voice as he approached the room of the political prisoners. Then
+followed a word of obscene abuse, and spiteful, mocking laughter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+MAKAR DEVKIN.
+
+When they had passed the bachelors’ room the sergeant who accompanied
+Nekhludoff left him, promising to come for him before the inspection
+would take place. As soon as the sergeant was gone a prisoner, quickly
+stepping with his bare feet and holding up the chains, came close up to
+Nekhludoff, enveloping him in the strong, acid smell of perspiration,
+and said in a mysterious whisper:
+
+“Help the lad, sir; he’s got into an awful mess. Been drinking. To-day
+he’s given his name as Karmanoff at the inspection. Take his part, sir.
+We dare not, or they’ll kill us,” and looking uneasily round he turned
+away.
+
+This is what had happened. The criminal Kalmanoff had persuaded a young
+fellow who resembled him in appearance and was sentenced to exile to
+change names with him and go to the mines instead of him, while he only
+went to exile. Nekhludoff knew all this. Some convict had told him about
+this exchange the week before. He nodded as a sign that he understood
+and would do what was in his power, and continued his way without
+looking round.
+
+Nekhludoff knew this convict, and was surprised by his action. When in
+Ekaterinburg the convict had asked Nekhludoff to get a permission for
+his wife to follow him. The convict was a man of medium size and of the
+most ordinary peasant type, about thirty years old. He was condemned to
+hard labour for an attempt to murder and rob. His name was Makar Devkin.
+His crime was a very curious one. In the account he gave of it to
+Nekhludoff, he said it was not his but his devil’s doing. He said that
+a traveller had come to his father’s house and hired his sledge to drive
+him to a village thirty miles off for two roubles. Makar’s father told
+him to drive the stranger. Makar harnessed the horse, dressed, and
+sat down to drink tea with the stranger. The stranger related at the
+tea-table that he was going to be married and had five hundred roubles,
+which he had earned in Moscow, with him. When he had heard this, Makar
+went out into the yard and put an axe into the sledge under the straw.
+“And I did not myself know why I was taking the axe,” he said. “‘Take
+the axe,’ says _he_, and I took it. We got in and started. We drove
+along all right; I even forgot about the axe. Well, we were getting
+near the village; only about four miles more to go. The way from the
+cross-road to the high road was up hill, and I got out. I walked behind
+the sledge and _he_ whispers to me, ‘What are you thinking about? When
+you get to the top of the hill you will meet people along the highway,
+and then there will be the village. He will carry the money away. If
+you mean to do it, now’s the time.’ I stooped over the sledge as if to
+arrange the straw, and the axe seemed to jump into my hand of itself.
+The man turned round. ‘What are you doing?’ I lifted the axe and tried
+to knock him down, but he was quick, jumped out, and took hold of my
+hands. ‘What are you doing, you villain?’ He threw me down into the
+snow, and I did not even struggle, but gave in at once. He bound my arms
+with his girdle, and threw me into the sledge, and took me straight to
+the police station. I was imprisoned and tried. The commune gave me a
+good character, said that I was a good man, and that nothing wrong had
+been noticed about me. The masters for whom I worked also spoke well of
+me, but we had no money to engage a lawyer, and so I was condemned to
+four years’ hard labour.”
+
+It was this man who, wishing to save a fellow-villager, knowing that he
+was risking his life thereby, told Nekhludoff the prisoner’s secret, for
+doing which (if found out) he should certainly be throttled.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+MASLOVA AND HER COMPANIONS.
+
+The political prisoners were kept in two small rooms, the doors of which
+opened into a part of the passage partitioned off from the rest. The
+first person Nekhludoff saw on entering into this part of the passage
+was Simonson in his rubber jacket and with a log of pine wood in his
+hands, crouching in front of a stove, the door of which trembled, drawn
+in by the heat inside.
+
+When he saw Nekhludoff he looked up at him from under his protruding
+brow, and gave him his hand without rising.
+
+“I am glad you have come; I want to speak to you,” he said, looking
+Nekhludoff straight in the eyes with an expression of importance.
+
+“Yes; what is it?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“It will do later on; I am busy just now,” and Simonson turned again
+towards the stove, which he was heating according to a theory of his
+own, so as to lose as little heat energy as possible.
+
+Nekhludoff was going to enter in at the first door, when Maslova,
+stooping and pushing a large heap of rubbish and dust towards the stove
+with a handleless birch broom, came out of the other. She had a white
+jacket on, her skirt was tucked up, and a kerchief, drawn down to her
+eyebrows, protected her hair from the dust. When she saw Nekhludoff, she
+drew herself up, flushing and animated, put down the broom, wiped her
+hands on her skirt, and stopped right in front of him. “You are tidying
+up the apartments, I see,” said Nekhludoff, shaking hands.
+
+“Yes; my old occupation,” and she smiled. “But the dirt! You can’t
+imagine what it is. We have been cleaning and cleaning. Well, is the
+plaid dry?” she asked, turning to Simonson.
+
+“Almost,” Simonson answered, giving her a strange look, which struck
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“All right, I’ll come for it, and will bring the cloaks to dry. Our
+people are all in here,” she said to Nekhludoff, pointing to the first
+door as she went out of the second.
+
+Nekhludoff opened the door and entered a small room dimly lit by a
+little metal lamp, which was standing low down on the shelf bedstead. It
+was cold in the room, and there was a smell of the dust, which had not
+had time to settle, damp and tobacco smoke.
+
+Only those who were close to the lamp were clearly visible, the
+bedsteads were in the shade and wavering shadows glided over the walls.
+Two men, appointed as caterers, who had gone to fetch boiling water and
+provisions, were away; most of the political prisoners were gathered
+together in the small room. There was Nekhludoff’s old acquaintance,
+Vera Doukhova, with her large, frightened eyes, and the swollen vein on
+her forehead, in a grey jacket with short hair, and thinner and yellower
+than ever.. She had a newspaper spread out in front of her, and sat
+rolling cigarettes with a jerky movement of her hands.
+
+Emily Rintzeva, whom Nekhludoff considered to be the pleasantest of the
+political prisoners, was also here. She looked after the housekeeping,
+and managed to spread a feeling of home comfort even in the midst of
+the most trying surroundings. She sat beside the lamp, with her sleeves
+rolled up, wiping cups and mugs, and placing them, with her deft, red
+and sunburnt hands, on a cloth that was spread on the bedstead. Rintzeva
+was a plain-looking young woman, with a clever and mild expression of
+face, which, when she smiled, had a way of suddenly becoming merry,
+animated and captivating. It was with such a smile that she now welcomed
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“Why, we thought you had gone back to Russia,” she said.
+
+Here in a dark corner was also Mary Pavlovna, busy with a little,
+fair-haired girl, who kept prattling in her sweet, childish accents.
+
+“How nice that you have come,” she said to Nekhludoff.
+
+“Have you seen Katusha? And we have a visitor here,” and she pointed to
+the little girl.
+
+Here was also Anatole Kryltzoff with felt boots on, sitting in a far
+corner with his feet under him, doubled up and shivering, his arms
+folded in the sleeves of his cloak, and looking at Nekhludoff with
+feverish eyes. Nekhludoff was going up to him, but to the right of
+the door a man with spectacles and reddish curls, dressed in a rubber
+jacket, sat talking to the pretty, smiling Grabetz. This was the
+celebrated revolutionist Novodvoroff. Nekhludoff hastened to greet him.
+He was in a particular hurry about it, because this man was the only one
+among all the political prisoners whom he disliked. Novodvoroff’s eyes
+glistened through his spectacles as he looked at Nekhludoff and held his
+narrow hand out to him.
+
+“Well, are you having a pleasant journey?” he asked, with apparent
+irony.
+
+“Yes, there is much that is interesting,” Nekhludoff answered, as if
+he did not notice the irony, but took the question for politeness, and
+passed on to Kryltzoff.
+
+Though Nekhludoff appeared indifferent, he was really far from
+indifferent, and these words of Novodvoroff, showing his evident desire
+to say or do something unpleasant, interfered with the state of kindness
+in which Nekhludoff found himself, and he felt depressed and sad.
+
+“Well, how are you?” he asked, pressing Kryltzoff’s cold and trembling
+hand.
+
+“Pretty well, only I cannot get warm; I got wet through,” Kryltzoff
+answered, quickly replacing his hands into the sleeves of his cloak.
+“And here it is also beastly cold. There, look, the window-panes are
+broken,” and he pointed to the broken panes behind the iron bars. “And
+how are you? Why did you not come?”
+
+“I was not allowed to, the authorities were so strict, but to-day the
+officer is lenient.”
+
+“Lenient indeed!” Kryltzoff remarked. “Ask Mary what she did this
+morning.”
+
+Mary Pavlovna from her place in the corner related what had happened
+about the little girl that morning when they left the halting station.
+
+“I think it is absolutely necessary to make a collective protest,” said
+Vera Doukhova, in a determined tone, and yet looking now at one, now
+at another, with a frightened, undecided look. “Valdemar Simonson did
+protest, but that is not sufficient.”
+
+“What protest!” muttered Kryltzoff, cross and frowning. Her want
+of simplicity, artificial tone and nervousness had evidently been
+irritating him for a long time.
+
+“Are you looking for Katusha?” he asked, addressing Nekhludoff. “She is
+working all the time. She has cleaned this, the men’s room, and now she
+has gone to clean the women’s! Only it is not possible to clean away
+the fleas. And what is Mary doing there?” he asked, nodding towards the
+corner where Mary Pavlovna sat.
+
+“She is combing out her adopted daughter’s hair,” replied Rintzeva.
+
+“But won’t she let the insects loose on us?” asked Kryltzoff.
+
+“No, no; I am very careful. She is a clean little girl now. You take
+her,” said Mary, turning to Rintzeva, “while I go and help Katusha, and
+I will also bring him his plaid.”
+
+Rintzeva took the little girl on her lap, pressing her plump, bare,
+little arms to her bosom with a mother’s tenderness, and gave her a bit
+of sugar. As Mary Pavlovna left the room, two men came in with boiling
+water and provisions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+NABATOFF AND MARKEL.
+
+One of the men who came in was a short, thin, young man, who had a
+cloth-covered sheepskin coat on, and high top-boots. He stepped lightly
+and quickly, carrying two steaming teapots, and holding a loaf wrapped
+in a cloth under his arm.
+
+“Well, so our prince has put in an appearance again,” he said, as he
+placed the teapot beside the cups, and handed the bread to Rintzeva.
+“We have bought wonderful things,” he continued, as he took off his
+sheepskin, and flung it over the heads of the others into the corner
+of the bedstead. “Markel has bought milk and eggs. Why, we’ll have
+a regular ball to-day. And Rintzeva is spreading out her aesthetic
+cleanliness,” he said, and looked with a smile at Rintzeva, “and now she
+will make the tea.”
+
+The whole presence of this man--his motion, his voice, his look--seemed
+to breathe vigour and merriment. The other newcomer was just the reverse
+of the first. He looked despondent and sad. He was short, bony, had very
+prominent cheek bones, a sallow complexion, thin lips and beautiful,
+greenish eyes, rather far apart. He wore an old wadded coat, top-boots
+and goloshes, and was carrying two pots of milk and two round boxes
+made of birch bark, which he placed in front of Rintzeva. He bowed to
+Nekhludoff, bending only his neck, and with his eyes fixed on him. Then,
+having reluctantly given him his damp hand to shake, he began to take
+out the provisions.
+
+Both these political prisoners were of the people; the first was
+Nabatoff, a peasant; the second, Markel Kondratieff, a factory hand.
+Markel did not come among the revolutionists till he was quite a man,
+Nabatoff only eighteen. After leaving the village school, owing to
+his exceptional talents Nabatoff entered the gymnasium, and maintained
+himself by giving lessons all the time he studied there, and obtained
+the gold medal. He did not go to the university because, while still in
+the seventh class of the gymnasium, he made up his mind to go among the
+people and enlighten his neglected brethren. This he did, first getting
+the place of a Government clerk in a large village. He was soon arrested
+because he read to the peasants and arranged a co-operative industrial
+association among them. They kept him imprisoned for eight months and
+then set him free, but he remained under police supervision. As soon
+as he was liberated he went to another village, got a place as
+schoolmaster, and did the same as he had done in the first village.
+He was again taken up and kept fourteen months in prison, where his
+convictions became yet stronger. After that he was exiled to the Perm
+Government, from where he escaped. Then he was put to prison for seven
+months and after that exiled to Archangel. There he refused to take the
+oath of allegiance that was required of them and was condemned to
+be exiled to the Takoutsk Government, so that half his life since he
+reached manhood was passed in prison and exile. All these adventures did
+not embitter him nor weaken his energy, but rather stimulated it. He was
+a lively young fellow, with a splendid digestion, always active, gay
+and vigorous. He never repented of anything, never looked far ahead, and
+used all his powers, his cleverness, his practical knowledge to act in
+the present. When free he worked towards the aim he had set himself, the
+enlightening and the uniting of the working men, especially the country
+labourers. When in prison he was just as energetic and practical in
+finding means to come in contact with the outer world, and in arranging
+his own life and the life of his group as comfortably as the conditions
+would allow. Above all things he was a communist. He wanted, as it
+seemed to him, nothing for himself and contented himself with very
+little, but demanded very much for the group of his comrades, and could
+work for it either physically or mentally day and night, without sleep
+or food. As a peasant he had been industrious, observant, clever at
+his work, and naturally self-controlled, polite without any effort, and
+attentive not only to the wishes but also the opinions of others. His
+widowed mother, an illiterate, superstitious, old peasant woman, was
+still living, and Nabatoff helped her and went to see her while he was
+free. During the time he spent at home he entered into all the interests
+of his mother’s life, helped her in her work, and continued his
+intercourse with former playfellows; smoked cheap tobacco with them in
+so-called “dog’s feet,” [a kind of cigarette that the peasants smoke,
+made of a bit of paper and bent at one end into a hook] took part
+in their fist fights, and explained to them how they were all being
+deceived by the State, and how they ought to disentangle themselves out
+of the deception they were kept in. When he thought or spoke of what a
+revolution would do for the people he always imagined this people from
+whom he had sprung himself left in very nearly the same conditions
+as they were in, only with sufficient land and without the gentry and
+without officials. The revolution, according to him, and in this
+he differed from Novodvoroff and Novodvoroff’s follower, Markel
+Kondratieff, should not alter the elementary forms of the life of the
+people, should not break down the whole edifice, but should only alter
+the inner walls of the beautiful, strong, enormous old structure he
+loved so dearly. He was also a typical peasant in his views on religion,
+never thinking about metaphysical questions, about the origin of
+all origin, or the future life. God was to him, as also to Arago, an
+hypothesis, which he had had no need of up to now. He had no business
+with the origin of the world, whether Moses or Darwin was right.
+Darwinism, which seemed so important to his fellows, was only the same
+kind of plaything of the mind as the creation in six days. The question
+how the world had originated did not interest him, just because the
+question how it would be best to live in this world was ever before him.
+He never thought about future life, always bearing in the depth of his
+soul the firm and quiet conviction inherited from his forefathers, and
+common to all labourers on the land, that just as in the world of plants
+and animals nothing ceases to exist, but continually changes its form,
+the manure into grain, the grain into a food, the tadpole into a frog,
+the caterpillar into a butterfly, the acorn into an oak, so man also
+does not perish, but only undergoes a change. He believed in this, and
+therefore always looked death straight in the face, and bravely bore the
+sufferings that lead towards it, but did not care and did not know how
+to speak about it. He loved work, was always employed in some practical
+business, and put his comrades in the way of the same kind of practical
+work.
+
+The other political prisoner from among the people, Markel Kondratieff,
+was a very different kind of man. He began to work at the age of
+fifteen, and took to smoking and drinking in order to stifle a dense
+sense of being wronged. He first realised he was wronged one Christmas
+when they, the factory children, were invited to a Christmas tree, got
+up by the employer’s wife, where he received a farthing whistle, an
+apple, a gilt walnut and a fig, while the employer’s children had
+presents given them which seemed gifts from fairyland, and had cost more
+than fifty roubles, as he afterwards heard.
+
+When he was twenty a celebrated revolutionist came to their factory to
+work as a working girl, and noticing his superior qualities began giving
+books and pamphlets to Kondratieff and to talk and explain his position
+to him, and how to remedy it. When the possibility of freeing himself
+and others from their oppressed state rose clearly in his mind, the
+injustice of this state appeared more cruel and more terrible than
+before, and he longed passionately not only for freedom, but also for
+the punishment of those who had arranged and who kept up this cruel
+injustice. Kondratieff devoted himself with passion to the acquirement
+of knowledge. It was not clear to him how knowledge should bring about
+the realisation of the social ideal, but he believed that the knowledge
+that had shown him the injustice of the state in which he lived would
+also abolish that injustice itself. Besides knowledge would, in his
+opinion, raise him above others. Therefore he left off drinking and
+smoking, and devoted all his leisure time to study. The revolutionist
+gave him lessons, and his thirst for every kind of knowledge, and the
+facility with which he took it in, surprised her. In two years he had
+mastered algebra, geometry, history--which he was specially fond of--and
+made acquaintance with artistic and critical, and especially socialistic
+literature. The revolutionist was arrested, and Kondratieff with her,
+forbidden books having been found in their possession, and they were
+imprisoned and then exiled to the Vologda Government. There Kondratieff
+became acquainted with Novodvoroff, and read a great deal more
+revolutionary literature, remembered it all, and became still firmer
+in his socialistic views. While in exile he became leader in a large
+strike, which ended in the destruction of a factory and the murder of
+the director. He was again arrested and condemned to Siberia.
+
+His religious views were of the same negative nature as his views of the
+existing economic conditions. Having seen the absurdity of the religion
+in which he was brought up, and having gained with great effort, and
+at first with fear, but later with rapture, freedom from it, he did
+not tire of viciously and with venom ridiculing priests and religious
+dogmas, as if wishing to revenge himself for the deception that had been
+practised on him.
+
+He was ascetic through habit, contented himself with very little, and,
+like all those used to work from childhood and whose muscles have been
+developed, he could work much and easily, and was quick at any manual
+labour; but what he valued most was the leisure in prisons and halting
+stations, which enabled him to continue his studies. He was now studying
+the first volume of Karl Marks’s, and carefully hid the book in his sack
+as if it were a great treasure. He behaved with reserve and indifference
+to all his comrades, except Novodvoroff, to whom he was greatly
+attached, and whose arguments on all subjects he accepted as
+unanswerable truths.
+
+He had an indefinite contempt for women, whom he looked upon as a
+hindrance in all necessary business. But he pitied Maslova and was
+gentle with her, for he considered her an example of the way the lower
+are exploited by the upper classes. The same reason made him dislike
+Nekhludoff, so that he talked little with him, and never pressed
+Nekhludoff’s hand, but only held out his own to be pressed when greeting
+him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+LOVE AFFAIRS OF THE EXILES.
+
+The stove had burned up and got warm, the tea was made and poured out
+into mugs and cups, and milk was added to it; rusks, fresh rye and wheat
+bread, hard-boiled eggs, butter, and calf’s head and feet were placed on
+the cloth. Everybody moved towards the part of the shelf beds which took
+the place of the table and sat eating and talking. Rintzeva sat on a box
+pouring out the tea. The rest crowded round her, only Kryltzoff, who had
+taken off his wet cloak and wrapped himself in his dry plaid and lay in
+his own place talking to Nekhludoff.
+
+After the cold and damp march and the dirt and disorder they had found
+here, and after the pains they had taken to get it tidy, after having
+drunk hot tea and eaten, they were all in the best and brightest of
+spirits.
+
+The fact that the tramp of feet, the screams and abuse of the criminals,
+reached them through the wall, reminding them of their surroundings,
+seemed only to increase the sense of coziness. As on an island in the
+midst of the sea, these people felt themselves for a brief interval not
+swamped by the degradation and sufferings which surrounded them; this
+made their spirits rise, and excited them. They talked about everything
+except their present position and that which awaited them. Then, as it
+generally happens among young men, and women especially, if they are
+forced to remain together, as these people were, all sorts of agreements
+and disagreements and attractions, curiously blended, had sprung up
+among them. Almost all of them were in love. Novodvoroff was in love
+with the pretty, smiling Grabetz. This Grabetz was a young, thoughtless
+girl who had gone in for a course of study, perfectly indifferent to
+revolutionary questions, but succumbing to the influence of the day, she
+compromised herself in some way and was exiled. The chief interest of
+her life during the time of her trial in prison and in exile was her
+success with men, just as it had been when she was free. Now on the way
+she comforted herself with the fact that Novodvoroff had taken a fancy
+to her, and she fell in love with him. Vera Doukhova, who was very prone
+to fall in love herself, but did not awaken love in others, though she
+was always hoping for mutual love, was sometimes drawn to Nabatoff, then
+to Novodvoroff. Kryltzoff felt something like love for Mary Pavlovna. He
+loved her with a man’s love, but knowing how she regarded this sort of
+love, hid his feelings under the guise of friendship and gratitude
+for the tenderness with which she attended to his wants. Nabatoff and
+Rintzeva were attached to each other by very complicated ties. Just as
+Mary Pavlovna was a perfectly chaste maiden, in the same way Rintzeva
+was perfectly chaste as her own husband’s wife. When only a schoolgirl
+of sixteen she fell in love with Rintzeff, a student of the Petersburg
+University, and married him before he left the university, when she was
+only nineteen years old. During his fourth year at the university her
+husband had become involved in the students’ rows, was exiled from
+Petersburg, and turned revolutionist. She left the medical courses she
+was attending, followed him, and also turned revolutionist. If she had
+not considered her husband the cleverest and best of men she would not
+have fallen in love with him; and if she had not fallen in love would
+not have married; but having fallen in love and married him whom she
+thought the best and cleverest of men, she naturally looked upon life
+and its aims in the way the best and cleverest of men looked at them. At
+first he thought the aim of life was to learn, and she looked upon study
+as the aim of life. He became a revolutionist, and so did she. She could
+demonstrate very clearly that the existing state of things could not go
+on, and that it was everybody’s duty to fight this state of things and
+to try to bring about conditions in which the individual could develop
+freely, etc. And she imagined that she really thought and felt all
+this, but in reality she only regarded everything her husband thought
+as absolute truth, and only sought for perfect agreement, perfect
+identification of her own soul with his which alone could give her full
+moral satisfaction. The parting with her husband and their child, whom
+her mother had taken, was very hard to bear; but she bore it firmly and
+quietly, since it was for her husband’s sake and for that cause which
+she had not the slightest doubt was true, since he served it. She was
+always with her husband in thoughts, and did not love and could not love
+any other any more than she had done before. But Nabatoff’s devoted and
+pure love touched and excited her. This moral, firm man, her husband’s
+friend, tried to treat her as a sister, but something more appeared in
+his behaviour to her, and this something frightened them both, and yet
+gave colour to their life of hardship.
+
+So that in all this circle only Mary Pavlovna and Kondratieff were quite
+free from love affairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CONVERSATIONS IN PRISON.
+
+Expecting to have a private talk with Katusha, as usual, after tea,
+Nekhludoff sat by the side of Kryltzoff, conversing with him. Among
+other things he told him the story of Makar’s crime and about his
+request to him. Kryltzoff listened attentively, gazing at Nekhludoff
+with glistening eyes.
+
+“Yes,” said Kryltzoff suddenly, “I often think that here we are going
+side by side with them, and who are they? The same for whose sake we
+are going, and yet we not only do not know them, but do not even wish to
+know them. And they, even worse than that, they hate us and look upon us
+as enemies. This is terrible.”
+
+“There is nothing terrible about it,” broke in Novodvoroff. “The masses
+always worship power only. The government is in power, and they worship
+it and hate us. To-morrow we shall have the power, and they will worship
+us,” he said with his grating voice. At that moment a volley of abuse
+and the rattle of chains sounded from behind the wall, something was
+heard thumping against it and screaming and shrieking, some one was
+being beaten, and some one was calling out, “Murder! help!”
+
+“Hear them, the beasts! What intercourse can there be between us and
+such as them?” quietly remarked Novodvoroff.
+
+“You call them beasts, and Nekhludoff was just telling me about such an
+action!” irritably retorted Kryltzoff, and went on to say how Makar was
+risking his life to save a fellow-villager. “That is not the action of a
+beast, it is heroism.”
+
+“Sentimentality!” Novodvoroff ejaculated ironically; “it is difficult
+for us to understand the emotions of these people and the motives on
+which they act. You see generosity in the act, and it may be simply
+jealousy of that other criminal.”
+
+“How is it that you never wish to see anything good in another?” Mary
+Pavlovna said suddenly, flaring up.
+
+“How can one see what does not exist!”
+
+“How does it not exist, when a man risks dying a terrible death?”
+
+“I think,” said Novodvoroff, “that if we mean to do our work, the first
+condition is that” (here Kondratieff put down the book he was reading by
+the lamplight and began to listen attentively to his master’s words) “we
+should not give way to fancy, but look at things as they are. We should
+do all in our power for the masses, and expect nothing in return.
+The masses can only be the object of our activity, but cannot be our
+fellow-workers as long as they remain in that state of inertia they are
+in at present,” he went on, as if delivering a lecture. “Therefore, to
+expect help from them before the process of development--that process
+which we are preparing them for--has taken place is an illusion.”
+
+“What process of development?” Kryltzoff began, flushing all over. “We
+say that we are against arbitrary rule and despotism, and is this not
+the most awful despotism?”
+
+“No despotism whatever,” quietly rejoined Novodvoroff. “I am only saying
+that I know the path that the people must travel, and can show them that
+path.”
+
+“But how can you be sure that the path you show is the true path?
+Is this not the same kind of despotism that lay at the bottom of the
+Inquisition, all persecutions, and the great revolution? They, too, knew
+the one true way, by means of their science.”
+
+“Their having erred is no proof of my going to err; besides, there is a
+great difference between the ravings of idealogues and the facts based
+on sound, economic science.” Novodvoroff’s voice filled the room; he
+alone was speaking, all the rest were silent.
+
+“They are always disputing,” Mary Pavlovna said, when there was a
+moment’s silence.
+
+“And you yourself, what do you think about it?” Nekhludoff asked her.
+
+“I think Kryltzoff is right when he says we should not force our views
+on the people.”
+
+“And you, Katusha?” asked Nekhludoff with a smile, waiting anxiously for
+her answer, fearing she would say something awkward.
+
+“I think the common people are wronged,” she said, and blushed scarlet.
+“I think they are dreadfully wronged.”
+
+“That’s right, Maslova, quite right,” cried Nabatoff. “They are terribly
+wronged, the people, and they must not be wronged, and therein lies the
+whole of our task.”
+
+“A curious idea of the object of revolution,” Novodvoroff remarked
+crossly, and began to smoke.
+
+“I cannot talk to him,” said Kryltzoff in a whisper, and was silent.
+
+“And it is much better not to talk,” Nekhludoff said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+NOVODVOROFF.
+
+Although Novodvoroff was highly esteemed of all the revolutionists,
+though he was very learned, and considered very wise, Nekhludoff
+reckoned him among those of the revolutionists who, being below the
+average moral level, were very far below it. His inner life was of a
+nature directly opposite to that of Simonson’s. Simonson was one of
+those people (of an essentially masculine type) whose actions follow
+the dictates of their reason, and are determined by it. Novodvoroff
+belonged, on the contrary, to the class of people of a feminine type,
+whose reason is directed partly towards the attainment of aims set by
+their feelings, partly to the justification of acts suggested by their
+feelings. The whole of Novodvoroff’s revolutionary activity, though
+he could explain it very eloquently and very convincingly, appeared
+to Nekhludoff to be founded on nothing but ambition and the desire
+for supremacy. At first his capacity for assimilating the thoughts of
+others, and of expressing them correctly, had given him a position of
+supremacy among pupils and teachers in the gymnasium and the university,
+where qualities such as his are highly prized, and he was satisfied.
+When he had finished his studies and received his diploma he suddenly
+altered his views, and from a modern liberal he turned into a rabid
+Narodovoletz, in order (so Kryltzoff, who did not like him, said) to
+gain supremacy in another sphere.
+
+As he was devoid of those moral and aesthetic qualities which call
+forth doubts and hesitation, he very soon acquired a position in the
+revolutionary world which satisfied him--that of the leader of a party.
+Having once chosen a direction, he never doubted or hesitated, and was
+therefore certain that he never made a mistake. Everything seemed quite
+simple, clear and certain. And the narrowness and one-sidedness of his
+views did make everything seem simple and clear. One only had to be
+logical, as he said. His self-assurance was so great that it either
+repelled people or made them submit to him. As he carried on his work
+among very young people, his boundless self-assurance led them to
+believe him very profound and wise; the majority did submit to him,
+and he had a great success in revolutionary circles. His activity was
+directed to the preparation of a rising in which he was to usurp the
+power and call together a council. A programme, composed by him, should
+be proposed before the council, and he felt sure that this programme of
+his solved every problem, and that it would be impossible not to carry
+it out.
+
+His comrades respected but did not love him. He did not love any one,
+looked upon all men of note as upon rivals, and would have willingly
+treated them as old male monkeys treat young ones if he could have done
+it. He would have torn all mental power, every capacity, from other men,
+so that they should not interfere with the display of his talents. He
+behaved well only to those who bowed before him. Now, on the journey he
+behaved well to Kondratieff, who was influenced by his propaganda; to
+Vera Doukhova and pretty little Grabetz, who were both in love with him.
+Although in principle he was in favour of the woman’s movement, yet in
+the depth of his soul he considered all women stupid and insignificant
+except those whom he was sentimentally in love with (as he was now in
+love with Grabetz), and such women he considered to be exceptions, whose
+merits he alone was capable of discerning.
+
+The question of the relations of the sexes he also looked upon as
+thoroughly solved by accepting free union. He had one nominal and
+one real wife, from both of whom he was separated, having come to the
+conclusion that there was no real love between them, and now he thought
+of entering on a free union with Grabetz. He despised Nekhludoff
+for “playing the fool,” as Novodvoroff termed it, with Maslova, but
+especially for the freedom Nekhludoff took of considering the defects
+of the existing system and the methods of correcting those defects in a
+manner which was not only not exactly the same as Novodvoroff’s, but was
+Nekhludoff’s own--a prince’s, that is, a fool’s manner. Nekhludoff felt
+this relation of Novodvoroff’s towards him, and knew to his sorrow that
+in spite of the state of good will in which he found himself on this
+journey he could not help paying this man in his own coin, and could not
+stifle the strong antipathy he felt for him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SIMONSON SPEAKS TO NEKHLUDOFF.
+
+The voices of officials sounded from the next room. All the prisoners
+were silent, and a sergeant, followed by two convoy soldiers, entered.
+The time of the inspection had come. The sergeant counted every one, and
+when Nekhludoff’s turn came he addressed him with kindly familiarity.
+
+“You must not stay any longer, Prince, after the inspection; you must go
+now.”
+
+Nekhludoff knew what this meant, went up to the sergeant and shoved a
+three-rouble note into his hand.
+
+“Ah, well, what is one to do with you; stay a bit longer, if you like.”
+ The sergeant was about to go when another sergeant, followed by a
+convict, a spare man with a thin beard and a bruise under his eye, came
+in.
+
+“It’s about the girl I have come,” said the convict.
+
+“Here’s daddy come,” came the ringing accents of a child’s voice, and a
+flaxen head appeared from behind Rintzeva, who, with Katusha’s and Mary
+Pavlovna’s help, was making a new garment for the child out of one of
+Rintzeva’s own petticoats.
+
+“Yes, daughter, it’s me,” Bousovkin, the prisoner, said softly.
+
+“She is quite comfortable here,” said Mary Pavlovna, looking with pity
+at Bousovkin’s bruised face. “Leave her with us.”
+
+“The ladies are making me new clothes,” said the girl, pointing to
+Rintzeva’s sewing--“nice red ones,” she went on, prattling.
+
+“Do you wish to sleep with us?” asked Rintzeva, caressing the child.
+
+“Yes, I wish. And daddy, too.”
+
+“No, daddy can’t. Well, leave her then,” she said, turning to the
+father.
+
+“Yes, you may leave her,” said the first sergeant, and went out with the
+other.
+
+As soon as they were out of the room Nabatoff went up to Bousovkin,
+slapped him on the shoulder, and said: “I say, old fellow, is it true
+that Karmanoff wishes to exchange?”
+
+Bousovkin’s kindly, gentle face turned suddenly sad and a veil seemed to
+dim his eyes.
+
+“We have heard nothing--hardly,” he said, and with the same dimness
+still over his eyes he turned to the child.
+
+“Well, Aksutka, it seems you’re to make yourself comfortable with the
+ladies,” and he hurried away.
+
+“It’s true about the exchange, and he knows it very well,” said
+Nabatoff.
+
+“What are you going to do?”
+
+“I shall tell the authorities in the next town. I know both prisoners by
+sight,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+All were silent, fearing a recommencement of the dispute.
+
+Simonson, who had been lying with his arms thrown back behind his head,
+and not speaking, rose, and determinately walked up to Nekhludoff,
+carefully passing round those who were sitting.
+
+“Could you listen to me now?”
+
+“Of course,” and Nekhludoff rose and followed him.
+
+Katusha looked up with an expression of suspense, and meeting
+Nekhludoff’s eyes, she blushed and shook her head.
+
+“What I want to speak to you about is this,” Simonson began, when they
+had come out into the passage. In the passage the din of the criminal’s
+voices and shouts sounded louder. Nekhludoff made a face, but Simonson
+did not seem to take any notice.
+
+“Knowing of your relations to Katerina Maslova,” he began seriously and
+frankly, with his kind eyes looking straight into Nekhludoff’s face,
+“I consider it my duty”--He was obliged to stop because two voices were
+heard disputing and shouting, both at once, close to the door.
+
+“I tell you, blockhead, they are not mine,” one voice shouted.
+
+“May you choke, you devil,” snorted the other.
+
+At this moment Mary Pavlovna came out into the passage.
+
+“How can one talk here?” she said; “go in, Vera is alone there,” and she
+went in at the second door, and entered a tiny room, evidently meant for
+a solitary cell, which was now placed at the disposal of the political
+women prisoners, Vera Doukhova lay covered up, head and all, on the bed.
+
+“She has got a headache, and is asleep, so she cannot hear you, and I
+will go away,” said Mary Pavlovna.
+
+“On the contrary, stay here,” said Simonson; “I have no secrets from any
+one, certainly none from you.”
+
+“All right,” said Mary Pavlovna, and moving her whole body from side to
+side, like a child, so as to get farther back on to the bed, she settled
+down to listen, her beautiful hazel eyes seeming to look somewhere far
+away.
+
+“Well, then, this is my business,” Simonson repeated. “Knowing of your
+relations to Katerina Maslova, I consider myself bound to explain to you
+my relations to her.”
+
+Nekhludoff could not help admiring the simplicity and truthfulness with
+which Simonson spoke to him.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that I should like to marry Katerina Maslova--”
+
+“How strange!” said Mary Pavlovna, fixing her eyes on Simonson.
+
+“--And so I made up my mind to ask her to be my wife,” Simonson
+continued.
+
+“What can I do? It depends on her,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“Yes; but she will not come to any decision without you.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because as long as your relations with her are unsettled she cannot
+make up her mind.”
+
+“As far as I am concerned, it is finally settled. I should like to do
+what I consider to be my duty and also to lighten her fate, but on no
+account would I wish to put any restraint on her.”
+
+“Yes, but she does not wish to accept your sacrifice.”
+
+“It is no sacrifice.”
+
+“And I know that this decision of hers is final.”
+
+“Well, then, there is no need to speak to me,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“She wants you to acknowledge that you think as she does.”
+
+“How can I acknowledge that I must not do what I consider to be my duty?
+All I can say is that I am not free, but she is.”
+
+Simonson was silent; then, after thinking a little, he said: “Very
+well, then, I’ll tell her. You must not think I am in love with her,”
+ he continued; “I love her as a splendid, unique, human being who has
+suffered much. I want nothing from her. I have only an awful longing to
+help her, to lighten her posi--”
+
+Nekhludoff was surprised to hear the trembling in Simonson’s voice.
+
+“--To lighten her position,” Simonson continued. “If she does not wish
+to accept your help, let her accept mine. If she consents, I shall ask
+to be sent to the place where she will be imprisoned. Four years are
+not an eternity. I would live near her, and perhaps might lighten her
+fate--” and he again stopped, too agitated to continue.
+
+“What am I to say?” said Nekhludoff. “I am very glad she has found such
+a protector as you--”
+
+“That’s what I wanted to know,” Simonson interrupted.
+
+“I wanted to know if, loving her and wishing her happiness, you would
+consider it good for her to marry me?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Nekhludoff decidedly.
+
+“It all depends on her; I only wish that this suffering soul should find
+rest,” said Simonson, with such childlike tenderness as no one could
+have expected from so morose-looking a man.
+
+Simonson rose, and stretching his lips out to Nekhludoff, smiled shyly
+and kissed him.
+
+“So I shall tell her,” and he went away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+“I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY.”
+
+“What do you think of that?” said Mary Pavlovna. “In love--quite in
+love. Now, that’s a thing I never should have expected, that Valdemar
+Simonson should be in love, and in the silliest, most boyish manner. It
+is strange, and, to say the truth, it is sad,” and she sighed.
+
+“But she? Katusha? How does she look at it, do you think?” Nekhludoff
+asked.
+
+“She?” Mary Pavlovna waited, evidently wishing to give as exact an
+answer as possible. “She? Well, you see, in spite of her past she
+has one of the most moral natures--and such fine feelings. She loves
+you--loves you well, and is happy to be able to do you even the negative
+good of not letting you get entangled with her. Marriage with you would
+be a terrible fall for her, worse than all that’s past, and therefore
+she will never consent to it. And yet your presence troubles her.”
+
+“Well, what am I to do? Ought I to vanish?”
+
+Mary Pavlovna smiled her sweet, childlike smile, and said, “Yes,
+partly.”
+
+“How is one to vanish partly?”
+
+“I am talking nonsense. But as for her, I should like to tell you that
+she probably sees the silliness of this rapturous kind of love (he has
+not spoken to her), and is both flattered and afraid of it. I am not
+competent to judge in such affairs, you know, still I believe that on
+his part it is the most ordinary man’s feeling, though it is masked. He
+says that this love arouses his energy and is Platonic, but I know that
+even if it is exceptional, still at the bottom it is degrading.”
+
+Mary Pavlovna had wandered from the subject, having started on her
+favourite theme.
+
+“Well, but what am I to do?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“I think you should tell her everything; it is always best that
+everything should be clear. Have a talk with her; I shall call her.
+Shall I?” said Mary Pavlovna.
+
+“If you please,” said Nekhludoff, and Mary Pavlovna went.
+
+A strange feeling overcame Nekhludoff when he was alone in the little
+room with the sleeping Vera Doukhova, listening to her soft breathing,
+broken now and then by moans, and to the incessant dirt that came
+through the two doors that separated him from the criminals. What
+Simonson had told him freed him from the self-imposed duty, which had
+seemed hard and strange to him in his weak moments, and yet now he felt
+something that was not merely unpleasant but painful.
+
+He had a feeling that this offer of Simonson’s destroyed the exceptional
+character of his sacrifice, and thereby lessened its value in his own
+and others’ eyes; if so good a man who was not bound to her by any kind
+of tie wanted to join his fate to hers, then this sacrifice was not so
+great. There may have also been an admixture of ordinary jealousy. He
+had got so used to her love that he did not like to admit that she loved
+another.
+
+Then it also upset the plans he had formed of living near her while
+she was doing her term. If she married Simonson his presence would be
+unnecessary, and he would have to form new plans.
+
+Before he had time to analyse his feelings the loud din of the
+prisoners’ voices came in with a rush (something special was going on
+among them to-day) as the door opened to let Katusha in.
+
+She stepped briskly close up to him and said, “Mary Pavlovna has sent
+me.”
+
+“Yes, I must have a talk with you. Sit down. Valdemar Simonson has been
+speaking to me.”
+
+She sat down and folded her hands in her lap and seemed quite calm, but
+hardly had Nekhludoff uttered Simonson’s name when she flushed crimson.
+
+“What did he say?” she asked.
+
+“He told me he wanted to marry you.”
+
+Her face suddenly puckered up with pain, but she said nothing and only
+cast down her eyes.
+
+“He is asking for my consent or my advice. I told him that it all
+depends entirely on you--that you must decide.”
+
+“Ah, what does it all mean? Why?” she muttered, and looked in his eyes
+with that peculiar squint that always strangely affected Nekhludoff.
+
+They sat silent for a few minutes looking into each other’s eyes, and
+this look told much to both of them.
+
+“You must decide,” Nekhludoff repeated.
+
+“What am I to decide? Everything has long been decided.”
+
+“No; you must decide whether you will accept Mr. Simonson’s offer,” said
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“What sort of a wife can I be--I, a convict? Why should I ruin Mr.
+Simonson, too?” she said, with a frown.
+
+“Well, but if the sentence should be mitigated.”
+
+“Oh, leave me alone. I have nothing more to say,” she said, and rose to
+leave the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+NEVEROFF’S FATE.
+
+When, following Katusha, Nekhludoff returned to the men’s room, he found
+every one there in agitation. Nabatoff, who went about all over the
+place, and who got to know everybody, and noticed everything, had
+just brought news which staggered them all. The news was that he had
+discovered a note on a wall, written by the revolutionist Petlin, who
+had been sentenced to hard labour, and who, every one thought, had long
+since reached the Kara; and now it turned out that he had passed this
+way quite recently, the only political prisoner among criminal convicts.
+
+“On the 17th of August,” so ran the note, “I was sent off alone with
+the criminals. Neveroff was with me, but hanged himself in the lunatic
+asylum in Kasan. I am well and in good spirits and hope for the best.”
+
+All were discussing Petlin’s position and the possible reasons of
+Neveroff’s suicide. Only Kryltzoff sat silent and preoccupied, his
+glistening eyes gazing fixedly in front of him.
+
+“My husband told me that Neveroff had a vision while still in the
+Petropavlovski prison,” said Rintzeva.
+
+“Yes, he was a poet, a dreamer; this sort of people cannot stand
+solitary confinement,” said Novodvoroff. “Now, I never gave my
+imagination vent when in solitary confinement, but arranged my days most
+systematically, and in this way always bore it very well.”
+
+“What is there unbearable about it? Why, I used to be glad when they
+locked me up,” said Nabatoff cheerfully, wishing to dispel the general
+depression.
+
+“A fellow’s afraid of everything; of being arrested himself and
+entangling others, and of spoiling the whole business, and then he gets
+locked up, and all responsibility is at an end, and he can rest; he can
+just sit and smoke.”
+
+“You knew him well?” asked Mary Pavlovna, glancing anxiously at the
+altered, haggard expression of Kryltzoff’s face.
+
+“Neveroff a dreamer?” Kryltzoff suddenly began, panting for breath as
+if he had been shouting or singing for a long time. “Neveroff was a man
+‘such as the earth bears few of,’ as our doorkeeper used to express it.
+Yes, he had a nature like crystal, you could see him right through; he
+could not lie, he could not dissemble; not simply thin skinned, but
+with all his nerves laid bare, as if he were flayed. Yes, his was a
+complicated, rich nature, not such a-- But where is the use of talking?”
+ he added, with a vicious frown. “Shall we first educate the people
+and then change the forms of life, or first change the forms and then
+struggle, using peaceful propaganda or terrorism? So we go on disputing
+while _they_ kill; _they_ do not dispute--they know their business; they
+don’t care whether dozens, hundreds of men perish--and what men! No;
+that the best should perish is just what they want. Yes, Herzen said
+that when the Decembrists were withdrawn from circulation the average
+level of our society sank. I should think so, indeed. Then Herzen
+himself and his fellows were withdrawn; now is the turn of the
+Neveroffs.”
+
+“They can’t all be got rid off,” said Nabatoff, in his cheerful tones.
+“There will always be left enough to continue the breed. No, there
+won’t, if we show any pity to _them_ there,” Nabatoff said, raising his
+voice; and not letting himself be interrupted, “Give me a cigarette.”
+
+“Oh, Anatole, it is not good for you,” said Mary Pavlovna. “Please do
+not smoke.”
+
+“Oh, leave me alone,” he said angrily, and lit a cigarette, but at once
+began to cough and to retch, as if he were going to be sick. Having
+cleared his throat though, he went on:
+
+“What we have been doing is not the thing at all. Not to argue, but for
+all to unite--to destroy them--that’s it.”
+
+“But _they_ are also human beings,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“No, _they_ are not human, they who can do what they are
+doing--No--There, now, I heard that some kind of bombs and balloons have
+been invented. Well, one ought to go up in such a balloon and sprinkle
+bombs down on _them_ as if _they_ were bugs, until _they_ are all
+exterminated--Yes. Because--” he was going to continue, but, flushing
+all over, he began coughing worse than before, and a stream of blood
+rushed from his mouth.
+
+Nabatoff ran to get ice. Mary Pavlovna brought valerian drops and
+offered them to him, but he, breathing quickly and heavily, pushed her
+away with his thin, white hand, and kept his eyes closed. When the ice
+and cold water had eased Kryltzoff a little, and he had been put to
+bed, Nekhludoff, having said good-night to everybody, went out with the
+sergeant, who had been waiting for him some time.
+
+The criminals were now quiet, and most of them were asleep. Though the
+people were lying on and under the bed shelves and in the space between,
+they could not all be placed inside the rooms, and some of them lay in
+the passage with their sacks under their heads and covered with their
+cloaks. The moans and sleepy voices came through the open doors and
+sounded through the passage. Everywhere lay compact heaps of human
+beings covered with prison cloaks. Only a few men who were sitting in
+the bachelors’ room by the light of a candle end, which they put out
+when they noticed the sergeant, were awake, and an old man who sat naked
+under the lamp in the passage picking the vermin off his shirt. The
+foul air in the political prisoners’ rooms seemed pure compared to the
+stinking closeness here. The smoking lamp shone dimly as through a mist,
+and it was difficult to breathe. Stepping along the passage, one had to
+look carefully for an empty space, and having put down one foot had to
+find place for the other. Three persons, who had evidently found no
+room even in the passage, lay in the anteroom, close to the stinking and
+leaking tub. One of these was an old idiot, whom Nekhludoff had often
+seen marching with the gang; another was a boy about twelve; he lay
+between the two other convicts, with his head on the leg of one of them.
+
+When he had passed out of the gate Nekhludoff took a deep breath and
+long continued to breathe in deep draughts of frosty air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+WHY IS IT DONE?
+
+It had cleared up and was starlight. Except in a few places the mud was
+frozen hard when Nekhludoff returned to his inn and knocked at one of
+its dark windows. The broad-shouldered labourer came barefooted to open
+the door for him and let him in. Through a door on the right, leading
+to the back premises, came the loud snoring of the carters, who slept
+there, and the sound of many horses chewing oats came from the yard. The
+front room, where a red lamp was burning in front of the icons, smelt
+of wormwood and perspiration, and some one with mighty lungs was snoring
+behind a partition. Nekhludoff undressed, put his leather travelling
+pillow on the oilcloth sofa, spread out his rug and lay down, thinking
+over all he had seen and heard that day; the boy sleeping on the liquid
+that oozed from the stinking tub, with his head on the convict’s leg,
+seemed more dreadful than all else.
+
+Unexpected and important as his conversation with Simonson and Katusha
+that evening had been, he did not dwell on it; his situation in relation
+to that subject was so complicated and indefinite that he drove the
+thought from his mind. But the picture of those unfortunate beings,
+inhaling the noisome air, and lying in the liquid oozing out of the
+stinking tub, especially that of the boy, with his innocent face asleep
+on the leg of a criminal, came all the more vividly to his mind, and he
+could not get it out of his head.
+
+To know that somewhere far away there are men who torture other men
+by inflicting all sorts of humiliations and inhuman degradation and
+sufferings on them, or for three months incessantly to look on while men
+were inflicting these humiliations and sufferings on other men is a very
+different thing. And Nekhludoff felt it. More than once during these
+three months he asked himself, “Am I mad because I see what others do
+not, or are they mad that do these things that I see?”
+
+Yet they (and there were many of them) did what seemed so astonishing
+and terrible to him with such quiet assurance that what they were doing
+was necessary and was important and useful work that it was hard to
+believe they were mad; nor could he, conscious of the clearness of his
+thoughts, believe he was mad; and all this kept him continually in a
+state of perplexity.
+
+This is how the things he saw during these three months impressed
+Nekhludoff: From among the people who were free, those were chosen, by
+means of trials and the administration, who were the most nervous,
+the most hot tempered, the most excitable, the most gifted, and the
+strongest, but the least careful and cunning. These people, not a wit
+more dangerous than many of those who remained free, were first locked
+in prisons, transported to Siberia, where they were provided for and
+kept months and years in perfect idleness, and away from nature, their
+families, and useful work--that is, away from the conditions necessary
+for a natural and moral life. This firstly. Secondly, these people
+were subjected to all sorts of unnecessary indignity in these different
+Places--chains, shaved heads, shameful clothing--that is, they were
+deprived of the chief motives that induce the weak to live good lives,
+the regard for public opinion, the sense of shame and the consciousness
+of human dignity. Thirdly, they were continually exposed to dangers,
+such as the epidemics so frequent in places of confinement, exhaustion,
+flogging, not to mention accidents, such as sunstrokes, drowning or
+conflagrations, when the instinct of self-preservation makes even the
+kindest, most moral men commit cruel actions, and excuse such actions
+when committed by others.
+
+Fourthly, these people were forced to associate with others who
+were particularly depraved by life, and especially by these very
+institutions--rakes, murderers and villains--who act on those who are
+not yet corrupted by the measures inflicted on them as leaven acts on
+dough.
+
+And, fifthly, the fact that all sorts of violence, cruelty, inhumanity,
+are not only tolerated, but even permitted by the government, when it
+suits its purposes, was impressed on them most forcibly by the inhuman
+treatment they were subjected to; by the sufferings inflicted on
+children, women and old men; by floggings with rods and whips; by
+rewards offered for bringing a fugitive back, dead or alive; by the
+separation of husbands and wives, and the uniting them with the wives
+and husbands of others for sexual intercourse; by shooting or hanging
+them. To those who were deprived of their freedom, who were in want
+and misery, acts of violence were evidently still more permissible.
+All these institutions seemed purposely invented for the production of
+depravity and vice, condensed to such a degree that no other conditions
+could produce it, and for the spreading of this condensed depravity and
+vice broadcast among the whole population.
+
+“Just as if a problem had been set to find the best, the surest means
+of depraving the greatest number of persons,” thought Nekhludoff, while
+investigating the deeds that were being done in the prisons and halting
+stations. Every year hundreds of thousands were brought to the highest
+pitch of depravity, and when completely depraved they were set free to
+carry the depravity they had caught in prison among the people. In
+the prisons of Tamen, Ekaterinburg, Tomsk and at the halting stations
+Nekhludoff saw how successfully the object society seemed to have set
+itself was attained.
+
+Ordinary, simple men with a conception of the demands of the social and
+Christian Russian peasant morality lost this conception, and found a
+new one, founded chiefly on the idea that any outrage or violence was
+justifiable if it seemed profitable. After living in a prison those
+people became conscious with the whole of their being that, judging by
+what was happening to themselves, all the moral laws, the respect and
+the sympathy for others which church and the moral teachers preach,
+was really set aside, and that, therefore, they, too, need not keep the
+laws. Nekhludoff noticed the effects of prison life on all the convicts
+he knew--on Fedoroff, on Makar, and even on Taras, who, after two months
+among the convicts, struck Nekhludoff by the want of morality in his
+arguments. Nekhludoff found out during his journey how tramps, escaping
+into the marshes, persuade a comrade to escape with them, and then kill
+him and feed on his flesh. (He saw a living man who was accused of this
+and acknowledged the fact.) And the most terrible part was that this was
+not a solitary, but a recurring case.
+
+Only by a special cultivation of vice, such as was perpetrated in these
+establishments, could a Russian be brought to the state of this tramp,
+who excelled Nietzsche’s newest teaching, and held that everything was
+possible and nothing forbidden, and who spread this teaching first among
+the convicts and then among the people in general.
+
+The only explanation of all that was being done was the wish to put
+a stop to crime by fear, by correction, by lawful vengeance as it was
+written in the books. But in reality nothing in the least resembling any
+of these results came to pass. Instead of vice being put a stop to, it
+only spread further; instead of being frightened, the criminals were
+encouraged (many a tramp returned to prison of his own free will).
+Instead of being corrected, every kind of vice was systematically
+instilled, while the desire for vengeance did not weaken by the measures
+of the government, but was bred in the people who had none of it.
+
+“Then why is it done?” Nekhludoff asked himself, but could find no
+answer. And what seemed most surprising was that all this was not being
+done accidentally, not by mistake, not once, but that it had continued
+for centuries, with this difference only, that at first the people’s
+nostrils used to be torn and their ears cut off; then they were branded,
+and now they were manacled and transported by steam instead of on the
+old carts. The arguments brought forward by those in government service,
+who said that the things which aroused his indignation were simply due
+to the imperfect arrangements of the places of confinement, and that
+they could all be put to rights if prisons of a modern type were built,
+did not satisfy Nekhludoff, because he knew that what revolted him was
+not the consequence of a better or worse arrangement of the prisons.
+He had read of model prisons with electric bells, of executions by
+electricity, recommended by Tard; but this refined kind of violence
+revolted him even more.
+
+But what revolted Nekhludoff most was that there were men in the law
+courts and in the ministry who received large salaries, taken from the
+people, for referring to books written by men like themselves and with
+like motives, and sorting actions that violated laws made by themselves
+according to different statutes; and, in obedience to these statutes,
+sending those guilty of such actions to places where they were
+completely at the mercy of cruel, hardened inspectors, jailers, convoy
+soldiers, where millions of them perished body and soul.
+
+Now that he had a closer knowledge of prisons, Nekhludoff found out
+that all those vices which developed among the prisoners--drunkenness,
+gambling, cruelty, and all these terrible crimes, even cannibalism--were
+not casual, or due to degeneration or to the existence of monstrosities
+of the criminal type, as science, going hand in hand with the
+government, explained it, but an unavoidable consequence of the
+incomprehensible delusion that men may punish one another. Nekhludoff
+saw that cannibalism did not commence in the marshes, but in the
+ministry. He saw that his brother-in-law, for example, and, in fact, all
+the lawyers and officials, from the usher to the minister, do not care
+in the least for justice or the good of the people about whom they
+spoke, but only for the roubles they were paid for doing the things that
+were the source whence all this degradation and suffering flowed. This
+was quite evident.
+
+“Can it be, then, that all this is done simply through misapprehension?
+Could it not be managed that all these officials should have their
+salaries secured to them, and a premium paid them, besides, so that
+they should leave off, doing all that they were doing now?” Nekhludoff
+thought, and in spite of the fleas, that seemed to spring up round him
+like water from a fountain whenever he moved, he fell fast asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE JOURNEY RESUMED.
+
+The carters had left the inn long before Nekhludoff awoke. The landlady
+had had her tea, and came in wiping her fat, perspiring neck with
+her handkerchief, and said that a soldier had brought a note from
+the halting station. The note was from Mary Pavlovna. She wrote that
+Kryltzoff’s attack was more serious than they had imagined. “We wished
+him to be left behind and to remain with him, but this has not been
+allowed, so that we shall take him on; but we fear the worst. Please
+arrange so that if he should be left in the next town, one of us might
+remain with him. If in order to get the permission to stay I should be
+obliged to get married to him, I am of course ready to do so.”
+
+Nekhludoff sent the young labourer to the post station to order horses
+and began packing up hurriedly. Before he had drunk his second tumbler
+of tea the three-horsed postcart drove up to the porch with ringing
+bells, the wheels rattling on the frozen mud as on stones. Nekhludoff
+paid the fat-necked landlady, hurried out and got into the cart,
+and gave orders to the driver to go on as fast as possible, so as to
+overtake the gang. Just past the gates of the commune pasture ground
+they did overtake the carts, loaded with sacks and the sick prisoners,
+as they rattled over the frozen mud, that was just beginning to be
+rolled smooth by the wheels (the officer was not there, he had gone in
+advance). The soldiers, who had evidently been drinking, followed by the
+side of the road, chatting merrily. There were a great many carts. In
+each of the first carts sat six invalid criminal convicts, close packed.
+On each of the last two were three political prisoners. Novodvoroff,
+Grabetz and Kondratieff sat on one, Rintzeva, Nabatoff and the woman to
+whom Mary Pavlovna had given up her own place on the other, and on one
+of the carts lay Kryltzoff on a heap of hay, with a pillow under his
+head, and Mary Pavlovna sat by him on the edge of the cart. Nekhludoff
+ordered his driver to stop, got out and went up to Kryltzoff. One of
+the tipsy soldiers waved his hand towards Nekhludoff, but he paid no
+attention and started walking by Kryltzoff’s side, holding on to the
+side of the cart with his hand. Dressed in a sheepskin coat, with a fur
+cap on his head and his mouth bound up with a handkerchief, he seemed
+paler and thinner than ever. His beautiful eyes looked very large and
+brilliant. Shaken from side to side by the jottings of the cart, he lay
+with his eyes fixed on Nekhludoff; but when asked about his health, he
+only closed his eyes and angrily shook his head. All his energy seemed
+to be needed in order to bear the jolting of the cart. Mary Pavlovna was
+on the other side. She exchanged a significant glance with Nekhludoff,
+which expressed all her anxiety about Kryltzoff’s state, and then began
+to talk at once in a cheerful manner.
+
+“It seems the officer is ashamed of himself,” she shouted, so as to be
+heard above the rattle of the wheels. “Bousovkin’s manacles have
+been removed, and he is carrying his little girl himself. Katusha and
+Simonson are with him, and Vera, too. She has taken my place.”
+
+Kryltzoff said something that could not be heard because of the noise,
+and frowning in the effort to repress his cough shook his head. Then
+Nekhludoff stooped towards him, so as to hear, and Kryltzoff, freeing
+his mouth of the handkerchief, whispered:
+
+“Much better now. Only not to catch cold.”
+
+Nekhludoff nodded in acquiescence, and again exchanged a glance with
+Mary Pavlovna.
+
+“How about the problem of the three bodies?” whispered Kryltzoff,
+smiling with great difficulty. “The solution is difficult.”
+
+Nekhludoff did not understand, but Mary Pavlovna explained that he meant
+the well-known mathematical problem which defined the position of the
+sun, moon and earth, which Kryltzoff compared to the relations between
+Nekhludoff, Katusha and Simonson. Kryltzoff nodded, to show that Mary
+Pavlovna had explained his joke correctly.
+
+“The decision does not lie with me,” Nekhludoff said.
+
+“Did you get my note? Will you do it?” Mary Pavlovna asked.
+
+“Certainly,” answered Nekhludoff; and noticing a look of displeasure on
+Kryltzoff’s face, he returned to his conveyance, and holding with both
+hands to the sides of the cart, got in, which jolted with him over the
+ruts of the rough road. He passed the gang, which, with its grey cloaks
+and sheepskin coats, chains and manacles, stretched over three-quarters
+of a mile of the road. On the opposite side of the road Nekhludoff
+noticed Katusha’s blue shawl, Vera Doukhova’s black coat, and Simonson’s
+crochet cap, white worsted stockings, with bands, like those of sandals,
+tied round him. Simonson was walking with the woman and carrying on a
+heated discussion.
+
+When they saw Nekhludoff they bowed to him, and Simonson raised his hat
+in a solemn manner. Nekhludoff, having nothing to say, did not stop, and
+was soon ahead of the carts. Having got again on to a smoother part of
+the road, they drove still more quickly, but they had continually to
+turn aside to let pass long rows of carts that were moving along the
+road in both directions.
+
+The road, which was cut up by deep ruts, lay through a thick pine
+forest, mingled with birch trees and larches, bright with yellow leaves
+they had not yet shed. By the time Nekhludoff had passed about half the
+gang he reached the end of the forest. Fields now lay stretched along
+both sides of the road, and the crosses and cupolas of a monastery
+appeared in the distance. The clouds had dispersed, and it had cleared
+up completely; the leaves, the frozen puddles and the gilt crosses and
+cupolas of the monastery glittered brightly in the sun that had risen
+above the forest. A little to the right mountains began to gleam white
+in the blue-grey distance, and the trap entered a large village.
+The village street was full of people, both Russians and other
+nationalities, wearing peculiar caps and cloaks. Tipsy men and women
+crowded and chattered round booths, traktirs, public houses and carts.
+The vicinity of a town was noticeable. Giving a pull and a lash of the
+whip to the horse on his right, the driver sat down sideways on the
+right edge of the seat, so that the reins hung over that side, and with
+evident desire of showing off, he drove quickly down to the river, which
+had to be crossed by a ferry. The raft was coming towards them, and
+had reached the middle of the river. About twenty carts were waiting to
+cross. Nekhludoff had not long to wait. The raft, which had been pulled
+far up the stream, quickly approached the landing, carried by the swift
+waters. The tall, silent, broad-shouldered, muscular ferryman, dressed
+in sheepskins, threw the ropes and moored the raft with practised hand,
+landed the carts that were on it, and put those that were waiting on
+the bank on board. The whole raft was filled with vehicles and horses
+shuffling at the sight of the water. The broad, swift river splashed
+against the sides of the ferryboats, tightening their moorings.
+
+When the raft was full, and Nekhludoff’s cart, with the horses taken out
+of it, stood closely surrounded by other carts on the side of the raft,
+the ferryman barred the entrance, and, paying no heed to the prayers of
+those who had not found room in the raft, unfastened the ropes and set
+off.
+
+All was quiet on the raft; one could hear nothing but the tramp of the
+ferryman’s boots and the horses changing from foot to foot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+“JUST A WORTHLESS TRAMP.”
+
+Nekhludoff stood on the edge of the raft looking at the broad river. Two
+pictures kept rising up in his mind. One, that of Kryltzoff, unprepared
+for death and dying, made a heavy, sorrowful impression on him. The
+other, that of Katusha, full of energy, having gained the love of such a
+man as Simonson, and found a true and solid path towards righteousness,
+should have been pleasant, yet it also created a heavy impression on
+Nekhludoff’s mind, and he could not conquer this impression.
+
+The vibrating sounds of a big brass bell reached them from the town.
+Nekhludoff’s driver, who stood by his side, and the other men on the
+raft raised their caps and crossed themselves, all except a short,
+dishevelled old man, who stood close to the railway and whom Nekhludoff
+had not noticed before. He did not cross himself, but raised his head
+and looked at Nekhludoff. This old man wore a patched coat, cloth
+trousers and worn and patched shoes. He had a small wallet on his back,
+and a high fur cap with the fur much rubbed on his head.
+
+“Why don’t you pray, old chap?” asked Nekhludoff’s driver as he replaced
+and straightened his cap. “Are you unbaptized?”
+
+“Who’s one to pray to?” asked the old man quickly, in a determinately
+aggressive tone.
+
+“To whom? To God, of course,” said the driver sarcastically.
+
+“And you just show me where he is, that god.” There was something so
+serious and firm in the expression of the old man, that the driver felt
+that he had to do with a strong-minded man, and was a bit abashed. And
+trying not to show this, not to be silenced, and not to be put to shame
+before the crowd that was observing them, he answered quickly.
+
+“Where? In heaven, of course.”
+
+“And have you been up there?”
+
+“Whether I’ve been or not, every one knows that you must pray to God.”
+
+“No one has ever seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in
+the bosom of the Father he hath declared him,” said the old man in the
+same rapid manner, and with a severe frown on his brow.
+
+“It’s clear you are not a Christian, but a hole worshipper. You pray
+to a hole,” said the driver, shoving the handle of his whip into his
+girdle, pulling straight the harness on one of the horses.
+
+Some one laughed.
+
+“What is your faith, Dad?” asked a middle-aged man, who stood by his
+cart on the same side of the raft.
+
+“I have no kind of faith, because I believe no one--no one but myself,”
+ said the old man as quickly and decidedly as before.
+
+“How can you believe yourself?” Nekhludoff asked, entering into a
+conversation with him. “You might make a mistake.”
+
+“Never in your life,” the old man said decidedly, with a toss of his
+head.
+
+“Then why are there different faiths?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“It’s just because men believe others and do not believe themselves that
+there are different faiths. I also believed others, and lost myself as
+in a swamp,--lost myself so that I had no hope of finding my way out.
+Old believers and new believers and Judaisers and Khlysty and Popovitzy,
+and Bespopovitzy and Avstriaks and Molokans and Skoptzy--every faith
+praises itself only, and so they all creep about like blind puppies.
+There are many faiths, but the spirit is one--in me and in you and in
+him. So that if every one believes himself all will be united. Every one
+be himself, and all will be as one.”
+
+The old man spoke loudly and often looked round, evidently wishing that
+as many as possible should hear him.
+
+“And have you long held this faith?”
+
+“I? A long time. This is the twenty-third year that they persecute me.”
+
+“Persecute you? How?”
+
+“As they persecuted Christ, so they persecute me. They seize me, and
+take me before the courts and before the priests, the Scribes and the
+Pharisees. Once they put me into a madhouse; but they can do nothing
+because I am free. They say, ‘What is your name?’ thinking I shall name
+myself. But I do not give myself a name. I have given up everything:
+I have no name, no place, no country, nor anything. I am just myself.
+‘What is your name?’ ‘Man.’ ‘How old are you?’ I say, ‘I do not count my
+years and cannot count them, because I always was, I always shall be.’
+‘Who are your parents?’ ‘I have no parents except God and Mother Earth.
+God is my father.’ ‘And the Tsar? Do you recognise the Tsar?’ they say.
+I say, ‘Why not? He is his own Tsar, and I am my own Tsar.’ ‘Where’s the
+good of talking to him,’ they say, and I say, ‘I do not ask you to talk
+to me.’ And so they begin tormenting me.”
+
+“And where are you going now?” asked Nekhludoff.
+
+“Where God will lead me. I work when I can find work, and when I can’t
+I beg.” The old man noticed that the raft was approaching the bank and
+stopped, looking round at the bystanders with a look of triumph.
+
+Nekhludoff got out his purse and offered some money to the old man, but
+he refused, saying:
+
+“I do not accept this sort of thing--bread I do accept.”
+
+“Well, then, excuse me.”
+
+“There is nothing to excuse, you have not offended me. And it is not
+possible to offend me.” And the old man put the wallet he had taken
+off again on his back. Meanwhile, the post-cart had been landed and the
+horses harnessed.
+
+“I wonder you should care to talk to him, sir,” said the driver, when
+Nekhludoff, having tipped the bowing ferryman, got into the cart again.
+“He is just a worthless tramp.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF SEES THE GENERAL.
+
+When they got to the top of the hill bank the driver turned to
+Nekhludoff.
+
+“Which hotel am I to drive to?”
+
+“Which is the best?”
+
+“Nothing could be better than the Siberian, but Dukeoff’s is also good.”
+
+“Drive to whichever you like.”
+
+The driver again seated himself sideways and drove faster. The town
+was like all such towns. The same kind of houses with attic windows
+and green roofs, the same kind of cathedral, the same kind of shops and
+stores in the principal street, and even the same kind of policemen.
+Only the houses were almost all of them wooden, and the streets were not
+paved. In one of the chief streets the driver stopped at the door of an
+hotel, but there was no room to be had, so he drove to another. And here
+Nekhludoff, after two months, found himself once again in surroundings
+such as he had been accustomed to as far as comfort and cleanliness
+went. Though the room he was shown to was simple enough, yet Nekhludoff
+felt greatly relieved to be there after two months of post-carts,
+country inns and halting stations. His first business was to clean
+himself of the lice which he had never been able to get thoroughly rid
+of after visiting a halting station. When he had unpacked he went to the
+Russian bath, after which he made himself fit to be seen in a town,
+put on a starched shirt, trousers that had got rather creased along the
+seams, a frock-coat and an overcoat, and drove to the Governor of the
+district. The hotel-keeper called an isvostchik, whose well-fed Kirghiz
+horse and vibrating trap soon brought Nekhludoff to the large porch of
+a big building, in front of which stood sentinels and a policeman. The
+house had a garden in front, and at the back, among the naked branches
+of aspen and birch trees, there grew thick and dark green pines and
+firs. The General was not well, and did not receive; but Nekhludoff
+asked the footman to hand in his card all the same, and the footman came
+back with a favourable reply.
+
+“You are asked to come in.”
+
+The hall, the footman, the orderly, the staircase, the dancing-room,
+with its well-polished floor, were very much the same as in Petersburg,
+only more imposing and rather dirtier. Nekhludoff was shown into the
+cabinet.
+
+The General, a bloated, potato-nosed man, with a sanguine disposition,
+large bumps on his forehead, bald head, and puffs under his eyes, sat
+wrapped in a Tartar silk dressing-gown smoking a cigarette and sipping
+his tea out of a tumbler in a silver holder.
+
+“How do you do, sir? Excuse my dressing-gown; it is better so than if I
+had not received you at all,” he said, pulling up his dressing-gown over
+his fat neck with its deep folds at the nape. “I am not quite well, and
+do not go out. What has brought you to our remote region?”
+
+“I am accompanying a gang of prisoners, among whom there is a person
+closely connected with me, said Nekhludoff, and now I have come to
+see your Excellency partly in behalf of this person, and partly about
+another business.” The General took a whiff and a sip of tea, put
+his cigarette into a malachite ashpan, with his narrow eyes fixed on
+Nekhludoff, listening seriously. He only interrupted him once to offer
+him a cigarette.
+
+The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed
+that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession.
+But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon felt the
+impossibility of such a reconciliation; so as not to feel the inner
+discord in which he was living, he gave himself up more and more to the
+habit of drinking, which is so widely spread among military men, and
+was now suffering from what doctors term alcoholism. He was imbued
+with alcohol, and if he drank any kind of liquor it made him tipsy. Yet
+strong drink was an absolute necessity to him, he could not live without
+it, so he was quite drunk every evening; but had grown so used to this
+state that he did not reel nor talk any special nonsense. And if he
+did talk nonsense, it was accepted as words of wisdom because of the
+important and high position which he occupied. Only in the morning, just
+at the time Nekhludoff came to see him, he was like a reasonable being,
+could understand what was said to him, and fulfil more or less aptly a
+proverb he was fond of repeating: “He’s tipsy, but he’s wise, so he’s
+pleasant in two ways.”
+
+The higher authorities knew he was a drunkard, but he was more educated
+than the rest, though his education had stopped at the spot where
+drunkenness had got hold of him. He was bold, adroit, of imposing
+appearance, and showed tact even when tipsy; therefore, he was
+appointed, and was allowed to retain so public and responsible an
+office.
+
+Nekhludoff told him that the person he was interested in was a woman,
+that she was sentenced, though innocent, and that a petition had been
+sent to the Emperor in her behalf.
+
+“Yes, well?” said the General.
+
+“I was promised in Petersburg that the news concerning her fate should
+be sent to me not later than this month and to this place-”
+
+The General stretched his hand with its stumpy fingers towards the
+table, and rang a bell, still looking at Nekhludoff and puffing at his
+cigarette.
+
+“So I would like to ask you that this woman should be allowed to remain
+here until the answer to her petition comes.”
+
+The footman, an orderly in uniform, came in.
+
+“Ask if Anna Vasilievna is up,” said the General to the orderly, “and
+bring some more tea.” Then, turning to Nekhludoff, “Yes, and what else?”
+
+“My other request concerns a political prisoner who is with the same
+gang.”
+
+“Dear me,” said the General, with a significant shake of the head.
+
+“He is seriously ill--dying, and he will probably be left here in the
+hospital, so one of the women prisoners would like to stay behind with
+him.”
+
+“She is no relation of his?”
+
+“No, but she is willing to marry him if that will enable her to remain
+with him.”
+
+The General looked fixedly with twinkling eyes at his interlocutor, and,
+evidently with a wish to discomfit him, listened, smoking in silence.
+
+When Nekhludoff had finished, the General took a book off the table,
+and, wetting his finger, quickly turned over the pages and found the
+statute relating to marriage.
+
+“What is she sentenced to?” he asked, looking up from the book.
+
+“She? To hard labour.”
+
+“Well, then, the position of one sentenced to that cannot be bettered by
+marriage.”
+
+“Yes, but--”
+
+“Excuse me. Even if a free man should marry her, she would have to
+serve her term. The question in such cases is, whose is the heavier
+punishment, hers or his?”
+
+“They are both sentenced to hard labour.”
+
+“Very well; so they are quits,” said the General, with a laugh. “She’s
+got what he has, only as he is sick he may be left behind, and of course
+what can be done to lighten his fate shall be done. But as for her, even
+if she did marry him, she could not remain behind.”
+
+“The Generaless is having her coffee,” the footman announced.
+
+The General nodded and continued:
+
+“However, I shall think about it. What are their names? Put them down
+here.”
+
+Nekhludoff wrote down the names.
+
+Nekhludoff’s request to be allowed to see the dying man the General
+answered by saying, “Neither can I do that. Of course I do not suspect
+you, but you take an interest in him and in the others, and you have
+money, and here with us anything can be done with money. I have been
+told to put down bribery. But how can I put down bribery when everybody
+takes bribes? And the lower their rank the more ready they are to be
+bribed. How can one find it out across more than three thousand miles?
+There any official is a little Tsar, just as I am here,” and he laughed.
+“You have in all likelihood been to see the political prisoners; you
+gave money and got permission to see them,” he said, with a smile. “Is
+it not so?”
+
+“Yes, it is.”
+
+“I quite understand that you had to do it. You pity a political prisoner
+and wish to see him. And the inspector or the convoy soldier accepts,
+because he has a salary of twice twenty copecks and a family, and he
+can’t help accepting it. In his place and yours I should have acted
+in the same way as you and he did. But in my position I do not permit
+myself to swerve an inch from the letter of the law, just because I am
+a man, and might be influenced by pity. But I am a member of the
+executive, and I have been placed in a position of trust on certain
+conditions, and these conditions I must carry out. Well, so this
+business is finished. And now let us hear what is going on in the
+metropolis.” And the General began questioning with the evident desire
+to hear the news and to show how very human he was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE SENTENCE COMMUTED.
+
+“By-the-way, where are you staying?” asked the General as he was taking
+leave of Nekhludoff. “At Duke’s? Well, it’s horrid enough there. Come
+and dine with us at five o’clock. You speak English?”
+
+“Yes, I do.”
+
+“That’s good. You see, an English traveller has just arrived here. He
+is studying the question of transportation and examining the prisons of
+Siberia. Well, he is dining with us to-night, and you come and meet him.
+We dine at five, and my wife expects punctuality. Then I shall also
+give you an answer what to do about that woman, and perhaps it may be
+possible to leave some one behind with the sick prisoner.”
+
+Having made his bow to the General, Nekhludoff drove to the post-office,
+feeling himself in an extremely animated and energetic frame of mind.
+
+The post-office was a low-vaulted room. Several officials sat behind
+a counter serving the people, of whom there was quite a crowd. One
+official sat with his head bent to one side and kept stamping the
+envelopes, which he slipped dexterously under the stamp. Nekhludoff had
+not long to wait. As soon as he had given his name, everything that had
+come for him by post was at once handed to him. There was a good deal:
+letters, and money, and books, and the last number of Fatherland Notes.
+Nekhludoff took all these things to a wooden bench, on which a soldier
+with a book in his hand sat waiting for something, took the seat by
+his side, and began sorting the letters. Among them was one registered
+letter in a fine envelope, with a distinctly stamped bright red seal. He
+broke the seal, and seeing a letter from Selenin and some official paper
+inside the envelope, he felt the blood rush to his face, and his heart
+stood still. It was the answer to Katusha’s petition. What would that
+answer be? Nekhludoff glanced hurriedly through the letter, written
+in an illegibly small, hard, and cramped hand, and breathed a sigh of
+relief. The answer was a favourable one.
+
+“Dear friend,” wrote Selenin, “our last talk has made a profound
+impression on me. You were right concerning Maslova. I looked carefully
+through the case, and see that shocking injustice has been done her. It
+could be remedied only by the Committee of Petitions before which you
+laid it. I managed to assist at the examination of the case, and I
+enclose herewith the copy of the mitigation of the sentence. Your aunt,
+the Countess Katerina Ivanovna, gave me the address which I am sending
+this to. The original document has been sent to the place where she was
+imprisoned before her trial, and will from there he probably sent
+at once to the principal Government office in Siberia. I hasten to
+communicate this glad news to you and warmly press your hand.
+
+                    “Yours,
+
+                        “SELENIN.”
+
+The document ran thus: “His Majesty’s office for the reception
+of petitions, addressed to his Imperial name”--here followed the
+date----“by order of the chief of his Majesty’s office for the reception
+of petitions addressed to his Imperial name. The meschanka Katerina
+Maslova is hereby informed that his Imperial Majesty, with reference to
+her most loyal petition, condescending to her request, deigns to order
+that her sentence to hard labour should be commuted to one of exile to
+the less distant districts of Siberia.”
+
+This was joyful and important news; all that Nekhludoff could have hoped
+for Katusha, and for himself also, had happened. It was true that the
+new position she was in brought new complications with it. While she was
+a convict, marriage with her could only be fictitious, and would have
+had no meaning except that he would have been in a position to alleviate
+her condition. And now there was nothing to prevent their living
+together, and Nekhludoff had not prepared himself for that. And,
+besides, what of her relations to Simonson? What was the meaning of her
+words yesterday? If she consented to a union with Simonson, would it
+be well? He could not unravel all these questions, and gave up thinking
+about it. “It will all clear itself up later on,” he thought; “I must
+not think about it now, but convey the glad news to her as soon as
+possible, and set her free.” He thought that the copy of the document he
+had received would suffice, so when he left the post-office he told the
+isvostchik to drive him to the prison.
+
+Though he had received no order from the governor to visit the prison
+that morning, he knew by experience that it was easy to get from the
+subordinates what the higher officials would not grant, so now he meant
+to try and get into the prison to bring Katusha the joyful news, and
+perhaps to get her set free, and at the same time to inquire about
+Kryltzoff’s state of health, and tell him and Mary Pavlovna what the
+general had said. The prison inspector was a tall, imposing-looking man,
+with moustaches and whiskers that twisted towards the corners of his
+mouth. He received Nekhludoff very gravely, and told him plainly that
+he could not grant an outsider the permission to interview the prisoners
+without a special order from his chief. To Nekhludoff’s remark that he
+had been allowed to visit the prisoners even in the cities he answered:
+
+“That may be so, but I do not allow it,” and his tone implied, “You
+city gentlemen may think to surprise and perplex us, but we in Eastern
+Siberia also know what the law is, and may even teach it you.” The copy
+of a document straight from the Emperor’s own office did not have any
+effect on the prison inspector either. He decidedly refused to let
+Nekhludoff come inside the prison walls. He only smiled contemptuously
+at Nekhludoff’s naive conclusion, that the copy he had received would
+suffice to set Maslova free, and declared that a direct order from his
+own superiors would be needed before any one could be set at liberty.
+The only things he agreed to do were to communicate to Maslova that a
+mitigation had arrived for her, and to promise that he would not detain
+her an hour after the order from his chief to liberate her would arrive.
+He would also give no news of Kryltzoff, saying he could not even tell
+if there was such a prisoner; and so Nekhludoff, having accomplished
+next to nothing, got into his trap and drove back to his hotel.
+
+The strictness of the inspector was chiefly due to the fact that an
+epidemic of typhus had broken out in the prison, owing to twice the
+number of persons that it was intended for being crowded in it. The
+isvostchik who drove Nekhludoff said, “Quite a lot of people are dying
+in the prison every day, some kind of disease having sprung up among
+them, so that as many as twenty were buried in one day.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE GENERAL’S HOUSEHOLD.
+
+In spite of his ineffectual attempt at the prison, Nekhludoff, still
+in the same vigorous, energetic frame of mind, went to the Governor’s
+office to see if the original of the document had arrived for Maslova.
+It had not arrived, so Nekhludoff went back to the hotel and wrote
+without delay to Selenin and the advocate about it. When he had
+finished writing he looked at his watch and saw it was time to go to the
+General’s dinner party.
+
+On the way he again began wondering how Katusha would receive the news
+of the mitigation of her sentence. Where she would be settled? How he
+should live with her? What about Simonson? What would his relations to
+her be? He remembered the change that had taken place in her, and
+this reminded him of her past. “I must forget it for the present,” he
+thought, and again hastened to drive her out of his mind. “When the time
+comes I shall see,” he said to himself, and began to think of what he
+ought to say to the General.
+
+The dinner at the General’s, with the luxury habitual to the lives
+of the wealthy and those of high rank, to which Nekhludoff had been
+accustomed, was extremely enjoyable after he had been so long deprived
+not only of luxury but even of the most ordinary comforts. The mistress
+of the house was a Petersburg grande dame of the old school, a maid of
+honour at the court of Nicholas I., who spoke French quite naturally and
+Russian very unnaturally. She held herself very erect and, moving her
+hands, she kept her elbows close to her waist. She was quietly and,
+somewhat sadly considerate for her husband, and extremely kind to
+all her visitors, though with a tinge of difference in her behaviour
+according to their position. She received Nekhludoff as if he were one
+of them, and her fine, almost imperceptible flattery made him once again
+aware of his virtues and gave him a feeling of satisfaction. She made
+him feel that she knew of that honest though rather singular step of his
+which had brought him to Siberia, and held him to be an exceptional man.
+This refined flattery and the elegance and luxury of the General’s house
+had the effect of making Nekhludoff succumb to the enjoyment of the
+handsome surroundings, the delicate dishes and the ease and pleasure
+of intercourse with educated people of his own class, so that the
+surroundings in the midst of which he had lived for the last months
+seemed a dream from which he had awakened to reality. Besides those
+of the household, the General’s daughter and her husband and an
+aide-de-camp, there were an Englishman, a merchant interested in gold
+mines, and the governor of a distant Siberian town. All these people
+seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff. The Englishman, a healthy man with a
+rosy complexion, who spoke very bad French, but whose command of his own
+language was very good and oratorically impressive, who had seen a great
+deal, was very interesting to listen to when he spoke about America,
+India, Japan and Siberia.
+
+The young merchant interested in the gold mines, the son of a peasant,
+whose evening dress was made in London, who had diamond studs to his
+shirt, possessed a fine library, contributed freely to philanthropic
+work, and held liberal European views, seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff
+as a sample of a quite new and good type of civilised European culture,
+grafted on a healthy, uncultivated peasant stem.
+
+The governor of the distant Siberian town was that same man who had been
+so much talked about in Petersburg at the time Nekhludoff was there. He
+was plump, with thin, curly hair, soft blue eyes, carefully-tended white
+hands, with rings on the fingers, a pleasant smile, and very big in the
+lower part of his body. The master of the house valued this governor
+because of all the officials he was the only one who would not be
+bribed. The mistress of the house, who was very fond of music and a
+very good pianist herself, valued him because he was a good musician and
+played duets with her.
+
+Nekhludoff was in such good humour that even this man was not unpleasant
+to him, in spite of what he knew of his vices. The bright, energetic
+aide-de-camp, with his bluey grey chin, who was continually offering his
+services, pleased Nekhludoff by his good nature. But it was the charming
+young couple, the General’s daughter and her husband, who pleased
+Nekhludoff best. The daughter was a plain-looking, simple-minded young
+woman, wholly absorbed in her two children. Her husband, whom she had
+fallen in love with and married after a long struggle with her parents,
+was a Liberal, who had taken honours at the Moscow University, a modest
+and intellectual young man in Government service, who made up statistics
+and studied chiefly the foreign tribes, which he liked and tried to save
+from dying out.
+
+All of them were not only kind and attentive to Nekhludoff, but
+evidently pleased to see him, as a new and interesting acquaintance. The
+General, who came in to dinner in uniform and with a white cross round
+his neck, greeted Nekhludoff as a friend, and asked the visitors to
+the side table to take a glass of vodka and something to whet their
+appetites. The General asked Nekhludoff what he had been doing since
+he left that morning, and Nekhludoff told him he had been to the
+post-office and received the news of the mitigation of that person’s
+sentence that he had spoken of in the morning, and again asked for a
+permission to visit the prison.
+
+The General, apparently displeased that business should be mentioned at
+dinner, frowned and said nothing.
+
+“Have a glass of vodka,” he said, addressing the Englishman, who had
+just come up to the table. The Englishman drank a glass, and said he had
+been to see the cathedral and the factory, but would like to visit the
+great transportation prison.
+
+“Oh, that will just fit in,” said the General to Nekhludoff. “You will
+be able to go together. Give them a pass,” he added, turning to his
+aide-de-camp.
+
+“When would you like to go?” Nekhludoff asked.
+
+“I prefer visiting the prisons in the evening,” the Englishman answered.
+“All are indoors and there is no preparation; you find them all as they
+are.”
+
+“Ah, he would like to see it in all its glory! Let him do so. I have
+written about it and no attention has been paid to it. Let him find out
+from foreign publications,” the General said, and went up to the dinner
+table, where the mistress of the house was showing the visitors their
+places. Nekhludoff sat between his hostess and the Englishman. In front
+of him sat the General’s daughter and the ex-director of the Government
+department in Petersburg. The conversation at dinner was carried on by
+fits and starts, now it was India that the Englishman talked about, now
+the Tonkin expedition that the General strongly disapproved of, now the
+universal bribery and corruption in Siberia. All these topics did not
+interest Nekhludoff much.
+
+But after dinner, over their coffee, Nekhludoff and the Englishman began
+a very interesting conversation about Gladstone, and Nekhludoff thought
+he had said many clever things which were noticed by his interlocutor.
+And Nekhludoff felt it more and more pleasant to be sipping his coffee
+seated in an easy-chair among amiable, well-bred people. And when at
+the Englishman’s request the hostess went up to the piano with the
+ex-director of the Government department, and they began to play in
+well-practised style Beethoven’s fifth symphony, Nekhludoff fell into
+a mental state of perfect self-satisfaction to which he had long been
+a stranger, as though he had only just found out what a good fellow he
+was.
+
+The grand piano was a splendid instrument, the symphony was well
+performed. At least, so it seemed to Nekhludoff, who knew and liked that
+symphony. Listening to the beautiful andante, he felt a tickling in his
+nose, he was so touched by his many virtues.
+
+Nekhludoff thanked his hostess for the enjoyment that he had been
+deprived of for so long, and was about to say goodbye and go when the
+daughter of the house came up to him with a determined look and said,
+with a blush, “You asked about my children. Would you like to see them?”
+
+“She thinks that everybody wants to see her children,” said her mother,
+smiling at her daughter’s winning tactlessness. “The Prince is not at
+all interested.”
+
+“On the contrary, I am very much interested,” said Nekhludoff, touched
+by this overflowing, happy mother-love. “Please let me see them.”
+
+“She’s taking the Prince to see her babies,” the General shouted,
+laughing from the card-table, where he sat with his son-in-law, the mine
+owner and the aide-de-camp. “Go, go, pay your tribute.”
+
+The young woman, visibly excited by the thought that judgment was about
+to be passed on her children, went quickly towards the inner apartments,
+followed by Nekhludoff. In the third, a lofty room, papered with white
+and lit up by a shaded lamp, stood two small cots, and a nurse with a
+white cape on her shoulders sat between the cots. She had a kindly, true
+Siberian face, with its high cheek-bones.
+
+The nurse rose and bowed. The mother stooped over the first cot, in
+which a two-year-old little girl lay peacefully sleeping with her little
+mouth open and her long, curly hair tumbled over the pillow.
+
+“This is Katie,” said the mother, straightening the white and blue
+crochet coverlet, from under which a little white foot pushed itself
+languidly out.
+
+“Is she not pretty? She’s only two years old, you know.”
+
+“Lovely.”
+
+“And this is Vasiuk, as ‘grandpapa’ calls him. Quite a different type. A
+Siberian, is he not?”
+
+“A splendid boy,” said Nekhludoff, as he looked at the little fatty
+lying asleep on his stomach.
+
+“Yes,” said the mother, with a smile full of meaning.
+
+Nekhludoff recalled to his mind chains, shaved heads, fighting
+debauchery, the dying Kryltzoff, Katusha and the whole of her past, and
+he began to feel envious and to wish for what he saw here, which now
+seemed to him pure and refined happiness.
+
+After having repeatedly expressed his admiration of the children,
+thereby at least partially satisfying their mother, who eagerly drank
+in this praise, he followed her back to the drawing-room, where the
+Englishman was waiting for him to go and visit the prison, as they had
+arranged. Having taken leave of their hosts, the old and the young ones,
+the Englishman and Nekhludoff went out into the porch of the General’s
+house.
+
+The weather had changed. It was snowing, and the snow fell densely in
+large flakes, and already covered the road, the roof and the trees in
+the garden, the steps of the porch, the roof of the trap and the back of
+the horse.
+
+The Englishman had a trap of his own, and Nekhludoff, having told the
+coachman to drive to the prison, called his isvostchik and got in with
+the heavy sense of having to fulfil an unpleasant duty, and followed
+the Englishman over the soft snow, through which the wheels turned with
+difficulty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+MASLOVA’S DECISION.
+
+The dismal prison house, with its sentinel and lamp burning under the
+gateway, produced an even more dismal impression, with its long row of
+lighted windows, than it had done in the morning, in spite of the white
+covering that now lay over everything--the porch, the roof and the
+walls.
+
+The imposing inspector came up to the gate and read the pass that had
+been given to Nekhludoff and the Englishman by the light of the lamp,
+shrugged his fine shoulders in surprise, but, in obedience to the order,
+asked the visitors to follow him in. He led them through the courtyard
+and then in at a door to the right and up a staircase into the office.
+He offered them a seat and asked what he could do for them, and when
+he heard that Nekhludoff would like to see Maslova at once, he sent a
+jailer to fetch her. Then he prepared himself to answer the questions
+which the Englishman began to put to him, Nekhludoff acting as
+interpreter.
+
+“How many persons is the prison built to hold?” the Englishman asked.
+“How many are confined in it? How many men? How many women? Children?
+How many sentenced to the mines? How many exiles? How many sick
+persons?”
+
+Nekhludoff translated the Englishman’s and the inspector’s words without
+paying any attention to their meaning, and felt an awkwardness he had
+not in the least expected at the thought of the impending interview.
+When, in the midst of a sentence he was translating for the Englishman,
+he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and the office door opened,
+and, as had happened many times before, a jailer came in, followed by
+Katusha, and he saw her with a kerchief tied round her head, and in a
+prison jacket a heavy sensation came over him. “I wish to live, I want
+a family, children, I want a human life.” These thoughts flashed through
+his mind as she entered the room with rapid steps and blinking her eyes.
+
+He rose and made a few steps to meet her, and her face appeared hard
+and unpleasant to him. It was again as it had been at the time when
+she reproached him. She flushed and turned pale, her fingers nervously
+twisting a corner of her jacket. She looked up at him, then cast down
+her eyes.
+
+“You know that a mitigation has come?”
+
+“Yes, the jailer told me.”
+
+“So that as soon as the original document arrives you may come away and
+settle where you like. We shall consider--”
+
+She interrupted him hurriedly. “What have I to consider? Where Valdemar
+Simonson goes, there I shall follow.” In spite of the excitement she
+was in she raised her eyes to Nekhludoff’s and pronounced these words
+quickly and distinctly, as if she had prepared what she had to say.
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“Well, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you see he wishes me to live with him--” and
+she stopped, quite frightened, and corrected herself. “He wishes me to
+be near him. What more can I desire? I must look upon it as happiness.
+What else is there for me--”
+
+“One of two things,” thought he. “Either she loves Simonson and does not
+in the least require the sacrifice I imagined I was bringing her, or she
+still loves me and refuses me for my own sake, and is burning her ships
+by uniting her fate with Simonson.” And Nekhludoff felt ashamed and knew
+that he was blushing.
+
+“And you yourself, do you love him?” he asked.
+
+“Loving or not loving, what does it matter? I have given up all that.
+And then Valdemar Simonson is quite an exceptional man.”
+
+“Yes, of course,” Nekhludoff began. “He is a splendid man, and I
+think--”
+
+But she again interrupted him, as if afraid that he might say too much
+or that she should not say all. “No, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you must forgive
+me if I am not doing what you wish,” and she looked at him with those
+unfathomable, squinting eyes of hers. “Yes, it evidently must be so. You
+must live, too.”
+
+She said just what he had been telling himself a few moments before, but
+he no longer thought so now and felt very differently. He was not only
+ashamed, but felt sorry to lose all he was losing with her. “I did not
+expect this,” he said.
+
+“Why should you live here and suffer? You have suffered enough.”
+
+“I have not suffered. It was good for me, and I should like to go on
+serving you if I could.”
+
+“We do not want anything,” she said, and looked at him.
+
+“You have done so much for me as it is. If it had not been for you--”
+ She wished to say more, but her voice trembled.
+
+“You certainly have no reason to thank me,” Nekhludoff said.
+
+“Where is the use of our reckoning? God will make up our accounts,” she
+said, and her black eyes began to glisten with the tears that filled
+them.
+
+“What a good woman you are,” he said.
+
+“I good?” she said through her tears, and a pathetic smile lit up her
+face.
+
+“Are you ready?” the Englishman asked.
+
+“Directly,” replied Nekhludoff and asked her about Kryltzoff.
+
+She got over her emotion and quietly told him all she knew. Kryltzoff
+was very weak and had been sent into the infirmary. Mary Pavlovna was
+very anxious, and had asked to be allowed to go to the infirmary as a
+nurse, but could not get the permission.
+
+“Am I to go?” she asked, noticing that the Englishman was waiting.
+
+“I will not say good-bye; I shall see you again,” said Nekhludoff,
+holding out his hand.
+
+“Forgive me,” she said so low that he could hardly hear her. Their eyes
+met, and Nekhludoff knew by the strange look of her squinting eyes and
+the pathetic smile with which she said not “Good-bye” but “Forgive
+me,” that of the two reasons that might have led to her resolution,
+the second was the real one. She loved him, and thought that by uniting
+herself to him she would be spoiling his life. By going with Simonson
+she thought she would be setting Nekhludoff free, and felt glad that she
+had done what she meant to do, and yet she suffered at parting from him.
+
+She pressed his hand, turned quickly and left the room.
+
+Nekhludoff was ready to go, but saw that the Englishman was noting
+something down, and did not disturb him, but sat down on a wooden seat
+by the wall, and suddenly a feeling of terrible weariness came over him.
+It was not a sleepless night that had tired him, not the journey, not
+the excitement, but he felt terribly tired of living. He leaned against
+the back of the bench, shut his eyes and in a moment fell into a deep,
+heavy sleep.
+
+“Well, would you like to look round the cells now?” the inspector asked.
+
+Nekhludoff looked up and was surprised to find himself where he was. The
+Englishman had finished his notes and expressed a wish to see the cells.
+
+Nekhludoff, tired and indifferent, followed him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE ENGLISH VISITOR.
+
+When they had passed the anteroom and the sickening, stinking corridor,
+the Englishman and Nekhludoff, accompanied by the inspector, entered the
+first cell, where those sentenced to hard labour were confined. The beds
+took up the middle of the cell and the prisoners were all in bed. There
+were about 70 of them. When the visitors entered all the prisoners
+jumped up and stood beside the beds, excepting two, a young man who was
+in a state of high fever, and an old man who did nothing but groan.
+
+The Englishman asked if the young man had long been ill. The inspector
+said that he was taken ill in the morning, but that the old man had long
+been suffering with pains in the stomach, but could not be removed, as
+the infirmary had been overfilled for a long time. The Englishman shook
+his head disapprovingly, said he would like to say a few words to these
+people, asking Nekhludoff to interpret. It turned out that besides
+studying the places of exile and the prisons of Siberia, the Englishman
+had another object in view, that of preaching salvation through faith
+and by the redemption.
+
+“Tell them,” he said, “that Christ died for them. If they believe in
+this they shall be saved.” While he spoke, all the prisoners stood
+silent with their arms at their sides. “This book, tell them,” he
+continued, “says all about it. Can any of them read?”
+
+There were more than 20 who could.
+
+The Englishman took several bound Testaments out of a hang-bag, and many
+strong hands with their hard, black nails stretched out from beneath the
+coarse shirt-sleeves towards him. He gave away two Testaments in this
+cell.
+
+The same thing happened in the second cell. There was the same foul air,
+the same icon hanging between the windows, the same tub to the left of
+the door, and they were all lying side by side close to one another, and
+jumped up in the same manner and stood stretched full length with their
+arms by their sides, all but three, two of whom sat up and one remained
+lying, and did not even look at the newcomers; these three were also
+ill. The Englishman made the same speech and again gave away two books.
+
+In the third room four were ill. When the Englishman asked why the sick
+were not put all together into one cell, the inspector said that they
+did not wish it themselves, that their diseases were not infectious, and
+that the medical assistant watched them and attended to them.
+
+“He has not set foot here for a fortnight,” muttered a voice.
+
+The inspector did not say anything and led the way to the next cell.
+Again the door was unlocked, and all got up and stood silent. Again the
+Englishman gave away Testaments. It was the same in the fifth and sixth
+cells, in those to the right and those to the left.
+
+From those sentenced to hard labour they went on to the exiles.
+
+From the exiles to those evicted by the Commune and those who followed
+of their own free will.
+
+Everywhere men, cold, hungry, idle, infected, degraded, imprisoned, were
+shown off like wild beasts.
+
+The Englishman, having given away the appointed number of Testaments,
+stopped giving any more, and made no speeches. The oppressing sight, and
+especially the stifling atmosphere, quelled even his energy, and he went
+from cell to cell, saying nothing but “All right” to the inspector’s
+remarks about what prisoners there were in each cell.
+
+Nekhludoff followed as in a dream, unable either to refuse to go on or
+to go away, and with the same feelings of weariness and hopelessness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+KRYLTZOFF AT REST.
+
+In one of the exiles’ cells Nekhludoff, to his surprise, recognised the
+strange old man he had seen crossing the ferry that morning. This old
+man was sitting on the floor by the beds, barefooted, with only a dirty
+cinder-coloured shirt on, torn on one shoulder, and similar trousers.
+He looked severely and enquiringly at the newcomers. His emaciated body,
+visible through the holes of his shirt, looked miserably weak, but in
+his face was even more concentrated seriousness and animation than when
+Nekhludoff saw him crossing the ferry. As in all the other cells, so
+here also the prisoners jumped up and stood erect when the official
+entered, but the old man remained sitting. His eyes glittered and his
+brows frowned with wrath.
+
+“Get up,” the inspector called out to him.
+
+The old man did not rise and only smiled contemptuously.
+
+“Thy servants are standing before thee. I am not thy servant. Thou
+bearest the seal--” The old man pointed to the inspector’s forehead.
+
+“Wha-a-t?” said the inspector threateningly, and made a step towards
+him.
+
+“I know this man,” Nekhludoff hastened to say; “what is he imprisoned
+for?”
+
+“The police have sent him here because he has no passport. We ask them
+not to send such, but they will do it,” said the inspector, casting an
+angry side look at the old man.
+
+“And so it seems thou, too, art one of Antichrist’s army?” the old man
+said to Nekhludoff.
+
+“No, I am a visitor,” said Nekhludoff.
+
+“What, hast thou come to see how Antichrist tortures men? There, look,
+he has locked them up in a cage, a whole army of them. Men should eat
+bread in the sweat of their brow. And he has locked them up with no work
+to do, and feeds them like swine, so that they should turn into beasts.”
+
+“What is he saying?” asked the Englishman.
+
+Nekhludoff told him the old man was blaming the inspector for keeping
+men imprisoned.
+
+“Ask him how he thinks one should treat those who do not keep to the
+laws,” said the Englishman.
+
+Nekhludoff translated the question. The old man laughed in a strange
+manner, showing his teeth.
+
+“The laws?” he repeated with contempt. “He first robbed everybody, took
+all the earth, all the rights away from men, killed all those who were
+against him, and then wrote laws, forbidding robbery and murder. He
+should have written these laws before.”
+
+Nekhludoff translated. The Englishman smiled. “Well, anyhow, ask him how
+one should treat thieves and murderers at present?”
+
+Nekhludoff again translated his question.
+
+“Tell him he should take the seal of Antichrist off himself,” the
+old man said, frowning severely; “then there will be no thieves and
+murderers. Tell him so.”
+
+“He is crazy,” said the Englishman, when Nekhludoff had translated the
+old man’s words, and, shrugging his shoulders, he left the cell.
+
+“Do thy business and leave them alone. Every one for himself. God knows
+whom to execute, whom to forgive, and we do not know,” said the old man.
+“Every man be his own chief, then the chiefs will not be wanted. Go,
+go!” he added, angrily frowning and looking with glittering eyes at
+Nekhludoff, who lingered in the cell. “Hast thou not looked on long
+enough how the servants of Antichrist feed lice on men? Go, go!”
+
+When Nekhludoff went out he saw the Englishman standing by the open door
+of an empty cell with the inspector, asking what the cell was for. The
+inspector explained that it was the mortuary.
+
+“Oh,” said the Englishman when Nekhludoff had translated, and expressed
+the wish to go in.
+
+The mortuary was an ordinary cell, not very large. A small lamp hung on
+the wall and dimly lit up sacks and logs of wood that were piled up in
+one corner, and four dead bodies lay on the bedshelves to the right. The
+first body had a coarse linen shirt and trousers on; it was that of a
+tall man with a small beard and half his head shaved. The body was quite
+rigid; the bluish hands, that had evidently been folded on the breast,
+had separated; the legs were also apart and the bare feet were sticking
+out. Next to him lay a bare-footed old woman in a white petticoat, her
+head, with its thin plait of hair, uncovered, with a little, pinched
+yellow face and a sharp nose. Beyond her was another man with something
+lilac on. This colour reminded Nekhludoff of something. He came nearer
+and looked at the body. The small, pointed beard sticking upwards, the
+firm, well-shaped nose, the high, white forehead, the thin, curly hair;
+he recognised the familiar features and could hardly believe his eyes.
+Yesterday he had seen this face, angry, excited, and full of suffering;
+now it was quiet, motionless, and terribly beautiful. Yes, it was
+Kryltzoff, or at any rate the trace that his material existence had left
+behind. “Why had he suffered? Why had he lived? Does he now understand?”
+ Nekhludoff thought, and there seemed to be no answer, seemed to be
+nothing but death, and he felt faint. Without taking leave of the
+Englishman, Nekhludoff asked the inspector to lead him out into the
+yard, and feeling the absolute necessity of being alone to think over
+all that had happened that evening, he drove back to his hotel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+A NEW LIFE DAWNS FOR NEKHLUDOFF.
+
+Nekhludoff did not go to bed, but went up and down his room for a long
+time. His business with Katusha was at an end. He was not wanted,
+and this made him sad and ashamed. His other business was not only
+unfinished, but troubled him more than ever and demanded his activity.
+All this horrible evil that he had seen and learned to know lately, and
+especially to-day in that awful prison, this evil, which had killed
+that dear Kryltzoff, ruled and was triumphant, and he could foreseen
+possibility of conquering or even knowing how to conquer it. Those
+hundreds and thousands of degraded human beings locked up in the noisome
+prisons by indifferent generals, procureurs, inspectors, rose up in
+his imagination; he remembered the strange, free old man accusing the
+officials, and therefore considered mad, and among the corpses the
+beautiful, waxen face of Kryltzoff, who had died in anger. And again the
+question as to whether he was mad or those who considered they were in
+their right minds while they committed all these deeds stood before him
+with renewed force and demanded an answer.
+
+Tired of pacing up and down, tired of thinking, he sat down on the sofa
+near the lamp and mechanically opened the Testament which the Englishman
+had given him as a remembrance, and which he had thrown on the table
+when he emptied his pockets on coming in.
+
+“It is said one can find an answer to everything here,” he thought, and
+opened the Testament at random and began reading Matt. xviii. 1-4: “In
+that hour came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who then is greatest in
+the Kingdom of Heaven? And He called to Him a little child, and set him
+in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn
+and become as little children, ye shall in nowise enter into the Kingdom
+of Heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child
+the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
+
+“Yes, yes, that is true,” he said, remembering that he had known the
+peace and joy of life only when he had humbled himself.
+
+“And whosoever shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth
+Me, but whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble, it is
+more profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about
+his neck and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea.” (Matt.
+xviii. 5, 6.)
+
+“What is this for, ‘Whosoever shall receive?’ Receive where? And what
+does ‘in my name’ mean?” he asked, feeling that these words did not tell
+him anything. “And why ‘the millstone round his neck and the depths of
+the sea?’ No, that is not it: it is not clear,” and he remembered how
+more than once in his life he had taken to reading the Gospels, and how
+want of clearness in these passages had repulsed him. He went on to
+read the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth verses about the occasions of
+stumbling, and that they must come, and about punishment by casting men
+into hell fire, and some kind of angels who see the face of the Father
+in Heaven. “What a pity that this is so incoherent,” he thought, “yet
+one feels that there is something good in it.”
+
+“For the Son of Man came to save that which was lost,” he continued to
+read.
+
+“How think ye? If any man have a hundred sheep and one of them go
+astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains
+and seek that which goeth astray? And if so be that he find it, verily
+I say unto you, he rejoiceth over it more than over the ninety and nine
+which have not gone astray.
+
+“Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in Heaven that one
+of these little ones should perish.”
+
+“Yes, it is not the will of the Father that they should perish, and
+here they are perishing by hundreds and thousands. And there is no
+possibility of saving them,” he thought.
+
+“Then came Peter and said to him, How oft shall my brother offend me and
+I forgive him? Until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto
+thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.
+
+“Therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven likened unto a certain king which
+made a reckoning with his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one
+was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch
+as he had not wherewith to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and
+his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.
+The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have
+patience with me; I will pay thee all. And the lord of that servant,
+being moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. But
+that servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants which owed
+him a hundred pence; and he laid hold on him and took him by the
+throat, saying, Pay what thou owest. So his fellow-servant fell down and
+besought him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee. And
+he would not, but went and cast him into prison till he should pay that
+which was due. So when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were
+exceeding sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done.
+Then his lord called him unto him and saith to him, Thou wicked servant,
+I forgave thee all that debt because thou besought me; shouldst not thou
+also have mercy on thy fellow-servant as I had mercy on thee?”
+
+“And is this all?” Nekhludoff suddenly exclaimed aloud, and the inner
+voice of the whole of his being said, “Yes, it is all.” And it happened
+to Nekhludoff, as it often happens to men who are living a spiritual
+life. The thought that seemed strange at first and paradoxical or
+even to be only a joke, being confirmed more and more often by life’s
+experience, suddenly appeared as the simplest, truest certainty. In this
+way the idea that the only certain means of salvation from the
+terrible evil from which men were suffering was that they should always
+acknowledge themselves to be sinning against God, and therefore unable
+to punish or correct others, because they were dear to Him. It became
+clear to him that all the dreadful evil he had been witnessing in
+prisons and jails and the quiet self-satisfaction of the perpetrators of
+this evil were the consequences of men trying to do what was impossible;
+trying to correct evil while being evil themselves; vicious men were
+trying to correct other vicious men, and thought they could do it by
+using mechanical means, and the only consequence of all this was that
+the needs and the cupidity of some men induced them to take up this
+so-called punishment and correction as a profession, and have themselves
+become utterly corrupt, and go on unceasingly depraving those whom they
+torment. Now he saw clearly what all the terrors he had seen came from,
+and what ought to be done to put a stop to them. The answer he could
+not find was the same that Christ gave to Peter. It was that we should
+forgive always an infinite number of times because there are no men who
+have not sinned themselves, and therefore none can punish or correct
+others.
+
+“But surely it cannot be so simple,” thought Nekhludoff, and yet he saw
+with certainty, strange as it had seemed at first, that it was not only
+a theoretical but also a practical solution of the question. The usual
+objection, “What is one to do with the evil doers? Surely not let them
+go unpunished?” no longer confused him. This objection might have a
+meaning if it were proved that punishment lessened crime, or improved
+the criminal, but when the contrary was proved, and it was evident that
+it was not in people’s power to correct each other, the only reasonable
+thing to do is to leave off doing the things which are not only useless,
+but harmful, immoral and cruel.
+
+For many centuries people who were considered criminals have been
+tortured. Well, and have they ceased to exist? No; their numbers have
+been increased not alone by the criminals corrupted by punishment but
+also by those lawful criminals, the judges, procureurs, magistrates
+and jailers, who judge and punish men. Nekhludoff now understood
+that society and order in general exists not because of these lawful
+criminals who judge and punish others, but because in spite of men being
+thus depraved, they still pity and love one another.
+
+In hopes of finding a confirmation of this thought in the Gospel,
+Nekhludoff began reading it from the beginning. When he had read the
+Sermon on the Mount, which had always touched him, he saw in it for the
+first time to-day not beautiful abstract thoughts, setting forth for
+the most part exaggerated and impossible demands, but simple, clear,
+practical laws. If these laws were carried out in practice (and this
+was quite possible) they would establish perfectly new and surprising
+conditions of social life, in which the violence that filled Nekhludoff
+with such indignation would cease of itself. Not only this, but the
+greatest blessing that is obtainable to men, the Kingdom of Heaven on
+Earth would be established. There were five of these laws.
+
+The first (Matt. v. 21-26), that man should not only do no murder,
+but not even be angry with his brother, should not consider any one
+worthless: “Raca,” and if he has quarrelled with any one he should make
+it up with him before bringing his gift to God--i.e., before praying.
+
+The second (Matt. v. 27-32), that man should not only not commit
+adultery but should not even seek for enjoyment in a woman’s beauty, and
+if he has once come together with a woman he should never be faithless
+to her.
+
+The third (Matt. 33-37), that man should never bind himself by oath.
+
+The fourth (Matt. 38-42), that man should not only not demand an eye for
+an eye, but when struck on one cheek should hold out the other, should
+forgive an offence and bear it humbly, and never refuse the service
+others demand of him.
+
+The fifth (Matt. 43-48), that man should not only not hate his enemy and
+not fight him, but love him, help him, serve him.
+
+Nekhludoff sat staring at the lamp and his heart stood still. Recalling
+the monstrous confusion of the life we lead, he distinctly saw what that
+life could be if men were brought up to obey these rules, and rapture
+such as he had long not felt filled his soul, just as if after long days
+of weariness and suffering he had suddenly found ease and freedom.
+
+He did not sleep all night, and as it happens to many and many a man who
+reads the Gospels he understood for the first time the full meaning of
+the words read so often before but passed by unnoticed. He imbibed all
+these necessary, important and joyful revelations as a sponge imbibes
+water. And all he read seemed so familiar and seemed to confirm, to form
+into a conception, what he had known long ago, but had never realised
+and never quite believed. Now he realised and believed it, and not
+only realised and believed that if men would obey these laws they would
+obtain the highest blessing they can attain to, he also realised and
+believed that the only duty of every man is to fulfil these laws; that
+in this lies the only reasonable meaning of life, that every stepping
+aside from these laws is a mistake which is immediately followed by
+retribution. This flowed from the whole of the teaching, and was most
+strongly and clearly illustrated in the parable of the vineyard.
+
+The husbandman imagined that the vineyard in which they were sent to
+work for their master was their own, that all that was in was made
+for them, and that their business was to enjoy life in this vineyard,
+forgetting the Master and killing all those who reminded them of his
+existence. “Are we not doing the same,” Nekhludoff thought, “when we
+imagine ourselves to be masters of our lives, and that life is given us
+for enjoyment? This evidently is an incongruity. We were sent here by
+some one’s will and for some reason. And we have concluded that we live
+only for our own joy, and of course we feel unhappy as labourers do when
+not fulfilling their Master’s orders. The Master’s will is expressed in
+these commandments. If men will only fulfil these laws, the Kingdom of
+Heaven will be established on earth, and men will receive the greatest
+good that they can attain to.
+
+“‘Seek ye first the Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things
+shall be added unto you.’
+
+“And so here it is, the business of my life. Scarcely have I finished
+one and another has commenced.” And a perfectly new life dawned that
+night for Nekhludoff, not because he had entered into new conditions of
+life, but because everything he did after that night had a new and quite
+different significance than before. How this new period of his life will
+end time alone will prove.
+
+
+
+[Transcriber’s Note: Corrected “Are we do not doing the same,” to “Are
+we not doing the same,” in third last paragraph.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy
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diff --git a/1938-0.zip b/1938-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Resurrection
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+Released on October, 1999  [Etext #1938]
+Last Updated: September 11, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RESURRECTION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      RESURRECTION
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      <b> By Leo Tolstoy </b>
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      Translated by Mrs. Louise Maude
+    </h4>
+    <h5>
+      [Transcriber&rsquo;s Note: The following paragraph is on a page of its own, in
+      cursive writing, apparently in Tolstoy&rsquo;s own hand.]
+    </h5>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+                             This English version
+                             of &ldquo;Resurrection&rdquo; is pub-
+                             lished by Dodd, Mead and
+                             Company by my authority.
+                                         Leo Tolstoy
+
+</pre>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> TRANSLATOR&rsquo;S PREFACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> RESURRECTION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> <b>BOOK I.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. MASLOVA IN PRISON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. MASLOVA&rsquo;S EARLY LIFE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. NEKHLUDOFF. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. MISSY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. THE JURYMEN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. THE JUDGES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. THE OFFICIALS OF THE COURT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. SWEARING IN THE JURY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE PRISONERS
+      QUESTIONED. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE INDICTMENT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. THE TRIAL&mdash;MASLOVA
+      CROSS-EXAMINED. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. TWELVE YEARS BEFORE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. LIFE IN THE ARMY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. THE SECOND MEETING WITH MASLOVA.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. THE EARLY MASS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST STEP. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. NEKHLUDOFF AND KATUSHA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. AFTERWARDS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. THE TRIAL&mdash;RESUMPTION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE MEDICAL REPORT.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE PROSECUTOR AND
+      THE ADVOCATES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE SUMMING UP.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE VERDICT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE SENTENCE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV. NEKHLUDOFF CONSULTS AN ADVOCATE.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXVI. THE HOUSE OF KORCHAGIN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII. MISSY&rsquo;S MOTHER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII. THE AWAKENING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXIX. MASLOVA IN PRISON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXX. THE CELL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXXI. THE PRISONERS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXXII. A PRISON QUARREL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXXIII. THE LEAVEN AT WORK&mdash;NEKHLUDOFF&rsquo;S
+      DOMESTIC CHANGES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER XXXIV. THE ABSURDITY OF LAW&mdash;REFLECTIONS
+      OF A JURYMAN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XXXV. THE PROCUREUR&mdash;NEKHLUDOFF
+      REFUSES TO SERVE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER XXXVI. NEKHLUDOFF ENDEAVOURS TO VISIT
+      MASLOVA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER XXXVII. MASLOVA RECALLS THE PAST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER XXXVIII. SUNDAY IN PRISON&mdash;PREPARING
+      FOR MASS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER XXXIX. THE PRISON CHURCH&mdash;BLIND
+      LEADERS OF THE BLIND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER XL. THE HUSKS OF RELIGION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0041"> CHAPTER XLI. VISITING DAY&mdash;THE MEN&rsquo;S WARD.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0042"> CHAPTER XLII. VISITING DAY&mdash;THE WOMEN&rsquo;S
+      WARD. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0043"> CHAPTER XLIII. NEKHLUDOFF VISITS MASLOVA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0044"> CHAPTER XLIV. MASLOVA&rsquo;S VIEW OF LIFE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0045"> CHAPTER XLV. FANARIN, THE ADVOCATE&mdash;THE
+      PETITION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0046"> CHAPTER XLVI. A PRISON FLOGGING. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0047"> CHAPTER XLVII. NEKHLUDOFF AGAIN VISITS MASLOVA.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0048"> CHAPTER XLVIII. MASLOVA REFUSES TO MARRY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0049"> CHAPTER XLIX. VERA DOUKHOVA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0050"> CHAPTER L. THE VICE-GOVERNOR OF THE PRISON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0051"> CHAPTER LI. THE CELLS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0052"> CHAPTER LII. NO. 21. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0053"> CHAPTER LIII. VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0054"> CHAPTER LIV. PRISONERS AND FRIENDS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0055"> CHAPTER LV. VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0056"> CHAPTER LVI. NEKHLUDOFF AND THE PRISONERS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0057"> CHAPTER LVII. THE VICE-GOVERNOR&rsquo;S &ldquo;AT-HOME&rdquo;. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0058"> CHAPTER LVIII. THE VICE-GOVERNOR SUSPICIOUS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0059"> CHAPTER LIX. NEKHLUDOFF&rsquo;S THIRD INTERVIEW WITH
+      MASLOVA IN PRISON. </a><br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0063"> <b>BOOK II.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0060"> CHAPTER I. PROPERTY IN LAND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0061"> CHAPTER II. EFFORTS AT LAND RESTORATION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0062"> CHAPTER III. OLD ASSOCIATIONS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0063"> CHAPTER IV. THE PEASANTS&rsquo; LOT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0064"> CHAPTER V. MASLOVA&rsquo;S AUNT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0065"> CHAPTER VI. REFLECTIONS OF A LANDLORD. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0066"> CHAPTER VII. THE DISINHERITED. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0067"> CHAPTER VIII. GOD&rsquo;S PEACE IN THE HEART. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0068"> CHAPTER IX. THE LAND SETTLEMENT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0069"> CHAPTER X. NEKHLUDOFF RETURNS TO TOWN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0070"> CHAPTER XI. AN ADVOCATE&rsquo;S VIEWS ON JUDGES AND
+      PROSECUTORS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0071"> CHAPTER XII. WHY THE PEASANTS FLOCK TO TOWN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0072"> CHAPTER XIII. NURSE MASLOVA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0073"> CHAPTER XIV. AN ARISTOCRATIC CIRCLE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0074"> CHAPTER XV. AN AVERAGE STATESMAN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0075"> CHAPTER XVI. AN UP-TO-DATE SENATOR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0076"> CHAPTER XVII. COUNTESS KATERINA IVANOVNA&rsquo;S DINNER
+      PARTY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0077"> CHAPTER XVIII. OFFICIALDOM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0078"> CHAPTER XIX. AN OLD GENERAL OF REPUTE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0079"> CHAPTER XX. MASLOVA&rsquo;S APPEAL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0080"> CHAPTER XXI. THE APPEAL DISMISSED. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0081"> CHAPTER XXII. AN OLD FRIEND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0082"> CHAPTER XXIII. THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0083"> CHAPTER XXIV. MARIETTE TEMPTS NEKHLUDOFF. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0084"> CHAPTER XXV. LYDIA SHOUSTOVA&rsquo;S HOME. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0085"> CHAPTER XXVI. LYDIA&rsquo;S AUNT. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0086"> CHAPTER XXVII. THE STATE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0087"> CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MEANING OF MARIETTE&rsquo;S
+      ATTRACTION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0088"> CHAPTER XXIX. FOR HER SAKE AND FOR GOD&rsquo;S. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0089"> CHAPTER XXX. THE ASTONISHING INSTITUTION CALLED
+      CRIMINAL LAW. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0090"> CHAPTER XXXI. NEKHLUDOFF&rsquo;S SISTER AND HER
+      HUSBAND. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0091"> CHAPTER XXXII. NEKHLUDOFF&rsquo;S ANARCHISM. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0092"> CHAPTER XXXIII. THE AIM OF THE LAW. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0093"> CHAPTER XXXIV. THE PRISONERS START FOR SIBERIA.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0094"> CHAPTER XXXV. NOT MEN BUT STRANGE AND TERRIBLE
+      CREATURES? </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0095"> CHAPTER XXXVI. THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE LORD.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0096"> CHAPTER XXXVII. SPILLED LIKE WATER ON THE GROUND.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0097"> CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE CONVICT TRAIN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0098"> CHAPTER XXXIX. BROTHER AND SISTER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0099"> CHAPTER XL. THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF HUMAN LIFE.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0100"> CHAPTER XLI. TARAS&rsquo;S STORY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0101"> CHAPTER XLII. LE VRAI GRAND MONDE. </a><br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0106"> <b>BOOK III.</b> </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0102"> CHAPTER I. MASLOVA MAKES NEW FRIENDS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0103"> CHAPTER II. AN INCIDENT OF THE MARCH. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0104"> CHAPTER III. MARY PAVLOVNA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0105"> CHAPTER IV. SIMONSON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0106"> CHAPTER V. THE POLITICAL PRISONERS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0107"> CHAPTER VI. KRYLTZOFF&rsquo;S STORY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0108"> CHAPTER VII. NEKHLUDOFF SEEKS AN INTERVIEW WITH
+      MASLOVA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0109"> CHAPTER VIII. NEKHLUDOFF AND THE OFFICER. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0110"> CHAPTER IX. THE POLITICAL PRISONERS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0111"> CHAPTER X. MAKAR DEVKIN. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0112"> CHAPTER XI. MASLOVA AND HER COMPANIONS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0113"> CHAPTER XII. NABATOFF AND MARKEL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0114"> CHAPTER XIII. LOVE AFFAIRS OF THE EXILES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0115"> CHAPTER XIV. CONVERSATIONS IN PRISON. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0116"> CHAPTER XV. NOVODVOROFF. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0117"> CHAPTER XVI. SIMONSON SPEAKS TO NEKHLUDOFF. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0118"> CHAPTER XVII. &ldquo;I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY.&rdquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0119"> CHAPTER XVIII. NEVEROFF&rsquo;S FATE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0120"> CHAPTER XIX. WHY IS IT DONE? </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0121"> CHAPTER XX. THE JOURNEY RESUMED. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0122"> CHAPTER XXI. &ldquo;JUST A WORTHLESS TRAMP.&rdquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0123"> CHAPTER XXII. NEKHLUDOFF SEES THE GENERAL. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0124"> CHAPTER XXIII. THE SENTENCE COMMUTED. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0125"> CHAPTER XXIV. THE GENERAL&rsquo;S HOUSEHOLD. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0126"> CHAPTER XXV. MASLOVA&rsquo;S DECISION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0127"> CHAPTER XXVI. THE ENGLISH VISITOR. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0128"> CHAPTER XXVII. KRYLTZOFF AT REST. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0129"> CHAPTER XXVIII. A NEW LIFE DAWNS FOR NEKHLUDOFF.
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TRANSLATOR&rsquo;S PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Opinions about Tolstoy and his work differ, but on one point there surely
+      might be unanimity. A writer of world-wide reputation should be at least
+      allowed to know how to spell his own name. Why should any one insist on
+      spelling it &ldquo;Tolstoi&rdquo; (with one, two or three dots over the &ldquo;i&rdquo;), when he
+      himself writes it &ldquo;Tolstoy&rdquo;? The only reason I have ever heard suggested
+      is, that in England and America such outlandish views are attributed to
+      him, that an outlandish spelling is desirable to match those views.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This novel, written in the rough by Tolstoy some years ago and founded
+      upon an actual occurrence, was completely rewritten by him during the last
+      year and a half, and all the proceeds have been devoted by him to aiding
+      the Doukhobors, a sect who were persecuted in the Caucasus (especially
+      from 1895 to 1898) for refusing to learn war. About seven thousand three
+      hundred of them are settled in Canada, and about a hundred of the leaders
+      are exiled to the remote parts of Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anything I may receive for my work in translating the book will go to the
+      same cause. &ldquo;Prevention is better than cure,&rdquo; and I would rather help
+      people to abstain from killing and wounding each other than devote the
+      money to patch up their wounds after the battle.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      LOUISE MAUDE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      RESURRECTION
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the
+      small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paving the
+      ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting
+      down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with
+      the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun shone warm, the air was balmy; everywhere, where it did not get
+      scraped away, the grass revived and sprang up between the paving-stones as
+      well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards. The birches, the
+      poplars, and the wild cherry unfolded their gummy and fragrant leaves, the
+      limes were expanding their opening buds; crows, sparrows, and pigeons,
+      filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests ready; the flies
+      were buzzing along the walls, warmed by the sunshine. All were glad, the
+      plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men
+      and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each
+      other. It was not this spring morning men thought sacred and worthy of
+      consideration not the beauty of God&rsquo;s world, given for a joy to all
+      creatures, this beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony, and
+      to love, but only their own devices for enslaving one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in the prison office of the Government town, it was not the fact
+      that men and animals had received the grace and gladness of spring that
+      was considered sacred and important, but that a notice, numbered and with
+      a superscription, had come the day before, ordering that on this 28th day
+      of April, at 9 a.m., three prisoners at present detained in the prison, a
+      man and two women (one of these women, as the chief criminal, to be
+      conducted separately), had to appear at Court. So now, on the 28th of
+      April, at 8 o&rsquo;clock, a jailer and soon after him a woman warder with curly
+      grey hair, dressed in a jacket with sleeves trimmed with gold, with a
+      blue-edged belt round her waist, and having a look of suffering on her
+      face, came into the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want Maslova?&rdquo; she asked, coming up to the cell with the jailer who
+      was on duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jailer, rattling the iron padlock, opened the door of the cell, from
+      which there came a whiff of air fouler even than that in the corridor, and
+      called out, &ldquo;Maslova! to the Court,&rdquo; and closed the door again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even into the prison yard the breeze had brought the fresh vivifying air
+      from the fields. But in the corridor the air was laden with the germs of
+      typhoid, the smell of sewage, putrefaction, and tar; every newcomer felt
+      sad and dejected in it. The woman warder felt this, though she was used to
+      bad air. She had just come in from outside, and entering the corridor, she
+      at once became sleepy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From inside the cell came the sound of bustle and women&rsquo;s voices, and the
+      patter of bare feet on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, hurry up, Maslova, I say!&rdquo; called out the jailer, and in a
+      minute or two a small young woman with a very full bust came briskly out
+      of the door and went up to the jailer. She had on a grey cloak over a
+      white jacket and petticoat. On her feet she wore linen stockings and
+      prison shoes, and round her head was tied a white kerchief, from under
+      which a few locks of black hair were brushed over the forehead with
+      evident intent. The face of the woman was of that whiteness peculiar to
+      people who have lived long in confinement, and which puts one in mind of
+      shoots of potatoes that spring up in a cellar. Her small broad hands and
+      full neck, which showed from under the broad collar of her cloak, were of
+      the same hue. Her black, sparkling eyes, one with a slight squint,
+      appeared in striking contrast to the dull pallor of her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She carried herself very straight, expanding her full bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With her head slightly thrown back, she stood in the corridor, looking
+      straight into the eyes of the jailer, ready to comply with any order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jailer was about to lock the door when a wrinkled and severe-looking
+      old woman put out her grey head and began speaking to Maslova. But the
+      jailer closed the door, pushing the old woman&rsquo;s head with it. A woman&rsquo;s
+      laughter was heard from the cell, and Maslova smiled, turning to the
+      little grated opening in the cell door. The old woman pressed her face to
+      the grating from the other side, and said, in a hoarse voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now mind, and when they begin questioning you, just repeat over the same
+      thing, and stick to it; tell nothing that is not wanted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it could not be worse than it is now, anyhow; I only wish it was
+      settled one way or another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it will be settled one way or another,&rdquo; said the jailer, with
+      a superior&rsquo;s self-assured witticism. &ldquo;Now, then, get along! Take your
+      places!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman&rsquo;s eyes vanished from the grating, and Maslova stepped out
+      into the middle of the corridor. The warder in front, they descended the
+      stone stairs, past the still fouler, noisy cells of the men&rsquo;s ward, where
+      they were followed by eyes looking out of every one of the gratings in the
+      doors, and entered the office, where two soldiers were waiting to escort
+      her. A clerk who was sitting there gave one of the soldiers a paper
+      reeking of tobacco, and pointing to the prisoner, remarked, &ldquo;Take her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier, a peasant from Nijni Novgorod, with a red, pock-marked face,
+      put the paper into the sleeve of his coat, winked to his companion, a
+      broad-shouldered Tchouvash, and then the prisoner and the soldiers went to
+      the front entrance, out of the prison yard, and through the town up the
+      middle of the roughly-paved street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isvostchiks [cabmen], tradespeople, cooks, workmen, and government clerks,
+      stopped and looked curiously at the prisoner; some shook their heads and
+      thought, &ldquo;This is what evil conduct, conduct unlike ours, leads to.&rdquo; The
+      children stopped and gazed at the robber with frightened looks; but the
+      thought that the soldiers were preventing her from doing more harm quieted
+      their fears. A peasant, who had sold his charcoal, and had had some tea in
+      the town, came up, and, after crossing himself, gave her a copeck. The
+      prisoner blushed and muttered something; she noticed that she was
+      attracting everybody&rsquo;s attention, and that pleased her. The comparatively
+      fresh air also gladdened her, but it was painful to step on the rough
+      stones with the ill-made prison shoes on her feet, which had become unused
+      to walking. Passing by a corn-dealer&rsquo;s shop, in front of which a few
+      pigeons were strutting about, unmolested by any one, the prisoner almost
+      touched a grey-blue bird with her foot; it fluttered up and flew close to
+      her ear, fanning her with its wings. She smiled, then sighed deeply as she
+      remembered her present position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. MASLOVA&rsquo;S EARLY LIFE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The story of the prisoner Maslova&rsquo;s life was a very common one.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Maslova&rsquo;s mother was the unmarried daughter of a village woman, employed
+      on a dairy farm, which belonged to two maiden ladies who were landowners.
+      This unmarried woman had a baby every year, and, as often happens among
+      the village people, each one of these undesired babies, after it had been
+      carefully baptised, was neglected by its mother, whom it hindered at her
+      work, and left to starve. Five children had died in this way. They had all
+      been baptised and then not sufficiently fed, and just left to die. The
+      sixth baby, whose father was a gipsy tramp, would have shared the same
+      fate, had it not so happened that one of the maiden ladies came into the
+      farmyard to scold the dairymaids for sending up cream that smelt of the
+      cow. The young woman was lying in the cowshed with a fine, healthy,
+      new-born baby. The old maiden lady scolded the maids again for allowing
+      the woman (who had just been confined) to lie in the cowshed, and was
+      about to go away, but seeing the baby her heart was touched, and she
+      offered to stand godmother to the little girl, and pity for her little
+      god-daughter induced her to give milk and a little money to the mother, so
+      that she should feed the baby; and the little girl lived. The old ladies
+      spoke of her as &ldquo;the saved one.&rdquo; When the child was three years old, her
+      mother fell ill and died, and the maiden ladies took the child from her
+      old grandmother, to whom she was nothing but a burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little black-eyed maiden grew to be extremely pretty, and so full of
+      spirits that the ladies found her very entertaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger of the ladies, Sophia Ivanovna, who had stood godmother to the
+      girl, had the kinder heart of the two sisters; Maria Ivanovna, the elder,
+      was rather hard. Sophia Ivanovna dressed the little girl in nice clothes,
+      and taught her to read and write, meaning to educate her like a lady.
+      Maria Ivanovna thought the child should be brought up to work, and trained
+      her to be a good servant. She was exacting; she punished, and, when in a
+      bad temper, even struck the little girl. Growing up under these two
+      different influences, the girl turned out half servant, half young lady.
+      They called her Katusha, which sounds less refined than Katinka, but is
+      not quite so common as Katka. She used to sew, tidy up the rooms, polish
+      the metal cases of the icons and do other light work, and sometimes she
+      sat and read to the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though she had more than one offer, she would not marry. She felt that
+      life as the wife of any of the working men who were courting her would be
+      too hard; spoilt as she was by a life of case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lived in this manner till she was sixteen, when the nephew of the old
+      ladies, a rich young prince, and a university student, came to stay with
+      his aunts, and Katusha, not daring to acknowledge it even to herself, fell
+      in love with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then two years later this same nephew stayed four days with his aunts
+      before proceeding to join his regiment, and the night before he left he
+      betrayed Katusha, and, after giving her a 100-rouble note, went away. Five
+      months later she knew for certain that she was to be a mother. After that
+      everything seemed repugnant to her, her only thought being how to escape
+      from the shame that awaited her. She began not only to serve the ladies in
+      a half-hearted and negligent way, but once, without knowing how it
+      happened, was very rude to them, and gave them notice, a thing she
+      repented of later, and the ladies let her go, noticing something wrong and
+      very dissatisfied with her. Then she got a housemaid&rsquo;s place in a
+      police-officer&rsquo;s house, but stayed there only three months, for the police
+      officer, a man of fifty, began to torment her, and once, when he was in a
+      specially enterprising mood, she fired up, called him &ldquo;a fool and old
+      devil,&rdquo; and gave him such a knock in the chest that he fell. She was
+      turned out for her rudeness. It was useless to look for another situation,
+      for the time of her confinement was drawing near, so she went to the house
+      of a village midwife, who also sold wine. The confinement was easy; but
+      the midwife, who had a case of fever in the village, infected Katusha, and
+      her baby boy had to be sent to the foundlings&rsquo; hospital, where, according
+      to the words of the old woman who took him there, he at once died. When
+      Katusha went to the midwife she had 127 roubles in all, 27 which she had
+      earned and 100 given her by her betrayer. When she left she had but six
+      roubles; she did not know how to keep money, but spent it on herself, and
+      gave to all who asked. The midwife took 40 roubles for two months&rsquo; board
+      and attendance, 25 went to get the baby into the foundlings&rsquo; hospital, and
+      40 the midwife borrowed to buy a cow with. Twenty roubles went just for
+      clothes and dainties. Having nothing left to live on, Katusha had to look
+      out for a place again, and found one in the house of a forester. The
+      forester was a married man, but he, too, began to annoy her from the first
+      day. He disgusted her, and she tried to avoid him. But he, more
+      experienced and cunning, besides being her master, who could send her
+      wherever he liked, managed to accomplish his object. His wife found it
+      out, and, catching Katusha and her husband in a room all by themselves,
+      began beating her. Katusha defended herself, and they had a fight, and
+      Katusha got turned out of the house without being paid her wages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Katusha went to live with her aunt in town. The aunt&rsquo;s husband, a
+      bookbinder, had once been comfortably off, but had lost all his customers,
+      and had taken to drink, and spent all he could lay hands on at the
+      public-house. The aunt kept a little laundry, and managed to support
+      herself, her children, and her wretched husband. She offered Katusha the
+      place of an assistant laundress; but seeing what a life of misery and
+      hardship her aunt&rsquo;s assistants led, Katusha hesitated, and applied to a
+      registry office for a place. One was found for her with a lady who lived
+      with her two sons, pupils at a public day school. A week after Katusha had
+      entered the house the elder, a big fellow with moustaches, threw up his
+      studies and made love to her, continually following her about. His mother
+      laid all the blame on Katusha, and gave her notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened that, after many fruitless attempts to find a situation,
+      Katusha again went to the registry office, and there met a woman with
+      bracelets on her bare, plump arms and rings on most of her fingers.
+      Hearing that Katusha was badly in want of a place, the woman gave her her
+      address, and invited her to come to her house. Katusha went. The woman
+      received her very kindly, set cake and sweet wine before her, then wrote a
+      note and gave it to a servant to take to somebody. In the evening a tall
+      man, with long, grey hair and a white beard, entered the room, and sat
+      down at once near Katusha, smiling and gazing at her with glistening eyes.
+      He began joking with her. The hostess called him away into the next room,
+      and Katusha heard her say, &ldquo;A fresh one from the country,&rdquo; Then the
+      hostess called Katusha aside and told her that the man was an author, and
+      that he had a great deal of money, and that if he liked her he would not
+      grudge her anything. He did like her, and gave her 25 roubles, promising
+      to see her often. The 25 roubles soon went; some she paid to her aunt for
+      board and lodging; the rest was spent on a hat, ribbons, and such like. A
+      few days later the author sent for her, and she went. He gave her another
+      25 roubles, and offered her a separate lodging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next door to the lodging rented for her by the author there lived a jolly
+      young shopman, with whom Katusha soon fell in love. She told the author,
+      and moved to a little lodging of her own. The shopman, who promised to
+      marry her, went to Nijni on business without mentioning it to her, having
+      evidently thrown her up, and Katusha remained alone. She meant to continue
+      living in the lodging by herself, but was informed by the police that in
+      this case she would have to get a license. She returned to her aunt.
+      Seeing her fine dress, her hat, and mantle, her aunt no longer offered her
+      laundry work. As she understood things, her niece had risen above that
+      sort of thing. The question as to whether she was to become a laundress or
+      not did not occur to Katusha, either. She looked with pity at the thin,
+      hard-worked laundresses, some already in consumption, who stood washing or
+      ironing with their thin arms in the fearfully hot front room, which was
+      always full of soapy steam and draughts from the windows, and thought with
+      horror that she might have shared the same fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katusha had begun to smoke some time before, and since the young shopman
+      had thrown her up she was getting more and more into the habit of
+      drinking. It was not so much the flavour of wine that tempted her as the
+      fact that it gave her a chance of forgetting the misery she suffered,
+      making her feel more unrestrained and more confident of her own worth,
+      which she was not when quite sober; without wine she felt sad and ashamed.
+      Just at this time a woman came along who offered to place her in one of
+      the largest establishments in the city, explaining all the advantages and
+      benefits of the situation. Katusha had the choice before her of either
+      going into service or accepting this offer&mdash;and she chose the latter.
+      Besides, it seemed to her as though, in this way, she could revenge
+      herself on her betrayer and the shopman and all those who had injured her.
+      One of the things that tempted her, and was the cause of her decision, was
+      the woman telling her she might order her own dresses&mdash;velvet, silk,
+      satin, low-necked ball dresses, anything she liked. A mental picture of
+      herself in a bright yellow silk trimmed with black velvet with low neck
+      and short sleeves conquered her, and she gave up her passport. On the same
+      evening the procuress took an isvostchik and drove her to the notorious
+      house kept by Carolina Albertovna Kitaeva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day a life of chronic sin against human and divine laws
+      commenced for Katusha Maslova, a life which is led by hundreds of
+      thousands of women, and which is not merely tolerated but sanctioned by
+      the Government, anxious for the welfare of its subjects; a life which for
+      nine women out of ten ends in painful disease, premature decrepitude, and
+      death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katusha Maslova lived this life for seven years. During these years she
+      twice changed houses, and had once been to the hospital. In the seventh
+      year of this life, when she was twenty-six years old, happened that for
+      which she was put in prison and for which she was now being taken to be
+      tried, after more than three months of confinement with thieves and
+      murderers in the stifling air of a prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. NEKHLUDOFF.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Maslova, wearied out by the long walk, reached the building,
+      accompanied by two soldiers, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, who had
+      seduced her, was still lying on his high bedstead, with a feather bed on
+      the top of the spring mattress, in a fine, clean, well-ironed linen night
+      shirt, smoking a cigarette, and considering what he had to do to-day, and
+      what had happened yesterday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Recalling the evening he had spent with the Korchagins, a wealthy and
+      aristocratic family, whose daughter every one expected he would marry, he
+      sighed, and, throwing away the end of his cigarette, was going to take
+      another out of the silver case; but, changing his mind, he resolutely
+      raised his solid frame, and, putting down his smooth, white legs, stepped
+      into his slippers, threw his silk dressing gown over his broad shoulders,
+      and passed into his dressing-room, walking heavily and quickly. There he
+      carefully cleaned his teeth, many of which were filled, with tooth powder,
+      and rinsed his mouth with scented elixir. After that he washed his hands
+      with perfumed soap, cleaned his long nails with particular care, then,
+      from a tap fixed to his marble washstand, he let a spray of cold water run
+      over his face and stout neck. Having finished this part of the business,
+      he went into a third room, where a shower bath stood ready for him. Having
+      refreshed his full, white, muscular body, and dried it with a rough bath
+      sheet, he put on his fine undergarments and his boots, and sat down before
+      the glass to brush his black beard and his curly hair, that had begun to
+      get thin above the forehead. Everything he used, everything belonging to
+      his toilet, his linen, his clothes, boots, necktie, pin, studs, was of the
+      best quality, very quiet, simple, durable and costly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff dressed leisurely, and went into the dining-room. A table,
+      which looked very imposing with its four legs carved in the shape of
+      lions&rsquo; paws, and a huge side-board to match, stood in the oblong room, the
+      floor of which had been polished by three men the day before. On the
+      table, which was covered with a fine, starched cloth, stood a silver
+      coffeepot full of aromatic coffee, a sugar basin, a jug of fresh cream,
+      and a bread basket filled with fresh rolls, rusks, and biscuits; and
+      beside the plate lay the last number of the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>,
+      a newspaper, and several letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was just going to open his letters, when a stout, middle-aged
+      woman in mourning, a lace cap covering the widening parting of her hair,
+      glided into the room. This was Agraphena Petrovna, formerly lady&rsquo;s maid to
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s mother. Her mistress had died quite recently in this very
+      house, and she remained with the son as his housekeeper. Agraphena
+      Petrovna had spent nearly ten years, at different times, abroad with
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s mother, and had the appearance and manners of a lady. She had
+      lived with the Nekhludoffs from the time she was a child, and had known
+      Dmitri Ivanovitch at the time when he was still little Mitinka.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Dmitri Ivanovitch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Agraphena Petrovna. What is it you want?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A letter from the princess; either from the mother or the daughter. The
+      maid brought it some time ago, and is waiting in my room,&rdquo; answered
+      Agraphena Petrovna, handing him the letter with a significant smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right! Directly!&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, taking the letter and frowning as
+      he noticed Agraphena Petrovna&rsquo;s smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That smile meant that the letter was from the younger Princess Korchagin,
+      whom Agraphena Petrovna expected him to marry. This supposition of hers
+      annoyed Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell her to wait?&rdquo; and Agraphena Petrovna took a crumb brush
+      which was not in its place, put it away, and sailed out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff opened the perfumed note, and began reading it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The note was written on a sheet of thick grey paper, with rough edges; the
+      writing looked English. It said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having assumed the task of acting as your memory, I take the liberty of
+      reminding you that on this the 28th day of April you have to appear at the
+      Law Courts, as juryman, and, in consequence, can on no account accompany
+      us and Kolosoff to the picture gallery, as, with your habitual
+      flightiness, you promised yesterday; <i>a moins que vous ne soyez dispose
+      a payer la cour d&rsquo;assise les 300 roubles d&rsquo;amende que vous vous refusez
+      pour votre cheval,</i> for not appearing in time. I remembered it last
+      night after you were gone, so do not forget.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                      Princess M. Korchagin.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      On the other side was a postscript.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Maman vous fait dire que votre convert vous attendra jusqu&rsquo;a la nuit.
+      Venez absolument a quelle heure que cela soit.</i>
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                    M. K.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff made a grimace. This note was a continuation of that skilful
+      manoeuvring which the Princess Korchagin had already practised for two
+      months in order to bind him closer and closer with invisible threads. And
+      yet, beside the usual hesitation of men past their youth to marry unless
+      they are very much in love, Nekhludoff had very good reasons why, even if
+      he did make up his mind to it, he could not propose at once. It was not
+      that ten years previously he had betrayed and forsaken Maslova; he had
+      quite forgotten that, and he would not have considered it a reason for not
+      marrying. No! The reason was that he had a liaison with a married woman,
+      and, though he considered it broken off, she did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was rather shy with women, and his very shyness awakened in
+      this married woman, the unprincipled wife of the marechal de noblesse of a
+      district where Nekhludoff was present at an election, the desire of
+      vanquishing him. This woman drew him into an intimacy which entangled him
+      more and more, while it daily became more distasteful to him. Having
+      succumbed to the temptation, Nekhludoff felt guilty, and had not the
+      courage to break the tie without her consent. And this was the reason he
+      did not feel at liberty to propose to Korchagin even if he had wished to
+      do so. Among the letters on the table was one from this woman&rsquo;s husband.
+      Seeing his writing and the postmark, Nekhludoff flushed, and felt his
+      energies awakening, as they always did when he was facing any kind of
+      danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his excitement passed at once. The marechal do noblesse, of the
+      district in which his largest estate lay, wrote only to let Nekhludoff
+      know that there was to be a special meeting towards the end of May, and
+      that Nekhludoff was to be sure and come to &ldquo;<i>donner un coup d&rsquo;epaule</i>,&rdquo;
+       at the important debates concerning the schools and the roads, as a strong
+      opposition by the reactionary party was expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marechal was a liberal, and was quite engrossed in this fight, not
+      even noticing the misfortune that had befallen him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff remembered the dreadful moments he had lived through; once when
+      he thought that the husband had found him out and was going to challenge
+      him, and he was making up his mind to fire into the air; also the terrible
+      scene he had with her when she ran out into the park, and in her
+      excitement tried to drown herself in the pond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I cannot go now, and can do nothing until I get a reply from her,&rdquo;
+       thought Nekhludoff. A week ago he had written her a decisive letter, in
+      which he acknowledged his guilt, and his readiness to atone for it; but at
+      the same time he pronounced their relations to be at an end, for her own
+      good, as he expressed it. To this letter he had as yet received no answer.
+      This might prove a good sign, for if she did not agree to break off their
+      relations, she would have written at once, or even come herself, as she
+      had done before. Nekhludoff had heard that there was some officer who was
+      paying her marked attention, and this tormented him by awakening jealousy,
+      and at the same time encouraged him with the hope of escape from the
+      deception that was oppressing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other letter was from his steward. The steward wrote to tell him that
+      a visit to his estates was necessary in order to enter into possession,
+      and also to decide about the further management of his lands; whether it
+      was to continue in the same way as when his mother was alive, or whether,
+      as he had represented to the late lamented princess, and now advised the
+      young prince, they had not better increase their stock and farm all the
+      land now rented by the peasants themselves. The steward wrote that this
+      would be a far more profitable way of managing the property; at the same
+      time, he apologised for not having forwarded the 3,000 roubles income due
+      on the 1st. This money would be sent on by the next mail. The reason for
+      the delay was that he could not get the money out of the peasants, who had
+      grown so untrustworthy that he had to appeal to the authorities. This
+      letter was partly disagreeable, and partly pleasant. It was pleasant to
+      feel that he had power over so large a property, and yet disagreeable,
+      because Nekhludoff had been an enthusiastic admirer of Henry George and
+      Herbert Spencer. Being himself heir to a large property, he was especially
+      struck by the position taken up by Spencer in Social Statics, that justice
+      forbids private landholding, and with the straightforward resoluteness of
+      his age, had not merely spoken to prove that land could not be looked upon
+      as private property, and written essays on that subject at the university,
+      but had acted up to his convictions, and, considering it wrong to hold
+      landed property, had given the small piece of land he had inherited from
+      his father to the peasants. Inheriting his mother&rsquo;s large estates, and
+      thus becoming a landed proprietor, he had to choose one of two things:
+      either to give up his property, as he had given up his father&rsquo;s land ten
+      years before, or silently to confess that all his former ideas were
+      mistaken and false.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not choose the former because he had no means but the landed
+      estates (he did not care to serve); moreover, he had formed luxurious
+      habits which he could not easily give up. Besides, he had no longer the
+      same inducements; his strong convictions, the resoluteness of youth, and
+      the ambitious desire to do something unusual were gone. As to the second
+      course, that of denying those clear and unanswerable proofs of the
+      injustice of landholding, which he had drawn from Spencer&rsquo;s Social
+      Statics, and the brilliant corroboration of which he had at a later period
+      found in the works of Henry George, such a course was impossible to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. MISSY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff had finished his coffee, he went to his study to look at
+      the summons, and find out what time he was to appear at the court, before
+      writing his answer to the princess. Passing through his studio, where a
+      few studies hung on the walls and, facing the easel, stood an unfinished
+      picture, a feeling of inability to advance in art, a sense of his
+      incapacity, came over him. He had often had this feeling, of late, and
+      explained it by his too finely-developed aesthetic taste; still, the
+      feeling was a very unpleasant one. Seven years before this he had given up
+      military service, feeling sure that he had a talent for art, and had
+      looked down with some disdain at all other activity from the height of his
+      artistic standpoint. And now it turned out that he had no right to do so,
+      and therefore everything that reminded him of all this was unpleasant. He
+      looked at the luxurious fittings of the studio with a heavy heart, and it
+      was in no cheerful mood that he entered his study, a large, lofty room
+      fitted up with a view to comfort, convenience, and elegant appearance. He
+      found the summons at once in a pigeon hole, labelled &ldquo;immediate,&rdquo; of his
+      large writing table. He had to appear at the court at 11 o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sat down to write a note in reply to the princess, thanking her
+      for the invitation, and promising to try and come to dinner. Having
+      written one note, he tore it up, as it seemed too intimate. He wrote
+      another, but it was too cold; he feared it might give offence, so he tore
+      it up, too. He pressed the button of an electric bell, and his servant, an
+      elderly, morose-looking man, with whiskers and shaved chin and lip,
+      wearing a grey cotton apron, entered at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send to fetch an isvostchik, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And tell the person who is waiting that I send thanks for the invitation,
+      and shall try to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not very polite, but I can&rsquo;t write; no matter, I shall see her
+      today,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, and went to get his overcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came out of the house, an isvostchik he knew, with india-rubber
+      tires to his trap, was at the door waiting for him. &ldquo;You had hardly gone
+      away from Prince Korchagin&rsquo;s yesterday,&rdquo; he said, turning half round,
+      &ldquo;when I drove up, and the Swiss at the door says, &lsquo;just gone.&rsquo;&rdquo; The
+      isvostchik knew that Nekhludoff visited at the Korchagins, and called
+      there on the chance of being engaged by him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even the isvostchiks know of my relations with the Korchagins,&rdquo; thought
+      Nekhludoff, and again the question whether he should not marry Princess
+      Korchagin presented itself to him, and he could not decide it either way,
+      any more than most of the questions that arose in his mind at this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in favour of marriage in general, that besides the comforts of
+      hearth and home, it made a moral life possible, and chiefly that a family
+      would, so Nekhludoff thought, give an aim to his now empty life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Against marriage in general was the fear, common to bachelors past their
+      first youth, of losing freedom, and an unconscious awe before this
+      mysterious creature, a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this particular case, in favour of marrying Missy (her name was Mary,
+      but, as is usual among a certain set, a nickname had been given her) was
+      that she came of good family, and differed in everything, manner of
+      speaking, walking, laughing, from the common people, not by anything
+      exceptional, but by her &ldquo;good breeding&rdquo;&mdash;he could find no other term
+      for this quality, though he prized it very highly&mdash;-and, besides, she
+      thought more of him than of anybody else, therefore evidently understood
+      him. This understanding of him, i.e., the recognition of his superior
+      merits, was to Nekhludoff a proof of her good sense and correct judgment.
+      Against marrying Missy in particular, was, that in all likelihood, a girl
+      with even higher qualities could be found, that she was already 27, and
+      that he was hardly her first love. This last idea was painful to him. His
+      pride would not reconcile itself with the thought that she had loved some
+      one else, even in the past. Of course, she could not have known that she
+      should meet him, but the thought that she was capable of loving another
+      offended him. So that he had as many reasons for marrying as against it;
+      at any rate, they weighed equally with Nekhludoff, who laughed at himself,
+      and called himself the ass of the fable, remaining like that animal
+      undecided which haycock to turn to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any rate, before I get an answer from Mary Vasilievna (the marechal&rsquo;s
+      wife), and finish completely with her, I can do nothing,&rdquo; he said to
+      himself. And the conviction that he might, and was even obliged, to delay
+      his decision, was comforting. &ldquo;Well, I shall consider all that later on,&rdquo;
+       he said to himself, as the trap drove silently along the asphalt pavement
+      up to the doors of the Court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I must fulfil my public duties conscientiously, as I am in the habit
+      of always doing, and as I consider it right to do. Besides, they are often
+      interesting.&rdquo; And he entered the hall of the Law Courts, past the
+      doorkeeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. THE JURYMEN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The corridors of the Court were already full of activity. The attendants
+      hurried, out of breath, dragging their feet along the ground without
+      lifting them, backwards and forwards, with all sorts of messages and
+      papers. Ushers, advocates, and law officers passed hither and thither.
+      Plaintiffs, and those of the accused who were not guarded, wandered sadly
+      along the walls or sat waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is the Law Court?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked of an attendant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which? There is the Civil Court and the Criminal Court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am on the jury.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Criminal Court you should have said. Here to the right, then to the
+      left&mdash;the second door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff followed the direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile some of the Criminal Court jurymen who were late had hurriedly
+      passed into a separate room. At the door mentioned two men stood waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One, a tall, fat merchant, a kind-hearted fellow, had evidently partaken
+      of some refreshments and a glass of something, and was in most pleasant
+      spirits. The other was a shopman of Jewish extraction. They were talking
+      about the price of wool when Nekhludoff came up and asked them if this was
+      the jurymen&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear sir, this is it. One of us? On the jury, are you?&rdquo; asked the
+      merchant, with a merry wink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, we shall have a go at the work together,&rdquo; he continued, after
+      Nekhludoff had answered in the affirmative. &ldquo;My name is Baklasheff,
+      merchant of the Second Guild,&rdquo; he said, putting out his broad, soft,
+      flexible hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With whom have I the honour?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff gave his name and passed into the jurymen&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inside the room were about ten persons of all sorts. They had come but a
+      short while ago, and some were sitting, others walking up and down,
+      looking at each other, and making each other&rsquo;s acquaintance. There was a
+      retired colonel in uniform; some were in frock coats, others in morning
+      coats, and only one wore a peasant&rsquo;s dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their faces all had a certain look of satisfaction at the prospect of
+      fulfilling a public duty, although many of them had had to leave their
+      businesses, and most were complaining of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jurymen talked among themselves about the weather, the early spring,
+      and the business before them, some having been introduced, others just
+      guessing who was who. Those who were not acquainted with Nekhludoff made
+      haste to get introduced, evidently looking upon this as an honour, and he
+      taking it as his due, as he always did when among strangers. Had he been
+      asked why he considered himself above the majority of people, he could not
+      have given an answer; the life he had been living of late was not
+      particularly meritorious. The fact of his speaking English, French, and
+      German with a good accent, and of his wearing the best linen, clothes,
+      ties, and studs, bought from the most expensive dealers in these goods, he
+      quite knew would not serve as a reason for claiming superiority. At the
+      same time he did claim superiority, and accepted the respect paid him as
+      his due, and was hurt if he did not get it. In the jurymen&rsquo;s room his
+      feelings were hurt by disrespectful treatment. Among the jury there
+      happened to be a man whom he knew, a former teacher of his sister&rsquo;s
+      children, Peter Gerasimovitch. Nekhludoff never knew his surname, and even
+      bragged a bit about this. This man was now a master at a public school.
+      Nekhludoff could not stand his familiarity, his self-satisfied laughter,
+      his vulgarity, in short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah ha! You&rsquo;re also trapped.&rdquo; These were the words, accompanied with
+      boisterous laughter, with which Peter Gerasimovitch greeted Nekhludoff.
+      &ldquo;Have you not managed to get out of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never meant to get out of it,&rdquo; replied Nekhludoff, gloomily, and in a
+      tone of severity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I call this being public spirited. But just wait until you get
+      hungry or sleepy; you&rsquo;ll sing to another tune then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This son of a priest will be saying &lsquo;thou&rsquo; [in Russian, as in many other
+      languages, &lsquo;thou&rsquo; is used generally among people very familiar with each
+      other, or by superiors to inferiors] to me next,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, and
+      walked away, with such a look of sadness on his face, as might have been
+      natural if he had just heard of the death of all his relations. He came up
+      to a group that had formed itself round a clean-shaven, tall, dignified
+      man, who was recounting something with great animation. This man was
+      talking about the trial going on in the Civil Court as of a case well
+      known to himself, mentioning the judges and a celebrated advocate by name.
+      He was saying that it seemed wonderful how the celebrated advocate had
+      managed to give such a clever turn to the affair that an old lady, though
+      she had the right on her side, would have to pay a large sum to her
+      opponent. &ldquo;The advocate is a genius,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The listeners heard it all with respectful attention, and several of them
+      tried to put in a word, but the man interrupted them, as if he alone knew
+      all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Nekhludoff had arrived late, he had to wait a long time. One of the
+      members of the Court had not yet come, and everybody was kept waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. THE JUDGES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The president, who had to take the chair, had arrived early. The president
+      was a tall, stout man, with long grey whiskers. Though married, he led a
+      very loose life, and his wife did the same, so they did not stand in each
+      other&rsquo;s way. This morning he had received a note from a Swiss girl, who
+      had formerly been a governess in his house, and who was now on her way
+      from South Russia to St. Petersburg. She wrote that she would wait for him
+      between five and six p.m. in the Hotel Italia. This made him wish to begin
+      and get through the sitting as soon as possible, so as to have time to
+      call before six p.m. on the little red-haired Clara Vasilievna, with whom
+      he had begun a romance in the country last summer. He went into a private
+      room, latched the door, took a pair of dumb-bells out of a cupboard, moved
+      his arms 20 times upwards, downwards, forwards, and sideways, then holding
+      the dumb-bells above his head, lightly bent his knees three times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing keeps one going like a cold bath and exercise,&rdquo; he said, feeling
+      the biceps of his right arm with his left hand, on the third finger of
+      which he wore a gold ring. He had still to do the moulinee movement (for
+      he always went through those two exercises before a long sitting), when
+      there was a pull at the door. The president quickly put away the
+      dumb-bells and opened the door, saying, &ldquo;I beg your pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the members, a high-shouldered, discontented-looking man, with gold
+      spectacles, came into the room. &ldquo;Matthew Nikitich has again not come,&rdquo; he
+      said, in a dissatisfied tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet?&rdquo; said the president, putting on his uniform. &ldquo;He is always
+      late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is extraordinary. He ought to be ashamed of himself,&rdquo; said the member,
+      angrily, and taking out a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This member, a very precise man, had had an unpleasant encounter with his
+      wife in the morning, because she had spent her allowance before the end of
+      the month, and had asked him to give her some money in advance, but he
+      would not give way to her, and they had a quarrel. The wife told him that
+      if he were going to behave so, he need not expect any dinner; there would
+      be no dinner for him at home. At this point he left, fearing that she
+      might carry out her threat, for anything might be expected from her. &ldquo;This
+      comes of living a good, moral life,&rdquo; he thought, looking at the beaming,
+      healthy, cheerful, and kindly president, who, with elbows far apart, was
+      smoothing his thick grey whiskers with his fine white hands over the
+      embroidered collar of his uniform. &ldquo;He is always contented and merry while
+      I am suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The secretary came in and brought some document.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, very much,&rdquo; said the president, lighting a cigarette. &ldquo;Which case
+      shall we take first, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poisoning case, I should say,&rdquo; answered the secretary, with
+      indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; the poisoning case let it be,&rdquo; said the president, thinking
+      that he could get this case over by four o&rsquo;clock, and then go away. &ldquo;And
+      Matthew Nikitich; has he come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Breve?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is here,&rdquo; replied the secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you see him, please tell him that we begin with the poisoning
+      case.&rdquo; Breve was the public prosecutor, who was to read the indictment in
+      this case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the corridor the secretary met Breve, who, with up lifted shoulders, a
+      portfolio under one arm, the other swinging with the palm turned to the
+      front, was hurrying along the corridor, clattering with his heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael Petrovitch wants to know if you are ready?&rdquo; the secretary asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course; I am always ready,&rdquo; said the public prosecutor. &ldquo;What are we
+      taking first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poisoning case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s quite right,&rdquo; said the public prosecutor, but did not think it at
+      all right. He had spent the night in a hotel playing cards with a friend
+      who was giving a farewell party. Up to five in the morning they played and
+      drank, so he had no time to look at this poisoning case, and meant to run
+      it through now. The secretary, happening to know this, advised the
+      president to begin with the poisoning case. The secretary was a Liberal,
+      even a Radical, in opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breve was a Conservative; the secretary disliked him, and envied him his
+      position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and how about the Skoptzy?&rdquo; [a religious sect] asked the secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already said that I cannot do it without witnesses, and so I shall
+      say to the Court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, what does it matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot do it,&rdquo; said Breve; and, waving his arm, he ran into his private
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was putting off the case of the Skoptzy on account of the absence of a
+      very unimportant witness, his real reason being that if they were tried by
+      an educated jury they might possibly be acquitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By an agreement with the president this case was to be tried in the coming
+      session at a provincial town, where there would be more peasants, and,
+      therefore, more chances of conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The movement in the corridor increased. The people crowded most at the
+      doors of the Civil Court, in which the case that the dignified man talked
+      about was being heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An interval in the proceeding occurred, and the old woman came out of the
+      court, whose property that genius of an advocate had found means of
+      getting for his client, a person versed in law who had no right to it
+      whatever. The judges knew all about the case, and the advocate and his
+      client knew it better still, but the move they had invented was such that
+      it was impossible not to take the old woman&rsquo;s property and not to hand it
+      over to the person versed in law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman was stout, well dressed, and had enormous flowers on her
+      bonnet; she stopped as she came out of the door, and spreading out her
+      short fat arms and turning to her advocate, she kept repeating. &ldquo;What does
+      it all mean? just fancy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The advocate was looking at the flowers in her bonnet, and evidently not
+      listening to her, but considering some question or other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next to the old woman, out of the door of the Civil Court, his broad,
+      starched shirt front glistening from under his low-cut waistcoat, with a
+      self-satisfied look on his face, came the celebrated advocate who had
+      managed to arrange matters so that the old woman lost all she had, and the
+      person versed in the law received more than 100,000 roubles. The advocate
+      passed close to the old woman, and, feeling all eyes directed towards him,
+      his whole bearing seemed to say: &ldquo;No expressions of deference are
+      required.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. THE OFFICIALS OF THE COURT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At last Matthew Nikitich also arrived, and the usher, a thin man, with a
+      long neck and a kind of sideways walk, his nether lip protruding to one
+      side, which made him resemble a turkey, came into the jurymen&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This usher was an honest man, and had a university education, but could
+      not keep a place for any length of time, as he was subject to fits of
+      drunkenness. Three months before a certain countess, who patronised his
+      wife, had found him this place, and he was very pleased to have kept it so
+      long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sirs, is everybody here?&rdquo; he asked, putting his pince-nez on his
+      nose, and looking round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody, I think,&rdquo; said the jolly merchant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; we&rsquo;ll soon see.&rdquo; And, taking a list from his pocket, he began
+      calling out the names, looking at the men, sometimes through and sometimes
+      over his pince-nez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Councillor of State, [grades such as this are common in Russia, and mean
+      very little] J. M. Nikiforoff!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am he,&rdquo; said the dignified-looking man, well versed in the habits of
+      the law court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ivan Semionovitch Ivanoff, retired colonel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; replied a thin man, in the uniform of a retired officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merchant of the Second Guild, Peter Baklasheff!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here we are, ready!&rdquo; said the good-humoured merchant, with a broad smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lieutenant of the Guards, Prince Dmitri Nekhludoff!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am he,&rdquo; answered Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The usher bowed to him, looking over his pince-nez, politely and
+      pleasantly, as if wishing to distinguish him from the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain Youri Demitrievitch-Dantchenko, merchant; Grigori Euphimitch
+      Kouleshoff,&rdquo; etc. All but two were present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now please to come to the court, gentlemen,&rdquo; said the usher, pointing to
+      the door, with an amiable wave of his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All moved towards the door, pausing to let each other pass. Then they went
+      through the corridor into the court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The court was a large, long room. At one end there was a raised platform,
+      with three steps leading up to it, on which stood a table, covered with a
+      green cloth trimmed with a fringe of a darker shade. At the table were
+      placed three arm-chairs, with high-carved oak backs; on the wall behind
+      them hung a full-length, brightly-coloured portrait of the Emperor in
+      uniform and ribbon, with one foot in advance, and holding a sword. In the
+      right corner hung a case, with an image of Christ crowned with thorns, and
+      beneath it stood a lectern, and on the same side the prosecuting
+      attorney&rsquo;s desk. On the left, opposite the desk, was the secretary&rsquo;s
+      table, and in front of it, nearer the public, an oak grating, with the
+      prisoners&rsquo; bench, as yet unoccupied, behind it. Besides all this, there
+      were on the right side of the platform high-backed ashwood chairs for the
+      jury, and on the floor below tables for the advocates. All this was in the
+      front part of the court, divided from the back by a grating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The back was all taken up by seats in tiers. Sitting on the front seats
+      were four women, either servant or factory girls, and two working men,
+      evidently overawed by the grandeur of the room, and not venturing to speak
+      above a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after the jury had come in the usher entered, with his sideward gait,
+      and stepping to the front, called out in a loud voice, as if he meant to
+      frighten those present, &ldquo;The Court is coming!&rdquo; Every one got up as the
+      members stepped on to the platform. Among them the president, with his
+      muscles and fine whiskers. Next came the gloomy member of the Court, who
+      was now more gloomy than ever, having met his brother-in-law, who informed
+      him that he had just called in to see his sister (the member&rsquo;s wife), and
+      that she had told him that there would be no dinner there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that, evidently, we shall have to call in at a cook shop,&rdquo; the
+      brother-in-law added, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not at all funny,&rdquo; said the gloomy member, and became gloomier
+      still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then at last came the third member of the Court, the same Matthew
+      Nikitich, who was always late. He was a bearded man, with large, round,
+      kindly eyes. He was suffering from a catarrh of the stomach, and,
+      according to his doctor&rsquo;s advice, he had begun trying a new treatment, and
+      this had kept him at home longer than usual. Now, as he was ascending the
+      platform, he had a pensive air. He was in the habit of making guesses in
+      answer to all sorts of self-put questions by different curious means. Just
+      now he had asked whether the new treatment would be beneficial, and had
+      decided that it would cure his catarrh if the number of steps from the
+      door to his chair would divide by three. He made 26 steps, but managed to
+      get in a 27th just by his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The figures of the president and the members in their uniforms, with
+      gold-embroidered collars, looked very imposing. They seemed to feel this
+      themselves, and, as if overpowered by their own grandeur, hurriedly sat
+      down on the high backed chairs behind the table with the green cloth, on
+      which were a triangular article with an eagle at the top, two glass vases&mdash;something
+      like those in which sweetmeats are kept in refreshment rooms&mdash;an
+      inkstand, pens, clean paper, and good, newly-cut pencils of different
+      kinds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The public prosecutor came in with the judges. With his portfolio under
+      one arm, and swinging the other, he hurriedly walked to his seat near the
+      window, and was instantly absorbed in reading and looking through the
+      papers, not wasting a single moment, in hope of being ready when the
+      business commenced. He had been public prosecutor but a short time, and
+      had only prosecuted four times before this. He was very ambitious, and had
+      firmly made up his mind to get on, and therefore thought it necessary to
+      get a conviction whenever he prosecuted. He knew the chief facts of the
+      poisoning case, and had already formed a plan of action. He only wanted to
+      copy out a few points which he required.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The secretary sat on the opposite side of the platform, and, having got
+      ready all the papers he might want, was looking through an article,
+      prohibited by the censor, which he had procured and read the day before.
+      He was anxious to have a talk about this article with the bearded member,
+      who shared his views, but wanted to look through it once more before doing
+      so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. SWEARING IN THE JURY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The president, having looked through some papers and put a few questions
+      to the usher and the secretary, gave the order for the prisoners to be
+      brought in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door behind the grating was instantly opened, and two gendarmes, with
+      caps on their heads, and holding naked swords in their hands, came in,
+      followed by the prisoners, a red-haired, freckled man, and two women. The
+      man wore a prison cloak, which was too long and too wide for him. He stuck
+      out his thumbs, and held his arms close to his sides, thus keeping the
+      sleeves, which were also too long, from slipping over his hands. Without
+      looking at the judges he gazed steadfastly at the form, and passing to the
+      other side of it, he sat down carefully at the very edge, leaving plenty
+      of room for the others. He fixed his eyes on the president, and began
+      moving the muscles of his cheeks, as if whispering something. The woman
+      who came next was also dressed in a prison cloak, and had a prison
+      kerchief round her head. She had a sallow complexion, no eyebrows or
+      lashes, and very red eyes. This woman appeared perfectly calm. Having
+      caught her cloak against something, she detached it carefully, without any
+      haste, and sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third prisoner was Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as she appeared, the eyes of all the men in the court turned her
+      way, and remained fixed on her white face, her sparklingly-brilliant black
+      eyes and the swelling bosom under the prison cloak. Even the gendarme whom
+      she passed on her way to her seat looked at her fixedly till she sat down,
+      and then, as if feeling guilty, hurriedly turned away, shook himself, and
+      began staring at the window in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The president paused until the prisoners had taken their seats, and when
+      Maslova was seated, turned to the secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the usual procedure commenced; the counting of the jury, remarks
+      about those who had not come, the fixing of the fines to be exacted from
+      them, the decisions concerning those who claimed exemption, the appointing
+      of reserve jurymen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having folded up some bits of paper and put them in one of the glass
+      vases, the president turned up the gold-embroidered cuffs of his uniform a
+      little way, and began drawing the lots, one by one, and opening them.
+      Nekhludoff was among the jurymen thus drawn. Then, having let down his
+      sleeves, the president requested the priest to swear in the jury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old priest, with his puffy, red face, his brown gown, and his gold
+      cross and little order, laboriously moving his stiff legs, came up to the
+      lectern beneath the icon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jurymen got up, and crowded towards the lectern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up, please,&rdquo; said the priest, pulling at the cross on his breast
+      with his plump hand, and waiting till all the jury had drawn near. When
+      they had all come up the steps of the platform, the priest passed his
+      bald, grey head sideways through the greasy opening of the stole, and,
+      having rearranged his thin hair, he again turned to the jury. &ldquo;Now, raise
+      your right arms in this way, and put your fingers together, thus,&rdquo; he
+      said, with his tremulous old voice, lifting his fat, dimpled hand, and
+      putting the thumb and two first fingers together, as if taking a pinch of
+      something. &ldquo;Now, repeat after me, &lsquo;I promise and swear, by the Almighty
+      God, by His holy gospels, and by the life-giving cross of our Lord, that
+      in this work which,&rsquo;&rdquo; he said, pausing between each sentence&mdash;&ldquo;don&rsquo;t
+      let your arm down; hold it like this,&rdquo; he remarked to a young man who had
+      lowered his arm&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;that in this work which . . . &lsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dignified man with the whiskers, the colonel, the merchant, and
+      several more held their arms and fingers as the priest required of them,
+      very high, very exactly, as if they liked doing it; others did it
+      unwillingly and carelessly. Some repeated the words too loudly, and with a
+      defiant tone, as if they meant to say, &ldquo;In spite of all, I will and shall
+      speak.&rdquo; Others whispered very low, and not fast enough, and then, as if
+      frightened, hurried to catch up the priest. Some kept their fingers
+      tightly together, as if fearing to drop the pinch of invisible something
+      they held; others kept separating and folding theirs. Every one save the
+      old priest felt awkward, but he was sure he was fulfilling a very useful
+      and important duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the swearing in, the president requested the jury to choose a
+      foreman, and the jury, thronging to the door, passed out into the
+      debating-room, where almost all of them at once began to smoke cigarettes.
+      Some one proposed the dignified man as foreman, and he was unanimously
+      accepted. Then the jurymen put out their cigarettes and threw them away
+      and returned to the court. The dignified man informed the president that
+      he was chosen foreman, and all sat down again on the high-backed chairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything went smoothly, quickly, and not without a certain solemnity.
+      And this exactitude, order, and solemnity evidently pleased those who took
+      part in it: it strengthened the impression that they were fulfilling a
+      serious and valuable public duty. Nekhludoff, too, felt this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the jurymen were seated, the president made a speech on their
+      rights, obligations, and responsibilities. While speaking he kept changing
+      his position; now leaning on his right, now on his left hand, now against
+      the back, then on the arms of his chair, now putting the papers straight,
+      now handling his pencil and paper-knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to his words, they had the right of interrogating the prisoners
+      through the president, to use paper and pencils, and to examine the
+      articles put in as evidence. Their duty was to judge not falsely, but
+      justly. Their responsibility meant that if the secrecy of their discussion
+      were violated, or communications were established with outsiders, they
+      would be liable to punishment. Every one listened with an expression of
+      respectful attention. The merchant, diffusing a smell of brandy around
+      him, and restraining loud hiccups, approvingly nodded his head at every
+      sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE PRISONERS QUESTIONED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When he had finished his speech, the president turned to the male
+      prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simeon Kartinkin, rise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simeon jumped up, his lips continuing to move nervously and inaudibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simon Petrov Kartinkin,&rdquo; he said, rapidly, with a cracked voice, having
+      evidently prepared the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What class do you belong to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peasant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What government, district, and parish?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Toula Government, Krapivinskia district, Koupianovski parish, the village
+      Borki.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty-three; born in the year one thousand eight&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What religion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the Russian religion, orthodox.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your occupation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a place in the Hotel Mauritania.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever been tried before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never got tried before, because, as we used to live formerly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you never were tried before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God forbid, never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you received a copy of the indictment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Euphemia Ivanovna Botchkova,&rdquo; said the president, turning to the next
+      prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Simon continued standing in front of Botchkova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kartinkin, sit down!&rdquo; Kartinkin continued standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kartinkin, sit down!&rdquo; But Kartinkin sat down only when the usher, with
+      his head on one side, and with preternaturally wide-open eyes, ran up, and
+      said, in a tragic whisper, &ldquo;Sit down, sit down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kartinkin sat down as hurriedly as he had risen, wrapping his cloak round
+      him, and again began moving his lips silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name?&rdquo; asked the president, with a weary sigh at being obliged to
+      repeat the same questions, without looking at the prisoner, but glancing
+      over a paper that lay before him. The president was so used to his task
+      that, in order to get quicker through it all, he did two things at a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Botchkova was forty-three years old, and came from the town of Kalomna.
+      She, too, had been in service at the Hotel Mauritania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never been tried before, and have received a copy of the
+      indictment.&rdquo; She gave her answers boldly, in a tone of voice as if she
+      meant to add to each answer, &ldquo;And I don&rsquo;t care who knows it, and I won&rsquo;t
+      stand any nonsense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not wait to be told, but sat down as soon as she had replied to
+      the last question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name?&rdquo; turning abruptly to the third prisoner. &ldquo;You will have to
+      rise,&rdquo; he added, softly and gently, seeing that Maslova kept her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova got up and stood, with her chest expanded, looking at the
+      president with that peculiar expression of readiness in her smiling black
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lubov,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had put on his pince-nez, looking at the prisoners while they
+      were being questioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is impossible,&rdquo; he thought, not taking his eyes off the prisoner.
+      &ldquo;Lubov! How can it be?&rdquo; he thought to himself, after hearing her answer.
+      The president was going to continue his questions, but the member with the
+      spectacles interrupted him, angrily whispering something. The president
+      nodded, and turned again to the prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is this,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you are not put down here as Lubov?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want your real name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your baptismal name?&rdquo; asked the angry member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Formerly I used to be called Katerina.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it cannot be,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff to himself; and yet he was now certain
+      that this was she, that same girl, half ward, half servant to his aunts;
+      that Katusha, with whom he had once been in love, really in love, but whom
+      he had betrayed and then abandoned, and never again brought to mind, for
+      the memory would have been too painful, would have convicted him too
+      clearly, proving that he who was so proud of his integrity had treated
+      this woman in a revolting, scandalous way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, this was she. He now clearly saw in her face that strange,
+      indescribable individuality which distinguishes every face from all
+      others; something peculiar, all its own, not to be found anywhere else. In
+      spite of the unhealthy pallor and the fulness of the face, it was there,
+      this sweet, peculiar individuality; on those lips, in the slight squint of
+      her eyes, in the voice, particularly in the naive smile, and in the
+      expression of readiness on the face and figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should have said so,&rdquo; remarked the president, again in a gentle tone.
+      &ldquo;Your patronymic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am illegitimate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, were you not called by your godfather&rsquo;s name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Mikhaelovna.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is it she can be guilty of?&rdquo; continued Nekhludoff, in his mind,
+      unable to breathe freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your family name&mdash;your surname, I mean?&rdquo; the president went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They used to call me by my mother&rsquo;s surname, Maslova.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What class?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meschanka.&rdquo; [the lowest town class or grade]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Religion&mdash;orthodox?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Orthodox.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Occupation. What was your occupation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was your employment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know yourself,&rdquo; she said, and smiled. Then, casting a hurried look
+      round the room, again turned her eyes on the president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something so unusual in the expression of her face, so terrible
+      and piteous in the meaning of the words she had uttered, in this smile,
+      and in the furtive glance she had cast round the room, that the president
+      was abashed, and for a few minutes silence reigned in the court. The
+      silence was broken by some one among the public laughing, then somebody
+      said &ldquo;Ssh,&rdquo; and the president looked up and continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever been tried before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never,&rdquo; answered Maslova, softly, and sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you received a copy of the indictment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner leant back to pick up her skirt in the way a fine lady picks
+      up her train, and sat down, folding her small white hands in the sleeves
+      of her cloak, her eyes fixed on the president. Her face was calm again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The witnesses were called, and some sent away; the doctor who was to act
+      as expert was chosen and called into the court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the secretary got up and began reading the indictment. He read
+      distinctly, though he pronounced the &ldquo;I&rdquo; and &ldquo;r&rdquo; alike, with a loud voice,
+      but so quickly that the words ran into one another and formed one
+      uninterrupted, dreary drone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The judges bent now on one, now on the other arm of their chairs, then on
+      the table, then back again, shut and opened their eyes, and whispered to
+      each other. One of the gendarmes several times repressed a yawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner Kartinkin never stopped moving his cheeks. Botchkova sat
+      quite still and straight, only now and then scratching her head under the
+      kerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova sat immovable, gazing at the reader; only now and then she gave a
+      slight start, as if wishing to reply, blushed, sighed heavily, and changed
+      the position of her hands, looked round, and again fixed her eyes on the
+      reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sat in the front row on his high-backed chair, without removing
+      his pince-nez, and looked at Maslova, while a complicated and fierce
+      struggle was going on in his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE INDICTMENT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The indictment ran as follows: On the 17th of January, 18&mdash;, in the
+      lodging-house Mauritania, occurred the sudden death of the Second Guild
+      merchant, Therapont Emilianovich Smelkoff, of Kourgan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The local police doctor of the fourth district certified that death was
+      due to rupture of the heart, owing to the excessive use of alcoholic
+      liquids. The body of the said Smelkoff was interred. After several days
+      had elapsed, the merchant Timokhin, a fellow-townsman and companion of the
+      said Smelkoff, returned from St. Petersburg, and hearing the circumstances
+      that accompanied the death of the latter, notified his suspicions that the
+      death was caused by poison, given with intent to rob the said Smelkoff of
+      his money. This suspicion was corroborated on inquiry, which proved:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. That shortly before his death the said Smelkoff had received the sum of
+      3,800 roubles from the bank. When an inventory of the property of the
+      deceased was made, only 312 roubles and 16 copecks were found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The whole day and night preceding his death the said Smelkoff spent
+      with Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) at her home and in the lodging-house
+      Mauritania, which she also visited at the said Smelkoff&rsquo;s request during
+      his absence, to get some money, which she took out of his portmanteau in
+      the presence of the servants of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia
+      Botchkova and Simeon Kartinkin, with a key given her by the said Smelkoff.
+      In the portmanteau opened by the said Maslova, the said Botchkova and
+      Kartinkin saw packets of 100-rouble bank-notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. On the said Smelkoff&rsquo;s return to the lodging-house Mauritania, together
+      with Lubka, the latter, in accordance with the attendant Kartinkin&rsquo;s
+      advice, gave the said Smelkoff some white powder given to her by the said
+      Kartinkin, dissolved in brandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. The next morning the said Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) sold to her
+      mistress, the witness Kitaeva, a brothel-keeper, a diamond ring given to
+      her, as she alleged, by the said Smelkoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. The housemaid of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia Botchkova,
+      placed to her account in the local Commercial Bank 1,800 roubles. The
+      postmortem examination of the body of the said Smelkoff and the chemical
+      analysis of his intestines proved beyond doubt the presence of poison in
+      the organism, so that there is reason to believe that the said Smelkoff&rsquo;s
+      death was caused by poisoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When cross-examined, the accused, Maslova, Botchkova, and Kartinkin,
+      pleaded not guilty, deposing&mdash;Maslova, that she had really been sent
+      by Smelkoff from the brothel, where she &ldquo;works,&rdquo; as she expresses it, to
+      the lodging-house Mauritania to get the merchant some money, and that,
+      having unlocked the portmanteau with a key given her by the merchant, she
+      took out 40 roubles, as she was told to do, and that she had taken nothing
+      more; that Botchkova and Kartinkin, in whose presence she unlocked and
+      locked the portmanteau, could testify to the truth of the statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave this further evidence&mdash;that when she came to the
+      lodging-house for the second time she did, at the instigation of Simeon
+      Kartinkin, give Smelkoff some kind of powder, which she thought was a
+      narcotic, in a glass of brandy, hoping he would fall asleep and that she
+      would be able to get away from him; and that Smelkoff, having beaten her,
+      himself gave her the ring when she cried and threatened to go away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The accused, Euphemia Botchkova, stated that she knew nothing about the
+      missing money, that she had not even gone into Smelkoff&rsquo;s room, but that
+      Lubka had been busy there all by herself; that if anything had been
+      stolen, it must have been done by Lubka when she came with the merchant&rsquo;s
+      key to get his money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Maslova gave a start, opened her mouth, and looked at
+      Botchkova. &ldquo;When,&rdquo; continued the secretary, &ldquo;the receipt for 1,800 roubles
+      from the bank was shown to Botchkova, and she was asked where she had
+      obtained the money, she said that it was her own earnings for 12 years,
+      and those of Simeon, whom she was going to marry. The accused Simeon
+      Kartinkin, when first examined, confessed that he and Botchkova, at the
+      instigation of Maslova, who had come with the key from the brothel, had
+      stolen the money and divided it equally among themselves and Maslova.&rdquo;
+       Here Maslova again started, half-rose from her seat, and, blushing
+      scarlet, began to say something, but was stopped by the usher. &ldquo;At last,&rdquo;
+       the secretary continued, reading, &ldquo;Kartinkin confessed also that he had
+      supplied the powders in order to get Smelkoff to sleep. When examined the
+      second time he denied having had anything to do with the stealing of the
+      money or giving Maslova the powders, accusing her of having done it
+      alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Concerning the money placed in the bank by Botchkova, he said the same as
+      she, that is, that the money was given to them both by the lodgers in tips
+      during 12 years&rsquo; service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The indictment concluded as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In consequence of the foregoing, the peasant of the village Borki, Simeon
+      Kartinkin, 33 years of age, the meschanka Euphemia Botchkova, 43 years of
+      age, and the meschanka Katerina Maslova, 27 years of age, are accused of
+      having on the 17th day of January, 188&mdash;, jointly stolen from the
+      said merchant, Smelkoff, a ring and money, to the value of 2,500 roubles,
+      and of having given the said merchant, Smelkoff, poison to drink, with
+      intent of depriving him of life, and thereby causing his death. This crime
+      is provided for in clause 1,455 of the Penal Code, paragraphs 4 and 5.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. THE TRIAL&mdash;MASLOVA CROSS-EXAMINED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When the reading of the indictment was over, the president, after having
+      consulted the members, turned to Kartinkin, with an expression that
+      plainly said: Now we shall find out the whole truth down to the minutest
+      detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peasant Simeon Kartinkin,&rdquo; he said, stooping to the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simeon Kartinkin got up, stretched his arms down his sides, and leaning
+      forward with his whole body, continued moving his cheeks inaudibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are accused of having on the 17th January, 188&mdash;, together with
+      Euphemia Botchkova and Katerina Maslova, stolen money from a portmanteau
+      belonging to the merchant Smelkoff, and then, having procured some
+      arsenic, persuaded Katerina Maslova to give it to the merchant Smelkoff in
+      a glass of brandy, which was the cause of Smelkoff&rsquo;s death. Do you plead
+      guilty?&rdquo; said the president, stooping to the right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not nohow, because our business is to attend on the lodgers, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll tell us that afterwards. Do you plead guilty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, sir. I only,&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll tell us that afterwards. Do you plead guilty?&rdquo; quietly and firmly
+      asked the president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t do such a thing, because that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The usher again rushed up to Simeon Kartinkin, and stopped him in a tragic
+      whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The president moved the hand with which he held the paper and placed the
+      elbow in a different position with an air that said: &ldquo;This is finished,&rdquo;
+       and turned to Euphemia Botchkova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Euphemia Botchkova, you are accused of having, on the 17th of January,
+      188-, in the lodging-house Mauritania, together with Simeon Kartinkin and
+      Katerina Maslova, stolen some money and a ring out of the merchant
+      Smelkoff&rsquo;s portmanteau, and having shared the money among yourselves,
+      given poison to the merchant Smelkoff, thereby causing his death. Do you
+      plead guilty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not guilty of anything,&rdquo; boldly and firmly replied the prisoner. &ldquo;I
+      never went near the room, but when this baggage went in she did the whole
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will say all this afterwards,&rdquo; the president again said, quietly and
+      firmly. &ldquo;So you do not plead guilty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not take the money nor give the drink, nor go into the room. Had I
+      gone in I should have kicked her out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you do not plead guilty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katerina Maslova,&rdquo; the president began, turning to the third prisoner,
+      &ldquo;you are accused of having come from the brothel with the key of the
+      merchant Smelkoff&rsquo;s portmanteau, money, and a ring.&rdquo; He said all this like
+      a lesson learned by heart, leaning towards the member on his left, who was
+      whispering into his ear that a bottle mentioned in the list of the
+      material evidence was missing. &ldquo;Of having stolen out of the portmanteau
+      money and a ring,&rdquo; he repeated, &ldquo;and shared it. Then, returning to the
+      lodging house Mauritania with Smelkoff, of giving him poison in his drink,
+      and thereby causing his death. Do you plead guilty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not guilty of anything,&rdquo; she began rapidly. &ldquo;As I said before I say
+      again, I did not take it&mdash;I did not take it; I did not take anything,
+      and the ring he gave me himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not plead guilty of having stolen 2,500 roubles?&rdquo; asked the
+      president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve said I took nothing but the 40 roubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and do you plead guilty of having given the merchant Smelkoff a
+      powder in his drink?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that I did. Only I believed what they told me, that they were
+      sleeping powders, and that no harm could come of them. I never thought,
+      and never wished. . . God is my witness; I say, I never meant this,&rdquo; she
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you do not plead guilty of having stolen the money and the ring from
+      the merchant Smelkoff, but confess that you gave him the powder?&rdquo; said the
+      president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes, I do confess this, but I thought they were sleeping powders. I
+      only gave them to make him sleep; I never meant and never thought of
+      worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the president, evidently satisfied with the results
+      gained. &ldquo;Now tell us how it all happened,&rdquo; and he leaned back in his chair
+      and put his folded hands on the table. &ldquo;Tell us all about it. A free and
+      full confession will be to your advantage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova continued to look at the president in silence, and blushing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell us how it happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How it happened?&rdquo; Maslova suddenly began, speaking quickly. &ldquo;I came to
+      the lodging-house, and was shown into the room. He was there, already very
+      drunk.&rdquo; She pronounced the word <i>he</i> with a look of horror in her
+      wide-open eyes. &ldquo;I wished to go away, but he would not let me.&rdquo; She
+      stopped, as if having lost the thread, or remembered some thing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what then? I remained a bit, and went home again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the public prosecutor raised himself a little, leaning on
+      one elbow in an awkward manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would like to put a question?&rdquo; said the president, and having
+      received an answer in the affirmative, he made a gesture inviting the
+      public prosecutor to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to ask, was the prisoner previously acquainted with Simeon
+      Kartinkin?&rdquo; said the public prosecutor, without looking at Maslova, and,
+      having put the question, he compressed his lips and frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The president repeated the question. Maslova stared at the public
+      prosecutor, with a frightened look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Simeon? Yes,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know what the prisoner&rsquo;s acquaintance with Kartinkin
+      consisted in. Did they meet often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Consisted in? . . . He invited me for the lodgers; it was not an
+      acquaintance at all,&rdquo; answered Maslova, anxiously moving her eyes from the
+      president to the public prosecutor and back to the president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know why Kartinkin invited only Maslova, and none of the
+      other girls, for the lodgers?&rdquo; said the public prosecutor, with
+      half-closed eyes and a cunning, Mephistophelian smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. How should I know?&rdquo; said Maslova, casting a frightened look
+      round, and fixing her eyes for a moment on Nekhludoff. &ldquo;He asked whom he
+      liked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible that she has recognised me?&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, and the
+      blood rushed to his face. But Maslova turned away without distinguishing
+      him from the others, and again fixed her eyes anxiously on the public
+      prosecutor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So the prisoner denies having had any intimate relations with Kartinkin?
+      Very well, I have no more questions to ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the public prosecutor took his elbow off the desk, and began writing
+      something. He was not really noting anything down, but only going over the
+      letters of his notes with a pen, having seen the procureur and leading
+      advocates, after putting a clever question, make a note, with which, later
+      on, to annihilate their adversaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The president did not continue at once, because he was consulting the
+      member with the spectacles, whether he was agreed that the questions
+      (which had all been prepared be forehand and written out) should be put.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! What happened next?&rdquo; he then went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came home,&rdquo; looking a little more boldly only at the president, &ldquo;and
+      went to bed. Hardly had I fallen asleep when one of our girls, Bertha,
+      woke me. &lsquo;Go, your merchant has come again!&rsquo; He&rdquo;&mdash;she again uttered
+      the word <i>he</i> with evident horror&mdash;&ldquo;he kept treating our girls,
+      and then wanted to send for more wine, but his money was all gone, and he
+      sent me to his lodgings and told me where the money was, and how much to
+      take. So I went.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The president was whispering to the member on his left, but, in order to
+      appear as if he had heard, he repeated her last words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you went. Well, what next?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went, and did all he told me; went into his room. I did not go alone,
+      but called Simeon Kartinkin and her,&rdquo; she said, pointing to Botchkova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a lie; I never went in,&rdquo; Botchkova began, but was stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In their presence I took out four notes,&rdquo; continued Maslova, frowning,
+      without looking at Botchkova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but did the prisoner notice,&rdquo; again asked the prosecutor, &ldquo;how much
+      money there was when she was getting out the 40 roubles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova shuddered when the prosecutor addressed her; she did not know why
+      it was, but she felt that he wished her evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not count it, but only saw some 100-rouble notes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! The prisoner saw 100-rouble notes. That&rsquo;s all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, so you brought back the money,&rdquo; continued the president, looking at
+      the clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he took me back with him,&rdquo; said Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and how did you give him the powder? In his drink?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did I give it? I put them in and gave it him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you give it him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not answer, but sighed deeply and heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would not let me go,&rdquo; she said, after a moment&rsquo;s silence, &ldquo;and I was
+      quite tired out, and so I went out into the passage and said to Simeon,
+      &lsquo;If he would only let me go, I am so tired.&rsquo; And he said, &lsquo;We are also
+      sick of him; we were thinking of giving him a sleeping draught; he will
+      fall asleep, and then you can go.&rsquo; So I said all right. I thought they
+      were harmless, and he gave me the packet. I went in. He was lying behind
+      the partition, and at once called for brandy. I took a bottle of &lsquo;fine
+      champagne&rsquo; from the table, poured out two glasses, one for him and one for
+      myself, and put the powders into his glass, and gave it him. Had I known
+      how could I have given them to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and how did the ring come into your possession?&rdquo; asked the
+      president. &ldquo;When did he give it you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was when we came back to his lodgings. I wanted to go away, and he
+      gave me a knock on the head and broke my comb. I got angry and said I&rsquo;d go
+      away, and he took the ring off his finger and gave it to me so that I
+      should not go,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the public prosecutor again slightly raised himself, and, putting on
+      an air of simplicity, asked permission to put a few more questions, and,
+      having received it, bending his head over his embroidered collar, he said:
+      &ldquo;I should like to know how long the prisoner remained in the merchant
+      Smelkoff&rsquo;s room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova again seemed frightened, and she again looked anxiously from the
+      public prosecutor to the president, and said hurriedly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not remember how long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but does the prisoner remember if she went anywhere else in the
+      lodging-house after she left Smelkoff?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova considered for a moment. &ldquo;Yes, I did go into an empty room next to
+      his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and why did you go in?&rdquo; asked the public prosecutor, forgetting
+      himself, and addressing her directly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went in to rest a bit, and to wait for an isvostchik.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And was Kartinkin in the room with the prisoner, or not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did he come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was some of the merchant&rsquo;s brandy left, and we finished it
+      together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, finished it together. Very well! And did the prisoner talk to
+      Kartinkin, and, if so, what about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova suddenly frowned, blushed very red, and said, hurriedly, &ldquo;What
+      about? I did not talk about anything, and that&rsquo;s all I know. Do what you
+      like with me; I am not guilty, and that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have nothing more to ask,&rdquo; said the prosecutor, and, drawing up his
+      shoulders in an unnatural manner, began writing down, as the prisoner&rsquo;s
+      own evidence, in the notes for his speech, that she had been in the empty
+      room with Kartinkin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have nothing more to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have told everything,&rdquo; she said, with a sigh, and sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the president noted something down, and, having listened to something
+      that the member on his left whispered to him, he announced a ten-minutes&rsquo; 
+      interval, rose hurriedly, and left the court. The communication he had
+      received from the tall, bearded member with the kindly eyes was that the
+      member, having felt a slight stomach derangement, wished to do a little
+      massage and to take some drops. And this was why an interval was made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the judges had risen, the advocates, the jury, and the witnesses also
+      rose, with the pleasant feeling that part of the business was finished,
+      and began moving in different directions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff went into the jury&rsquo;s room, and sat down by the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. TWELVE YEARS BEFORE.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;Yes, this was Katusha.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      The relations between Nekhludoff and Katusha had been the following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff first saw Katusha when he was a student in his third year at
+      the University, and was preparing an essay on land tenure during the
+      summer vacation, which he passed with his aunts. Until then he had always
+      lived, in summer, with his mother and sister on his mother&rsquo;s large estate
+      near Moscow. But that year his sister had married, and his mother had gone
+      abroad to a watering-place, and he, having his essay to write, resolved to
+      spend the summer with his aunts. It was very quiet in their secluded
+      estate and there was nothing to distract his mind; his aunts loved their
+      nephew and heir very tenderly, and he, too, was fond of them and of their
+      simple, old-fashioned life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During that summer on his aunts&rsquo; estate, Nekhludoff passed through that
+      blissful state of existence when a young man for the first time, without
+      guidance from any one outside, realises all the beauty and significance of
+      life, and the importance of the task allotted in it to man; when he grasps
+      the possibility of unlimited advance towards perfection for one&rsquo;s self and
+      for all the world, and gives himself to this task, not only hopefully, but
+      with full conviction of attaining to the perfection he imagines. In that
+      year, while still at the University, he had read Spencer&rsquo;s Social Statics,
+      and Spencer&rsquo;s views on landholding especially impressed him, as he himself
+      was heir to large estates. His father had not been rich, but his mother
+      had received 10,000 acres of land for her dowry. At that time he fully
+      realised all the cruelty and injustice of private property in land, and
+      being one of those to whom a sacrifice to the demands of conscience gives
+      the highest spiritual enjoyment, he decided not to retain property rights,
+      but to give up to the peasant labourers the land he had inherited from his
+      father. It was on this land question he wrote his essay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arranged his life on his aunts&rsquo; estate in the following manner. He got
+      up very early, sometimes at three o&rsquo;clock, and before sunrise went through
+      the morning mists to bathe in the river, under the hill. He returned while
+      the dew still lay on the grass and the flowers. Sometimes, having finished
+      his coffee, he sat down with his books of reference and his papers to
+      write his essay, but very often, instead of reading or writing, he left
+      home again, and wandered through the fields and the woods. Before dinner
+      he lay down and slept somewhere in the garden. At dinner he amused and
+      entertained his aunts with his bright spirits, then he rode on horseback
+      or went for a row on the river, and in the evening he again worked at his
+      essay, or sat reading or playing patience with his aunts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His joy in life was so great that it agitated him, and kept him awake many
+      a night, especially when it was moonlight, so that instead of sleeping he
+      wandered about in the garden till dawn, alone with his dreams and fancies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, peacefully and happily, he lived through the first month of his
+      stay with his aunts, taking no particular notice of their half-ward,
+      half-servant, the black-eyed, quick-footed Katusha. Then, at the age of
+      nineteen, Nekhludoff, brought up under his mother&rsquo;s wing, was still quite
+      pure. If a woman figured in his dreams at all it was only as a wife. All
+      the other women, who, according to his ideas he could not marry, were not
+      women for him, but human beings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on Ascension Day that summer, a neighbour of his aunts&rsquo;, and her
+      family, consisting of two young daughters, a schoolboy, and a young artist
+      of peasant origin who was staying with them, came to spend the day. After
+      tea they all went to play in the meadow in front of the house, where the
+      grass had already been mown. They played at the game of gorelki, and
+      Katusha joined them. Running about and changing partners several times,
+      Nekhludoff caught Katusha, and she became his partner. Up to this time he
+      had liked Katusha&rsquo;s looks, but the possibility of any nearer relations
+      with her had never entered his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible to catch those two,&rdquo; said the merry young artist, whose turn
+      it was to catch, and who could run very fast with his short, muscular
+      legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You! And not catch us?&rdquo; said Katusha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One, two, three,&rdquo; and the artist clapped his hands. Katusha, hardly
+      restraining her laughter, changed places with Nekhludoff, behind the
+      artist&rsquo;s back, and pressing his large hand with her little rough one, and
+      rustling with her starched petticoat, ran to the left. Nekhludoff ran fast
+      to the right, trying to escape from the artist, but when he looked round
+      he saw the artist running after Katusha, who kept well ahead, her firm
+      young legs moving rapidly. There was a lilac bush in front of them, and
+      Katusha made a sign with her head to Nekhludoff to join her behind it, for
+      if they once clasped hands again they were safe from their pursuer, that
+      being a rule of the game. He understood the sign, and ran behind the bush,
+      but he did not know that there was a small ditch overgrown with nettles
+      there. He stumbled and fell into the nettles, already wet with dew,
+      stinging his bands, but rose immediately, laughing at his mishap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katusha, with her eyes black as sloes, her face radiant with joy, was
+      flying towards him, and they caught hold of each other&rsquo;s hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got stung, I daresay?&rdquo; she said, arranging her hair with her free hand,
+      breathing fast and looking straight up at him with a glad, pleasant smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know there was a ditch here,&rdquo; he answered, smiling also, and
+      keeping her hand in his. She drew nearer to him, and he himself, not
+      knowing how it happened, stooped towards her. She did not move away, and
+      he pressed her hand tight and kissed her on the lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! You&rsquo;ve done it!&rdquo; she said; and, freeing her hand with a swift
+      movement, ran away from him. Then, breaking two branches of white lilac
+      from which the blossoms were already falling, she began fanning her hot
+      face with them; then, with her head turned back to him, she walked away,
+      swaying her arms briskly in front of her, and joined the other players.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this there grew up between Nekhludoff and Katusha those peculiar
+      relations which often exist between a pure young man and girl who are
+      attracted to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Katusha came into the room, or even when he saw her white apron from
+      afar, everything brightened up in Nekhludoff&rsquo;s eyes, as when the sun
+      appears everything becomes more interesting, more joyful, more important.
+      The whole of life seemed full of gladness. And she felt the same. But it
+      was not only Katusha&rsquo;s presence that had this effect on Nekhludoff. The
+      mere thought that Katusha existed (and for her that Nekhludoff existed)
+      had this effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he received an unpleasant letter from his mother, or could not get on
+      with his essay, or felt the unreasoning sadness that young people are
+      often subject to, he had only to remember Katusha and that he should see
+      her, and it all vanished. Katusha had much work to do in the house, but
+      she managed to get a little leisure for reading, and Nekhludoff gave her
+      Dostoievsky and Tourgeneff (whom he had just read himself) to read. She
+      liked Tourgeneff&rsquo;s Lull best. They had talks at moments snatched when
+      meeting in the passage, on the veranda, or the yard, and sometimes in the
+      room of his aunts&rsquo; old servant, Matrona Pavlovna, with whom he sometimes
+      used to drink tea, and where Katusha used to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These talks in Matrona Pavlovna&rsquo;s presence were the pleasantest. When they
+      were alone it was worse. Their eyes at once began to say something very
+      different and far more important than what their mouths uttered. Their
+      lips puckered, and they felt a kind of dread of something that made them
+      part quickly. These relations continued between Nekhludoff and Katusha
+      during the whole time of his first visit to his aunts&rsquo;. They noticed it,
+      and became frightened, and even wrote to Princess Elena Ivanovna,
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s mother. His aunt, Mary Ivanovna, was afraid Dmitri would form
+      an intimacy with Katusha; but her fears were groundless, for Nekhludoff,
+      himself hardly conscious of it, loved Katusha, loved her as the pure love,
+      and therein lay his safety&mdash;his and hers. He not only did not feel
+      any desire to possess her, but the very thought of it filled him with
+      horror. The fears of the more poetical Sophia Ivanovna, that Dmitri, with
+      his thoroughgoing, resolute character, having fallen in love with a girl,
+      might make up his mind to marry her, without considering either her birth
+      or her station, had more ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Nekhludoff at that time been conscious of his love for Katusha, and
+      especially if he had been told that he could on no account join his life
+      with that of a girl in her position, it might have easily happened that,
+      with his usual straight-forwardness, he would have come to the conclusion
+      that there could be no possible reason for him not to marry any girl
+      whatever, as long as he loved her. But his aunts did not mention their
+      fears to him; and, when he left, he was still unconscious of his love for
+      Katusha. He was sure that what he felt for Katusha was only one of the
+      manifestations of the joy of life that filled his whole being, and that
+      this sweet, merry little girl shared this joy with him. Yet, when he was
+      going away, and Katusha stood with his aunts in the porch, and looked
+      after him, her dark, slightly-squinting eyes filled with tears, he felt,
+      after all, that he was leaving something beautiful, precious, something
+      which would never reoccur. And he grew very sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Katusha,&rdquo; he said, looking across Sophia Ivanovna&rsquo;s cap as he
+      was getting into the trap. &ldquo;Thank you for everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Dmitri Ivanovitch,&rdquo; she said, with her pleasant, tender voice,
+      keeping back the tears that filled her eyes&mdash;and ran away into the
+      hall, where she could cry in peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. LIFE IN THE ARMY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After that Nekhludoff did not see Katusha for more than three years. When
+      he saw her again he had just been promoted to the rank of officer and was
+      going to join his regiment. On the way he came to spend a few days with
+      his aunts, being now a very different young man from the one who had spent
+      the summer with them three years before. He then had been an honest,
+      unselfish lad, ready to sacrifice himself for any good cause; now he was
+      depraved and selfish, and thought only of his own enjoyment. Then God&rsquo;s
+      world seemed a mystery which he tried enthusiastically and joyfully to
+      solve; now everything in life seemed clear and simple, defined by the
+      conditions of the life he was leading. Then he had felt the importance of,
+      and had need of intercourse with, nature, and with those who had lived and
+      thought and felt before him&mdash;philosophers and poets. What he now
+      considered necessary and important were human institutions and intercourse
+      with his comrades. Then women seemed mysterious and charming&mdash;charming
+      by the very mystery that enveloped them; now the purpose of women, all
+      women except those of his own family and the wives of his friends, was a
+      very definite one: women were the best means towards an already
+      experienced enjoyment. Then money was not needed, and he did not require
+      even one-third of what his mother allowed him; but now this allowance of
+      1,500 roubles a month did not suffice, and he had already had some
+      unpleasant talks about it with his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he had looked on his spirit as the I; now it was his healthy strong
+      animal I that he looked upon as himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all this terrible change had come about because he had ceased to
+      believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done
+      because it was too difficult to live believing one&rsquo;s self; believing one&rsquo;s
+      self, one had to decide every question not in favour of one&rsquo;s own animal
+      life, which is always seeking for easy gratifications, but almost in every
+      case against it. Believing others there was nothing to decide; everything
+      had been decided already, and decided always in favour of the animal I and
+      against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his own self he was
+      always exposing himself to the censure of those around him; believing
+      others he had their approval. So, when Nekhludoff had talked of the
+      serious matters of life, of God, truth, riches, and poverty, all round him
+      thought it out of place and even rather funny, and his mother and aunts
+      called him, with kindly irony, notre cher philosophe. But when he read
+      novels, told improper anecdotes, went to see funny vaudevilles in the
+      French theatre and gaily repeated the jokes, everybody admired and
+      encouraged him. When he considered it right to limit his needs, wore an
+      old overcoat, took no wine, everybody thought it strange and looked upon
+      it as a kind of showing off; but when he spent large sums on hunting, or
+      on furnishing a peculiar and luxurious study for himself, everybody
+      admired his taste and gave him expensive presents to encourage his hobby.
+      While he kept pure and meant to remain so till he married his friends
+      prayed for his health, and even his mother was not grieved but rather
+      pleased when she found out that he had become a real man and had gained
+      over some French woman from his friend. (As to the episode with Katusha,
+      the princess could not without horror think that he might possibly have
+      married her.) In the same way, when Nekhludoff came of age, and gave the
+      small estate he had inherited from his father to the peasants because he
+      considered the holding of private property in land wrong, this step filled
+      his mother and relations with dismay and served as an excuse for making
+      fun of him to all his relatives. He was continually told that these
+      peasants, after they had received the land, got no richer, but, on the
+      contrary, poorer, having opened three public-houses and left off doing any
+      work. But when Nekhludoff entered the Guards and spent and gambled away so
+      much with his aristocratic companions that Elena Ivanovna, his mother, had
+      to draw on her capital, she was hardly pained, considering it quite
+      natural and even good that wild oats should be sown at an early age and in
+      good company, as her son was doing. At first Nekhludoff struggled, but all
+      that he had considered good while he had faith in himself was considered
+      bad by others, and what he had considered evil was looked upon as good by
+      those among whom he lived, and the struggle grew too hard. And at last
+      Nekhludoff gave in, i.e., left off believing himself and began believing
+      others. At first this giving up of faith in himself was unpleasant, but it
+      did not long continue to be so. At that time he acquired the habit of
+      smoking, and drinking wine, and soon got over this unpleasant feeling and
+      even felt great relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff, with his passionate nature, gave himself thoroughly to the new
+      way of life so approved of by all those around, and he entirely stifled
+      the inner voice which demanded something different. This began after he
+      moved to St. Petersburg, and reached its highest point when he entered the
+      army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of
+      complete idleness, i.e., absence of all useful work; frees them of their
+      common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional ones to the
+      honour of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and, while giving them on
+      the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions
+      of servile obedience to those of higher rank than themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when, to the usual depraving influence of military service with its
+      honours, uniforms, flags, its permitted violence and murder, there is
+      added the depraving influence of riches and nearness to and intercourse
+      with members of the Imperial family, as is the case in the chosen regiment
+      of the Guards in which all the officers are rich and of good family, then
+      this depraving influence creates in the men who succumb to it a perfect
+      mania of selfishness. And this mania of selfishness attacked Nekhludoff
+      from the moment he entered the army and began living in the way his
+      companions lived. He had no occupation whatever except to dress in a
+      uniform, splendidly made and well brushed by other people, and, with arms
+      also made and cleaned and handed to him by others, ride to reviews on a
+      fine horse which had been bred, broken in and fed by others. There, with
+      other men like himself, he had to wave a sword, shoot off guns, and teach
+      others to do the same. He had no other work, and the highly-placed
+      persons, young and old, the Tsar and those near him, not only sanctioned
+      his occupation but praised and thanked him for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this was done, it was thought important to eat, and particularly to
+      drink, in officers&rsquo; clubs or the salons of the best restaurants,
+      squandering large sums of money, which came from some invisible source;
+      then theatres, ballets, women, then again riding on horseback, waving of
+      swords and shooting, and again the squandering of money, the wine, cards,
+      and women. This kind of life acts on military men even more depravingly
+      than on others, because if any other than a military man lead such a life
+      he cannot help being ashamed of it in the depth of his heart. A military
+      man is, on the contrary, proud of a life of this kind especially at war
+      time, and Nekhludoff had entered the army just after war with the Turks
+      had been declared. &ldquo;We are prepared to sacrifice our lives at the wars,
+      and therefore a gay, reckless life is not only pardonable, but absolutely
+      necessary for us, and so we lead it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were Nekhludoff&rsquo;s confused thoughts at this period of his existence,
+      and he felt all the time the delight of being free of the moral barriers
+      he had formerly set himself. And the state he lived in was that of a
+      chronic mania of selfishness. He was in this state when, after three
+      years&rsquo; absence, he came again to visit his aunts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. THE SECOND MEETING WITH MASLOVA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff went to visit his aunts because their estate lay near the road
+      he had to travel in order to join his regiment, which had gone forward,
+      because they had very warmly asked him to come, and especially because he
+      wanted to see Katusha. Perhaps in his heart he had already formed those
+      evil designs against Katusha which his now uncontrolled animal self
+      suggested to him, but he did not acknowledge this as his intention, but
+      only wished to go back to the spot where he had been so happy, to see his
+      rather funny, but dear, kind-hearted old aunts, who always, without his
+      noticing it, surrounded him with an atmosphere of love and admiration, and
+      to see sweet Katusha, of whom he had retained so pleasant a memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arrived at the end of March, on Good Friday, after the thaw had set in.
+      It was pouring with rain so that he had not a dry thread on him and was
+      feeling very cold, but yet vigorous and full of spirits, as always at that
+      time. &ldquo;Is she still with them?&rdquo; he thought, as he drove into the familiar,
+      old-fashioned courtyard, surrounded by a low brick wall, and now filled
+      with snow off the roofs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He expected she would come out when she heard the sledge bells but she did
+      not. Two bare-footed women with pails and tucked-up skirts, who had
+      evidently been scrubbing the floors, came out of the side door. She was
+      not at the front door either, and only Tikhon, the man-servant, with his
+      apron on, evidently also busy cleaning, came out into the front porch. His
+      aunt Sophia Ivanovna alone met him in the ante-room; she had a silk dress
+      on and a cap on her head. Both aunts had been to church and had received
+      communion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this is nice of you to come,&rdquo; said Sophia Ivanovna, kissing him.
+      &ldquo;Mary is not well, got tired in church; we have been to communion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I congratulate you, Aunt Sophia,&rdquo; [it is usual in Russia to congratulate
+      those who have received communion] said Nekhludoff, kissing Sophia
+      Ivanovna&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Oh, I beg your pardon, I have made you wet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to your room&mdash;why you are soaking wet. Dear me, you have got
+      moustaches! . . . Katusha! Katusha! Get him some coffee; be quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Directly,&rdquo; came the sound of a well-known, pleasant voice from the
+      passage, and Nekhludoff&rsquo;s heart cried out &ldquo;She&rsquo;s here!&rdquo; and it was as if
+      the sun had come out from behind the clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff, followed by Tikhon, went gaily to his old room to change his
+      things. He felt inclined to ask Tikhon about Katusha; how she was, what
+      she was doing, was she not going to be married? But Tikhon was so
+      respectful and at the same time so severe, insisted so firmly on pouring
+      the water out of the jug for him, that Nekhludoff could not make up his
+      mind to ask him about Katusha, but only inquired about Tikhon&rsquo;s grandsons,
+      about the old so-called &ldquo;brother&rsquo;s&rdquo; horse, and about the dog Polkan. All
+      were alive except Polkan, who had gone mad the summer before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had taken off all his wet things and just begun to dress again,
+      Nekhludoff heard quick, familiar footsteps and a knock at the door.
+      Nekhludoff knew the steps and also the knock. No one but she walked and
+      knocked like that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having thrown his wet greatcoat over his shoulders, he opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in.&rdquo; It was she, Katusha, the same, only sweeter than before. The
+      slightly squinting naive black eyes looked up in the same old way. Now as
+      then, she had on a white apron. She brought him from his aunts a piece of
+      scented soap, with the wrapper just taken off, and two towels&mdash;one a
+      long Russian embroidered one, the other a bath towel. The unused soap with
+      the stamped inscription, the towels, and her own self, all were equally
+      clean, fresh, undefiled and pleasant. The irrepressible smile of joy at
+      the sight of him made the sweet, firm lips pucker up as of old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do, Dmitri Ivanovitch?&rdquo; she uttered with difficulty, her face
+      suffused with a rosy blush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning! How do you do?&rdquo; he said, also blushing. &ldquo;Alive and well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the Lord be thanked. And here is your favorite pink soap and towels
+      from your aunts,&rdquo; she said, putting the soap on the table and hanging the
+      towels over the back of a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is everything here,&rdquo; said Tikhon, defending the visitor&rsquo;s
+      independence, and pointing to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s open dressing case filled with
+      brushes, perfume, fixatoire, a great many bottles with silver lids and all
+      sorts of toilet appliances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank my aunts, please. Oh, how glad I am to be here,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff,
+      his heart filling with light and tenderness as of old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She only smiled in answer to these words, and went out. The aunts, who had
+      always loved Nekhludoff, welcomed him this time more warmly than ever.
+      Dmitri was going to the war, where he might be wounded or killed, and this
+      touched the old aunts. Nekhludoff had arranged to stay only a day and
+      night with his aunts, but when he had seen Katusha he agreed to stay over
+      Easter with them and telegraphed to his friend Schonbock, whom he was to
+      have joined in Odessa, that he should come and meet him at his aunts&rsquo; 
+      instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as he had seen Katusha Nekhludoff&rsquo;s old feelings toward her awoke
+      again. Now, just as then, he could not see her white apron without getting
+      excited; he could not listen to her steps, her voice, her laugh, without a
+      feeling of joy; he could not look at her eyes, black as sloes, without a
+      feeling of tenderness, especially when she smiled; and, above all, he
+      could not notice without agitation how she blushed when they met. He felt
+      he was in love, but not as before, when this love was a kind of mystery to
+      him and he would not own, even to himself, that he loved, and when he was
+      persuaded that one could love only once; now he knew he was in love and
+      was glad of it, and knew dimly what this love consisted of and what it
+      might lead to, though he sought to conceal it even from himself. In
+      Nekhludoff, as in every man, there were two beings: one the spiritual,
+      seeking only that kind of happiness for him self which should tend towards
+      the happiness of all; the other, the animal man, seeking only his own
+      happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it the happiness of the rest of the
+      world. At this period of his mania of self-love brought on by life in
+      Petersburg and in the army, this animal man ruled supreme and completely
+      crushed the spiritual man in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he saw Katusha and experienced the same feelings as he had had
+      three years before, the spiritual man in him raised its head once more and
+      began to assert its rights. And up to Easter, during two whole days, an
+      unconscious, ceaseless inner struggle went on in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew in the depths of his soul that he ought to go away, that there was
+      no real reason for staying on with his aunts, knew that no good could come
+      of it; and yet it was so pleasant, so delightful, that he did not honestly
+      acknowledge the facts to himself and stayed on. On Easter eve, the priest
+      and the deacon who came to the house to say mass had had (so they said)
+      the greatest difficulty in getting over the three miles that lay between
+      the church and the old ladies&rsquo; house, coming across the puddles and the
+      bare earth in a sledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff attended the mass with his aunts and the servants, and kept
+      looking at Katusha, who was near the door and brought in the censers for
+      the priests. Then having given the priests and his aunts the Easter kiss,
+      though it was not midnight and therefore not Easter yet, he was already
+      going to bed when he heard the old servant Matrona Pavlovna preparing to
+      go to the church to get the koulitch and paski [Easter cakes] blest after
+      the midnight service. &ldquo;I shall go too,&rdquo; he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road to the church was impassable either in a sledge or on wheels, so
+      Nekhludoff, who behaved in his aunts&rsquo; house just as he did at home,
+      ordered the old horse, &ldquo;the brother&rsquo;s horse,&rdquo; to be saddled, and instead
+      of going to bed he put on his gay uniform, a pair of tight-fitting riding
+      breeches and his overcoat, and got on the old over-fed and heavy horse,
+      which neighed continually all the way as he rode in the dark through the
+      puddles and snow to the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. THE EARLY MASS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For Nekhludoff this early mass remained for ever after one of the
+      brightest and most vivid memories of his life. When he rode out of the
+      darkness, broken only here and there by patches of white snow, into the
+      churchyard illuminated by a row of lamps around the church, the service
+      had already begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasants, recognising Mary Ivanovna&rsquo;s nephew, led his horse, which was
+      pricking up its ears at the sight of the lights, to a dry place where he
+      could get off, put it up for him, and showed him into the church, which
+      was full of people. On the right stood the peasants; the old men in
+      home-spun coats, and clean white linen bands [long strips of linen are
+      worn by the peasants instead of stockings] wrapped round their legs, the
+      young men in new cloth coats, bright-coloured belts round their waists,
+      and top-boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the left stood the women, with red silk kerchiefs on their heads, black
+      velveteen sleeveless jackets, bright red shirt-sleeves, gay-coloured
+      green, blue, and red skirts, and thick leather boots. The old women,
+      dressed more quietly, stood behind them, with white kerchiefs, homespun
+      coats, old-fashioned skirts of dark home-spun material, and shoes on their
+      feet. Gaily-dressed children, their hair well oiled, went in and out among
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men, making the sign of the cross, bowed down and raised their heads
+      again, shaking back their hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women, especially the old ones, fixed their eyes on an icon surrounded
+      with candies and made the sign of the cross, firmly pressing their folded
+      fingers to the kerchief on their foreheads, to their shoulders, and their
+      stomachs, and, whispering something, stooped or knelt down. The children,
+      imitating the grown-up people, prayed earnestly when they knew that they
+      were being observed. The gilt case containing the icon glittered,
+      illuminated on all sides by tall candles ornamented with golden spirals.
+      The candelabra was filled with tapers, and from the choir sounded most
+      merry tunes sung by amateur choristers, with bellowing bass and shrill
+      boys&rsquo; voices among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff passed up to the front. In the middle of the church stood the
+      aristocracy of the place: a landed proprietor, with his wife and son (the
+      latter dressed in a sailor&rsquo;s suit), the police officer, the telegraph
+      clerk, a tradesman in top-boots, and the village elder, with a medal on
+      his breast; and to the right of the ambo, just behind the landed
+      proprietor&rsquo;s wife, stood Matrona Pavlovna in a lilac dress and fringed
+      shawl and Katusha in a white dress with a tucked bodice, blue sash, and
+      red bow in her black hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything seemed festive, solemn, bright, and beautiful: the priest in
+      his silver cloth vestments with gold crosses; the deacon, the clerk and
+      chanter in their silver and gold surplices; the amateur choristers in
+      their best clothes, with their well-oiled hair; the merry tunes of the
+      holiday hymns that sounded like dance music; and the continual blessing of
+      the people by the priests, who held candles decorated with flowers, and
+      repeated the cry of &ldquo;Christ is risen!&rdquo; &ldquo;Christ is risen!&rdquo; All was
+      beautiful; but, above all, Katusha, in her white dress, blue sash, and the
+      red bow on her black head, her eyes beaming with rapture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff knew that she felt his presence without looking at him. He
+      noticed this as he passed her, walking up to the altar. He had nothing to
+      tell her, but he invented something to say and whispered as he passed her:
+      &ldquo;Aunt told me that she would break her fast after the late mass.&rdquo; The
+      young blood rushed up to Katusha&rsquo;s sweet face, as it always did when she
+      looked at him. The black eyes, laughing and full of joy, gazed naively up
+      and remained fixed on Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; she said, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the clerk was going out with a copper coffee-pot
+      [coffee-pots are often used for holding holy water in Russia] of holy
+      water in his hand, and, not noticing Katusha, brushed her with his
+      surplice. Evidently he brushed against Katusha through wishing to pass
+      Nekhludoff at a respectful distance, and Nekhludoff was surprised that he,
+      the clerk, did not understand that everything here, yes, and in all the
+      world, only existed for Katusha, and that everything else might remain
+      unheeded, only not she, because she was the centre of all. For her the
+      gold glittered round the icons; for her all these candles in candelabra
+      and candlesticks were alight; for her were sung these joyful hymns,
+      &ldquo;Behold the Passover of the Lord&rdquo; &ldquo;Rejoice, O ye people!&rdquo; All&mdash;all
+      that was good in the world was for her. And it seemed to him that Katusha
+      was aware that it was all for her when he looked at her well-shaped
+      figure, the tucked white dress, the wrapt, joyous expression of her face,
+      by which he knew that just exactly the same that was singing in his own
+      soul was also singing in hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the interval between the early and the late mass Nekhludoff left the
+      church. The people stood aside to let him pass, and bowed. Some knew him;
+      others asked who he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped on the steps. The beggars standing there came clamouring round
+      him, and he gave them all the change he had in his purse and went down. It
+      was dawning, but the sun had not yet risen. The people grouped round the
+      graves in the churchyard. Katusha had remained inside. Nekhludoff stood
+      waiting for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people continued coming out, clattering with their nailed boots on the
+      stone steps and dispersing over the churchyard. A very old man with
+      shaking head, his aunts&rsquo; cook, stopped Nekhludoff in order to give him the
+      Easter kiss, his old wife took an egg, dyed yellow, out of her
+      handkerchief and gave it to Nekhludoff, and a smiling young peasant in a
+      new coat and green belt also came up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Christ is risen,&rdquo; he said, with laughing eyes, and coming close to
+      Nekhludoff he enveloped him in his peculiar but pleasant peasant smell,
+      and, tickling him with his curly beard, kissed him three times straight on
+      the mouth with his firm, fresh lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the peasant was kissing Nekhludoff and giving him a dark brown egg,
+      the lilac dress of Matrona Pavlovna and the dear black head with the red
+      bow appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katusha caught sight of him over the heads of those in front of her, and
+      he saw how her face brightened up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had come out with Matrona Pavlovna on to the porch, and stopped there
+      distributing alms to the beggars. A beggar with a red scab in place of a
+      nose came up to Katusha. She gave him something, drew nearer him, and,
+      evincing no sign of disgust, but her eyes still shining with joy, kissed
+      him three times. And while she was doing this her eyes met Nekhludoff&rsquo;s
+      with a look as if she were asking, &ldquo;Is this that I am doing right?&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes,
+      dear, yes, it is right; everything is right, everything is beautiful. I
+      love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They came down the steps of the porch, and he came up to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not mean to give them the Easter kiss, but only to be nearer to
+      her. Matrona Pavlovna bowed her head, and said with a smile, &ldquo;Christ is
+      risen!&rdquo; and her tone implied, &ldquo;To-day we are all equal.&rdquo; She wiped her
+      mouth with her handkerchief rolled into a ball and stretched her lips
+      towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is, indeed,&rdquo; answered Nekhludoff, kissing her. Then he looked at
+      Katusha; she blushed, and drew nearer. &ldquo;Christ is risen, Dmitri
+      Ivanovitch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is risen, indeed,&rdquo; answered Nekhludoff, and they kissed twice, then
+      paused as if considering whether a third kiss were necessary, and, having
+      decided that it was, kissed a third time and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to the priests?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we shall sit out here a bit, Dmitri Ivanovitch,&rdquo; said Katusha with
+      effort, as if she had accomplished some joyous task, and, her whole chest
+      heaving with a deep sigh, she looked straight in his face with a look of
+      devotion, virgin purity, and love, in her very slightly squinting eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when
+      this love has reached its zenith&mdash;a moment when it is unconscious,
+      unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it. Such a moment had come for
+      Nekhludoff on that Easter eve. When he brought Katusha back to his mind,
+      now, this moment veiled all else; the smooth glossy black head, the white
+      tucked dress closely fitting her graceful maidenly form, her, as yet,
+      un-developed bosom, the blushing cheeks, the tender shining black eyes
+      with their slight squint heightened by the sleepless night, and her whole
+      being stamped with those two marked features, purity and chaste love, love
+      not only for him (he knew that), but for everybody and everything, not for
+      the good alone, but for all that is in the world, even for that beggar
+      whom she had kissed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew she had that love in her because on that night and morning he was
+      conscious of it in himself, and conscious that in this love he became one
+      with her. Ah! if it had all stopped there, at the point it had reached
+      that night. &ldquo;Yes, all that horrible business had not yet happened on that
+      Easter eve!&rdquo; he thought, as he sat by the window of the jurymen&rsquo;s room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST STEP.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When he returned from church Nekhludoff broke the fast with his aunts and
+      took a glass of spirits and some wine, having got into that habit while
+      with his regiment, and when he reached his room fell asleep at once,
+      dressed as he was. He was awakened by a knock at the door. He knew it was
+      her knock, and got up, rubbing his eyes and stretching himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katusha, is it you? Come in,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dinner is ready,&rdquo; she said. She still had on the same white dress, but
+      not the bow in her hair. She looked at him with a smile, as if she had
+      communicated some very good news to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am coming,&rdquo; he answered, as he rose, taking his comb to arrange his
+      hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood still for a minute, and he, noticing it, threw down his comb and
+      made a step towards her, but at that very moment she turned suddenly and
+      went with quick light steps along the strip of carpet in the middle of the
+      passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, what a fool I am,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Why did I not stop her?&rdquo;
+       What he wanted her for he did not know himself, but he felt that when she
+      came into his room something should have been done, something that is
+      generally done on such occasions, and that he had left it undone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katusha, wait,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; she said, stopping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, only&mdash;&rdquo; and, with an effort, remembering how men in his
+      position generally behave, he put his arm round her waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood still and looked into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you must not,&rdquo; she said, blushing to tears and
+      pushing away his arm with her strong hard hand. Nekhludoff let her go, and
+      for a moment he felt not only confused and ashamed but disgusted with
+      himself. He should now have believed himself, and then he would have known
+      that this confusion and shame were caused by the best feelings of his soul
+      demanding to be set free; but he thought it was only his stupidity and
+      that he ought to behave as every one else did. He caught her up and kissed
+      her on the neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This kiss was very different from that first thoughtless kiss behind the
+      lilac bush, and very different to the kiss this morning in the churchyard.
+      This was a dreadful kiss, and she felt it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what are you doing?&rdquo; she cried, in a tone as if he had irreparably
+      broken something of priceless value, and ran quickly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came into the dining-room. His aunts, elegantly dressed, their family
+      doctor, and a neighbour were already there. Everything seemed so very
+      ordinary, but in Nekhludoff a storm was raging. He understood nothing of
+      what was being said and gave wrong answers, thinking only of Katusha. The
+      sound of her steps in the passage brought back the thrill of that last
+      kiss and he could think of nothing else. When she came into the room he,
+      without looking round, felt her presence with his whole being and had to
+      force himself not to look at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner he at once went into his bedroom and for a long time walked
+      up and down in great excitement, listening to every sound in the house and
+      expecting to hear her steps. The animal man inside him had now not only
+      lifted its head, but had succeeded in trampling under foot the spiritual
+      man of the days of his first visit, and even of that every morning. That
+      dreadful animal man alone now ruled over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he was watching for her all day he could not manage to meet her
+      alone. She was probably trying to evade him. In the evening, however, she
+      was obliged to go into the room next to his. The doctor had been asked to
+      stay the night, and she had to make his bed. When he heard her go in
+      Nekhludoff followed her, treading softly and holding his breath as if he
+      were going to commit a crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was putting a clean pillow-case on the pillow, holding it by two of
+      its corners with her arms inside the pillow-case. She turned round and
+      smiled, not a happy, joyful smile as before, but in a frightened, piteous
+      way. The smile seemed to tell him that what he was doing was wrong. He
+      stopped for a moment. There was still the possibility of a struggle. The
+      voice of his real love for her, though feebly, was still speaking of her,
+      her feelings, her life. Another voice was saying, &ldquo;Take care I don&rsquo;t let
+      the opportunity for your own happiness, your own enjoyment, slip by!&rdquo; And
+      this second voice completely stifled the first. He went up to her with
+      determination and a terrible, ungovernable animal passion took possession
+      of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his arm round he made her sit down on the bed; and feeling that there
+      was something more to be done he sat down beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dmitri Ivanovitch, dear! please let me go,&rdquo; she said, with a piteous
+      voice. &ldquo;Matrona Pavlovna is coming,&rdquo; she cried, tearing herself away. Some
+      one was really coming to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I&rsquo;ll come to you in the night,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be
+      alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you thinking of? On no account. No, no!&rdquo; she said, but only with
+      her lips; the tremulous confusion of her whole being said something very
+      different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Matrona Pavlovna who had come to the door. She came in with a
+      blanket over her arm, looked reproachfully at Nekhludoff, and began
+      scolding Katusha for having taken the wrong blanket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff went out in silence, but he did not even feel ashamed. He could
+      see by Matrona Pavlovna&rsquo;s face that she was blaming him, he knew that she
+      was blaming him with reason and felt that he was doing wrong, but this
+      novel, low animal excitement, having freed itself of all the old feelings
+      of real love for Katusha, ruled supreme, leaving room for nothing else. He
+      went about as if demented all the evening, now into his aunts&rsquo;, then back
+      into his own room, then out into the porch, thinking all the time how he
+      could meet her alone; but she avoided him, and Matrona Pavlovna watched
+      her closely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. NEKHLUDOFF AND KATUSHA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And so the evening passed and night came. The doctor went to bed.
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s aunts had also retired, and he knew that Matrona Pavlovna was
+      now with them in their bedroom so that Katusha was sure to be alone in the
+      maids&rsquo; sitting-room. He again went out into the porch. It was dark, damp
+      and warm out of doors, and that white spring mist which drives away the
+      last snow, or is diffused by the thawing of the last snow, filled the air.
+      From the river under the hill, about a hundred steps from the front door,
+      came a strange sound. It was the ice breaking. Nekhludoff came down the
+      steps and went up to the window of the maids&rsquo; room, stepping over the
+      puddles on the bits of glazed snow. His heart was beating so fiercely in
+      his breast that he seemed to hear it, his laboured breath came and went in
+      a burst of long-drawn sighs. In the maids&rsquo; room a small lamp was burning,
+      and Katusha sat alone by the table, looking thoughtfully in front of her.
+      Nekhludoff stood a long time without moving and waited to see what she,
+      not knowing that she was observed, would do. For a minute or two she did
+      not move; then she lifted her eyes, smiled and shook her head as if
+      chiding herself, then changed her pose and dropped both her arms on the
+      table and again began gazing down in front of her. He stood and looked at
+      her, involuntarily listening to the beating of his own heart and the
+      strange sounds from the river. There on the river, beneath the white mist,
+      the unceasing labour went on, and sounds as of something sobbing,
+      cracking, dropping, being shattered to pieces mixed with the tinkling of
+      the thin bits of ice as they broke against each other like glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There he stood, looking at Katusha&rsquo;s serious, suffering face, which
+      betrayed the inner struggle of her soul, and he felt pity for her; but,
+      strange though it may seem, this pity only confirmed him in his evil
+      intention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knocked at the window. She started as if she had received an electric
+      shock, her whole body trembled, and a look of horror came into her face.
+      Then she jumped up, approached the window and brought her face up to the
+      pane. The look of terror did not leave her face even when, holding her
+      hands up to her eyes like blinkers and peering through the glass, she
+      recognised him. Her face was unusually grave; he had never seen it so
+      before. She returned his smile, but only in submission to him; there was
+      no smile in her soul, only fear. He beckoned her with his hand to come out
+      into the yard to him. But she shook her head and remained by the window.
+      He brought his face close to the pane and was going to call out to her,
+      but at that moment she turned to the door; evidently some one inside had
+      called her. Nekhludoff moved away from the window. The fog was so dense
+      that five steps from the house the windows could not be seen, but the
+      light from the lamp shone red and huge out of a shapeless black mass. And
+      on the river the same strange sounds went on, sobbing and rustling and
+      cracking and tinkling. Somewhere in the fog, not far off, a cock crowed;
+      another answered, and then others, far in the village took up the cry till
+      the sound of the crowing blended into one, while all around was silent
+      excepting the river. It was the second time the cocks crowed that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff walked up and down behind the corner of the house, and once or
+      twice got into a puddle. Then again came up to the window. The lamp was
+      still burning, and she was again sitting alone by the table as if
+      uncertain what to do. He had hardly approached the window when she looked
+      up. He knocked. Without looking who it was she at once ran out of the
+      room, and he heard the outside door open with a snap. He waited for her
+      near the side porch and put his arms round her without saying a word. She
+      clung to him, put up her face, and met his kiss with her lips. Then the
+      door again gave the same sort of snap and opened, and the voice of Matrona
+      Pavlovna called out angrily, &ldquo;Katusha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She tore herself away from him and returned into the maids&rsquo; room. He heard
+      the latch click, and then all was quiet. The red light disappeared and
+      only the mist remained, and the bustle on the river went on. Nekhludoff
+      went up to the window, nobody was to be seen; he knocked, but got no
+      answer. He went back into the house by the front door, but could not
+      sleep. He got up and went with bare feet along the passage to her door,
+      next to Matrona Pavlovna&rsquo;s room. He heard Matrona Pavlovna snoring
+      quietly, and was about to go on when she coughed and turned on her
+      creaking bed, and his heart fell, and he stood immovable for about five
+      minutes. When all was quiet and she began to snore peacefully again, he
+      went on, trying to step on the boards that did not creak, and came to
+      Katusha&rsquo;s door. There was no sound to be heard. She was probably awake, or
+      else he would have heard her breathing. But as soon as he had whispered
+      &ldquo;Katusha&rdquo; she jumped up and began to persuade him, as if angrily, to go
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open! Let me in just for a moment! I implore you!&rdquo; He hardly knew what he
+      was saying.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                   * * * * * * *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When she left him, trembling and silent, giving no answer to his words, he
+      again went out into the porch and stood trying to understand the meaning
+      of what had happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was getting lighter. From the river below the creaking and tinkling and
+      sobbing of the breaking ice came still louder and a gurgling sound could
+      now also be heard. The mist had begun to sink, and from above it the
+      waning moon dimly lighted up something black and weird.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the meaning of it all? Was it a great joy or a great misfortune
+      that had befallen him?&rdquo; he asked himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. AFTERWARDS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day the gay, handsome, and brilliant Schonbock joined Nekhludoff
+      at his aunts&rsquo; house, and quite won their hearts by his refined and amiable
+      manner, his high spirits, his generosity, and his affection for Dmitri.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though the old ladies admired his generosity it rather perplexed them,
+      for it seemed exaggerated. He gave a rouble to some blind beggars who came
+      to the gate, gave 15 roubles in tips to the servants, and when Sophia
+      Ivanovna&rsquo;s pet dog hurt his paw and it bled, he tore his hemstitched
+      cambric handkerchief into strips (Sophia Ivanovna knew that such
+      handkerchiefs cost at least 15 roubles a dozen) and bandaged the dog&rsquo;s
+      foot. The old ladies had never met people of this kind, and did not know
+      that Schonbock owed 200,000 roubles which he was never going to pay, and
+      that therefore 25 roubles more or less did not matter a bit to him.
+      Schonbock stayed only one day, and he and Nekhludoff both, left at night.
+      They could not stay away from their regiment any longer, for their leave
+      was fully up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the stage which Nekhludoff&rsquo;s selfish mania had now reached he could
+      think of nothing but himself. He was wondering whether his conduct, if
+      found out, would be blamed much or at all, but he did not consider what
+      Katusha was now going through, and what was going to happen to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw that Schonbock guessed his relations to her and this flattered his
+      vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I see how it is you have taken such a sudden fancy to your aunts that
+      you have been living nearly a week with them,&rdquo; Schonbock remarked when he
+      had seen Katusha. &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t wonder&mdash;should have done the same.
+      She&rsquo;s charming.&rdquo; Nekhludoff was also thinking that though it was a pity to
+      go away before having fully gratified the cravings of his love for her,
+      yet the absolute necessity of parting had its advantages because it put a
+      sudden stop to relations it would have been very difficult for him to
+      continue. Then he thought that he ought to give her some money, not for
+      her, not because she might need it, but because it was the thing to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he gave her what seemed to him a liberal amount, considering his and
+      her station. On the day of his departure, after dinner, he went out and
+      waited for her at the side entrance. She flushed up when she saw him and
+      wished to pass by, directing his attention to the open door of the maids&rsquo; 
+      room by a look, but he stopped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come to say good-bye,&rdquo; he said, crumbling in his hand an envelope
+      with a 100-rouble note inside. &ldquo;There, I . . . &rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She guessed what he meant, knit her brows, and shaking her head pushed his
+      hand away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it; oh, you must!&rdquo; he stammered, and thrust the envelope into the
+      bib of her apron and ran back to his room, groaning and frowning as if he
+      had hurt himself. And for a long time he went up and down writhing as in
+      pain, and even stamping and groaning aloud as he thought of this last
+      scene. &ldquo;But what else could I have done? Is it not what happens to every
+      one? And if every one does the same . . . well I suppose it can&rsquo;t be
+      helped.&rdquo; In this way he tried to get peace of mind, but in vain. The
+      recollection of what had passed burned his conscience. In his soul&mdash;in
+      the very depths of his soul&mdash;he knew that he had acted in a base,
+      cruel, cowardly manner, and that the knowledge of this act of his must
+      prevent him, not only from finding fault with any one else, but even from
+      looking straight into other people&rsquo;s eyes; not to mention the
+      impossibility of considering himself a splendid, noble, high-minded
+      fellow, as he did and had to do to go on living his life boldly and
+      merrily. There was only one solution of the problem&mdash;i.e., not to
+      think about it. He succeeded in doing so. The life he was now entering
+      upon, the new surroundings, new friends, the war, all helped him to
+      forget. And the longer he lived, the less he thought about it, until at
+      last he forgot it completely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once only, when, after the war, he went to see his aunts in hopes of
+      meeting Katusha, and heard that soon after his last visit she had left,
+      and that his aunts had heard she had been confined somewhere or other and
+      had gone quite to the bad, his heart ached. According to the time of her
+      confinement, the child might or might not have been his. His aunts said
+      she had gone wrong, that she had inherited her mother&rsquo;s depraved nature,
+      and he was pleased to hear this opinion of his aunts&rsquo;. It seemed to acquit
+      him. At first he thought of trying to find her and her child, but then,
+      just because in the depths of his soul he felt so ashamed and pained when
+      thinking about her, he did not make the necessary effort to find her, but
+      tried to forget his sin again and ceased to think about it. And now this
+      strange coincidence brought it all back to his memory, and demanded from
+      him the acknowledgment of the heartless, cruel cowardice which had made it
+      possible for him to live these nine years with such a sin on his
+      conscience. But he was still far from such an acknowledgment, and his only
+      fear was that everything might now be found out, and that she or her
+      advocate might recount it all and put him to shame before every one
+      present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. THE TRIAL&mdash;RESUMPTION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In this state of mind Nekhludoff left the Court and went into the
+      jurymen&rsquo;s room. He sat by the window smoking all the while, and hearing
+      what was being said around him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The merry merchant seemed with all his heart to sympathise with Smelkoff&rsquo;s
+      way of spending his time. &ldquo;There, old fellow, that was something like!
+      Real Siberian fashion! He knew what he was about, no fear! That&rsquo;s the sort
+      of wench for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman was stating his conviction, that in some way or other the
+      expert&rsquo;s conclusions were the important thing. Peter Gerasimovitch was
+      joking about something with the Jewish clerk, and they burst out laughing.
+      Nekhludoff answered all the questions addressed to him in monosyllables
+      and longed only to be left in peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the usher, with his sideways gait, called the jury back to the Court,
+      Nekhludoff was seized with fear, as if he were not going to judge, but to
+      be judged. In the depth of his soul he felt that he was a scoundrel, who
+      ought to be ashamed to look people in the face, yet, by sheer force of
+      habit, he stepped on to the platform in his usual self-possessed manner,
+      and sat down, crossing his legs and playing with his pince-nez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoners had also been led out, and were now brought in again. There
+      were some new faces in the Court witnesses, and Nekhludoff noticed that
+      Maslova could not take her eyes off a very fat woman who sat in the row in
+      front of the grating, very showily dressed in silk and velvet, a high hat
+      with a large bow on her head, and an elegant little reticule on her arm,
+      which was bare to the elbow. This was, as he subsequently found out, one
+      of the witnesses, the mistress of the establishment to which Maslova had
+      belonged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The examination of the witnesses commenced: they were asked their names,
+      religion, etc. Then, after some consultation as to whether the witnesses
+      were to be sworn in or not, the old priest came in again, dragging his
+      legs with difficulty, and, again arranging the golden cross on his breast,
+      swore the witnesses and the expert in the same quiet manner, and with the
+      same assurance that he was doing something useful and important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The witnesses having been sworn, all but Kitaeva, the keeper of the house,
+      were led out again. She was asked what she knew about this affair. Kitaeva
+      nodded her head and the big hat at every sentence and smiled affectedly.
+      She gave a very full and intelligent account, speaking with a strong
+      German accent. First of all, the hotel servant Simeon, whom she knew, came
+      to her establishment on behalf of a rich Siberian merchant, and she sent
+      Lubov back with him. After a time Lubov returned with the merchant. The
+      merchant was already somewhat intoxicated&mdash;she smiled as she said
+      this&mdash;and went on drinking and treating the girls. He was short of
+      money. He sent this same Lubov to his lodgings. He had taken a
+      &ldquo;predilection&rdquo; to her. She looked at the prisoner as she said this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thought he saw Maslova smile here, and this seemed disgusting
+      to him. A strange, indefinite feeling of loathing, mingled with suffering,
+      arose in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what was your opinion of Maslova?&rdquo; asked the blushing and confused
+      applicant for a judicial post, appointed to act as Maslova&rsquo;s advocate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zee ferry pesht,&rdquo; answered Kitaeva. &ldquo;Zee yoong voman is etucated and
+      elecant. She was prought up in a coot family and can reat French. She tid
+      have a trop too moch sometimes, put nefer forcot herself. A ferry coot
+      girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katusha looked at the woman, then suddenly turned her eyes on the jury and
+      fixed them on Nekhludoff, and her face grew serious and even severe. One
+      of her serious eyes squinted, and those two strange eyes for some time
+      gazed at Nekhludoff, who, in spite of the terrors that seized him, could
+      not take his look off these squinting eyes, with their bright, clear
+      whites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought of that dreadful night, with its mist, the ice breaking on the
+      river below, and when the waning moon, with horns turned upwards, that had
+      risen towards morning, lit up something black and weird. These two black
+      eyes now looking at him reminded him of this weird, black something. &ldquo;She
+      has recognised me,&rdquo; he thought, and Nekhludoff shrank as if expecting a
+      blow. But she had not recognised him. She sighed quietly and again looked
+      at the president. Nekhludoff also sighed. &ldquo;Oh, if it would only get on
+      quicker,&rdquo; he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He now felt the same loathing and pity and vexation as when, out shooting,
+      he was obliged to kill a wounded bird. The wounded bird struggles in the
+      game bag. One is disgusted and yet feels pity, and one is in a hurry to
+      kill the bird and forget it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such mixed feelings filled Nekhludoff&rsquo;s breast as he sat listening to the
+      examination of the witnesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE MEDICAL REPORT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But, as if to spite him, the case dragged out to a great length. After
+      each witness had been examined separately and the expert last of all, and
+      a great number of useless questions had been put, with the usual air of
+      importance, by the public prosecutor and by both advocates, the president
+      invited the jury to examine the objects offered as material evidence. They
+      consisted of an enormous diamond ring, which had evidently been worn on
+      the first finger, and a test tube in which the poison had been analysed.
+      These things had seals and labels attached to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as the witnesses were about to look at these things, the public
+      prosecutor rose and demanded that before they did this the results of the
+      doctor&rsquo;s examination of the body should be read. The president, who was
+      hurrying the business through as fast as he could in order to visit his
+      Swiss friend, though he knew that the reading of this paper could have no
+      other effect than that of producing weariness and putting off the dinner
+      hour, and that the public prosecutor wanted it read simply because he knew
+      he had a right to demand it, had no option but to express his consent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The secretary got out the doctor&rsquo;s report and again began to read in his
+      weary lisping voice, making no distinction between the &ldquo;r&rsquo;s&rdquo; and &ldquo;l&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The external examination proved that:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;1. Theropont Smelkoff&rsquo;s height was six feet five inches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so bad, that. A very good size,&rdquo; whispered the merchant, with
+      interest, into Nekhludoff&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;2. He looked about 40 years of age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;3. The body was of a swollen appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;4. The flesh was of a greenish colour, with dark spots in several places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;5. The skin was raised in blisters of different sizes and in places had
+      come off in large pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;6. The hair was chestnut; it was thick, and separated easily from the
+      skin when touched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;7. The eye-balls protruded from their sockets and the cornea had grown
+      dim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;8. Out of the nostrils, both ears, and the mouth oozed serous liquid; the
+      mouth was half open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;9. The neck had almost disappeared, owing to the swelling of the face and
+      chest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so on and so on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four pages were covered with the 27 paragraphs describing all the details
+      of the external examination of the enormous, fat, swollen, and decomposing
+      body of the merchant who had been making merry in the town. The indefinite
+      loathing that Nekhludoff felt was increased by the description of the
+      corpse. Katusha&rsquo;s life, and the scrum oozing from the nostrils of the
+      corpse, and the eyes that protruded out of their sockets, and his own
+      treatment of her&mdash;all seemed to belong to the same order of things,
+      and he felt surrounded and wholly absorbed by things of the same nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the reading of the report of the external examination was ended, the
+      president heaved a sigh and raised his hand, hoping it was finished; but
+      the secretary at once went on to the description of the internal
+      examination. The president&rsquo;s head again dropped into his hand and he shut
+      his eyes. The merchant next to Nekhludoff could hardly keep awake, and now
+      and then his body swayed to and fro. The prisoners and the gendarmes sat
+      perfectly quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The internal examination showed that:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;1. The skin was easily detachable from the bones of the skull, and there
+      was no coagulated blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;2. The bones of the skull were of average thickness and in sound
+      condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;3. On the membrane of the brain there were two discoloured spots about
+      four inches long, the membrane itself being of a dull white.&rdquo; And so on
+      for 13 paragraphs more. Then followed the names and signatures of the
+      assistants, and the doctor&rsquo;s conclusion showing that the changes observed
+      in the stomach, and to a lesser degree in the bowels and kidneys, at the
+      postmortem examination, and described in the official report, gave great
+      probability to the conclusion that Smelkoff&rsquo;s death was caused by poison
+      which had entered his stomach mixed with alcohol. To decide from the state
+      of the stomach what poison had been introduced was difficult; but it was
+      necessary to suppose that the poison entered the stomach mixed with
+      alcohol, since a great quantity of the latter was found in Smelkoff&rsquo;s
+      stomach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He could drink, and no mistake,&rdquo; again whispered the merchant, who had
+      just waked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reading of this report had taken a full hour, but it had not satisfied
+      the public prosecutor, for, when it had been read through and the
+      president turned to him, saying, &ldquo;I suppose it is superfluous to read the
+      report of the examination of the internal organs?&rdquo; he answered in a severe
+      tone, without looking at the president, &ldquo;I shall ask to have it read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised himself a little, and showed by his manner that he had a right
+      to have this report read, and would claim this right, and that if that
+      were not granted it would serve as a cause of appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The member of the Court with the big beard, who suffered from catarrh of
+      the stomach, feeling quite done up, turned to the president:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the use of reading all this? It is only dragging it out. These
+      new brooms do not sweep clean; they only take a long while doing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The member with the gold spectacles said nothing, but only looked gloomily
+      in front of him, expecting nothing good, either from his wife or life in
+      general. The reading of the report commenced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the year 188-, on February 15th, I, the undersigned, commissioned by
+      the medical department, made an examination, No. 638,&rdquo; the secretary began
+      again with firmness and raising the pitch of his voice as if to dispel the
+      sleepiness that had overtaken all present, &ldquo;in the presence of the
+      assistant medical inspector, of the internal organs:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;1. The right lung and the heart (contained in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;2. The contents of the stomach (in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;3. The stomach itself (in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;4. The liver, the spleen and the kidneys (in a 9-lb. glass jar).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;5. The intestines (in a 9-lb. earthenware jar).&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The president here whispered to one of the members, then stooped to the
+      other, and having received their consent, he said: &ldquo;The Court considers
+      the reading of this report superfluous.&rdquo; The secretary stopped reading and
+      folded the paper, and the public prosecutor angrily began to write down
+      something. &ldquo;The gentlemen of the jury may now examine the articles of
+      material evidence,&rdquo; said the president. The foreman and several of the
+      others rose and went to the table, not quite knowing what to do with their
+      hands. They looked in turn at the glass, the test tube, and the ring. The
+      merchant even tried on the ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that was a finger,&rdquo; he said, returning to his place; &ldquo;like a
+      cucumber,&rdquo; he added. Evidently the image he had formed in his mind of the
+      gigantic merchant amused him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE PROSECUTOR AND THE ADVOCATES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When the examination of the articles of material evidence was finished,
+      the president announced that the investigation was now concluded and
+      immediately called on the prosecutor to proceed, hoping that as the latter
+      was also a man, he, too, might feel inclined to smoke or dine, and show
+      some mercy on the rest. But the public prosecutor showed mercy neither to
+      himself nor to any one else. He was very stupid by nature, but, besides
+      this, he had had the misfortune of finishing school with a gold medal and
+      of receiving a reward for his essay on &ldquo;Servitude&rdquo; when studying Roman Law
+      at the University, and was therefore self-confident and self-satisfied in
+      the highest degree (his success with the ladies also conducing to this)
+      and his stupidity had become extraordinary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the word was given to him, he got up slowly, showing the whole of his
+      graceful figure in his embroidered uniform. Putting his hand on the desk
+      he looked round the room, slightly bowing his head, and, avoiding the eyes
+      of the prisoners, began to read the speech he had prepared while the
+      reports were being read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen of the jury! The business that now lies before you is, if I may
+      so express myself, very characteristic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The speech of a public prosecutor, according to his views, should always
+      have a social importance, like the celebrated speeches made by the
+      advocates who have become distinguished. True, the audience consisted of
+      three women&mdash;a semptress, a cook, and Simeon&rsquo;s sister&mdash;and a
+      coachman; but this did not matter. The celebrities had begun in the same
+      way. To be always at the height of his position, i.e., to penetrate into
+      the depths of the psychological significance of crime and to discover the
+      wounds of society, was one of the prosecutor&rsquo;s principles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see before you, gentlemen of the jury, a crime characteristic, if I
+      may so express myself, of the end of our century; bearing, so to say, the
+      specific features of that very painful phenomenon, the corruption to which
+      those elements of our present-day society, which are, so to say,
+      particularly exposed to the burning rays of this process, are subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The public prosecutor spoke at great length, trying not to forget any of
+      the notions he had formed in his mind, and, on the other hand, never to
+      hesitate, and let his speech flow on for an hour and a quarter without a
+      break.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only once he stopped and for some time stood swallowing his saliva, but he
+      soon mastered himself and made up for the interruption by heightened
+      eloquence. He spoke, now with a tender, insinuating accent, stepping from
+      foot to foot and looking at the jury, now in quiet, business-like tones,
+      glancing into his notebook, then with a loud, accusing voice, looking from
+      the audience to the advocates. But he avoided looking at the prisoners,
+      who were all three fixedly gazing at him. Every new craze then in vogue
+      among his set was alluded to in his speech; everything that then was, and
+      some things that still are, considered to be the last words of scientific
+      wisdom: the laws of heredity and inborn criminality, evolution and the
+      struggle for existence, hypnotism and hypnotic influence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to his definition, the merchant Smelkoff was of the genuine
+      Russian type, and had perished in consequence of his generous, trusting
+      nature, having fallen into the hands of deeply degraded individuals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simeon Kartinkin was the atavistic production of serfdom, a stupefied,
+      ignorant, unprincipled man, who had not even any religion. Euphemia was
+      his mistress, and a victim of heredity; all the signs of degeneration were
+      noticeable in her. The chief wire-puller in this affair was Maslova,
+      presenting the phenomenon of decadence in its lowest form. &ldquo;This woman,&rdquo;
+       he said, looking at her, &ldquo;has, as we have to-day heard from her mistress
+      in this court, received an education; she cannot only read and write, but
+      she knows French; she is illegitimate, and probably carries in her the
+      germs of criminality. She was educated in an enlightened, noble family and
+      might have lived by honest work, but she deserts her benefactress, gives
+      herself up to a life of shame in which she is distinguished from her
+      companions by her education, and chiefly, gentlemen of the jury, as you
+      have heard from her mistress, by her power of acting on the visitors by
+      means of that mysterious capacity lately investigated by science,
+      especially by the school of Charcot, known by the name of hypnotic
+      influence. By these means she gets hold of this Russian, this kind-hearted
+      Sadko, [Sadko, the hero of a legend] the rich guest, and uses his trust in
+      order first to rob and then pitilessly to murder him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he is piling it on now, isn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; said the president with a smile,
+      bending towards the serious member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fearful blockhead!&rdquo; said the serious member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the public prosecutor went on with his speech. &ldquo;Gentlemen of the
+      jury,&rdquo; gracefully swaying his body, &ldquo;the fate of society is to a certain
+      extent in your power. Your verdict will influence it. Grasp the full
+      meaning of this crime, the danger that awaits society from those whom I
+      may perhaps be permitted to call pathological individuals, such as
+      Maslova. Guard it from infection; guard the innocent and strong elements
+      of society from contagion or even destruction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as if himself overcome by the significance of the expected verdict,
+      the public prosecutor sank into his chair, highly delighted with his
+      speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sense of the speech, when divested of all its flowers of rhetoric, was
+      that Maslova, having gained the merchant&rsquo;s confidence, hypnotised him and
+      went to his lodgings with his key meaning to take all the money herself,
+      but having been caught in the act by Simeon and Euphemia had to share it
+      with them. Then, in order to hide the traces of the crime, she had
+      returned to the lodgings with the merchant and there poisoned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the prosecutor had spoken, a middle-aged man in swallow-tail coat
+      and low-cut waistcoat showing a large half-circle of starched white shirt,
+      rose from the advocates&rsquo; bench and made a speech in defence of Kartinkin
+      and Botchkova; this was an advocate engaged by them for 300 roubles. He
+      acquitted them both and put all the blame on Maslova. He denied the truth
+      of Maslova&rsquo;s statements that Botchkova and Kartinkin were with her when
+      she took the money, laying great stress on the point that her evidence
+      could not be accepted, she being charged with poisoning. &ldquo;The 2,500
+      roubles,&rdquo; the advocate said, &ldquo;could have been easily earned by two honest
+      people getting from three to five roubles per day in tips from the
+      lodgers. The merchant&rsquo;s money was stolen by Maslova and given away, or
+      even lost, as she was not in a normal state.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poisoning was committed by Maslova alone; therefore he begged the jury
+      to acquit Kartinkin and Botchkova of stealing the money; or if they could
+      not acquit them of the theft, at least to admit that it was done without
+      any participation in the poisoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In conclusion the advocate remarked, with a thrust at the public
+      prosecutor, that &ldquo;the brilliant observations of that gentleman on
+      heredity, while explaining scientific facts concerning heredity, were
+      inapplicable in this case, as Botchkova was of unknown parentage.&rdquo; The
+      public prosecutor put something down on paper with an angry look, and
+      shrugged his shoulders in contemptuous surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Maslova&rsquo;s advocate rose, and timidly and hesitatingly began his
+      speech in her defence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without denying that she had taken part in the stealing of the money, he
+      insisted on the fact that she had no intention of poisoning Smelkoff, but
+      had given him the powder only to make him fall asleep. He tried to go in
+      for a little eloquence in giving a description of how Maslova was led into
+      a life of debauchery by a man who had remained unpunished while she had to
+      bear all the weight of her fall; but this excursion into the domain of
+      psychology was so unsuccessful that it made everybody feel uncomfortable.
+      When he muttered something about men&rsquo;s cruelty and women&rsquo;s helplessness,
+      the president tried to help him by asking him to keep closer to the facts
+      of the case. When he had finished the public prosecutor got up to reply.
+      He defended his position against the first advocate, saying that even if
+      Botchkova was of unknown parentage the truth of the doctrine of heredity
+      was thereby in no way invalidated, since the laws of heredity were so far
+      proved by science that we can not only deduce the crime from heredity, but
+      heredity from the crime. As to the statement made in defence of Maslova,
+      that she was the victim of an imaginary (he laid a particularly venomous
+      stress on the word imaginary) betrayer, he could only say that from the
+      evidence before them it was much more likely that she had played the part
+      of temptress to many and many a victim who had fallen into her hands.
+      Having said this he sat down in triumph. Then the prisoners were offered
+      permission to speak in their own defence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euphemia Botchkova repeated once more that she knew nothing about it and
+      had taken part in nothing, and firmly laid the whole blame on Maslova.
+      Simeon Kartinkin only repeated several times: &ldquo;It is your business, but I
+      am innocent; it&rsquo;s unjust.&rdquo; Maslova said nothing in her defence. Told she
+      might do so by the president, she only lifted her eyes to him, cast a look
+      round the room like a hunted animal, and, dropping her head, began to cry,
+      sobbing aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; the merchant asked Nekhludoff, hearing him utter a
+      strange sound. This was the sound of weeping fiercely kept back.
+      Nekhludoff had not yet understood the significance of his present
+      position, and attributed the sobs he could hardly keep back and the tears
+      that filled his eyes to the weakness of his nerves. He put on his
+      pince-nez in order to hide the tears, then got out his handkerchief and
+      began blowing his nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fear of the disgrace that would befall him if every one in the court knew
+      of his conduct stifled the inner working of his soul. This fear was,
+      during this first period, stronger than all else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE SUMMING UP.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After the last words of the prisoners had been heard, the form in which
+      the questions were to be put to the jury was settled, which also took some
+      time. At last the questions were formulated, and the president began the
+      summing up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before putting the case to the jury, he spoke to them for some time in a
+      pleasant, homely manner, explaining that burglary was burglary and theft
+      was theft, and that stealing from a place which was under lock and key was
+      stealing from a place under lock and key. While he was explaining this, he
+      looked several times at Nekhludoff as if wishing to impress upon him these
+      important facts, in hopes that, having understood it, Nekhludoff would
+      make his fellow-jurymen also understand it. When he considered that the
+      jury were sufficiently imbued with these facts, he proceeded to enunciate
+      another truth&mdash;namely, that a murder is an action which has the death
+      of a human being as its consequence, and that poisoning could therefore
+      also be termed murder. When, according to his opinion, this truth had also
+      been received by the jury, he went on to explain that if theft and murder
+      had been committed at the same time, the combination of the crimes was
+      theft with murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although he was himself anxious to finish as soon as possible, although he
+      knew that his Swiss friend would be waiting for him, he had grown so used
+      to his occupation that, having begun to speak, he could not stop himself,
+      and therefore he went on to impress on the jury with much detail that if
+      they found the prisoners guilty, they would have the right to give a
+      verdict of guilty; and if they found them not guilty, to give a verdict of
+      not guilty; and if they found them guilty of one of the crimes and not of
+      the other, they might give a verdict of guilty on the one count and of not
+      guilty on the other. Then he explained that though this right was given
+      them they should use it with reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was going to add that if they gave an affirmative answer to any
+      question that was put to them they would thereby affirm everything
+      included in the question, so that if they did not wish to affirm the whole
+      of the question they should mention the part of the question they wished
+      to be excepted. But, glancing at the clock, and seeing it was already five
+      minutes to three, he resolved to trust to their being intelligent enough
+      to understand this without further comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The facts of this case are the following,&rdquo; began the president, and
+      repeated all that had already been said several times by the advocates,
+      the public prosecutor and the witnesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The president spoke, and the members on each side of him listened with
+      deeply-attentive expressions, but looked from time to time at the clock,
+      for they considered the speech too long though very good&mdash;i.e., such
+      as it ought to be. The public prosecutor, the lawyers, and, in fact,
+      everyone in the court, shared the same impression. The president finished
+      the summing up. Then he found it necessary to tell the jury what they all
+      knew, or might have found out by reading it up&mdash;i.e., how they were
+      to consider the case, count the votes, in case of a tie to acquit the
+      prisoners, and so on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything seemed to have been told; but no, the president could not
+      forego his right of speaking as yet. It was so pleasant to hear the
+      impressive tones of his own voice, and therefore he found it necessary to
+      say a few words more about the importance of the rights given to the jury,
+      how carefully they should use the rights and how they ought not to abuse
+      them, about their being on their oath, that they were the conscience of
+      society, that the secrecy of the debating-room should be considered
+      sacred, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the time the president commenced his speech, Maslova watched him
+      without moving her eyes as if afraid of losing a single word; so that
+      Nekhludoff was not afraid of meeting her eyes and kept looking at her all
+      the time. And his mind passed through those phases in which a face which
+      we have not seen for many years first strikes us with the outward changes
+      brought about during the time of separation, and then gradually becomes
+      more and more like its old self, when the changes made by time seem to
+      disappear, and before our spiritual eyes rises only the principal
+      expression of one exceptional, unique individuality. Yes, though dressed
+      in a prison cloak, and in spite of the developed figure, the fulness of
+      the bosom and lower part of the face, in spite of a few wrinkles on the
+      forehead and temples and the swollen eyes, this was certainly the same
+      Katusha who, on that Easter eve, had so innocently looked up to him whom
+      she loved, with her fond, laughing eyes full of joy and life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a strange coincidence that after ten years, during which I never saw
+      her, this case should have come up today when I am on the jury, and that
+      it is in the prisoners&rsquo; dock that I see her again! And how will it end?
+      Oh, dear, if they would only get on quicker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he would not give in to the feelings of repentance which began to
+      arise within him. He tried to consider it all as a coincidence, which
+      would pass without infringing his manner of life. He felt himself in the
+      position of a puppy, when its master, taking it by the scruff of its neck,
+      rubs its nose in the mess it has made. The puppy whines, draws back and
+      wants to get away as far as possible from the effects of its misdeed, but
+      the pitiless master does not let go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, Nekhludoff, feeling all the repulsiveness of what he had done,
+      felt also the powerful hand of the Master, but he did not feel the whole
+      significance of his action yet and would not recognise the Master&rsquo;s hand.
+      He did not wish to believe that it was the effect of his deed that lay
+      before him, but the pitiless hand of the Master held him and he felt he
+      could not get away. He was still keeping up his courage and sat on his
+      chair in the first row in his usual self-possessed pose, one leg
+      carelessly thrown over the other, and playing with his pince-nez. Yet all
+      the while, in the depths of his soul, he felt the cruelty, cowardice and
+      baseness, not only of this particular action of his but of his whole
+      self-willed, depraved, cruel, idle life; and that dreadful veil which had
+      in some unaccountable manner hidden from him this sin of his and the whole
+      of his subsequent life was beginning to shake, and he caught glimpses of
+      what was covered by that veil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE VERDICT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At last the president finished his speech, and lifting the list of
+      questions with a graceful movement of his arm he handed it to the foreman,
+      who came up to take it. The jury, glad to be able to get into the
+      debating-court, got up one after the other and left the room, looking as
+      if a bit ashamed of themselves and again not knowing what to do with their
+      hands. As soon as the door was closed behind them a gendarme came up to
+      it, pulled his sword out of the scabbard, and, holding it up against his
+      shoulder, stood at the door. The judges got up and went away. The
+      prisoners were also led out. When the jury came into the debating-room the
+      first thing they did was to take out their cigarettes, as before, and
+      begin smoking. The sense of the unnaturalness and falseness of their
+      position, which all of them had experienced while sitting in their places
+      in the court, passed when they entered the debating-room and started
+      smoking, and they settled down with a feeling of relief and at once began
+      an animated conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Tisn&rsquo;t the girl&rsquo;s fault. She&rsquo;s got mixed up in it,&rdquo; said the kindly
+      merchant. &ldquo;We must recommend her to mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what we are going to consider,&rdquo; said the foreman. &ldquo;We must
+      not give way to our personal impressions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The president&rsquo;s summing up was good,&rdquo; remarked the colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good? Why, it nearly sent me to sleep!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The chief point is that the servants could have known nothing about the
+      money if Maslova had not been in accord with them,&rdquo; said the clerk of
+      Jewish extraction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, do you think that it was she who stole the money?&rdquo; asked one of the
+      jury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will never believe it,&rdquo; cried the kindly merchant; &ldquo;it was all that
+      red-eyed hag&rsquo;s doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are a nice lot, all of them,&rdquo; said the colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she says she never went into the room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, believe her by all means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should not believe that jade, not for the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether you believe her or not does not settle the question,&rdquo; said the
+      clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl had the key,&rdquo; said the colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if she had?&rdquo; retorted the merchant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the ring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But didn&rsquo;t she say all about it?&rdquo; again cried the merchant. &ldquo;The fellow
+      had a temper of his own, and had had a drop too much besides, and gave the
+      girl a licking; what could be simpler? Well, then he&rsquo;s sorry&mdash;quite
+      naturally. &lsquo;There, never mind,&rsquo; says he; &lsquo;take this.&rsquo; Why, I heard them
+      say he was six foot five high; I should think he must have weighed about
+      20 stones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not the point,&rdquo; said Peter Gerasimovitch. &ldquo;The question is,
+      whether she was the instigator and inciter in this affair, or the
+      servants?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not possible for the servants to do it alone; she had the key.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This kind of random talk went on for a considerable time. At last the
+      foreman said: &ldquo;I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but had we not better take
+      our places at the table and discuss the matter? Come, please.&rdquo; And he took
+      the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The questions were expressed in the following manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. Is the peasant of the village Borki, Krapivinskia district, Simeon
+      Petrov Kartinkin, 33 years of age, guilty of having, in agreement with
+      other persons, given the merchant Smelkoff, on the 17th January, 188-, in
+      the town of N&mdash;&mdash;-, with intent to deprive him of life, for the
+      purpose of robbing him, poisoned brandy, which caused Smelkoff&rsquo;s death,
+      and of having stolen from him about 2,500 roubles in money and a diamond
+      ring?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. Is the meschanka Euphemia Ivanovna Botchkova, 43 years of age, guilty
+      of the crimes described above?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. Is the meschanka Katerina Michaelovna Maslova, 27 years of age, guilty
+      of the crimes described in the first question?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. If the prisoner Euphemia Botchkova is not guilty according to the first
+      question, is she not guilty of having, on the 17th January, in the town of
+      N&mdash;&mdash;, while in service at the hotel Mauritania, stolen from a
+      locked portmanteau, belonging to the merchant Smelkoff, a lodger in that
+      hotel, and which was in the room occupied by him, 2,500 roubles, for which
+      object she unlocked the portmanteau with a key she brought and fitted to
+      the lock?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman read the first question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, gentlemen, what do you think?&rdquo; This question was quickly answered.
+      All agreed to say &ldquo;Guilty,&rdquo; as if convinced that Kartinkin had taken part
+      both in the poisoning and the robbery. An old artelshik, [member of an
+      artel, an association of workmen, in which the members share profits and
+      liabilities] whose answers were all in favour of acquittal, was the only
+      exception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman thought he did not understand, and began to point out to him
+      that everything tended to prove Kartinkin&rsquo;s guilt. The old man answered
+      that he did understand, but still thought it better to have pity on him.
+      &ldquo;We are not saints ourselves,&rdquo; and he kept to his opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer to the second question concerning Botchkova was, after much
+      dispute and many exclamations, answered by the words, &ldquo;Not guilty,&rdquo; there
+      being no clear proofs of her having taken part in the poisoning&mdash;a
+      fact her advocate had strongly insisted on. The merchant, anxious to
+      acquit Maslova, insisted that Botchkova was the chief instigator of it
+      all. Many of the jury shared this view, but the foreman, wishing to be in
+      strict accord with the law, declared they had no grounds to consider her
+      as an accomplice in the poisoning. After much disputing the foreman&rsquo;s
+      opinion triumphed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the fourth question concerning Botchkova the answer was &ldquo;Guilty.&rdquo; But
+      on the artelshik&rsquo;s insistence she was recommended to mercy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third question, concerning Maslova, raised a fierce dispute. The
+      foreman maintained she was guilty both of the poisoning and the theft, to
+      which the merchant would not agree. The colonel, the clerk and the old
+      artelshik sided with the merchant, the rest seemed shaky, and the opinion
+      of the foreman began to gain ground, chiefly because all the jurymen were
+      getting tired, and preferred to take up the view that would bring them
+      sooner to a decision and thus liberate them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From all that had passed, and from his former knowledge of Maslova,
+      Nekhludoff was certain that she was innocent of both the theft and the
+      poisoning. And he felt sure that all the others would come to the same
+      conclusion. When he saw that the merchant&rsquo;s awkward defence (evidently
+      based on his physical admiration for her, which he did not even try to
+      hide) and the foreman&rsquo;s insistence, and especially everybody&rsquo;s weariness,
+      were all tending to her condemnation, he longed to state his objections,
+      yet dared not, lest his relations with Maslova should be discovered. He
+      felt he could not allow things to go on without stating his objection;
+      and, blushing and growing pale again, was about to speak when Peter
+      Gerasimovitch, irritated by the authoritative manner of the foreman, began
+      to raise his objections and said the very things Nekhludoff was about to
+      say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me one moment,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You seem to think that her having the key
+      proves she is guilty of the theft; but what could be easier than for the
+      servants to open the portmanteau with a false key after she was gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, of course,&rdquo; said the merchant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She could not have taken the money, because in her position she would
+      hardly know what to do with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I say,&rdquo; remarked the merchant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is very likely that her coming put the idea into the servants&rsquo; 
+      heads and that they grasped the opportunity and shoved all the blame on
+      her.&rdquo; Peter Gerasimovitch spoke so irritably that the foreman became
+      irritated too, and went on obstinately defending the opposite views; but
+      Peter Gerasimovitch spoke so convincingly that the majority agreed with
+      him, and decided that Maslova was not guilty of stealing the money and
+      that the ring was given her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the question of her having taken part in the poisoning was
+      raised, her zealous defender, the merchant, declared that she must be
+      acquitted, because she could have no reason for the poisoning. The
+      foreman, however, said that it was impossible to acquit her, because she
+      herself had pleaded guilty to having given the powder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but thinking it was opium,&rdquo; said the merchant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Opium can also deprive one of life,&rdquo; said the colonel, who was fond of
+      wandering from the subject, and he began telling how his brother-in-law&rsquo;s
+      wife would have died of an overdose of opium if there had not been a
+      doctor near at hand to take the necessary measures. The colonel told his
+      story so impressively, with such self-possession and dignity, that no one
+      had the courage to interrupt him. Only the clerk, infected by his example,
+      decided to break in with a story of his own: &ldquo;There are some who get so
+      used to it that they can take 40 drops. I have a relative&mdash;,&rdquo; but the
+      colonel would not stand the interruption, and went on to relate what
+      effects the opium had on his brother-in-law&rsquo;s wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, gentlemen, do you know it is getting on towards five o&rsquo;clock?&rdquo; said
+      one of the jury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, gentlemen, what are we to say, then?&rdquo; inquired the foreman. &ldquo;Shall
+      we say she is guilty, but without intent to rob? And without stealing any
+      property? Will that do?&rdquo; Peter Gerasimovitch, pleased with his victory,
+      agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she must be recommended to mercy,&rdquo; said the merchant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All agreed; only the old artelshik insisted that they should say &ldquo;Not
+      guilty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It comes to the same thing,&rdquo; explained the foreman; &ldquo;without intent to
+      rob, and without stealing any property. Therefore, &lsquo;Not guilty,&rsquo; that&rsquo;s
+      evident.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; that&rsquo;ll do. And we recommend her to mercy,&rdquo; said the merchant,
+      gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were all so tired, so confused by the discussions, that nobody
+      thought of saying that she was guilty of giving the powder but without the
+      intent of taking life. Nekhludoff was so excited that he did not notice
+      this omission, and so the answers were written down in the form agreed
+      upon and taken to the court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rabelais says that a lawyer who was trying a case quoted all sorts of
+      laws, read 20 pages of judicial senseless Latin, and then proposed to the
+      judges to throw dice, and if the numbers proved odd the defendant would be
+      right, if not, the plaintiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was much the same in this case. The resolution was taken, not because
+      everybody agreed upon it, but because the president, who had been summing
+      up at such length, omitted to say what he always said on such occasions,
+      that the answer might be, &ldquo;Yes, guilty, but without the intent of taking
+      life;&rdquo; because the colonel had related the story of his brother-in-law&rsquo;s
+      wife at such great length; because Nekhludoff was too excited to notice
+      that the proviso &ldquo;without intent to take life&rdquo; had been omitted, and
+      thought that the words &ldquo;without intent&rdquo; nullified the conviction; because
+      Peter Gerasimovitch had retired from the room while the questions and
+      answers were being read, and chiefly because, being tired, and wishing to
+      get away as soon as possible, all were ready to agree with the decision
+      which would bring matters to an end soonest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jurymen rang the bell. The gendarme who had stood outside the door
+      with his sword drawn put the sword back into the scabbard and stepped
+      aside. The judges took their seats and the jury came out one by one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman brought in the paper with an air of solemnity and handed it to
+      the president, who looked at it, and, spreading out his hands in
+      astonishment, turned to consult his companions. The president was
+      surprised that the jury, having put in a proviso&mdash;without intent to
+      rob&mdash;did not put in a second proviso&mdash;without intent to take
+      life. From the decision of the jury it followed that Maslova had not
+      stolen, nor robbed, and yet poisoned a man without any apparent reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just see what an absurd decision they have come to,&rdquo; he whispered to the
+      member on his left. &ldquo;This means penal servitude in Siberia, and she is
+      innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely you do not mean to say she is innocent?&rdquo; answered the serious
+      member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she is positively innocent. I think this is a case for putting
+      Article 817 into practice (Article 817 states that if the Court considers
+      the decision of the jury unjust it may set it aside).&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think?&rdquo; said the president, turning to the other member. The
+      kindly member did not answer at once. He looked at the number on a paper
+      before him and added up the figures; the sum would not divide by three. He
+      had settled in his mind that if it did divide by three he would agree to
+      the president&rsquo;s proposal, but though the sum would not so divide his
+      kindness made him agree all the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, too, think it should be done,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you?&rdquo; asked the president, turning to the serious member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On no account,&rdquo; he answered, firmly. &ldquo;As it is, the papers accuse the
+      jury of acquitting prisoners. What will they say if the Court does it? I,
+      shall not agree to that on any account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The president looked at his watch. &ldquo;It is a pity, but what&rsquo;s to be done?&rdquo;
+       and handed the questions to the foreman to read out. All got up, and the
+      foreman, stepping from foot to foot, coughed, and read the questions and
+      the answers. All the Court, secretary, advocates, and even the public
+      prosecutor, expressed surprise. The prisoners sat impassive, evidently not
+      understanding the meaning of the answers. Everybody sat down again, and
+      the president asked the prosecutor what punishments the prisoners were to
+      be subjected to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prosecutor, glad of his unexpected success in getting Maslova
+      convicted, and attributing the success entirely to his own eloquence,
+      looked up the necessary information, rose and said: &ldquo;With Simeon Kartinkin
+      I should deal according to Statute 1,452 paragraph 93. Euphemia Botchkova
+      according to Statute . . ., etc. Katerina Maslova according to Statute . .
+      ., etc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All three punishments were the heaviest that could be inflicted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Court will adjourn to consider the sentence,&rdquo; said the president,
+      rising. Everybody rose after him, and with the pleasant feeling of a task
+      well done began to leave the room or move about in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D&rsquo;you know, sirs, we have made a shameful hash of it?&rdquo; said Peter
+      Gerasimovitch, approaching Nekhludoff, to whom the foreman was relating
+      something. &ldquo;Why, we&rsquo;ve got her to Siberia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you saying?&rdquo; exclaimed Nekhludoff. This time he did not notice
+      the teacher&rsquo;s familiarity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, we did not put in our answer &lsquo;Guilty, but without intent of causing
+      death.&rsquo; The secretary just told me the public prosecutor is for condemning
+      her to 15 years&rsquo; penal servitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but it was decided so,&rdquo; said the foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Gerasimovitch began to dispute this, saying that since she did not
+      take the money it followed naturally that she could not have had any
+      intention of committing murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I read the answer before going out,&rdquo; said the foreman, defending
+      himself, &ldquo;and nobody objected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had just then gone out of the room,&rdquo; said Peter Gerasimovitch, turning
+      to Nekhludoff, &ldquo;and your thoughts must have been wool-gathering to let the
+      thing pass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never imagined this,&rdquo; Nekhludoff replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you didn&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, we can get it put right,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear no; it&rsquo;s finished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff looked at the prisoners. They whose fate was being decided
+      still sat motionless behind the grating in front of the soldiers. Maslova
+      was smiling. Another feeling stirred in Nekhludoff&rsquo;s soul. Up to now,
+      expecting her acquittal and thinking she would remain in the town, he was
+      uncertain how to act towards her. Any kind of relations with her would be
+      so very difficult. But Siberia and penal servitude at once cut off every
+      possibility of any kind of relations with her. The wounded bird would stop
+      struggling in the game-bag, and no longer remind him of its existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. THE TRIAL&mdash;THE SENTENCE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Peter Gerasimovitch&rsquo;s assumption was correct. The president came back from
+      the debating room with a paper, and read as follows:&mdash;&ldquo;April 28th,
+      188-. By His Imperial Majesty&rsquo;s ukase No. &mdash;&mdash;- The Criminal
+      Court, on the strength of the decision of the jury, in accordance with
+      Section 3 of Statute 771, Section 3 of Statutes 770 and 777, decrees that
+      the peasant, Simeon Kartinkin, 33 years of age, and the meschanka Katerina
+      Maslova, 27 years of age, are to be deprived of all property rights and to
+      be sent to penal servitude in Siberia, Kartinkin for eight, Maslova for
+      four years, with the consequences stated in Statute 25 of the code. The
+      meschanka Botchkova, 43 years of age, to be deprived of all special
+      personal and acquired rights, and to be imprisoned for three years with
+      consequences in accord with Statute 48 of the code. The costs of the case
+      to be borne equally by the prisoners; and, in the case of their being
+      without sufficient property, the costs to be transferred to the Treasury.
+      Articles of material evidence to be sold, the ring to be returned, the
+      phials destroyed.&rdquo; Botchkova was condemned to prison, Simeon Kartinken and
+      Katerina Maslova to the loss of all special rights and privileges and to
+      penal servitude in Siberia, he for eight and she for four years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kartinkin stood holding his arms close to his sides and moving his lips.
+      Botchkova seemed perfectly calm. Maslova, when she heard the sentence,
+      blushed scarlet. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not guilty, not guilty!&rdquo; she suddenly cried, so that
+      it resounded through the room. &ldquo;It is a sin! I am not guilty! I never
+      wished&mdash;I never thought! It is the truth I am saying&mdash;the
+      truth!&rdquo; and sinking on the bench she burst into tears and sobbed aloud.
+      When Kartinkin and Botchkova went out she still sat crying, so that a
+      gendarme had to touch the sleeve of her cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it is impossible to leave it as it is,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff to himself,
+      utterly forgetting his bad thoughts. He did not know why he wished to look
+      at her once more, but hurried out into the corridor. There was quite a
+      crowd at the door. The advocates and jury were going out, pleased to have
+      finished the business, and he was obliged to wait a few seconds, and when
+      he at last got out into the corridor she was far in front. He hurried
+      along the corridor after her, regardless of the attention he was arousing,
+      caught her up, passed her, and stopped. She had ceased crying and only
+      sobbed, wiping her red, discoloured face with the end of the kerchief on
+      her head. She passed without noticing him. Then he hurried back to see the
+      president. The latter had already left the court, and Nekhludoff followed
+      him into the lobby and went up to him just as he had put on his light grey
+      overcoat and was taking the silver-mounted walking-stick which an
+      attendant was handing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, may I have a few words with you concerning some business I have just
+      decided upon?&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I am one of the jury.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly, Prince Nekhludoff. I shall be delighted. I think we have
+      met before,&rdquo; said the president, pressing Nekhludoff&rsquo;s hand and recalling
+      with pleasure the evening when he first met Nekhludoff, and when he had
+      danced so gaily, better than all the young people. &ldquo;What can I do for
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a mistake in the answer concerning Maslova. She is not guilty of
+      the poisoning and yet she is condemned to penal servitude,&rdquo; said
+      Nekhludoff, with a preoccupied and gloomy air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Court passed the sentence in accordance with the answers you
+      yourselves gave,&rdquo; said the president, moving towards the front door;
+      &ldquo;though they did not seem to be quite in accord.&rdquo; And he remembered that
+      he had been going to explain to the jury that a verdict of &ldquo;guilty&rdquo; meant
+      guilty of intentional murder unless the words &ldquo;without intent to take
+      life&rdquo; were added, but had, in his hurry to get the business over, omitted
+      to do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but could not the mistake be rectified?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A reason for an appeal can always be found. You will have to speak to an
+      advocate,&rdquo; said the president, putting on his hat a little to one side and
+      continuing to move towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is terrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, there were two possibilities before Maslova,&rdquo; said the
+      president, evidently wishing to be as polite and pleasant to Nekhludoff as
+      he could. Then, having arranged his whiskers over his coat collar, he put
+      his hand lightly under Nekhludoff&rsquo;s elbow, and, still directing his steps
+      towards the front door, he said, &ldquo;You are going, too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, quickly getting his coat, and following him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went out into the bright, merry sunlight, and had to raise their
+      voices because of the rattling of the wheels on the pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The situation is a curious one, you see,&rdquo; said the president; &ldquo;what lay
+      before this Maslova was one of two things: either to be almost acquitted
+      and only imprisoned for a short time, or, taking the preliminary
+      confinement into consideration, perhaps not at all&mdash;or Siberia. There
+      is nothing between. Had you but added the words, &lsquo;without intent to cause
+      death,&rsquo; she would have been acquitted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was inexcusable of me to omit that,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s where the whole matter lies,&rdquo; said the president, with a smile,
+      and looked at his watch. He had only three-quarters of an hour left before
+      the time appointed by his Clara would elapse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, if you like to speak to the advocates you&rsquo;ll have to find a reason
+      for an appeal; that can be easily done.&rdquo; Then, turning to an isvostchik,
+      he called out, &ldquo;To the Dvoryanskaya 30 copecks; I never give more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, your honour; here you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-afternoon. If I can be of any use, my address is House Dvornikoff,
+      on the Dvoryanskaya; it&rsquo;s easy to remember.&rdquo; And he bowed in a friendly
+      manner as he got into the trap and drove off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. NEKHLUDOFF CONSULTS AN ADVOCATE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      His conversation with the president and the fresh air quieted Nekhludoff a
+      little. He now thought that the feelings experienced by him had been
+      exaggerated by the unusual surroundings in which he had spent the whole of
+      the morning, and by that wonderful and startling coincidence. Still, it
+      was absolutely necessary to take some steps to lighten Maslova&rsquo;s fate, and
+      to take them quickly. &ldquo;Yes, at once! It will be best to find out here in
+      the court where the advocate Fanarin or Mikishin lives.&rdquo; These were two
+      well-known advocates whom Nekhludoff called to mind. He returned to the
+      court, took off his overcoat, and went upstairs. In the first corridor he
+      met Fanarin himself. He stopped him, and told him that he was just going
+      to look him up on a matter of business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fanarin knew Nekhludoff by sight and name, and said he would be very glad
+      to be of service to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though I am rather tired, still, if your business will not take very
+      long, perhaps you might tell me what it is now. Will you step in here?&rdquo;
+       And he led Nekhludoff into a room, probably some judge&rsquo;s cabinet. They sat
+      down by the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and what is your business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First of all, I must ask you to keep the business private. I do not want
+      it known that I take an interest in the affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that of course. Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was on the jury to-day, and we have condemned a woman to Siberia, an
+      innocent woman. This bothers me very much.&rdquo; Nekhludoff, to his own
+      surprise, blushed and became confused. Fanarin glanced at him rapidly, and
+      looked down again, listening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have condemned a woman, and I should like to appeal to a higher
+      court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the Senate, you mean,&rdquo; said Fanarin, correcting him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and I should like to ask you to take the case in hand.&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      wanted to get the most difficult part over, and added, &ldquo;I shall take the
+      costs of the case on myself, whatever they may be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we shall settle all that,&rdquo; said the advocate, smiling with
+      condescension at Nekhludoff&rsquo;s inexperience in these matters. &ldquo;What is the
+      case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff stated what had happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I shall look the case through to-morrow or the day after&mdash;no&mdash;better
+      on Thursday. If you will come to me at six o&rsquo;clock I will give you an
+      answer. Well, and now let us go; I have to make a few inquiries here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff took leave of him and went out. This talk with the advocate,
+      and the fact that he had taken measures for Maslova&rsquo;s defence, quieted him
+      still further. He went out into the street. The weather was beautiful, and
+      he joyfully drew in a long breath of spring air. He was at once surrounded
+      by isvostchiks offering their services, but he went on foot. A whole swarm
+      of pictures and memories of Katusha and his conduct to her began whirling
+      in his brain, and he felt depressed and everything appeared gloomy. &ldquo;No, I
+      shall consider all this later on; I must now get rid of all these
+      disagreeable impressions,&rdquo; he thought to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered the Korchagin&rsquo;s dinner and looked at his watch. It was not
+      yet too late to get there in time. He heard the ring of a passing tramcar,
+      ran to catch it, and jumped on. He jumped off again when they got to the
+      market-place, took a good isvostchik, and ten minutes later was at the
+      entrance of the Korchagins&rsquo; big house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. THE HOUSE OF KORCHAGIN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please to walk in, your excellency,&rdquo; said the friendly, fat doorkeeper of
+      the Korchagins&rsquo; big house, opening the door, which moved noiselessly on
+      its patent English hinges; &ldquo;you are expected. They are at dinner. My
+      orders were to admit only you.&rdquo; The doorkeeper went as far as the
+      staircase and rang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there any strangers?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff, taking off his overcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Kolosoff and Michael Sergeivitch only, besides the family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A very handsome footman with whiskers, in a swallow-tail coat and white
+      gloves, looked down from the landing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please to walk up, your excellency,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are expected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff went up and passed through the splendid large dancing-room,
+      which he knew so well, into the dining-room. There the whole Korchagin
+      family&mdash;except the mother, Sophia Vasilievna, who never left her
+      cabinet&mdash;were sitting round the table. At the head of the table sat
+      old Korchagin; on his left the doctor, and on his right, a visitor, Ivan
+      Ivanovitch Kolosoff, a former Marechal de Noblesse, now a bank director,
+      Korchagin&rsquo;s friend and a Liberal. Next on the left side sat Miss Rayner,
+      the governess of Missy&rsquo;s little sister, and the four-year-old girl
+      herself. Opposite them, Missy&rsquo;s brother, Petia, the only son of the
+      Korchagins, a public-school boy of the Sixth Class. It was because of his
+      examinations that the whole family were still in town. Next to him sat a
+      University student who was coaching him, and Missy&rsquo;s cousin, Michael
+      Sergeivitch Telegin, generally called Misha; opposite him, Katerina
+      Alexeevna, a 40-year-old maiden lady, a Slavophil; and at the foot of the
+      table sat Missy herself, with an empty place by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that&rsquo;s right! Sit down. We are still at the fish,&rdquo; said old Korchagin
+      with difficulty, chewing carefully with his false teeth, and lifting his
+      bloodshot eyes (which had no visible lids to them) to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stephen!&rdquo; he said, with his mouth full, addressing the stout, dignified
+      butler, and pointing with his eyes to the empty place. Though Nekhludoff
+      knew Korchagin very well, and had often seen him at dinner, to-day this
+      red face with the sensual smacking lips, the fat neck above the napkin
+      stuck into his waistcoat, and the whole over-fed military figure, struck
+      him very disagreeably. Then Nekhludoff remembered, without wishing to,
+      what he knew of the cruelty of this man, who, when in command, used to
+      have men flogged, and even hanged, without rhyme or reason, simply because
+      he was rich and had no need to curry favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Immediately, your excellency,&rdquo; said Stephen, getting a large soup ladle
+      out of the sideboard, which was decorated with a number of silver vases.
+      He made a sign with his head to the handsome footman, who began at once to
+      arrange the untouched knives and forks and the napkin, elaborately folded
+      with the embroidered family crest uppermost, in front of the empty place
+      next to Missy. Nekhludoff went round shaking hands with every one, and
+      all, except old Korchagin and the ladies, rose when he approached. And
+      this walk round the table, this shaking the hands of people, with many of
+      whom he never talked, seemed unpleasant and odd. He excused himself for
+      being late, and was about to sit down between Missy and Katerina
+      Alexeevna, but old Korchagin insisted that if he would not take a glass of
+      vodka he should at least take a bit of something to whet his appetite, at
+      the side table, on which stood small dishes of lobster, caviare, cheese,
+      and salt herrings. Nekhludoff did not know how hungry he was until he
+      began to eat, and then, having taken some bread and cheese, he went on
+      eating eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, have you succeeded in undermining the basis of society?&rdquo; asked
+      Kolosoff, ironically quoting an expression used by a retrograde newspaper
+      in attacking trial by jury. &ldquo;Acquitted the culprits and condemned the
+      innocent, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undermining the basis&mdash;undermining the basis,&rdquo; repeated Prince
+      Korchagin, laughing. He had a firm faith in the wisdom and learning of his
+      chosen friend and companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the risk of seeming rude, Nekhludoff left Kolosoff&rsquo;s question
+      unanswered, and sitting down to his steaming soup, went on eating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let him eat,&rdquo; said Missy, with a smile. The pronoun him she used as a
+      reminder of her intimacy with Nekhludoff. Kolosoff went on in a loud voice
+      and lively manner to give the contents of the article against trial by
+      jury which had aroused his indignation. Missy&rsquo;s cousin, Michael
+      Sergeivitch, endorsed all his statements, and related the contents of
+      another article in the same paper. Missy was, as usual, very distinguee,
+      and well, unobtrusively well, dressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be terribly tired,&rdquo; she said, after waiting until Nekhludoff had
+      swallowed what was in his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not particularly. And you? Have you been to look at the pictures?&rdquo; he
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we put that off. We have been playing tennis at the Salamatoffs&rsquo;. It
+      is quite true, Mr. Crooks plays remarkably well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had come here in order to distract his thoughts, for he used to
+      like being in this house, both because its refined luxury had a pleasant
+      effect on him and because of the atmosphere of tender flattery that
+      unobtrusively surrounded him. But to-day everything in the house was
+      repulsive to him&mdash;everything: beginning with the doorkeeper, the
+      broad staircase, the flowers, the footman, the table decorations, up to
+      Missy herself, who to-day seemed unattractive and affected. Kolosoff&rsquo;s
+      self-assured, trivial tone of liberalism was unpleasant, as was also the
+      sensual, self-satisfied, bull-like appearance of old Korchagin, and the
+      French phrases of Katerina Alexeevna, the Slavophil. The constrained looks
+      of the governess and the student were unpleasant, too, but most unpleasant
+      of all was the pronoun <i>him</i> that Missy had used. Nekhludoff had long
+      been wavering between two ways of regarding Missy; sometimes he looked at
+      her as if by moonlight, and could see in her nothing but what was
+      beautiful, fresh, pretty, clever and natural; then suddenly, as if the
+      bright sun shone on her, he saw her defects and could not help seeing
+      them. This was such a day for him. To-day he saw all the wrinkles of her
+      face, knew which of her teeth were false, saw the way her hair was
+      crimped, the sharpness of her elbows, and, above all, how large her
+      thumb-nail was and how like her father&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tennis is a dull game,&rdquo; said Kolosoff; &ldquo;we used to play lapta when we
+      were children. That was much more amusing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, you never tried it; it&rsquo;s awfully interesting,&rdquo; said Missy,
+      laying, it seemed to Nekhludoff, a very affected stress on the word
+      &ldquo;awfully.&rdquo; Then a dispute arose in which Michael Sergeivitch, Katerina
+      Alexeevna and all the others took part, except the governess, the student
+      and the children, who sat silent and wearied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, these everlasting disputes!&rdquo; said old Korchagin, laughing, and he
+      pulled the napkin out of his waistcoat, noisily pushed back his chair,
+      which the footman instantly caught hold of, and left the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody rose after him, and went up to another table on which stood
+      glasses of scented water. They rinsed their mouths, then resumed the
+      conversation, interesting to no one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo; said Missy to Nekhludoff, calling for a confirmation
+      of the statement that nothing shows up a man&rsquo;s character like a game. She
+      noticed that preoccupied and, as it seemed to her, dissatisfied look which
+      she feared, and she wanted to find out what had caused it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, I can&rsquo;t tell; I have never thought about it,&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come to mamma?&rdquo; asked Missy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; he said, in a tone which plainly proved that he did not want
+      to go, and took out a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him in silence, with a questioning look, and he felt
+      ashamed. &ldquo;To come into a house and give the people the dumps,&rdquo; he thought
+      about himself; then, trying to be amiable, said that he would go with
+      pleasure if the princess would admit him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes! Mamma will be pleased. You may smoke there; and Ivan Ivanovitch
+      is also there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mistress of the house, Princess Sophia Vasilievna, was a recumbent
+      lady. It was the eighth year that, when visitors were present, she lay in
+      lace and ribbons, surrounded with velvet, gilding, ivory, bronze, lacquer
+      and flowers, never going out, and only, as she put it, receiving intimate
+      friends, i.e., those who according to her idea stood out from the common
+      herd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was admitted into the number of these friends because he was
+      considered clever, because his mother had been an intimate friend of the
+      family, and because it was desirable that Missy should marry him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sophia Vasilievna&rsquo;s room lay beyond the large and the small drawing-rooms.
+      In the large drawing-room, Missy, who was in front of Nekhludoff, stopped
+      resolutely, and taking hold of the back of a small green chair, faced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Missy was very anxious to get married, and as he was a suitable match and
+      she also liked him, she had accustomed herself to the thought that he
+      should be hers (not she his). To lose him would be very mortifying. She
+      now began talking to him in order to get him to explain his intentions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see something has happened,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Tell me, what is the matter
+      with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered the meeting in the law court, and frowned and blushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, something has happened,&rdquo; he said, wishing to be truthful; &ldquo;a very
+      unusual and serious event.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, then? Can you not tell me what it is?&rdquo; She was pursuing her
+      aim with that unconscious yet obstinate cunning often observable in the
+      mentally diseased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now. Please do not ask me to tell you. I have not yet had time fully
+      to consider it,&rdquo; and he blushed still more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you will not tell me?&rdquo; A muscle twitched in her face and she
+      pushed back the chair she was holding. &ldquo;Well then, come!&rdquo; She shook her
+      head as if to expel useless thoughts, and, faster than usual, went on in
+      front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fancied that her mouth was unnaturally compressed in order to keep back
+      the tears. He was ashamed of having hurt her, and yet he knew that the
+      least weakness on his part would mean disaster, i.e., would bind him to
+      her. And to-day he feared this more than anything, and silently followed
+      her to the princess&rsquo;s cabinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. MISSY&rsquo;S MOTHER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Princess Sophia Vasilievna, Missy&rsquo;s mother, had finished her very
+      elaborate and nourishing dinner. (She had it always alone, that no one
+      should see her performing this unpoetical function.) By her couch stood a
+      small table with her coffee, and she was smoking a pachitos. Princess
+      Sophia Vasilievna was a long, thin woman, with dark hair, large black eyes
+      and long teeth, and still pretended to be young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her intimacy with the doctor was being talked about. Nekhludoff had known
+      that for some time; but when he saw the doctor sitting by her couch, his
+      oily, glistening beard parted in the middle, he not only remembered the
+      rumours about them, but felt greatly disgusted. By the table, on a low,
+      soft, easy chair, next to Sophia Vasilievna, sat Kolosoff, stirring his
+      coffee. A glass of liqueur stood on the table. Missy came in with
+      Nekhludoff, but did not remain in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When mamma gets tired of you and drives you away, then come to me,&rdquo; she
+      said, turning to Kolosoff and Nekhludoff, speaking as if nothing had
+      occurred; then she went away, smiling merrily and stepping noiselessly on
+      the thick carpet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do, dear friend? Sit down and talk,&rdquo; said Princess Sophia
+      Vasilievna, with her affected but very naturally-acted smile, showing her
+      fine, long teeth&mdash;a splendid imitation of what her own had once been.
+      &ldquo;I hear that you have come from the Law Courts very much depressed. I
+      think it must be very trying to a person with a heart,&rdquo; she added in
+      French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is so,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;One often feels one&rsquo;s own de&mdash;one
+      feels one has no right to judge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Comme, c&rsquo;est vrai,&rdquo; she cried, as if struck by the truth of this remark.
+      She was in the habit of artfully flattering all those with whom she
+      conversed. &ldquo;Well, and what of your picture? It does interest me so. If I
+      were not such a sad invalid I should have been to see it long ago,&rdquo; she
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have quite given it up,&rdquo; Nekhludoff replied drily. The falseness of her
+      flattery seemed as evident to him to-day as her age, which she was trying
+      to conceal, and he could not put himself into the right state to behave
+      politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that <i>is</i> a pity! Why, he has a real talent for art; I have it
+      from Repin&rsquo;s own lips,&rdquo; she added, turning to Kolosoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why is it she is not ashamed of lying so?&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, and
+      frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had convinced herself that Nekhludoff was in a bad temper and
+      that one could not get him into an agreeable and clever conversation,
+      Sophia Vasilievna turned to Kolosoff, asking his opinion of a new play.
+      She asked it in a tone as if Kolosoff&rsquo;s opinion would decide all doubts,
+      and each word of this opinion be worthy of being immortalised. Kolosoff
+      found fault both with the play and its author, and that led him to express
+      his views on art. Princess Sophia Vasilievna, while trying at the same
+      time to defend the play, seemed impressed by the truth of his arguments,
+      either giving in at once, or at least modifying her opinion. Nekhludoff
+      looked and listened, but neither saw nor heard what was going on before
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listening now to Sophia Vasilievna, now to Kolosoff, Nekhludoff noticed
+      that neither he nor she cared anything about the play or each other, and
+      that if they talked it was only to gratify the physical desire to move the
+      muscles of the throat and tongue after having eaten; and that Kolosoff,
+      having drunk vodka, wine and liqueur, was a little tipsy. Not tipsy like
+      the peasants who drink seldom, but like people to whom drinking wine has
+      become a habit. He did not reel about or talk nonsense, but he was in a
+      state that was not normal; excited and self-satisfied. Nekhludoff also
+      noticed that during the conversation Princess Sophia Vasilievna kept
+      glancing uneasily at the window, through which a slanting ray of sunshine,
+      which might vividly light up her aged face, was beginning to creep up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How true,&rdquo; she said in reference to some remark of Kolosoff&rsquo;s, touching
+      the button of an electric bell by the side of her couch. The doctor rose,
+      and, like one who is at home, left the room without saying anything.
+      Sophia Vasilievna followed him with her eyes and continued the
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, Philip, draw these curtains,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the window,
+      when the handsome footman came in answer to the bell. &ldquo;No; whatever you
+      may say, there is some mysticism in him; without mysticism there can be no
+      poetry,&rdquo; she said, with one of her black eyes angrily following the
+      footman&rsquo;s movements as he was drawing the curtains. &ldquo;Without poetry,
+      mysticism is superstition; without mysticism, poetry is&mdash;prose,&rdquo; she
+      continued, with a sorrowful smile, still not losing sight of the footman
+      and the curtains. &ldquo;Philip, not that curtain; the one on the large window,&rdquo;
+       she exclaimed, in a suffering tone. Sophia Vasilievna was evidently
+      pitying herself for having to make the effort of saying these words; and,
+      to soothe her feelings, she raised to her lips a scented, smoking
+      cigarette with her jewel-bedecked fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The broad-chested, muscular, handsome Philip bowed slightly, as if begging
+      pardon; and stepping lightly across the carpet with his broad-calved,
+      strong, legs, obediently and silently went to the other window, and,
+      looking at the princess, carefully began to arrange the curtain so that
+      not a single ray dared fall on her. But again he did not satisfy her, and
+      again she had to interrupt the conversation about mysticism, and correct
+      in a martyred tone the unintelligent Philip, who was tormenting her so
+      pitilessly. For a moment a light flashed in Philip&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The devil take you! What do you want?&rsquo; was probably what he said to
+      himself,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, who had been observing all this scene. But
+      the strong, handsome Philip at once managed to conceal the signs of his
+      impatience, and went on quietly carrying out the orders of the worn, weak,
+      false Sophia Vasilievna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, there is a good deal of truth in Lombroso&rsquo;s teaching,&rdquo; said
+      Kolosoff, lolling back in the low chair and looking at Sophia Vasilievna
+      with sleepy eyes; &ldquo;but he over-stepped the mark. Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you? Do you believe in heredity?&rdquo; asked Sophia Vasilievna, turning to
+      Nekhludoff, whose silence annoyed her. &ldquo;In heredity?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;No, I
+      don&rsquo;t.&rdquo; At this moment his whole mind was taken up by strange images that
+      in some unaccountable way rose up in his imagination. By the side of this
+      strong and handsome Philip he seemed at this minute to see the nude figure
+      of Kolosoff as an artist&rsquo;s model; with his stomach like a melon, his bald
+      head, and his arms without muscle, like pestles. In the same dim way the
+      limbs of Sophia Vasilievna, now covered with silks and velvets, rose up in
+      his mind as they must be in reality; but this mental picture was too
+      horrid and he tried to drive it away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you know Missy is waiting for you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Go and find her. She
+      wants to play a new piece by Grieg to you; it is most interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did not mean to play anything; the woman is simply lying, for some
+      reason or other,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, rising and pressing Sophia
+      Vasilievna&rsquo;s transparent and bony, ringed hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katerina Alexeevna met him in the drawing-room, and at once began, in
+      French, as usual:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see the duties of a juryman act depressingly upon you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; pardon me, I am in low spirits to-day, and have no right to weary
+      others by my presence,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you in low spirits?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me not to speak about that,&rdquo; he said, looking round for his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember how you used to say that we must always tell the
+      truth? And what cruel truths you used to tell us all! Why do you not wish
+      to speak out now? Don&rsquo;t you remember, Missy?&rdquo; she said, turning to Missy,
+      who had just come in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were playing a game then,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, seriously; &ldquo;one may tell
+      the truth in a game, but in reality we are so bad&mdash;I mean I am so bad&mdash;that
+      I, at least, cannot tell the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do not correct yourself, but rather tell us why <i>we</i> are so
+      bad,&rdquo; said Katerina Alexeevna, playing with her words and pretending not
+      to notice how serious Nekhludoff was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing is worse than to confess to being in low spirits,&rdquo; said Missy. &ldquo;I
+      never do it, and therefore am always in good spirits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff felt as a horse must feel when it is being caressed to make it
+      submit to having the bit put in its mouth and be harnessed, and to-day he
+      felt less than ever inclined to draw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, are you coming into my room? We will try to cheer you up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He excused himself, saying he had to be at home, and began taking leave.
+      Missy kept his hand longer than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember that what is important to you is important to your friends,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;Are you coming tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly expect to,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff; and feeling ashamed, without
+      knowing whether for her or for himself, he blushed and went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it? <i>Comme cela m&rsquo;intrigue</i>,&rdquo; said Katerina Alexeevna. &ldquo;I
+      must find it out. I suppose it is some <i>affaire d&rsquo;amour propre; il est
+      tres susceptible, notre cher Mitia</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Plutot une affaire d&rsquo;amour sale</i>,&rdquo; Missy was going to say, but
+      stopped and looked down with a face from which all the light had gone&mdash;a
+      very different face from the one with which she had looked at him. She
+      would not mention to Katerina Alexeevna even, so vulgar a pun, but only
+      said, &ldquo;We all have our good and our bad days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible that he, too, will deceive?&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;after all that
+      has happened it would be very bad of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Missy had had to explain what she meant by &ldquo;after all that has
+      happened,&rdquo; she could have said nothing definite, and yet she knew that he
+      had not only excited her hopes but had almost given her a promise. No
+      definite words had passed between them&mdash;only looks and smiles and
+      hints; and yet she considered him as her own, and to lose him would be
+      very hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. THE AWAKENING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shameful and stupid, horrid and shameful!&rdquo; Nekhludoff kept saying to
+      himself, as he walked home along the familiar streets. The depression he
+      had felt whilst speaking to Missy would not leave him. He felt that,
+      looking at it externally, as it were, he was in the right, for he had
+      never said anything to her that could be considered binding, never made
+      her an offer; but he knew that in reality he had bound himself to her, had
+      promised to be hers. And yet to-day he felt with his whole being that he
+      could not marry her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shameful and horrid, horrid and shameful!&rdquo; he repeated to himself, with
+      reference not only to his relations with Missy but also to the rest.
+      &ldquo;Everything is horrid and shameful,&rdquo; he muttered, as he stepped into the
+      porch of his house. &ldquo;I am not going to have any supper,&rdquo; he said to his
+      manservant Corney, who followed him into the dining-room, where the cloth
+      was laid for supper and tea. &ldquo;You may go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said Corney, yet he did not go, but began clearing the supper
+      off the table. Nekhludoff looked at Corney with a feeling of ill-will. He
+      wished to be left alone, and it seemed to him that everybody was bothering
+      him in order to spite him. When Corney had gone away with the supper
+      things, Nekhludoff moved to the tea urn and was about to make himself some
+      tea, but hearing Agraphena Petrovna&rsquo;s footsteps, he went hurriedly into
+      the drawing-room, to avoid being seen by her, and shut the door after him.
+      In this drawing-room his mother had died three months before. On entering
+      the room, in which two lamps with reflectors were burning, one lighting up
+      his father&rsquo;s and the other his mother&rsquo;s portrait, he remembered what his
+      last relations with his mother had been. And they also seemed shameful and
+      horrid. He remembered how, during the latter period of her illness, he had
+      simply wished her to die. He had said to himself that he wished it for her
+      sake, that she might be released from her suffering, but in reality he
+      wished to be released from the sight of her sufferings for his own sake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Trying to recall a pleasant image of her, he went up to look at her
+      portrait, painted by a celebrated artist for 800 roubles. She was depicted
+      in a very low-necked black velvet dress. There was something very
+      revolting and blasphemous in this representation of his mother as a
+      half-nude beauty. It was all the more disgusting because three months ago,
+      in this very room, lay this same woman, dried up to a mummy. And he
+      remembered how a few days before her death she clasped his hand with her
+      bony, discoloured fingers, looked into his eyes, and said: &ldquo;Do not judge
+      me, Mitia, if I have not done what I should,&rdquo; and how the tears came into
+      her eyes, grown pale with suffering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, how horrid!&rdquo; he said to himself, looking up once more at the
+      half-naked woman, with the splendid marble shoulders and arms, and the
+      triumphant smile on her lips. &ldquo;Oh, how horrid!&rdquo; The bared shoulders of the
+      portrait reminded him of another, a young woman, whom he had seen exposed
+      in the same way a few days before. It was Missy, who had devised an excuse
+      for calling him into her room just as she was ready to go to a ball, so
+      that he should see her in her ball dress. It was with disgust that he
+      remembered her fine shoulders and arms. &ldquo;And that father of hers, with his
+      doubtful past and his cruelties, and the bel-esprit her mother, with her
+      doubtful reputation.&rdquo; All this disgusted him, and also made him feel
+      ashamed. &ldquo;Shameful and horrid; horrid and shameful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;freedom from all these false relations with the
+      Korchagins and Mary Vasilievna and the inheritance and from all the rest
+      must be got. Oh, to breathe freely, to go abroad, to Rome and work at my
+      picture!&rdquo; He remembered the doubts he had about his talent for art. &ldquo;Well,
+      never mind; only just to breathe freely. First Constantinople, then Rome.
+      Only just to get through with this jury business, and arrange with the
+      advocate first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly there arose in his mind an extremely vivid picture of a
+      prisoner with black, slightly-squinting eyes, and how she began to cry
+      when the last words of the prisoners had been heard; and he hurriedly put
+      out his cigarette, pressing it into the ash-pan, lit another, and began
+      pacing up and down the room. One after another the scenes he had lived
+      through with her rose in his mind. He recalled that last interview with
+      her. He remembered the white dress and blue sash, the early mass. &ldquo;Why, I
+      loved her, really loved her with a good, pure love, that night; I loved
+      her even before: yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the first
+      time and was writing my composition.&rdquo; And he remembered himself as he had
+      been then. A breath of that freshness, youth and fulness of life seemed to
+      touch him, and he grew painfully sad. The difference between what he had
+      been then and what he was now, was enormous&mdash;just as great, if not
+      greater than the difference between Katusha in church that night, and the
+      prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom they judged
+      this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable possibilities
+      lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught in the meshes of
+      a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of which he saw no means
+      of extricating himself even if he wished to, which he hardly did. He
+      remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he
+      had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and really had been
+      truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in lies: in the most dreadful of
+      lies&mdash;lies considered as the truth by all who surrounded him. And, as
+      far as he could see, there was no way out of these lies. He had sunk in
+      the mire, got used to it, indulged himself in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How was he to break off his relations with Mary Vasilievna and her husband
+      in such a way as to be able to look him and his children in the eyes? How
+      disentangle himself from Missy? How choose between the two opposites&mdash;the
+      recognition that holding land was unjust and the heritage from his mother?
+      How atone for his sin against Katusha? This last, at any rate, could not
+      be left as it was. He could not abandon a woman he had loved, and satisfy
+      himself by paying money to an advocate to save her from hard labour in
+      Siberia. She had not even deserved hard labour. Atone for a fault by
+      paying money? Had he not then, when he gave her the money, thought he was
+      atoning for his fault?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he clearly recalled to mind that moment when, having caught her up in
+      the passage, he thrust the money into her bib and ran away. &ldquo;Oh, that
+      money!&rdquo; he thought with the same horror and disgust he had then felt. &ldquo;Oh,
+      dear! oh, dear! how disgusting,&rdquo; he cried aloud as he had done then. &ldquo;Only
+      a scoundrel, a knave, could do such a thing. And I am that knave, that
+      scoundrel!&rdquo; He went on aloud: &ldquo;But is it possible?&rdquo;&mdash;he stopped and
+      stood still&mdash;&ldquo;is it possible that I am really a scoundrel? . . .
+      Well, who but I?&rdquo; he answered himself. &ldquo;And then, is this the only thing?&rdquo;
+       he went on, convicting himself. &ldquo;Was not my conduct towards Mary
+      Vasilievna and her husband base and disgusting? And my position with
+      regard to money? To use riches considered by me unlawful on the plea that
+      they are inherited from my mother? And the whole of my idle, detestable
+      life? And my conduct towards Katusha to crown all? Knave and scoundrel!
+      Let men judge me as they like, I can deceive them; but myself I cannot
+      deceive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, suddenly, he understood that the aversion he had lately, and
+      particularly to-day, felt for everybody&mdash;the Prince and Sophia
+      Vasilievna and Corney and Missy&mdash;was an aversion for himself. And,
+      strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was
+      something painful yet joyful and quieting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than once in Nekhludoff&rsquo;s life there had been what he called a
+      &ldquo;cleansing of the soul.&rdquo; By &ldquo;cleansing of the soul&rdquo; he meant a state of
+      mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life, a total
+      cessation of its activity, he began to clear out all the rubbish that had
+      accumulated in his soul, and was the cause of the cessation of the true
+      life. His soul needed cleansing as a watch does. After such an awakening
+      Nekhludoff always made some rules for himself which he meant to follow
+      forever after, wrote his diary, and began afresh a life which he hoped
+      never to change again. &ldquo;Turning over a new leaf,&rdquo; he called it to himself
+      in English. But each time the temptations of the world entrapped him, and
+      without noticing it he fell again, often lower than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus he had several times in his life raised and cleansed himself. The
+      first time this happened was during the summer he spent with his aunts;
+      that was his most vital and rapturous awakening, and its effects had
+      lasted some time. Another awakening was when he gave up civil service and
+      joined the army at war time, ready to sacrifice his life. But here the
+      choking-up process was soon accomplished. Then an awakening came when he
+      left the army and went abroad, devoting himself to art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time until this day a long period had elapsed without any
+      cleansing, and therefore the discord between the demands of his conscience
+      and the life he was leading was greater than it had ever been before. He
+      was horror-struck when he saw how great the divergence was. It was so
+      great and the defilement so complete that he despaired of the possibility
+      of getting cleansed. &ldquo;Have you not tried before to perfect yourself and
+      become better, and nothing has come of it?&rdquo; whispered the voice of the
+      tempter within. &ldquo;What is the use of trying any more? Are you the only one?&mdash;All
+      are alike, such is life,&rdquo; whispered the voice. But the free spiritual
+      being, which alone is true, alone powerful, alone eternal, had already
+      awakened in Nekhludoff, and he could not but believe it. Enormous though
+      the distance was between what he wished to be and what he was, nothing
+      appeared insurmountable to the newly-awakened spiritual being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any cost I will break this lie which binds me and confess everything,
+      and will tell everybody the truth, and act the truth,&rdquo; he said resolutely,
+      aloud. &ldquo;I shall tell Missy the truth, tell her I am a profligate and
+      cannot marry her, and have only uselessly upset her. I shall tell Mary
+      Vasilievna. . . Oh, there is nothing to tell her. I shall tell her husband
+      that I, scoundrel that I am, have been deceiving him. I shall dispose of
+      the inheritance in such a way as to acknowledge the truth. I shall tell
+      her, Katusha, that I am a scoundrel and have sinned towards her, and will
+      do all I can to ease her lot. Yes, I will see her, and will ask her to
+      forgive me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will beg her pardon, as children do.&rdquo; . . . He stopped&mdash;-&ldquo;will
+      marry her if necessary.&rdquo; He stopped again, folded his hands in front of
+      his breast as he used to do when a little child, lifted his eyes, and
+      said, addressing some one: &ldquo;Lord, help me, teach me, come enter within me
+      and purify me of all this abomination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He prayed, asking God to help him, to enter into him and cleanse him; and
+      what he was praying for had happened already: the God within him had
+      awakened his consciousness. He felt himself one with Him, and therefore
+      felt not only the freedom, fulness and joy of life, but all the power of
+      righteousness. All, all the best that a man could do he felt capable of
+      doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes filled with tears as he was saying all this to himself, good and
+      bad tears: good because they were tears of joy at the awakening of the
+      spiritual being within him, the being which had been asleep all these
+      years; and bad tears because they were tears of tenderness to himself at
+      his own goodness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt hot, and went to the window and opened it. The window opened into
+      a garden. It was a moonlit, quiet, fresh night; a vehicle rattled past,
+      and then all was still. The shadow of a tall poplar fell on the ground
+      just opposite the window, and all the intricate pattern of its bare
+      branches was clearly defined on the clean swept gravel. To the left the
+      roof of a coach-house shone white in the moonlight, in front the black
+      shadow of the garden wall was visible through the tangled branches of the
+      trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff gazed at the roof, the moonlit garden, and the shadows of the
+      poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How delightful, how delightful; oh, God, how delightful,&rdquo; he said,
+      meaning that which was going on in his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Maslova reached her cell only at six in the evening, tired and footsore,
+      having, unaccustomed as she was to walking, gone 10 miles on the stony
+      road that day. She was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence and
+      tormented by hunger. During the first interval of her trial, when the
+      soldiers were eating bread and hard-boiled eggs in her presence, her mouth
+      watered and she realised she was hungry, but considered it beneath her
+      dignity to beg of them. Three hours later the desire to eat had passed,
+      and she felt only weak. It was then she received the unexpected sentence.
+      At first she thought she had made a mistake; she could not imagine herself
+      as a convict in Siberia, and could not believe what she heard. But seeing
+      the quiet, business-like faces of judges and jury, who heard this news as
+      if it were perfectly natural and expected, she grew indignant, and
+      proclaimed loudly to the whole Court that she was not guilty. Finding that
+      her cry was also taken as something natural and expected, and feeling
+      incapable of altering matters, she was horror-struck and began to weep in
+      despair, knowing that she must submit to the cruel and surprising
+      injustice that had been done her. What astonished her most was that young
+      men&mdash;or, at any rate, not old men&mdash;the same men who always
+      looked so approvingly at her (one of them, the public prosecutor, she had
+      seen in quite a different humour) had condemned her. While she was sitting
+      in the prisoners&rsquo; room before the trial and during the intervals, she saw
+      these men looking in at the open door pretending they had to pass there on
+      some business, or enter the room and gaze on her with approval. And then,
+      for some unknown reason, these same men had condemned her to hard labour,
+      though she was innocent of the charge laid against her. At first she
+      cried, but then quieted down and sat perfectly stunned in the prisoners&rsquo; 
+      room, waiting to be led back. She wanted only two things now&mdash;tobacco
+      and strong drink. In this state Botchkova and Kartinkin found her when
+      they were led into the same room after being sentenced. Botchkova began at
+      once to scold her, and call her a &ldquo;convict.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! What have you gained? justified yourself, have you? What you have
+      deserved, that you&rsquo;ve got. Out in Siberia you&rsquo;ll give up your finery, no
+      fear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova sat with her hands inside her sleeves, hanging her head and
+      looking in front of her at the dirty floor without moving, only saying: &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t bother you, so don&rsquo;t you bother me. I don&rsquo;t bother you, do I?&rdquo; she
+      repeated this several times, and was silent again. She did brighten up a
+      little when Botchkova and Kartinkin were led away and an attendant brought
+      her three roubles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you Maslova?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Here you are; a lady sent it you,&rdquo; he said,
+      giving her the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lady&mdash;what lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just take it. I&rsquo;m not going to talk to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This money was sent by Kitaeva, the keeper of the house in which she used
+      to live. As she was leaving the court she turned to the usher with the
+      question whether she might give Maslova a little money. The usher said she
+      might. Having got permission, she removed the three-buttoned Swedish kid
+      glove from her plump, white hand, and from an elegant purse brought from
+      the back folds of her silk skirt took a pile of coupons, [in Russia
+      coupons cut off interest-bearing papers are often used as money] just cut
+      off from the interest-bearing papers which she had earned in her
+      establishment, chose one worth 2 roubles and 50 copecks, added two 20 and
+      one 10-copeck coins, and gave all this to the usher. The usher called an
+      attendant, and in his presence gave the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Belease to giff it accurately,&rdquo; said Carolina Albertovna Kitaeva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The attendant was hurt by her want of confidence, and that was why he
+      treated Maslova so brusquely. Maslova was glad of the money, because it
+      could give her the only thing she now desired. &ldquo;If I could but get
+      cigarettes and take a whiff!&rdquo; she said to herself, and all her thoughts
+      centred on the one desire to smoke and drink. She longed for spirits so
+      that she tasted them and felt the strength they would give her; and she
+      greedily breathed in the air when the fumes of tobacco reached her from
+      the door of a room that opened into the corridor. But she had to wait
+      long, for the secretary, who should have given the order for her to go,
+      forgot about the prisoners while talking and even disputing with one of
+      the advocates about the article forbidden by the censor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, about five o&rsquo;clock, she was allowed to go, and was led away
+      through the back door by her escort, the Nijni man and the Tchoovash.
+      Then, still within the entrance to the Law Courts, she gave them 50
+      copecks, asking them to get her two rolls and some cigarettes. The
+      Tchoovash laughed, took the money, and said, &ldquo;All right; I&rsquo;ll get &lsquo;em,&rdquo;
+       and really got her the rolls and the cigarettes and honestly returned the
+      change. She was not allowed to smoke on the way, and, with her craving
+      unsatisfied, she continued her way to the prison. When she was brought to
+      the gate of the prison, a hundred convicts who had arrived by rail were
+      being led in. The convicts, bearded, clean-shaven, old, young, Russians,
+      foreigners, some with their heads shaved and rattling with the chains on
+      their feet, filled the anteroom with dust, noise and an acid smell of
+      perspiration. Passing Maslova, all the convicts looked at her, and some
+      came up to her and brushed her as they passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, here&rsquo;s a wench&mdash;a fine one,&rdquo; said one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My respects to you, miss,&rdquo; said another, winking at her. One dark man
+      with a moustache, the rest of his face and the back of his head clean
+      shaved, rattling with his chains and catching her feet in them, sprang
+      near and embraced her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! don&rsquo;t you know your chum? Come, come; don&rsquo;t give yourself airs,&rdquo;
+       showing his teeth and his eyes glittering when she pushed him away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You rascal! what are you up to?&rdquo; shouted the inspector&rsquo;s assistant,
+      coming in from behind. The convict shrank back and jumped away. The
+      assistant assailed Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you here for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova was going to say she had been brought back from the Law Courts,
+      but she was so tired that she did not care to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has returned from the Law Courts, sir,&rdquo; said one of the soldiers,
+      coming forward with his fingers lifted to his cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, hand her over to the chief warder. I won&rsquo;t have this sort of
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sokoloff, take her in!&rdquo; shouted the assistant inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief warder came up, gave Maslova a slap on the shoulder, and making
+      a sign with his head for her to follow led her into the corridor of the
+      women&rsquo;s ward. There she was searched, and as nothing prohibited was found
+      on her (she had hidden her box of cigarettes inside a roll) she was led to
+      the cell she had left in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX. THE CELL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The cell in which Maslova was imprisoned was a large room 21 feet long and
+      10 feet broad; it had two windows and a large stove. Two-thirds of the
+      space were taken up by shelves used as beds. The planks they were made of
+      had warped and shrunk. Opposite the door hung a dark-coloured icon with a
+      wax candle sticking to it and a bunch of everlastings hanging down from
+      it. By the door to the right there was a dark spot on the floor on which
+      stood a stinking tub. The inspection had taken place and the women were
+      locked up for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The occupants of this room were 15 persons, including three children. It
+      was still quite light. Only two of the women were lying down: a
+      consumptive woman imprisoned for theft, and an idiot who spent most of her
+      time in sleep and who was arrested because she had no passport. The
+      consumptive woman was not asleep, but lay with wide open eyes, her cloak
+      folded under her head, trying to keep back the phlegm that irritated her
+      throat, and not to cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the other women, most of whom had nothing on but coarse brown
+      holland chemises, stood looking out of the window at the convicts down in
+      the yard, and some sat sewing. Among the latter was the old woman,
+      Korableva, who had seen Maslova off in the morning. She was a tall,
+      strong, gloomy-looking woman; her fair hair, which had begun to turn grey
+      on the temples, hung down in a short plait. She was sentenced to hard
+      labour in Siberia because she had killed her husband with an axe for
+      making up to their daughter. She was at the head of the women in the cell,
+      and found means of carrying on a trade in spirits with them. Beside her
+      sat another woman sewing a coarse canvas sack. This was the wife of a
+      railway watchman, [There are small watchmen&rsquo;s cottages at distances of
+      about one mile from each other along the Russian railways, and the
+      watchmen or their wives have to meet every train.] imprisoned for three
+      months because she did not come out with the flags to meet a train that
+      was passing, and an accident had occurred. She was a short, snub-nosed
+      woman, with small, black eyes; kind and talkative. The third of the women
+      who were sewing was Theodosia, a quiet young girl, white and rosy, very
+      pretty, with bright child&rsquo;s eyes, and long fair plaits which she wore
+      twisted round her head. She was in prison for attempting to poison her
+      husband. She had done this immediately after her wedding (she had been
+      given in marriage without her consent at the age of 16) because her
+      husband would give her no peace. But in the eight months during which she
+      had been let out on bail, she had not only made it up with her husband,
+      but come to love him, so that when her trial came they were heart and soul
+      to one another. Although her husband, her father-in-law, but especially
+      her mother-in-law, who had grown very fond of her, did all they could to
+      get her acquitted, she was sentenced to hard labour in Siberia. The kind,
+      merry, ever-smiling Theodosia had a place next Maslova&rsquo;s on the shelf bed,
+      and had grown so fond of her that she took it upon herself as a duty to
+      attend and wait on her. Two other women were sitting without any work at
+      the other end of the shelf bedstead. One was a woman of about 40, with a
+      pale, thin face, who once probably had been very handsome. She sat with
+      her baby at her thin, white breast. The crime she had committed was that
+      when a recruit was, according to the peasants&rsquo; view, unlawfully taken from
+      their village, and the people stopped the police officer and took the
+      recruit away from him, she (an aunt of the lad unlawfully taken) was the
+      first to catch hold of the bridle of the horse on which he was being
+      carried off. The other, who sat doing nothing, was a kindly, grey-haired
+      old woman, hunchbacked and with a flat bosom. She sat behind the stove on
+      the bedshelf, and pretended to catch a fat four-year-old boy, who ran
+      backwards and forwards in front of her, laughing gaily. This boy had only
+      a little shirt on and his hair was cut short. As he ran past the old woman
+      he kept repeating, &ldquo;There, haven&rsquo;t caught me!&rdquo; This old woman and her son
+      were accused of incendiarism. She bore her imprisonment with perfect
+      cheerfulness, but was concerned about her son, and chiefly about her &ldquo;old
+      man,&rdquo; who she feared would get into a terrible state with no one to wash
+      for him. Besides these seven women, there were four standing at one of the
+      open windows, holding on to the iron bars. They were making signs and
+      shouting to the convicts whom Maslova had met when returning to prison,
+      and who were now passing through the yard. One of these women was big and
+      heavy, with a flabby body, red hair, and freckled on her pale yellow face,
+      her hands, and her fat neck. She shouted something in a loud, raucous
+      voice, and laughed hoarsely. This woman was serving her term for theft.
+      Beside her stood an awkward, dark little woman, no bigger than a child of
+      ten, with a long waist and very short legs, a red, blotchy face, thick
+      lips which did not hide her long teeth, and eyes too far apart. She broke
+      by fits and starts into screeching laughter at what was going on in the
+      yard. She was to be tried for stealing and incendiarism. They called her
+      Khoroshavka. Behind her, in a very dirty grey chemise, stood a thin,
+      miserable-looking pregnant woman, who was to be tried for concealment of
+      theft. This woman stood silent, but kept smiling with pleasure and
+      approval at what was going on below. With these stood a peasant woman of
+      medium height, the mother of the boy who was playing with the old woman
+      and of a seven-year-old girl. These were in prison with her because she
+      had no one to leave them with. She was serving her term of imprisonment
+      for illicit sale of spirits. She stood a little further from the window
+      knitting a stocking, and though she listened to the other prisoners&rsquo; words
+      she shook her head disapprovingly, frowned, and closed her eyes. But her
+      seven-year-old daughter stood in her little chemise, her flaxen hair done
+      up in a little pigtail, her blue eyes fixed, and, holding the red-haired
+      woman by the skirt, attentively listened to the words of abuse that the
+      women and the convicts flung at each other, and repeated them softly, as
+      if learning them by heart. The twelfth prisoner, who paid no attention to
+      what was going on, was a very tall, stately girl, the daughter of a
+      deacon, who had drowned her baby in a well. She went about with bare feet,
+      wearing only a dirty chemise. The thick, short plait of her fair hair had
+      come undone and hung down dishevelled, and she paced up and down the free
+      space of the cell, not looking at any one, turning abruptly every time she
+      came up to the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI. THE PRISONERS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When the padlock rattled and the door opened to let Maslova into the cell,
+      all turned towards her. Even the deacon&rsquo;s daughter stopped for a moment
+      and looked at her with lifted brows before resuming her steady striding up
+      and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Korableva stuck her needle into the brown sacking and looked questioningly
+      at Maslova through her spectacles. &ldquo;Eh, eh, deary me, so you have come
+      back. And I felt sure they&rsquo;d acquit you. So you&rsquo;ve got it?&rdquo; She took off
+      her spectacles and put her work down beside her on the shelf bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here have I and the old lady been saying, &lsquo;Why, it may well be
+      they&rsquo;ll let her go free at once.&rsquo; Why, it happens, ducky, they&rsquo;ll even
+      give you a heap of money sometimes, that&rsquo;s sure,&rdquo; the watchman&rsquo;s wife
+      began, in her singing voice: &ldquo;Yes, we were wondering, &lsquo;Why&rsquo;s she so long?&rsquo; 
+      And now just see what it is. Well, our guessing was no use. The Lord
+      willed otherwise,&rdquo; she went on in musical tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible? Have they sentenced you?&rdquo; asked Theodosia, with concern,
+      looking at Maslova with her bright blue, child-like eyes; and her merry
+      young face changed as if she were going to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova did not answer, but went on to her place, the second from the end,
+      and sat down beside Korableva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you eaten anything?&rdquo; said Theodosia, rising and coming up to
+      Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova gave no reply, but putting the rolls on the bedstead, took off her
+      dusty cloak, the kerchief off her curly black head, and began pulling off
+      her shoes. The old woman who had been playing with the boy came up and
+      stood in front of Maslova. &ldquo;Tz, tz, tz,&rdquo; she clicked with her tongue,
+      shaking her head pityingly. The boy also came up with her, and, putting
+      out his upper lip, stared with wide open eyes at the roll Maslova had
+      brought. When Maslova saw the sympathetic faces of her fellow-prisoners,
+      her lips trembled and she felt inclined to cry, but she succeeded in
+      restraining herself until the old woman and the boy came up. When she
+      heard the kind, pitying clicking of the old woman&rsquo;s tongue, and met the
+      boy&rsquo;s serious eyes turned from the roll to her face, she could bear it no
+      longer; her face quivered and she burst into sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell you to insist on having a proper advocate?&rdquo; said Norableva.
+      &ldquo;Well, what is it? Exile?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova could not answer, but took from inside the roll a box of
+      cigarettes, on which was a picture of a lady with hair done up very high
+      and dress cut low in front, and passed the box to Korableva. Korableva
+      looked at it and shook her head, chiefly because see did not approve of
+      Maslova&rsquo;s putting her money to such bad use; but still she took out a
+      cigarette, lit it at the lamp, took a puff, and almost forced it into
+      Maslova&rsquo;s hand. Maslova, still crying, began greedily to inhale the
+      tobacco smoke. &ldquo;Penal servitude,&rdquo; she muttered, blowing out the smoke and
+      sobbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t they fear the Lord, the cursed soul-slayers?&rdquo; muttered Korableva,
+      &ldquo;sentencing the lass for nothing.&rdquo; At this moment the sound of loud,
+      coarse laughter came from the women who were still at the window. The
+      little girl also laughed, and her childish treble mixed with the hoarse
+      and screeching laughter of the others. One of the convicts outside had
+      done something that produced this effect on the onlookers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lawks! see the shaved hound, what he&rsquo;s doing,&rdquo; said the red-haired woman,
+      her whole fat body shaking with laughter; and leaning against the grating
+      she shouted meaning less obscene words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ugh, the fat fright&rsquo;s cackling,&rdquo; said Korableva, who disliked the
+      red-haired woman. Then, turning to Maslova again, she asked: &ldquo;How many
+      years?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four,&rdquo; said Maslova, and the tears ran down her cheeks in such profusion
+      that one fell on the cigarette. Maslova crumpled it up angrily and took
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the watchman&rsquo;s wife did not smoke she picked up the cigarette
+      Maslova had thrown away and began straightening it out, talking
+      unceasingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, now, ducky, so it&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Truth&rsquo;s gone to the dogs and
+      they do what they please, and here we were guessing that you&rsquo;d go free.
+      Norableva says, &lsquo;She&rsquo;ll go free.&rsquo; I say, &lsquo;No,&rsquo; say I. &lsquo;No, dear, my heart
+      tells me they&rsquo;ll give it her.&rsquo; And so it&rsquo;s turned out,&rdquo; she went on,
+      evidently listening with pleasure to her own voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women who had been standing by the window now also came up to Maslova,
+      the convicts who had amused them having gone away. The first to come up
+      were the woman imprisoned for illicit trade in spirits, and her little
+      girl. &ldquo;Why such a hard sentence?&rdquo; asked the woman, sitting down by Maslova
+      and knitting fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so hard? Because there&rsquo;s no money. That&rsquo;s why! Had there been money,
+      and had a good lawyer that&rsquo;s up to their tricks been hired, they&rsquo;d have
+      acquitted her, no fear,&rdquo; said Korableva. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s-his-name&mdash;that
+      hairy one with the long nose. He&rsquo;d bring you out clean from pitch, mum, he
+      would. Ah, if we&rsquo;d only had him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him, indeed,&rdquo; said Khoroshavka. &ldquo;Why, he won&rsquo;t spit at you for less than
+      a thousand roubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems you&rsquo;ve been born under an unlucky star,&rdquo; interrupted the old woman
+      who was imprisoned for incendiarism. &ldquo;Only think, to entice the lad&rsquo;s wife
+      and lock him himself up to feed vermin, and me, too, in my old days&mdash;&rdquo;
+       she began to retell her story for the hundredth time. &ldquo;If it isn&rsquo;t the
+      beggar&rsquo;s staff it&rsquo;s the prison. Yes, the beggar&rsquo;s staff and the prison
+      don&rsquo;t wait for an invitation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, it seems that&rsquo;s the way with all of them,&rdquo; said the spirit trader;
+      and after looking at her little girl she put down her knitting, and,
+      drawing the child between her knees, began to search her head with deft
+      fingers. &ldquo;Why do you sell spirits?&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;Why? but what&rsquo;s one to
+      feed the children on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words brought back to Maslova&rsquo;s mind her craving for drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little vodka,&rdquo; she said to Korableva, wiping the tears with her sleeve
+      and sobbing less frequently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, fork out,&rdquo; said Korableva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII. A PRISON QUARREL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Maslova got the money, which she had also hidden in a roll, and passed the
+      coupon to Korableva. Korableva accepted it, though she could not read,
+      trusting to Khoroshavka, who knew everything, and who said that the slip
+      of paper was worth 2 roubles 50 copecks, then climbed up to the
+      ventilator, where she had hidden a small flask of vodka. Seeing this, the
+      women whose places were further off went away. Meanwhile Maslova shook the
+      dust out of her cloak and kerchief, got up on the bedstead, and began
+      eating a roll.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I kept your tea for you,&rdquo; said Theodosia, getting down from the shelf a
+      mug and a tin teapot wrapped in a rag, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;m afraid it is quite cold.&rdquo;
+       The liquid was quite cold and tasted more of tin than of tea, yet Maslova
+      filled the mug and began drinking it with her roll. &ldquo;Finashka, here you
+      are,&rdquo; she said, breaking off a bit of the roll and giving it to the boy,
+      who stood looking at her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Korableva handed the flask of vodka and a mug to Maslova, who
+      offered some to her and to Khoroshavka. These prisoners were considered
+      the aristocracy of the cell because they had some money, and shared what
+      they possessed with the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments Maslova brightened up and related merrily what had
+      happened at the court, and what had struck her most, i.e., how all the men
+      had followed her wherever she went. In the court they all looked at her,
+      she said, and kept coming into the prisoners&rsquo; room while she was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the soldiers even says, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s all to look at you that they come.&rsquo; 
+      One would come in, &lsquo;Where is such a paper?&rsquo; or something, but I see it is
+      not the paper he wants; he just devours me with his eyes,&rdquo; she said,
+      shaking her head. &ldquo;Regular artists.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s so,&rdquo; said the watchman&rsquo;s wife, and ran on in her musical
+      strain, &ldquo;they&rsquo;re like flies after sugar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here, too,&rdquo; Maslova interrupted her, &ldquo;the same thing. They can do
+      without anything else. But the likes of them will go without bread sooner
+      than miss that! Hardly had they brought me back when in comes a gang from
+      the railway. They pestered me so, I did not know how to rid myself of
+      them. Thanks to the assistant, he turned them off. One bothered so, I
+      hardly got away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s he like?&rdquo; asked Khoroshevka.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dark, with moustaches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him&mdash;who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Schegloff; him as has just gone by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s he, this Schegloff?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, she don&rsquo;t know Schegloff? Why, he ran twice from Siberia. Now
+      they&rsquo;ve got him, but he&rsquo;ll run away. The warders themselves are afraid of
+      him,&rdquo; said Khoroshavka, who managed to exchange notes with the male
+      prisoners and knew all that went on in the prison. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll run away, that&rsquo;s
+      flat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he does go away you and I&rsquo;ll have to stay,&rdquo; said Korableva, turning to
+      Maslova, &ldquo;but you&rsquo;d better tell us now what the advocate says about
+      petitioning. Now&rsquo;s the time to hand it in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova answered that she knew nothing about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment the red-haired woman came up to the &ldquo;aristocracy&rdquo; with both
+      freckled hands in her thick hair, scratching her head with her nails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you all about it, Katerina,&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;First and foremost,
+      you&rsquo;ll have to write down you&rsquo;re dissatisfied with the sentence, then give
+      notice to the Procureur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want here?&rdquo; said Korableva angrily; &ldquo;smell the vodka, do you?
+      Your chatter&rsquo;s not wanted. We know what to do without your advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one&rsquo;s speaking to you; what do you stick your nose in for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s vodka you want; that&rsquo;s why you come wriggling yourself in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, offer her some,&rdquo; said Maslova, always ready to share anything she
+      possessed with anybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll offer her something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on then,&rdquo; said the red-haired one, advancing towards Korableva. &ldquo;Ah!
+      think I&rsquo;m afraid of such as you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Convict fright!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s her as says it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Slut!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? A slut? Convict! Murderess!&rdquo; screamed the red-haired one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away, I tell you,&rdquo; said Korableva gloomily, but the red-haired one
+      came nearer and Korableva struck her in the chest. The red-haired woman
+      seemed only to have waited for this, and with a sudden movement caught
+      hold of Korableva&rsquo;s hair with one hand and with the other struck her in
+      the face. Korableva seized this hand, and Maslova and Khoroshavka caught
+      the red-haired woman by her arms, trying to pull her away, but she let go
+      the old woman&rsquo;s hair with her hand only to twist it round her fist.
+      Korableva, with her head bent to one side, was dealing out blows with one
+      arm and trying to catch the red-haired woman&rsquo;s hand with her teeth, while
+      the rest of the women crowded round, screaming and trying to separate the
+      fighters; even the consumptive one came up and stood coughing and watching
+      the fight. The children cried and huddled together. The noise brought the
+      woman warder and a jailer. The fighting women were separated; and
+      Korableva, taking out the bits of torn hair from her head, and the
+      red-haired one, holding her torn chemise together over her yellow breast,
+      began loudly to complain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, it&rsquo;s all the vodka. Wait a bit; I&rsquo;ll tell the inspector tomorrow.
+      He&rsquo;ll give it you. Can&rsquo;t I smell it? Mind, get it all out of the way, or
+      it will be the worse for you,&rdquo; said the warder. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve no time to settle
+      your disputes. Get to your places and be quiet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But quiet was not soon re-established. For a long time the women went on
+      disputing and explaining to one another whose fault it all was. At last
+      the warder and the jailer left the cell, the women grew quieter and began
+      going to bed, and the old woman went to the icon and commenced praying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The two jailbirds have met,&rdquo; the red-haired woman suddenly called out in
+      a hoarse voice from the other end of the shelf beds, accompanying every
+      word with frightfully vile abuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mind you don&rsquo;t get it again,&rdquo; Korableva replied, also adding words of
+      abuse, and both were quiet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had I not been stopped I&rsquo;d have pulled your damned eyes out,&rdquo; again began
+      the red-haired one, and an answer of the same kind followed from
+      Korableva. Then again a short interval and more abuse. But the intervals
+      became longer and longer, as when a thunder-cloud is passing, and at last
+      all was quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All were in bed, some began to snore; and only the old woman, who always
+      prayed a long time, went on bowing before the icon and the deacon&rsquo;s
+      daughter, who had got up after the warder left, was pacing up and down the
+      room again. Maslova kept thinking that she was now a convict condemned to
+      hard labour, and had twice been reminded of this&mdash;once by Botchkova
+      and once by the red-haired woman&mdash;and she could not reconcile herself
+      to the thought. Korableva, who lay next to her, turned over in her bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now,&rdquo; said Maslova in a low voice; &ldquo;who would have thought it? See
+      what others do and get nothing for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, girl. People manage to live in Siberia. As for you, you&rsquo;ll
+      not be lost there either,&rdquo; Korableva said, trying to comfort her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I&rsquo;ll not be lost; still it is hard. It&rsquo;s not such a fate I want&mdash;I,
+      who am used to a comfortable life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, one can&rsquo;t go against God,&rdquo; said Korableva, with a sigh. &ldquo;One can&rsquo;t,
+      my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, granny. Still, it&rsquo;s hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were silent for a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear that baggage?&rdquo; whispered Korableva, drawing Maslova&rsquo;s
+      attention to a strange sound proceeding from the other end of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sound was the smothered sobbing of the red-haired woman. The
+      red-haired woman was crying because she had been abused and had not got
+      any of the vodka she wanted so badly; also because she remembered how all
+      her life she had been abused, mocked at, offended, beaten. Remembering
+      this, she pitied herself, and, thinking no one heard her, began crying as
+      children cry, sniffing with her nose and swallowing the salt tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry for her,&rdquo; said Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course one is sorry,&rdquo; said Korableva, &ldquo;but she shouldn&rsquo;t come
+      bothering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII. THE LEAVEN AT WORK&mdash;NEKHLUDOFF&rsquo;S DOMESTIC CHANGES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Nekhludoff awoke, conscious that something had happened
+      to him, and even before he had remembered what it was he knew it to be
+      something important and good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katusha&mdash;the trial!&rdquo; Yes, he must stop lying and tell the whole
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By a strange coincidence on that very morning he received the
+      long-expected letter from Mary Vasilievna, the wife of the Marechal de
+      Noblesse, the very letter he particularly needed. She gave him full
+      freedom, and wished him happiness in his intended marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marriage!&rdquo; he repeated with irony. &ldquo;How far I am from all that at
+      present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he remembered the plans he had formed the day before, to tell the
+      husband everything, to make a clean breast of it, and express his
+      readiness to give him any kind of satisfaction. But this morning this did
+      not seem so easy as the day before. And, then, also, why make a man
+      unhappy by telling him what he does not know? Yes, if he came and asked,
+      he would tell him all, but to go purposely and tell&mdash;no! that was
+      unnecessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And telling the whole truth to Missy seemed just as difficult this
+      morning. Again, he could not begin to speak without offence. As in many
+      worldly affairs, something had to remain unexpressed. Only one thing he
+      decided on, i.e., not to visit there, and to tell the truth if asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in connection with Katusha, nothing was to remain unspoken. &ldquo;I shall
+      go to the prison and shall tell her every thing, and ask her to forgive
+      me. And if need be&mdash;yes, if need be, I shall marry her,&rdquo; he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This idea, that he was ready to sacrifice all on moral grounds, and marry
+      her, again made him feel very tender towards himself. Concerning money
+      matters he resolved this morning to arrange them in accord with his
+      conviction, that the holding of landed property was unlawful. Even if he
+      should not be strong enough to give up everything, he would still do what
+      he could, not deceiving himself or others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was long since he had met the coming day with so much energy. When
+      Agraphena Petrovna came in, he told her, with more firmness than he
+      thought himself capable of, that he no longer needed this lodging nor her
+      services. There had been a tacit understanding that he was keeping up so
+      large and expensive an establishment because he was thinking of getting
+      married. The giving up of the house had, therefore, a special meaning.
+      Agraphena Petrovna looked at him in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you very much, Agraphena Petrovna, for all your care for me, but
+      I no longer require so large a house nor so many servants. If you wish to
+      help me, be so good as to settle about the things, put them away as it
+      used to be done during mamma&rsquo;s life, and when Natasha comes she will see
+      to everything.&rdquo; Natasha was Nekhludoff&rsquo;s sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agraphena Petrovna shook her head. &ldquo;See about the things? Why, they&rsquo;ll be
+      required again,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they won&rsquo;t, Agraphena Petrovna; I assure you they won&rsquo;t be required,&rdquo;
+       said Nekhludoff, in answer to what the shaking of her head had expressed.
+      &ldquo;Please tell Corney also that I shall pay him two months&rsquo; wages, but shall
+      have no further need of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a pity, Dmitri Ivanovitch, that you should think of doing this,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;Well, supposing you go abroad, still you&rsquo;ll require a place of
+      residence again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken in your thoughts, Agraphena Petrovna; I am not going
+      abroad. If I go on a journey, it will be to quite a different place.&rdquo; He
+      suddenly blushed very red. &ldquo;Yes, I must tell her,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;no hiding;
+      everybody must be told.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very strange and important thing happened to me yesterday. Do you
+      remember my Aunt Mary Ivanovna&rsquo;s Katusha?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes. Why, I taught her how to sew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this Katusha was tried in the Court and I was on the jury.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord! What a pity!&rdquo; cried Agraphena Petrovna. &ldquo;What was she being
+      tried for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murder; and it is I have done it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now this is very strange; how could you do it all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am the cause of it all; and it is this that has altered all my
+      plans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What difference can it make to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This difference: that I, being the cause of her getting on to that path,
+      must do all I can to help her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just according to your own good pleasure; you are not
+      particularly in fault there. It happens to every one, and if one&rsquo;s
+      reasonable, it all gets smoothed over and forgotten,&rdquo; she said, seriously
+      and severely. &ldquo;Why should you place it to your account? There&rsquo;s no need. I
+      had already heard before that she had strayed from the right path. Well,
+      whose fault is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine! that&rsquo;s why I want to put it right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hard to put right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my business. But if you are thinking about yourself, then I will
+      tell you that, as mamma expressed the wish&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not thinking about myself. I have been so bountifully treated by the
+      dear defunct, that I desire nothing. Lisenka&rdquo; (her married niece) &ldquo;has
+      been inviting me, and I shall go to her when I am not wanted any longer.
+      Only it is a pity you should take this so to heart; it happens to
+      everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do not think so. And I still beg that you will help me let this
+      lodging and put away the things. And please do not be angry with me. I am
+      very, very grateful to you for all you have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, strangely, from the moment Nekhludoff realised that it was he who was
+      so bad and disgusting to himself, others were no longer disgusting to him;
+      on the contrary, he felt a kindly respect for Agraphena Petrovna, and for
+      Corney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would have liked to go and confess to Corney also, but Corney&rsquo;s manner
+      was so insinuatingly deferential that he had not the resolution to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the way to the Law Courts, passing along the same streets with the same
+      isvostchik as the day before, he was surprised what a different being he
+      felt himself to be. The marriage with Missy, which only yesterday seemed
+      so probable, appeared quite impossible now. The day before he felt it was
+      for him to choose, and had no doubts that she would be happy to marry him;
+      to-day he felt himself unworthy not only of marrying, but even of being
+      intimate with her. &ldquo;If she only knew what I am, nothing would induce her
+      to receive me. And only yesterday I was finding fault with her because she
+      flirted with N&mdash;-. Anyhow, even if she consented to marry me, could I
+      be, I won&rsquo;t say happy, but at peace, knowing that the other was here in
+      prison, and would to-day or to-morrow he taken to Siberia with a gang of
+      other prisoners, while I accepted congratulations and made calls with my
+      young wife; or while I count the votes at the meetings, for and against
+      the motion brought forward by the rural inspection, etc., together with
+      the Marechal de Noblesse, whom I abominably deceive, and afterwards make
+      appointments with his wife (how abominable!) or while I continue to work
+      at my picture, which will certainly never get finished? Besides, I have no
+      business to waste time on such things. I can do nothing of the kind now,&rdquo;
+       he continued to himself, rejoicing at the change he felt within himself.
+      &ldquo;The first thing now is to see the advocate and find out his decision, and
+      then . . . then go and see her and tell her everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when he pictured to himself how he would see her, and tell her all,
+      confess his sin to her, and tell her that he would do all in his power to
+      atone for his sin, he was touched at his own goodness, and the tears came
+      to his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV. THE ABSURDITY OF LAW&mdash;REFLECTIONS OF A JURYMAN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On coming into the Law Courts Nekhludoff met the usher of yesterday, who
+      to-day seemed to him much to be pitied, in the corridor, and asked him
+      where those prisoners who had been sentenced were kept, and to whom one
+      had to apply for permission to visit them. The usher told him that the
+      condemned prisoners were kept in different places, and that, until they
+      received their sentence in its final form, the permission to visit them
+      depended on the president. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come and call you myself, and take you to
+      the president after the session. The president is not even here at
+      present. After the session! And now please come in; we are going to
+      commence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thanked the usher for his kindness, and went into the jurymen&rsquo;s
+      room. As he was approaching the room, the other jurymen were just leaving
+      it to go into the court. The merchant had again partaken of a little
+      refreshment, and was as merry as the day before, and greeted Nekhludoff
+      like an old friend. And to-day Peter Gerasimovitch did not arouse any
+      unpleasant feelings in Nekhludoff by his familiarity and his loud
+      laughter. Nekhludoff would have liked to tell all the jurymen about his
+      relations to yesterday&rsquo;s prisoner. &ldquo;By rights,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;I ought to
+      have got up yesterday during the trial and disclosed my guilt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He entered the court with the other jurymen, and witnessed the same
+      procedure as the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The judges are coming,&rdquo; was again proclaimed, and again three men, with
+      embroidered collars, ascended the platform, and there was the same
+      settling of the jury on the high-backed chairs, the same gendarmes, the
+      same portraits, the same priest, and Nekhludoff felt that, though he knew
+      what he ought to do, he could not interrupt all this solemnity. The
+      preparations for the trials were just the same as the day before,
+      excepting that the swearing in of the jury and the president&rsquo;s address to
+      them were omitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The case before the Court this day was one of burglary. The prisoner,
+      guarded by two gendarmes with naked swords, was a thin, narrow-chested lad
+      of 20, with a bloodless, sallow face, dressed in a grey cloak. He sat
+      alone in the prisoner&rsquo;s dock. This boy was accused of having, together
+      with a companion, broken the lock of a shed and stolen several old mats
+      valued at 3 roubles [the rouble is worth a little over two shillings, and
+      contains 100 copecks] and 67 copecks. According to the indictment, a
+      policeman had stopped this boy as he was passing with his companion, who
+      was carrying the mats on his shoulder. The boy and his companion confessed
+      at once, and were both imprisoned. The boy&rsquo;s companion, a locksmith, died
+      in prison, and so the boy was being tried alone. The old mats were lying
+      on the table as the objects of material evidence. The business was
+      conducted just in the same manner as the day before, with the whole
+      armoury of evidence, proofs, witnesses, swearing in, questions, experts,
+      and cross-examinations. In answer to every question put to him by the
+      president, the prosecutor, or the advocate, the policeman (one of the
+      witnesses) in variably ejected the words: &ldquo;just so,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t tell.&rdquo; Yet,
+      in spite of his being stupefied, and rendered a mere machine by military
+      discipline, his reluctance to speak about the arrest of this prisoner was
+      evident. Another witness, an old house proprietor, and owner of the mats,
+      evidently a rich old man, when asked whether the mats were his,
+      reluctantly identified them as such. When the public prosecutor asked him
+      what he meant to do with these mats, what use they were to him, he got
+      angry, and answered: &ldquo;The devil take those mats; I don&rsquo;t want them at all.
+      Had I known there would be all this bother about them I should not have
+      gone looking for them, but would rather have added a ten-rouble note or
+      two to them, only not to be dragged here and pestered with questions. I
+      have spent a lot on isvostchiks. Besides, I am not well. I have been
+      suffering from rheumatism for the last seven years.&rdquo; It was thus the
+      witness spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The accused himself confessed everything, and looking round stupidly, like
+      an animal that is caught, related how it had all happened. Still the
+      public prosecutor, drawing up his shoulders as he had done the day before,
+      asked subtle questions calculated to catch a cunning criminal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his speech he proved that the theft had been committed from a
+      dwelling-place, and a lock had been broken; and that the boy, therefore,
+      deserved a heavy punishment. The advocate appointed by the Court proved
+      that the theft was not committed from a dwelling-place, and that, though
+      the crime was a serious one, the prisoner was not so very dangerous to
+      society as the prosecutor stated. The president assumed the role of
+      absolute neutrality in the same way as he had done on the previous day,
+      and impressed on the jury facts which they all knew and could not help
+      knowing. Then came an interval, just as the day before, and they smoked;
+      and again the usher called out &ldquo;The judges are coming,&rdquo; and in the same
+      way the two gendarmes sat trying to keep awake and threatening the
+      prisoner with their naked weapons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The proceedings showed that this boy was apprenticed by his father at a
+      tobacco factory, where he remained five years. This year he had been
+      discharged by the owner after a strike, and, having lost his place, he
+      wandered about the town without any work, drinking all he possessed. In a
+      traktir [cheap restaurant] he met another like himself, who had lost his
+      place before the prisoner had, a locksmith by trade and a drunkard. One
+      night, those two, both drunk, broke the lock of a shed and took the first
+      thing they happened to lay hands on. They confessed all and were put in
+      prison, where the locksmith died while awaiting the trial. The boy was now
+      being tried as a dangerous creature, from whom society must be protected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as dangerous a creature as yesterday&rsquo;s culprit,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff,
+      listening to all that was going on before him. &ldquo;They are dangerous, and we
+      who judge them? I, a rake, an adulterer, a deceiver. We are not dangerous.
+      But, even supposing that this boy is the most dangerous of all that are
+      here in the court, what should be done from a common-sense point of view
+      when he has been caught? It is clear that he is not an exceptional
+      evil-doer, but a most ordinary boy; every one sees it&mdash;and that he
+      has become what he is simply because he got into circumstances that create
+      such characters, and, therefore, to prevent such a boy from going wrong
+      the circumstances that create these unfortunate beings must be done away
+      with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do we do? We seize one such lad who happens to get caught,
+      knowing well that there are thousands like him whom we have not caught,
+      and send him to prison, where idleness, or most unwholesome, useless
+      labour is forced on him, in company of others weakened and ensnared by the
+      lives they have led. And then we send him, at the public expense, from the
+      Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government, in company with the most depraved of
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we do nothing to destroy the conditions in which people like these
+      are produced; on the contrary, we support the establishments where they
+      are formed. These establishments are well known: factories, mills,
+      workshops, public-houses, gin-shops, brothels. And we do not destroy these
+      places, but, looking at them as necessary, we support and regulate them.
+      We educate in this way not one, but millions of people, and then catch one
+      of them and imagine that we have done something, that we have guarded
+      ourselves, and nothing more can be expected of us. Have we not sent him
+      from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government?&rdquo; Thus thought Nekhludoff with
+      unusual clearness and vividness, sitting in his high-backed chair next to
+      the colonel, and listening to the different intonations of the advocates&rsquo;,
+      prosecutor&rsquo;s, and president&rsquo;s voices, and looking at their self-confident
+      gestures. &ldquo;And how much and what hard effort this pretence requires,&rdquo;
+       continued Nekhludoff in his mind, glancing round the enormous room, the
+      portraits, lamps, armchairs, uniforms, the thick walls and large windows;
+      and picturing to himself the tremendous size of the building, and the
+      still more ponderous dimensions of the whole of this organisation, with
+      its army of officials, scribes, watchmen, messengers, not only in this
+      place, but all over Russia, who receive wages for carrying on this comedy
+      which no one needs. &ldquo;Supposing we spent one-hundredth of these efforts
+      helping these castaways, whom we now only regard as hands and bodies,
+      required by us for our own peace and comfort. Had some one chanced to take
+      pity on him and given some help at the time when poverty made them send
+      him to town, it might have been sufficient,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, looking
+      at the boy&rsquo;s piteous face. &ldquo;Or even later, when, after 12 hours&rsquo; work at
+      the factory, he was going to the public-house, led away by his companions,
+      had some one then come and said, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t go, Vania; it is not right,&rsquo; he
+      would not have gone, nor got into bad ways, and would not have done any
+      wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But no; no one who would have taken pity on him came across this
+      apprentice in the years he lived like a poor little animal in the town,
+      and with his hair cut close so as not to breed vermin, and ran errands for
+      the workmen. No, all he heard and saw, from the older workmen and his
+      companions, since he came to live in town, was that he who cheats, drinks,
+      swears, who gives another a thrashing, who goes on the loose, is a fine
+      fellow. Ill, his constitution undermined by unhealthy labour, drink, and
+      debauchery&mdash;bewildered as in a dream, knocking aimlessly about town,
+      he gets into some sort of a shed, and takes from there some old mats,
+      which nobody needs&mdash;and here we, all of us educated people, rich or
+      comfortably off, meet together, dressed in good clothes and fine uniforms,
+      in a splendid apartment, to mock this unfortunate brother of ours whom we
+      ourselves have ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrible! It is difficult to say whether the cruelty or the absurdity is
+      greater, but the one and the other seem to reach their climax.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thought all this, no longer listening to what was going on, and
+      he was horror-struck by that which was being revealed to him. He could not
+      understand why he had not been able to see all this before, and why others
+      were unable to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXV. THE PROCUREUR&mdash;NEKHLUDOFF REFUSES TO SERVE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      During an interval Nekhludoff got up and went out into the corridor, with
+      the intention of not returning to the court. Let them do what they liked
+      with him, he could take no more part in this awful and horrid tomfoolery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having inquired where the Procureur&rsquo;s cabinet was he went straight to him.
+      The attendant did not wish to let him in, saying that the Procureur was
+      busy, but Nekhludoff paid no heed and went to the door, where he was met
+      by an official. He asked to be announced to the Procureur, saying he was
+      on the jury and had a very important communication to make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His title and good clothes were of assistance to him. The official
+      announced him to the Procureur, and Nekhludoff was let in. The Procureur
+      met him standing, evidently annoyed at the persistence with which
+      Nekhludoff demanded admittance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you want?&rdquo; the Procureur asked, severely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am on the jury; my name is Nekhludoff, and it is absolutely necessary
+      for me to see the prisoner Maslova,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, quickly and
+      resolutely, blushing, and feeling that he was taking a step which would
+      have a decisive influence on his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Procureur was a short, dark man, with short, grizzly hair, quick,
+      sparkling eyes, and a thick beard cut close on his projecting lower jaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maslova? Yes, of course, I know. She was accused of poisoning,&rdquo; the
+      Procureur said, quietly. &ldquo;But why do you want to see her?&rdquo; And then, as if
+      wishing to tone down his question, he added, &ldquo;I cannot give you the
+      permission without knowing why you require it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I require it for a particularly important reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said the Procureur, and, lifting his eyes, looked attentively at
+      Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Has her case been heard or not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was tried yesterday, and unjustly sentenced; she is innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes? If she was sentenced only yesterday,&rdquo; went on the Procureur, paying
+      no attention to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s statement concerning Maslova&rsquo;s innocence,
+      &ldquo;she must still be in the preliminary detention prison until the sentence
+      is delivered in its final form. Visiting is allowed there only on certain
+      days; I should advise you to inquire there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must see her as soon as possible,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, his jaw
+      trembling as he felt the decisive moment approaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why must you?&rdquo; said the Procureur, lifting his brows with some agitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I betrayed her and brought her to the condition which exposed her
+      to this accusation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, I cannot see what it has to do with visiting her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This: that whether I succeed or not in getting the sentence changed I
+      want to follow her, and&mdash;marry her,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, touched to
+      tears by his own conduct, and at the same time pleased to see the effect
+      he produced on the Procureur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really! Dear me!&rdquo; said the Procureur. &ldquo;This is certainly a very
+      exceptional case. I believe you are a member of the Krasnoporsk rural
+      administration?&rdquo; he asked, as if he remembered having heard before of this
+      Nekhludoff, who was now making so strange a declaration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, but I do not think that has anything to do with my
+      request,&rdquo; answered Nekhludoff, flushing angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; said the Procureur, with a scarcely perceptible smile and
+      not in the least abashed; &ldquo;only your wish is so extraordinary and so out
+      of the common.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well; but can I get the permission?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The permission? Yes, I will give you an order of admittance directly.
+      Take a seat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went up to the table, sat down, and began to write. &ldquo;Please sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff continued to stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having written an order of admittance, and handed it to Nekhludoff, the
+      Procureur looked curiously at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must also state that I can no longer take part in the sessions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will have to lay valid reasons before the Court, as you, of
+      course, know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My reasons are that I consider all judging not only useless, but
+      immoral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the Procureur, with the same scarcely perceptible smile, as if
+      to show that this kind of declaration was well known to him and belonged
+      to the amusing sort. &ldquo;Yes, but you will certainly understand that I as
+      Procureur, can not agree with you on this point. Therefore, I should
+      advise you to apply to the Court, which will consider your declaration,
+      and find it valid or not valid, and in the latter case will impose a fine.
+      Apply, then, to the Court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have made my declaration, and shall apply nowhere else,&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      said, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, good-afternoon,&rdquo; said the Procureur, bowing his head,
+      evidently anxious to be rid of this strange visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was that you had here?&rdquo; asked one of the members of the Court, as he
+      entered, just after Nekhludoff left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nekhludoff, you know; the same that used to make all sorts of strange
+      statements at the Krasnoporsk rural meetings. Just fancy! He is on the
+      jury, and among the prisoners there is a woman or girl sentenced to penal
+      servitude, whom he says he betrayed, and now he wants to marry her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what he told me. And in such a strange state of excitement!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is something abnormal in the young men of to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but he is not so very young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But how tiresome your famous Ivoshenka was. He carries the day by
+      wearying one out. He talked and talked without end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that kind of people should be simply stopped, or they will become
+      real obstructionists.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI. NEKHLUDOFF ENDEAVOURS TO VISIT MASLOVA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      From the Procureur Nekhludoff went straight to the preliminary detention
+      prison. However, no Maslova was to be found there, and the inspector
+      explained to Nekhludoff that she would probably be in the old temporary
+      prison. Nekhludoff went there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, Katerina Maslova was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The distance between the two prisons was enormous, and Nekhludoff only
+      reached the old prison towards evening. He was going up to the door of the
+      large, gloomy building, but the sentinel stopped him and rang. A warder
+      came in answer to the bell. Nekhludoff showed him his order of admittance,
+      but the warder said he could not let him in without the inspector&rsquo;s
+      permission. Nekhludoff went to see the inspector. As he was going up the
+      stairs he heard distant sounds of some complicated bravura, played on the
+      piano. When a cross servant girl, with a bandaged eye, opened the door to
+      him, those sounds seemed to escape from the room and to strike his car. It
+      was a rhapsody of Liszt&rsquo;s, that everybody was tired of, splendidly played
+      but only to one point. When that point was reached the same thing was
+      repeated. Nekhludoff asked the bandaged maid whether the inspector was in.
+      She answered that he was not in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he return soon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rhapsody again stopped and recommenced loudly and brilliantly again up
+      to the same charmed point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go and ask,&rdquo; and the servant went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him he is not in and won&rsquo;t be to-day; he is out visiting. What do
+      they come bothering for?&rdquo; came the sound of a woman&rsquo;s voice from behind
+      the door, and again the rhapsody rattled on and stopped, and the sound of
+      a chair pushed back was heard. It was plain the irritated pianist meant to
+      rebuke the tiresome visitor, who had come at an untimely hour. &ldquo;Papa is
+      not in,&rdquo; a pale girl with crimped hair said, crossly, coming out into the
+      ante-room, but, seeing a young man in a good coat, she softened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, please. . . . What is it you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to see a prisoner in this prison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A political one, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not a political one. I have a permission from the Procureur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know, and papa is out; but come in, please,&rdquo; she said,
+      again, &ldquo;or else speak to the assistant. He is in the office at present;
+      apply there. What is your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, without answering her question, and went
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was not yet closed after him when the same lively tones
+      recommenced. In the courtyard Nekhludoff met an officer with bristly
+      moustaches, and asked for the assistant-inspector. It was the assistant
+      himself. He looked at the order of admittance, but said that he could not
+      decide to let him in with a pass for the preliminary prison. Besides, it
+      was too late. &ldquo;Please to come again to-morrow. To morrow, at 10, everybody
+      is allowed to go in. Come then, and the inspector himself will be at home.
+      Then you can have the interview either in the common room or, if the
+      inspector allows it, in the office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so Nekhludoff did not succeed in getting an interview that day, and
+      returned home. As he went along the streets, excited at the idea of
+      meeting her, he no longer thought about the Law Courts, but recalled his
+      conversations with the Procureur and the inspector&rsquo;s assistant. The fact
+      that he had been seeking an interview with her, and had told the
+      Procureur, and had been in two prisons, so excited him that it was long
+      before he could calm down. When he got home he at once fetched out his
+      diary, that had long remained untouched, read a few sentences out of it,
+      and then wrote as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For two years I have not written anything in my diary, and thought I
+      never should return to this childishness. Yet it is not childishness, but
+      converse with my own self, with this real divine self which lives in every
+      man. All this time that I slept there was no one for me to converse with.
+      I was awakened by an extraordinary event on the 28th of April, in the Law
+      Court, when I was on the jury. I saw her in the prisoners&rsquo; dock, the
+      Katusha betrayed by me, in a prisoner&rsquo;s cloak, condemned to penal
+      servitude through a strange mistake, and my own fault. I have just been to
+      the Procureur&rsquo;s and to the prison, but I was not admitted. I have resolved
+      to do all I can to see her, to confess to her, and to atone for my sin,
+      even by a marriage. God help me. My soul is at peace and I am full of
+      joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII. MASLOVA RECALLS THE PAST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That night Maslova lay awake a long time with her eyes open looking at the
+      door, in front of which the deacon&rsquo;s daughter kept passing. She was
+      thinking that nothing would induce her to go to the island of Sakhalin and
+      marry a convict, but would arrange matters somehow with one of the prison
+      officials, the secretary, a warder, or even a warder&rsquo;s assistant. &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t
+      they all given that way? Only I must not get thin, or else I am lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought of how the advocate had looked at her, and also the president,
+      and of the men she met, and those who came in on purpose at the court. She
+      recollected how her companion, Bertha, who came to see her in prison, had
+      told her about the student whom she had &ldquo;loved&rdquo; while she was with
+      Kitaeva, and who had inquired about her, and pitied her very much. She
+      recalled many to mind, only not Nekhludoff. She never brought back to mind
+      the days of her childhood and youth, and her love to Nekhludoff. That
+      would have been too painful. These memories lay untouched somewhere deep
+      in her soul; she had forgotten him, and never recalled and never even
+      dreamt of him. To-day, in the court, she did not recognise him, not only
+      because when she last saw him he was in uniform, without a beard, and had
+      only a small moustache and thick, curly, though short hair, and now was
+      bald and bearded, but because she never thought about him. She had buried
+      his memory on that terrible dark night when he, returning from the army,
+      had passed by on the railway without stopping to call on his aunts.
+      Katusha then knew her condition. Up to that night she did not consider the
+      child that lay beneath her heart a burden. But on that night everything
+      changed, and the child became nothing but a weight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His aunts had expected Nekhludoff, had asked him to come and see them in
+      passing, but he had telegraphed that he could not come, as he had to be in
+      Petersburg at an appointed time. When Katusha heard this she made up her
+      mind to go to the station and see him. The train was to pass by at two
+      o&rsquo;clock in the night. Katusha having helped the old ladies to bed, and
+      persuaded a little girl, the cook&rsquo;s daughter, Mashka, to come with her,
+      put on a pair of old boots, threw a shawl over her head, gathered up her
+      dress, and ran to the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a warm, rainy, and windy autumn night. The rain now pelted down in
+      warm, heavy drops, now stopped again. It was too dark to see the path
+      across the field, and in the wood it was pitch black, so that although
+      Katusha knew the way well, she got off the path, and got to the little
+      station where the train stopped for three minutes, not before, as she had
+      hoped, but after the second bell had been rung. Hurrying up the platform,
+      Katusha saw him at once at the windows of a first-class carriage. Two
+      officers sat opposite each other on the velvet-covered seats, playing
+      cards. This carriage was very brightly lit up; on the little table between
+      the seats stood two thick, dripping candles. He sat in his closefitting
+      breeches on the arm of the seat, leaning against the back, and laughed. As
+      soon as she recognised him she knocked at the carriage window with her
+      benumbed hand, but at that moment the last bell rang, and the train first
+      gave a backward jerk, and then gradually the carriages began to move
+      forward. One of the players rose with the cards in his hand, and looked
+      out. She knocked again, and pressed her face to the window, but the
+      carriage moved on, and she went alongside looking in. The officer tried to
+      lower the window, but could not. Nekhludoff pushed him aside and began
+      lowering it himself. The train went faster, so that she had to walk
+      quickly. The train went on still faster and the window opened. The guard
+      pushed her aside, and jumped in. Katusha ran on, along the wet boards of
+      the platform, and when she came to the end she could hardly stop herself
+      from falling as she ran down the steps of the platform. She was running by
+      the side of the railway, though the first-class carriage had long passed
+      her, and the second-class carriages were gliding by faster, and at last
+      the third-class carriages still faster. But she ran on, and when the last
+      carriage with the lamps at the back had gone by, she had already reached
+      the tank which fed the engines, and was unsheltered from the wind, which
+      was blowing her shawl about and making her skirt cling round her legs. The
+      shawl flew off her head, but still she ran on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katerina Michaelovna, you&rsquo;ve lost your shawl!&rdquo; screamed the little girl,
+      who was trying to keep up with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katusha stopped, threw back her head, and catching hold of it with both
+      hands sobbed aloud. &ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; she screamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is sitting in a velvet arm-chair and joking and drinking, in a
+      brightly lit carriage, and I, out here in the mud, in the darkness, in the
+      wind and the rain, am standing and weeping,&rdquo; she thought to herself; and
+      sat down on the ground, sobbing so loud that the little girl got
+      frightened, and put her arms round her, wet as she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come home, dear,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When a train passes&mdash;then under a carriage, and there will be an
+      end,&rdquo; Katusha was thinking, without heeding the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she made up her mind to do it, when, as it always happens, when a
+      moment of quiet follows great excitement, he, the child&mdash;his child&mdash;made
+      himself known within her. Suddenly all that a moment before had been
+      tormenting her, so that it had seemed impossible to live, all her
+      bitterness towards him, and the wish to revenge herself, even by dying,
+      passed away; she grew quieter, got up, put the shawl on her head, and went
+      home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wet, muddy, and quite exhausted, she returned, and from that day the
+      change which brought her where she now was began to operate in her soul.
+      Beginning from that dreadful night, she ceased believing in God and in
+      goodness. She had herself believed in God, and believed that other people
+      also believed in Him; but after that night she became convinced that no
+      one believed, and that all that was said about God and His laws was
+      deception and untruth. He whom she loved, and who had loved her&mdash;yes,
+      she knew that&mdash;had thrown her away; had abused her love. Yet he was
+      the best of all the people she knew. All the rest were still worse. All
+      that afterwards happened to her strengthened her in this belief at every
+      step. His aunts, the pious old ladies, turned her out when she could no
+      longer serve them as she used to. And of all those she met, the women used
+      her as a means of getting money, the men, from the old police officer down
+      to the warders of the prison, looked at her as on an object for pleasure.
+      And no one in the world cared for aught but pleasure. In this belief the
+      old author with whom she had come together in the second year of her life
+      of independence had strengthened her. He had told her outright that it was
+      this that constituted the happiness of life, and he called it poetical and
+      aesthetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody lived for himself only, for his pleasure, and all the talk
+      concerning God and righteousness was deception. And if sometimes doubts
+      arose in her mind and she wondered why everything was so ill-arranged in
+      the world that all hurt each other, and made each other suffer, she
+      thought it best not to dwell on it, and if she felt melancholy she could
+      smoke, or, better still, drink, and it would pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVIII. SUNDAY IN PRISON&mdash;PREPARING FOR MASS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On Sunday morning at five o&rsquo;clock, when a whistle sounded in the corridor
+      of the women&rsquo;s ward of the prison, Korableva, who was already awake,
+      called Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear! life again,&rdquo; thought Maslova, with horror, involuntarily
+      breathing in the air that had become terribly noisome towards the morning.
+      She wished to fall asleep again, to enter into the region of oblivion, but
+      the habit of fear overcame sleepiness, and she sat up and looked round,
+      drawing her feet under her. The women had all got up; only the elder
+      children were still asleep. The spirit-trader was carefully drawing a
+      cloak from under the children, so as not to wake them. The watchman&rsquo;s wife
+      was hanging up the rags to dry that served the baby as swaddling clothes,
+      while the baby was screaming desperately in Theodosia&rsquo;s arms, who was
+      trying to quiet it. The consumptive woman was coughing with her hands
+      pressed to her chest, while the blood rushed to her face, and she sighed
+      loudly, almost screaming, in the intervals of coughing. The fat,
+      red-haired woman was lying on her back, with knees drawn up, and loudly
+      relating a dream. The old woman accused of incendiarism was standing in
+      front of the image, crossing herself and bowing, and repeating the same
+      words over and over again. The deacon&rsquo;s daughter sat on the bedstead,
+      looking before her, with a dull, sleepy face. Khoroshavka was twisting her
+      black, oily, coarse hair round her fingers. The sound of slipshod feet was
+      heard in the passage, and the door opened to let in two convicts, dressed
+      in jackets and grey trousers that did not reach to their ankles. With
+      serious, cross faces they lifted the stinking tub and carried it out of
+      the cell. The women went out to the taps in the corridor to wash. There
+      the red-haired woman again began a quarrel with a woman from another cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it the solitary cell you want?&rdquo; shouted an old jailer, slapping the
+      red-haired woman on her bare, fat back, so that it sounded through the
+      corridor. &ldquo;You be quiet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lawks! the old one&rsquo;s playful,&rdquo; said the woman, taking his action for a
+      caress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, be quick; get ready for the mass.&rdquo; Maslova had hardly time to
+      do her hair and dress when the inspector came with his assistants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out for inspection,&rdquo; cried a jailer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some more prisoners came out of other cells and stood in two rows along
+      the corridor; each woman had to place her hand on the shoulder of the
+      woman in front of her. They were all counted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the inspection the woman warder led the prisoners to church. Maslova
+      and Theodosia were in the middle of a column of over a hundred women, who
+      had come out of different cells. All were dressed in white skirts, white
+      jackets, and wore white kerchiefs on their heads, except a few who had
+      their own coloured clothes on. These were wives who, with their children,
+      were following their convict husbands to Siberia. The whole flight of
+      stairs was filled by the procession. The patter of softly-shod feet
+      mingled with the voices and now and then a laugh. When turning, on the
+      landing, Maslova saw her enemy, Botchkova, in front, and pointed out her
+      angry face to Theodosia. At the bottom of the stairs the women stopped
+      talking. Bowing and crossing themselves, they entered the empty church,
+      which glistened with gilding. Crowding and pushing one another, they took
+      their places on the right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the women came the men condemned to banishment, those serving their
+      term in the prison, and those exiled by their Communes; and, coughing
+      loudly, they took their stand, crowding the left side and the middle of
+      the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one side of the gallery above stood the men sentenced to penal
+      servitude in Siberia, who had been let into the church before the others.
+      Each of them had half his head shaved, and their presence was indicated by
+      the clanking of the chains on their feet. On the other side of the gallery
+      stood those in preliminary confinement, without chains, their heads not
+      shaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prison church had been rebuilt and ornamented by a rich merchant, who
+      spent several tens of thousands of roubles on it, and it glittered with
+      gay colours and gold. For a time there was silence in the church, and only
+      coughing, blowing of noses, the crying of babies, and now and then the
+      rattling of chains, was heard. But at last the convicts that stood in the
+      middle moved, pressed against each other, leaving a passage in the centre
+      of the church, down which the prison inspector passed to take his place in
+      front of every one in the nave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIX. THE PRISON CHURCH&mdash;BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The service began.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It consisted of the following. The priest, having dressed in a strange and
+      very inconvenient garb, made of gold cloth, cut and arranged little bits
+      of bread on a saucer, and then put them into a cup with wine, repeating at
+      the same time different names and prayers. Meanwhile the deacon first read
+      Slavonic prayers, difficult to understand in themselves, and rendered
+      still more incomprehensible by being read very fast, and then sang them
+      turn and turn about with the convicts. The contents of the prayers were
+      chiefly the desire for the welfare of the Emperor and his family. These
+      petitions were repeated many times, separately and together with other
+      prayers, the people kneeling. Besides this, several verses from the Acts
+      of the Apostles were read by the deacon in a peculiarly strained voice,
+      which made it impossible to understand what he read, and then the priest
+      read very distinctly a part of the Gospel according to St. Mark, in which
+      it said that Christ, having risen from the dead before flying up to heaven
+      to sit down at His Father&rsquo;s right hand, first showed Himself to Mary
+      Magdalene, out of whom He had driven seven devils, and then to eleven of
+      His disciples, and ordered them to preach the Gospel to the whole
+      creation, and the priest added that if any one did not believe this he
+      would perish, but he that believed it and was baptised should be saved,
+      and should besides drive out devils and cure people by laying his hands on
+      them, should talk in strange tongues, should take up serpents, and if he
+      drank poison should not die, but remain well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The essence of the service consisted in the supposition that the bits cut
+      up by the priest and put by him into the wine, when manipulated and prayed
+      over in a certain way, turned into the flesh and blood of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These manipulations consisted in the priest&rsquo;s regularly lifting and
+      holding up his arms, though hampered by the gold cloth sack he had on,
+      then, sinking on to his knees and kissing the table and all that was on
+      it, but chiefly in his taking a cloth by two of its corners and waving it
+      regularly and softly over the silver saucer and golden cup. It was
+      supposed that, at this point, the bread and the wine turned into flesh and
+      blood; therefore, this part of the service was performed with the greatest
+      solemnity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, to the blessed, most pure, and most holy Mother of God,&rdquo; the priest
+      cried from the golden partition which divided part of the church from the
+      rest, and the choir began solemnly to sing that it was very right to
+      glorify the Virgin Mary, who had borne Christ without losing her
+      virginity, and was therefore worthy of greater honour than some kind of
+      cherubim, and greater glory than some kind of seraphim. After this the
+      transformation was considered accomplished, and the priest having taken
+      the napkin off the saucer, cut the middle bit of bread in four, and put it
+      into the wine, and then into his mouth. He was supposed to have eaten a
+      bit of God&rsquo;s flesh and swallowed a little of His blood. Then the priest
+      drew a curtain, opened the middle door in the partition, and, taking the
+      gold cup in his hands, came out of the door, inviting those who wished to
+      do so also to come and eat some of God&rsquo;s flesh and blood that was
+      contained in the cup. A few children appeared to wish to do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having asked the children their names, the priest carefully took out
+      of the cup, with a spoon, and shoved a bit of bread soaked in wine deep
+      into the mouth of each child in turn, and the deacon, while wiping the
+      children&rsquo;s mouths, sang, in a merry voice, that the children were eating
+      the flesh and drinking the blood of God. After this the priest carried the
+      cup back behind the partition, and there drank all the remaining blood and
+      ate up all the bits of flesh, and after having carefully sucked his
+      moustaches and wiped his mouth, he stepped briskly from behind the
+      partition, the soles of his calfskin boots creaking. The principal part of
+      this Christian service was now finished, but the priest, wishing to
+      comfort the unfortunate prisoners, added to the ordinary service another.
+      This consisted of his going up to the gilt hammered-out image (with black
+      face and hands) supposed to represent the very God he had been eating,
+      illuminated by a dozen wax candles, and proceeding, in a strange,
+      discordant voice, to hum or sing the following words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jesu sweetest, glorified of the Apostles, Jesu lauded by the martyrs,
+      almighty Monarch, save me, Jesu my Saviour. Jesu, most beautiful, have
+      mercy on him who cries to Thee, Saviour Jesu. Born of prayer Jesu, all thy
+      saints, all thy prophets, save and find them worthy of the joys of heaven.
+      Jesu, lover of men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he stopped, drew breath, crossed himself, bowed to the ground, and
+      every one did the same&mdash;the inspector, the warders, the prisoners;
+      and from above the clinking of the chains sounded more unintermittently.
+      Then he continued: &ldquo;Of angels the Creator and Lord of powers, Jesu most
+      wonderful, the angels&rsquo; amazement, Jesu most powerful, of our forefathers
+      the Redeemer. Jesu sweetest, of patriarchs the praise. Jesu most glorious,
+      of kings the strength. Jesu most good, of prophets the fulfilment. Jesu
+      most amazing, of martyrs the strength. Jesu most humble, of monks the joy.
+      Jesu most merciful, of priests the sweetness. Jesu most charitable, of the
+      fasting the continence. Jesu most sweet, of the just the joy. Jesu most
+      pure, of the celibates the chastity. Jesu before all ages of sinners the
+      salvation. Jesu, son of God, have mercy on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every time he repeated the word &ldquo;Jesu&rdquo; his voice became more and more
+      wheezy. At last he came to a stop, and holding up his silk-lined cassock,
+      and kneeling down on one knee, he stooped down to the ground and the choir
+      began to sing, repeating the words, &ldquo;Jesu, Son of God, have mercy on me,&rdquo;
+       and the convicts fell down and rose again, shaking back the hair that was
+      left on their heads, and rattling with the chains that were bruising their
+      thin ankles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This continued for a long time. First came the glorification, which ended
+      with the words, &ldquo;Have mercy on me.&rdquo; Then more glorifications, ending with
+      &ldquo;Alleluia!&rdquo; And the convicts made the sign of the cross, and bowed, first
+      at each sentence, then after every two and then after three, and all were
+      very glad when the glorification ended, and the priest shut the book with
+      a sigh of relief and retired behind the partition. One last act remained.
+      The priest took a large, gilt cross, with enamel medallions at the ends,
+      from a table, and came out into the centre of the church with it. First
+      the inspector came up and kissed the cross, then the jailers, then the
+      convicts, pushing and abusing each other in whispers. The priest, talking
+      to the inspector, pushed the cross and his hand now against the mouths and
+      now against the noses of the convicts, who were trying to kiss both the
+      cross and the hand of the priest. And thus ended the Christian service,
+      intended for the comfort and the teaching of these strayed brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XL. THE HUSKS OF RELIGION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And none of those present, from the inspector down to Maslova, seemed
+      conscious of the fact that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeated such
+      a great number of times, and whom he praised with all these curious
+      expressions, had forbidden the very things that were being done there;
+      that He had prohibited not only this meaningless much-speaking and the
+      blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine, but had also, in the
+      clearest words, forbidden men to call other men their master, and to pray
+      in temples; and had ordered that every one should pray in solitude, had
+      forbidden to erect temples, saying that He had come to destroy them, and
+      that one should worship, not in a temple, but in spirit and in truth; and,
+      above all, that He had forbidden not only to judge, to imprison, to
+      torment, to execute men, as was being done here, but had prohibited any
+      kind of violence, saying that He had come to give freedom to the captives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one present seemed conscious that all that was going on here was the
+      greatest blasphemy and a supreme mockery of that same Christ in whose name
+      it was being done. No one seemed to realise that the gilt cross with the
+      enamel medallions at the ends, which the priest held out to the people to
+      be kissed, was nothing but the emblem of that gallows on which Christ had
+      been executed for denouncing just what was going on here. That these
+      priests, who imagined they were eating and drinking the body and blood of
+      Christ in the form of bread and wine, did in reality eat and drink His
+      flesh and His blood, but not as wine and bits of bread, but by ensnaring
+      &ldquo;these little ones&rdquo; with whom He identified Himself, by depriving them of
+      the greatest blessings and submitting them to most cruel torments, and by
+      hiding from men the tidings of great joy which He had brought. That
+      thought did not enter into the mind of any one present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest did his part with a quiet conscience, because he was brought up
+      from childhood to consider that the only true faith was the faith which
+      had been held by all the holy men of olden times and was still held by the
+      Church, and demanded by the State authorities. He did not believe that the
+      bread turned into flesh, that it was useful for the soul to repeat so many
+      words, or that he had actually swallowed a bit of God. No one could
+      believe this, but he believed that one ought to hold this faith. What
+      strengthened him most in this faith was the fact that, for fulfilling the
+      demands of this faith, he had for the last 15 years been able to draw an
+      income, which enabled him to keep his family, send his son to a gymnasium
+      and his daughter to a school for the daughters of the clergy. The deacon
+      believed in the same manner, and even more firmly than the priest, for he
+      had forgotten the substance of the dogmas of this faith, and knew only
+      that the prayers for the dead, the masses, with and without the
+      acathistus, all had a definite price, which real Christians readily paid,
+      and, therefore, he called out his &ldquo;have mercy, have mercy,&rdquo; very
+      willingly, and read and said what was appointed, with the same quiet
+      certainty of its being necessary to do so with which other men sell
+      faggots, flour, or potatoes. The prison inspector and the warders, though
+      they had never understood or gone into the meaning of these dogmas and of
+      all that went on in church, believed that they must believe, because the
+      higher authorities and the Tsar himself believed in it. Besides, though
+      faintly (and themselves unable to explain why), they felt that this faith
+      defended their cruel occupations. If this faith did not exist it would
+      have been more difficult, perhaps impossible, for them to use all their
+      powers to torment people, as they were now doing, with a quiet conscience.
+      The inspector was such a kind-hearted man that he could not have lived as
+      he was now living unsupported by his faith. Therefore, he stood
+      motionless, bowed and crossed himself zealously, tried to feel touched
+      when the song about the cherubims was being sung, and when the children
+      received communion he lifted one of them, and held him up to the priest
+      with his own hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great majority of the prisoners believed that there lay a mystic power
+      in these gilt images, these vestments, candles, cups, crosses, and this
+      repetition of incomprehensible words, &ldquo;Jesu sweetest&rdquo; and &ldquo;have mercy&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      power through which might be obtained much convenience in this and in the
+      future life. Only a few clearly saw the deception that was practised on
+      the people who adhered to this faith, and laughed at it in their hearts;
+      but the majority, having made several attempts to get the conveniences
+      they desired, by means of prayers, masses, and candles, and not having got
+      them (their prayers remaining unanswered), were each of them convinced
+      that their want of success was accidental, and that this organisation,
+      approved by the educated and by archbishops, is very important and
+      necessary, if not for this, at any rate for the next life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova also believed in this way. She felt, like the rest, a mixed
+      sensation of piety and dulness. She stood at first in a crowd behind a
+      railing, so that she could see no one but her companions; but when those
+      to receive communion moved on, she and Theodosia stepped to the front, and
+      they saw the inspector, and, behind him, standing among the warders, a
+      little peasant, with a very light beard and fair hair. This was
+      Theodosia&rsquo;s husband, and he was gazing with fixed eyes at his wife. During
+      the acathistus Maslova occupied herself in scrutinising him and talking to
+      Theodosia in whispers, and bowed and made the sign of the cross only when
+      every one else did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLI. VISITING DAY&mdash;THE MEN&rsquo;S WARD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff left home early. A peasant from the country was still driving
+      along the side street and calling out in a voice peculiar to his trade,
+      &ldquo;Milk! milk! milk!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The first warm spring rain had fallen the day before, and now wherever the
+      ground was not paved the grass shone green. The birch trees in the gardens
+      looked as if they were strewn with green fluff, the wild cherry and the
+      poplars unrolled their long, balmy buds, and in shops and dwelling-houses
+      the double window-frames were being removed and the windows cleaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Tolkoochi [literally, jostling market, where second-hand clothes
+      and all sorts of cheap goods are sold] market, which Nekhludoff had to
+      pass on his way, a dense crowd was surging along the row of booths, and
+      tattered men walked about selling top-boots, which they carried under
+      their arms, and renovated trousers and waistcoats, which hung over their
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men in clean coats and shining boots, liberated from the factories, it
+      being Sunday, and women with bright silk kerchiefs on their heads and
+      cloth jackets trimmed with jet, were already thronging at the door of the
+      traktir. Policemen, with yellow cords to their uniforms and carrying
+      pistols, were on duty, looking out for some disorder which might distract
+      the ennui that oppressed them. On the paths of the boulevards and on the
+      newly-revived grass, children and dogs ran about, playing, and the nurses
+      sat merrily chattering on the benches. Along the streets, still fresh and
+      damp on the shady side, but dry in the middle, heavy carts rumbled
+      unceasingly, cabs rattled and tramcars passed ringing by. The air vibrated
+      with the pealing and clanging of church bells, that were calling the
+      people to attend to a service like that which was now being conducted in
+      the prison. And the people, dressed in their Sunday best, were passing on
+      their way to their different parish churches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The isvostchik did not drive Nekhludoff up to the prison itself, but to
+      the last turning that led to the prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several persons&mdash;men and women&mdash;most of them carrying small
+      bundles, stood at this turning, about 100 steps from the prison. To the
+      right there were several low wooden buildings; to the left, a two-storeyed
+      house with a signboard. The huge brick building, the prison proper, was
+      just in front, and the visitors were not allowed to come up to it. A
+      sentinel was pacing up and down in front of it, and shouted at any one who
+      tried to pass him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the gate of the wooden buildings, to the right, opposite the sentinel,
+      sat a warder on a bench, dressed in uniform, with gold cords, a notebook
+      in his hands. The visitors came up to him, and named the persons they
+      wanted to see, and he put the names down. Nekhludoff also went up, and
+      named Katerina Maslova. The warder wrote down the name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;don&rsquo;t they admit us yet?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The service is going on. When the mass is over, you&rsquo;ll be admitted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff stepped aside from the waiting crowd. A man in tattered
+      clothes, crumpled hat, with bare feet and red stripes all over his face,
+      detached himself from the crowd, and turned towards the prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, where are you going?&rdquo; shouted the sentinel with the gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you hold your row,&rdquo; answered the tramp, not in the least abashed by
+      the sentinel&rsquo;s words, and turned back. &ldquo;Well, if you&rsquo;ll not let me in,
+      I&rsquo;ll wait. But, no! Must needs shout, as if he were a general.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd laughed approvingly. The visitors were, for the greater part,
+      badly-dressed people; some were ragged, but there were also some
+      respectable-looking men and women. Next to Nekhludoff stood a
+      clean-shaven, stout, and red-cheeked man, holding a bundle, apparently
+      containing under-garments. This was the doorkeeper of a bank; he had come
+      to see his brother, who was arrested for forgery. The good-natured fellow
+      told Nekhludoff the whole story of his life, and was going to question him
+      in turn, when their attention was aroused by a student and a veiled lady,
+      who drove up in a trap, with rubber tyres, drawn by a large thoroughbred
+      horse. The student was holding a large bundle. He came up to Nekhludoff,
+      and asked if and how he could give the rolls he had brought in alms to the
+      prisoners. His fiancee wished it (this lady was his fiancee), and her
+      parents had advised them to take some rolls to the prisoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I myself am here for the first time,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, &ldquo;and don&rsquo;t know;
+      but I think you had better ask this man,&rdquo; and he pointed to the warder
+      with the gold cords and the book, sitting on the right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they were speaking, the large iron door with a window in it opened, and
+      an officer in uniform, followed by another warder, stepped out. The warder
+      with the notebook proclaimed that the admittance of visitors would now
+      commence. The sentinel stepped aside, and all the visitors rushed to the
+      door as if afraid of being too late; some even ran. At the door there
+      stood a warder who counted the visitors as they came in, saying aloud, 16,
+      17, and so on. Another warder stood inside the building and also counted
+      the visitors as they entered a second door, touching each one with his
+      hand, so that when they went away again not one visitor should be able to
+      remain inside the prison and not one prisoner might get out. The warder,
+      without looking at whom he was touching, slapped Nekhludoff on the back,
+      and Nekhludoff felt hurt by the touch of the warder&rsquo;s hand; but,
+      remembering what he had come about, he felt ashamed of feeling
+      dissatisfied and taking offence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first apartment behind the entrance doors was a large vaulted room
+      with iron bars to the small windows. In this room, which was called the
+      meeting-room, Nekhludoff was startled by the sight of a large picture of
+      the Crucifixion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that for?&rdquo; he thought, his mind involuntarily connecting the
+      subject of the picture with liberation and not with imprisonment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on, slowly letting the hurrying visitors pass before, and
+      experiencing a mingled feeling of horror at the evil-doers locked up in
+      this building, compassion for those who, like Katusha and the boy they
+      tried the day before, must be here though guiltless, and shyness and
+      tender emotion at the thought of the interview before him. The warder at
+      the other end of the meeting-room said something as they passed, but
+      Nekhludoff, absorbed by his own thoughts, paid no attention to him, and
+      continued to follow the majority of the visitors, and so got into the
+      men&rsquo;s part of the prison instead of the women&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Letting the hurrying visitors pass before him, he was the last to get into
+      the interviewing-room. As soon as Nekhludoff opened the door of this room,
+      he was struck by the deafening roar of a hundred voices shouting at once,
+      the reason of which he did not at once understand. But when he came nearer
+      to the people, he saw that they were all pressing against a net that
+      divided the room in two, like flies settling on sugar, and he understood
+      what it meant. The two halves of the room, the windows of which were
+      opposite the door he had come in by, were separated, not by one, but by
+      two nets reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The wire nets were
+      stretched 7 feet apart, and soldiers were walking up and down the space
+      between them. On the further side of the nets were the prisoners, on the
+      nearer, the visitors. Between them was a double row of nets and a space of
+      7 feet wide, so that they could not hand anything to one another, and any
+      one whose sight was not very good could not even distinguish the face on
+      the other side. It was also difficult to talk; one had to scream in order
+      to be heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On both sides were faces pressed close to the nets, faces of wives,
+      husbands, fathers, mothers, children, trying to see each other&rsquo;s features
+      and to say what was necessary in such a way as to be understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as each one tried to be heard by the one he was talking to, and his
+      neighbour tried to do the same, they did their best to drown each other&rsquo;s
+      voices&rsquo; and that was the cause of the din and shouting which struck
+      Nekhludoff when he first came in. It was impossible to understand what was
+      being said and what were the relations between the different people. Next
+      Nekhludoff an old woman with a kerchief on her head stood trembling, her
+      chin pressed close to the net, and shouting something to a young fellow,
+      half of whose head was shaved, who listened attentively with raised brows.
+      By the side of the old woman was a young man in a peasant&rsquo;s coat, who
+      listened, shaking his head, to a boy very like himself. Next stood a man
+      in rags, who shouted, waving his arm and laughing. Next to him a woman,
+      with a good woollen shawl on her shoulders, sat on the floor holding a
+      baby in her lap and crying bitterly. This was apparently the first time
+      she saw the greyheaded man on the other side in prison clothes, and with
+      his head shaved. Beyond her was the doorkeeper, who had spoken to
+      Nekhludoff outside; he was shouting with all his might to a greyhaired
+      convict on the other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff found that he would have to speak in similar conditions, a
+      feeling of indignation against those who were able to make and enforce
+      these conditions arose in him; he was surprised that, placed in such a
+      dreadful position, no one seemed offended at this outrage on human
+      feelings. The soldiers, the inspector, the prisoners themselves, acted as
+      if acknowledging all this to be necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff remained in this room for about five minutes, feeling strangely
+      depressed, conscious of how powerless he was, and at variance with all the
+      world. He was seized with a curious moral sensation like seasickness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLII. VISITING DAY&mdash;THE WOMEN&rsquo;S WARD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but I must do what I came here for,&rdquo; he said, trying to pick up
+      courage. &ldquo;What is to be done now?&rdquo; He looked round for an official, and
+      seeing a thin little man in the uniform of an officer going up and down
+      behind the people, he approached him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you tell me, sir,&rdquo; he said, with exceedingly strained politeness of
+      manner, &ldquo;where the women are kept, and where one is allowed to interview
+      them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it the women&rsquo;s ward you want to go to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I should like to see one of the women prisoners,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said,
+      with the same strained politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should have said so when you were in the hall. Who is it, then, that
+      you want to see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to see a prisoner called Katerina Maslova.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she a political one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she is simply . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Is she sentenced?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; the day before yesterday she was sentenced,&rdquo; meekly answered
+      Nekhludoff, fearing to spoil the inspector&rsquo;s good humour, which seemed to
+      incline in his favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want to go to the women&rsquo;s ward please to step this way,&rdquo; said the
+      officer, having decided from Nekhludoff&rsquo;s appearance that he was worthy of
+      attention. &ldquo;Sideroff, conduct the gentleman to the women&rsquo;s ward,&rdquo; he said,
+      turning to a moustached corporal with medals on his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment heart-rending sobs were heard coming from some one near the
+      net.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything here seemed strange to Nekhludoff; but strangest of all was
+      that he should have to thank and feel obligation towards the inspector and
+      the chief warders, the very men who were performing the cruel deeds that
+      were done in this house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The corporal showed Nekhludoff through the corridor, out of the men&rsquo;s into
+      the women&rsquo;s interviewing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This room, like that of the men, was divided by two wire nets; but it was
+      much smaller, and there were fewer visitors and fewer prisoners, so that
+      there was less shouting than in the men&rsquo;s room. Yet the same thing was
+      going on here, only, between the nets instead of soldiers there was a
+      woman warder, dressed in a blue-edged uniform jacket, with gold cords on
+      the sleeves, and a blue belt. Here also, as in the men&rsquo;s room, the people
+      were pressing close to the wire netting on both sides; on the nearer side,
+      the townspeople in varied attire; on the further side, the prisoners, some
+      in white prison clothes, others in their own coloured dresses. The whole
+      length of the net was taken up by the people standing close to it. Some
+      rose on tiptoe to be heard across the heads of others; some sat talking on
+      the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most remarkable of the prisoners, both by her piercing screams and her
+      appearance, was a thin, dishevelled gipsy. Her kerchief had slipped off
+      her curly hair, and she stood near a post in the middle of the prisoner&rsquo;s
+      division, shouting something, accompanied by quick gestures, to a gipsy
+      man in a blue coat, girdled tightly below the waist. Next the gipsy man, a
+      soldier sat on the ground talking to prisoner; next the soldier, leaning
+      close to the net, stood a young peasant, with a fair beard and a flushed
+      face, keeping back his tears with difficulty. A pretty, fair-haired
+      prisoner, with bright blue eyes, was speaking to him. These two were
+      Theodosia and her husband. Next to them was a tramp, talking to a
+      broad-faced woman; then two women, then a man, then again a woman, and in
+      front of each a prisoner. Maslova was not among them. But some one stood
+      by the window behind the prisoners, and Nekhludoff knew it was she. His
+      heart began to beat faster, and his breath stopped. The decisive moment
+      was approaching. He went up to the part of the net where he could see the
+      prisoner, and recognised her at once. She stood behind the blue-eyed
+      Theodosia, and smiled, listening to what Theodosia was saying. She did not
+      wear the prison cloak now, but a white dress, tightly drawn in at the
+      waist by a belt, and very full in the bosom. From under her kerchief
+      appeared the black ringlets of her fringe, just the same as in the court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, in a moment it will be decided,&rdquo; he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How shall I call her? Or will she come herself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was expecting Bertha; that this man had come to see her never entered
+      her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you want?&rdquo; said the warder who was walking between the nets,
+      coming up to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katerina Maslova,&rdquo; Nekhludoff uttered, with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katerina Maslova, some one to see you,&rdquo; cried the warder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIII. NEKHLUDOFF VISITS MASLOVA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Maslova looked round, and with head thrown back and expanded chest, came
+      up to the net with that expression of readiness which he well knew, pushed
+      in between two prisoners, and gazed at Nekhludoff with a surprised and
+      questioning look. But, concluding from his clothing he was a rich man, she
+      smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it me you want?&rdquo; she asked, bringing her smiling face, with the
+      slightly squinting eyes, nearer the net.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, I&mdash;I wished to see&mdash;&rdquo; Nekhludoff did not know how to address
+      her. &ldquo;I wished to see you&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo; He was not speaking louder than
+      usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; nonsense, I tell you!&rdquo; shouted the tramp who stood next to him. &ldquo;Have
+      you taken it or not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dying, I tell you; what more do you want?&rdquo; some one else was screaming at
+      his other side. Maslova could not hear what Nekhludoff was saying, but the
+      expression of his face as he was speaking reminded her of him. She did not
+      believe her own eyes; still the smile vanished from her face and a deep
+      line of suffering appeared on her brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot hear what you are saying,&rdquo; she called out, wrinkling her brow
+      and frowning more and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Yes, I am doing my duty&mdash;I am
+      confessing,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff; and at this thought the tears came in his
+      eyes, and he felt a choking sensation in his throat, and holding on with
+      both hands to the net, he made efforts to keep from bursting into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, why do you shove yourself in where you&rsquo;re not wanted?&rdquo; some one
+      shouted at one side of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God is my witness; I know nothing,&rdquo; screamed a prisoner from the other
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noticing his excitement, Maslova recognised him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re like . . . but no; I don&rsquo;t know you,&rdquo; she shouted, without looking
+      at him, and blushing, while her face grew still more stern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come to ask you to forgive me,&rdquo; he said, in a loud but monotonous
+      voice, like a lesson learnt by heart. Having said these words he became
+      confused; but immediately came the thought that, if he felt ashamed, it
+      was all the better; he had to bear this shame, and he continued in a loud
+      voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me; I have wronged you terribly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood motionless and without taking her squinting eyes off him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not continue to speak, and stepping away from the net he tried to
+      suppress the sobs that were choking him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector, the same officer who had directed Nekhludoff to the women&rsquo;s
+      ward, and whose interest he seemed to have aroused, came into the room,
+      and, seeing Nekhludoff not at the net, asked him why he was not talking to
+      her whom he wanted to see. Nekhludoff blew his nose, gave himself a shake,
+      and, trying to appear calm, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so inconvenient through these nets; nothing can be heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the inspector considered for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, she can be brought out here for awhile. Mary Karlovna,&rdquo; turning
+      to the warder, &ldquo;lead Maslova out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A minute later Maslova came out of the side door. Stepping softly, she
+      came up close to Nekhludoff, stopped, and looked up at him from under her
+      brows. Her black hair was arranged in ringlets over her forehead in the
+      same way as it had been two days ago; her face, though unhealthy and
+      puffy, was attractive, and looked perfectly calm, only the glittering
+      black eyes glanced strangely from under the swollen lids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may talk here,&rdquo; said the inspector, and shrugging his shoulders he
+      stepped aside with a look of surprise. Nekhludoff moved towards a seat by
+      the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova cast a questioning look at the inspector, and then, shrugging her
+      shoulders in surprise, followed Nekhludoff to the bench, and having
+      arranged her skirt, sat down beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it is hard for you to forgive me,&rdquo; he began, but stopped. His
+      tears were choking him. &ldquo;But though I can&rsquo;t undo the past, I shall now do
+      what is in my power. Tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How have you managed to find me?&rdquo; she said, without answering his
+      question, neither looking away from him nor quite at him, with her
+      squinting eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O God, help me! Teach me what to do,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, looking at her
+      changed face. &ldquo;I was on the jury the day before yesterday,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You
+      did not recognise me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I did not; there was not time for recognitions. I did not even look,&rdquo;
+       she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a child, was there not?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God! he died at once,&rdquo; she answered, abruptly and viciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean? Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was so ill myself, I nearly died,&rdquo; she said, in the same quiet voice,
+      which Nekhludoff had not expected and could not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could my aunts have let you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who keeps a servant that has a baby? They sent me off as soon as they
+      noticed. But why speak of this? I remember nothing. That&rsquo;s all finished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is not finished; I wish to redeem my sin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to redeem. What&rsquo;s been has been and is passed,&rdquo; she said;
+      and, what he never expected, she looked at him and smiled in an
+      unpleasantly luring, yet piteous, manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova never expected to see him again, and certainly not here and not
+      now; therefore, when she first recognised him, she could not keep back the
+      memories which she never wished to revive. In the first moment she
+      remembered dimly that new, wonderful world of feeling and of thought which
+      had been opened to her by the charming young man who loved her and whom
+      she loved, and then his incomprehensible cruelty and the whole string of
+      humiliations and suffering which flowed from and followed that magic joy.
+      This gave her pain, and, unable to understand it, she did what she was
+      always in the habit of doing, she got rid of these memories by enveloping
+      them in the mist of a depraved life. In the first moment, she associated
+      the man now sitting beside her with the lad she had loved; but feeling
+      that this gave her pain, she dissociated them again. Now, this
+      well-dressed, carefully-got-up gentleman with perfumed beard was no longer
+      the Nekhludoff whom she had loved but only one of the people who made use
+      of creatures like herself when they needed them, and whom creatures like
+      herself had to make use of in their turn as profitably as they could; and
+      that is why she looked at him with a luring smile and considered silently
+      how she could best make use of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all at an end,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Now I&rsquo;m condemned to Siberia,&rdquo; and her
+      lip trembled as she was saying this dreadful word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew; I was certain you were not guilty,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guilty! of course not; as if I could be a thief or a robber.&rdquo; She
+      stopped, considering in what way she could best get something out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say here that all depends on the advocate,&rdquo; she began. &ldquo;A petition
+      should be handed in, only they say it&rsquo;s expensive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, most certainly,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I have already spoken to an
+      advocate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No money ought to be spared; it should be a good one,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall do all that is possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were silent, and then she smiled again in the same way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I should like to ask you . . . a little money if you can . . . not
+      much; ten roubles, I do not want more,&rdquo; she said, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, with a sense of confusion, and felt for his
+      purse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked rapidly at the inspector, who was walking up and down the room.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t give it in front of him; he&rsquo;d take it away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff took out his purse as soon as the inspector had turned his
+      back; but had no time to hand her the note before the inspector faced them
+      again, so he crushed it up in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This woman is dead,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, looking at this once sweet, and
+      now defiled, puffy face, lit up by an evil glitter in the black, squinting
+      eyes which were now glancing at the hand in which he held the note, then
+      following the inspector&rsquo;s movements, and for a moment he hesitated. The
+      tempter that had been speaking to him in the night again raised its voice,
+      trying to lead him out of the realm of his inner into the realm of his
+      outer life, away from the question of what he should do to the question of
+      what the consequences would be, and what would be practical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can do nothing with this woman,&rdquo; said the voice; &ldquo;you will only tie a
+      stone round your neck, which will help to drown you and hinder you from
+      being useful to others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not better to give her all the money that is here, say good-bye,
+      and finish with her forever?&rdquo; whispered the voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But here he felt that now, at this very moment, something most important
+      was taking place in his soul&mdash;that his inner life was, as it were,
+      wavering in the balance, so that the slightest effort would make it sink
+      to this side or the other. And he made this effort by calling to his
+      assistance that God whom he had felt in his soul the day before, and that
+      God instantly responded. He resolved to tell her everything now&mdash;at
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katusha, I have come to ask you to forgive me, and you have given me no
+      answer. Have you forgiven me? Will you ever forgive me?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not listen to him, but looked at his hand and at the inspector,
+      and when the latter turned she hastily stretched out her hand, grasped the
+      note, and hid it under her belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s odd, what you are saying there,&rdquo; she said, with a smile of
+      contempt, as it seemed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff felt that there was in her soul one who was his enemy and who
+      was protecting her, such as she was now, and preventing him from getting
+      at her heart. But, strange to say, this did not repel him, but drew him
+      nearer to her by some fresh, peculiar power. He knew that he must waken
+      her soul, that this was terribly difficult, but the very difficulty
+      attracted him. He now felt towards her as he had never felt towards her or
+      any one else before. There was nothing personal in this feeling: he wanted
+      nothing from her for himself, but only wished that she might not remain as
+      she now was, that she might awaken and become again what she had been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katusha, why do you speak like that? I know you; I remember you&mdash;and
+      the old days in Papovo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use of recalling what&rsquo;s past?&rdquo; she remarked, drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am recalling it in order to put it right, to atone for my sin,
+      Katusha,&rdquo; and he was going to say that he would marry her, but, meeting
+      her eyes, he read in them something so dreadful, so coarse, so repellent,
+      that he could not go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the visitors began to go. The inspector came up to
+      Nekhludoff and said that the time was up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye; I have still much to say to you, but you see it is impossible
+      to do so now,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and held out his hand. &ldquo;I shall come
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you have said all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took his hand but did not press it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I shall try to see you again, somewhere where we can talk, and then I
+      shall tell you what I have to say-something very important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, come; why not?&rdquo; she answered, and smiled with that habitual,
+      inviting, and promising smile which she gave to the men whom she wished to
+      please.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are more than a sister to me,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s odd,&rdquo; she said again, and went behind the grating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0044" id="link2HCH0044">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIV. MASLOVA&rsquo;S VIEW OF LIFE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before the first interview, Nekhludoff thought that when she saw him and
+      knew of his intention to serve her, Katusha would be pleased and touched,
+      and would be Katusha again; but, to his horror, he found that Katusha
+      existed no more, and there was Maslova in her place. This astonished and
+      horrified him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What astonished him most was that Katusha was not ashamed of her position&mdash;not
+      the position of a prisoner (she was ashamed of that), but her position as
+      a prostitute. She seemed satisfied, even proud of it. And, yet, how could
+      it be otherwise? Everybody, in order to be able to act, has to consider
+      his occupation important and good. Therefore, in whatever position a
+      person is, he is certain to form such a view of the life of men in general
+      which will make his occupation seem important and good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute,
+      acknowledging his or her profession as evil, is ashamed of it. But the
+      contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a
+      certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of life
+      in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In order
+      to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the
+      circle of those people who share their views of life and their own place
+      in it. This surprises us, where the persons concerned are thieves,
+      bragging about their dexterity, prostitutes vaunting their depravity, or
+      murderers boasting of their cruelty. This surprises us only because the
+      circle, the atmosphere in which these people live, is limited, and we are
+      outside it. But can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich boast
+      of their wealth, i.e., robbery; the commanders in the army pride
+      themselves on victories, i.e., murder; and those in high places vaunt
+      their power, i.e., violence? We do not see the perversion in the views of
+      life held by these people, only because the circle formed by them is more
+      extensive, and we ourselves are moving inside of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in this manner Maslova had formed her views of life and of her own
+      position. She was a prostitute condemned to Siberia, and yet she had a
+      conception of life which made it possible for her to be satisfied with
+      herself, and even to pride herself on her position before others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to this conception, the highest good for all men without
+      exception&mdash;old, young, schoolboys, generals, educated and uneducated,
+      was connected with the relation of the sexes; therefore, all men, even
+      when they pretended to be occupied with other things, in reality took this
+      view. She was an attractive woman, and therefore she was an important and
+      necessary person. The whole of her former and present life was a
+      confirmation of the correctness of this conception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such a view of life, she was by no means the lowest, but a very
+      important person. And Maslova prized this view of life more than anything;
+      she could not but prize it, for, if she lost the importance that such a
+      view of life gave her among men, she would lose the meaning of her life.
+      And, in order not to lose the meaning of her life, she instinctively clung
+      to the set that looked at life in the same way as she did. Feeling that
+      Nekhludoff wanted to lead her out into another world, she resisted him,
+      foreseeing that she would have to lose her place in life, with the
+      self-possession and self-respect it gave her. For this reason she drove
+      from her the recollections of her early youth and her first relations with
+      Nekhludoff. These recollections did not correspond with her present
+      conception of the world, and were therefore quite rubbed out of her mind,
+      or, rather, lay somewhere buried and untouched, closed up and plastered
+      over so that they should not escape, as when bees, in order to protect the
+      result of their labour, will sometimes plaster a nest of worms. Therefore,
+      the present Nekhludoff was not the man she had once loved with a pure
+      love, but only a rich gentleman whom she could, and must, make use of, and
+      with whom she could only have the same relations as with men in general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I could not tell her the chief thing,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, moving
+      towards the front doors with the rest of the people. &ldquo;I did not tell her
+      that I would marry her; I did not tell her so, but I will,&rdquo; he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two warders at the door let out the visitors, counting them again, and
+      touching each one with their hands, so that no extra person should go out,
+      and none remain within. The slap on his shoulder did not offend Nekhludoff
+      this time; he did not even notice it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0045" id="link2HCH0045">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLV. FANARIN, THE ADVOCATE&mdash;THE PETITION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff meant to rearrange the whole of his external life, to let his
+      large house and move to an hotel, but Agraphena Petrovna pointed out that
+      it was useless to change anything before the winter. No one would rent a
+      town house for the summer; anyhow, he would have to live and keep his
+      things somewhere. And so all his efforts to change his manner of life (he
+      meant to live more simply: as the students live) led to nothing. Not only
+      did everything remain as it was, but the house was suddenly filled with
+      new activity. All that was made of wool or fur was taken out to be aired
+      and beaten. The gate-keeper, the boy, the cook, and Corney himself took
+      part in this activity. All sorts of strange furs, which no one ever used,
+      and various uniforms were taken out and hung on a line, then the carpets
+      and furniture were brought out, and the gate-keeper and the boy rolled
+      their sleeves up their muscular arms and stood beating these things,
+      keeping strict time, while the rooms were filled with the smell of
+      naphthaline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff crossed the yard or looked out of the window and saw all
+      this going on, he was surprised at the great number of things there were,
+      all quite useless. Their only use, Nekhludoff thought, was the providing
+      of exercise for Agraphena Petrovna, Corney, the gate-keeper, the boy, and
+      the cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s not worth while altering my manner of life now,&rdquo; he thought,
+      &ldquo;while Maslova&rsquo;s case is not decided. Besides, it is too difficult. It
+      will alter of itself when she will be set free or exiled, and I follow
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the appointed day Nekhludoff drove up to the advocate Fanarin&rsquo;s own
+      splendid house, which was decorated with huge palms and other plants, and
+      wonderful curtains, in fact, with all the expensive luxury witnessing to
+      the possession of much idle money, i.e., money acquired without labour,
+      which only those possess who grow rich suddenly. In the waiting-room, just
+      as in a doctor&rsquo;s waiting-room, he found many dejected-looking people
+      sitting round several tables, on which lay illustrated papers meant to
+      amuse them, awaiting their turns to be admitted to the advocate. The
+      advocate&rsquo;s assistant sat in the room at a high desk, and having recognised
+      Nekhludoff, he came up to him and said he would go and announce him at
+      once. But the assistant had not reached the door before it opened and the
+      sounds of loud, animated voices were heard; the voice of a middle-aged,
+      sturdy merchant, with a red face and thick moustaches, and the voice of
+      Fanarin himself. Fanarin was also a middle-aged man of medium height, with
+      a worn look on his face. Both faces bore the expression which you see on
+      the faces of those who have just concluded a profitable but not quite
+      honest transaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your own fault, you know, my dear sir,&rdquo; Fanarin said, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;d all be in &lsquo;eaven were it not for hour sins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, yes; we all know that,&rdquo; and both laughed un-naturally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Prince Nekhludoff! Please to step in,&rdquo; said Fanarin, seeing him, and,
+      nodding once more to the merchant, he led Nekhludoff into his business
+      cabinet, furnished in a severely correct style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you smoke?&rdquo; said the advocate, sitting down opposite Nekhludoff and
+      trying to conceal a smile, apparently still excited by the success of the
+      accomplished transaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks; I have come about Maslova&rsquo;s case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes; directly! But oh, what rogues these fat money bags are!&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;You saw this here fellow. Why, he has about twelve million roubles,
+      and he cannot speak correctly; and if he can get a twenty-five rouble note
+      out of you he&rsquo;ll have it, if he&rsquo;s to wrench it out with his teeth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says &lsquo;&rsquo;eaven&rsquo; and &lsquo;hour,&rsquo; and you say &lsquo;this here fellow,&rsquo;&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      thought, with an insurmountable feeling of aversion towards this man who
+      wished to show by his free and easy manner that he and Nekhludoff belonged
+      to one and the same camp, while his other clients belonged to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has worried me to death&mdash;a fearful scoundrel. I felt I must
+      relieve my feelings,&rdquo; said the advocate, as if to excuse his speaking
+      about things that had no reference to business. &ldquo;Well, how about your
+      case? I have read it attentively, but do not approve of it. I mean that
+      greenhorn of an advocate has left no valid reason for an appeal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, what have you decided?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment. Tell him,&rdquo; he said to his assistant, who had just come in,
+      &ldquo;that I keep to what I have said. If he can, it&rsquo;s all right; if not, no
+      matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he won&rsquo;t agree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, no matter,&rdquo; and the advocate frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now, and it is said that we advocates get our money for nothing,&rdquo;
+       he remarked, after a pause. &ldquo;I have freed one insolvent debtor from a
+      totally false charge, and now they all flock to me. Yet every such case
+      costs enormous labour. Why, don&rsquo;t we, too, &lsquo;lose bits of flesh in the
+      inkstand?&rsquo; as some writer or other has said. Well, as to your case, or,
+      rather, the case you are taking an interest in. It has been conducted
+      abominably. There is no good reason for appealing. Still,&rdquo; he continued,
+      &ldquo;we can but try to get the sentence revoked. This is what I have noted
+      down.&rdquo; He took up several sheets of paper covered with writing, and began
+      to read rapidly, slurring over the uninteresting legal terms and laying
+      particular stress on some sentences. &ldquo;To the Court of Appeal, criminal
+      department, etc., etc. According to the decisions, etc., the verdict,
+      etc., So-and-so Maslova pronounced guilty of having caused the death
+      through poison of the merchant Smelkoff, and has, according to Statute
+      1454 of the penal code, been sentenced to Siberia,&rdquo; etc., etc. He stopped.
+      Evidently, in spite of his being so used to it, he still felt pleasure in
+      listening to his own productions. &ldquo;This sentence is the direct result of
+      the most glaring judicial perversion and error,&rdquo; he continued,
+      impressively, &ldquo;and there are grounds for its revocation. Firstly, the
+      reading of the medical report of the examination of Smelkoff&rsquo;s intestines
+      was interrupted by the president at the very beginning. This is point
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it was the prosecuting side that demanded this reading,&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      said, with surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That does not matter. There might have been reasons for the defence to
+      demand this reading, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but there could have been no reason whatever for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a ground for appeal, though. To continue: &lsquo;Secondly,&rsquo; he went on
+      reading, &lsquo;when Maslova&rsquo;s advocate, in his speech for the defence, wishing
+      to characterise Maslova&rsquo;s personality, referred to the causes of her fall,
+      he was interrupted by the president calling him to order for the alleged
+      deviation from the direct subject. Yet, as has been repeatedly pointed out
+      by the Senate, the elucidation of the criminal&rsquo;s characteristics and his
+      or her moral standpoint in general has a significance of the first
+      importance in criminal cases, even if only as a guide in the settling of
+      the question of imputation.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s point two,&rdquo; he said, with a look at
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he spoke so badly that no one could make anything of it,&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      said, still more astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fellow&rsquo;s quite a fool, and of course could not be expected to say
+      anything sensible,&rdquo; Fanarin said, laughing; &ldquo;but, all the same, it will do
+      as a reason for appeal. Thirdly: &lsquo;The president, in his summing up,
+      contrary to the direct decree of section 1, statute 801, of the criminal
+      code, omitted to inform the jury what the judicial points are that
+      constitute guilt; and did not mention that having admitted the fact of
+      Maslova having administered the poison to Smelkoff, the jury had a right
+      not to impute the guilt of murder to her, since the proofs of wilful
+      intent to deprive Smelkoff of life were absent, and only to pronounce her
+      guilty of carelessness resulting in the death of the merchant, which she
+      did not desire.&rsquo; This is the chief point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but we ought to have known that ourselves. It was our mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now the fourth point,&rdquo; the advocate continued. &ldquo;The form of the
+      answer given by the jury contained an evident contradiction. Maslova is
+      accused of wilfully poisoning Smelkoff, her one object being that of
+      cupidity, the only motive to commit murder she could have had. The jury in
+      their verdict acquit her of the intent to rob, or participation in the
+      stealing of valuables, from which it follows that they intended also to
+      acquit her of the intent to murder, and only through a misunderstanding,
+      which arose from the incompleteness of the president&rsquo;s summing up, omitted
+      to express it in due form in their answer. Therefore an answer of this
+      kind by the jury absolutely demanded the application of statutes 816 and
+      808 of the criminal code of procedure, i.e., an explanation by the
+      president to the jury of the mistake made by them, and another debate on
+      the question of the prisoner&rsquo;s guilt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why did the president not do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, too, should like to know why,&rdquo; Fanarin said, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the Senate will, of course, correct this error?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will all depend on who will preside there at the time. Well, now,
+      there it is. I have further said,&rdquo; he continued, rapidly, &ldquo;a verdict of
+      this kind gave the Court no right to condemn Maslova to be punished as a
+      criminal, and to apply section 3, statute 771 of the penal code to her
+      case. This is a decided and gross violation of the basic principles of our
+      criminal law. In view of the reasons stated, I have the honour of
+      appealing to you, etc., etc., the refutation, according to 909, 910, and
+      section 2, 912 and 928 statute of the criminal code, etc., etc. . . . to
+      carry this case before another department of the same Court for a further
+      examination. There; all that can be done is done, but, to be frank, I have
+      little hope of success, though, of course, it all depends on what members
+      will be present at the Senate. If you have any influence there you can but
+      try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do know some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; only be quick about it. Else they&rsquo;ll all go off for a change
+      of air; then you may have to wait three months before they return. Then,
+      in case of failure, we have still the possibility of appealing to His
+      Majesty. This, too, depends on the private influence you can bring to
+      work. In this case, too, I am at your service; I mean as to the working of
+      the petition, not the influence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you. Now as to your fees?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My assistant will hand you the petition and tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing more. The Procureur gave me a pass for visiting this person in
+      prison, but they tell me I must also get a permission from the governor in
+      order to get an interview at another time and in another place than those
+      appointed. Is this necessary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think so. But the governor is away at present; a vice-governor is
+      in his place. And he is such an impenetrable fool that you&rsquo;ll scarcely be
+      able to do anything with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it Meslennikoff?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know him,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and got up to go. At this moment a horribly
+      ugly, little, bony, snub-nosed, yellow-faced woman flew into the room. It
+      was the advocate&rsquo;s wife, who did not seem to be in the least bit troubled
+      by her ugliness. She was attired in the most original manner; she seemed
+      enveloped in something made of velvet and silk, something yellow and
+      green, and her thin hair was crimped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stepped out triumphantly into the ante-room, followed by a tall,
+      smiling man, with a greenish complexion, dressed in a coat with silk
+      facings, and a white tie. This was an author. Nekhludoff knew him by
+      sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened the cabinet door and said, &ldquo;Anatole, you must come to me. Here
+      is Simeon Ivanovitch, who will read his poems, and you must absolutely
+      come and read about Garshin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff noticed that she whispered something to her husband, and,
+      thinking it was something concerning him, wished to go away, but she
+      caught him up and said: &ldquo;I beg your pardon, Prince, I know you, and,
+      thinking an introduction superfluous, I beg you to stay and take part in
+      our literary matinee. It will be most interesting. M. Fanarin will read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see what a lot I have to do,&rdquo; said Fanarin, spreading out his hands
+      and smilingly pointing to his wife, as if to show how impossible it was to
+      resist so charming a creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thanked the advocate&rsquo;s wife with extreme politeness for the
+      honour she did him in inviting him, but refused the invitation with a sad
+      and solemn look, and left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an affected fellow!&rdquo; said the advocate&rsquo;s wife, when he had gone out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the ante-room the assistant handed him a ready-written petition, and
+      said that the fees, including the business with the Senate and the
+      commission, would come to 1,000 roubles, and explained that M. Fanarin did
+      not usually undertake this kind of business, but did it only to oblige
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And about this petition. Who is to sign it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The prisoner may do it herself, or if this is inconvenient, M. Fanarin
+      can, if he gets a power of attorney from her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no. I shall take the petition to her and get her to sign it,&rdquo; said
+      Nekhludoff, glad of the opportunity of seeing her before the appointed
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0046" id="link2HCH0046">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVI. A PRISON FLOGGING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the usual time the jailer&rsquo;s whistle sounded in the corridors of the
+      prison, the iron doors of the cells rattled, bare feet pattered, heels
+      clattered, and the prisoners who acted as scavengers passed along the
+      corridors, filling the air with disgusting smells. The prisoners washed,
+      dressed, and came out for revision, then went to get boiling water for
+      their tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation at breakfast in all the cells was very lively. It was all
+      about two prisoners who were to be flogged that day. One, Vasiliev, was a
+      young man of some education, a clerk, who had killed his mistress in a fit
+      of jealousy. His fellow-prisoners liked him because he was merry and
+      generous and firm in his behaviour with the prison authorities. He knew
+      the laws and insisted on their being carried out. Therefore he was
+      disliked by the authorities. Three weeks before a jailer struck one of the
+      scavengers who had spilt some soup over his new uniform. Vasiliev took the
+      part of the scavenger, saying that it was not lawful to strike a prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll teach you the law,&rdquo; said the jailer, and gave Vasiliev a scolding.
+      Vasiliev replied in like manner, and the jailer was going to hit him, but
+      Vasiliev seized the jailer&rsquo;s hands, held them fast for about three
+      minutes, and, after giving the hands a twist, pushed the jailer out of the
+      door. The jailer complained to the inspector, who ordered Vasiliev to be
+      put into a solitary cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The solitary cells were a row of dark closets, locked from outside, and
+      there were neither beds, nor chairs, nor tables in them, so that the
+      inmates had to sit or lie on the dirty floor, while the rats, of which
+      there were a great many in those cells, ran across them. The rats were so
+      bold that they stole the bread from the prisoners, and even attacked them
+      if they stopped moving. Vasiliev said he would not go into the solitary
+      cell, because he had not done anything wrong; but they used force. Then he
+      began struggling, and two other prisoners helped him to free himself from
+      the jailers. All the jailers assembled, and among them was Petrov, who was
+      distinguished for his strength. The prisoners got thrown down and pushed
+      into the solitary cells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The governor was immediately informed that something very like a rebellion
+      had taken place. And he sent back an order to flog the two chief
+      offenders, Vasiliev and the tramp, Nepomnishy, giving each thirty strokes
+      with a birch rod. The flogging was appointed to take place in the women&rsquo;s
+      interviewing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was known in the prison since the evening, and it was being
+      talked about with animation in all the cells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Korableva, Khoroshevka, Theodosia, and Maslova sat together in their
+      corner, drinking tea, all of them flushed and animated by the vodka they
+      had drunk, for Maslova, who now had a constant supply of vodka, freely
+      treated her companions to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not been a-rioting, or anything,&rdquo; Korableva said, referring to
+      Vasiliev, as she bit tiny pieces off a lump of sugar with her strong
+      teeth. &ldquo;He only stuck up for a chum, because it&rsquo;s not lawful to strike
+      prisoners nowadays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he&rsquo;s a fine fellow, I&rsquo;ve heard say,&rdquo; said Theodosia, who sat
+      bareheaded, with her long plaits round her head, on a log of wood opposite
+      the shelf bedstead on which the teapot stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, now, if you were to ask <i>him</i>,&rdquo; the watchman&rsquo;s wife said to
+      Maslova (by him she meant Nekhludoff).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall tell him. He&rsquo;ll do anything for me,&rdquo; Maslova said, tossing her
+      head, and smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but when is he coming? and they&rsquo;ve already gone to fetch them,&rdquo; said
+      Theodosia. &ldquo;It is terrible,&rdquo; she added, with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once did see how they flogged a peasant in the village. Father-in-law,
+      he sent me once to the village elder. Well, I went, and there . . . &ldquo; The
+      watchman&rsquo;s wife began her long story, which was interrupted by the sound
+      of voices and steps in the corridor above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women were silent, and sat listening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There they are, hauling him along, the devils!&rdquo; Khoroshavka said.
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll do him to death, they will. The jailers are so enraged with him
+      because he never would give in to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All was quiet again upstairs, and the watchman&rsquo;s wife finished her story
+      of how she was that frightened when she went into the barn and saw them
+      flogging a peasant, her inside turned at the sight, and so on. Khoroshevka
+      related how Schegloff had been flogged, and never uttered a sound. Then
+      Theodosia put away the tea things, and Korableva and the watchman&rsquo;s wife
+      took up their sewing. Maslova sat down on the bedstead, with her arms
+      round her knees, dull and depressed. She was about to lie down and try to
+      sleep, when the woman warder called her into the office to see a visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, mind, and don&rsquo;t forget to tell him about us,&rdquo; the old woman
+      (Menshova) said, while Maslova was arranging the kerchief on her head
+      before the dim looking-glass. &ldquo;We did not set fire to the house, but he
+      himself, the fiend, did it; his workman saw him do it, and will not damn
+      his soul by denying it. You just tell to ask to see my Mitri. Mitri will
+      tell him all about it, as plain as can be. Just think of our being locked
+      up in prison when we never dreamt of any ill, while he, the fiend, is
+      enjoying himself at the pub, with another man&rsquo;s wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not the law,&rdquo; remarked Korableva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell him&mdash;I&rsquo;ll tell him,&rdquo; answered Maslova. &ldquo;Suppose I have
+      another drop, just to keep up courage,&rdquo; she added, with a wink; and
+      Korableva poured out half a cup of vodka, which Maslova drank. Then,
+      having wiped her mouth and repeating the words &ldquo;just to keep up courage,&rdquo;
+       tossing her head and smiling gaily, she followed the warder along the
+      corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0047" id="link2HCH0047">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVII. NEKHLUDOFF AGAIN VISITS MASLOVA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had to wait in the hall for a long time. When he had arrived at
+      the prison and rung at the entrance door, he handed the permission of the
+      Procureur to the jailer on duty who met him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; the jailer on duty said hurriedly, &ldquo;the inspector is engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the office?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, here in the interviewing-room.&rdquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, is it a visiting day to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it&rsquo;s special business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to see him. What am I to do?&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the inspector comes out you&rsquo;ll tell him&mdash;wait a bit,&rdquo; said the
+      jailer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a sergeant-major, with a smooth, shiny face and moustaches
+      impregnated with tobacco smoke, came out of a side door, with the gold
+      cords of his uniform glistening, and addressed the jailer in a severe
+      tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by letting any one in here? The office. . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was told the inspector was here,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, surprised at the
+      agitation he noticed in the sergeant-major&rsquo;s manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the inner door opened, and Petrov came out, heated and
+      perspiring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll remember it,&rdquo; he muttered, turning to the sergeant major. The
+      latter pointed at Nekhludoff by a look, and Petrov knitted his brows and
+      went out through a door at the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who will remember it? Why do they all seem so confused? Why did the
+      sergeant-major make a sign to him?&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sergeant-major, again addressing Nekhludoff, said: &ldquo;You cannot meet
+      here; please step across to the office.&rdquo; And Nekhludoff was about to
+      comply when the inspector came out of the door at the back, looking even
+      more confused than his subordinates, and sighing continually. When he saw
+      Nekhludoff he turned to the jailer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fedotoff, have Maslova, cell 5, women&rsquo;s ward, taken to the office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come this way, please,&rdquo; he said, turning to Nekhludoff. They
+      ascended a steep staircase and entered a little room with one window, a
+      writing-table, and a few chairs in it. The inspector sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine are heavy, heavy duties,&rdquo; he remarked, again addressing Nekhludoff,
+      and took out a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are tired, evidently,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tired of the whole of the service&mdash;the duties are very trying. One
+      tries to lighten their lot and only makes it worse; my only thought is how
+      to get away. Heavy, heavy duties!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff did not know what the inspector&rsquo;s particular difficulties were,
+      but he saw that to-day he was in a peculiarly dejected and hopeless
+      condition, calling for pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I should think the duties were heavy for a kind-hearted man,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Why do you serve in this capacity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, if it is so hard&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, still you know it is possible to be of use in some measure; I
+      soften down all I can. Another in my place would conduct the affairs quite
+      differently. Why, we have more than 2,000 persons here. And what persons!
+      One must know how to manage them. It is easier said than done, you know.
+      After all, they are also men; one cannot help pitying them.&rdquo; The inspector
+      began telling Nekhludoff of a fight that had lately taken place among the
+      convicts, which had ended by one man being killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story was interrupted by the entrance of Maslova, who was accompanied
+      by a jailer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff saw her through the doorway before she had noticed the
+      inspector. She was following the warder briskly, smiling and tossing her
+      head. When she saw the inspector she suddenly changed, and gazed at him
+      with a frightened look; but, quickly recovering, she addressed Nekhludoff
+      boldly and gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How d&rsquo;you do?&rdquo; she said, drawling out her words, and smilingly took his
+      hand and shook it vigorously, not like the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, I&rsquo;ve brought you a petition to sign,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, rather
+      surprised by the boldness with which she greeted him to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The advocate has written out a petition which you will have to sign, and
+      then we shall send it to Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right! That can be done. Anything you like,&rdquo; she said, with a wink
+      and a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Nekhludoff drew a folded paper from his pocket and went up to the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May she sign it here?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff, turning to the inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, it&rsquo;s all right! Sit down. Here&rsquo;s a pen; you can write?&rdquo;
+       said the inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could at one time,&rdquo; she said; and, after arranging her skirt and the
+      sleeves of her jacket, she sat down at the table, smiled awkwardly, took
+      the pen with her small, energetic hand, and glanced at Nekhludoff with a
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff told her what to write and pointed out the place where to sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sighing deeply as she dipped her pen into the ink, and carefully shaking
+      some drops off the pen, she wrote her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it all?&rdquo; she asked, looking from Nekhludoff to the inspector, and
+      putting the pen now on the inkstand, now on the papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a few words to tell you,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, taking the pen from
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; tell me,&rdquo; she said. And suddenly, as if remembering something,
+      or feeling sleepy, she grew serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector rose and left the room, and Nekhludoff remained with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0048" id="link2HCH0048">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLVIII. MASLOVA REFUSES TO MARRY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The jailer who had brought Maslova in sat on a windowsill at some distance
+      from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The decisive moment had come for Nekhludoff. He had been incessantly
+      blaming himself for not having told her the principal thing at the first
+      interview, and was now determined to tell her that he would marry her. She
+      was sitting at the further side of the table. Nekhludoff sat down opposite
+      her. It was light in the room, and Nekhludoff for the first time saw her
+      face quite near. He distinctly saw the crowsfeet round her eyes, the
+      wrinkles round her mouth, and the swollen eyelids. He felt more sorry than
+      before. Leaning over the table so as not to be heard by the jailer&mdash;a
+      man of Jewish type with grizzly whiskers, who sat by the window&mdash;Nekhludoff
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should this petition come to nothing we shall appeal to the Emperor. All
+      that is possible shall be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, now, if we had had a proper advocate from the first,&rdquo; she
+      interrupted. &ldquo;My defendant was quite a silly. He did nothing but pay me
+      compliments,&rdquo; she said, and laughed. &ldquo;If it had then been known that I was
+      acquainted with you, it would have been another matter. They think every
+      one&rsquo;s a thief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How strange she is to-day,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, and was just going to say
+      what he had on his mind when she began again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something I want to say. We have here an old woman; such a fine
+      one, d&rsquo;you know, she just surprises every one; she is imprisoned for
+      nothing, and her son, too, and everybody knows they are innocent, though
+      they are accused of having set fire to a house. D&rsquo;you know, hearing I was
+      acquainted with you, she says: &lsquo;Tell him to ask to see my son; he&rsquo;ll tell
+      him all about it.&rdquo;&rsquo; Thus spoke Maslova, turning her head from side to
+      side, and glancing at Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Their name&rsquo;s Menshoff. Well, will you
+      do it? Such a fine old thing, you know; you can see at once she&rsquo;s
+      innocent. You&rsquo;ll do it, there&rsquo;s a dear,&rdquo; and she smiled, glanced up at
+      him, and then cast down her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. I&rsquo;ll find out about them,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, more and more
+      astonished by her free-and-easy manner. &ldquo;But I was going to speak to you
+      about myself. Do you remember what I told you last time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said a lot last time. What was it you told me?&rdquo; she said, continuing
+      to smile and to turn her head from side to side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said I had come to ask you to forgive me,&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use of that? Forgive, forgive, where&rsquo;s the good of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To atone for my sin, not by mere words, but in deed. I have made up my
+      mind to marry you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An expression of fear suddenly came over her face. Her squinting eyes
+      remained fixed on him, and yet seemed not to be looking at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that for?&rdquo; she said, with an angry frown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel that it is my duty before God to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What God have you found now? You are not saying what you ought to. God,
+      indeed! What God? You ought to have remembered God then,&rdquo; she said, and
+      stopped with her mouth open. It was only now that Nekhludoff noticed that
+      her breath smelled of spirits, and that he understood the cause of her
+      excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try and be calm,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I be calm?&rdquo; she began, quickly, flushing scarlet. &ldquo;I am a
+      convict, and you are a gentleman and a prince. There&rsquo;s no need for you to
+      soil yourself by touching me. You go to your princesses; my price is a
+      ten-rouble note.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However cruelly you may speak, you cannot express what I myself am
+      feeling,&rdquo; he said, trembling all over; &ldquo;you cannot imagine to what extent
+      I feel myself guilty towards you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feel yourself guilty?&rdquo; she said, angrily mimicking him. &ldquo;You did not feel
+      so then, but threw me 100 roubles. That&rsquo;s your price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know; but what is to be done now?&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I have
+      decided not to leave you, and what I have said I shall do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I say you sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said, and laughed aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katusha,&rdquo; he said, touching her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go away. I am a convict and you a prince, and you&rsquo;ve no business
+      here,&rdquo; she cried, pulling away her hand, her whole appearance transformed
+      by her wrath. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got pleasure out of me in this life, and want to
+      save yourself through me in the life to come. You are disgusting to me&mdash;your
+      spectacles and the whole of your dirty fat mug. Go, go!&rdquo; she screamed,
+      starting to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jailer came up to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you kicking up this row for?&rsquo; That won&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her alone, please,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must not forget herself,&rdquo; said the jailer. &ldquo;Please wait a little,&rdquo;
+       said Nekhludoff, and the jailer returned to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova sat down again, dropping her eyes and firmly clasping her small
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff stooped over her, not knowing what to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not believe me?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you mean to marry me? It will never be. I&rsquo;ll rather hang myself. So
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, still I shall go on serving you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s your affair, only I don&rsquo;t want anything from you. I am telling you
+      the plain truth,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Oh, why did I not die then?&rdquo; she added, and
+      began to cry piteously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff could not speak; her tears infected him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her eyes, looked at him in surprise, and began to wipe her
+      tears with her kerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jailer came up again and reminded them that it was time to part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are excited. If it is possible, I shall come again tomorrow; you
+      think it over,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him no answer and, without looking up, followed the jailer out of
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, lass, you&rsquo;ll have rare times now,&rdquo; Korableva said, when Maslova
+      returned to the cell. &ldquo;Seems he&rsquo;s mighty sweet on you; make the most of it
+      while he&rsquo;s after you. He&rsquo;ll help you out. Rich people can do anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s so,&rdquo; remarked the watchman&rsquo;s wife, with her musical voice.
+      &ldquo;When a poor man thinks of getting married, there&rsquo;s many a slip &lsquo;twixt the
+      cup and the lip; but a rich man need only make up his mind and it&rsquo;s done.
+      We knew a toff like that duckie. What d&rsquo;you think he did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, have you spoken about my affairs?&rdquo; the old woman asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Maslova gave her fellow-prisoners no answer; she lay down on the shelf
+      bedstead, her squinting eyes fixed on a corner of the room, and lay there
+      until the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A painful struggle went on in her soul. What Nekhludoff had told her
+      called up the memory of that world in which she had suffered and which she
+      had left without having understood, hating it. She now feared to wake from
+      the trance in which she was living. Not having arrived at any conclusion
+      when evening came, she again bought some vodka and drank with her
+      companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0049" id="link2HCH0049">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLIX. VERA DOUKHOVA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So this is what it means, this,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff as he left the
+      prison, only now fully understanding his crime. If he had not tried to
+      expiate his guilt he would never have found out how great his crime was.
+      Nor was this all; she, too, would never have felt the whole horror of what
+      had been done to her. He only now saw what he had done to the soul of this
+      woman; only now she saw and understood what had been done to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to this time Nekhludoff had played with a sensation of self-admiration,
+      had admired his own remorse; now he was simply filled with horror. He knew
+      he could not throw her up now, and yet he could not imagine what would
+      come of their relations to one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as he was going out, a jailer, with a disagreeable, insinuating
+      countenance, and a cross and medals on his breast, came up and handed him
+      a note with an air of mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is a note from a certain person, your honour,&rdquo; he said to Nekhludoff
+      as he gave him the envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What person?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will know when you read it. A political prisoner. I am in that ward,
+      so she asked me; and though it is against the rules, still feelings of
+      humanity&mdash;&rdquo; The jailer spoke in an unnatural manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was surprised that a jailer of the ward where political
+      prisoners were kept should pass notes inside the very prison walls, and
+      almost within sight of every one; he did not then know that this was both
+      a jailer and a spy. However, he took the note and read it on coming out of
+      the prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The note was written in a bold hand, and ran as follows: &ldquo;Having heard
+      that you visit the prison, and are interested in the case of a criminal
+      prisoner, the desire of seeing you arose in me. Ask for a permission to
+      see me. I can give you a good deal of information concerning your
+      protegee, and also our group.&mdash;Yours gratefully, VERA DOUKHOVA.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Vera Doukhova had been a school-teacher in an out-of-the-way village of
+      the Novgorod Government, where Nekhludoff and some friends of his had once
+      put up while bear hunting. Nekhludoff gladly and vividly recalled those
+      old days, and his acquaintance with Doukhova. It was just before Lent, in
+      an isolated spot, 40 miles from the railway. The hunt had been successful;
+      two bears had been killed; and the company were having dinner before
+      starting on their return journey, when the master of the hut where they
+      were putting up came in to say that the deacon&rsquo;s daughter wanted to speak
+      to Prince Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Is she pretty?&rdquo; some one asked. &ldquo;None of that,
+      please,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, and rose with a serious look on his face. Wiping
+      his mouth, and wondering what the deacon&rsquo;s daughter might want of him, he
+      went into the host&rsquo;s private hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There he found a girl with a felt hat and a warm cloak on&mdash;a sinewy,
+      ugly girl; only her eyes with their arched brows were beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, miss, speak to him,&rdquo; said the old housewife; &ldquo;this is the prince
+      himself. I shall go out meanwhile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way can I be of service to you?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;I see you are throwing away your money on such nonsense&mdash;on
+      hunting,&rdquo; began the girl, in great confusion. &ldquo;I know&mdash;I only want
+      one thing&mdash;to be of use to the people, and I can do nothing because I
+      know nothing&mdash;&rdquo; Her eyes were so truthful, so kind, and her
+      expression of resoluteness and yet bashfulness was so touching, that
+      Nekhludoff, as it often happened to him, suddenly felt as if he were in
+      her position, understood, and sympathised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I do, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a teacher, but should like to follow a course of study; and I am not
+      allowed to do so. That is, not that I am not allowed to; they&rsquo;d allow me
+      to, but I have not got the means. Give them to me, and when I have
+      finished the course I shall repay you. I am thinking the rich kill bears
+      and give the peasants drink; all this is bad. Why should they not do good?
+      I only want 80 roubles. But if you don&rsquo;t wish to, never mind,&rdquo; she added,
+      gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I am very grateful to you for this opportunity. . . . I
+      will bring it at once,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went out into the passage, and there met one of his comrades, who had
+      been overhearing his conversation. Paying no heed to his chaffing,
+      Nekhludoff got the money out of his bag and took it to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please, do not thank me; it is I who should thank you,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was pleasant to remember all this now; pleasant to remember that he had
+      nearly had a quarrel with an officer who tried to make an objectionable
+      joke of it, and how another of his comrades had taken his part, which led
+      to a closer friendship between them. How successful the whole of that
+      hunting expedition had been, and how happy he had felt when returning to
+      the railway station that night. The line of sledges, the horses in tandem,
+      glide quickly along the narrow road that lies through the forest, now
+      between high trees, now between low firs weighed down by the snow, caked
+      in heavy lumps on their branches. A red light flashes in the dark, some
+      one lights an aromatic cigarette. Joseph, a bear driver, keeps running
+      from sledge to sledge, up to his knees in snow, and while putting things
+      to rights he speaks about the elk which are now going about on the deep
+      snow and gnawing the bark off the aspen trees, of the bears that are lying
+      asleep in their deep hidden dens, and his breath comes warm through the
+      opening in the sledge cover. All this came back to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s mind; but,
+      above all, the joyous sense of health, strength, and freedom from care:
+      the lungs breathing in the frosty air so deeply that the fur cloak is
+      drawn tightly on his chest, the fine snow drops off the low branches on to
+      his face, his body is warm, his face feels fresh, and his soul is free
+      from care, self-reproach, fear, or desire. How beautiful it was. And now,
+      O God! what torment, what trouble!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently Vera Doukhova was a revolutionist and imprisoned as such. He
+      must see her, especially as she promised to advise him how to lighten
+      Maslova&rsquo;s lot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0050" id="link2HCH0050">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER L. THE VICE-GOVERNOR OF THE PRISON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Awaking early the next morning, Nekhludoff remembered what he had done the
+      day before, and was seized with fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in spite of this fear, he was more determined than ever to continue
+      what he had begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conscious of a sense of duty, he left the house and went to see
+      Maslennikoff in order to obtain from him a permission to visit Maslova in
+      prison, and also the Menshoffs&mdash;mother and son&mdash;about whom
+      Maslova had spoken to him. Nekhludoff had known this Maslennikoff a long
+      time; they had been in the regiment together. At that time Maslennikoff
+      was treasurer to the regiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a kind-hearted and zealous officer, knowing and wishing to know
+      nothing beyond the regiment and the Imperial family. Now Nekhludoff saw
+      him as an administrator, who had exchanged the regiment for an
+      administrative office in the government where he lived. He was married to
+      a rich and energetic woman, who had forced him to exchange military for
+      civil service. She laughed at him, and caressed him, as if he were her own
+      pet animal. Nekhludoff had been to see them once during the winter, but
+      the couple were so uninteresting to him that he had not gone again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sight of Nekhludoff Maslennikoff&rsquo;s face beamed all over. He had the
+      same fat red face, and was as corpulent and as well dressed as in his
+      military days. Then, he used to be always dressed in a well-brushed
+      uniform, made according to the latest fashion, tightly fitting his chest
+      and shoulders; now, it was a civil service uniform he wore, and that, too,
+      tightly fitted his well-fed body and showed off his broad chest, and was
+      cut according to the latest fashion. In spite of the difference in age
+      (Maslennikoff was 40), the two men were very familiar with one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halloo, old fellow! How good of you to come! Let us go and see my wife. I
+      have just ten minutes to spare before the meeting. My chief is away, you
+      know. I am at the head of the Government administration,&rdquo; he said, unable
+      to disguise his satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come on business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said Maslennikoff, in an anxious and severe tone, putting
+      himself at once on his guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a person, whom I am very much interested in, in prison&rdquo; (at the
+      word &ldquo;prison&rdquo; Maslennikoff&rsquo;s face grew stern); &ldquo;and I should like to have
+      an interview in the office, and not in the common visiting-room. I have
+      been told it depended on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, mon cher,&rdquo; said Maslennikoff, putting both hands on
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s knees, as if to tone down his grandeur; &ldquo;but remember, I am
+      monarch only for an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then will you give me an order that will enable me to see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is she there for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poisoning, but she has been unjustly condemned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there you have it, your justice administered by jury, ils n&rsquo;en font
+      point d&rsquo;autres,&rdquo; he said, for some unknown reason, in French. &ldquo;I know you
+      do not agree with me, but it can&rsquo;t be helped, c&rsquo;est mon opinion bien
+      arretee,&rdquo; he added, giving utterance to an opinion he had for the last
+      twelve months been reading in the retrograde Conservative paper. &ldquo;I know
+      you are a Liberal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether I am a Liberal or something else,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said,
+      smiling; it always surprised him to find himself ranked with a political
+      party and called a Liberal, when he maintained that a man should be heard
+      before he was judged, that before being tried all men were equal, that
+      nobody at all ought to be ill-treated and beaten, but especially those who
+      had not yet been condemned by law. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether I am a Liberal or
+      not; but I do know that however had the present way of conducting a trial
+      is, it is better than the old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And whom have you for an advocate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have spoken to Fanarin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, Fanarin!&rdquo; said Meslennikoff, with a grimace, recollecting how
+      this Fanarin had examined him as a witness at a trial the year before and
+      had, in the politest manner, held him up to ridicule for half an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should not advise you to have anything to do with him. <i>Fanarin est
+      un homme tare</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have one more request to make,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, without answering him.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a girl whom I knew long ago, a teacher; she is a very pitiable
+      little thing, and is now also imprisoned, and would like to see me. Could
+      you give me a permission to visit her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meslennikoff bent his head on one side and considered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a political one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have been told so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, only relatives get permission to visit political
+      prisoners. Still, I&rsquo;ll give you an open order. <i>Je sais que vous
+      n&rsquo;abuserez pas</i>. What&rsquo;s the name of your protegee? Doukhova? <i>Elle
+      est jolie?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hideuse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslennikoff shook his head disapprovingly, went up to the table, and
+      wrote on a sheet of paper, with a printed heading: &ldquo;The bearer, Prince
+      Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, is to be allowed to interview in the prison
+      office the meschanka Maslova, and also the medical assistant, Doukhova,&rdquo;
+       and he finished with an elaborate flourish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you&rsquo;ll be able to see what order we have got there. And it is very
+      difficult to keep order, it is so crowded, especially with people
+      condemned to exile; but I watch strictly, and love the work. You will see
+      they are very comfortable and contented. But one must know how to deal
+      with them. Only a few days ago we had a little trouble&mdash;insubordination;
+      another would have called it mutiny, and would have made many miserable,
+      but with us it all passed quietly. We must have solicitude on one hand,
+      firmness and power on the other,&rdquo; and he clenched the fat, white,
+      turquoise-ringed fist, which issued out of the starched cuff of his shirt
+      sleeve, fastened with a gold stud. &ldquo;Solicitude and firm power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know about that,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I went there twice, and
+      felt very much depressed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, you ought to get acquainted with the Countess Passek,&rdquo;
+       continued Maslennikoff, growing talkative. &ldquo;She has given herself up
+      entirely to this sort of work. Elle fait beaucoup de bien. Thanks to her&mdash;and,
+      perhaps I may add without false modesty, to me&mdash;everything has been
+      changed, changed in such a way that the former horrors no longer exist,
+      and they are really quite comfortable there. Well, you&rsquo;ll see. There&rsquo;s
+      Fanarin. I do not know him personally; besides, my social position keeps
+      our ways apart; but he is positively a bad man, and besides, he takes the
+      liberty of saying such things in the court&mdash;such things!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, thank you,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, taking the paper, and without
+      listening further he bade good-day to his former comrade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And won&rsquo;t you go in to see my wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, pray excuse me; I have no time now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, why she will never forgive me,&rdquo; said Maslennikoff, accompanying
+      his old acquaintance down to the first landing, as he was in the habit of
+      doing to persons of not the greatest, but the second greatest importance,
+      with whom he classed Nekhludoff; &ldquo;now do go in, if only for a moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Nekhludoff remained firm; and while the footman and the door-keeper
+      rushed to give him his stick and overcoat, and opened the door, outside of
+      which there stood a policeman, Nekhludoff repeated that he really could
+      not come in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then; on Thursday, please. It is her &lsquo;at-home.&rsquo; I will tell her you
+      will come,&rdquo; shouted Maslennikoff from the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0051" id="link2HCH0051">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LI. THE CELLS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff drove that day straight from Maslennikoff&rsquo;s to the prison, and
+      went to the inspector&rsquo;s lodging, which he now knew. He was again struck by
+      the sounds of the same piano of inferior quality; but this time it was not
+      a rhapsody that was being played, but exercises by Clementi, again with
+      the same vigour, distinctness, and quickness. The servant with the
+      bandaged eye said the inspector was in, and showed Nekhludoff to a small
+      drawing-room, in which there stood a sofa and, in front of it, a table,
+      with a large lamp, which stood on a piece of crochet work, and the paper
+      shade of which was burnt on one side. The chief inspector entered, with
+      his usual sad and weary look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a seat, please. What is it you want?&rdquo; he said, buttoning up the
+      middle button of his uniform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just been to the vice-governor&rsquo;s, and got this order from him. I
+      should like to see the prisoner Maslova.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Markova?&rdquo; asked the inspector, unable to bear distinctly because of the
+      music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maslova!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes.&rdquo; The inspector got up and went to the door whence proceeded
+      Clementi&rsquo;s roulades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary, can&rsquo;t you stop just a minute?&rdquo; he said, in a voice that showed that
+      this music was the bane of his life. &ldquo;One can&rsquo;t hear a word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The piano was silent, but one could hear the sound of reluctant steps, and
+      some one looked in at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector seemed to feel eased by the interval of silence, lit a thick
+      cigarette of weak tobacco, and offered one to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff refused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I want is to see Maslova.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, that can be managed. Now, then, what do you want?&rdquo; he said,
+      addressing a little girl of five or six, who came into the room and walked
+      up to her father with her head turned towards Nekhludoff, and her eyes
+      fixed on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, now, you&rsquo;ll fall down,&rdquo; said the inspector, smiling, as the little
+      girl ran up to him, and, not looking where she was going, caught her foot
+      in a little rug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, if I may, I shall go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not very convenient to see Maslova to-day,&rdquo; said the inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you know, it&rsquo;s all your own fault,&rdquo; said the inspector, with a
+      slight smile. &ldquo;Prince, give her no money into her hands. If you like, give
+      it me. I will keep it for her. You see, you gave her some money yesterday;
+      she got some spirits (it&rsquo;s an evil we cannot manage to root out), and
+      to-day she is quite tipsy, even violent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can this be true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, it is. I have even been obliged to have recourse to severe
+      measures, and to put her into a separate cell. She is a quiet woman in an
+      ordinary way. But please do not give her any money. These people are so&mdash;&rdquo;
+       What had happened the day before came vividly back to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s mind,
+      and again he was seized with fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Doukhova, a political prisoner; might I see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if you like,&rdquo; said the inspector. He embraced the little girl, who
+      was still looking at Nekhludoff, got up, and, tenderly motioning her
+      aside, went into the ante-room. Hardly had he got into the overcoat which
+      the maid helped him to put on, and before he had reached the door, the
+      distinct sounds of Clementi&rsquo;s roulades again began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She entered the Conservatoire, but there is such disorder there. She has
+      a great gift,&rdquo; said the inspector, as they went down the stairs. &ldquo;She
+      means to play at concerts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector and Nekhludoff arrived at the prison. The gates were
+      instantly opened as they appeared. The jailers, with their fingers lifted
+      to their caps, followed the inspector with their eyes. Four men, with
+      their heads half shaved, who were carrying tubs filled with something,
+      cringed when they saw the inspector. One of them frowned angrily, his
+      black eyes glaring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course a talent like that must be developed; it would not do to bury
+      it, but in a small lodging, you know, it is rather hard.&rdquo; The inspector
+      went on with the conversation, taking no notice of the prisoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it you want to see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doukhova.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s in the tower. You&rsquo;ll have to wait a little,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might I not meanwhile see the prisoners Menshoff, mother and son, who are
+      accused of incendiarism?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes. Cell No. 21. Yes, they can be sent for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But might I not see Menshoff in his cell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ll find the waiting-room more pleasant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I should prefer the cell. It is more interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you have found something to be interested in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the assistant, a smartly-dressed officer, entered the side door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, see the Prince into Menshoff&rsquo;s cell, No. 21,&rdquo; said the inspector to
+      his assistant, &ldquo;and then take him to the office. And I&rsquo;ll go and call&mdash;What&rsquo;s
+      her name? Vera Doukhova.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector&rsquo;s assistant was young, with dyed moustaches, and diffusing
+      the smell of eau-de-cologne. &ldquo;This way, please,&rdquo; he said to Nekhludoff,
+      with a pleasant smile. &ldquo;Our establishment interests you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it does interest me; and, besides, I look upon it as a duty to help
+      a man who I heard was confined here, though innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that may happen,&rdquo; he said quietly, politely stepping aside to let
+      the visitor enter, the stinking corridor first. &ldquo;But it also happens that
+      they lie. Here we are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doors of the cells were open, and some of the prisoners were in the
+      corridor. The assistant nodded slightly to the jailers, and cast a side
+      glance at the prisoners, who, keeping close to the wall, crept back to
+      their cells, or stood like soldiers, with their arms at their sides,
+      following the official with their eyes. After passing through one
+      corridor, the assistant showed Nekhludoff into another to the left,
+      separated from the first by an iron door. This corridor was darker, and
+      smelt even worse than the first. The corridor had doors on both sides,
+      with little holes in them about an inch in diameter. There was only an old
+      jailer, with an unpleasant face, in this corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Menshoff?&rdquo; asked the inspector&rsquo;s assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The eighth cell to the left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these? Are they occupied?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, all but one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0052" id="link2HCH0052">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LII. NO. 21.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;May I look in?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly,&rdquo; answered the assistant, smiling, and turned to the jailer
+      with some question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff looked into one of the little holes, and saw a tall young man
+      pacing up and down the cell. When the man heard some one at the door he
+      looked up with a frown, but continued walking up and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff looked into another hole. His eye met another large eye looking
+      out of the hole at him, and he quickly stepped aside. In the third cell he
+      saw a very small man asleep on the bed, covered, head and all, with his
+      prison cloak. In the fourth a broad-faced man was sitting with his elbows
+      on his knees and his head low down. At the sound of footsteps this man
+      raised his head and looked up. His face, especially his large eyes, bore
+      the expression of hopeless dejection. One could see that it did not even
+      interest him to know who was looking into his cell. Whoever it might be,
+      he evidently hoped for nothing good from him. Nekhludoff was seized with
+      dread, and went to Menshoff&rsquo;s cell, No. 21, without stopping to look
+      through any more holes. The jailer unlocked the door and opened it. A
+      young man, with long neck, well-developed muscles, a small head, and kind,
+      round eyes, stood by the bed, hastily putting on his cloak, and looking at
+      the newcomers with a frightened face. Nekhludoff was specially struck by
+      the kind, round eyes that were throwing frightened and inquiring glances
+      in turns at him, at the jailer, and at the assistant, and back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a gentleman wants to inquire into your affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you kindly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I was told about you,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, going through the cell up to
+      the dirty grated window, &ldquo;and I should like to hear all about it from
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Menshoff also came up to the window, and at once started telling his
+      story, at first looking shyly at the inspector&rsquo;s assistant, but growing
+      gradually bolder. When the assistant left the cell and went into the
+      corridor to give some order the man grew quite bold. The story was told
+      with the accent and in the manner common to a most ordinary good peasant
+      lad. To hear it told by a prisoner dressed in this degrading clothing, and
+      inside a prison, seemed very strange to Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff listened,
+      and at the same time kept looking around him&mdash;at the low bedstead
+      with its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall, and the
+      piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant in his
+      prison cloak and shoes, and he felt sadder and sadder, and would have
+      liked not to believe what this good-natured fellow was saying. It seemed
+      too dreadful to think that men could do such a thing as to take a man,
+      dress him in convict clothes, and put him in this horrible place without
+      any reason only because he himself had been injured. And yet the thought
+      that this seemingly true story, told with such a good-natured expression
+      on the face, might be an invention and a lie was still more dreadful. This
+      was the story: The village public-house keeper had enticed the young
+      fellow&rsquo;s wife. He tried to get justice by all sorts of means. But
+      everywhere the public-house keeper managed to bribe the officials, and was
+      acquitted. Once, he took his wife back by force, but she ran away next
+      day. Then he came to demand her back, but, though he saw her when he came
+      in, the public-house keeper told him she was not there, and ordered him to
+      go away. He would not go, so the public-house keeper and his servant beat
+      him so that they drew blood. The next day a fire broke out in the
+      public-house, and the young man and his mother were accused of having set
+      the house on fire. He had not set it on fire, but was visiting a friend at
+      the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is true that you did not set it on fire?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It never entered my head to do it, sir. It must be my enemy that did it
+      himself. They say he had only just insured it. Then they said it was
+      mother and I that did it, and that we had threatened him. It is true I
+      once did go for him, my heart couldn&rsquo;t stand it any longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can this be true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God is my witness it is true. Oh, sir, be so good&mdash;&rdquo; and Nekhludoff
+      had some difficulty to prevent him from bowing down to the ground. &ldquo;You
+      see I am perishing without any reason.&rdquo; His face quivered and he turned up
+      the sleeve of his cloak and began to cry, wiping the tears with the sleeve
+      of his dirty shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you ready?&rdquo; asked the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Well, cheer up. We will consult a good lawyer, and will do what we
+      can,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and went out. Menshoff stood close to the door, so
+      that the jailer knocked him in shutting it, and while the jailer was
+      locking it he remained looking out through the little hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0053" id="link2HCH0053">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LIII. VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Passing back along the broad corridor (it was dinner time, and the cell
+      doors were open), among the men dressed in their light yellow cloaks,
+      short, wide trousers, and prison shoes, who were looking eagerly at him,
+      Nekhludoff felt a strange mixture of sympathy for them, and horror and
+      perplexity at the conduct of those who put and kept them here, and,
+      besides, he felt, he knew not why, ashamed of himself calmly examining it
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one of the corridors, some one ran, clattering with his shoes, in at
+      the door of a cell. Several men came out from here, and stood in
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s way, bowing to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, your honour (we don&rsquo;t know what to call you), get our affair
+      settled somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not an official. I know nothing about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, anyhow, you come from outside; tell somebody&mdash;one of the
+      authorities, if need be,&rdquo; said an indignant voice. &ldquo;Show some pity on us,
+      as a human being. Here we are suffering the second month for nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean? Why?&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? We ourselves don&rsquo;t know why, but are sitting here the second month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s quite true, and it is owing to an accident,&rdquo; said the
+      inspector. &ldquo;These people were taken up because they had no passports, and
+      ought to have been sent back to their native government; but the prison
+      there is burnt, and the local authorities have written, asking us not to
+      send them on. So we have sent all the other passportless people to their
+      different governments, but are keeping these.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! For no other reason than that?&rdquo; Nekhludoff exclaimed, stopping at
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes, surrounded him
+      and the assistant, and several began talking at once. The assistant
+      stopped them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let some one of you speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty, stepped out
+      from the rest. He told Nekhludoff that all of them had been ordered back
+      to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no
+      passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue. The
+      same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to renew
+      their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said anything;
+      but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in prison the
+      second month, as if they were criminals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are all masons, and belong to the same artel. We are told that the
+      prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault. Do help us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-looking old man
+      was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey,
+      many-legged louse that was creeping along the good-looking man&rsquo;s cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&rsquo;s that? Is it possible for such a reason?&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, turning
+      to the assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they should have been sent off and taken back to their homes,&rdquo;
+       calmly said the assistant, &ldquo;but they seem to have been forgotten or
+      something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the assistant had finished, a small, nervous man, also in prison
+      dress, came out of the crowd, and, strangely contorting his mouth, began
+      to say that they were being ill-used for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse than dogs,&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now; not too much of this. Hold your tongue, or you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I know?&rdquo; screamed the little man, desperately. &ldquo;What is our
+      crime?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silence!&rdquo; shouted the assistant, and the little man was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is the meaning of all this?&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought to himself as he
+      came out of the cell, while a hundred eyes were fixed upon him through the
+      openings of the cell doors and from the prisoners that met him, making him
+      feel as if he were running the gauntlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it really possible that perfectly innocent people are kept here?&rdquo;
+       Nekhludoff uttered when they left the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have us do? They lie so. To hear them talk they are all of
+      them innocent,&rdquo; said the inspector&rsquo;s assistant. &ldquo;But it does happen that
+      some are really imprisoned for nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, these have done nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we must admit it. Still, the people are fearfully spoilt. There are
+      such types&mdash;desperate fellows, with whom one has to look sharp.
+      To-day two of that sort had to be punished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Punished? How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Flogged with a birch-rod, by order.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But corporal punishment is abolished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for such as are deprived of their rights. They are still liable to
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thought of what he had seen the day before while waiting in the
+      hall, and now understood that the punishment was then being inflicted, and
+      the mixed feeling of curiosity, depression, perplexity, and moral nausea,
+      that grew into physical sickness, took hold of him more strongly than ever
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without listening to the inspector&rsquo;s assistant, or looking round, he
+      hurriedly left the corridor, and went to the office. The inspector was in
+      the office, occupied with other business, and had forgotten to send for
+      Doukhova. He only remembered his promise to have her called when
+      Nekhludoff entered the office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, please. I&rsquo;ll send for her at once,&rdquo; said the inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0054" id="link2HCH0054">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LIV. PRISONERS AND FRIENDS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The office consisted of two rooms. The first room, with a large,
+      dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for measuring
+      the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a large image of
+      Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people. In this room
+      stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty persons, men and
+      women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices. There was a writing
+      table by the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector sat down by the table, and offered Nekhludoff a chair beside
+      him. Nekhludoff sat down, and looked at the people in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first who drew his attention was a young man with a pleasant face,
+      dressed in a short jacket, standing in front of a middle-aged woman with
+      dark eyebrows, and he was eagerly telling her something and gesticulating
+      with his hands. Beside them sat an old man, with blue spectacles, holding
+      the hand of a young woman in prisoner&rsquo;s clothes, who was telling him
+      something. A schoolboy, with a fixed, frightened look on his face, was
+      gazing at the old man. In one corner sat a pair of lovers. She was quite
+      young and pretty, and had short, fair hair, looked energetic, and was
+      elegantly dressed; he had fine features, wavy hair, and wore a rubber
+      jacket. They sat in their corner and seemed stupefied with love. Nearest
+      to the table sat a grey-haired woman dressed in black, evidently the
+      mother of a young, consumptive-looking fellow, in the same kind of jacket.
+      Her head lay on his shoulder. She was trying to say something, but the
+      tears prevented her from speaking; she began several times, but had to
+      stop. The young man held a paper in his hand, and, apparently not knowing
+      what to do, kept folding and pressing it with an angry look on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beside them was a short-haired, stout, rosy girl, with very prominent
+      eyes, dressed in a grey dress and a cape; she sat beside the weeping
+      mother, tenderly stroking her. Everything about this girl was beautiful;
+      her large, white hands, her short, wavy hair, her firm nose and lips, but
+      the chief charm of her face lay in her kind, truthful hazel eyes. The
+      beautiful eyes turned away from the mother for a moment when Nekhludoff
+      came in, and met his look. But she turned back at once and said something
+      to the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not far from the lovers a dark, dishevelled man, with a gloomy face, sat
+      angrily talking to a beardless visitor, who looked as if he belonged to
+      the Scoptsy sect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed more
+      concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker than about what
+      he was saying. Nekhludoff, sitting by the inspector&rsquo;s side, looked round
+      with strained curiosity. A little boy with closely-cropped hair came up to
+      him and addressed him in a thin little voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And whom are you waiting for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy, and
+      seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive eyes fixed on
+      him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for a woman of his
+      acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she, then, your sister?&rdquo; the boy asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not my sister,&rdquo; Nekhludoff answered in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And with whom are you here?&rdquo; he inquired of the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? With mamma; she is a political one,&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!&rdquo; said the inspector, evidently considering
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s conversation with the boy illegal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff&rsquo;s
+      attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps,
+      approached Nekhludoff and the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is he asking you? Who you are?&rdquo; she inquired with a slight smile,
+      and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in her kind,
+      prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no doubt whatever that
+      she was and must be on sisterly terms with everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He likes to know everything,&rdquo; she said, looking at the boy with so sweet
+      and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were obliged to smile
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was asking me whom I have come to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers. You know it
+      is,&rdquo; said the inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, all right,&rdquo; she said, and went back to the consumptive lad&rsquo;s
+      mother, holding Kolia&rsquo;s little hand in her large, white one, while he
+      continued gazing up into her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose is this little boy?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,&rdquo; said the
+      inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how exceptional his
+      establishment was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that young girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot answer your question,&rdquo; said the inspector, shrugging his
+      shoulders. &ldquo;Besides, here is Doukhova.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0055" id="link2HCH0055">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LV. VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait,
+      the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large, kind eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks for having come,&rdquo; she said, pressing Nekhludoff&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;Do you
+      remember me? Let us sit down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not expect to see you like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire
+      nothing better,&rdquo; said Vera Doukhova, with the usual expression of fright
+      in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhludoff, and twisting the
+      terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty
+      collar of her bodice. Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great animation.
+      Her speech was intermingled with a great many long words, such as
+      propaganda, disorganisation, social groups, sections and sub-sections,
+      about which she seemed to think everybody knew, but which Nekhludoff had
+      never heard of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told him all the secrets of the Nardovolstvo, [literally, &ldquo;People&rsquo;s
+      Freedom,&rdquo; a revolutionary movement] evidently convinced that he was
+      pleased to hear them. Nekhludoff looked at her miserable little neck, her
+      thin, unkempt hair, and wondered why she had been doing all these strange
+      things, and why she was now telling all this to him. He pitied her, but
+      not as he had pitied Menshoff, the peasant, kept for no fault of his own
+      in the stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the confusion that
+      filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself a heroine, and
+      was ready to give her life for a cause, though she could hardly have
+      explained what that cause was and in what its success would lie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The business that Vera Doukhova wanted to see Nekhludoff about was the
+      following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to their
+      &ldquo;sub-group,&rdquo; as she expressed it, had been arrested with her about five
+      months before, and imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress because some
+      prohibited books and papers (which she had been asked to keep) had been
+      found in her possession. Vera Doukhova felt herself in some measure to
+      blame for her friend&rsquo;s arrest, and implored Nekhludoff, who had
+      connections among influential people, to do all he could in order to set
+      this friend free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides this, Doukhova asked him to try and get permission for another
+      friend of hers, Gourkevitch (who was also imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky
+      fortress), to see his parents, and to procure some scientific books which
+      he required for his studies. Nekhludoff promised to do what he could when
+      he went to Petersburg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a course of
+      midwifery, she became connected with a group of adherents to the
+      Nardovolstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in the revolutionary
+      movement. At first all went on smoothly. She wrote proclamations and
+      occupied herself with propaganda work in the factories; then, an important
+      member having been arrested, their papers were seized and all concerned
+      were arrested. &ldquo;I was also arrested, and shall be exiled. But what does it
+      matter? I feel perfectly happy.&rdquo; She concluded her story with a piteous
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the prominent
+      eyes. Vera Doukhova told him that this girl was the daughter of a general,
+      and had been long attached to the revolutionary party, and was arrested
+      because she had pleaded guilty to having shot a gendarme. She lived in a
+      house with some conspirators, where they had a secret printing press. One
+      night, when the police came to search this house, the occupiers resolved
+      to defend themselves, put out the light, and began destroying the things
+      that might incriminate them. The police forced their way in, and one of
+      the conspirators fired, and mortally wounded a gendarme. When an inquiry
+      was instituted, this girl said that it was she who had fired, although she
+      had never had a revolver in her hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And
+      she kept to it, and was now condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An altruistic, fine character,&rdquo; said Vera Doukhova, approvingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third business that Vera Doukhova wanted to talk about concerned
+      Maslova. She knew, as everybody does know in prison, the story of
+      Maslova&rsquo;s life and his connection with her, and advised him to take steps
+      to get her removed into the political prisoner&rsquo;s ward, or into the
+      hospital to help to nurse the sick, of which there were very many at that
+      time, so that extra nurses were needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thanked her for the advice, and said he would try to act upon
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0056" id="link2HCH0056">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LVI. NEKHLUDOFF AND THE PRISONERS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Their conversation was interrupted by the inspector, who said that the
+      time was up, and the prisoners and their friends must part. Nekhludoff
+      took leave of Vera Doukhova and went to the door, where he stopped to
+      watch what was going on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector&rsquo;s order called forth only heightened animation among the
+      prisoners in the room, but no one seemed to think of going. Some rose and
+      continued to talk standing, some went on talking without rising. A few
+      began crying and taking leave of each other. The mother and her
+      consumptive son seemed especially pathetic. The young fellow kept twisting
+      his bit of paper and his face seemed angry, so great were his efforts not
+      to be infected by his mother&rsquo;s emotion. The mother, hearing that it was
+      time to part, put her head on his shoulder and sobbed and sniffed aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl with the prominent eyes&mdash;Nekhludoff could not help watching
+      her&mdash;was standing opposite the sobbing mother, and was saying
+      something to her in a soothing tone. The old man with the blue spectacles
+      stood holding his daughter&rsquo;s hand and nodding in answer to what she said.
+      The young lovers rose, and, holding each other&rsquo;s hands, looked silently
+      into one another&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are the only two who are merry,&rdquo; said a young man with a short coat
+      who stood by Nekhludoff&rsquo;s side, also looking at those who were about to
+      part, and pointed to the lovers. Feeling Nekhludoff&rsquo;s and the young man&rsquo;s
+      eyes fixed on them, the lovers&mdash;the young man with the rubber coat
+      and the pretty girl&mdash;stretched out their arms, and with their hands
+      clasped in each other&rsquo;s, danced round and round again. &ldquo;To-night they are
+      going to be married here in prison, and she will follow him to Siberia,&rdquo;
+       said the young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A convict, condemned to penal servitude. Let those two at least have a
+      little joy, or else it is too painful,&rdquo; the young man added, listening to
+      the sobs of the consumptive lad&rsquo;s mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my good people! Please, please do not oblige me to have recourse to
+      severe measures,&rdquo; the inspector said, repeating the same words several
+      times over. &ldquo;Do, please,&rdquo; he went on in a weak, hesitating manner. &ldquo;It is
+      high time. What do you mean by it? This sort of thing is quite impossible.
+      I am now asking you for the last time,&rdquo; he repeated wearily, now putting
+      out his cigarette and then lighting another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evident that, artful, old, and common as were the devices enabling
+      men to do evil to others without feeling responsible for it, the inspector
+      could not but feel conscious that he was one of those who were guilty of
+      causing the sorrow which manifested itself in this room. And it was
+      apparent that this troubled him sorely. At length the prisoners and their
+      visitors began to go&mdash;the first out of the inner, the latter out of
+      the outer door. The man with the rubber jacket passed out among them, and
+      the consumptive youth and the dishevelled man. Mary Pavlovna went out with
+      the boy born in prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visitors went out too. The old man with the blue spectacles, stepping
+      heavily, went out, followed by Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, a strange state of things this,&rdquo; said the talkative young man, as if
+      continuing an interrupted conversation, as he descended the stairs side by
+      side with Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Yet we have reason to be grateful to the inspector
+      who does not keep strictly to the rules, kind-hearted fellow. If they can
+      get a talk it does relieve their hearts a bit, after all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While talking to the young man, who introduced himself as Medinzeff,
+      Nekhludoff reached the hall. There the inspector came up to them with
+      weary step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you wish to see Maslova,&rdquo; he said, apparently desiring to be polite to
+      Nekhludoff, &ldquo;please come to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; answered Nekhludoff, and hurried away, experiencing more than
+      ever that sensation of moral nausea which he always felt on entering the
+      prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sufferings of the evidently innocent Menshoff seemed terrible, and not
+      so much his physical suffering as the perplexity, the distrust in the good
+      and in God which he must feel, seeing the cruelty of the people who
+      tormented him without any reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Terrible were the disgrace and sufferings cast on these hundreds of
+      guiltless people simply because something was not written on paper as it
+      should have been. Terrible were the brutalised jailers, whose occupation
+      is to torment their brothers, and who were certain that they were
+      fulfilling an important and useful duty; but most terrible of all seemed
+      this sickly, elderly, kind-hearted inspector, who was obliged to part
+      mother and son, father and daughter, who were just the same sort of people
+      as he and his own children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it all for?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked himself, and could not find an
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0057" id="link2HCH0057">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LVII. THE VICE-GOVERNOR&rsquo;S &ldquo;AT-HOME&rdquo;.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day Nekhludoff went to see the advocate, and spoke to him about
+      the Menshoffs&rsquo; case, begging him to undertake their defence. The advocate
+      promised to look into the case, and if it turned out to be as Nekhludoff
+      said he would in all probability undertake the defence free of charge.
+      Then Nekhludoff told him of the 130 men who were kept in prison owing to a
+      mistake. &ldquo;On whom did it depend? Whose fault was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The advocate was silent for a moment, evidently anxious to give a correct
+      reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose fault is it? No one&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he said, decidedly. &ldquo;Ask the Procureur,
+      he&rsquo;ll say it is the Governor&rsquo;s; ask the Governor, he&rsquo;ll say it is the
+      Procureur&rsquo;s fault. No one is in fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am just going to see the Vice-Governor. I shall tell him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s quite useless,&rdquo; said the advocate, with a smile. &ldquo;He is such a&mdash;he
+      is not a relation or friend of yours?&mdash;such a blockhead, if I may say
+      so, and yet a crafty animal at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff remembered what Maslennikoff had said about the advocate, and
+      did not answer, but took leave and went on to Maslennikoff&rsquo;s. He had to
+      ask Maslennikoff two things: about Maslova&rsquo;s removal to the prison
+      hospital, and about the 130 passportless men innocently imprisoned. Though
+      it was very hard to petition a man whom he did not respect, and by whose
+      orders men were flogged, yet it was the only means of gaining his end, and
+      he had to go through with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he drove up to Maslennikoff&rsquo;s house Nekhludoff saw a number of
+      different carriages by the front door, and remembered that it was
+      Maslennikoff&rsquo;s wife&rsquo;s &ldquo;at-home&rdquo; day, to which he had been invited. At the
+      moment Nekhludoff drove up there was a carriage in front of the door, and
+      a footman in livery, with a cockade in his hat, was helping a lady down
+      the doorstep. She was holding up her train, and showing her thin ankles,
+      black stockings, and slippered feet. Among the carriages was a closed
+      landau, which he knew to be the Korchagins&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grey-haired, red-checked coachman took off his hat and bowed in a
+      respectful yet friendly manner to Nekhludoff, as to a gentleman he knew
+      well. Nekhludoff had not had time to inquire for Maslennikoff, when the
+      latter appeared on the carpeted stairs, accompanying a very important
+      guest not only to the first landing but to the bottom of the stairs. This
+      very important visitor, a military man, was speaking in French about a
+      lottery for the benefit of children&rsquo;s homes that were to be founded in the
+      city, and expressed the opinion that this was a good occupation for the
+      ladies. &ldquo;It amuses them, and the money comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Qu&rsquo;elles s&rsquo;amusent et que le bon dieu les benisse. M. Nekhludoff!</i>
+      How d&rsquo;you do? How is it one never sees you?&rdquo; he greeted Nekhludoff. &ldquo;<i>Allez
+      presenter vos devoirs a Madame.</i> And the Korchagins are here et Nadine
+      Bukshevden. <i>Toutes les jolies femmes de la ville,</i>&rdquo; said the
+      important guest, slightly raising his uniformed shoulders as he presented
+      them to his own richly liveried servant to have his military overcoat put
+      on. &ldquo;<i>Au revoir, mon cher.</i>&rdquo; And he pressed Maslennikoff&rsquo;s hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, come up; I am so glad,&rdquo; said Maslennikoff, grasping Nekhludoff&rsquo;s
+      hand. In spite of his corpulency Maslennikoff hurried quickly up the
+      stairs. He was in particularly good spirits, owing to the attention paid
+      him by the important personage. Every such attention gave him the same
+      sense of delight as is felt by an affectionate dog when its master pats
+      it, strokes it, or scratches its ears. It wags its tail, cringes, jumps
+      about, presses its ears down, and madly rushes about in a circle.
+      Maslennikoff was ready to do the same. He did not notice the serious
+      expression on Nekhludoff&rsquo;s face, paid no heed to his words, but pulled him
+      irresistibly towards the drawing-room, so that it was impossible for
+      Nekhludoff not to follow. &ldquo;Business after wards. I shall do whatever you
+      want,&rdquo; said Meslennikoff, as he drew Nekhludoff through the dancing hall.
+      &ldquo;Announce Prince Nekhludoff,&rdquo; he said to a footman, without stopping on
+      his way. The footman started off at a trot and passed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Vous n&rsquo;avez qu&rsquo; a ordonner.</i> But you must see my wife. As it is, I
+      got it for letting you go without seeing her last time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time they reached the drawing-room the footman had already
+      announced Nekhludoff, and from between the bonnets and heads that
+      surrounded it the smiling face of Anna Ignatievna, the Vice-Governor&rsquo;s
+      wife, beamed on Nekhludoff. At the other end of the drawing-room several
+      ladies were seated round the tea-table, and some military men and some
+      civilians stood near them. The clatter of male and female voices went on
+      unceasingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enfin! you seem to have quite forgotten us. How have we offended?&rdquo; With
+      these words, intended to convey an idea of intimacy which had never
+      existed between herself and Nekhludoff, Anna Ignatievna greeted the
+      newcomer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are acquainted?&mdash;Madam Tilyaevsky, M. Chernoff. Sit down a bit
+      nearer. Missy <i>vene donc a notre table on vous apportera votre</i> the .
+      . . And you,&rdquo; she said, having evidently forgotten his name, to an officer
+      who was talking to Missy, &ldquo;do come here. A cup of tea, Prince?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall never, never agree with you. It&rsquo;s quite simple; she did not
+      love,&rdquo; a woman&rsquo;s voice was heard saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she loved tarts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, your eternal silly jokes!&rdquo; put in, laughingly, another lady
+      resplendent in silks, gold, and jewels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;C&rsquo;est excellent these little biscuits, and so light. I think I&rsquo;ll take
+      another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, are you moving soon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, this is our last day. That&rsquo;s why we have come. Yes, it must be
+      lovely in the country; we are having a delightful spring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Missy, with her hat on, in a dark-striped dress of some kind that fitted
+      her like a skin, was looking very handsome. She blushed when she saw
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I thought you had left,&rdquo; she said to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am on the point of leaving. Business is keeping me in town, and it is
+      on business I have come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you come to see mamma? She would like to see you,&rdquo; she said, and
+      knowing that she was saying what was not true, and that he knew it also,
+      she blushed still more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fear I shall scarcely have time,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said gloomily, trying to
+      appear as if he had not noticed her blush. Missy frowned angrily, shrugged
+      her shoulders, and turned towards an elegant officer, who grasped the
+      empty cup she was holding, and knocking his sword against the chairs,
+      manfully carried the cup across to another table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must contribute towards the Home fund.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not refusing, but only wish to keep my bounty fresh for the lottery.
+      There I shall let it appear in all its glory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, look out for yourself,&rdquo; said a voice, followed by an evidently
+      feigned laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anna Ignatievna was in raptures; her &ldquo;at-home&rdquo; had turned out a brilliant
+      success. &ldquo;Micky tells me you are busying yourself with prison work. I can
+      understand you so well,&rdquo; she said to Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Micky (she meant her fat
+      husband, Maslennikoff) may have other defects, but you know how
+      kind-hearted he is. All these miserable prisoners are his children. He
+      does not regard them in any other light. <i>Il est d&rsquo;une bonte&mdash;-</i>&rdquo;
+       and she stopped, finding no words to do justice to this bonte of his, and
+      quickly turned to a shrivelled old woman with bows of lilac ribbon all
+      over, who came in just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having said as much as was absolutely necessary, and with as little
+      meaning as conventionality required, Nekhludoff rose and went up to
+      Meslennikoff. &ldquo;Can you give me a few minutes&rsquo; hearing, please?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes. Well, what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us come in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered a small Japanese sitting-room, and sat down by the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0058" id="link2HCH0058">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LVIII. THE VICE-GOVERNOR SUSPICIOUS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well? <i>Je suis a vous</i>. Will you smoke? But wait a bit; we must be
+      careful and not make a mess here,&rdquo; said Maslennikoff, and brought an
+      ashpan. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are two matters I wish to ask you about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An expression of gloom and dejection came over Maslennikoff&rsquo;s countenance,
+      and every trace of the excitement, like that of the dog&rsquo;s whom its master
+      has scratched behind the cars, vanished completely. The sound of voices
+      reached them from the drawing-room. A woman&rsquo;s voice was heard, saying, <i>&ldquo;Jamais
+      je ne croirais,&rdquo;</i> and a man&rsquo;s voice from the other side relating
+      something in which the names of la Comtesse Voronzoff and Victor Apraksine
+      kept recurring. A hum of voices, mixed with laughter, came from another
+      side. Maslennikoff tried to listen to what was going on in the
+      drawing-room and to what Nekhludoff was saying at the same time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am again come about that same woman,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; I know. The one innocently condemned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like to ask that she should be appointed to serve in the prison
+      hospital. I have been told that this could be arranged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslennikoff compressed his lips and meditated. &ldquo;That will be scarcely
+      possible,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;However, I shall see what can be done, and shall wire
+      you an answer tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been told that there were many sick, and help was needed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, all right. I shall let you know in any case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of a general and even a natural laugh came from the
+      drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all that Victor. He is wonderfully sharp when he is in the right
+      vein,&rdquo; said Maslennikoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The next thing I wanted to tell you,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, &ldquo;is that 130
+      persons are imprisoned only because their passports are overdue. They have
+      been kept here a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he related the circumstances of the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How have you come to know of this?&rdquo; said Maslennikoff, looking uneasy and
+      dissatisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went to see a prisoner, and these men came and surrounded me in the
+      corridor, and asked . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What prisoner did you go to see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A peasant who is kept in prison, though innocent. I have put his case
+      into the hands of a lawyer. But that is not the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible that people who have done no wrong are imprisoned only
+      because their passports are overdue? And . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the Procureur&rsquo;s business,&rdquo; Maslennikoff interrupted, angrily.
+      &ldquo;There, now, you see what it is you call a prompt and just form of trial.
+      It is the business of the Public Prosecutor to visit the prison and to
+      find out if the prisoners are kept there lawfully. But that set play
+      cards; that&rsquo;s all they do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I to understand that you can do nothing?&rdquo; Nekhludoff said,
+      despondently, remembering that the advocate had foretold that the Governor
+      would put the blame on the Procureur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I can. I shall see about it at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the worse for her. <i>C&rsquo;est un souffre douleur</i>,&rdquo; came the
+      voice of a woman, evidently indifferent to what she was saying, from the
+      drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the better. I shall take it also,&rdquo; a man&rsquo;s voice was heard to say
+      from the other side, followed by the playful laughter of a woman, who was
+      apparently trying to prevent the man from taking something away from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; not on any account,&rdquo; the woman&rsquo;s voice said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, then. I shall do all this,&rdquo; Maslennikoff repeated, and put out
+      the cigarette he held in his white, turquoise-ringed hand. &ldquo;And now let us
+      join the ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a moment,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, stopping at the door of the
+      drawing-room. &ldquo;I was told that some men had received corporal punishment
+      in the prison yesterday. Is this true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslennikoff blushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s what you are after? No, mon cher, decidedly it won&rsquo;t do to let
+      you in there; you want to get at everything. Come, come; Anna is calling
+      us,&rdquo; he said, catching Nekhludoff by the arm, and again becoming as
+      excited as after the attention paid him by the important person, only now
+      his excitement was not joyful, but anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff pulled his arm away, and without taking leave of any one and
+      without saying a word, he passed through the drawing-room with a dejected
+      look, went down into the hall, past the footman, who sprang towards him,
+      and out at the street door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with him? What have you done to him?&rdquo; asked Anna of
+      her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is <i>a la Francaise</i>,&rdquo; remarked some one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>A la Francaise</i>, indeed&mdash;it is <i>a la Zoulou</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but he&rsquo;s always been like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some one rose, some one came in, and the clatter went on its course. The
+      company used this episode with Nekhludoff as a convenient topic of
+      conversation for the rest of the &ldquo;at-home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day following his visit to Maslennikoff, Nekhludoff received a
+      letter from him, written in a fine, firm hand, on thick, glazed paper,
+      with a coat-of-arms, and sealed with sealing-wax. Maslennikoff said that
+      he had written to the doctor concerning Maslova&rsquo;s removal to the hospital,
+      and hoped Nekhludoff&rsquo;s wish would receive attention. The letter was
+      signed, &ldquo;Your affectionate elder comrade,&rdquo; and the signature ended with a
+      large, firm, and artistic flourish. &ldquo;Fool!&rdquo; Nekhludoff could not refrain
+      from saying, especially because in the word &ldquo;comrade&rdquo; he felt
+      Maslennikoff&rsquo;s condescension towards him, i.e., while Maslennikoff was
+      filling this position, morally most dirty and shameful, he still thought
+      himself a very important man, and wished, if not exactly to flatter
+      Nekhludoff, at least to show that he was not too proud to call him
+      comrade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0059" id="link2HCH0059">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER LIX. NEKHLUDOFF&rsquo;S THIRD INTERVIEW WITH MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own
+      special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid,
+      energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that
+      he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener
+      energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say of
+      one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is wicked and
+      foolish. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is
+      untrue. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in
+      all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower,
+      there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same
+      with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality,
+      and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often
+      becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man, In some people
+      these changes are very rapid, and Nekhludoff was such a man. These changes
+      in him were due to physical and to spiritual causes. At this time he
+      experienced such a change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That feeling of triumph and joy at the renewal of life which he had
+      experienced after the trial and after the first interview with Katusha,
+      vanished completely, and after the last interview fear and revulsion took
+      the place of that joy. He was determined not to leave her, and not to
+      change his decision of marrying her, if she wished it; but it seemed very
+      hard, and made him suffer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day after his visit to Maslennikoff, he again went to the prison to
+      see her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector allowed him to speak to her, only not in the advocate&rsquo;s room
+      nor in the office, but in the women&rsquo;s visiting-room. In spite of his
+      kindness, the inspector was more reserved with Nekhludoff than hitherto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An order for greater caution had apparently been sent, as a result of his
+      conversation with Meslennikoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may see her,&rdquo; the inspector said; &ldquo;but please remember what I said as
+      regards money. And as to her removal to the hospital, that his excellency
+      wrote to me about, it can be done; the doctor would agree. Only she
+      herself does not wish it. She says, &lsquo;Much need have I to carry out the
+      slops for the scurvy beggars.&rsquo; You don&rsquo;t know what these people are,
+      Prince,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff did not reply, but asked to have the interview. The inspector
+      called a jailer, whom Nekhludoff followed into the women&rsquo;s visiting-room,
+      where there was no one but Maslova waiting. She came from behind the
+      grating, quiet and timid, close up to him, and said, without looking at
+      him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me, Dmitri Ivanovitch, I spoke hastily the day before yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not for me to forgive you,&rdquo; Nekhludoff began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But all the same, you must leave me,&rdquo; she interrupted, and in the
+      terribly squinting eyes with which she looked at him Nekhludoff read the
+      former strained, angry expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I leave you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She again looked up, as it seemed to him, with the same angry look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, thus it is,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You must leave me. It is true what I
+      am saying. I cannot. You just give it up altogether.&rdquo; Her lips trembled
+      and she was silent for a moment. &ldquo;It is true. I&rsquo;d rather hang myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff felt that in this refusal there was hatred and unforgiving
+      resentment, but there was also something besides, something good. This
+      confirmation of the refusal in cold blood at once quenched all the doubts
+      in Nekhludoff&rsquo;s bosom, and brought back the serious, triumphant emotion he
+      had felt in relation to Katusha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katusha, what I have said I will again repeat,&rdquo; he uttered, very
+      seriously. &ldquo;I ask you to marry me. If you do not wish it, and for as long
+      as you do not wish it, I shall only continue to follow you, and shall go
+      where you are taken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is your business. I shall not say anything more,&rdquo; she answered, and
+      her lips began to tremble again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He, too, was silent, feeling unable to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall now go to the country, and then to Petersburg,&rdquo; he said, when he
+      was quieter again. &ldquo;I shall do my utmost to get your&mdash;our case, I
+      mean, reconsidered, and by the help of God the sentence may be revoked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if it is not revoked, never mind. I have deserved it, if not in this
+      case, in other ways,&rdquo; she said, and he saw how difficult it was for her to
+      keep down her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, have you seen Menshoff?&rdquo; she suddenly asked, to hide her emotion.
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true they are innocent, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such a splendid old woman,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and as to the hospital?&rdquo; she suddenly said, and looking at him with
+      her squinting eyes. &ldquo;If you like, I will go, and I shall not drink any
+      spirits, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff looked into her eyes. They were smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, she is quite a different being,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought. After all
+      his former doubts, he now felt something he had never before experienced&mdash;the
+      certainty that love is invincible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Maslova returned to her noisome cell after this interview, she took
+      off her cloak and sat down in her place on the shelf bedstead with her
+      hands folded on her lap. In the cell were only the consumptive woman, the
+      Vladimir woman with her baby, Menshoff&rsquo;s old mother, and the watchman&rsquo;s
+      wife. The deacon&rsquo;s daughter had the day before been declared mentally
+      diseased and removed to the hospital. The rest of the women were away,
+      washing clothes. The old woman was asleep, the cell door stood open, and
+      the watchman&rsquo;s children were in the corridor outside. The Vladimir woman,
+      with her baby in her arms, and the watchman&rsquo;s wife, with the stocking she
+      was knitting with deft fingers, came up to Maslova. &ldquo;Well, have you had a
+      chat?&rdquo; they asked. Maslova sat silent on the high bedstead, swinging her
+      legs, which did not reach to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good of snivelling?&rdquo; said the watchman&rsquo;s wife. &ldquo;The chief
+      thing&rsquo;s not to go down into the dumps. Eh, Katusha? Now, then!&rdquo; and she
+      went on, quickly moving her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And our women have all gone to wash,&rdquo; said the Vladimir woman. &ldquo;I heard
+      them say much has been given in alms to-day. Quite a lot has been
+      brought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Finashka,&rdquo; called out the watchman&rsquo;s wife, &ldquo;where&rsquo;s the little imp gone
+      to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took a knitting needle, stuck it through both the ball and the
+      stocking, and went out into the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the sound of women&rsquo;s voices was heard from the corridor,
+      and the inmates of the cell entered, with their prison shoes, but no
+      stockings on their feet. Each was carrying a roll, some even two.
+      Theodosia came at once up to Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter; is anything wrong?&rdquo; Theodosia asked, looking lovingly
+      at Maslova with her clear, blue eyes. &ldquo;This is for our tea,&rdquo; and she put
+      the rolls on a shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, surely he has not changed his mind about marrying?&rdquo; asked Korableva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he has not, but I don&rsquo;t wish to,&rdquo; said Maslova, &ldquo;and so I told him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More fool you!&rdquo; muttered Korableva in her deep tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If one&rsquo;s not to live together, what&rsquo;s the use of marrying?&rdquo; said
+      Theodosia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s your husband&mdash;he&rsquo;s going with you,&rdquo; said the watchman&rsquo;s
+      wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, of course, we&rsquo;re married,&rdquo; said Theodosia. &ldquo;But why should he go
+      through the ceremony if he is not to live with her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, indeed! Don&rsquo;t be a fool! You know if he marries her she&rsquo;ll roll in
+      wealth,&rdquo; said Korableva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says, &lsquo;Wherever they take you, I&rsquo;ll follow,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Maslova. &ldquo;If he
+      does, it&rsquo;s well; if he does not, well also. I am not going to ask him to.
+      Now he is going to try and arrange the matter in Petersburg. He is related
+      to all the Ministers there. But, all the same, I have no need of him,&rdquo; she
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; suddenly agreed Korableva, evidently thinking about
+      something else as she sat examining her bag. &ldquo;Well, shall we have a drop?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have some,&rdquo; replied Maslova. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      END OF BOOK I.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0063" id="link2H_4_0063">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0060" id="link2HCH0060">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. PROPERTY IN LAND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was possible for Maslova&rsquo;s case to come before the Senate in a
+      fortnight, at which time Nekhludoff meant to go to Petersburg, and, if
+      need be, to appeal to the Emperor (as the advocate who had drawn up the
+      petition advised) should the appeal be disregarded (and, according to the
+      advocate, it was best to be prepared for that, since the causes for appeal
+      were so slight). The party of convicts, among whom was Maslova, would very
+      likely leave in the beginning of June. In order to be able to follow her
+      to Siberia, as Nekhludoff was firmly resolved to do, he was now obliged to
+      visit his estates, and settle matters there. Nekhludoff first went to the
+      nearest, Kousminski, a large estate that lay in the black earth district,
+      and from which he derived the greatest part of his income.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had lived on that estate in his childhood and youth, and had been there
+      twice since, and once, at his mother&rsquo;s request, he had taken a German
+      steward there, and had with him verified the accounts. The state of things
+      there and the peasants&rsquo; relations to the management, i.e., the landlord,
+      had therefore been long known to him. The relations of the peasants to the
+      administration were those of utter dependence on that management.
+      Nekhludoff knew all this when still a university student, he had confessed
+      and preached Henry Georgeism, and, on the basis of that teaching, had
+      given the land inherited from his father to the peasants. It is true that
+      after entering the army, when he got into the habit of spending 20,000
+      roubles a year, those former occupations ceased to be regarded as a duty,
+      and were forgotten, and he not only left off asking himself where the
+      money his mother allowed him came from, but even avoided thinking about
+      it. But his mother&rsquo;s death, the coming into the property, and the
+      necessity of managing it, again raised the question as to what his
+      position in reference to private property in land was. A month before
+      Nekhludoff would have answered that he had not the strength to alter the
+      existing order of things; that it was not he who was administering the
+      estate; and would one way or another have eased his conscience, continuing
+      to live far from his estates, and having the money sent him. But now he
+      decided that he could not leave things to go on as they were, but would
+      have to alter them in a way unprofitable to himself, even though he had
+      all these complicated and difficult relations with the prison world which
+      made money necessary, as well as a probable journey to Siberia before him.
+      Therefore he decided not to farm the land, but to let it to the peasants
+      at a low rent, to enable them to cultivate it without depending on a
+      landlord. More than once, when comparing the position of a landowner with
+      that of an owner of serfs, Nekhludoff had compared the renting of land to
+      the peasants instead of cultivating it with hired labour, to the old
+      system by which serf proprietors used to exact a money payment from their
+      serfs in place of labour. It was not a solution of the problem, and yet a
+      step towards the solution; it was a movement towards a less rude form of
+      slavery. And it was in this way he meant to act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff reached Kousminski about noon. Trying to simplify his life in
+      every way, he did not telegraph, but hired a cart and pair at the station.
+      The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen coat, with a belt below his
+      long waist. He was glad to talk to the gentleman, especially because while
+      they were talking his broken-winded white horse and the emaciated spavined
+      one could go at a foot-pace, which they always liked to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver spoke about the steward at Kousminski without knowing that he
+      was driving &ldquo;the master.&rdquo; Nekhludoff had purposely not told him who he
+      was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That ostentatious German,&rdquo; said the driver (who had been to town and read
+      novels) as he sat sideways on the box, passing his hand from the top to
+      the bottom of his long whip, and trying to show off his accomplishments&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      ostentatious German has procured three light bays, and when he drives out
+      with his lady&mdash;-oh, my! At Christmas he had a Christmas-tree in the
+      big house. I drove some of the visitors there. It had &lsquo;lectric lights; you
+      could not see the like of it in the whole of the government. What&rsquo;s it to
+      him, he has cribbed a heap of money. I heard say he has bought an estate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had imagined that he was quite indifferent to the way the
+      steward managed his estate, and what advantages the steward derived from
+      it. The words of the long-waisted driver, however, were not pleasant to
+      hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dark cloud now and then covered the sun; the larks were soaring above
+      the fields of winter corn; the forests were already covered with fresh
+      young green; the meadows speckled with grazing cattle and horses. The
+      fields were being ploughed, and Nekhludoff enjoyed the lovely day. But
+      every now and then he had an unpleasant feeling, and, when he asked
+      himself what it was caused by, he remembered what the driver had told him
+      about the way the German was managing Kousminski. When he got to his
+      estate and set to work this unpleasant feeling vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking over the books in the office, and a talk with the foreman, who
+      naively pointed out the advantages to be derived from the facts that the
+      peasants had very little land of their own and that it lay in the midst of
+      the landlord&rsquo;s fields, made Nekhludoff more than ever determined to leave
+      off farming and to let his land to the peasants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the office books and his talk with the foreman, Nekhludoff found that
+      two-thirds of the best of the cultivated land was still being tilled with
+      improved machinery by labourers receiving fixed wages, while the other
+      third was tilled by the peasants at the rate of five roubles per desiatin
+      [about two and three-quarter acres]. So that the peasants had to plough
+      each desiatin three times, harrow it three times, sow and mow the corn,
+      make it into sheaves, and deliver it on the threshing ground for five
+      roubles, while the same amount of work done by wage labour came to at
+      least 10 roubles. Everything the peasants got from the office they paid
+      for in labour at a very high price. They paid in labour for the use of the
+      meadows, for wood, for potato-stalks, and were nearly all of them in debt
+      to the office. Thus, for the land that lay beyond the cultivated fields,
+      which the peasants hired, four times the price that its value would bring
+      in if invested at five per cent was taken from the peasants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had known all this before, but he now saw it in a new light,
+      and wondered how he and others in his position could help seeing how
+      abnormal such conditions are. The steward&rsquo;s arguments that if the land
+      were let to the peasants the agricultural implements would fetch next to
+      nothing, as it would be impossible to get even a quarter of their value
+      for them, and that the peasants would spoil the land, and how great a
+      loser Nekhludoff would be, only strengthened Nekhludoff in the opinion
+      that he was doing a good action in letting the land to the peasants and
+      thus depriving himself of a large part of his income. He decided to settle
+      this business now, at once, while he was there. The reaping and selling of
+      the corn he left for the steward to manage in due season, and also the
+      selling of the agricultural implements and useless buildings. But he asked
+      his steward to call the peasants of the three neighbouring villages that
+      lay in the midst of his estate (Kousminski) to a meeting, at which he
+      would tell them of his intentions and arrange about the price at which
+      they were to rent the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the pleasant sense of the firmness he had shown in the face of the
+      steward&rsquo;s arguments, and his readiness to make a sacrifice, Nekhludoff
+      left the office, thinking over the business before him, and strolled round
+      the house, through the neglected flower-garden&mdash;this year the flowers
+      were planted in front of the steward&rsquo;s house&mdash;over the tennis ground,
+      now overgrown with dandelions, and along the lime-tree walk, where he used
+      to smoke his cigar, and where he had flirted with the pretty Kirimova, his
+      mother&rsquo;s visitor. Having briefly prepared in his mind the speech he was
+      going to make to the peasants, he again went in to the steward, and, after
+      tea, having once more arranged his thoughts, he went into the room
+      prepared for him in the big house, which used to be a spare bedroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this clean little room, with pictures of Venice on the walls, and a
+      mirror between the two windows, there stood a clean bed with a spring
+      mattress, and by the side of it a small table, with a decanter of water,
+      matches, and an extinguisher. On a table by the looking-glass lay his open
+      portmanteau, with his dressing-case and some books in it; a Russian book,
+      The Investigation of the Laws of Criminality, and a German and an English
+      book on the same subject, which he meant to read while travelling in the
+      country. But it was too late to begin to-day, and he began preparing to go
+      to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old-fashioned inlaid mahogany arm-chair stood in the corner of the
+      room, and this chair, which Nekhludoff remembered standing in his mother&rsquo;s
+      bedroom, suddenly raised a perfectly unexpected sensation in his soul. He
+      was suddenly filled with regret at the thought of the house that would
+      tumble to ruin, and the garden that would run wild, and the forest that
+      would be cut down, and all these farmyards, stables, sheds, machines,
+      horses, cows which he knew had cost so much effort, though not to himself,
+      to acquire and to keep. It had seemed easy to give up all this, but now it
+      was hard, not only to give this, but even to let the land and lose half
+      his income. And at once a consideration, which proved that it was
+      unreasonable to let the land to the peasants, and thus to destroy his
+      property, came to his service. &ldquo;I must not hold property in land. If I
+      possess no property in land, I cannot keep up the house and farm. And,
+      besides, I am going to Siberia, and shall not need either the house or the
+      estate,&rdquo; said one voice. &ldquo;All this is so,&rdquo; said another voice, &ldquo;but you
+      are not going to spend all your life in Siberia. You may marry, and have
+      children, and must hand the estate on to them in as good a condition as
+      you received it. There is a duty to the land, too. To give up, to destroy
+      everything is very easy; to acquire it very difficult. Above all, you must
+      consider your future life, and what you will do with yourself, and you
+      must dispose of your property accordingly. And are you really firm in your
+      resolve? And then, are you really acting according to your conscience, or
+      are you acting in order to be admired of men?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked himself
+      all this, and had to acknowledge that he was influenced by the thought of
+      what people would say about him. And the more he thought about it the more
+      questions arose, and the more unsolvable they seemed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In hopes of ridding himself of these thoughts by falling asleep, and
+      solving them in the morning when his head would be fresh, he lay down on
+      his clean bed. But it was long before he could sleep. Together with the
+      fresh air and the moonlight, the croaking of the frogs entered the room,
+      mingling with the trills of a couple of nightingales in the park and one
+      close to the window in a bush of lilacs in bloom. Listening to the
+      nightingales and the frogs, Nekhludoff remembered the inspector&rsquo;s
+      daughter, and her music, and the inspector; that reminded him of Maslova,
+      and how her lips trembled, like the croaking of the frogs, when she said,
+      &ldquo;You must just leave it.&rdquo; Then the German steward began going down to the
+      frogs, and had to be held back, but he not only went down but turned into
+      Maslova, who began reproaching Nekhludoff, saying, &ldquo;You are a prince, and
+      I am a convict.&rdquo; &ldquo;No, I must not give in,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, waking up,
+      and again asking himself, &ldquo;Is what I am doing right? I do not know, and no
+      matter, no matter, I must only fall asleep now.&rdquo; And he began himself to
+      descend where he had seen the inspector and Maslova climbing down to, and
+      there it all ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0061" id="link2HCH0061">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. EFFORTS AT LAND RESTORATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day Nekhludoff awoke at nine o&rsquo;clock. The young office clerk who
+      attended on &ldquo;the master&rdquo; brought him his boots, shining as they had never
+      shone before, and some cold, beautifully clear spring water, and informed
+      him that the peasants were already assembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff jumped out of bed, and collected his thoughts. Not a trace of
+      yesterday&rsquo;s regret at giving up and thus destroying his property remained
+      now. He remembered this feeling of regret with surprise; he was now
+      looking forward with joy to the task before him, and could not help being
+      proud of it. He could see from the window the old tennis ground, overgrown
+      with dandelions, on which the peasants were beginning to assemble. The
+      frogs had not croaked in vain the night before; the day was dull. There
+      was no wind; a soft warm rain had begun falling in the morning, and hung
+      in drops on leaves, twigs, and grass. Besides the smell of the fresh
+      vegetation, the smell of damp earth, asking for more rain, entered in at
+      the window. While dressing, Nekhludoff several times looked out at the
+      peasants gathered on the tennis ground. One by one they came, took off
+      their hats or caps to one another, and took their places in a circle,
+      leaning on their sticks. The steward, a stout, muscular, strong young man,
+      dressed in a short pea-jacket, with a green stand-up collar, and enormous
+      buttons, came to say that all had assembled, but that they might wait
+      until Nekhludoff had finished his breakfast&mdash;tea and coffee,
+      whichever he pleased; both were ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think I had better go and see them at once,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, with
+      an unexpected feeling of shyness and shame at the thought of the
+      conversation he was going to have with the peasants. He was going to
+      fulfil a wish of the peasants, the fulfilment of which they did not even
+      dare to hope for&mdash;to let the land to them at a low price, i.e., to
+      confer a great boon; and yet he felt ashamed of something. When Nekhludoff
+      came up to the peasants, and the fair, the curly, the bald, the grey heads
+      were bared before him, he felt so confused that he could say nothing. The
+      rain continued to come down in small drops, that remained on the hair, the
+      beards, and the fluff of the men&rsquo;s rough coats. The peasants looked at
+      &ldquo;the master,&rdquo; waiting for him to speak, and he was so abashed that he
+      could not speak. This confused silence was broken by the sedate,
+      self-assured German steward, who considered himself a good judge of the
+      Russian peasant, and who spoke Russian remarkably well. This strong,
+      over-fed man, and Nekhludoff himself, presented a striking contrast to the
+      peasants, with their thin, wrinkled faces and the shoulder blades
+      protruding beneath their coarse coats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the Prince wanting to do you a favor, and to let the land to you;
+      only you are not worthy of it,&rdquo; said the steward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are we not worthy of it, Vasili Karlovitch? Don&rsquo;t we work for you? We
+      were well satisfied with the deceased lady&mdash;God have mercy on her
+      soul&mdash;and the young Prince will not desert us now. Our thanks to
+      him,&rdquo; said a redhaired, talkative peasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s why I have called you together. I should like to let you have
+      all the land, if you wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasants said nothing, as if they did not understand or did not
+      believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s see. Let us have the land? What do you mean?&rdquo; asked a middle-aged
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To let it to you, that you might have the use of it, at a low rent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very agreeable thing,&rdquo; said an old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only the pay is such as we can afford,&rdquo; said another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no reason why we should not rent the land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are accustomed to live by tilling the ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s quieter for you, too, that way. You&rsquo;ll have to do nothing but
+      receive the rent. Only think of all the sin and worry now!&rdquo; several voices
+      were heard saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sin is all on your side,&rdquo; the German remarked. &ldquo;If only you did your
+      work, and were orderly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s impossible for the likes of us,&rdquo; said a sharp-nosed old man. &ldquo;You
+      say, &lsquo;Why do you let the horse get into the corn?&rsquo; just as if I let it in.
+      Why, I was swinging my scythe, or something of the kind, the livelong day,
+      till the day seemed as long as a year, and so I fell asleep while watching
+      the herd of horses at night, and it got into your oats, and now you&rsquo;re
+      skinning me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you should keep order.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s easy for you to talk about order, but it&rsquo;s more than our strength
+      will bear,&rdquo; answered a tall, dark, hairy middleaged man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell you to put up a fence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You give us the wood to make it of,&rdquo; said a short, plain-looking peasant.
+      &ldquo;I was going to put up a fence last year, and you put me to feed vermin in
+      prison for three months. That was the end of that fence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it he is saying?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff, turning to the steward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Der ersto Dieb im Dorfe,&rdquo; [The greatest thief in the village] answered
+      the steward in German. &ldquo;He is caught stealing wood from the forest every
+      year.&rdquo; Then turning to the peasant, he added, &ldquo;You must learn to respect
+      other people&rsquo;s property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t we respect you?&rdquo; said an old man. &ldquo;We are obliged to respect
+      you. Why, you could twist us into a rope; we are in your hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, my friend, it&rsquo;s impossible to do you. It&rsquo;s you who are ever ready to
+      do us,&rdquo; said the steward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you, indeed. Didn&rsquo;t you smash my jaw for me, and I got nothing for it?
+      No good going to law with the rich, it seems.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should keep to the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tournament of words was apparently going on without those who took part
+      in it knowing exactly what it was all about; but it was noticeable that
+      there was bitterness on one side, restricted by fear, and on the other a
+      consciousness of importance and power. It was very trying to Nekhludoff to
+      listen to all this, so he returned to the question of arranging the amount
+      and the terms of the rent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, how about the land? Do you wish to take it, and what price
+      will you pay if I let you have the whole of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The property is yours: it is for you to fix the price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff named the price. Though it was far below that paid in the
+      neighbourhood, the peasants declared it too high, and began bargaining, as
+      is customary among them. Nekhludoff thought his offer would be accepted
+      with pleasure, but no signs of pleasure were visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing only showed Nekhludoff that his offer was a profitable one to
+      the peasants. The question as to who would rent the land, the whole
+      commune or a special society, was put, and a violent dispute arose among
+      those peasants who were in favour of excluding the weak and those not
+      likely to pay the rent regularly, and the peasants who would have to be
+      excluded on that score. At last, thanks to the steward, the amount and the
+      terms of the rent were fixed, and the peasants went down the hill towards
+      their villages, talking noisily, while Nekhludoff and the steward went
+      into the office to make up the agreement. Everything was settled in the
+      way Nekhludoff wished and expected it to be. The peasants had their land
+      30 per cent. cheaper than they could have got it anywhere in the district,
+      the revenue from the land was diminished by half, but was more than
+      sufficient for Nekhludoff, especially as there would be money coming in
+      for a forest he sold, as well as for the agricultural implements, which
+      would be sold, too. Everything seemed excellently arranged, yet he felt
+      ashamed of something. He could see that the peasants, though they spoke
+      words of thanks, were not satisfied, and had expected something greater.
+      So it turned out that he had deprived himself of a great deal, and yet not
+      done what the peasants had expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day the agreement was signed, and accompanied by several old
+      peasants, who had been chosen as deputies, Nekhludoff went out, got into
+      the steward&rsquo;s elegant equipage (as the driver from the station had called
+      it), said &ldquo;good-bye&rdquo; to the peasants, who stood shaking their heads in a
+      dissatisfied and disappointed manner, and drove off to the station.
+      Nekhludoff was dissatisfied with himself without knowing why, but all the
+      time he felt sad and ashamed of something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0062" id="link2HCH0062">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. OLD ASSOCIATIONS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      From Kousminski Nekhludoff went to the estate he had inherited from his
+      aunts, the same where he first met Katusha. He meant to arrange about the
+      land there in the way he had done in Kousminski. Besides this, he wished
+      to find out all he could about Katusha and her baby, and when and how it
+      had died. He got to Panovo early one morning, and the first thing that
+      struck him when he drove up was the look of decay and dilapidation that
+      all the buildings bore, especially the house itself. The iron roofs, which
+      had once been painted green, looked red with rust, and a few sheets of
+      iron were bent back, probably by a storm. Some of the planks which covered
+      the house from outside were torn away in several places; these were easier
+      to get by breaking the rusty nails that held them. Both porches, but
+      especially the side porch he remembered so well, were rotten and broken;
+      only the banister remained. Some of the windows were boarded up, and the
+      building in which the foreman lived, the kitchen, the stables&mdash;all
+      were grey and decaying. Only the garden had not decayed, but had grown,
+      and was in full bloom; from over the fence the cherry, apple, and plum
+      trees looked like white clouds. The lilac bushes that formed the hedge
+      were in full bloom, as they had been when, 14 years ago, Nekhludoff had
+      played gorelki with the 15-year-old Katusha, and had fallen and got his
+      hand stung by the nettles behind one of those lilac bushes. The larch that
+      his aunt Sophia had planted near the house, which then was only a short
+      stick, had grown into a tree, the trunk of which would have made a beam,
+      and its branches were covered with soft yellow green needles as with down.
+      The river, now within its banks, rushed noisily over the mill dam. The
+      meadow the other side of the river was dotted over by the peasants&rsquo; mixed
+      herds. The foreman, a student, who had left the seminary without finishing
+      the course, met Nekhludoff in the yard, with a smile on his face, and,
+      still smiling, asked him to come into the office, and, as if promising
+      something exceptionally good by this smile, he went behind a partition.
+      For a moment some whispering was heard behind the partition. The
+      isvostchik who had driven Nekhludoff from the station, drove away after
+      receiving a tip, and all was silent. Then a barefooted girl passed the
+      window; she had on an embroidered peasant blouse, and long earrings in her
+      ears; then a man walked past, clattering with his nailed boots on the
+      trodden path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sat down by the little casement, and looked out into the garden
+      and listened. A soft, fresh spring breeze, smelling of newly-dug earth,
+      streamed in through the window, playing with the hair on his damp forehead
+      and the papers that lay on the window-sill, which was all cut about with a
+      knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tra-pa-trop, tra-pa-trop,&rdquo; comes a sound from the river, as the women who
+      were washing clothes there slapped them in regular measure with their
+      wooden bats, and the sound spread over the glittering surface of the mill
+      pond while the rhythmical sound of the falling water came from the mill,
+      and a frightened fly suddenly flew loudly buzzing past his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all at once Nekhludoff remembered how, long ago, when he was young and
+      innocent, he had heard the women&rsquo;s wooden bats slapping the wet clothes
+      above the rhythmical sound from the mill, and in the same way the spring
+      breeze had blown about the hair on his wet forehead and the papers on the
+      window-sill, which was all cut about with a knife, and just in the same
+      way a fly had buzzed loudly past his car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not exactly that he remembered himself as a lad of 15, but he
+      seemed to feel himself the same as he was then, with the same freshness
+      and purity, and full of the same grand possibilities for the future, and
+      at the same time, as it happens in a dream, he knew that all this could be
+      no more, and he felt terribly sad. &ldquo;At what time would you like something
+      to eat?&rdquo; asked the foreman, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you like; I am not hungry. I shall go for a walk through the
+      village.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you not like to come into the house? Everything is in order there.
+      Have the goodness to look in. If the outside&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now; later on. Tell me, please, have you got a woman here called
+      Matrona Kharina?&rdquo; (This was Katusha&rsquo;s aunt, the village midwife.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; in the village she keeps a secret pot-house. I know she does,
+      and I accuse her of it and scold her; but as to taking her up, it would be
+      a pity. An old woman, you know; she has grandchildren,&rdquo; said the foreman,
+      continuing to smile in the same manner, partly wishing to be pleasant to
+      the master, and partly because he was convinced that Nekhludoff understood
+      all these matters just as well as he did himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where does she live? I shall go across and see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the end of the village; the further side, the third from the end. To
+      the left there is a brick cottage, and her hut is beyond that. But I&rsquo;d
+      better see you there,&rdquo; the foreman said with a graceful smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thanks, I shall find it; and you be so good as to call a meeting of
+      the peasants, and tell them that I want to speak to them about the land,&rdquo;
+       said Nekhludoff, with the intention of coming to the same agreement with
+      the peasants here as he had done in Kousminski, and, if possible, that
+      same evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0063" id="link2HCH0063">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. THE PEASANTS&rsquo; LOT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff came out of the gate he met the girl with the long
+      earrings on the well-trodden path that lay across the pasture ground,
+      overgrown with dock and plantain leaves. She had a long, brightly-coloured
+      apron on, and was quickly swinging her left arm in front of herself as she
+      stepped briskly with her fat, bare feet. With her right arm she was
+      pressing a fowl to her stomach. The fowl, with red comb shaking, seemed
+      perfectly calm; he only rolled up his eyes and stretched out and drew in
+      one black leg, clawing the girl&rsquo;s apron. When the girl came nearer to &ldquo;the
+      master,&rdquo; she began moving more slowly, and her run changed into a walk.
+      When she came up to him she stopped, and, after a backward jerk with her
+      head, bowed to him; and only when he had passed did she recommence to run
+      homeward with the cock. As he went down towards the well, he met an old
+      woman, who had a coarse dirty blouse on, carrying two pails full of water,
+      that hung on a yoke across her bent back. The old woman carefully put down
+      the pails and bowed, with the same backward jerk of her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After passing the well Nekhludoff entered the village. It was a bright,
+      hot day, and oppressive, though only ten o&rsquo;clock. At intervals the sun was
+      hidden by the gathering clouds. An unpleasant, sharp smell of manure
+      filled the air in the street. It came from carts going up the hillside,
+      but chiefly from the disturbed manure heaps in the yards of the huts, by
+      the open gates of which Nekhludoff had to pass. The peasants, barefooted,
+      their shirts and trousers soiled with manure, turned to look at the tall,
+      stout gentleman with the glossy silk ribbon on his grey hat who was
+      walking up the village street, touching the ground every other step with a
+      shiny, bright-knobbed walking-stick. The peasants returning from the
+      fields at a trot and jotting in their empty carts, took off their hats,
+      and, in their surprise, followed with their eyes the extraordinary man who
+      was walking up their street. The women came out of the gates or stood in
+      the porches of their huts, pointing him out to each other and gazing at
+      him as he passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff was passing the fourth gate, he was stopped by a cart that
+      was coming out, its wheels creaking, loaded high with manure, which was
+      pressed down, and was covered with a mat to sit on. A six-year-old boy,
+      excited by the prospect of a drive, followed the cart. A young peasant,
+      with shoes plaited out of bark on his feet, led the horse out of the yard.
+      A long-legged colt jumped out of the gate; but, seeing Nekhludoff, pressed
+      close to the cart, and scraping its legs against the wheels, jumped
+      forward, past its excited, gently-neighing mother, as she was dragging the
+      heavy load through the gateway. The next horse was led out by a barefooted
+      old man, with protruding shoulder-blades, in a dirty shirt and striped
+      trousers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the horses got out on to the hard road, strewn over with bits of dry,
+      grey manure, the old man returned to the gate, and bowed to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are our ladies&rsquo; nephew, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am their nephew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve kindly come to look us up, eh?&rdquo; said the garrulous old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have. Well, how are you getting on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do we get on? We get on very badly,&rdquo; the old man drawled, as if it
+      gave him pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so badly?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked, stepping inside the gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is our life but the very worst life?&rdquo; said the old man, following
+      Nekhludoff into that part of the yard which was roofed over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff stopped under the roof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have got 12 of them there,&rdquo; continued the old man, pointing to two
+      women on the remainder of the manure heap, who stood perspiring with forks
+      in their hands, the kerchiefs tumbling off their heads, with their skirts
+      tucked up, showing the calves of their dirty, bare legs. &ldquo;Not a month
+      passes but I have to buy six poods [a pood is 36 English pounds] of corn,
+      and where&rsquo;s the money to come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not got enough corn of your own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My own?&rdquo; repeated the old man, with a smile of contempt; &ldquo;why I have only
+      got land for three, and last year we had not enough to last till
+      Christmas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you do then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do we do? Why, I hire out as a labourer; and then I borrowed some
+      money from your honour. We spent it all before Lent, and the tax is not
+      paid yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how much is the tax?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s 17 roubles for my household. Oh, Lord, such a life! One hardly
+      knows one&rsquo;s self how one manages to live it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I go into your hut?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff, stepping across the yard over
+      the yellow-brown layers of manure that had been raked up by the forks, and
+      were giving off a strong smell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? Come in,&rdquo; said the old man, and stepping quickly with his bare
+      feet over the manure, the liquid oozing between his toes, he passed
+      Nekhludoff and opened the door of the hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women arranged the kerchiefs on their heads and let down their skirts,
+      and stood looking with surprise at the clean gentleman with gold studs to
+      his sleeves who was entering their house. Two little girls, with nothing
+      on but coarse chemises, rushed out of the hut. Nekhludoff took off his
+      hat, and, stooping to get through the low door, entered, through a passage
+      into the dirty, narrow hut, that smelt of sour food, and where much space
+      was taken up by two weaving looms. In the hut an old woman was standing by
+      the stove, with the sleeves rolled up over her thin, sinewy brown arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is our master come to see us,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;s very welcome,&rdquo; said the old woman, kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like to see how you live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see how we live. The hut is coming down, and might kill one any
+      day; but my old man he says it&rsquo;s good enough, and so we live like kings,&rdquo;
+       said the brisk old woman, nervously jerking her head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting the
+      dinner; going to feed the workers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what are you going to have for dinner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our food is very good. First course, bread and kvas; [kvas is a kind of
+      sour, non-intoxicant beer made of rye] second course, kvas and bread,&rdquo;
+       said the old woman, showing her teeth, which were half worn away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; seriously; &ldquo;let me see what you are going to eat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To eat?&rdquo; said the old man, laughing. &ldquo;Ours is not a very cunning meal.
+      You just show him, wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Want to see our peasant food? Well, you are an inquisitive gentleman, now
+      I come to look at you. He wants to know everything. Did I not tell you
+      bread and kvas and then we&rsquo;ll have soup. A woman brought us some fish, and
+      that&rsquo;s what the soup is made of, and after that, potatoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What more do you want? We&rsquo;ll also have a little milk,&rdquo; said the old
+      woman, looking towards the door. The door stood open, and the passage
+      outside was full of people&mdash;boys, girls, women with babies&mdash;thronged
+      together to look at the strange gentleman who wanted to see the peasants&rsquo; 
+      food. The old woman seemed to pride herself on the way she behaved with a
+      gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s a miserable life, ours; that goes without saying, sir,&rdquo; said
+      the old man. &ldquo;What are you doing there?&rdquo; he shouted to those in the
+      passage. &ldquo;Well, good-bye,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, feeling ashamed and uneasy,
+      though unable to account for the feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you kindly for having looked us up,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people in the passage pressed closer together to let Nekhludoff pass,
+      and he went out and continued his way up the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two barefooted boys followed him out of the passage the elder in a shirt
+      that had once been white, the other in a worn and faded pink one.
+      Nekhludoff looked back at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where are you going now?&rdquo; asked the boy with the white shirt.
+      Nekhludoff answered: &ldquo;To Matrona Kharina. Do you know her?&rdquo; The boy with
+      the pink shirt began laughing at something; but the elder asked,
+      seriously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What Matrona is that? Is she old?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she is old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;oh,&rdquo; he drawled; &ldquo;that one; she&rsquo;s at the other end of the
+      village; we&rsquo;ll show you. Yes, Fedka, we&rsquo;ll go with him. Shall we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but the horses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll be all right, I dare say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fedka agreed, and all three went up the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0064" id="link2HCH0064">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. MASLOVA&rsquo;S AUNT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff felt more at ease with the boys than with the grown-up people,
+      and he began talking to them as they went along. The little one with the
+      pink shirt stopped laughing, and spoke as sensibly and as exactly as the
+      elder one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you tell me who are the poorest people you have got here?&rdquo; asked
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poorest? Michael is poor, Simon Makhroff, and Martha, she is very
+      poor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Anisia, she is still poorer; she&rsquo;s not even got a cow. They go
+      begging,&rdquo; said little Fedka.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not got a cow, but they are only three persons, and Martha&rsquo;s family
+      are five,&rdquo; objected the elder boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the other&rsquo;s a widow,&rdquo; the pink boy said, standing up for Anisia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say Anisia is a widow, and Martha is no better than a widow,&rdquo; said
+      the elder boy; &ldquo;she&rsquo;s also no husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is her husband?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feeding vermin in prison,&rdquo; said the elder boy, using this expression,
+      common among the peasants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A year ago he cut down two birch trees in the land-lord&rsquo;s forest,&rdquo; the
+      little pink boy hurried to say, &ldquo;so he was locked up; now he&rsquo;s sitting the
+      sixth month there, and the wife goes begging. There are three children and
+      a sick grandmother,&rdquo; he went on with his detailed account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where does she live?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this very house,&rdquo; answered the boy, pointing to a hut, in front of
+      which, on the footpath along which Nekhludoff was walking, a tiny,
+      flaxen-headed infant stood balancing himself with difficulty on his
+      rickety legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vaska! Where&rsquo;s the little scamp got to?&rdquo; shouted a woman, with a dirty
+      grey blouse, and a frightened look, as she ran out of the house, and,
+      rushing forward, seized the baby before Nekhludoff came up to it, and
+      carried it in, just as if she were afraid that Nekhludoff would hurt her
+      child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the woman whose husband was imprisoned for Nekhludoff&rsquo;s birch
+      trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and this Matrona, is she also poor?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked, as they came
+      up to Matrona&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She poor? No. Why, she sells spirits,&rdquo; the thin, pink little boy answered
+      decidedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they reached the house Nekhludoff left the boys outside and went
+      through the passage into the hut. The hut was 14 feet long. The bed that
+      stood behind the big stove was not long enough for a tall person to
+      stretch out on. &ldquo;And on this very bed,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, &ldquo;Katusha bore
+      her baby and lay ill afterwards.&rdquo; The greater part of the hut was taken up
+      by a loom, on which the old woman and her eldest granddaughter were
+      arranging the warp when Nekhludoff came in, striking his forehead against
+      the low doorway. Two other grandchildren came rushing in after Nekhludoff,
+      and stopped, holding on to the lintels of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you want?&rdquo; asked the old woman, crossly. She was in a bad temper
+      because she could not manage to get the warp right, and, besides, carrying
+      on an illicit trade in spirits, she was always afraid when any stranger
+      came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am&mdash;the owner of the neighbouring estates, and should like to
+      speak to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me; why, it&rsquo;s you, my honey; and I, fool, thought it was just some
+      passer-by. Dear me, you&mdash;it&rsquo;s you, my precious,&rdquo; said the old woman,
+      with simulated tenderness in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to speak to you alone,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, with a glance
+      towards the door, where the children were standing, and behind them a
+      woman holding a wasted, pale baby, with a sickly smile on its face, who
+      had a little cap made of different bits of stuff on its head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you staring at? I&rsquo;ll give it you. Just hand me my crutch,&rdquo; the
+      old woman shouted to those at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut the door, will you!&rdquo; The children went away, and the woman closed
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I was thinking, who&rsquo;s that? And it&rsquo;s &lsquo;the master&rsquo; himself. My jewel,
+      my treasure. Just think,&rdquo; said the old woman, &ldquo;where he has deigned to
+      come. Sit down here, your honour,&rdquo; she said, wiping the seat with her
+      apron. &ldquo;And I was thinking what devil is it coming in, and it&rsquo;s your
+      honour, &lsquo;the master&rsquo; himself, the good gentleman, our benefactor. Forgive
+      me, old fool that I am; I&rsquo;m getting blind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sat down, and the old woman stood in front of him, leaning her
+      cheek on her right hand, while the left held up the sharp elbow of her
+      right arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, you have grown old, your honour; and you used to be as fresh as
+      a daisy. And now! Cares also, I expect?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is what I have come about: Do you remember Katusha Maslova?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Katerina? I should think so. Why, she is my niece. How could I help
+      remembering; and the tears I have shed because of her. Why, I know all
+      about it. Eh, sir, who has not sinned before God? who has not offended
+      against the Tsar? We know what youth is. You used to be drinking tea and
+      coffee, so the devil got hold of you. He is strong at times. What&rsquo;s to be
+      done? Now, if you had chucked her; but no, just see how you rewarded her,
+      gave her a hundred roubles. And she? What has she done? Had she but
+      listened to me she might have lived all right. I must say the truth,
+      though she is my niece: that girl&rsquo;s no good. What a good place I found
+      her! She would not submit, but abused her master. Is it for the likes of
+      us to scold gentlefolk? Well, she was sent away. And then at the
+      forester&rsquo;s. She might have lived there; but no, she would not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to know about the child. She was confined at your house, was she
+      not? Where&rsquo;s the child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to the child, I considered that well at the time. She was so bad I
+      never thought she would get up again. Well, so I christened the baby quite
+      properly, and we sent it to the Foundlings&rsquo;. Why should one let an
+      innocent soul languish when the mother is dying? Others do like this: they
+      just leave the baby, don&rsquo;t feed it, and it wastes away. But, thinks I, no;
+      I&rsquo;d rather take some trouble, and send it to the Foundlings&rsquo;. There was
+      money enough, so I sent it off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you not get its registration number from the Foundlings&rsquo; Hospital?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there was a number, but the baby died,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It died as soon
+      as she brought it there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That same woman who used to live in Skorodno. She made a business of it.
+      Her name was Malania. She&rsquo;s dead now. She was a wise woman. What do you
+      think she used to do? They&rsquo;d bring her a baby, and she&rsquo;d keep it and feed
+      it; and she&rsquo;d feed it until she had enough of them to take to the
+      Foundlings&rsquo;. When she had three or four, she&rsquo;d take them all at once. She
+      had such a clever arrangement, a sort of big cradle&mdash;a double one she
+      could put them in one way or the other. It had a handle. So she&rsquo;d put four
+      of them in, feet to feet and the heads apart, so that they should not
+      knock against each other. And so she took four at once. She&rsquo;d put some pap
+      in a rag into their mouths to keep &lsquo;em silent, the pets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she took Katerina&rsquo;s baby in the same way, after keeping it a
+      fortnight, I believe. It was in her house it began to sicken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And was it a fine baby?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such a baby, that if you wanted a finer you could not find one. Your very
+      image,&rdquo; the old woman added, with a wink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did it sicken? Was the food bad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, what food? Only just a pretence of food. Naturally, when it&rsquo;s not
+      one&rsquo;s own child. Only enough to get it there alive. She said she just
+      managed to get it to Moscow, and there it died. She brought a certificate&mdash;all
+      in order. She was such a wise woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all Nekhludoff could find out concerning his child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0065" id="link2HCH0065">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. REFLECTIONS OF A LANDLORD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Again striking his head against both doors, Nekhludoff went out into the
+      street, where the pink and the white boys were waiting for him. A few
+      newcomers were standing with them. Among the women, of whom several had
+      babies in their arms, was the thin woman with the baby who had the
+      patchwork cap on its head. She held lightly in her arms the bloodless
+      infant, who kept strangely smiling all over its wizened little face, and
+      continually moving its crooked thumbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff knew the smile to be one of suffering. He asked who the woman
+      was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is that very Anisia I told you about,&rdquo; said the elder boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff turned to Anisia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you live?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;By what means do you gain your livelihood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do I live? I go begging,&rdquo; said Anisia, and began to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff took out his pocket-book, and gave the woman a 10-rouble note.
+      He had not had time to take two steps before another woman with a baby
+      caught him up, then an old woman, then another young one. All of them
+      spoke of their poverty, and asked for help. Nekhludoff gave them the 60
+      roubles&mdash;all in small notes&mdash;which he had with him, and,
+      terribly sad at heart, turned home, i.e., to the foreman&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman met Nekhludoff with a smile, and informed him that the
+      peasants would come to the meeting in the evening. Nekhludoff thanked him,
+      and went straight into the garden to stroll along the paths strewn over
+      with the petals of apple-blossom and overgrown with weeds, and to think
+      over all he had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first all was quiet, but soon Nekhludoff heard from behind the
+      foreman&rsquo;s house two angry women&rsquo;s voices interrupting each other, and now
+      and then the voice of the ever-smiling foreman. Nekhludoff listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My strength&rsquo;s at an end. What are you about, dragging the very cross
+      [those baptized in the Russo-Greek Church always wear a cross round their
+      necks] off my neck,&rdquo; said an angry woman&rsquo;s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she only got in for a moment,&rdquo; said another voice. &ldquo;Give it her back,
+      I tell you. Why do you torment the beast, and the children, too, who want
+      their milk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pay, then, or work it off,&rdquo; said the foreman&rsquo;s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff left the garden and entered the porch, near which stood two
+      dishevelled women&mdash;one of them pregnant and evidently near her time.
+      On one of the steps of the porch, with his hands in the pockets of his
+      holland coat, stood the foreman. When they saw the master, the women were
+      silent, and began arranging the kerchiefs on their heads, and the foreman
+      took his hands out of his pockets and began to smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is what had happened. From the foreman&rsquo;s words, it seemed that the
+      peasants were in the habit of letting their calves and even their cows
+      into the meadow belonging to the estate. Two cows belonging to the
+      families of these two women were found in the meadow, and driven into the
+      yard. The foreman demanded from the women 30 copecks for each cow or two
+      days&rsquo; work. The women, however, maintained that the cows had got into the
+      meadow of their own accord; that they had no money, and asked that the
+      cows, which had stood in the blazing sun since morning without food,
+      piteously lowing, should be returned to them, even if it had to be on the
+      understanding that the price should be worked off later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often have I not begged of you,&rdquo; said the smiling foreman, looking
+      back at Nekhludoff as if calling upon him to be a witness, &ldquo;if you drive
+      your cattle home at noon, that you should have an eye on them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only ran to my little one for a bit, and they got away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t run away when you have undertaken to watch the cows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who&rsquo;s to feed the little one? You&rsquo;d not give him the breast, I
+      suppose?&rdquo; said the other woman. &ldquo;Now, if they had really damaged the
+      meadow, one would not take it so much to heart; but they only strayed in a
+      moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the meadows are damaged,&rdquo; the foreman said, turning to Nekhludoff.
+      &ldquo;If I exact no penalty there will be no hay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, now, don&rsquo;t go sinning like that; my cows have never been caught
+      there before,&rdquo; shouted the pregnant woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now that one has been caught, pay up or work it off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, I&rsquo;ll work it off; only let me have the cow now, don&rsquo;t torture
+      her with hunger,&rdquo; she cried, angrily. &ldquo;As it is, I have no rest day or
+      night. Mother-in-law is ill, husband taken to drink; I&rsquo;m all alone to do
+      all the work, and my strength&rsquo;s at an end. I wish you&rsquo;d choke, you and
+      your working it off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and went back
+      into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but there was nothing
+      more to think about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering how
+      it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for such a
+      long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were dying
+      out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of
+      life adapted to this process: there was the great mortality among the
+      children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding, especially of
+      the aged. And so gradually had the people come to this condition that they
+      did not realise the full horrors of it, and did not complain. Therefore,
+      we consider their condition natural and as it should be. Now it seemed as
+      clear as daylight that the chief cause of the people&rsquo;s great want was one
+      that they themselves knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land
+      which alone could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And how evident it was that the children and the aged died because they
+      had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no pasture land, and
+      no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was quite evident that all the
+      misery of the people or, at least by far the greater part of it, was
+      caused by the fact that the land which should feed them was not in their
+      hands, but in the hands of those who, profiting by their rights to the
+      land, live by the work of these people. The land so much needed by men was
+      tilled by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the
+      corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy themselves
+      hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. He understood this as
+      clearly as he understood that horses when they have eaten all the grass in
+      the inclosure where they are kept will have to grow thin and starve unless
+      they are put where they can get food off other land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was terrible, and must not go on. Means must be found to alter it, or
+      at least not to take part in it. &ldquo;And I will find them,&rdquo; he thought, as he
+      walked up and down the path under the birch trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In scientific circles, Government institutions, and in the papers we talk
+      about the causes of the poverty among the people and the means of
+      ameliorating their condition; but we do not talk of the only sure means
+      which would certainly lighten their condition, i.e., giving back to them
+      the land they need so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry George&rsquo;s fundamental position recurred vividly to his mind and how
+      he had once been carried away by it, and he was surprised that he could
+      have forgotten it. The earth cannot be any one&rsquo;s property; it cannot be
+      bought or sold any more than water, air, or sunshine. All have an equal
+      right to the advantages it gives to men. And now he knew why he had felt
+      ashamed to remember the transaction at Kousminski. He had been deceiving
+      himself. He knew that no man could have a right to own land, yet he had
+      accepted this right as his, and had given the peasants something which, in
+      the depth of his heart, he knew he had no right to. Now he would not act
+      in this way, and would alter the arrangement in Kousminski also. And he
+      formed a project in his mind to let the land to the peasants, and to
+      acknowledge the rent they paid for it to be their property, to be kept to
+      pay the taxes and for communal uses. This was, of course, not the
+      single-tax system, still it was as near an approach to it as could be had
+      under existing circumstances. His chief consideration, however, was that
+      in this way he would no longer profit by the possession of landed
+      property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned to the house the foreman, with a specially pleasant
+      smile, asked him if he would not have his dinner now, expressing the fear
+      that the feast his wife was preparing, with the help of the girl with the
+      earrings, might be overdone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The table was covered with a coarse, unbleached cloth and an embroidered
+      towel was laid on it in lieu of a napkin. A vieux-saxe soup tureen with a
+      broken handle stood on the table, full of potato soup, the stock made of
+      the fowl that had put out and drawn in his black leg, and was now cut, or
+      rather chopped, in pieces, which were here and there covered with hairs.
+      After the soup more of the same fowl with the hairs was served roasted,
+      and then curd pasties, very greasy, and with a great deal of sugar. Little
+      appetising as all this was, Nekhludoff hardly noticed what he was eating;
+      he was occupied with the thought which had in a moment dispersed the
+      sadness with which he had returned from the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman&rsquo;s wife kept looking in at the door, whilst the frightened maid
+      with the earrings brought in the dishes; and the foreman smiled more and
+      more joyfully, priding himself on his wife&rsquo;s culinary skill. After dinner,
+      Nekhludoff succeeded, with some trouble, in making the foreman sit down.
+      In order to revise his own thoughts, and to express them to some one, he
+      explained his project of letting the land to the peasants, and asked the
+      foreman for his opinion. The foreman, smiling as if he had thought all
+      this himself long ago, and was very pleased to hear it, did not really
+      understand it at all. This was not because Nekhludoff did not express
+      himself clearly, but because according to this project it turned out that
+      Nekhludoff was giving up his own profit for the profit of others, and the
+      thought that every one is only concerned about his own profit, to the harm
+      of others, was so deeply rooted in the foreman&rsquo;s conceptions that he
+      imagined he did not understand something when Nekhludoff said that all the
+      income from the land must be placed to form the communal capital of the
+      peasants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see; then you, of course, will receive the percentages from that
+      capital,&rdquo; said the foreman, brightening up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me! no. Don&rsquo;t you see, I am giving up the land altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then you will not get any income,&rdquo; said the foreman, smiling no
+      longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am going to give it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The foreman sighed heavily, and then began smiling again. Now he
+      understood. He understood that Nekhludoff was not quite normal, and at
+      once began to consider how he himself could profit by Nekhludoff&rsquo;s project
+      of giving up the land, and tried to see this project in such a way that he
+      might reap some advantage from it. But when he saw that this was
+      impossible he grew sorrowful, and the project ceased to interest him, and
+      he continued to smile only in order to please the master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that the foreman did not understand him, Nekhludoff let him go and
+      sat down by the window-sill, that was all cut about and inked over, and
+      began to put his project down on paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun went down behind the limes, that were covered with fresh green,
+      and the mosquitoes swarmed in, stinging Nekhludoff. Just as he finished
+      his notes, he heard the lowing of cattle and the creaking of opening gates
+      from the village, and the voices of the peasants gathering together for
+      the meeting. He told the foreman not to call the peasants up to the
+      office, as he meant to go into the village himself and meet the men where
+      they would assemble. Having hurriedly drank a cup of tea offered him by
+      the foreman, Nekhludoff went to the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0066" id="link2HCH0066">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. THE DISINHERITED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      From the crowd assembled in front of the house of the village elder came
+      the sound of voices; but as soon as Nekhludoff came up the talking ceased,
+      and all the peasants took off their caps, just as those in Kousminski had
+      done. The peasants here were of a much poorer class than those in
+      Kousminski. The men wore shoes made of bark and homespun shirts and coats.
+      Some had come straight from their work in their shirts and with bare feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff made an effort, and began his speech by telling the peasants of
+      his intention to give up his land to them altogether. The peasants were
+      silent, and the expression on their faces did not undergo any change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I hold,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, &ldquo;and believe that every one has a right
+      to the use of the land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s certain. That&rsquo;s so, exactly,&rdquo; said several voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff went on to say that the revenue from the land ought to be
+      divided among all, and that he would therefore suggest that they should
+      rent the land at a price fixed by themselves, the rent to form a communal
+      fund for their own use. Words of approval and agreement were still to be
+      heard, but the serious faces of the peasants grew still more serious, and
+      the eyes that had been fixed on the gentleman dropped, as if they were
+      unwilling to put him to shame by letting him see that every one had
+      understood his trick, and that no one would be deceived by him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff spoke clearly, and the peasants were intelligent, but they did
+      not and could not understand him, for the same reason that the foreman had
+      so long been unable to understand him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were fully convinced that it is natural for every man to consider his
+      own interest. The experience of many generations had proved to them that
+      the landlords always considered their own interest to the detriment of the
+      peasants. Therefore, if a landlord called them to a meeting and made them
+      some kind of a new offer, it could evidently only be in order to swindle
+      them more cunningly than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, what are you willing to rent the land at?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can we fix a price? We cannot do it. The land is yours, and the power
+      is in your hands,&rdquo; answered some voices from among the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not at all. You will yourselves have the use of the money for
+      communal purposes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We cannot do it; the commune is one thing, and this is another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you understand?&rdquo; said the foreman, with a smile (he had followed
+      Nekhludoff to the meeting), &ldquo;the Prince is letting the land to you for
+      money, and is giving you the money back to form a capital for the
+      commune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We understand very well,&rdquo; said a cross, toothless old man, without
+      raising his eyes. &ldquo;Something like a bank; we should have to pay at a fixed
+      time. We do not wish it; it is hard enough as it is, and that would ruin
+      us completely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s no go. We prefer to go on the old way,&rdquo; began several
+      dissatisfied, and even rude, voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The refusals grew very vehement when Nekhludoff mentioned that he would
+      draw up an agreement which would have to be signed by him and by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why sign? We shall go on working as we have done hitherto. What is all
+      this for? We are ignorant men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t agree, because this sort of thing is not what we have been used
+      to. As it was, so let it continue to be. Only the seeds we should like to
+      withdraw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This meant that under the present arrangement the seeds had to be provided
+      by the peasants, and they wanted the landlord to provide them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then am I to understand that you refuse to accept the land?&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      asked, addressing a middle-aged, barefooted peasant, with a tattered coat,
+      and a bright look on his face, who was holding his worn cap with his left
+      hand, in a peculiarly straight position, in the same way soldiers hold
+      theirs when commanded to take them off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so,&rdquo; said this peasant, who had evidently not yet rid himself of the
+      military hypnotism he had been subjected to while serving his time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means that you have sufficient land,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, we have not,&rdquo; said the ex-soldier, with an artificially pleased
+      look, carefully holding his tattered cap in front of him, as if offering
+      it to any one who liked to make use of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, anyhow, you&rsquo;d better think over what I have said.&rdquo; Nekhludoff spoke
+      with surprise, and again repeated his offer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have no need to think about it; as we have said, so it will be,&rdquo;
+       angrily muttered the morose, toothless old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall remain here another day, and if you change your minds, send to
+      let me know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasants gave no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Nekhludoff did not succeed in arriving at any result from this
+      interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I might make a remark, Prince,&rdquo; said the foreman, when they got home,
+      &ldquo;you will never come to any agreement with them; they are so obstinate. At
+      a meeting these people just stick in one place, and there is no moving
+      them. It is because they are frightened of everything. Why, these very
+      peasants&mdash;say that white-haired one, or the dark one, who were
+      refusing, are intelligent peasants. When one of them comes to the office
+      and one makes him sit down to cup of tea it&rsquo;s like in the Palace of Wisdom&mdash;he
+      is quite diplomatist,&rdquo; said the foreman, smiling; &ldquo;he will consider
+      everything rightly. At a meeting it&rsquo;s a different man&mdash;he keeps
+      repeating one and the same . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, could not some of the more intelligent men be asked to come here?&rdquo;
+       said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I would carefully explain it to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That can be done,&rdquo; said the smiling foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, would you mind calling them here to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly I will,&rdquo; said the foreman, and smiled still more joyfully.
+      &ldquo;I shall call them to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just hear him; he&rsquo;s not artful, not he,&rdquo; said a blackhaired peasant, with
+      an unkempt beard, as he sat jolting from side to side on a well-fed mare,
+      addressing an old man in a torn coat who rode by his side. The two men
+      were driving a herd of the peasants&rsquo; horses to graze in the night,
+      alongside the highroad and secretly, in the landlord&rsquo;s forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give you the land for nothing&mdash;you need only sign&mdash;have they
+      not done the likes of us often enough? No, my friend, none of your humbug.
+      Nowadays we have a little sense,&rdquo; he added, and began shouting at a colt
+      that had strayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped his horse and looked round, but the colt had not remained
+      behind; it had gone into the meadow by the roadside. &ldquo;Bother that son of a
+      Turk; he&rsquo;s taken to getting into the landowner&rsquo;s meadows,&rdquo; said the dark
+      peasant with the unkempt beard, hearing the cracking of the sorrel stalks
+      that the neighing colt was galloping over as he came running back from the
+      scented meadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear the cracking? We&rsquo;ll have to send the women folk to weed the
+      meadow when there&rsquo;s a holiday,&rdquo; said the thin peasant with the torn coat,
+      &ldquo;or else we&rsquo;ll blunt our scythes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sign,&rdquo; he says. The unkempt man continued giving his opinion of the
+      landlord&rsquo;s speech. &ldquo;&lsquo;Sign,&rsquo; indeed, and let him swallow you up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s certain,&rdquo; answered the old man. And then they were silent, and the
+      tramping of the horses&rsquo; feet along the highroad was the only sound to be
+      heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0067" id="link2HCH0067">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. GOD&rsquo;S PEACE IN THE HEART.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff returned he found that the office had been arranged as a
+      bedroom for him. A high bedstead, with a feather bed and two large
+      pillows, had been placed in the room. The bed was covered with a dark red
+      doublebedded silk quilt, which was elaborately and finely quilted, and
+      very stiff. It evidently belonged to the trousseau of the foreman&rsquo;s wife.
+      The foreman offered Nekhludoff the remains of the dinner, which the latter
+      refused, and, excusing himself for the poorness of the fare and the
+      accommodation, he left Nekhludoff alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasants&rsquo; refusal did not at all bother Nekhludoff. On the contrary,
+      though at Kousminski his offer had been accepted and he had even been
+      thanked for it, and here he was met with suspicion and even enmity, he
+      felt contented and joyful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was close and dirty in the office. Nekhludoff went out into the yard,
+      and was going into the garden, but he remembered: that night, the window
+      of the maid-servant&rsquo;s room, the side porch, and he felt uncomfortable, and
+      did not like to pass the spot desecrated by guilty memories. He sat down
+      on the doorstep, and breathing in the warm air, balmy with the strong
+      scent of fresh birch leaves, he sat for a long time looking into the dark
+      garden and listening to the mill, the nightingales, and some other bird
+      that whistled monotonously in the bush close by. The light disappeared
+      from the foreman&rsquo;s window; in the cast, behind the barn, appeared the
+      light of the rising moon, and sheet lightning began to light up the
+      dilapidated house, and the blooming, over-grown garden more and more
+      frequently. It began to thunder in the distance, and a black cloud spread
+      over one-third of the sky. The nightingales and the other birds were
+      silent. Above the murmur of the water from the mill came the cackling of
+      geese, and then in the village and in the foreman&rsquo;s yard the first cocks
+      began to crow earlier than usual, as they do on warm, thundery nights.
+      There is a saying that if the cocks crow early the night will be a merry
+      one. For Nekhludoff the night was more than merry; it was a happy, joyful
+      night. Imagination renewed the impressions of that happy summer which he
+      had spent here as an innocent lad, and he felt himself as he had been not
+      only at that but at all the best moments of his life. He not only
+      remembered but felt as he had felt when, at the age of 14, he prayed that
+      God would show him the truth; or when as a child he had wept on his
+      mother&rsquo;s lap, when parting from her, and promising to be always good, and
+      never give her pain; he felt as he did when he and Nikolenka Irtenieff
+      resolved always to support each other in living a good life and to try to
+      make everybody happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered how he had been tempted in Kousminski, so that he had begun
+      to regret the house and the forest and the farm and the land, and he asked
+      himself if he regretted them now, and it even seemed strange to think that
+      he could regret them. He remembered all he had seen to-day; the woman with
+      the children, and without her husband, who was in prison for having cut
+      down trees in his (Nekhludoff&rsquo;s) forest, and the terrible Matrona, who
+      considered, or at least talked as if she considered, that women of her
+      position must give themselves to the gentlefolk; he remembered her
+      relation to the babies, the way in which they were taken to the
+      Foundlings&rsquo; Hospital, and the unfortunate, smiling, wizened baby with the
+      patchwork cap, dying of starvation. And then he suddenly remembered the
+      prison, the shaved heads, the cells, the disgusting smells, the chains,
+      and, by the side of it all, the madly lavish city lift of the rich,
+      himself included.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bright moon, now almost full, rose above the barn. Dark shadows fell
+      across the yard, and the iron roof of the ruined house shone bright. As if
+      unwilling to waste this light, the nightingales again began their trills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff called to mind how he had begun to consider his life in the
+      garden of Kousminski when deciding what he was going to do, and remembered
+      how confused he had become, how he could not arrive at any decision, how
+      many difficulties each question had presented. He asked himself these
+      questions now, and was surprised how simple it all was. It was simple
+      because he was not thinking now of what would be the results for himself,
+      but only thought of what he had to do. And, strange to say, what he had to
+      do for himself he could not decide, but what he had to do for others he
+      knew without any doubt. He had no doubt that he must not leave Katusha,
+      but go on helping her. He had no doubt that he must study, investigate,
+      clear up, understand all this business concerning judgment and punishment,
+      which he felt he saw differently to other people. What would result from
+      it all he did not know, but he knew for certain that he must do it. And
+      this firm assurance gave him joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black cloud had spread all over the sky; the lightning flashed vividly
+      across the yard and the old house with its tumble-down porches, the
+      thunder growled overhead. All the birds were silent, but the leaves
+      rustled and the wind reached the step where Nekhludoff stood and played
+      with his hair. One drop came down, then another; then they came drumming
+      on the dock leaves and on the iron of the roof, and all the air was filled
+      by a bright flash, and before Nekhludoff could count three a fearful crash
+      sounded over head and spread pealing all over the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;The work that our life accomplishes, the whole of
+      this work, the meaning of it is not, nor can be, intelligible to me. What
+      were my aunts for? Why did Nikolenka Irtenieff die? Why am I living? What
+      was Katusha for? And my madness? Why that war? Why my subsequent lawless
+      life? To understand it, to understand the whole of the Master&rsquo;s will is
+      not in my power. But to do His will, that is written down in my
+      conscience, is in my power; that I know for certain. And when I am
+      fulfilling it I have sureness and peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rain came down in torrents and rushed from the roof into a tub
+      beneath; the lightning lit up the house and yard less frequently.
+      Nekhludoff went into his room, undressed, and lay down, not without fear
+      of the bugs, whose presence the dirty, torn wall-papers made him suspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to feel one&rsquo;s self not the master but a servant,&rdquo; he thought, and
+      rejoiced at the thought. His fears were not vain. Hardly had he put out
+      his candle when the vermin attacked and stung him. &ldquo;To give up the land
+      and go to Siberia. Fleas, bugs, dirt! Ah, well; if it must be borne, I
+      shall bear it.&rdquo; But, in spite of the best of intentions, he could not bear
+      it, and sat down by the open window and gazed with admiration at the
+      retreating clouds and the reappearing moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0068" id="link2HCH0068">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. THE LAND SETTLEMENT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was morning before Nekhludoff could fall asleep, and therefore he woke
+      up late. At noon seven men, chosen from among the peasants at the
+      foreman&rsquo;s invitation, came into the orchard, where the foreman had
+      arranged a table and benches by digging posts into the ground, and fixing
+      boards on the top, under the apple trees. It took some time before the
+      peasants could be persuaded to put on their caps and to sit down on the
+      benches. Especially firm was the ex-soldier, who to-day had bark shoes on.
+      He stood erect, holding his cap as they do at funerals, according to
+      military regulation. When one of them, a respectable-looking,
+      broad-shouldered old man, with a curly, grizzly beard like that of Michael
+      Angelo&rsquo;s &ldquo;Moses,&rdquo; and grey hair that curled round the brown, bald
+      forehead, put on his big cap, and, wrapping his coat round him, got in
+      behind the table and sat down, the rest followed his example. When all had
+      taken their places Nekhludoff sat down opposite them, and leaning on the
+      table over the paper on which he had drawn up his project, he began
+      explaining it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether it was that there were fewer present, or that he was occupied with
+      the business in hand and not with himself, anyhow, this time Nekhludoff
+      felt no confusion. He involuntarily addressed the broad-shouldered old man
+      with white ringlets in his grizzly beard, expecting approbation or
+      objections from him. But Nekhludoff&rsquo;s conjecture was wrong. The
+      respectable-looking old patriarch, though he nodded his handsome head
+      approvingly or shook it, and frowned when the others raised an objection,
+      evidently understood with great difficulty, and only when the others
+      repeated what Nekhludoff had said in their own words. A little, almost
+      beardless old fellow, blind in one eye, who sat by the side of the
+      patriarch, and had a patched nankeen coat and old boots on, and, as
+      Nekhludoff found out later, was an oven-builder, understood much better.
+      This man moved his brows quickly, attending to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s words with an
+      effort, and at once repeated them in his own way. An old, thick-set man
+      with a white beard and intelligent eyes understood as quickly, and took
+      every opportunity to put in an ironical joke, clearly wishing to show off.
+      The ex-soldier seemed also to understand matters, but got mixed, being
+      used to senseless soldiers&rsquo; talk. A tall man with a small beard, a long
+      nose, and a bass voice, who wore clean, home-made clothes and new
+      bark-plaited shoes, seemed to be the one most seriously interested. This
+      man spoke only when there was need of it. The two other old men, the same
+      toothless one who had shouted a distinct refusal at the meeting the day
+      before to every proposal of Nekhludoff&rsquo;s, and a tall, white lame old man
+      with a kind face, his thin legs tightly wrapped round with strips of
+      linen, said little, though they listened attentively. First of all
+      Nekhludoff explained his views in regard to personal property in land.
+      &ldquo;The land, according to my idea, can neither be bought nor sold, because
+      if it could be, he who has got the money could buy it all, and exact
+      anything he liked for the use of the land from those who have none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said the long-nosed man, in a deep bass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so,&rdquo; said the ex-soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman gathers a little grass for her cow; she&rsquo;s caught and imprisoned,&rdquo;
+       said the white-bearded old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our own land is five versts away, and as to renting any it&rsquo;s impossible;
+      the price is raised so high that it won&rsquo;t pay,&rdquo; added the cross, toothless
+      old man. &ldquo;They twist us into ropes, worse than during serfdom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think as you do, and I count it a sin to possess land, so I wish to
+      give it away,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s a good thing,&rdquo; said the old man, with curls like Angelo&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Moses,&rdquo; evidently thinking that Nekhludoff meant to let the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come here because I no longer wish to possess any land, and now we
+      must consider the best way of dividing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just give it to the peasants, that&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; said the cross, toothless old
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was abashed for a moment, feeling a suspicion of his not being
+      honest in these words, but he instantly recovered, and made use of the
+      remark, in order to express what was in his mind, in reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be glad to give it them,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but to whom, and how? To
+      which of the peasants? Why, to your commune, and not to that of Deminsk.&rdquo;
+       (That was the name of a neighbouring village with very little land.) All
+      were silent. Then the ex-soldier said, &ldquo;Just so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, tell me how would you divide the land among the peasants if
+      you had to do it?&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should divide it up equally, so much for every man,&rdquo; said the
+      oven-builder, quickly raising and lowering his brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How else? Of course, so much per man,&rdquo; said the good natured lame man
+      with the white strips of linen round his legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one confirmed this statement, considering it satisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much per man? Then are the servants attached to the house also to have
+      a share?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said the ex-soldier, trying to appear bold and merry. But the
+      tall, reasonable man would not agree with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If one is to divide, all must share alike,&rdquo; he said, in his deep bass,
+      after a little consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be done,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, who had already prepared his reply.
+      &ldquo;If all are to share alike, then those who do not work themselves&mdash;do
+      not plough&mdash;will sell their shares to the rich. The rich will again
+      get at the land. Those who live by working the land will multiply, and
+      land will again be scarce. Then the rich will again get those who need
+      land into their power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so,&rdquo; quickly said the ex-soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forbid to sell the land; let only him who ploughs it have it,&rdquo; angrily
+      interrupted the oven-builder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this Nekhludoff replied that it was impossible to know who was
+      ploughing for himself and who for another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall, reasonable man proposed that an arrangement be made so that they
+      should all plough communally, and those who ploughed should get the
+      produce and those who did not should get nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this communistic project Nekhludoff had also an answer ready. He said
+      that for such an arrangement it would be necessary that all should have
+      ploughs, and that all the horses should be alike, so that none should be
+      left behind, and that ploughs and horses and all the implements would have
+      to be communal property, and that in order to get that, all the people
+      would have to agree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our people could not be made to agree in a lifetime,&rdquo; said the cross old
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We should have regular fights,&rdquo; said the white-bearded old man with the
+      laughing eyes. &ldquo;So that the thing is not as simple as it looks,&rdquo; said
+      Nekhludoff, &ldquo;and this is a thing not only we but many have been
+      considering. There is an American, Henry George. This is what he has
+      thought out, and I agree with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you are the master, and you give it as you like. What&rsquo;s it to you?
+      The power is yours,&rdquo; said the cross old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This confused Nekhludoff, but he was pleased to see that not he alone was
+      dissatisfied with this interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wait a bit, Uncle Simon; let him tell us about it,&rdquo; said the
+      reasonable man, in his imposing bass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This emboldened Nekhludoff, and he began to explain Henry George&rsquo;s
+      single-tax system &ldquo;The earth is no man&rsquo;s; it is God&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so; that it is,&rdquo; several voices replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The land is common to all. All have the same right to it, but there is
+      good land and bad land, and every one would like to take the good land.
+      How is one to do in order to get it justly divided? In this way: he that
+      will use the good land must pay those who have got no land the value of
+      the land he uses,&rdquo; Nekhludoff went on, answering his own question. &ldquo;As it
+      would be difficult to say who should pay whom, and money is needed for
+      communal use, it should be arranged that he who uses the good land should
+      pay the amount of the value of his land to the commune for its needs. Then
+      every one would share equally. If you want to use land pay for it&mdash;more
+      for the good, less for the bad land. If you do not wish to use land, don&rsquo;t
+      pay anything, and those who use the land will pay the taxes and the
+      communal expenses for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he had a head, this George,&rdquo; said the oven-builder, moving his
+      brows. &ldquo;He who has good land must pay more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only the payment is according to our strength,&rdquo; said the tall man with
+      the bass voice, evidently foreseeing how the matter would end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The payment should be not too high and not too low. If it is too high it
+      will not get paid, and there will be a loss; and if it is too low it will
+      be bought and sold. There would be a trading in land. This is what I
+      wished to arrange among you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just, that is right; yes, that would do,&rdquo; said the peasants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a head, this George,&rdquo; said the broad-shouldered old man with the
+      curls. &ldquo;See what he has invented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, how would it be if I wished to take some land?&rdquo; asked the
+      smiling foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If there is an allotment to spare, take it and work it,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want it for? You have sufficient as it is,&rdquo; said the old man
+      with the laughing eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this the conference ended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff repeated his offer, and advised the men to talk it over with
+      the rest of the commune and to return with the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasants said they would talk it over and bring an answer, and left in
+      a state of excitement. Their loud talk was audible as they went along the
+      road, and up to late in the night the sound of voices came along the river
+      from the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day the peasants did not go to work, but spent it in considering
+      the landlord&rsquo;s offer. The commune was divided into two parties&mdash;one
+      which regarded the offer as a profitable one to themselves and saw no
+      danger in agreeing with it, and another which suspected and feared the
+      offer it did not understand. On the third day, however, all agreed, and
+      some were sent to Nekhludoff to accept his offer. They were influenced in
+      their decision by the explanation some of the old men gave of the
+      landlord&rsquo;s conduct, which did away with all fear of deceit. They thought
+      the gentleman had begun to consider his soul, and was acting as he did for
+      its salvation. The alms which Nekhludoff had given away while in Panovo
+      made his explanation seem likely. The fact that Nekhludoff had never
+      before been face to face with such great poverty and so bare a life as the
+      peasants had come to in this place, and was so appalled by it, made him
+      give away money in charity, though he knew that this was not reasonable.
+      He could not help giving the money, of which he now had a great deal,
+      having received a large sum for the forest he had sold the year before,
+      and also the hand money for the implements and stock in Kousminski. As
+      soon as it was known that the master was giving money in charity, crowds
+      of people, chiefly women, began to come to ask him for help. He did not in
+      the least know how to deal with them, how to decide, how much, and whom to
+      give to. He felt that to refuse to give money, of which he had a great
+      deal, to poor people was impossible, yet to give casually to those who
+      asked was not wise. The last day he spent in Panovo, Nekhludoff looked
+      over the things left in his aunts&rsquo; house, and in the bottom drawer of the
+      mahogany wardrobe, with the brass lions&rsquo; heads with rings through them, he
+      found many letters, and amongst them a photograph of a group, consisting
+      of his aunts, Sophia Ivanovna and Mary Ivanovna, a student, and Katusha.
+      Of all the things in the house he took only the letters and the
+      photograph. The rest he left to the miller who, at the smiling foreman&rsquo;s
+      recommendation, had bought the house and all it contained, to be taken
+      down and carried away, at one-tenth of the real value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Recalling the feeling of regret at the loss of his property which he had
+      felt in Kousminski, Nekhludoff was surprised how he could have felt this
+      regret. Now he felt nothing but unceasing joy at the deliverance, and a
+      sensation of newness something like that which a traveller must experience
+      when discovering new countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0069" id="link2HCH0069">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. NEKHLUDOFF RETURNS TO TOWN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The town struck Nekhludoff in a new and peculiar light on his return. He
+      came back in the evening, when the gas was lit, and drove from the railway
+      station to his house, where the rooms still smelt of naphthaline.
+      Agraphena Petrovna and Corney were both feeling tired and dissatisfied,
+      and had even had a quarrel over those things that seemed made only to be
+      aired and packed away. Nekhludoff&rsquo;s room was empty, but not in order, and
+      the way to it was blocked up with boxes, so that his arrival evidently
+      hindered the business which, owing to a curious kind of inertia, was going
+      on in this house. The evident folly of these proceedings, in which he had
+      once taken part, was so distasteful to Nekhludoff after the impressions
+      the misery of the life of the peasants had made on him, that he decided to
+      go to a hotel the next day, leaving Agraphena Petrovna to put away the
+      things as she thought fit until his sister should come and finally dispose
+      of everything in the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff left home early and chose a couple of rooms in a very modest
+      and not particularly clean lodging-house within easy reach of the prison,
+      and, having given orders that some of his things should be sent there, he
+      went to see the advocate. It was cold out of doors. After some rainy and
+      stormy weather it had turned out cold, as it often does in spring. It was
+      so cold that Nekhludoff felt quite chilly in his light overcoat, and
+      walked fast hoping to get warmer. His mind was filled with thoughts of the
+      peasants, the women, children, old men, and all the poverty and weariness
+      which he seemed to have seen for the first time, especially the smiling,
+      old-faced infant writhing with his calfless little legs, and he could not
+      help contrasting what was going on in the town. Passing by the butchers&rsquo;,
+      fishmongers&rsquo;, and clothiers&rsquo; shops, he was struck, as if he saw them for
+      the first time, by the appearance of the clean, well-fed shopkeepers, like
+      whom you could not find one peasant in the country. These men were
+      apparently convinced that the pains they took to deceive the people who
+      did not know much about their goods was not a useless but rather an
+      important business. The coachmen with their broad hips and rows of buttons
+      down their sides, and the door-keepers with gold cords on their caps, the
+      servant-girls with their aprons and curly fringes, and especially the
+      smart isvostchiks with the nape of their necks clean shaved, as they sat
+      lolling back in their traps, and examined the passers-by with dissolute
+      and contemptuous air, looked well fed. In all these people Nekhludoff
+      could not now help seeing some of these very peasants who had been driven
+      into the town by lack of land. Some of the peasants driven to the town had
+      found means of profiting by the conditions of town life and had become
+      like the gentlefolk and were pleased with their position; others were in a
+      worse position than they had been in the country and were more to be
+      pitied than the country people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such seemed the bootmakers Nekhludoff saw in the cellar, the pale,
+      dishevelled washerwomen with their thin, bare, arms ironing at an open
+      window, out of which streamed soapy steam; such the two house-painters
+      with their aprons, stockingless feet, all bespattered and smeared with
+      paint, whom Nekhludoff met&mdash;their weak, brown arms bared to above the
+      elbows&mdash;carrying a pailful of paint, and quarrelling with each other.
+      Their faces looked haggard and cross. The dark faces of the carters
+      jolting along in their carts bore the same expression, and so did the
+      faces of the tattered men and women who stood begging at the street
+      corners. The same kind of faces were to be seen at the open, windows of
+      the eating-houses which Nekhludoff passed. By the dirty tables on which
+      stood tea things and bottles, and between which waiters dressed in white
+      shirts were rushing hither and thither, sat shouting and singing red,
+      perspiring men with stupefied faces. One sat by the window with lifted
+      brows and pouting lips and fixed eyes as if trying to remember something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why are they all gathered here?&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, breathing in
+      together with the dust which the cold wind blew towards him the air filled
+      with the smell of rank oil and fresh paint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one street he met a row of carts loaded with something made of iron,
+      that rattled so on the uneven pavement that it made his ears and head
+      ache. He started walking still faster in order to pass the row of carts,
+      when he heard himself called by name. He stopped and saw an officer with
+      sharp pointed moustaches and shining face who sat in the trap of a swell
+      isvostchik and waved his hand in a friendly manner, his smile disclosing
+      unusually long, white teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nekhludoff! Can it be you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s first feeling was one of pleasure. &ldquo;Ah, Schonbock!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed joyfully; but he knew the next moment that there was nothing to
+      be joyful about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was that Schonbock who had been in the house of Nekhludoff&rsquo;s aunts
+      that day, and whom Nekhludoff had quite lost out of sight, but about whom
+      he had heard that in spite of his debts he had somehow managed to remain
+      in the cavalry, and by some means or other still kept his place among the
+      rich. His gay, contented appearance corroborated this report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a good thing that I have caught you. There is no one in town. Ah,
+      old fellow; you have grown old,&rdquo; he said, getting out of the trap and
+      moving his shoulders about. &ldquo;I only knew you by your walk. Look here, we
+      must dine together. Is there any place where they feed one decently?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I can spare the time,&rdquo; Nekhludoff answered, thinking only
+      of how he could best get rid of his companion without hurting him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what has brought you here?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Business, old fellow. Guardianship business. I am a guardian now. I am
+      managing Samanoff&rsquo;s affairs&mdash;the millionaire, you know. He has
+      softening of the brain, and he&rsquo;s got fifty-four thousand desiatins of
+      land,&rdquo; he said, with peculiar pride, as if he had himself made all these
+      desiatins. &ldquo;The affairs were terribly neglected. All the land was let to
+      the peasants. They did not pay anything. There were more than eighty
+      thousand roubles debts. I changed it all in one year, and have got 70 per
+      cent. more out of it. What do you think of that?&rdquo; he asked proudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff remembered having heard that this Schonbock, just because, he
+      had spent all he had, had attained by some special influence the post of
+      guardian to a rich old man who was squandering his property&mdash;and was
+      now evidently living by this guardianship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How am I to get rid of him without offending him?&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff,
+      looking at this full, shiny face with the stiffened moustache and
+      listening to his friendly, good-humoured chatter about where one gets fed
+      best, and his bragging about his doings as a guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, where do we dine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, I have no time to spare,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, glancing at his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, look here. To-night, at the races&mdash;will you be there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I shall not be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do come. I have none of my own now, but I back Grisha&rsquo;s horses. You
+      remember; he has a fine stud. You&rsquo;ll come, won&rsquo;t you? And we&rsquo;ll have some
+      supper together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I cannot have supper with you either,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s too bad! And where are you off to now? Shall I give you a
+      lift?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to see an advocate, close to here round the corner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, of course. You have got something to do with the prisons&mdash;have
+      turned into a prisoners&rsquo; mediator, I hear,&rdquo; said Schonbock, laughing. &ldquo;The
+      Korchagins told me. They have left town already. What does it all mean?
+      Tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, it is quite true,&rdquo; Nekhludoff answered; &ldquo;but I cannot tell you
+      about it in the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course; you always were a crank. But you will come to the races?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I neither can nor wish to come. Please do not be angry with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angry? Dear me, no. Where do you live?&rdquo; And suddenly his face became
+      serious, his eyes fixed, and he drew up his brows. He seemed to be trying
+      to remember something, and Nekhludoff noticed the same dull expression as
+      that of the man with the raised brows and pouting lips whom he had seen at
+      the window of the eating-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How cold it is! Is it not? Have you got the parcels?&rdquo; said Schonbock,
+      turning to the isvostchik.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. Good-bye. I am very glad indeed to have met you,&rdquo; and warmly
+      pressing Nekhludoff&rsquo;s hand, he jumped into the trap and waved his
+      white-gloved hand in front of his shiny face, with his usual smile,
+      showing his exceptionally white teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I have also been like that?&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, as he continued his
+      way to the advocate&rsquo;s. &ldquo;Yes, I wished to be like that, though I was not
+      quite like it. And I thought of living my life in that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0070" id="link2HCH0070">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. AN ADVOCATE&rsquo;S VIEWS ON JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was admitted by the advocate before his turn. The advocate at
+      once commenced to talk about the Menshoffs&rsquo; case, which he had read with
+      indignation at the inconsistency of the accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This case is perfectly revolting,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it is very likely that the
+      owner himself set fire to the building in order to get the insurance
+      money, and the chief thing is that there is no evidence to prove the
+      Menshoffs&rsquo; guilt. There are no proofs whatever. It is all owing to the
+      special zeal of the examining magistrate and the carelessness of the
+      prosecutor. If they are tried here, and not in a provincial court, I
+      guarantee that they will be acquitted, and I shall charge nothing. Now
+      then, the next case, that of Theodosia Birukoff. The appeal to the Emperor
+      is written. If you go to Petersburg, you&rsquo;d better take it with you, and
+      hand it in yourself, with a request of your own, or else they will only
+      make a few inquiries, and nothing will come of it. You must try and get at
+      some of the influential members of the Appeal Committee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, is this all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; here I have a letter . . . I see you have turned into a pipe&mdash;a
+      spout through which all the complaints of the prison are poured,&rdquo; said the
+      advocate, with a smile. &ldquo;It is too much; you&rsquo;ll not be able to manage it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but this is a striking case,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and gave a brief
+      outline of the case of a peasant who began to read the Gospels to the
+      peasants in the village, and to discuss them with his friends. The priests
+      regarded this as a crime and informed the authorities. The magistrate
+      examined him and the public prosecutor drew up an act of indictment, and
+      the law courts committed him for trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is really too terrible,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said. &ldquo;Can it be true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you surprised at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, everything. I can understand the police-officer, who simply obeys
+      orders, but the prosecutor drawing up an act of that kind. An educated man
+      . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is where the mistake lies, that we are in the habit of considering
+      that the prosecutors and the judges in general are some kind of liberal
+      persons. There was a time when they were such, but now it is quite
+      different. They are just officials, only troubled about pay-day. They
+      receive their salaries and want them increased, and there their principles
+      end. They will accuse, judge, and sentence any one you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but do laws really exist that can condemn a man to Siberia for
+      reading the Bible with his friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not only to be exiled to the less remote parts of Siberia, but even to
+      the mines, if you can only prove that reading the Bible they took the
+      liberty of explaining it to others not according to orders, and in this
+      way condemned the explanations given by the Church. Blaming the Greek
+      orthodox religion in the presence of the common people means, according to
+      Statute . . . the mines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you it is so. I always tell these gentlemen, the judges,&rdquo; the
+      advocate continued, &ldquo;that I cannot look at them without gratitude, because
+      if I am not in prison, and you, and all of us, it is only owing to their
+      kindness. To deprive us of our privileges, and send us all to the less
+      remote parts of Siberia, would be an easy thing for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if it is so, and if everything depends on the Procureur and others
+      who can, at will, either enforce the laws or not, what are the trials
+      for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The advocate burst into a merry laugh. &ldquo;You do put strange questions. My
+      dear sir, that is philosophy. Well, we might have a talk about that, too.
+      Could you come on Saturday? You will meet men of science, literary men,
+      and artists at my house, and then we might discuss these general
+      questions,&rdquo; said the advocate, pronouncing the words &ldquo;general questions&rdquo;
+       with ironical pathos. &ldquo;You have met my wife? Do come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you; I will try to,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and felt that he was saying
+      an untruth, and knew that if he tried to do anything it would be to keep
+      away froth the advocate&rsquo;s literary evening, and the circle of the men of
+      science, art, and literature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The laugh with which the advocate met Nekhludoff&rsquo;s remark that trials
+      could have no meaning if the judges might enforce the laws or not,
+      according to their notion, and the tone with which he pronounced the words
+      &ldquo;philosophy&rdquo; and &ldquo;general questions&rdquo; proved to Nekhludoff how very
+      differently he and the advocate and, probably, the advocate&rsquo;s friends,
+      looked at things; and he felt that in spite of the distance that now
+      existed between himself and his former companions, Schonbock, etc., the
+      difference between himself and the circle of the advocate and his friends
+      was still greater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0071" id="link2HCH0071">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. WHY THE PEASANTS FLOCK TO TOWN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The prison was a long way off and it was getting late, so Nekhludoff took
+      an isvostchik. The isvostchik, a middle-aged man with an intelligent and
+      kind face, turned round towards Nekhludoff as they were driving along one
+      of the streets and pointed to a huge house that was being built there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just see what a tremendous house they have begun to build,&rdquo; he said, as
+      if he was partly responsible for the building of the house and proud of
+      it. The house was really immense and was being built in a very original
+      style. The strong pine beams of the scaffolding were firmly fixed together
+      with iron bands and a plank wall separated the building from the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the boards of the scaffolding workmen, all bespattered with plaster,
+      moved hither and thither like ants. Some were laying bricks, some hewing
+      stones, some carrying up the heavy hods and pails and bringing them down
+      empty. A fat and finely-dressed gentleman&mdash;probably the architect&mdash;stood
+      by the scaffolding, pointing upward and explaining something to a
+      contractor, a peasant from the Vladimir Government, who was respectfully
+      listening to him. Empty carts were coming out of the gate by which the
+      architect and the contractor were standing, and loaded ones were going in.
+      &ldquo;And how sure they all are&mdash;those that do the work as well as those
+      that make them do it&mdash;that it ought to be; that while their wives at
+      home, who are with child, are labouring beyond their strength, and their
+      children with the patchwork caps, doomed soon to the cold grave, smile
+      with suffering and contort their little legs, they must be building this
+      stupid and useless palace for some stupid and useless person&mdash;one of
+      those who spoil and rob them,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, while looking at the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is a stupid house,&rdquo; he said, uttering his thought out aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why stupid?&rdquo; replied the isvostchik, in an offended tone. &ldquo;Thanks to it,
+      the people get work; it&rsquo;s not stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the work is useless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be useless, or why should it be done?&rdquo; said the isvostchik. &ldquo;The
+      people get bread by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was silent, and it would have been difficult to talk because of
+      the clatter the wheels made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they came nearer the prison, and the isvostchik turned off the paved
+      on to the macadamised road, it became easier to talk, and he again turned
+      to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what a lot of these people are flocking to the town nowadays; it&rsquo;s
+      awful,&rdquo; he said, turning round on the box and pointing to a party of
+      peasant workmen who were coming towards them, carrying saws, axes,
+      sheepskins, coats, and bags strapped to their shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than in other years?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By far. This year every place is crowded, so that it&rsquo;s just terrible. The
+      employers just fling the workmen about like chaff. Not a job to be got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve increased. There&rsquo;s no room for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what if they have increased? Why do not they stay in the village?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing for them to do in the village&mdash;no land to be had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff felt as one does when touching a sore place. It feels as if the
+      bruised part was always being hit; yet it is only because the place is
+      sore that the touch is felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible that the same thing is happening everywhere?&rdquo; he thought,
+      and began questioning the isvostchik about the quantity of land in his
+      village, how much land the man himself had, and why he had left the
+      country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have a desiatin per man, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Our family have three men&rsquo;s
+      shares of the land. My father and a brother are at home, and manage the
+      land, and another brother is serving in the army. But there&rsquo;s nothing to
+      manage. My brother has had thoughts of coming to Moscow, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And cannot land be rented?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&rsquo;s one to rent it nowadays? The gentry, such as they were, have
+      squandered all theirs. Men of business have got it all into their own
+      hands. One can&rsquo;t rent it from them. They farm it themselves. We have a
+      Frenchman ruling in our place; he bought the estate from our former
+      landlord, and won&rsquo;t let it&mdash;and there&rsquo;s an end of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s that Frenchman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dufour is the Frenchman&rsquo;s name. Perhaps you&rsquo;ve heard of him. He makes
+      wigs for the actors in the big theatre; it is a good business, so he&rsquo;s
+      prospering. He bought it from our lady, the whole of the estate, and now
+      he has us in his power; he just rides on us as he pleases. The Lord be
+      thanked, he is a good man himself; only his wife, a Russian, is such a
+      brute that&mdash;God have mercy on us. She robs the people. It&rsquo;s awful.
+      Well, here&rsquo;s the prison. Am I to drive you to the entrance? I&rsquo;m afraid
+      they&rsquo;ll not let us do it, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0072" id="link2HCH0072">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. NURSE MASLOVA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When he rang the bell at the front entrance Nekhludoff&rsquo;s heart stood still
+      with horror as he thought of the state he might find Maslova in to-day,
+      and at the mystery that he felt to be in her and in the people that were
+      collected in the prison. He asked the jailer who opened the door for
+      Maslova. After making the necessary inquiry the jailer informed him that
+      she was in the hospital. Nekhludoff went there. A kindly old man, the
+      hospital doorkeeper, let him in at once and, after asking Nekhludoff whom
+      he wanted, directed him to the children&rsquo;s ward. A young doctor saturated
+      with carbolic acid met Nekhludoff in the passage and asked him severely
+      what he wanted. This doctor was always making all sorts of concessions to
+      the prisoners, and was therefore continually coming into conflict with the
+      prison authorities and even with the head doctor. Fearing lest Nekhludoff
+      should demand something unlawful, and wishing to show that he made no
+      exceptions for any one, he pretended to be cross. &ldquo;There are no women
+      here; it is the children&rsquo;s ward,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know; but a prisoner has been removed here to be an assistant
+      nurse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there are two such here. Then whom do you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am closely connected with one of them, named Maslova,&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      answered, &ldquo;and should like to speak to her. I am going to Petersburg to
+      hand in an appeal to the Senate about her case and should like to give her
+      this. It is only a photo,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, taking an envelope out of his
+      pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, you may do that,&rdquo; said the doctor, relenting, and turning to
+      an old woman with a white apron, he told her to call the prisoner&mdash;Nurse
+      Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you take a seat, or go into the waiting-room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and profiting by the favourable change in the
+      manner of the doctor towards him asked how they were satisfied with
+      Maslova in the hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she is all right. She works fairly well, if you the conditions of her
+      former life into account. But here she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old nurse came in at one of the doors, followed by Maslova, who wore a
+      blue striped dress, a white apron, a kerchief that quite covered her hair.
+      When she saw Nekhludoff her face flushed, and she stopped as if
+      hesitating, then frowned, and with downcast eyes went quickly towards him
+      along the strip of carpet in the middle of the passage. When she came up
+      to Nekhludoff she did not wish to give him her hand, and then gave it,
+      growing redder still. Nekhludoff had not seen her since the day when she
+      begged forgiveness for having been in a passion, and he expected to find
+      her the same as she was then. But to-day she was quite different. There
+      was something new in the expression of her face, reserve and shyness, and,
+      as it seemed to him, animosity towards him. He told her what he had
+      already said to the doctor, i.e., that he was going to Petersburg, and he
+      handed her the envelope with the photograph which he had brought from
+      Panovo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found this in Panovo&mdash;it&rsquo;s an old photo; perhaps you would like
+      it. Take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lifting her dark eyebrows, she looked at him with surprise in her
+      squinting eyes, as if asking, &ldquo;What is this for?&rdquo; took the photo silently
+      and put it in the bib of her apron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw your aunt there,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you?&rdquo; she said, indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you all right here?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, it&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too difficult?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no. But I am not used to it yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad, for your sake. Anyhow, it is better than there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Than where&mdash;there?&rdquo; she asked, her face flushing again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&mdash;in the prison,&rdquo; Nekhludoff hurriedly answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why better?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think the people are better. Here are none such as there must be
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are many good ones there,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been seeing about the Menshoffs, and hope they will be liberated,&rdquo;
+       said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God grant they may. Such a splendid old woman,&rdquo; she said, again repeating
+      her opinion of the old woman, and slightly smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to Petersburg to-day. Your case will come on soon, and I hope
+      the sentence will be repealed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether it is repealed or not won&rsquo;t matter now,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; she said, looking with a quick, questioning glance into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff understood the word and the look to mean that she wished to
+      know whether he still kept firm to his decision or had accepted her
+      refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know why it does not matter to you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It certainly does
+      not matter as far as I am concerned whether you are acquitted or not. I am
+      ready to do what I told you in any case,&rdquo; he said decidedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her head and her black squinting eyes remained fixed on him and
+      beyond him, and her face beamed with joy. But the words she spoke were
+      very different from what her eyes said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should not speak like that,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am saying it so that you should know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything has been said about that, and there is no use speaking,&rdquo; she
+      said, with difficulty repressing a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden noise came from the hospital ward, and the sound of a child
+      crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they are calling me,&rdquo; she said, and looked round uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, good-bye, then,&rdquo; he said. She pretended not to see his extended
+      hand, and, without taking it, turned away and hastily walked along the
+      strip of carpet, trying to hide the triumph she felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is going on in her? What is she thinking? What does she feel? Does
+      she mean to prove me, or can she really not forgive me? Is it that she
+      cannot or that she will not express what she feels and thinks? Has she
+      softened or hardened?&rdquo; he asked himself, and could find no answer. He only
+      knew that she had altered and that an important change was going on in her
+      soul, and this change united him not only to her but also to Him for whose
+      sake that change was being wrought. And this union brought on a state of
+      joyful animation and tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she returned to the ward, in which there stood eight small beds,
+      Maslova began, in obedience to the nurse&rsquo;s order, to arrange one of the
+      beds; and, bending over too far with the sheet, she slipped and nearly
+      fell down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little convalescent boy with a bandaged neck, who was looking at her,
+      laughed. Maslova could no longer contain herself and burst into loud
+      laughter, and such contagious laughter that several of the children also
+      burst out laughing, and one of the sisters rebuked her angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you giggling at? Do you think you are where you used to be? Go
+      and fetch the food.&rdquo; Maslova obeyed and went where she was sent; but,
+      catching the eye of the bandaged boy who was not allowed to laugh, she
+      again burst out laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever she was alone Maslova again and again pulled the photograph
+      partly out of the envelope and looked at it admiringly; but only in the
+      evening when she was off duty and alone in the bedroom which she shared
+      with a nurse, did she take it quite out of the envelope and gaze long at
+      the faded yellow photograph, caressing with, her eyes every detail of
+      faces and clothing, the steps of the veranda, and the bushes which served
+      as a background to his and hers and his aunts&rsquo; faces, and could not cease
+      from admiring especially herself&mdash;her pretty young face with the
+      curly hair round the forehead. She was so absorbed that she did not hear
+      her fellow-nurse come into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it that he&rsquo;s given you?&rdquo; said the good-natured, fat nurse,
+      stooping over the photograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s this? You?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who else?&rdquo; said Maslova, looking into her companion&rsquo;s face with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who&rsquo;s this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is this his mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, his aunt. Would you not have known me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never. The whole face is altered. Why, it must be 10 years since then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not years, but a lifetime,&rdquo; said Maslova. And suddenly her animation
+      went, her face grew gloomy, and a deep line appeared between her brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so? Your way of life must have been an easy one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easy, indeed,&rdquo; Maslova reiterated, closing her eyes and shaking her head.
+      &ldquo;It is hell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what makes it so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes it so! From eight till four in the morning, and every night
+      the same!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why don&rsquo;t they give it up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t give it up if they want to. But what&rsquo;s the use of talking?&rdquo;
+       Maslova said, jumping up and throwing the photograph into the drawer of
+      the table. And with difficulty repressing angry tears, she ran out into
+      the passage and slammed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While looking at the group she imagined herself such as she was there and
+      dreamt of her happiness then and of the possibility of happiness with him
+      now. But her companion&rsquo;s words reminded her of what she was now and what
+      she had been, and brought back all the horrors of that life, which she had
+      felt but dimly, and not allowed herself to realise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only now that the memory of all those terrible nights came vividly
+      back to her, especially one during the carnival when she was expecting a
+      student who had promised to buy her out. She remembered how she&mdash;wearing
+      her low necked silk dress stained with wine, a red bow in her untidy hair,
+      wearied, weak, half tipsy, having seen her visitors off, sat down during
+      an interval in the dancing by the piano beside the bony pianiste with the
+      blotchy face, who played the accompaniments to the violin, and began
+      complaining of her hard fate; and how this pianiste said that she, too,
+      was feeling how heavy her position was and would like to change it; and
+      how Clara suddenly came up to them; and how they all three decided to
+      change their life. They thought that the night was over, and were about to
+      go away, when suddenly the noise of tipsy voices was heard in the
+      ante-room. The violinist played a tune and the pianiste began hammering
+      the first figure of a quadrille on the piano, to the tune of a most merry
+      Russian song. A small, perspiring man, smelling of spirits, with a white
+      tie and swallow-tail coat, which he took off after the first figure, came
+      up to her, hiccoughing, and caught her up, while another fat man, with a
+      beard, and also wearing a dress-coat (they had come straight from a ball)
+      caught Clara up, and for a long time they turned, danced, screamed, drank.
+      . . . And so it went on for another year, and another, and a third. How
+      could she help changing? And he was the cause of it all. And, suddenly,
+      all her former bitterness against him reawoke; she wished to scold, to
+      reproach him. She regretted having neglected the opportunity of repeating
+      to him once more that she knew him, and would not give in to him&mdash;would
+      not let him make use of her spiritually as he had done physically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she longed for drink in order to stifle the feeling of pity to herself
+      and the useless feeling of reproach to him. And she would have broken her
+      word if she had been inside the prison. Here she could not get any spirits
+      except by applying to the medical assistant, and she was afraid of him
+      because he made up to her, and intimate relations with men were disgusting
+      to her now. After sitting a while on a form in the passage she returned to
+      her little room, and without paying any heed to her companion&rsquo;s words, she
+      wept for a long time over her wrecked life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0073" id="link2HCH0073">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. AN ARISTOCRATIC CIRCLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had four matters to attend to in Petersburg. The first was the
+      appeal to the Senate in Maslova&rsquo;s case; the second, to hand in Theodosia
+      Birukoff&rsquo;s petition to the committee; the third, to comply with Vera
+      Doukhova&rsquo;s requests&mdash;i.e., try to get her friend Shoustova released
+      from prison, and get permission for a mother to visit her son in prison.
+      Vera Doukhova had written to him about this, and he was going to the
+      Gendarmerie Office to attend to these two matters, which he counted as
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fourth matter he meant to attend to was the case of some sectarians
+      who had been separated from their families and exiled to the Caucasus
+      because they read and discussed the Gospels. It was not so much to them as
+      to himself he had promised to do all he could to clear up this affair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since his last visit to Maslennikoff, and especially since he had been in
+      the country, Nekhludoff had not exactly formed a resolution but felt with
+      his whole nature a loathing for that society in which he had lived till
+      then, that society which so carefully hides the sufferings of millions in
+      order to assure ease and pleasure to a small number of people, that the
+      people belonging to this society do not and cannot see these sufferings,
+      nor the cruelty and wickedness of their life. Nekhludoff could no longer
+      move in this society without feeling ill at ease and reproaching himself.
+      And yet all the ties of relationship and friendship, and his own habits,
+      were drawing him back into this society. Besides, that which alone
+      interested him now, his desire to help Maslova and the other sufferers,
+      made it necessary to ask for help and service from persons belonging to
+      that society, persons whom he not only could not respect, but who often
+      aroused in him indignation and a feeling of contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came to Petersburg and stopped at his aunt&rsquo;s&mdash;his mother&rsquo;s
+      sister, the Countess Tcharsky, wife of a former minister&mdash;Nekhludoff
+      at once found himself in the very midst of that aristocratic circle which
+      had grown so foreign to him. This was very unpleasant, but there was no
+      possibility of getting out of it. To put up at an hotel instead of at his
+      aunt&rsquo;s house would have been to offend his aunt, and, besides, his aunt
+      had important connections and might be extremely useful in all these
+      matters he meant to attend to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this I hear about you? All sorts of marvels,&rdquo; said the Countess
+      Katerina Ivanovna Tcharsky, as she gave him his coffee immediately after
+      his arrival. &ldquo;<i>Vous posez pour un Howard</i>. Helping criminals, going
+      the round of prisons, setting things right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no. I never thought of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? It is a good thing, only there seems to be some romantic story
+      connected with it. Let us hear all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff told her the whole truth about his relations to Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, I remember your poor mother telling me about it. That was when
+      you were staying with those old women. I believe they wished to marry you
+      to their ward (the Countess Katerina Ivanovna had always despised
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s aunts on his father&rsquo;s side). So it&rsquo;s she. <i>Elle est encore
+      jolie?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katerina Ivanovna was a strong, bright, energetic, talkative woman of 60.
+      She was tall and very stout, and had a decided black moustache on her lip.
+      Nekhludoff was fond of her and had even as a child been infected by her
+      energy and mirth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, ma tante, that&rsquo;s at an end. I only wish to help her, because she is
+      innocently accused. I am the cause of it and the cause of her fate being
+      what it is. I feel it my duty to do all I can for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is this I have heard about your intention of marrying her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was my intention, but she does not wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katerina Ivanovna looked at her nephew with raised brows and drooping
+      eyeballs, in silent amazement. Suddenly her face changed, and with a look
+      of pleasure she said: &ldquo;Well, she is wiser than you. Dear me, you are a
+      fool. And you would have married her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most certainly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After her having been what she was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the more, since I was the cause of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you are a simpleton,&rdquo; said his aunt, repressing a smile, &ldquo;a
+      terrible simpleton; but it is just because you are such a terrible
+      simpleton that I love you.&rdquo; She repeated the word, evidently liking it, as
+      it seemed to correctly convey to her mind the idea of her nephew&rsquo;s moral
+      state. &ldquo;Do you know&mdash;What a lucky chance. Aline has a wonderful home&mdash;the
+      Magdalene Home. I went there once. They are terribly disgusting. After
+      that I had to pray continually. But Aline is devoted to it, body and soul,
+      so we shall place her there&mdash;yours, I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she is condemned to Siberia. I have come on purpose to appeal about
+      it. This is one of my requests to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, and where do you appeal to in this case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the Senate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the Senate! Yes, my dear Cousin Leo is in the Senate, but he is in
+      the heraldry department, and I don&rsquo;t know any of the real ones. They are
+      all some kind of Germans&mdash;Gay, Fay, Day&mdash;tout l&rsquo;alphabet, or
+      else all sorts of Ivanoffs, Simenoffs, Nikitines, or else Ivanenkos,
+      Simonenkos, Nikitenkos, pour varier. Des gens de l&rsquo;autre monde. Well, it
+      is all the same. I&rsquo;ll tell my husband, he knows them. He knows all sorts
+      of people. I&rsquo;ll tell him, but you will have to explain, he never
+      understands me. Whatever I may say, he always maintains he does not
+      understand it. C&rsquo;est un parti pris, every one understands but only not
+      he.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a footman with stockinged legs came in with a note on a
+      silver platter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now, from Aline herself. You&rsquo;ll have a chance of hearing
+      Kiesewetter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is Kiesewetter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kiesewetter? Come this evening, and you will find out who he is. He
+      speaks in such a way that the most hardened criminals sink on their knees
+      and weep and repent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess Katerina Ivanovna, however strange it may seem, and however
+      little it seemed in keeping with the rest of her character, was a staunch
+      adherent to that teaching which holds that the essence of Christianity
+      lies in the belief in redemption. She went to meetings where this
+      teaching, then in fashion, was being preached, and assembled the
+      &ldquo;faithful&rdquo; in her own house. Though this teaching repudiated all
+      ceremonies, icons, and sacraments, Katerina Ivanovna had icons in every
+      room, and one on the wall above her bed, and she kept all that the Church
+      prescribed without noticing any contradiction in that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now; if your Magdalene could hear him she would be converted,&rdquo; said
+      the Countess. &ldquo;Do stay at home to-night; you will hear him. He is a
+      wonderful man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does not interest me, ma tante.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I tell you that it is interesting, and you must come home. Now you
+      may go. What else do you want of me? <i>Videz votre sac</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The next is in the fortress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the fortress? I can give you a note for that to the Baron Kriegsmuth.
+      <i>Cest un tres brave homme</i>. Oh, but you know him; he was a comrade of
+      your father&rsquo;s. <i>Il donne dans le spiritisme</i>. But that does not
+      matter, he is a good fellow. What do you want there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to get leave for a mother to visit her son who is imprisoned
+      there. But I was told that this did not depend on Kriegsmuth but on
+      Tcherviansky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not like Tcherviansky, but he is Mariette&rsquo;s husband; we might ask
+      her. She will do it for me. <i>Elle est tres gentille</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have also to petition for a woman who is imprisoned there without
+      knowing what for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No fear; she knows well enough. They all know it very well, and it serves
+      them right, those short-haired [many advanced women wear their hair short,
+      like men] ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We do not know whether it serves them right or not. But they suffer. You
+      are a Christian and believe in the Gospel teaching and yet you are so
+      pitiless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That has nothing to do with it. The Gospels are the Gospels, but what is
+      disgusting remains disgusting. It would be worse if I pretended to love
+      Nihilists, especially short-haired women Nihilists, when I cannot bear
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why can you not bear them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask why, after the 1st of March?&rdquo; [The Emperor Alexander II was
+      killed on the first of March, old style.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They did not all take part in it on the 1st of March.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind; they should not meddle with what is no business of theirs.
+      It&rsquo;s not women&rsquo;s business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet you consider that Mariette may take part in business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mariette? Mariette is Mariette, and these are goodness knows what. Want
+      to teach everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to teach but simply to help the people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One knows whom to help and whom not to help without them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the peasants are in great need. I have just returned from the
+      country. Is it necessary, that the peasants should work to the very limits
+      of their strength and never have sufficient to eat while we are living in
+      the greatest luxury?&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, involuntarily led on by his aunt&rsquo;s
+      good nature into telling her what he was in his thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want, then? That I should work and not eat anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I do not wish you not to eat. I only wish that we should all work and
+      all eat.&rdquo; He could not help smiling as he said it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again raising her brow and drooping her eyeballs his aunt looked at him
+      curiously. &ldquo;<i>Mon cher vous finirez mal</i>,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the general, and former minister, Countess Tcharsky&rsquo;s husband, a
+      tall, broad-shouldered man, came into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Dmitri, how d&rsquo;you do?&rdquo; he said, turning his freshly-shaved cheek to
+      Nekhludoff to be kissed. &ldquo;When did you get here?&rdquo; And he silently kissed
+      his wife on the forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Non il est impayable</i>,&rdquo; the Countess said, turning to her husband.
+      &ldquo;He wants me to go and wash clothes and live on potatoes. He is an awful
+      fool, but all the same do what he is going to ask of you. A terrible
+      simpleton,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;Have you heard? Kamenskaya is in such despair that
+      they fear for her life,&rdquo; she said to her husband. &ldquo;You should go and call
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it is dreadful,&rdquo; said her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go along, then, and talk to him. I must write some letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly had Nekhludoff stepped into the room next the drawing-room than she
+      called him back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I write to Mariette, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, ma tante.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall leave a blank for what you want to say about the short-haired
+      one, and she will give her husband his orders, and he&rsquo;ll do it. Do not
+      think me wicked; they are all so disgusting, your prologues, but <i>je ne
+      leur veux pas de mal</i>, bother them. Well, go, but be sure to stay at
+      home this evening to hear Kiesewetter, and we shall have some prayers. And
+      if only you do not resist <i>cela vous fera beaucoup de bien</i>. I know
+      your poor mother and all of you were always very backward in these
+      things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0074" id="link2HCH0074">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. AN AVERAGE STATESMAN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Count Ivan Michaelovitch had been a minister, and was a man of strong
+      convictions. The convictions of Count Ivan Michaelovitch consisted in the
+      belief that, just as it was natural for a bird to feed on worms, to be
+      clothed in feathers and down, and to fly in the air, so it was natural for
+      him to feed on the choicest and most expensive food, prepared by
+      highly-paid cooks, to wear the most comfortable and most expensive
+      clothing, to drive with the best and fastest horses, and that, therefore,
+      all these things should be ready found for him. Besides this, Count Ivan
+      Michaelovitch considered that the more money he could get out of the
+      treasury by all sorts of means, the more orders he had, including
+      different diamond insignia of something or other, and the oftener he spoke
+      to highly-placed individuals of both sexes, so much the better it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the rest Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered insignificant and
+      uninteresting beside these dogmas. All the rest might be as it was, or
+      just the reverse. Count Ivan Michaelovitch lived and acted according to
+      these lights for 40 years, and at the end of 40 years reached the position
+      of a Minister of State. The chief qualities that enabled Count Ivan
+      Michaelovitch to reach this position were his capacity of understanding
+      the meaning of documents and laws and of drawing up, though clumsily,
+      intelligible State papers, and of spelling them correctly; secondly, his
+      very stately appearance, which enabled him, when necessary, to seem not
+      only extremely proud, but unapproachable and majestic, while at other
+      times he could be abjectly and almost passionately servile; thirdly, the
+      absence of any general principles or rules, either of personal or
+      administrative morality, which made it possible for him either to agree or
+      disagree with anybody according to what was wanted at the time. When
+      acting thus his only endeavour was to sustain the appearance of good
+      breeding and not to seem too plainly inconsistent. As for his actions
+      being moral or not, in themselves, or whether they were going to result in
+      the highest welfare or greatest evil for the whole of the Russian Empire,
+      or even the entire world, that was quite indifferent to him. When he
+      became minister, not only those dependent on him (and there were great
+      many of them) and people connected with him, but many strangers and even
+      he himself were convinced that he was a very clever statesman. But after
+      some time had elapsed and he had done nothing and had nothing to show, and
+      when in accordance with the law of the struggle for existence others, like
+      himself, who had learnt to write and understand documents, stately and
+      unprincipled officials, had displaced him, he turned out to be not only
+      far from clever but very limited and badly educated. Though self-assured,
+      his views hardly reaching the level of those in the leading articles of
+      the Conservative papers, it became apparent that there was nothing in him
+      to distinguish him from those other badly-educated and self-assured
+      officials who had pushed him out, and he himself saw it. But this did not
+      shake his conviction that he had to receive a great deal of money out of
+      the Treasury every year, and new decorations for his dress clothes. This
+      conviction was so firm that no one had the pluck to refuse these things to
+      him, and he received yearly, partly in form of a pension, partly as a
+      salary for being a member in a Government institution and chairman of all
+      sorts of committees and councils, several tens of thousands of roubles,
+      besides the right&mdash;highly prized by him&mdash;of sewing all sorts of
+      new cords to his shoulders and trousers, and ribbons to wear under and
+      enamel stars to fix on to his dress coat. In consequence of this Count
+      Ivan Michaelovitch had very high connections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Count Ivan Michaelovitch listened to Nekhludoff as he was wont to listen
+      to the reports of the permanent secretary of his department, and, having
+      heard him, said he would give him two notes, one to the Senator Wolff, of
+      the Appeal Department. &ldquo;All sorts of things are reported of him, but dans
+      tous les cas c&rsquo;est un homme tres comme ii faut,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He is indebted
+      to me, and will do all that is possible.&rdquo; The other note Count Ivan
+      Michaelovitch gave Nekhludoff was to an influential member of the Petition
+      Committee. The story of Theodosia Birukoff as told by Nekhludoff
+      interested him very much. When Nekhludoff said that he thought of writing
+      to the Empress, the Count replied that it certainly was a very touching
+      story, and might, if occasion presented itself, he told her, but he could
+      not promise. Let the petition be handed in in due form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should there be an opportunity, and if a petit comite were called on
+      Thursday, he thought he would tell her the story. As soon as Nekhludoff
+      had received these two notes, and a note to Mariette from his aunt, he at
+      once set off to these different places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First he went to Mariette&rsquo;s. He had known her as a half-grown girl, the
+      daughter of an aristocratic but not wealthy family, and had heard how she
+      had married a man who was making a career, whom Nekhludoff had heard badly
+      spoken of; and, as usual, he felt it hard to ask a favour of a man he did
+      not esteem. In these cases he always felt an inner dissension and
+      dissatisfaction, and wavered whether to ask the favour or not, and always
+      resolved to ask. Besides feeling himself in a false position among those
+      to whose set he no longer regarded himself as belonging, who yet regarded
+      him as belonging to them, he felt himself getting into the old accustomed
+      rut, and in spite of himself fell into the thoughtless and immoral tone
+      that reigned in that circle. He felt that from the first, with his aunt,
+      he involuntarily fell into a bantering tone while talking about serious
+      matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Petersburg in general affected him with its usual physically invigorating
+      and mentally dulling effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything so clean, so comfortably well-arranged and the people so
+      lenient in moral matters, that life seemed very easy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fine, clean, and polite isvostchik drove him past fine, clean, polite
+      policemen, along the fine, clean, watered streets, past fine, clean houses
+      to the house in which Mariette lived. At the front door stood a pair of
+      English horses, with English harness, and an English-looking coachman on
+      the box, with the lower part of his face shaved, proudly holding a whip.
+      The doorkeeper, dressed in a wonderfully clean livery, opened the door
+      into the hall, where in still cleaner livery with gold cords stood the
+      footman with his splendid whiskers well combed out, and the orderly on
+      duty in a brand-new uniform. &ldquo;The general does not receive, and the
+      generaless does not receive either. She is just going to drive out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff took out Katerina Ivanovna&rsquo;s letter, and going up to a table on
+      which lay a visitors&rsquo; book, began to write that he was sorry not to have
+      been able to see any one; when the footman went up the staircase the
+      doorkeeper went out and shouted to the coachman, and the orderly stood up
+      rigid with his arms at his sides following with his eyes a little, slight
+      lady, who was coming down the stairs with rapid steps not in keeping with
+      all the grandeur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mariette had a large hat on, with feathers, a black dress and cape, and
+      new black gloves. Her face was covered by a veil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw Nekhludoff she lifted the veil off a very pretty face with
+      bright eyes that looked inquiringly at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff,&rdquo; she said, with a soft, pleasant
+      voice. &ldquo;I should have known&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you even remember my name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think so. Why, I and my sisters have even been in love with
+      you,&rdquo; she said, in French. &ldquo;But, dear me, how you have altered. Oh, what a
+      pity I have to go out. But let us go up again,&rdquo; she said and stopped
+      hesitatingly. Then she looked at the clock. &ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t. I am going to
+      Kamenskaya&rsquo;s to attend a mass for the dead. She is terribly afflicted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is this Kamenskaya?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not heard? Her son was killed in a duel. He fought Posen. He was
+      the only son. Terrible I The mother is very much afflicted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I have heard of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I had better go, and you must come again, to-night or to-morrow,&rdquo; she
+      said, and went to the door with quick, light steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot come to-night,&rdquo; he said, going out after her; &ldquo;but I have a
+      request to make you,&rdquo; and he looked at the pair of bays that were drawing
+      up to the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a letter from aunt to you,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, handing her a narrow
+      envelope, with a large crest. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find all about it in there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Countess Katerina Ivanovna thinks I have some influence with my
+      husband in business matters. She is mistaken. I can do nothing and do not
+      like to interfere. But, of course, for you I am willing to be false to my
+      principle. What is this business about?&rdquo; she said, searching in vain for
+      her pocket with her little black gloved hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a girl imprisoned in the fortress, and she is ill and innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is her name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lydia Shoustova. It&rsquo;s in the note.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; I&rsquo;ll see what I can do,&rdquo; she said, and lightly jumped into her
+      little, softly upholstered, open carriage, its brightly-varnished
+      splash-guards glistening in the sunshine, and opened her parasol. The
+      footman got on the box and gave the coachman a sign. The carriage moved,
+      but at that moment she touched the coachman with her parasol and the
+      slim-legged beauties, the bay mares, stopped, bending their beautiful
+      necks and stepping from foot to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you must come, only, please, without interested motives,&rdquo; and she
+      looked at him with a smile, the force of which she well knew, and, as if
+      the performance over and she were drawing the curtain, she dropped the
+      veil over her face again. &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; and she again touched the coachman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff raised his hat, and the well-bred bays, slightly snorting, set
+      off, their shoes clattering on the pavement, and the carriage rolled
+      quickly and smoothly on its new rubber tyres, giving a jump only now and
+      then over some unevenness of the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0075" id="link2HCH0075">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. AN UP-TO-DATE SENATOR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff remembered the smiles that had passed between him and
+      Mariette, he shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have hardly time to turn round before you are again drawn into this
+      life,&rdquo; he thought, feeling that discord and those doubts which the
+      necessity to curry favour from people he did not esteem caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After considering where to go first, so as not to have to retrace his
+      steps, Nekhludoff set off for the Senate. There he was shown into the
+      office where he found a great many very polite and very clean officials in
+      the midst of a magnificent apartment. Maslova&rsquo;s petition was received and
+      handed on to that Wolf, to whom Nekhludoff had a letter from his uncle, to
+      be examined and reported on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be a meeting of the Senate this week,&rdquo; the official said to
+      Nekhludoff, &ldquo;but Maslova&rsquo;s case will hardly come before that meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might come before the meeting on Wednesday, by special request,&rdquo; one
+      of the officials remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the time Nekhludoff waited in the office, while some information
+      was being taken, he heard that the conversation in the Senate was all
+      about the duel, and he heard a detailed account of how a young man,
+      Kaminski, had been killed. It was here he first heard all the facts of the
+      case which was exciting the interest of all Petersburg. The story was
+      this: Some officers were eating oysters and, as usual, drinking very much,
+      when one of them said something ill-natured about the regiment to which
+      Kaminski belonged, and Kaminski called him a liar. The other hit Kaminski.
+      The next day they fought. Kaminski was wounded in the stomach and died two
+      hours later. The murderer and the seconds were arrested, but it was said
+      that though they were arrested and in the guardhouse they would be set
+      free in a fortnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the Senate Nekhludoff drove to see an influential member of the
+      petition Committee, Baron Vorobioff, who lived in a splendid house
+      belonging to the Crown. The doorkeeper told Nekhludoff in a severe tone
+      that the Baron could not be seen except on his reception days; that he was
+      with His Majesty the Emperor to-day, and the next day he would again have
+      to deliver a report. Nekhludoff left his uncle&rsquo;s letter with the
+      doorkeeper and went on to see the Senator Wolf. Wolf had just had his
+      lunch, and was as usual helping digestion by smoking a cigar and pacing up
+      and down the room, when Nekhludoff came in. Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was
+      certainly <i>un homme tres comme il faut</i>, and prized this quality very
+      highly, and from that elevation he looked down at everybody else. He could
+      not but esteem this quality of his very highly, because it was thanks to
+      it alone that he had made a brilliant career, the very career he desired,
+      i.e., by marriage he obtained a fortune which brought him in 18,000
+      roubles a year, and by his own exertions the post of a senator. He
+      considered himself not only <i>un homme tres comme il faut</i>, but also a
+      man of knightly honour. By honour he understood not accepting secret
+      bribes from private persons. But he did not consider it dishonest to beg
+      money for payment of fares and all sorts of travelling expenses from the
+      Crown, and to do anything the Government might require of him in return.
+      To ruin hundreds of innocent people, to cause them to be imprisoned, to be
+      exiled because of their love for their people and the religion of their
+      fathers, as he had done in one of the governments of Poland when he was
+      governor there. He did not consider it dishonourable, but even thought it
+      a noble, manly and patriotic action. Nor did he consider it dishonest to
+      rob his wife and sister-in-law, as he had done, but thought it a wise way
+      of arranging his family life. His family consisted of his commonplace
+      wife, his sister-in-law, whose fortune he had appropriated by selling her
+      estate and putting the money to his account, and his meek, frightened,
+      plain daughter, who lived a lonely, weary life, from which she had lately
+      begun to look for relaxation in evangelicism, attending meetings at
+      Aline&rsquo;s, and the Countess Katerina Ivanovna. Wolf&rsquo;s son, who had grown a
+      beard at the age of 15, and had at that age begun to drink and lead a
+      depraved life, which he continued to do till the age of 20, when he was
+      turned out by his father because he never finished his studies, moved in a
+      low set and made debts which committed the father. The father had once
+      paid a debt of 250 roubles for his son, then another of 600 roubles, but
+      warned the son that he did it for the last time, and that if the son did
+      not reform he would be turned out of the house and all further intercourse
+      between him and his family would he put a stop to. The son did not reform,
+      but made a debt of a thousand roubles, and took the liberty of telling his
+      father that life at home was a torment anyhow. Then Wolf declared to his
+      son that he might go where he pleased&mdash;that he was no son of his any
+      longer. Since then Wolf pretended he had no son, and no one at home dared
+      speak to him about his son, and Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was firmly
+      convinced that he had arranged his family life in the best way. Wolf
+      stopped pacing up and down his study, and greeted Nekhludoff with a
+      friendly though slightly ironical smile. This was his way of showing how
+      comme il faut he was, and how superior to the majority of men. He read the
+      note which Nekhludoff handed to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please take a seat, and excuse me if I continue to walk up and down, with
+      your permission,&rdquo; he said, putting his hands into his coat pockets, and
+      began again to walk with light, soft steps across his large, quietly and
+      stylishly furnished study. &ldquo;Very pleased to make your acquaintance and of
+      course very glad to do anything that Count Ivan Michaelovitch wishes,&rdquo; he
+      said, blowing the fragrant blue smoke out of his mouth and removing his
+      cigar carefully so as not to drop the ash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should only like to ask that the case might come on soon, so that if
+      the prisoner has to go to Siberia she might set off early,&rdquo; said
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, with one of the first steamers from Nijni. I know,&rdquo; said Wolf,
+      with his patronising smile, always knowing in advance whatever one wanted
+      to tell him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the prisoner&rsquo;s name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maslova.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolf went up to the table and looked at a paper that lay on a piece of
+      cardboard among other business papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes. Maslova. All right, I will ask the others. We shall hear the
+      case on Wednesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then may I telegraph to the advocate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The advocate! What&rsquo;s that for? But if you like, why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The causes for appeal may be insufficient,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, &ldquo;but I think
+      the case will show that the sentence was passed owing to a
+      misunderstanding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes; it may be so, but the Senate cannot decide the case on its
+      merits,&rdquo; said Wolf, looking seriously at the ash of his cigar. &ldquo;The Senate
+      only considers the exactness of the application of the laws and their
+      right interpretation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this seems to me to be an exceptional case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know! All cases are exceptional. We shall do our duty. That&rsquo;s
+      all.&rdquo; The ash was still holding on, but had began breaking, and was in
+      danger of falling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you often come to Petersburg?&rdquo; said Wolf, holding his cigar so that
+      the ash should not fall. But the ash began to shake, and Wolf carefully
+      carried it to the ashpan, into which it fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a terrible thing this is with regard to Kaminski,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A
+      splendid young man. The only son. Especially the mother&rsquo;s position,&rdquo; he
+      went on, repeating almost word for word what every one in Petersburg was
+      at that time saying about Kaminski. Wolf spoke a little about the Countess
+      Katerina Ivanovna and her enthusiasm for the new religious teaching, which
+      he neither approved nor disapproved of, but which was evidently needless
+      to him who was so comme il faut, and then rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it is convenient, come and dine on Wednesday, and I will give you a
+      decisive answer,&rdquo; said Wolf, extending his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was late, and Nekhludoff returned to his aunt&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0076" id="link2HCH0076">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. COUNTESS KATERINA IVANOVNA&rsquo;S DINNER PARTY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Countess Katerina Ivanovna&rsquo;s dinner hour was half-past seven, and the
+      dinner was served in a new manner that Nekhludoff had not yet seen
+      anywhere. After they had placed the dishes on the table the waiters left
+      the room and the diners helped themselves. The men would not let the
+      ladies take the trouble of moving, and, as befitted the stronger sex, they
+      manfully took on themselves the burden of putting the food on the ladies&rsquo; 
+      plates and of filling their glasses. When one course was finished, the
+      Countess pressed the button of an electric bell fitted to the table and
+      the waiters stepped in noiselessly and quickly carried away the dishes,
+      changed the plates, and brought in the next course. The dinner was very
+      refined, the wines very costly. A French chef was working in the large,
+      light kitchens, with two white-clad assistants. There were six persons at
+      dinner, the Count and Countess, their son (a surly officer in the Guards
+      who sat with his elbows on the table), Nekhludoff, a French lady reader,
+      and the Count&rsquo;s chief steward, who had come up from the country. Here,
+      too, the conversation was about the duel, and opinions were given as to
+      how the Emperor regarded the case. It was known that the Emperor was very
+      much grieved for the mother&rsquo;s sake, and all were grieved for her, and as
+      it was also known that the Emperor did not mean to be very severe to the
+      murderer, who defended the honour of his uniform, all were also lenient to
+      the officer who had defended the honour of his uniform. Only the Countess
+      Katerina Ivanovna, with her free thoughtlessness, expressed her
+      disapproval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They get drunk, and kill unobjectionable young men. I should not forgive
+      them on any account,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, that&rsquo;s a thing I cannot understand,&rdquo; said the Count.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that you never can understand what I say,&rdquo; the Countess began, and
+      turning to Nekhludoff, she added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody understands except my husband. I say I am sorry for the mother,
+      and I do not wish him to be contented, having killed a man.&rdquo; Then her son,
+      who had been silent up to then, took the murderer&rsquo;s part, and rudely
+      attacked his mother, arguing that an officer could not behave in any other
+      way, because his fellow-officers would condemn him and turn him out of the
+      regiment. Nekhludoff listened to the conversation without joining in.
+      Having been an officer himself, he understood, though he did not agree
+      with, young Tcharsky&rsquo;s arguments, and at the same time he could not help
+      contrasting the fate of the officer with that of a beautiful young convict
+      whom he had seen in the prison, and who was condemned to the mines for
+      having killed another in a fight. Both had turned murderers through
+      drunkenness. The peasant had killed a man in a moment of irritation, and
+      he was parted from his wife and family, had chains on his legs, and his
+      head shaved, and was going to hard labour in Siberia, while the officer
+      was sitting in a fine room in the guardhouse, eating a good dinner,
+      drinking good wine, and reading books, and would be set free in a day or
+      two to live as he had done before, having only become more interesting by
+      the affair. Nekhludoff said what he had been thinking, and at first his
+      aunt, Katerina Ivanovna, seemed to agree with him, but at last she became
+      silent as the rest had done, and Nekhludoff felt that he had committed
+      something akin to an impropriety. In the evening, soon after dinner, the
+      large hall, with high-backed carved chairs arranged in rows as for a
+      meeting, and an armchair next to a little table, with a bottle of water
+      for the speaker, began to fill with people come to hear the foreigner,
+      Kiesewetter, preach. Elegant equipages stopped at the front entrance. In
+      the hall sat richly-dressed ladies in silks and velvets and lace, with
+      false hair and false busts and drawn-in waists, and among them men in
+      uniform and evening dress, and about five persons of the common class,
+      i.e., two men-servants, a shop-keeper, a footman, and a coachman.
+      Kiesewetter, a thick-set, grisly man, spoke English, and a thin young
+      girl, with a pince-nez, translated it into Russian promptly and well. He
+      was saying that our sins were so great, the punishment for them so great
+      and so unavoidable, that it was impossible to live anticipating such
+      punishment. &ldquo;Beloved brothers and sisters, let us for a moment consider
+      what we are doing, how we are living, how we have offended against the
+      all-loving Lord, and how we make Christ suffer, and we cannot but
+      understand that there is no forgiveness possible for us, no escape
+      possible, that we are all doomed to perish. A terrible fate awaits us&mdash;-everlasting
+      torment,&rdquo; he said, with tears in his trembling voice. &ldquo;Oh, how can we be
+      saved, brothers? How can we be saved from this terrible, unquenchable
+      fire? The house is in flames; there is no escape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a while, and real tears flowed down his cheeks. It was
+      for about eight years that each time when he got to this part of his
+      speech, which he himself liked so well, he felt a choking in his throat
+      and an irritation in his nose, and the tears came in his eyes, and these
+      tears touched him still more. Sobs were heard in the room. The Countess
+      Katerina Ivanovna sat with her elbows on an inlaid table, leaning her head
+      on her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. The coachman looked with
+      fear and surprise at the foreigner, feeling as if he was about to run him
+      down with the pole of his carriage and the foreigner would not move out of
+      his way. All sat in positions similar to that Katerina Ivanovna had
+      assumed. Wolf&rsquo;s daughter, a thin, fashionably-dressed girl, very like her
+      father, knelt with her face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orator suddenly uncovered his face, and smiled a very real-looking
+      smile, such as actors express joy with, and began again with a sweet,
+      gentle voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet there is a way to be saved. Here it is&mdash;a joyful, easy way. The
+      salvation is the blood shed for us by the only son of God, who gave
+      himself up to torments for our sake. His sufferings, His blood, will save
+      us. Brothers and sisters,&rdquo; he said, again with tears in his voice, &ldquo;let us
+      praise the Lord, who has given His only begotten son for the redemption of
+      mankind. His holy blood . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff felt so deeply disgusted that he rose silently, and frowning
+      and keeping back a groan of shame, he left on tiptoe, and went to his
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0077" id="link2HCH0077">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. OFFICIALDOM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Hardly had Nekhludoff finished dressing the next morning, just as he was
+      about to go down, the footman brought him a card from the Moscow advocate.
+      The advocate had come to St. Petersburg on business of his own, and was
+      going to be present when Maslova&rsquo;s case was examined in the Senate, if
+      that would be soon. The telegram sent by Nekhludoff crossed him on the
+      way. Having found out from Nekhludoff when the case was going to be heard,
+      and which senators were to be present, he smiled. &ldquo;Exactly, all the three
+      types of senators,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Wolf is a Petersburg official;
+      Skovorodnikoff is a theoretical, and Bay a practical lawyer, and therefore
+      the most alive of them all,&rdquo; said the advocate. &ldquo;There is most hope of
+      him. Well, and how about the Petition Committee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m going to Baron Vorobioff to-day. I could not get an audience with
+      him yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know why he is <i>Baron</i> Vorobioff?&rdquo; said the advocate,
+      noticing the slightly ironical stress that Nekhludoff put on this foreign
+      title, followed by so very Russian a surname.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was because the Emperor Paul rewarded the grandfather&mdash;I think
+      he was one of the Court footmen&mdash;by giving him this title. He managed
+      to please him in some way, so he made him a baron. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s my wish, so don&rsquo;t
+      gainsay me!&rsquo; And so there&rsquo;s a <i>Baron</i> Vorobioff, and very proud of
+      the title. He is a dreadful old humbug.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going to see him,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s good; we can go together. I shall give you a lift.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they were going to start, a footman met Nekhludoff in the ante-room,
+      and handed him a note from Mariette:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pour vous faire plaisir, f&rsquo;ai agi tout a fait contre mes principes et
+      j&rsquo;ai intercede aupres de mon mari pour votre protegee. Il se trouve que
+      cette personne pout etre relaxee immediatement. Mon mari a ecrit au
+      commandant. Venez donc disinterestedly. Je vous attends.</i>
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                          <i>M.</i>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just fancy!&rdquo; said Nekhludoff to the advocate. &ldquo;Is this not dreadful? A
+      woman whom they are keeping in solitary confinement for seven months turns
+      out to be quite innocent, and only a word was needed to get her released.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s always so. Well, anyhow, you have succeeded in getting what you
+      wanted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but this success grieves me. Just think what must be going on there.
+      Why have they been keeping her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s best not to look too deeply into it. Well, then, I shall give
+      you a lift, if I may,&rdquo; said the advocate, as they left the house, and a
+      fine carriage that the advocate had hired drove up to the door. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      Baron Vorobioff you are going to see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The advocate gave the driver his directions, and the two good horses
+      quickly brought Nekhludoff to the house in which the Baron lived. The
+      Baron was at home. A young official in uniform, with a long, thin neck, a
+      much protruding Adam&rsquo;s apple, and an extremely light walk, and two ladies
+      were in the first room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name, please?&rdquo; the young man with the Adam&rsquo;s apple asked, stepping
+      with extreme lightness and grace across from the ladies to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff gave his name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Baron was just mentioning you,&rdquo; said the young man, the Baron&rsquo;s
+      adjutant, and went out through an inner door. He returned, leading a
+      weeping lady dressed in mourning. With her bony fingers the lady was
+      trying to pull her tangled veil over her face in order to hide her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, please,&rdquo; said the young man to Nekhludoff, lightly stepping up
+      to the door of the study and holding it open. When Nekhludoff came in, he
+      saw before him a thick-set man of medium height, with short hair, in a
+      frock coat, who was sitting in an armchair opposite a large writing-table,
+      and looking gaily in front of himself. The kindly, rosy red face, striking
+      by its contrast with the white hair, moustaches, and beard, turned towards
+      Nekhludoff with a friendly smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very glad to see you. Your mother and I were old acquaintances and
+      friends. I have seen you as a boy, and later on as an officer. Sit down
+      and tell me what I can do for you. Yes, yes,&rdquo; he said, shaking his cropped
+      white head, while Nekhludoff was telling him Theodosia&rsquo;s story. &ldquo;Go on, go
+      on. I quite understand. It is certainly very touching. And have you handed
+      in the petition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have got the petition ready,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, getting it out of his
+      pocket; &ldquo;but I thought of speaking to you first in hopes that the case
+      would then get special attention paid to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have done very well. I shall certainly report it myself,&rdquo; said the
+      Baron, unsuccessfully trying to put an expression of pity on his merry
+      face. &ldquo;Very touching! It is clear she was but a child; the husband treated
+      her roughly, this repelled her, but as time went on they fell in love with
+      each other. Yes I will report the case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Count Ivan Michaelovitch was also going to speak about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had hardly got these words out when the Baron&rsquo;s face changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better hand in the petition into the office, after all, and I
+      shall do what I can,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the young official again entered the room, evidently
+      showing off his elegant manner of walking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That lady is asking if she may say a few words more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, ask her in. Ah, mon cher, how many tears we have to see shed! If
+      only we could dry them all. One does all that lies within one&rsquo;s power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forgot to ask you that he should not be allowed to give up the
+      daughter, because he is ready . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have already told you that I should do all I can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Baron, for the love of God! You will save the mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seized his hand, and began kissing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything shall be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the lady went out Nekhludoff also began to take leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall do what we can. I shall speak about it at the Ministry of
+      Justice, and when we get their answer we shall do what we can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff left the study, and went into the office again. Just as in the
+      Senate office, he saw, in a splendid apartment, a number of very elegant
+      officials, clean, polite, severely correct and distinguished in dress and
+      in speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many there are of them; how very many and how well fed they all look!
+      And what clean shirts and hands they all have, and how well all their
+      boots are polished! Who does it for them? How comfortable they all are, as
+      compared not only with the prisoners, but even with the peasants!&rdquo; These
+      thoughts again involuntarily came to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0078" id="link2HCH0078">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. AN OLD GENERAL OF REPUTE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The man on whom depended the easing of the fate of the Petersburg
+      prisoners was an old General of repute&mdash;a baron of German descent,
+      who, as it was said of him, had outlived his wits. He had received a
+      profusion of orders, but only wore one of them, the Order of the White
+      Cross. He had received this order, which he greatly valued, while serving
+      in the Caucasus, because a number of Russian peasants, with their hair
+      cropped, and dressed in uniform and armed with guns and bayonets, had
+      killed at his command more than a thousand men who were defending their
+      liberty, their homes, and their families. Later on he served in Poland,
+      and there also made Russian peasants commit many different crimes, and got
+      more orders and decorations for his uniform. Then he served somewhere
+      else, and now that he was a weak, old man he had this position, which
+      insured him a good house, an income and respect. He strictly observed all
+      the regulations which were prescribed &ldquo;from above,&rdquo; and was very zealous
+      in the fulfilment of these regulations, to which he ascribed a special
+      importance, considering that everything else in the world might be changed
+      except the regulations prescribed &ldquo;from above.&rdquo; His duty was to keep
+      political prisoners, men and women, in solitary confinement in such a way
+      that half of them perished in 10 years&rsquo; time, some going out of their
+      minds, some dying of consumption, some committing suicide by starving
+      themselves to death, cutting their veins with bits of glass, hanging, or
+      burning themselves to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old General was not ignorant of this; it all happened within his
+      knowledge; but these cases no more touched his conscience than accidents
+      brought on by thunderstorms, floods, etc. These cases occurred as a
+      consequence of the fulfilment of regulations prescribed &ldquo;from above&rdquo; by
+      His Imperial Majesty. These regulations had to be carried out without
+      fail, and therefore it was absolutely useless to think of the consequences
+      of their fulfilment. The old General did not even allow himself to think
+      of such things, counting it his patriotic duty as a soldier not to think
+      of them for fear of getting weak in the carrying out of these, according
+      to his opinion, very important obligations. Once a week the old General
+      made the round of the cells, one of the duties of his position, and asked
+      the prisoners if they had any requests to make. The prisoners had all
+      sorts of requests. He listened to them quietly, in impenetrable silence,
+      and never fulfilled any of their requests, because they were all in
+      disaccord with the regulations. Just as Nekhludoff drove up to the old
+      General&rsquo;s house, the high notes of the bells on the belfry clock chimed
+      &ldquo;Great is the Lord,&rdquo; and then struck two. The sound of these chimes
+      brought back to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s mind what he had read in the notes of the
+      Decembrists [the Decembrists were a group who attempted, but failed, to
+      put an end to absolutism in Russia at the time of the accession of
+      Nicholas the First] about the way this sweet music repeated every hour
+      re-echoes in the hearts of those imprisoned for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the old General was sitting in his darkened drawing-room at an
+      inlaid table, turning a saucer on a piece of paper with the aid of a young
+      artist, the brother of one of his subordinates. The thin, weak, moist
+      fingers of the artist were pressed against the wrinkled and stiff-jointed
+      fingers of the old General, and the hands joined in this manner were
+      moving together with the saucer over a paper that had all the letters of
+      the alphabet written on it. The saucer was answering the questions put by
+      the General as to how souls will recognise each other after death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff sent in his card by an orderly acting as footman, the soul
+      of Joan of Arc was speaking by the aid of the saucer. The soul of Joan of
+      Arc had already spelt letter by letter the words: &ldquo;They well knew each
+      other,&rdquo; and these words had been written down. When the orderly came in
+      the saucer had stopped first on b, then on y, and began jerking hither and
+      thither. This jerking was caused by the General&rsquo;s opinion that the next
+      letter should be b, i.e., Joan of Arc ought to say that the souls will
+      know each other by being cleansed of all that is earthly, or something of
+      the kind, clashing with the opinion of the artist, who thought the next
+      letter should be l, i.e., that the souls should know each other by light
+      emanating from their astral bodies. The General, with his bushy grey
+      eyebrows gravely contracted, sat gazing at the hands on the saucer, and,
+      imagining that it was moving of its own accord, kept pulling the saucer
+      towards b. The pale-faced young artist, with his thin hair combed back
+      behind his cars, was looking with his lifeless blue eyes into a dark
+      corner of the drawing-room, nervously moving his lips and pulling the
+      saucer towards l.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General made a wry face at the interruption, but after a moment&rsquo;s
+      pause he took the card, put on his pince-nez, and, uttering a groan, rose,
+      in spite of the pain in his back, to his full height, rubbing his numb
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him into the study.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your excellency&rsquo;s permission I will finish it alone,&rdquo; said the
+      artist, rising. &ldquo;I feel the presence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, finish alone,&rdquo; the General said, severely and decidedly, and
+      stepped quickly, with big, firm and measured strides, into his study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very pleased to see you,&rdquo; said the General to Nekhludoff, uttering the
+      friendly words in a gruff tone, and pointing to an armchair by the side of
+      the writing-table. &ldquo;Have you been in Petersburg long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff replied that he had only lately arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the Princess, your mother, well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me; I am very sorry. My son told me he had met you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General&rsquo;s son was making the same kind of career for himself that the
+      father had done, and, having passed the Military Academy, was now serving
+      in the Inquiry Office, and was very proud of his duties there. His
+      occupation was the management of Government spies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I served with your father. We were friends&mdash;comrades. And you;
+      are you also in the Service?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General bent his head disapprovingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a request to make, General.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very pleased. In what way can I be of service to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If my request is out of place pray pardon me. But I am obliged to make
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a certain Gourkevitch imprisoned in the fortress; his mother
+      asks for an interview with him, or at least to be allowed to send him some
+      books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General expressed neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction at
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s request, but bending his head on one side he closed his eyes
+      as if considering. In reality he was not considering anything, and was not
+      even interested in Nekhludoff&rsquo;s questions, well knowing that he would
+      answer them according to the law. He was simply resting mentally and not
+      thinking at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;this does not depend on me. There is a
+      regulation, confirmed by His Majesty, concerning interviews; and as to
+      books, we have a library, and they may have what is permitted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but he wants scientific books; he wishes to study.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you believe it,&rdquo; growled the General. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not study he wants; it
+      is just only restlessness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is to be done? They must occupy their time somehow in their hard
+      condition,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are always complaining,&rdquo; said the General. &ldquo;We know them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke of them in a general way, as if they were all a specially bad
+      race of men. &ldquo;They have conveniences here which can be found in few places
+      of confinement,&rdquo; said the General, and he began to enumerate the comforts
+      the prisoners enjoyed, as if the aim of the institution was to give the
+      people imprisoned there a comfortable home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true it used to be rather rough, but now they are very well kept
+      here,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;They have three courses for dinner&mdash;and one of
+      them meat&mdash;cutlets, or rissoles; and on Sundays they get a fourth&mdash;a
+      sweet dish. God grant every Russian may eat as well as they do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like all old people, the General, having once got on to a familiar topic,
+      enumerated the various proofs he had often given before of the prisoners
+      being exacting and ungrateful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They get books on spiritual subjects and old journals. We have a library.
+      Only they rarely read. At first they seem interested, later on the new
+      books remain uncut, and the old ones with their leaves unturned. We tried
+      them,&rdquo; said the old General, with the dim likeness of a smile. &ldquo;We put
+      bits of paper in on purpose, which remained just as they had been placed.
+      Writing is also not forbidden,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;A slate is provided, and a
+      slate pencil, so that they can write as a pastime. They can wipe the slate
+      and write again. But they don&rsquo;t write, either. Oh, they very soon get
+      quite tranquil. At first they seem restless, but later on they even grow
+      fat and become very quiet.&rdquo; Thus spoke the General, never suspecting the
+      terrible meaning of his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff listened to the hoarse old voice, looked at the stiff limbs,
+      the swollen eyelids under the grey brows, at the old, clean-shaved, flabby
+      jaw, supported by the collar of the military uniform, at the white cross
+      that this man was so proud of, chiefly because he had gained it by
+      exceptionally cruel and extensive slaughter, and knew that it was useless
+      to reply to the old man or to explain the meaning of his own words to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made another effort, and asked about the prisoner Shoustova, for whose
+      release, as he had been informed that morning, orders were given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shoustova&mdash;Shoustova? I cannot remember all their names, there are
+      so many of them,&rdquo; he said, as if reproaching them because there were so
+      many. He rang, and ordered the secretary to be called. While waiting for
+      the latter, he began persuading Nekhludoff to serve, saying that &ldquo;honest
+      noblemen,&rdquo; counting himself among the number, &ldquo;were particularly needed by
+      the Tsar and&mdash;the country,&rdquo; he added, evidently only to round off his
+      sentence. &ldquo;I am old, yet I am serving still, as well as my strength
+      allows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The secretary, a dry, emaciated man, with restless, intelligent eyes, came
+      in and reported that Shoustova was imprisoned in some queer, fortified
+      place, and that he had received no orders concerning her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we get the order we shall let her out the same day. We do not keep
+      them; we do not value their visits much,&rdquo; said the General, with another
+      attempt at a playful smile, which only distorted his old face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff rose, trying to keep from expressing the mixed feelings of
+      repugnance and pity which he felt towards this terrible old man. The old
+      man on his part considered that he should not be too severe on the
+      thoughtless and evidently misguided son of his old comrade, and should not
+      leave him without advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, my dear fellow; do not take it amiss. It is my affection that
+      makes me say it. Do not keep company with such people as we have at our
+      place here. There are no innocent ones among them. All these people are
+      most immoral. We know them,&rdquo; he said, in a tone that admitted no
+      possibility of doubt. And he did not doubt, not because the thing was so,
+      but because if it was not so, he would have to admit himself to be not a
+      noble hero living out the last days of a good life, but a scoundrel, who
+      sold, and still continued in his old age to sell, his conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Best of all, go and serve,&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;the Tsar needs honest men&mdash;and
+      the country,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;Well, supposing I and the others refused to
+      serve, as you are doing? Who would be left? Here we are, finding fault
+      with the order of things, and yet not wishing to help the Government.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a deep sigh Nekhludoff made a low bow, shook the large, bony hand
+      condescendingly stretched out to him and left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General shook his head reprovingly, and rubbing his back, he again
+      went into the drawing-room where the artist was waiting for him. He had
+      already written down the answer given by the soul of Joan of Arc. The
+      General put on his pince-nez and read, &ldquo;Will know one another by light
+      emanating from their astral bodies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said the General, with approval, and closed his eyes. &ldquo;But how is
+      one to know if the light of all is alike?&rdquo; he asked, and again crossed
+      fingers with the artist on the saucer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The isvostchik drove Nekhludoff out of the gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is dull here, sir, he said, turning to Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I almost wished to
+      drive off without waiting for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff agreed. &ldquo;Yes, it is dull,&rdquo; and he took a deep breath, and
+      looked up with a sense of relief at the grey clouds that were floating in
+      the sky, and at the glistening ripples made by the boats and steamers on
+      the Neva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0079" id="link2HCH0079">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. MASLOVA&rsquo;S APPEAL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day Maslova&rsquo;s case was to be examined at the Senate, and
+      Nekhludoff and the advocate met at the majestic portal of the building,
+      where several carriages were waiting. Ascending the magnificent and
+      imposing staircase to the first floor, the advocate, who knew all the ins
+      and outs of the place, turned to the left and entered through a door which
+      had the date of the introduction of the Code of Laws above it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After taking off his overcoat in the first narrow room, he found out from
+      the attendant that the Senators had all arrived, and that the last had
+      just come in. Fanarin, in his swallow-tail coat, a white tie above the
+      white shirt-front, and a self-confident smile on his lips, passed into the
+      next room. In this room there were to the right a large cupboard and a
+      table, and to the left a winding staircase, which an elegant official in
+      uniform was descending with a portfolio under his arm. In this room an old
+      man with long, white hair and a patriarchal appearance attracted every
+      one&rsquo;s attention. He wore a short coat and grey trousers. Two attendants
+      stood respectfully beside him. The old man with white hair entered the
+      cupboard and shut himself in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fanarin noticed a fellow-advocate dressed in the same way as himself, with
+      a white tie and dress coat, and at once entered into an animated
+      conversation with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was meanwhile examining the people in the room. The public
+      consisted of about 15 persons, of whom two were ladies&mdash;a young one
+      with a pince-nez, and an old, grey-haired one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A case of libel was to be heard that day, and therefore the public were
+      more numerous than usual&mdash;chiefly persons belonging to the
+      journalistic world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The usher, a red-cheeked, handsome man in a fine uniform, came up to
+      Fanarin and asked him what his business was. When he heard that it was the
+      case of Maslova, he noted something down and walked away. Then the
+      cupboard door opened and the old man with the patriarchal appearance
+      stepped out, no longer in a short coat but in a gold-trimmed attire, which
+      made him look like a bird, and with metal plates on his breast. This funny
+      costume seemed to make the old man himself feel uncomfortable, and,
+      walking faster than his wont, he hurried out of the door opposite the
+      entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is Bay, a most estimable man,&rdquo; Fanarin said to Nekhludoff, and then
+      having introduced him to his colleague, he explained the case that was
+      about to be heard, which he considered very interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hearing of the case soon commenced, and Nekhludoff, with the public,
+      entered the left side of the Senate Chamber. They all, including Fanarin,
+      took their places behind a grating. Only the Petersburg advocate went up
+      to a desk in front of the grating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Senate Chamber was not so big as the Criminal Court; and was more
+      simply furnished, only the table in front of the senators was covered with
+      crimson, gold-trimmed velvet, instead of green cloth; but the attributes
+      of all places of judgment, i.e., the mirror of justice, the icon, the
+      emblem of hypocrisy, and the Emperor&rsquo;s portrait, the emblem of servility,
+      were there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The usher announced, in the same solemn manner: &ldquo;The Court is coming.&rdquo;
+       Every one rose in the same way, and the senators entered in their uniforms
+      and sat down on highbacked chairs and leant on the table, trying to appear
+      natural, just in the same way as the judges in the Court of Law. There
+      were four senators present&mdash;Nikitin, who took the chair, a
+      clean-shaved man with a narrow face and steely eyes; Wolf, with
+      significantly compressed lips, and little white hands, with which he kept
+      turning over the pages of the business papers; Skovorodnikoff, a heavy,
+      fat, pockmarked man&mdash;the learned lawyer; and Bay, the
+      patriarchal-looking man who had arrived last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the advocates entered the chief secretary and public prosecutor, a
+      lean, clean-shaven young man of medium height, a very dark complexion, and
+      sad, black eyes. Nekhludoff knew him at once, in spite of his curious
+      uniform and the fact that he had not seen him for six years. He had been
+      one of his best friends in Nekhludoff&rsquo;s student days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The public prosecutor Selenin?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked, turning to the
+      advocate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know him well. He is a fine fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a good public prosecutor; business-like. Now he is the man you should
+      have interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will act according to his conscience in any case,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff,
+      recalling the intimate relations and friendship between himself and
+      Selenin, and the attractive qualities of the latter&mdash;purity, honesty,
+      and good breeding in its best sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there is no time now,&rdquo; whispered Fanarin, who was listening to the
+      report of the case that had commenced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Court of Justice was accused of having left a decision of the Court of
+      Law unaltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff listened and tried to make out the meaning of what was going
+      on; but, just as in the Criminal Court, his chief difficulty was that not
+      the evidently chief point, but some side issues, were being discussed. The
+      case was that of a newspaper which had published the account of a swindle
+      arranged by a director of a limited liability company. It seemed that the
+      only important question was whether the director of the company really
+      abused his trust, and how to stop him from doing it. But the questions
+      under consideration were whether the editor had a right to publish this
+      article of his contributor, and what he had been guilty of in publishing
+      it: slander or libel, and in what way slander included libel, or libel
+      included slander, and something rather incomprehensible to ordinary people
+      about all sorts of statutes and resolutions passed by some General
+      Department.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only thing clear to Nekhludoff was that, in spite of what Wolf had so
+      strenuously insisted on, the day before, i.e., that the Senate could not
+      try a case on its merits, in this case he was evidently strongly in favour
+      of repealing the decision of the Court of Justice, and that Selenin, in
+      spite of his characteristic reticence, stated the opposite opinion with
+      quite unexpected warmth. The warmth, which surprised Nekhludoff, evinced
+      by the usually self-controlled Selenin, was due to his knowledge of the
+      director&rsquo;s shabbiness in money matters, and the fact, which had
+      accidentally come to his cars, that Wolf had been to a swell dinner party
+      at the swindler&rsquo;s house only a few days before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that Wolf spoke on the case, guardedly enough, but with evident bias,
+      Selenin became excited, and expressed his opinion with too much nervous
+      irritation for an ordinary business transaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clear that Selenin&rsquo;s speech had offended Wolf. He grew red, moved
+      in his chair, made silent gestures of surprise, and at last rose, with a
+      very dignified and injured look, together with the other senators, and
+      went out into the debating-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What particular case have you come about?&rdquo; the usher asked again,
+      addressing Fanarin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already told you: Maslova&rsquo;s case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, quite so. It is to be heard to-day, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what?&rdquo; the advocate asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, this case was to be examined without taking sides, so that
+      the senators will hardly come out again after passing the resolution. But
+      I will inform them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll inform them; I&rsquo;ll inform them.&rdquo; And the usher again put something
+      down on his paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Senators really meant to pronounce their decision concerning the libel
+      case, and then to finish the other business, Maslova&rsquo;s case among it, over
+      their tea and cigarettes, without leaving the debating-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0080" id="link2HCH0080">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. THE APPEAL DISMISSED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the Senators were seated round the table in the debating-room,
+      Wolf began to bring forward with great animation all the motives in favour
+      of a repeal. The chairman, an ill-natured man at best, was in a
+      particularly bad humour that day. His thoughts were concentrated on the
+      words he had written down in his memoranda on the occasion when not he but
+      Viglanoff was appointed to the important post he had long coveted. It was
+      the chairman, Nikitin&rsquo;s, honest conviction that his opinions of the
+      officials of the two upper classes with which he was in connection would
+      furnish valuable material for the historians. He had written a chapter the
+      day before in which the officials of the upper classes got it hot for
+      preventing him, as he expressed it, from averting the ruin towards which
+      the present rulers of Russia were driving it, which simply meant that they
+      had prevented his getting a better salary. And now he was considering what
+      a new light to posterity this chapter would shed on events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, certainly,&rdquo; he said, in reply to the words addressed to him by Wolf,
+      without listening to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bay was listening to Wolf with a sad face and drawing a garland on the
+      paper that lay before him. Bay was a Liberal of the very first water. He
+      held sacred the Liberal traditions of the sixth decade of this century,
+      and if he ever overstepped the limits of strict neutrality it was always
+      in the direction of Liberalism. So in this case; beside the fact that the
+      swindling director, who was prosecuting for libel, was a bad lot, the
+      prosecution of a journalist for libel in itself tending, as it did, to
+      restrict the freedom of the press, inclined Bay to reject the appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Wolf concluded his arguments Bay stopped drawing his garland and
+      began in a sad and gentle voice (he was sad because he was obliged to
+      demonstrate such truisms) concisely, simply and convincingly to show how
+      unfounded the accusation was, and then, bending his white head, he
+      continued drawing his garland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Skovorodnikoff, who sat opposite Wolf, and, with his fat fingers, kept
+      shoving his beard and moustaches into his mouth, stopped chewing his beard
+      as soon as Bay was silent, and said with a loud, grating voice, that,
+      notwithstanding the fact of the director being a terrible scoundrel, he
+      would have been for the repeal of the sentence if there were any legal
+      reasons for it; but, as there were none, he was of Bay&rsquo;s opinion. He was
+      glad to put this spoke in Wolf&rsquo;s wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chairman agreed with Skovorodnikoff, and the appeal was rejected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolf was dissatisfied, especially because it was like being caught acting
+      with dishonest partiality; so he pretended to be indifferent, and,
+      unfolding the document which contained Maslova&rsquo;s case, he became engrossed
+      in it. Meanwhile the Senators rang and ordered tea, and began talking
+      about the event that, together with the duel, was occupying the
+      Petersburgers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the case of the chief of a Government department, who was accused
+      of the crime provided for in Statute 995.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What nastiness,&rdquo; said Bay, with disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why; where is the harm of it? I can show you a Russian book containing
+      the project of a German writer, who openly proposes that it should not be
+      considered a crime,&rdquo; said Skovorodnikoff, drawing in greedily the fumes of
+      the crumpled cigarette, which he held between his fingers close to the
+      palm, and he laughed boisterously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; said Bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall show it you,&rdquo; said Skovorodnikoff, giving the full title of the
+      book, and even its date and the name of its editor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear he has been appointed governor to some town in Siberia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s fine. The archdeacon will meet him with a crucifix. They ought to
+      appoint an archdeacon of the same sort,&rdquo; said Skovorodnikoff. &ldquo;I could
+      recommend them one,&rdquo; and he threw the end of his cigarette into his
+      saucer, and again shoved as much of his beard and moustaches as he could
+      into his mouth and began chewing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The usher came in and reported the advocate&rsquo;s and Nekhludoff&rsquo;s desire to
+      be present at the examination of Maslova&rsquo;s case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This case,&rdquo; Wolf said, &ldquo;is quite romantic,&rdquo; and he told them what he knew
+      about Nekhludoff&rsquo;s relations with Maslova. When they had spoken a little
+      about it and finished their tea and cigarettes, the Senators returned into
+      the Senate Chamber and proclaimed their decision in the libel case, and
+      began to hear Maslova&rsquo;s case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolf, in his thin voice, reported Maslova&rsquo;s appeal very fully, but again
+      not without some bias and an evident wish for the repeal of the sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you anything to add?&rdquo; the chairman said, turning to Fanarin. Fanarin
+      rose, and standing with his broad white chest expanded, proved point by
+      point, with wonderful exactness and persuasiveness, how the Court had in
+      six points strayed from the exact meaning of the law; and besides this he
+      touched, though briefly, on the merits of the case, and on the crying
+      injustice of the sentence. The tone of his speech was one of apology to
+      the Senators, who, with their penetration and judicial wisdom, could not
+      help seeing and understanding it all better than he could. He was obliged
+      to speak only because the duty he had undertaken forced him to do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Fanarin&rsquo;s speech one might have thought that there could not remain
+      the least doubt that the Senate ought to repeal the decision of the Court.
+      When he had finished his speech, Fanarin looked round with a smile of
+      triumph, seeing which Nekhludoff felt certain that the case was won. But
+      when he looked at the Senators he saw that Fanarin smiled and triumphed
+      all alone. The Senators and the Public Prosecutor did not smile nor
+      triumph, but looked like people wearied, and who were thinking &ldquo;We have
+      often heard the like of you; it is all in vain,&rdquo; and were only too glad
+      when he stopped and ceased uselessly detaining them there. Immediately
+      after the end of the advocate&rsquo;s speech the chairman turned to the Public
+      Prosecutor. Selenin briefly and clearly expressed himself in favour of
+      leaving the decision of the Court unaltered, as he considered all the
+      reasons for appealing inadequate. After this the Senators went out into
+      the debating-room. They were divided in their opinions. Wolf was in favour
+      of altering the decision. Bay, when he had understood the case, took up
+      the same side with fervour, vividly presenting the scene at the court to
+      his companions as he clearly saw it himself. Nikitin, who always was on
+      the side of severity and formality, took up the other side. All depended
+      on Skovorodnikoff&rsquo;s vote, and he voted for rejecting the appeal, because
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s determination to marry the woman on moral grounds was
+      extremely repugnant to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Skovorodnikoff was a materialist, a Darwinian, and counted every
+      manifestation of abstract morality, or, worse still, religion, not only as
+      a despicable folly, but as a personal affront to himself. All this bother
+      about a prostitute, and the presence of a celebrated advocate and
+      Nekhludoff in the Senate were in the highest degree repugnant to him. So
+      he shoved his beard into his mouth and made faces, and very skilfully
+      pretended to know nothing of this case, excepting that the reasons for an
+      appeal were insufficient, and that he, therefore, agreed with the chairman
+      to leave the decision of the Court unaltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the sentence remained unrepealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0081" id="link2HCH0081">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. AN OLD FRIEND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrible,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, as he went out into the waiting-room with the
+      advocate, who was arranging the papers in his portfolio. &ldquo;In a matter
+      which is perfectly clear they attach all the importance to the form and
+      reject the appeal. Terrible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The case was spoiled in the Criminal Court,&rdquo; said the advocate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Selenin, too, was in favour of the rejection. Terrible! terrible!&rdquo;
+       Nekhludoff repeated. &ldquo;What is to be done now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will appeal to His Majesty, and you can hand in the petition yourself
+      while you are here. I will write it for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment little Wolf, with his stars and uniform, came out into the
+      waiting-room and approached Nekhludoff. &ldquo;It could not be helped, dear
+      Prince. The reasons for an appeal were not sufficient,&rdquo; he said, shrugging
+      his narrow shoulders and closing his eyes, and then he went his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Wolf, Selenin came out too, having heard from the Senators that his
+      old friend Nekhludoff was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never expected to see you here,&rdquo; he said, coming up to
+      Nekhludoff, and smiling only with his lips while his eyes remained sad. &ldquo;I
+      did not know you were in Petersburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I did not know you were Public Prosecutor-in-Chief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it you are in the Senate?&rdquo; asked Selenin. &ldquo;I had heard, by the
+      way, that you were in Petersburg. But what are you doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here? I am here because I hoped to find justice and save a woman
+      innocently condemned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one whose case has just been decided.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Maslova&rsquo;s case,&rdquo; said Selenin, suddenly remembering it. &ldquo;The appeal
+      had no grounds whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not the appeal; it&rsquo;s the woman who is innocent, and is being
+      punished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Selenin sighed. &ldquo;That may well be, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not <i>may be</i>, but is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I was on the jury. I know how we made the mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Selenin became thoughtful. &ldquo;You should have made a statement at the time,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did make the statement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It should have been put down in an official report. If this had been
+      added to the petition for the appeal&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but still, as it is, the verdict is evidently absurd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Senate has no right to say so. If the Senate took upon itself to
+      repeal the decision of the law courts according to its own views as to the
+      justice of the decisions in themselves, the verdict of the jury would lose
+      all its meaning, not to mention that the Senate would have no basis to go
+      upon, and would run the risk of infringing justice rather than upholding
+      it,&rdquo; said Selenin, calling to mind the case that had just been heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I know is that this woman is quite innocent, and that the last hope
+      of saving her from an unmerited punishment is gone. The grossest injustice
+      has been confirmed by the highest court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has not been confirmed. The Senate did not and cannot enter into the
+      merits of the case in itself,&rdquo; said Selenin. Always busy and rarely going
+      out into society, he had evidently heard nothing of Nekhludoff&rsquo;s romance.
+      Nekhludoff noticed it, and made up his mind that it was best to say
+      nothing about his special relations with Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are probably staying with your aunt,&rdquo; Selenin remarked, apparently
+      wishing to change the subject. &ldquo;She told me you were here yesterday, and
+      she invited me to meet you in the evening, when some foreign preacher was
+      to lecture,&rdquo; and Selenin again smiled only with his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I was there, but left in disgust,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff angrily, vexed
+      that Selenin had changed the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why with disgust? After all, it is a manifestation of religious feeling,
+      though one-sided and sectarian,&rdquo; said Selenin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s only some kind of whimsical folly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, no. The curious thing is that we know the teaching of our
+      church so little that we see some new kind of revelation in what are,
+      after all, our own fundamental dogmas,&rdquo; said Selenin, as if hurrying to
+      let his old friend know his new views.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff looked at Selenin scrutinisingly and with surprise, and Selenin
+      dropped his eyes, in which appeared an expression not only of sadness but
+      also of ill-will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you, then, believe in the dogmas of the church?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do,&rdquo; replied Selenin, gazing straight into Nekhludoff&rsquo;s eyes
+      with a lifeless look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sighed. &ldquo;It is strange,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However, we shall have a talk some other time,&rdquo; said Selenin. &ldquo;I am
+      coming,&rdquo; he added, in answer to the usher, who had respectfully approached
+      him. &ldquo;Yes, we must meet again,&rdquo; he went on with a sigh. &ldquo;But will it be
+      possible for me to find you? You will always find me in at seven o&rsquo;clock.
+      My address is Nadejdinskaya,&rdquo; and he gave the number. &ldquo;Ah, time does not
+      stand still,&rdquo; and he turned to go, smiling only with his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will come if I can,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, feeling that a man once near and
+      dear to him had, by this brief conversation, suddenly become strange,
+      distant, and incomprehensible, if not hostile to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0082" id="link2HCH0082">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff knew Selenin as a student, he was a good son, a true
+      friend, and for his years an educated man of the world, with much tact;
+      elegant, handsome, and at the same time truthful and honest. He learned
+      well, without much exertion and with no pedantry, receiving gold medals
+      for his essays. He considered the service of mankind, not only in words
+      but in acts, to be the aim of his young life. He saw no other way of being
+      useful to humanity than by serving the State. Therefore, as soon as he had
+      completed his studies, he systematically examined all the activities to
+      which he might devote his life, and decided to enter the Second Department
+      of the Chancellerie, where the laws are drawn up, and he did so. But, in
+      spite of the most scrupulous and exact discharge of the duties demanded of
+      him, this service gave no satisfaction to his desire of being useful, nor
+      could he awake in himself the consciousness that he was doing &ldquo;the right
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This dissatisfaction was so much increased by the friction with his very
+      small-minded and vain fellow officials that he left the Chancellerie and
+      entered the Senate. It was better there, but the same dissatisfaction
+      still pursued him; he felt it to be very different from what he had
+      expected, and from what ought to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now that he was in the Senate his relatives obtained for him the post
+      of Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and he had to go in a carriage, dressed in
+      an embroidered uniform and a white linen apron, to thank all sorts of
+      people for having placed him in the position of a lackey. However much he
+      tried he could find no reasonable explanation for the existence of this
+      post, and felt, more than in the Senate, that it was not &ldquo;the right
+      thing,&rdquo; and yet he could not refuse it for fear of hurting those who felt
+      sure they were giving him much pleasure by this appointment, and because
+      it flattered the lowest part of his nature. It pleased him to see himself
+      in a mirror in his gold-embroidered uniform, and to accept the deference
+      paid him by some people because of his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something of the same kind happened when he married. A very brilliant
+      match, from a worldly point of view, was arranged for him, and he married
+      chiefly because by refusing he would have had to hurt the young lady who
+      wished to be married to him, and those who arranged the marriage, and also
+      because a marriage with a nice young girl of noble birth flattered his
+      vanity and gave him pleasure. But this marriage very soon proved to be
+      even less &ldquo;the right thing&rdquo; than the Government service and his position
+      at Court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the birth of her first child the wife decided to have no more, and
+      began leading that luxurious worldly life in which he now had to
+      participate whether he liked or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not particularly handsome, and was faithful to him, and she
+      seemed, in spite of all the efforts it cost her, to derive nothing but
+      weariness from the life she led, yet she perseveringly continued to live
+      it, though it was poisoning her husband&rsquo;s life. And all his efforts to
+      alter this life was shattered, as against a stone wall, by her conviction,
+      which all her friends and relatives supported, that all was as it should
+      be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child, a little girl with bare legs and long golden curls, was a being
+      perfectly foreign to him, chiefly because she was trained quite otherwise
+      than he wished her to be. There sprung up between the husband and wife the
+      usual misunderstanding, without even the wish to understand each other,
+      and then a silent warfare, hidden from outsiders and tempered by decorum.
+      All this made his life at home a burden, and became even less &ldquo;the right
+      thing&rdquo; than his service and his post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was above all his attitude towards religion which was not &ldquo;the
+      right thing.&rdquo; Like every one of his set and his time, by the growth of his
+      reason he broke without the least effort the nets of the religious
+      superstitions in which he was brought up, and did not himself exactly know
+      when it was that he freed himself of them. Being earnest and upright, he
+      did not, during his youth and intimacy with Nekhludoff as a student,
+      conceal his rejection of the State religion. But as years went on and he
+      rose in the service, and especially at the time of the reaction towards
+      conservatism in society, his spiritual freedom stood in his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At home, when his father died, he had to be present at the masses said for
+      his soul, and his mother wished him to go to confession or to communion,
+      and it was in a way expected, by public opinion, but above all, Government
+      service demanded that he should be present at all sorts of services,
+      consecrations, thanksgivings, and the like. Hardly a day passed without
+      some outward religious form having to be observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When present at these services he had to pretend that he believed in
+      something which he did not believe in, and being truthful he could not do
+      this. The alternative was, having made up his mind that all these outward
+      signs were deceitful, to alter his life in such a way that he would not
+      have to be present at such ceremonials. But to do what seemed so simple
+      would have cost a great deal. Besides encountering the perpetual hostility
+      of all those who were near to him, he would have to give up the service
+      and his position, and sacrifice his hopes of being useful to humanity by
+      his service, now and in the future. To make such a sacrifice one would
+      have to be firmly convinced of being right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he was firmly convinced he was right, as no educated man of our time
+      can help being convinced who knows a little history and how the religions,
+      and especially Church Christianity, originated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But under the stress of his daily life he, a truthful man, allowed a
+      little falsehood to creep in. He said that in order to do justice to an
+      unreasonable thing one had to study the unreasonable thing. It was a
+      little falsehood, but it sunk him into the big falsehood in which he was
+      now caught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before putting to himself the question whether the orthodoxy in which he
+      was born and bred, and which every one expected him to accept, and without
+      which he could not continue his useful occupation, contained the truth, he
+      had already decided the answer. And to clear up the question he did not
+      read Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, or Comte, but the
+      philosophical works of Hegel and the religious works of Vinet and
+      Khomyakoff, and naturally found in them what he wanted, i.e., something
+      like peace of mind and a vindication of that religious teaching in which
+      he was educated, which his reason had long ceased to accept, but without
+      which his whole life was filled with unpleasantness which could all be
+      removed by accepting the teaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so he adopted all the usual sophistries which go to prove that a
+      single human reason cannot know the truth, that the truth is only revealed
+      to an association of men, and can only be known by revelation, that
+      revelation is kept by the church, etc. And so he managed to be present at
+      prayers, masses for the dead, to confess, make signs of the cross in front
+      of icons, with a quiet mind, without being conscious of the lie, and to
+      continue in the service which gave him the feeling of being useful and
+      some comfort in his joyless family life. Although he believed this, he
+      felt with his entire being that this religion of his, more than all else,
+      was not &ldquo;the right thing,&rdquo; and that is why his eyes always looked sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And seeing Nekhludoff, whom he had known before all these lies had rooted
+      themselves within him, reminded him of what he then was. It was especially
+      after he had hurried to hint at his religious views that he had most
+      strongly felt all this &ldquo;not the right thing,&rdquo; and had become painfully
+      sad. Nekhludoff felt it also after the first joy of meeting his old friend
+      had passed, and therefore, though they promised each other to meet, they
+      did not take any steps towards an interview, and did not again see each
+      other during this stay of Nekhludoff&rsquo;s in Petersburg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0083" id="link2HCH0083">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. MARIETTE TEMPTS NEKHLUDOFF.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When they left the Senate, Nekhludoff and the advocate walked on together,
+      the advocate having given the driver of his carriage orders to follow
+      them. The advocate told Nekhludoff the story of the chief of a Government
+      department, about whom the Senators had been talking: how the thing was
+      found out, and how the man, who according to law should have been sent to
+      the mines, had been appointed Governor of a town in Siberia. Then he
+      related with particular pleasure how several high-placed persons stole a
+      lot of money collected for the erection of the still unfinished monument
+      which they had passed that morning; also, how the mistress of So-and-so
+      got a lot of money at the Stock Exchange, and how So-and-so agreed with
+      So-and-so to sell him his wife. The advocate began another story about a
+      swindle, and all sorts of crimes committed by persons in high places, who,
+      instead of being in prison, sat on presidential chairs in all sorts of
+      Government institutions. These tales, of which the advocate seemed to have
+      an unending supply, gave him much pleasure, showing as they did, with
+      perfect clearness, that his means of getting money were quite just and
+      innocent compared to the means which the highest officials in Petersburg
+      made use of. The advocate was therefore surprised when Nekhludoff took an
+      isvostchik before hearing the end of the story, said good-bye, and left
+      him. Nekhludoff felt very sad. It was chiefly the rejection of the appeal
+      by the Senate, confirming the senseless torments that the innocent Maslova
+      was enduring, that saddened him, and also the fact that this rejection
+      made it still harder for him to unite his fate with hers. The stories
+      about existing evils, which the advocate recounted with such relish,
+      heightened his sadness, and so did the cold, unkind look that the once
+      sweet-natured, frank, noble Selenin had given him, and which kept
+      recurring to his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his return the doorkeeper handed him a note, and said, rather
+      scornfully, that some kind of woman had written it in the hall. It was a
+      note from Shoustova&rsquo;s mother. She wrote that she had come to thank her
+      daughter&rsquo;s benefactor and saviour, and to implore him to come to see them
+      on the Vasilievsky, 5th Line, house No. &mdash;. This was very necessary
+      because of Vera Doukhova. He need not be afraid that they would weary him
+      with expressions of gratitude. They would not speak their gratitude, but
+      be simply glad to see him. Would he not come next morning, if he could?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another note from Bogotyreff, a former fellow-officer,
+      aide-de-camp to the Emperor, whom Nekhludoff had asked to hand personally
+      to the Emperor his petition on behalf of the sectarians. Bogotyreff wrote,
+      in his large, firm hand, that he would put the petition into the Emperor&rsquo;s
+      own hands, as he had promised; but that it had occurred to him that it
+      might be better for Nekhludoff first to go and see the person on whom the
+      matter depended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the impressions received during the last few days, Nekhludoff felt
+      perfectly hopeless of getting anything done. The plans he had formed in
+      Moscow seemed now something like the dreams of youth, which are inevitably
+      followed by disillusion when life comes to be faced. Still, being now in
+      Petersburg, he considered it his duty to do all he had intended, and he
+      resolved next day, after consulting Bogotyreff, to act on his advice and
+      see the person on whom the case of the sectarians depended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got out the sectarians&rsquo; petition from his portfolio, and began reading
+      it over, when there was a knock at his door, and a footman came in with a
+      message from the Countess Katerina Ivanovna, who asked him to come up and
+      have a cup of tea with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff said he would come at once, and having put the papers back into
+      the portfolio, he went up to his aunt&rsquo;s. He looked out of a window on his
+      way, and saw Mariette&rsquo;s pair of bays standing in front of the house, and
+      he suddenly brightened and felt inclined to smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mariette, with a hat on her head, not in black but with a light dress of
+      many shades, sat with a cup in her hand beside the Countess&rsquo;s easy chair,
+      prattling about something while her beautiful, laughing eyes glistened.
+      She had said something funny&mdash;something indecently funny&mdash;just
+      as Nekhludoff entered the room. He knew it by the way she laughed, and by
+      the way the good-natured Countess Katerina Ivanovna&rsquo;s fat body was shaking
+      with laughter; while Mariette, her smiling mouth slightly drawn to one
+      side, her head a little bent, a peculiarly mischievous expression in her
+      merry, energetic face, sat silently looking at her companion. From a few
+      words which he overheard, Nekhludoff guessed that they were talking of the
+      second piece of Petersburg news, the episode of the Siberian Governor, and
+      that it was in reference to this subject that Mariette had said something
+      so funny that the Countess could not control herself for a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will kill me,&rdquo; she said, coughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After saying &ldquo;How d&rsquo;you do?&rdquo; Nekhludoff sat down. He was about to censure
+      Mariette in his mind for her levity when, noticing the serious and even
+      slightly dissatisfied look in his eyes, she suddenly, to please him,
+      changed not only the expression of her face, but also the attitude of her
+      mind; for she felt the wish to please him as soon as she looked at him.
+      She suddenly turned serious, dissatisfied with her life, as if seeking and
+      striving after something; it was not that she pretended, but she really
+      reproduced in herself the very same state of mind that he was in, although
+      it would have been impossible for her to express in words what was the
+      state of Nekhludoff&rsquo;s mind at that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She asked him how he had accomplished his tasks. He told her about his
+      failure in the Senate and his meeting Selenin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what a pure soul! He is, indeed, a chevalier sans peur et sans
+      reproche. A pure soul!&rdquo; said both ladies, using the epithet commonly
+      applied to Selenin in Petersburg society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is his wife like?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife? Well, I do not wish to judge, but she does not understand him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible that he, too, was for rejecting the appeal?&rdquo; Mariette
+      asked with real sympathy. &ldquo;It is dreadful. How sorry I am for her,&rdquo; she
+      added with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He frowned, and in order to change the subject began to speak about
+      Shoustova, who had been imprisoned in the fortress and was now set free
+      through the influence of Mariette&rsquo;s husband. He thanked her for her
+      trouble, and was going on to say how dreadful he thought it, that this
+      woman and the whole of her family had suffered merely, because no one had
+      reminded the authorities about them, but Mariette interrupted him and
+      expressed her own indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say nothing about it to me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;When my husband told me she could
+      be set free, it was this that struck me, &lsquo;What was she kept in prison for
+      if she is innocent?&rsquo;&rdquo; She went on expressing what Nekhludoff was about to
+      say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is revolting&mdash;revolting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Countess Katerina Ivanovna noticed that Mariette was coquetting with her
+      nephew, and this amused her. &ldquo;What do you think?&rdquo; she said, when they were
+      silent. &ldquo;Supposing you come to Aline&rsquo;s to-morrow night. Kiesewetter will
+      be there. And you, too,&rdquo; she said, turning to Mariette. &ldquo;<i>Il vous a
+      remarque</i>,&rdquo; she went on to her nephew. &ldquo;He told me that what you say (I
+      repeated it all to him) is a very good sign, and that you will certainly
+      come to Christ. You must come absolutely. Tell him to, Mariette, and come
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Countess, in the first place, I have no right whatever to give any kind
+      of advice to the Prince,&rdquo; said Mariette, and gave Nekhludoff a look that
+      somehow established a full comprehension between them of their attitude in
+      relation to the Countess&rsquo;s words and evangelicalism in general. &ldquo;Secondly,
+      I do not much care, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know you always do things the wrong way round, and according to
+      your own ideas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My own ideas? I have faith like the most simple peasant woman,&rdquo; said
+      Mariette with a smile. &ldquo;And, thirdly, I am going to the French Theatre
+      to-morrow night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! And have you seen that&mdash;What&rsquo;s her name?&rdquo; asked Countess
+      Katerina Ivanovna. Mariette gave the name of a celebrated French actress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must go, most decidedly; she is wonderful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom am I to see first, ma tante&mdash;the actress or the preacher?&rdquo;
+       Nekhludoff said with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t catch at my words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think the preacher first and then the actress, or else the
+      desire for the sermon might vanish altogether,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; better begin with the French Theatre, and do penance afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, you are not to hold me up for ridicule. The preacher is the
+      preacher and the theatre is the theatre. One need not weep in order to be
+      saved. One must have faith, and then one is sure to be gay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, ma tante, preach better than any preacher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what?&rdquo; said Mariette. &ldquo;Come into my box to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I shall not be able to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The footman interrupted the conversation by announcing a visitor. It was
+      the secretary of a philanthropic society of which the Countess was
+      president.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that is the dullest of men. I think I shall receive him out there,
+      and return to you later on. Mariette, give him his tea,&rdquo; said the
+      Countess, and left the room, with her quick, wriggling walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mariette took the glove off her firm, rather flat hand, the fourth finger
+      of which was covered with rings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Want any?&rdquo; she said, taking hold of the silver teapot, under which a
+      spirit lamp was burning, and extending her little finger curiously. Her
+      face looked sad and serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is always terribly painful to me to notice that people whose opinion I
+      value confound me with the position I am placed in.&rdquo; She seemed ready to
+      cry as she said these last words. And though these words had no meaning,
+      or at any rate a very indefinite meaning, they seemed to be of exceptional
+      depth, meaning, or goodness to Nekhludoff, so much was he attracted by the
+      look of the bright eyes which accompanied the words of this young,
+      beautiful, and well-dressed woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff looked at her in silence, and could not take his eyes from her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think I do not understand you and all that goes on in you. Why,
+      everybody knows what you are doing. <i>C&rsquo;est le secret de polichinelle</i>.
+      And I am delighted with your work, and think highly of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, there is nothing to be delighted with; and I have done so little
+      as Yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter. I understand your feelings, and I understand her. All right,
+      all right. I will say nothing more about it,&rdquo; she said, noticing
+      displeasure on his face. &ldquo;But I also understand that after seeing all the
+      suffering and the horror in the prisons,&rdquo; Mariette went on, her only
+      desire that of attracting him, and guessing with her woman&rsquo;s instinct what
+      was dear and important to him, &ldquo;you wish to help the sufferers, those who
+      are made to suffer so terribly by other men, and their cruelty and
+      indifference. I understand the willingness to give one&rsquo;s life, and could
+      give mine in such a cause, but we each have our own fate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you, then, dissatisfied with your fate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo; she asked, as if struck with surprise that such a question could be
+      put to her. &ldquo;I have to be satisfied, and am satisfied. But there is a worm
+      that wakes up&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he must not be allowed to fall asleep again. It is a voice that must
+      be obeyed,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said, falling into the trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many a time later on Nekhludoff remembered with shame his talk with her.
+      He remembered her words, which were not so much lies as imitations of his
+      own, and her face, which seemed looking at him with sympathetic attention
+      when he told her about the terrors of the prison and of his impressions in
+      the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Countess returned they were talking not merely like old, but like
+      exclusive friends who alone understood one another. They were talking
+      about the injustice of power, of the sufferings of the unfortunate, the
+      poverty of the people, yet in reality in the midst of the sound of their
+      talk their eyes, gazing at each other, kept asking, &ldquo;Can you love me?&rdquo; and
+      answering, &ldquo;I can,&rdquo; and the sex-feeling, taking the most unexpected and
+      brightest forms, drew them to each other. As she was going away she told
+      him that she would always be willing to serve him in any way she could,
+      and asked him to come and see her, if only for a moment, in the theatre
+      next day, as she had a very important thing to tell him about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and when shall I see you again?&rdquo; she added, with a sigh, carefully
+      drawing the glove over her jewelled hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say you will come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, when Nekhludoff was alone in his room, and lay down after
+      putting out his candle, he could not sleep. He thought of Maslova, of the
+      decision of the Senate, of his resolve to follow her in any case, of his
+      having given up the land. The face of Mariette appeared to him as if in
+      answer to those thoughts&mdash;her look, her sigh, her words, &ldquo;When shall
+      I see you again?&rdquo; and her smile seemed vivid as if he really saw her, and
+      he also smiled. &ldquo;Shall I be doing right in going to Siberia? And have I
+      done right in divesting myself of my wealth?&rdquo; And the answers to the
+      questions on this Petersburg night, on which the daylight streamed into
+      the window from under the blind, were quite indefinite. All seemed mixed
+      in his head. He recalled his former state of mind, and the former sequence
+      of his thoughts, but they had no longer their former power or validity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And supposing I have invented all this, and am unable to live it through&mdash;supposing
+      I repent of having acted right,&rdquo; he thought; and unable to answer he was
+      seized with such anguish and despair as he had long not felt. Unable to
+      free himself from his perplexity, he fell into a heavy sleep, such as he
+      had slept after a heavy loss at cards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0084" id="link2HCH0084">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. LYDIA SHOUSTOVA&rsquo;S HOME.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff awoke next morning feeling as if he had been guilty of some
+      iniquity the day before. He began considering. He could not remember
+      having done anything wrong; he had committed no evil act, but he had had
+      evil thoughts. He had thought that all his present resolutions to marry
+      Katusha and to give up his land were unachievable dreams; that he should
+      be unable to bear it; that it was artificial, unnatural; and that he would
+      have to go on living as he lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had committed no evil action, but, what was far worse than an evil
+      action, he had entertained evil thoughts whence all evil actions proceed.
+      An evil action may not be repeated, and can be repented of; but evil
+      thoughts generate all evil actions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An evil action only smooths the path for other evil acts; evil thoughts
+      uncontrollably drag one along that path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff repeated in his mind the thoughts of the day before, he
+      was surprised that he could for a moment have believed these thoughts.
+      However new and difficult that which he had decided to do might be, he
+      knew that it was the only possible way of life for him now, and however
+      easy and natural it might have been to return to his former state, he knew
+      that state to be death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday&rsquo;s temptation seemed like the feeling when one awakes from deep
+      sleep, and, without feeling sleepy, wants to lie comfortably in bed a
+      little longer, yet knows that it is time to rise and commence the glad and
+      important work that awaits one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that, his last day in Petersburg, he went in the morning to the
+      Vasilievski Ostrov to see Shoustova. Shoustova lived on the second floor,
+      and having been shown the back stairs, Nekhludoff entered straight into
+      the hot kitchen, which smelt strongly of food. An elderly woman, with
+      turned-up sleeves, with an apron and spectacles, stood by the fire
+      stirring something in a steaming pan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you want?&rdquo; she asked severely, looking at him over her
+      spectacles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Nekhludoff had time to answer, an expression of fright and joy
+      appeared on her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Prince!&rdquo; she exclaimed, wiping her hands on her apron. &ldquo;But why have
+      you come the back way? Our Benefactor! I am her mother. They have nearly
+      killed my little girl. You have saved us,&rdquo; she said, catching hold of
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s hand and trying to kiss it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went to see you yesterday. My sister asked me to. She is here. This
+      way, this way, please,&rdquo; said Shoustova&rsquo;s mother, as she led the way
+      through a narrow door, and a dark passage, arranging her hair and pulling
+      at her tucked-up skirt. &ldquo;My sister&rsquo;s name is Kornilova. You must have
+      heard of her,&rdquo; she added, stopping before a closed door. &ldquo;She was mixed up
+      in a political affair. An extremely clever woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shoustova&rsquo;s mother opened the door and showed Nekhludoff into a little
+      room where on a sofa with a table before it sat a plump, short girl with
+      fair hair that curled round her pale, round face, which was very like her
+      mother&rsquo;s. She had a striped cotton blouse on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite her, in an armchair, leaning forward, so that he was nearly bent
+      double, sat a young fellow with a slight, black beard and moustaches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lydia, Prince Nekhludoff!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pale girl jumped up, nervously pushing back a lock of hair behind her
+      ear, and gazing at the newcomer with a frightened look in her large, grey
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you are that dangerous woman whom Vera Doukhova wished me to intercede
+      for?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am,&rdquo; said Lydia Shoustova, her broad, kind, child-like smile
+      disclosing a row of beautiful teeth. &ldquo;It was aunt who was so anxious to
+      see you. Aunt!&rdquo; she called out, in a pleasant, tender voice through a
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your imprisonment grieved Vera Doukhova very much,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a seat here, or better here,&rdquo; said Shoustova, pointing to the
+      battered easy-chair from which the young man had just risen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cousin, Zakharov,&rdquo; she said, noticing that Nekhludoff looked at the
+      young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man greeted the visitor with a smile as kindly as Shoustova&rsquo;s,
+      and when Nekhludoff sat down he brought himself another chair, and sat by
+      his side. A fair-haired schoolboy of about 10 also came into the room and
+      silently sat down on the window-sill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vera Doukhova is a great friend of my aunt&rsquo;s, but I hardly know her,&rdquo;
+       said Shoustova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather
+      belt, came in from the next room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do? Thanks for coming,&rdquo; she began as soon as she had taken the
+      place next Shoustova&rsquo;s on the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and how is Vera. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does not complain,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;She says she feels perfectly
+      happy.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s like Vera. I know her,&rdquo; said the aunt, smiling and shaking her
+      head. &ldquo;One must know her. She has a fine character. Everything for others;
+      nothing for herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your
+      niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece
+      was imprisoned for nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said the aunt. &ldquo;It is a dreadful business. She
+      suffered, in reality, because of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the
+      same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me to know better,&rdquo; said the aunt. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she went on to
+      Nekhludoff, &ldquo;it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep his
+      papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them to
+      her. And that very night the police searched her room and took her and the
+      papers, and have kept her up to now, demanding that she should say from
+      whom she had them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I never told them,&rdquo; said Shoustova quickly, pulling nervously at a
+      lock that was not even out of place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never said you did,&rdquo; answered the aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they took Mitin up it was certainly not through me,&rdquo; said Shoustova,
+      blushing, and looking round uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak about it, Lydia dear,&rdquo; said her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? I should like to relate it,&rdquo; said Shoustova, no longer smiling
+      nor pulling her lock, but twisting it round her finger and getting redder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t forget what happened yesterday when you began talking about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all&mdash;-Leave me alone, mamma. I did not tell, I only kept
+      quiet. When he examined me about Mitin and about aunt, I said nothing, and
+      told him I would not answer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then this&mdash;Petrov&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Petrov is a spy, a gendarme, and a blackguard,&rdquo; put in the aunt, to
+      explain her niece&rsquo;s words to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he began persuading,&rdquo; continued Shoustova, excitedly and hurriedly.
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Anything you tell me,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;can harm no one; on the contrary, if
+      you tell me, we may be able to set free innocent people whom we may be
+      uselessly tormenting.&rsquo; Well, I still said I would not tell. Then he said,
+      &lsquo;All right, don&rsquo;t tell, but do not deny what I am going to say.&rsquo; And he
+      named Mitin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk about it,&rdquo; said the aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, aunt, don&rsquo;t interrupt,&rdquo; and she went on pulling the lock of hair and
+      looking round. &ldquo;And then, only fancy, the next day I hear&mdash;they let
+      me know by knocking at the wall&mdash;that Mitin is arrested. Well, I
+      think I have betrayed him, and this tormented me so&mdash;it tormented me
+      so that I nearly went mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it turned out that it was not at all because of you he was taken up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but I didn&rsquo;t know. I think, &lsquo;There, now, I have betrayed him.&rsquo; I
+      walk and walk up and down from wall to wall, and cannot help thinking. I
+      think, &lsquo;I have betrayed him.&rsquo; I lie down and cover myself up, and hear
+      something whispering, &lsquo;Betrayed! betrayed Mitin! Mitin betrayed!&rsquo; I know
+      it is an hallucination, but cannot help listening. I wish to fall asleep,
+      I cannot. I wish not to think, and cannot cease. That is terrible!&rdquo; and as
+      Shoustova spoke she got more and more excited, and twisted and untwisted
+      the lock of hair round her finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lydia, dear, be calm,&rdquo; the mother said, touching her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Shoustova could not stop herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all the more terrible&mdash;&rdquo; she began again, but did not finish,
+      and jumping up with a cry rushed out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mother turned to follow her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They ought to be hanged, the rascals!&rdquo; said the schoolboy who was sitting
+      on the window-sill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; said the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only said&mdash;Oh, it&rsquo;s nothing,&rdquo; the schoolboy answered, and taking a
+      cigarette that lay on the table, he began to smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0085" id="link2HCH0085">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. LYDIA&rsquo;S AUNT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that solitary confinement is terrible for the young,&rdquo; said the aunt,
+      shaking her head and also lighting a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should say for every one,&rdquo; Nekhludoff replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not for all,&rdquo; answered the aunt. &ldquo;For the real revolutionists, I have
+      been told, it is rest and quiet. A man who is wanted by the police lives
+      in continual anxiety, material want, and fear for himself and others, and
+      for his cause, and at last, when he is taken up and it is all over, and
+      all responsibility is off his shoulders, he can sit and rest. I have been
+      told they actually feel joyful when taken up. But the young and innocent
+      (they always first arrest the innocent, like Lydia), for them the first
+      shock is terrible. It is not that they deprive you of freedom; and the bad
+      food and bad air&mdash;all that is nothing. Three times as many privations
+      would be easily borne if it were not for the moral shock when one is first
+      taken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you experienced it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? I was twice in prison,&rdquo; she answered, with a sad, gentle smile. &ldquo;When
+      I was arrested for the first time I had done nothing. I was 22, had a
+      child, and was expecting another. Though the loss of freedom and the
+      parting with my child and husband were hard, they were nothing when
+      compared with what I felt when I found out that I had ceased being a human
+      creature and had become a thing. I wished to say good-bye to my little
+      daughter. I was told to go and get into the trap. I asked where I was
+      being taken to. The answer was that I should know when I got there. I
+      asked what I was accused of, but got no reply. After I had been examined,
+      and after they had undressed me and put numbered prison clothes on me,
+      they led me to a vault, opened a door, pushed me in, and left me alone; a
+      sentinel, with a loaded gun, paced up and down in front of my door, and
+      every now and then looked in through a crack&mdash;I felt terribly
+      depressed. What struck me most at the time was that the gendarme officer
+      who examined me offered me a cigarette. So he knew that people liked
+      smoking, and must know that they liked freedom and light; and that mothers
+      love their children, and children their mothers. Then how could they tear
+      me pitilessly from all that was dear to me, and lock me up in prison like
+      a wild animal? That sort of thing could not be borne without evil effects.
+      Any one who believes in God and men, and believes that men love one
+      another, will cease to believe it after all that. I have ceased to believe
+      in humanity since then, and have grown embittered,&rdquo; she finished, with a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shoustova&rsquo;s mother came in at the door through which her daughter had gone
+      out, and said that Lydia was very much upset, and would not come in again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what has this young life been ruined for?&rdquo; said the aunt. &ldquo;What is
+      especially painful to me is that I am the involuntary cause of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will recover in the country, with God&rsquo;s help,&rdquo; said the mother. &ldquo;We
+      shall send her to her father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if it were not for you she would have perished altogether,&rdquo; said the
+      aunt. &ldquo;Thank you. But what I wished to see you for is this: I wished to
+      ask you to take a letter to Vera Doukhova,&rdquo; and she got the letter out of
+      her pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The letter is not closed; you may read and tear it up, or hand it to her,
+      according to how far it coincides with your principles,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It
+      contains nothing compromising.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff took the letter, and, having promised to give it to Vera
+      Doukhova, he took his leave and went away. He sealed the letter without
+      reading it, meaning to take it to its destination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0086" id="link2HCH0086">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. THE STATE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The last thing that kept Nekhludoff in Petersburg was the case of the
+      sectarians, whose petition he intended to get his former fellow-officer,
+      Aide-de-camp Bogatyreff, to hand to the Tsar. He came to Bogatyreff in the
+      morning, and found him about to go out, though still at breakfast.
+      Bogatyreff was not tall, but firmly built and wonderfully strong (he could
+      bend a horseshoe), a kind, honest, straight, and even liberal man. In
+      spite of these qualities, he was intimate at Court, and very fond of the
+      Tsar and his family, and by some strange method he managed, while living
+      in that highest circle, to see nothing but the good in it and to take no
+      part in the evil and corruption. He never condemned anybody nor any
+      measure, and either kept silent or spoke in a bold, loud voice, almost
+      shouting what he had to say, and often laughing in the same boisterous
+      manner. And he did not do it for diplomatic reasons, but because such was
+      his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s right that you have come. Would you like some breakfast? Sit
+      down, the beefsteaks are fine! I always begin with something substantial&mdash;begin
+      and finish, too. Ha! ha! ha! Well, then, have a glass of wine,&rdquo; he
+      shouted, pointing to a decanter of claret. &ldquo;I have been thinking of you. I
+      will hand on the petition. I shall put it into his own hands. You may
+      count on that, only it occurred to me that it would be best for you to
+      call on Toporoff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff made a wry face at the mention of Toporoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It all depends on him. He will be consulted, anyhow. And perhaps he may
+      himself meet your wishes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you advise it I shall go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right. Well, and how does Petersburg agree with you?&rdquo; shouted
+      Bogatyreff. &ldquo;Tell me. Eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel myself getting hypnotised,&rdquo; replied Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hypnotised!&rdquo; Bogatyreff repeated, and burst out laughing. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t have
+      anything? Well, just as you please,&rdquo; and he wiped his moustaches with his
+      napkin. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll go? Eh? If he does not do it, give the petition to
+      me, and I shall hand it on to-morrow.&rdquo; Shouting these words, he rose,
+      crossed himself just as naturally as he had wiped his mouth, and began
+      buckling on his sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now good-bye; I must go. We are both going out,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and
+      shaking Bogatyreff&rsquo;s strong, broad hand, and with the sense of pleasure
+      which the impression of something healthy and unconsciously fresh always
+      gave him, Nekhludoff parted from Bogatyreff on the door-steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he expected no good result from his visit, still Nekhludoff,
+      following Bogatyreff&rsquo;s advice, went to see Toporoff, on whom the
+      sectarians&rsquo; fate depended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position occupied by Toporoff, involving as it did an incongruity of
+      purpose, could only be held by a dull man devoid of moral sensibility.
+      Toporoff possessed both these negative qualities. The incongruity of the
+      position he occupied was this. It was his duty to keep up and to defend,
+      by external measures, not excluding violence, that Church which, by its
+      own declaration, was established by God Himself and could not be shaken by
+      the gates of hell nor by anything human. This divine and immutable
+      God-established institution had to be sustained and defended by a human
+      institution&mdash;the Holy Synod, managed by Toporoff and his officials.
+      Toporoff did not see this contradiction, nor did he wish to see it, and he
+      was therefore much concerned lest some Romish priest, some pastor, or some
+      sectarian should destroy that Church which the gates of hell could not
+      conquer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toporoff, like all those who are quite destitute of the fundamental
+      religious feeling that recognises the equality and brotherhood of men, was
+      fully convinced that the common people were creatures entirely different
+      from himself, and that the people needed what he could very well do
+      without, for at the bottom of his heart he believed in nothing, and found
+      such a state very convenient and pleasant. Yet he feared lest the people
+      might also come to such a state, and looked upon it as his sacred duty, as
+      he called it, to save the people therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain cookery book declares that some crabs like to be boiled alive.
+      In the same way he thought and spoke as if the people liked being kept in
+      superstition; only he meant this in a literal sense, whereas the cookery
+      book did not mean its words literally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His feelings towards the religion he was keeping up were the same as those
+      of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his fowls on. Carrion was
+      very disgusting, but the fowls liked it; therefore it was right to feed
+      the fowls on carrion. Of course all this worship of the images of the
+      Iberian, Kasan and Smolensk Mothers of God was a gross superstition, but
+      the people liked it and believed in it, and therefore the superstition
+      must be kept up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus thought Toporoff, not considering that the people only liked
+      superstition because there always have been, and still are, men like
+      himself who, being enlightened, instead of using their light to help
+      others to struggle out of their dark ignorance, use it to plunge them
+      still deeper into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff entered the reception-room Toporoff was in his study
+      talking with an abbess, a lively and aristocratic lady, who was spreading
+      the Greek orthodox faith in Western Russia among the Uniates (who
+      acknowledge the Pope of Rome), and who have the Greek religion enforced on
+      them. An official who was in the reception-room inquired what Nekhludoff
+      wanted, and when he heard that Nekhludoff meant to hand in a petition to
+      the Emperor, he asked him if he would allow the petition to be read first.
+      Nekhludoff gave it him, and the official took it into the study. The
+      abbess, with her hood and flowing veil and her long train trailing behind,
+      left the study and went out, her white hands (with their well-tended
+      nails) holding a topaz rosary. Nekhludoff was not immediately asked to
+      come in. Toporoff was reading the petition and shaking his head. He was
+      unpleasantly surprised by the clear and emphatic wording of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it gets into the hands of the Emperor it may cause misunderstandings,
+      and unpleasant questions may be asked,&rdquo; he thought as he read. Then he put
+      the petition on the table, rang, and ordered Nekhludoff to be asked in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered the case of the sectarians; he had had a petition from them
+      before. The case was this: These Christians, fallen away from the Greek
+      Orthodox Church, were first exhorted and then tried by law, but were
+      acquitted. Then the Archdeacon and the Governor arranged, on the plea that
+      their marriages were illegal, to exile these sectarians, separating the
+      husbands, wives, and children. These fathers and wives were now
+      petitioning that they should not be parted. Toporoff recollected the first
+      time the case came to his notice: he had at that time hesitated whether he
+      had not better put a stop to it. But then he thought no harm could result
+      from his confirming the decision to separate and exile the different
+      members of the sectarian families, whereas allowing the peasant sect to
+      remain where it was might have a bad effect on the rest of the inhabitants
+      of the place and cause them to fall away from Orthodoxy. And then the
+      affair also proved the zeal of the Archdeacon, and so he let the case
+      proceed along the lines it had taken. But now that they had a defender
+      such as Nekhludoff, who had some influence in Petersburg, the case might
+      be specially pointed out to the Emperor as something cruel, or it might
+      get into the foreign papers. Therefore he at once took an unexpected
+      decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; he said, with the air of a very busy man, receiving
+      Nekhludoff standing, and at once starting on the business. &ldquo;I know this
+      case. As soon as I saw the names I recollected this unfortunate business,&rdquo;
+       he said, taking up the petition and showing it to Nekhludoff. &ldquo;And I am
+      much indebted to you for reminding me of it. It is the over-zealousness of
+      the provincial authorities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff stood silent, looking with no kindly feelings at the immovable,
+      pale mask of a face before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I shall give orders that these measures should be revoked and the
+      people reinstated in their homes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that I need not make use of this petition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise you most assuredly,&rdquo; answered Toporoff, laying a stress on the
+      word I, as if quite convinced that his honesty, his word was the best
+      guarantee. &ldquo;It will be best if I write at once. Take a seat, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went up to the table and began to write. As Nekhludoff sat down he
+      looked at the narrow, bald skull, at the fat, blue-veined hand that was
+      swiftly guiding the pen, and wondered why this evidently indifferent man
+      was doing what he did and why he was doing it with such care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, here you are,&rdquo; said Toporoff, sealing the envelope; &ldquo;you may let
+      your clients know,&rdquo; and he stretched his lips to imitate a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what did these people suffer for?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked, as he took the
+      envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toporoff raised his head and smiled, as if Nekhludoff&rsquo;s question gave him
+      pleasure. &ldquo;That I cannot tell. All I can say is that the interests of the
+      people guarded by us are so important that too great a zeal in matters of
+      religion is not so dangerous or so harmful as the indifference which is
+      now spreading&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how is it that in the name of religion the very first demands of
+      righteousness are violated&mdash;families are separated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Toporoff continued to smile patronisingly, evidently thinking what
+      Nekhludoff said very pretty. Anything that Nekhludoff could say he would
+      have considered very pretty and very one-sided, from the height of what he
+      considered his far-reaching office in the State.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may seem so from the point of view of a private individual,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;but from an administrative point of view it appears in a rather different
+      light. However, I must bid you good-bye, now,&rdquo; said Toporoff, bowing his
+      head and holding out his hand, which Nekhludoff pressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The interests of the people! Your interests is what you mean!&rdquo; thought
+      Nekhludoff as he went out. And he ran over in his mind the people in whom
+      is manifested the activity of the institutions that uphold religion and
+      educate the people. He began with the woman punished for the illicit sale
+      of spirits, the boy for theft, the tramp for tramping, the incendiary for
+      setting a house on fire, the banker for fraud, and that unfortunate Lydia
+      Shoustova imprisoned only because they hoped to get such information as
+      they required from her. Then he thought of the sectarians punished for
+      violating Orthodoxy, and Gourkevitch for wanting constitutional
+      government, and Nekhludoff clearly saw that all these people were
+      arrested, locked up, exiled, not really because they transgressed against
+      justice or behaved unlawfully, but only because they were an obstacle
+      hindering the officials and the rich from enjoying the property they had
+      taken away from the people. And the woman who sold wine without having a
+      license, and the thief knocking about the town, and Lydia Shoustova hiding
+      proclamations, and the sectarians upsetting superstitions, and Gourkevitch
+      desiring a constitution, were a real hindrance. It seemed perfectly clear
+      to Nekhludoff that all these officials, beginning with his aunt&rsquo;s husband,
+      the Senators, and Toporoff, down to those clean and correct gentlemen who
+      sat at the tables in the Ministry Office, were not at all troubled by the
+      fact that that in such a state of things the innocent had to suffer, but
+      were only concerned how to get rid of the really dangerous, so that the
+      rule that ten guilty should escape rather than that one innocent should be
+      condemned was not observed, but, on the contrary, for the sake of getting
+      rid of one really dangerous person, ten who seemed dangerous were
+      punished, as, when cutting a rotten piece out of anything, one has to cut
+      away some that is good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This explanation seemed very simple and clear to Nekhludoff; but its very
+      simplicity and clearness made him hesitate to accept it. Was it possible
+      that so complicated a phenomenon could have so simple and terrible an
+      explanation? Was it possible that all these words about justice, law,
+      religion, and God, and so on, were mere words, hiding the coarsest
+      cupidity and cruelty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0087" id="link2HCH0087">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MEANING OF MARIETTE&rsquo;S ATTRACTION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff would have left Petersburg on the evening of the same day, but
+      he had promised Mariette to meet her at the theatre, and though he knew
+      that he ought not to keep that promise, he deceived himself into the
+      belief that it would not be right to break his word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I capable of withstanding these temptations?&rdquo; he asked himself not
+      quite honestly. &ldquo;I shall try for the last time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dressed in his evening clothes, and arrived at the theatre during the
+      second act of the eternal Dame aux Camelias, in which a foreign actress
+      once again, and in a novel manner, showed how women die of consumption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theatre was quite full. Mariette&rsquo;s box was at once, and with great
+      deference, shown to Nekhludoff at his request. A liveried servant stood in
+      the corridor outside; he bowed to Nekhludoff as to one whom he knew, and
+      opened the door of the box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the people who sat and stood in the boxes on the opposite side, those
+      who sat near and those who were in the parterre, with their grey, grizzly,
+      bald, or curly heads&mdash;all were absorbed in watching the thin, bony
+      actress who, dressed in silks and laces, was wriggling before them, and
+      speaking in an unnatural voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some one called &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; when the door opened, and two streams, one of
+      cool, the other of hot, air touched Nekhludoff&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mariette and a lady whom he did not know, with a red cape and a big, heavy
+      head-dress, were in the box, and two men also, Mariette&rsquo;s husband, the
+      General, a tall, handsome man with a severe, inscrutable countenance, a
+      Roman nose, and a uniform padded round the chest, and a fair man, with a
+      bit of shaved chin between pompous whiskers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mariette, graceful, slight, elegant, her low-necked dress showing her
+      firm, shapely, slanting shoulders, with a little black mole where they
+      joined her neck, immediately turned, and pointed with her face to a chair
+      behind her in an engaging manner, and smiled a smile that seemed full of
+      meaning to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband looked at him in the quiet way in which he did everything, and
+      bowed. In the look he exchanged with his wife, the master, the owner of a
+      beautiful woman, was to be seen at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the monologue was over the theatre resounded with the clapping of
+      hands. Mariette rose, and holding up her rustling silk skirt, went into
+      the back of the box and introduced Nekhludoff to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General, without ceasing to smile with his eyes, said he was very
+      pleased, and then sat inscrutably silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to have left to-day, had I not promised,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff to
+      Mariette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do not care to see me,&rdquo; said Mariette, in answer to what his words
+      implied, &ldquo;you will see a wonderful actress. Was she not splendid in the
+      last scene?&rdquo; she asked, turning to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband bowed his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This sort of thing does not touch me,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I have seen so
+      much real suffering lately that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sit down and tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The husband listened, his eyes smiling more and more ironically. &ldquo;I have
+      been to see that woman whom they have set free, and who has been kept in
+      prison for so long; she is quite broken down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the woman I spoke to you about,&rdquo; Mariette said to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I was very pleased that she could be set free,&rdquo; said the husband
+      quietly, nodding and smiling under his moustache with evident irony, so it
+      seemed to Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I shall go and have a smoke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sat waiting to hear what the something was that Mariette had to
+      tell him. She said nothing, and did not even try to say anything, but
+      joked and spoke about the performance, which she thought ought to touch
+      Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff saw that she had nothing to tell, but only wished
+      to show herself to him in all the splendour of her evening toilet, with
+      her shoulders and little mole; and this was pleasant and yet repulsive to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The charm that had veiled all this sort of thing from Nekhludoff was not
+      removed, but it was as if he could see what lay beneath. Looking at
+      Mariette, he admired her, and yet he knew that she was a liar, living with
+      a husband who was making his career by means of the tears and lives of
+      hundreds and hundreds of people, and that she was quite indifferent about
+      it, and that all she had said the day before was untrue. What she wanted&mdash;neither
+      he nor she knew why&mdash;was to make him fall in love with her. This both
+      attracted and disgusted him. Several times, on the point of going away, he
+      took up his hat, and then stayed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at last, when the husband returned with a strong smell of tobacco in
+      his thick moustache, and looked at Nekhludoff with a patronising,
+      contemptuous air, as if not recognising him, Nekhludoff left the box
+      before the door was closed again, found his overcoat, and went out of the
+      theatre. As he was walking home along the Nevski, he could not help
+      noticing a well-shaped and aggressively finely-dressed woman, who was
+      quietly walking in front of him along the broad asphalt pavement. The
+      consciousness of her detestable power was noticeable in her face and the
+      whole of her figure. All who met or passed that woman looked at her.
+      Nekhludoff walked faster than she did and, involuntarily, also looked her
+      in the face. The face, which was probably painted, was handsome, and the
+      woman looked at him with a smile and her eyes sparkled. And, curiously
+      enough, Nekhludoff was suddenly reminded of Mariette, because he again
+      felt both attracted and disgusted just as when in the theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having hurriedly passed her, Nekhludoff turned off on to the Morskaya, and
+      passed on to the embankment, where, to the surprise of a policeman, he
+      began pacing up and down the pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other one gave me just such a smile when I entered the theatre,&rdquo; he
+      thought, &ldquo;and the meaning of the smile was the same. The only difference
+      is, that this one said plainly, &lsquo;If you want me, take me; if not, go your
+      way,&rsquo; and the other one pretended that she was not thinking of this, but
+      living in some high and refined state, while this was really at the root.
+      Besides, this one was driven to it by necessity, while the other amused
+      herself by playing with that enchanting, disgusting, frightful passion.
+      This woman of the street was like stagnant, smelling water offered to
+      those whose thirst was greater than their disgust; that other one in the
+      theatre was like the poison which, unnoticed, poisons everything it gets
+      into.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff recalled his liaison with the Marechal&rsquo;s wife, and shameful
+      memories rose before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting,&rdquo; thought he, &ldquo;but
+      as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of
+      our spiritual life and despise it; and&mdash;whether one has fallen or
+      resisted&mdash;one remains what one was before. But when that same
+      animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands
+      our worship&mdash;then we are swallowed up by it completely, and worship
+      animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff perceived all this now as clearly as he saw the palace, the
+      sentinels, the fortress, the river, the boats, and the Stock Exchange. And
+      just as on this northern summer night there was no restful darkness on the
+      earth, but only a dismal, dull light coming from an invisible source, so
+      in Nekhludoff&rsquo;s soul there was no longer the restful darkness, ignorance.
+      Everything seemed clear. It was clear that everything considered important
+      and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all the glamour and
+      luxury hid the old, well-known crimes, which not only remained unpunished
+      but were adorned with all the splendour which men were capable of
+      inventing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff wished to forget all this, not to see it, but he could no
+      longer help seeing it. Though he could not see the source of the light
+      which revealed it to him any more than he could see the source of the
+      light which lay over Petersburg; and though the light appeared to him
+      dull, dismal, and unnatural, yet he could not help seeing what it
+      revealed, and he felt both joyful and anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0088" id="link2HCH0088">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX. FOR HER SAKE AND FOR GOD&rsquo;S.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On his return to Moscow Nekhludoff went at once to the prison hospital to
+      bring Maslova the sad news that the Senate had confirmed the decision of
+      the Court, and that she must prepare to go to Siberia. He had little hope
+      of the success of his petition to the Emperor, which the advocate had
+      written for him, and which he now brought with him for Maslova to sign.
+      And, strange to say, he did not at present even wish to succeed; he had
+      got used to the thought of going to Siberia and living among the exiled
+      and the convicts, and he could not easily picture to himself how his life
+      and Maslova&rsquo;s would shape if she were acquitted. He remembered the thought
+      of the American writer, Thoreau, who at the time when slavery existed in
+      America said that &ldquo;under a government that imprisons any unjustly the true
+      place for a just man is also a prison.&rdquo; Nekhludoff, especially after his
+      visit to Petersburg and all he discovered there, thought in the same way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the only place befitting an honest man in Russia at the present time
+      is a prison,&rdquo; he thought, and even felt that this applied to him
+      personally, when he drove up to the prison and entered its walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doorkeeper recognised Nekhludoff, and told him at once that Maslova
+      was no longer there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the cell again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why has she been removed?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, your excellency, what are such people?&rdquo; said the doorkeeper,
+      contemptuously. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s been carrying on with the medical assistant, so the
+      head doctor ordered her back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had had no idea how near Maslova and the state of her mind were
+      to him. He was stunned by the news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt as one feels at the news of a great and unforeseen misfortune, and
+      his pain was very severe. His first feeling was one of shame. He, with his
+      joyful idea of the change that he imagined was going on in her soul, now
+      seemed ridiculous in his own eyes. He thought that all her pretence of not
+      wishing to accept his sacrifice, all the reproaches and tears, were only
+      the devices of a depraved woman, who wished to use him to the best
+      advantage. He seemed to remember having seen signs of obduracy at his last
+      interview with her. All this flashed through his mind as he instinctively
+      put on his hat and left the hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I to do now? Am I still bound to her? Has this action of hers not
+      set me free?&rdquo; And as he put these questions to himself he knew at once
+      that if he considered himself free, and threw her up, he would be
+      punishing himself, and not her, which was what he wished to do, and he was
+      seized with fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, what has happened cannot alter&mdash;it can only strengthen my
+      resolve. Let her do what flows from the state her mind is in. If it is
+      carrying on with the medical assistant, let her carry on with the medical
+      assistant; that is her business. I must do what my conscience demands of
+      me. And my conscience expects me to sacrifice my freedom. My resolution to
+      marry her, if only in form, and to follow wherever she may be sent,
+      remains unalterable.&rdquo; Nekhludoff said all this to himself with vicious
+      obstinacy as he left the hospital and walked with resolute steps towards
+      the big gates of the prison. He asked the warder on duty at the gate to
+      inform the inspector that he wished to see Maslova. The warder knew
+      Nekhludoff, and told him of an important change that had taken place in
+      the prison. The old inspector had been discharged, and a new, very severe
+      official appointed in his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are so strict nowadays, it&rsquo;s just awful,&rdquo; said the jailer. &ldquo;He is in
+      here; they will let him know directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new inspector was in the prison and soon came to Nekhludoff. He was a
+      tall, angular man, with high cheek bones, morose, and very slow in his
+      movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Interviews are allowed in the visiting room on the appointed days,&rdquo; he
+      said, without looking at Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have a petition to the Emperor, which I want signed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can give it to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must see the prisoner myself. I was always allowed to before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was so, before,&rdquo; said the inspector, with a furtive glance at
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a permission from the governor,&rdquo; insisted Nekhludoff, and took out
+      his pocket-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me,&rdquo; said the inspector, taking the paper from Nekhludoff with his
+      long, dry, white fingers, on the first of which was a gold ring, still
+      without looking him in the eyes. He read the paper slowly. &ldquo;Step into the
+      office, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time the office was empty. The inspector sat down by the table and
+      began sorting some papers that lay on it, evidently intending to be
+      present at the interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff asked whether he might see the political prisoner,
+      Doukhova, the inspector answered, shortly, that he could not. &ldquo;Interviews
+      with political prisoners are not permitted,&rdquo; he said, and again fixed his
+      attention on his papers. With a letter to Doukhova in his pocket,
+      Nekhludoff felt as if he had committed some offence, and his plans had
+      been discovered and frustrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Maslova entered the room the inspector raised his head, and, without
+      looking at either her or Nekhludoff, remarked: &ldquo;You may talk,&rdquo; and went on
+      sorting his papers. Maslova had again the white jacket, petticoat and
+      kerchief on. When she came up to Nekhludoff and saw his cold, hard look,
+      she blushed scarlet, and crumbling the hem of her jacket with her hand,
+      she cast down her eyes. Her confusion, so it seemed to Nekhludoff,
+      confirmed the hospital doorkeeper&rsquo;s words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had meant to treat her in the same way as before, but could not
+      bring himself to shake hands with her, so disgusting was she to him now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought you bad news,&rdquo; he said, in a monotonous voice, without
+      looking at her or taking her hand. &ldquo;The Senate has refused.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it would,&rdquo; she said, in a strange tone, as if she were gasping for
+      breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Formerly Nekhludoff would have asked why she said she knew it would; now
+      he only looked at her. Her eyes were full of tears. But this did not
+      soften him; it roused his irritation against her even more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector rose and began pacing up and down the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the disgust Nekhludoff was feeling at the moment, he
+      considered it right to express his regret at the Senate&rsquo;s decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not despair,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The petition to the Emperor may meet
+      with success, and I hope&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not thinking of that,&rdquo; she said, looking piteously at him with her
+      wet, squinting eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been to the hospital, and they have most likely told you about
+      me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What of that? That is your affair,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff coldly, and frowned.
+      The cruel feeling of wounded pride that had quieted down rose with renewed
+      force when she mentioned the hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He, a man of the world, whom any girl of the best families would think it
+      happiness to marry, offered himself as a husband to this woman, and she
+      could not even wait, but began intriguing with the medical assistant,&rdquo;
+       thought he, with a look of hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, sign this petition,&rdquo; he said, taking a large envelope from his
+      pocket, and laying the paper on the table. She wiped the tears with a
+      corner of her kerchief, and asked what to write and where.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He showed her, and she sat down and arranged the cuff of her right sleeve
+      with her left hand; he stood behind her, and silently looked at her back,
+      which shook with suppressed emotion, and evil and good feelings were
+      fighting in his breast&mdash;feelings of wounded pride and of pity for her
+      who was suffering&mdash;and the last feeling was victorious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not remember which came first; did the pity for her first enter
+      his heart, or did he first remember his own sins&mdash;his own repulsive
+      actions, the very same for which he was condemning her? Anyhow, he both
+      felt himself guilty and pitied her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having signed the petition and wiped her inky finger on her petticoat, she
+      got up and looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever happens, whatever comes of it, my resolve remains unchanged,&rdquo;
+       said Nekhludoff. The thought that he had forgiven her heightened his
+      feeling of pity and tenderness for her, and he wished to comfort her. &ldquo;I
+      will do what I have said; wherever they take you I shall be with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the use?&rdquo; she interrupted hurriedly, though her whole face lighted
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think what you will want on the way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know of anything in particular, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector came up, and without waiting for a remark from him
+      Nekhludoff took leave, and went out with peace, joy, and love towards
+      everybody in his heart such as he had never felt before. The certainty
+      that no action of Maslova could change his love for her filled him with
+      joy and raised him to a level which he had never before attained. Let her
+      intrigue with the medical assistant; that was her business. He loved her
+      not for his own but for her sake and for God&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this intrigue, for which Maslova was turned out of the hospital, and
+      of which Nekhludoff believed she was really guilty, consisted of the
+      following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova was sent by the head nurse to get some herb tea from the
+      dispensary at the end of the corridor, and there, all alone, she found the
+      medical assistant, a tall man, with a blotchy face, who had for a long
+      time been bothering her. In trying to get away from him Maslova gave him
+      such a push that he knocked his head against a shelf, from which two
+      bottles fell and broke. The head doctor, who was passing at that moment,
+      heard the sound of breaking glass, and saw Maslova run out, quite red, and
+      shouted to her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my good woman, if you start intriguing here, I&rsquo;ll send you about your
+      business. What is the meaning of it?&rdquo; he went on, addressing the medical
+      assistant, and looking at him over his spectacles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant smiled, and began to justify himself. The doctor gave no
+      heed to him, but, lifting his head so that he now looked through his
+      spectacles, he entered the ward. He told the inspector the same day to
+      send another more sedate assistant-nurse in Maslova&rsquo;s place. And this was
+      her &ldquo;intrigue&rdquo; with the medical assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being turned out for a love intrigue was particularly painful to Maslova,
+      because the relations with men, which had long been repulsive to her, had
+      become specially disgusting after meeting Nekhludoff. The thought that,
+      judging her by her past and present position, every man, the blotchy
+      assistant among them, considered he had a right to offend her, and was
+      surprised at her refusal, hurt her deeply, and made her pity herself and
+      brought tears to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she went out to Nekhludoff this time she wished to clear herself of
+      the false charge which she knew he would certainly have heard about. But
+      when she began to justify herself she felt he did not believe her, and
+      that her excuses would only strengthen his suspicions; tears choked her,
+      and she was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova still thought and continued to persuade herself that she had never
+      forgiven him, and hated him, as she told him at their second interview,
+      but in reality she loved him again, and loved him so that she did all he
+      wished her to do; left off drinking, smoking, coquetting, and entered the
+      hospital because she knew he wished it. And if every time he reminded her
+      of it, she refused so decidedly to accept his sacrifice and marry him, it
+      was because she liked repeating the proud words she had once uttered, and
+      because she knew that a marriage with her would be a misfortune for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had resolutely made up her mind that she would not accept his
+      sacrifice, and yet the thought that he despised her and believed that she
+      still was what she had been, and did not notice the change that had taken
+      place in her, was very painful. That he could still think she had done
+      wrong while in the hospital tormented her more than the news that her
+      sentence was confirmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0089" id="link2HCH0089">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX. THE ASTONISHING INSTITUTION CALLED CRIMINAL LAW.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Maslova might be sent off with the first gang of prisoners, therefore
+      Nekhludoff got ready for his departure. But there was so much to be done
+      that he felt that he could not finish it, however much time he might have.
+      It was quite different now from what it had been. Formerly he used to be
+      obliged to look for an occupation, the interest of which always centred in
+      one person, i.e., Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, and yet, though every
+      interest of his life was thus centred, all these occupations were very
+      wearisome. Now all his occupations related to other people and not to
+      Dmitri Ivanovitch, and they were all interesting and attractive, and there
+      was no end to them. Nor was this all. Formerly Dmitri Ivanovitch
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s occupations always made him feel vexed and irritable; now
+      they produced a joyful state of mind. The business at present occupying
+      Nekhludoff could be divided under three headings. He himself, with his
+      usual pedantry, divided it in that way, and accordingly kept the papers
+      referring to it in three different portfolios. The first referred to
+      Maslova, and was chiefly that of taking steps to get her petition to the
+      Emperor attended to, and preparing for her probable journey to Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second was about his estates. In Panovo he had given the land to the
+      peasants on condition of their paying rent to be put to their own communal
+      use. But he had to confirm this transaction by a legal deed, and to make
+      his will, in accordance with it. In Kousminski the state of things was
+      still as he had first arranged it, i.e., he was to receive the rent; but
+      the terms had to be fixed, and also how much of the money he would use to
+      live on, and how much he would leave for the peasants&rsquo; use. As he did not
+      know what his journey to Siberia would cost him, he could not decide to
+      lose this revenue altogether, though he reduced the income from it by
+      half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third part of his business was to help the convicts, who applied more
+      and more often to him. At first when he came in contact with the
+      prisoners, and they appealed to him for help, he at once began interceding
+      for them, hoping to lighten their fate, but he soon had so many
+      applications that he felt the impossibility of attending to all of them,
+      and that naturally led him to take up another piece of work, which at last
+      roused his interest even more than the three first. This new part of his
+      business was finding an answer to the following questions: What was this
+      astonishing institution called criminal law, of which the results were
+      that in the prison, with some of the inmates of which he had lately become
+      acquainted, and in all those other places of confinement, from the Peter
+      and Paul Fortress in Petersburg to the island of Sakhalin, hundreds and
+      thousands of victims were pining? What did this strange criminal law exist
+      for? How had it originated?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his personal relations with the prisoners, from notes by some of
+      those in confinement, and by questioning the advocate and the prison
+      priest, Nekhludoff came to the conclusion that the convicts, the so-called
+      criminals, could be divided into five classes. The first were quite
+      innocent people, condemned by judicial blunder. Such were the Menshoffs,
+      supposed to be incendiaries, Maslova, and others. There were not many of
+      these; according to the priest&rsquo;s words, only seven per cent., but their
+      condition excited particular interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the second class belong persons condemned for actions done under
+      peculiar circumstances, i.e., in a fit of passion, jealousy, or
+      drunkenness, circumstances under which those who judged them would surely
+      have committed the same actions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third class consisted of people punished for having committed actions
+      which, according to their understanding, were quite natural, and even
+      good, but which those other people, the men who made the laws, considered
+      to be crimes. Such were the persons who sold spirits without a license,
+      smugglers, those who gathered grass and wood on large estates and in the
+      forests belonging to the Crown; the thieving miners; and those unbelieving
+      people who robbed churches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the fourth class belonged those who were imprisoned only because they
+      stood morally higher than the average level of society. Such were the
+      Sectarians, the Poles, the Circassians rebelling in order to regain their
+      independence, the political prisoners, the Socialists, the strikers
+      condemned for withstanding the authorities. There was, according to
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s observations, a very large percentage belonging to this
+      class; among them some of the best of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fifth class consisted of persons who had been far more sinned against
+      by society than they had sinned against it. These were castaways,
+      stupefied by continual oppression and temptation, such as the boy who had
+      stolen the rugs, and hundreds of others whom Nekhludoff had seen in the
+      prison and out of it. The conditions under which they lived seemed to lead
+      on systematically to those actions which are termed crimes. A great many
+      thieves and murderers with whom he had lately come in contact, according
+      to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s estimate, belonged to this class. To this class Nekhludoff
+      also reckoned those depraved, demoralised creatures whom the new school of
+      criminology classify as the criminal type, and the existence of which is
+      considered to be the chief proof of the necessity of criminal law and
+      punishment. This demoralised, depraved, abnormal type was, according to
+      Nekhludoff, exactly the same as that against whom society had sinned, only
+      here society had sinned not directly against them, but against their
+      parents and forefathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among this latter class Nekhludoff was specially struck by one Okhotin, an
+      inveterate thief, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, brought up in a
+      doss-house, who, up to the age of 30, had apparently never met with any
+      one whose morality was above that of a policeman, and who had got into a
+      band of thieves when quite young. He was gifted with an extraordinary
+      sense of humour, by means of which he made himself very attractive. He
+      asked Nekhludoff for protection, at the same time making fun of himself,
+      the lawyers, the prison, and laws human and divine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another was the handsome Fedoroff, who, with a band of robbers, of whom he
+      was the chief, had robbed and murdered an old man, an official. Fedoroff
+      was a peasant, whose father had been unlawfully deprived of his house, and
+      who, later on, when serving as a soldier, had suffered much because he had
+      fallen in love with an officer&rsquo;s mistress. He had a fascinating,
+      passionate nature, that longed for enjoyment at any cost. He had never met
+      anybody who restrained himself for any cause whatever, and had never heard
+      a word about any aim in life other than enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff distinctly saw that both these men were richly endowed by
+      nature, but had been neglected and crippled like uncared-for plants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had also met a tramp and a woman who had repelled him by their dulness
+      and seeming cruelty, but even in them he could find no trace of the
+      criminal type written about by the Italian school, but only saw in them
+      people who were repulsive to him personally, just in the same way as some
+      he had met outside the prison, in swallow-tail coats wearing epaulettes,
+      or bedecked with lace. And so the investigation of the reasons why all
+      these very different persons were put in prison, while others just like
+      them were going about free and even judging them, formed a fourth task for
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hoped to find an answer to this question in books, and bought all that
+      referred to it. He got the works of Lombroso, Garofalo, Ferry, List,
+      Maudsley, Tard, and read them carefully. But as he read he became more and
+      more disappointed. It happened to him as it always happens to those who
+      turn to science not in order to play a part in it, nor to write, nor to
+      dispute, nor to teach, but simply for an answer to an every-day question
+      of life. Science answered thousands of different very subtle and ingenious
+      questions touching criminal law, but not the one he was trying to solve.
+      He asked a very simple question: &ldquo;Why, and with what right, do some people
+      lock up, torment, exile, flog, and kill others, while they are themselves
+      just like those whom they torment, flog, and kill?&rdquo; And in answer he got
+      deliberations as to whether human beings had free will or not. Whether
+      signs of criminality could be detected by measuring the skulls or not.
+      What part heredity played in crime. Whether immorality could be inherited.
+      What madness is, what degeneration is, and what temperament is. How
+      climate, food, ignorance, imitativeness, hypnotism, or passion act. What
+      society is. What are its duties, etc., etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These disquisitions reminded him of the answer he once got from a little
+      boy whom he met coming home from school. Nekhludoff asked him if he had
+      learned his spelling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have,&rdquo; answered the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, tell me, how do you spell &lsquo;leg&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dog&rsquo;s leg, or what kind of leg?&rdquo; the boy answered, with a sly look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Answers in the form of new questions, like the boy&rsquo;s, was all Nekhludoff
+      got in reply to his one primary question. He found much that was clever,
+      learned much that was interesting, but what he did not find was an answer
+      to the principal question: By what right some people punish others?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not only did he not find any answer, but all the arguments were brought
+      forward in order to explain and vindicate punishment, the necessity of
+      which was taken as an axiom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff read much, but only in snatches, and putting down his failure
+      to this superficial way of reading, hoped to find the answer later on. He
+      would not allow himself to believe in the truth of the answer which began,
+      more and more often, to present itself to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0090" id="link2HCH0090">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI. NEKHLUDOFF&rsquo;S SISTER AND HER HUSBAND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The gang of prisoners, with Maslova among them, was to start on the 5th
+      July. Nekhludoff arranged to start on the same day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day before, Nekhludoff&rsquo;s sister and her husband came to town to see
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s sister, Nathalie Ivanovna Rogozhinsky, was 10 years older
+      than her brother. She had been very fond of him when he was a boy, and
+      later on, just before her marriage, they grew very close to each other, as
+      if they were equals, she being a young woman of 25, he a lad of 15. At
+      that time she was in love with his friend, Nikolenka Irtenieff, since
+      dead. They both loved Nikolenka, and loved in him and in themselves that
+      which is good, and which unites all men. Since then they had both been
+      depraved, he by military service and a vicious life, she by marriage with
+      a man whom she loved with a sensual love, who did not care for the things
+      that had once been so dear and holy to her and to her brother, nor even
+      understand the meaning of those aspirations towards moral perfection and
+      the service of mankind, which once constituted her life, and put them down
+      to ambition and the wish to show off; that being the only explanation
+      comprehensible to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nathalie&rsquo;s husband had been a man without a name and without means, but
+      cleverly steering towards Liberalism or Conservatism, according to which
+      best suited his purpose, he managed to make a comparatively brilliant
+      judicial career. Some peculiarity which made him attractive to women
+      assisted him when he was no longer in his first youth. While travelling
+      abroad he made Nekhludoff&rsquo;s acquaintance, and managed to make Nathalie,
+      who was also no longer a girl, fall in love with him, rather against her
+      mother&rsquo;s wishes who considered a marriage with him to be a misalliance for
+      her daughter. Nekhludoff, though he tried to hide it from himself, though
+      he fought against it, hated his brother-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff had a strong antipathy towards him because of the vulgarity of
+      his feelings, his assurance and narrowness, but chiefly because of
+      Nathalie, who managed to love him in spite of the narrowness of his
+      nature, and loved him so selfishly, so sensually, and stifled for his sake
+      all the good that had been in her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It always hurt Nekhludoff to think of Nathalie as the wife of that hairy,
+      self-assured man with the shiny, bald patch on his head. He could not even
+      master a feeling of revulsion towards their children, and when he heard
+      that she was again going to have a baby, he felt something like sorrow
+      that she had once more been infected with something bad by this man who
+      was so foreign to him. The Rogozhinskys had come to Moscow alone, having
+      left their two children&mdash;a boy and a girl&mdash;at home, and stopped
+      in the best rooms of the best hotel. Nathalie at once went to her mother&rsquo;s
+      old house, but hearing from Agraphena Petrovna that her brother had left,
+      and was living in a lodging-house, she drove there. The dirty servant met
+      her in the stuffy passage, dark but for a lamp which burnt there all day.
+      He told her that the Prince was not in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nathalie asked to be shown into his rooms, as she wished to leave a note
+      for him, and the man took her up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nathalie carefully examined her brother&rsquo;s two little rooms. She noticed in
+      everything the love of cleanliness and order she knew so well in him, and
+      was struck by the novel simplicity of the surroundings. On his
+      writing-table she saw the paper-weight with the bronze dog on the top
+      which she remembered; the tidy way in which his different portfolios and
+      writing utensils were placed on the table was also familiar, and so was
+      the large, crooked ivory paper knife which marked the place in a French
+      book by Tard, which lay with other volumes on punishment and a book in
+      English by Henry George. She sat down at the table and wrote a note asking
+      him to be sure to come that same day, and shaking her head in surprise at
+      what she saw, she returned to her hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two questions regarding her brother now interested Nathalie: his marriage
+      with Katusha, which she had heard spoken about in their town&mdash;for
+      everybody was speaking about it&mdash;and his giving away the land to the
+      peasants, which was also known, and struck many as something of a
+      political nature, and dangerous. The marriage with Katusha pleased her in
+      a way. She admired that resoluteness which was so like him and herself as
+      they used to be in those happy times before her marriage. And yet she was
+      horrified when she thought her brother was going to marry such a dreadful
+      woman. The latter was the stronger feeling of the two, and she decided to
+      use all her influence to prevent him from doing it, though she knew how
+      difficult this would be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other matter, the giving up of the land to the peasants, did not touch
+      her so nearly, but her husband was very indignant about it, and expected
+      her to influence her brother against it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rogozhinsky said that such an action was the height of inconsistency,
+      flightiness, and pride, the only possible explanation of which was the
+      desire to appear original, to brag, to make one&rsquo;s self talked about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sense could there be in letting the land to the peasants, on
+      condition that they pay the rent to themselves?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If he was
+      resolved to do such a thing, why not sell the land to them through the
+      Peasants&rsquo; Bank? There might have been some sense in that. In fact, this
+      act verges on insanity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Rogozhinsky began seriously thinking about putting Nekhludoff under
+      guardianship, and demanded of his wife that she should speak seriously to
+      her brother about his curious intention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0091" id="link2HCH0091">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII. NEKHLUDOFF&rsquo;S ANARCHISM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As soon as Nekhludoff returned that evening and saw his sister&rsquo;s note on
+      the table he started to go and see her. He found Nathalie alone, her
+      husband having gone to take a rest in the next room. She wore a
+      tightly-fitting black silk dress, with a red bow in front. Her black hair
+      was crimped and arranged according to the latest fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pains she took to appear young, for the sake of her husband, whose
+      equal she was in years, were very obvious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw her brother she jumped up and hurried towards him, with her
+      silk dress rustling. They kissed, and looked smilingly at each other.
+      There passed between them that mysterious exchange of looks, full of
+      meaning, in which all was true, and which cannot be expressed in words.
+      Then came words which were not true. They had not met since their mother&rsquo;s
+      death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have grown stouter and younger,&rdquo; he said, and her lips puckered up
+      with pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have grown thinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and how is your husband?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is taking a rest; he did not sleep all night.&rdquo; There was much to say,
+      but it was not said in words; only their looks expressed what their words
+      failed to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know. I moved because the house is too big for me. I was lonely
+      there, and dull. I want nothing of all that is there, so that you had
+      better take it all&mdash;the furniture, I mean, and things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Agraphena Petrovna told me. I went there. Thanks, very much. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the hotel waiter brought in a silver tea-set. While he set
+      the table they were silent. Then Nathalie sat down at the table and made
+      the tea, still in silence. Nekhludoff also said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Nathalie began resolutely. &ldquo;Well, Dmitri, I know all about it.&rdquo;
+       And she looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What of that? l am glad you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you hope to reform her after the life she has led?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat quite straight on a small chair, and listened attentively, trying
+      to understand her and to answer rightly. The state of mind called forth in
+      him by his last interview with Maslova still filled his soul with quiet
+      joy and good will to all men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not her but myself I wish to reform,&rdquo; he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nathalie sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are other means besides marriage to do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I think it is the best. Besides, it leads me into that world in which
+      I can be of use.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot believe you will be happy,&rdquo; said Nathalie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not my happiness that is the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, but if she has a heart she cannot be happy&mdash;cannot even
+      wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does not wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand; but life&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Demands something different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It demands nothing but that we should do what is right,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff,
+      looking into her face, still handsome, though slightly wrinkled round eyes
+      and mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand,&rdquo; she said, and sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor darling; how could she change so?&rdquo; he thought, calling back to his
+      mind Nathalie as she had been before her marriage, and feeling towards her
+      a tenderness woven out of innumerable memories of childhood. At that
+      moment Rogozhinsky entered the room, with head thrown back and expanded
+      chest, and stepping lightly and softly in his usual manner, his
+      spectacles, his bald patch, and his black beard all glistening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do? How do you do?&rdquo; he said, laying an unnatural and
+      intentional stress on his words. (Though, soon after the marriage, they
+      had tried to be more familiar with each other, they had never succeeded.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They shook hands, and Rogozhinsky sank softly into an easy-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I not interrupting your conversation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I do not wish to hide what I am saying or doing from any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as Nekhludoff saw the hairy hands, and heard the patronising,
+      self-assured tones, his meekness left him in a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we were talking about his intentions,&rdquo; said Nathalie. &ldquo;Shall I give
+      you a cup of tea?&rdquo; she added, taking the teapot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, please. What particular intentions do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That of going to Siberia with the gang of prisoners, among whom is the
+      woman I consider myself to have wronged,&rdquo; uttered Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear not only to accompany her, but more than that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and to marry her if she wishes it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me! But if you do not object I should like to ask you to explain
+      your motives. I do not understand them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My motives are that this woman&mdash;that this woman&rsquo;s first step on her
+      way to degradation&mdash;&rdquo; Nekhludoff got angry with himself, and was
+      unable to find the right expression. &ldquo;My motives are that I am the guilty
+      one, and she gets the punishment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she is being punished she cannot be innocent, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is quite innocent.&rdquo; And Nekhludoff related the whole incident with
+      unnecessary warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that was a case of carelessness on the part of the president, the
+      result of which was a thoughtless answer on the part of the jury; but
+      there is the Senate for cases like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Senate has rejected the appeal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if the Senate has rejected it, there cannot have been sufficient
+      reasons for an appeal,&rdquo; said Rogozhinsky, evidently sharing the prevailing
+      opinion that truth is the product of judicial decrees. &ldquo;The Senate cannot
+      enter into the question on its merits. If there is a real mistake, the
+      Emperor should be petitioned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That has been done, but there is no probability of success. They will
+      apply to the Department of the Ministry, the Department will consult the
+      Senate, the Senate will repeat its decision, and, as usual, the innocent
+      will get punished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place, the Department of the Ministry won&rsquo;t consult the
+      Senate,&rdquo; said Rogozhinsky, with a condescending smile; &ldquo;it will give
+      orders for the original deeds to be sent from the Law Court, and if it
+      discovers a mistake it will decide accordingly. And, secondly, the
+      innocent are never punished, or at least in very rare, exceptional cases.
+      It is the guilty who are punished,&rdquo; Rogozhinsky said deliberately, and
+      smiled self-complacently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I have become fully convinced that most of those condemned by law are
+      innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Innocent in the literal sense. Just as this woman is innocent of
+      poisoning any one; as innocent as a peasant I have just come to know, of
+      the murder he never committed; as a mother and son who were on the point
+      of being condemned for incendiarism, which was committed by the owner of
+      the house that was set on fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, of course there always have been and always will be judicial
+      errors. Human institutions cannot be perfect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, besides, there are a great many people convicted who are innocent of
+      doing anything considered wrong by the society they have grown up in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, this is not so; every thief knows that stealing is wrong, and
+      that we should not steal; that it is immoral,&rdquo; said Rogozhinsky, with his
+      quiet, self-assured, slightly contemptuous smile, which specially
+      irritated Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he does not know it; they say to him &lsquo;don&rsquo;t steal,&rsquo; and he knows that
+      the master of the factory steals his labour by keeping back his wages;
+      that the Government, with its officials, robs him continually by
+      taxation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, this is anarchism,&rdquo; Rogozhinsky said, quietly defining his
+      brother-in-law&rsquo;s words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it is; I am only telling you the truth,&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      continued. &ldquo;He knows that the Government is robbing him, knows that we
+      landed proprietors have robbed him long since, robbed him of the land
+      which should be the common property of all, and then, if he picks up dry
+      wood to light his fire on that land stolen from him, we put him in jail,
+      and try to persuade him that he is a thief. Of course he knows that not he
+      but those who robbed him of the land are thieves, and that to get any
+      restitution of what has been robbed is his duty towards his family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand, or if I do I cannot agree with it. The land must be
+      somebody&rsquo;s property,&rdquo; began Rogozhinsky quietly, and, convinced that
+      Nekhludoff was a Socialist, and that Socialism demands that all the land
+      should be divided equally, that such a division would be very foolish, and
+      that he could easily prove it to be so, he said. &ldquo;If you divided it
+      equally to-day, it would to-morrow be again in the hands of the most
+      industrious and clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody is thinking of dividing the land equally. The land must not be
+      anybody&rsquo;s property; must not be a thing to be bought and sold or rented.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rights of property are inborn in man; without them the cultivation of
+      land would present no interest. Destroy the rights of property and we
+      lapse into barbarism.&rdquo; Rogozhinsky uttered this authoritatively, repeating
+      the usual argument in favour of private ownership of land which is
+      supposed to be irrefutable, based on the assumption that people&rsquo;s desire
+      to possess land proves that they need it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, only when the land is nobody&rsquo;s property will it cease to
+      lie idle, as it does now, while the landlords, like dogs in the manger,
+      unable themselves to put it to use, will not let those use it who are
+      able.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Dmitri Ivanovitch, what you are saying is sheer madness. Is it
+      possible to abolish property in land in our age? I know it is your old
+      hobby. But allow me to tell you straight,&rdquo; and Rogozhinsky grew pale, and
+      his voice trembled. It was evident that this question touched him very
+      nearly. &ldquo;I should advise you to consider this question well before
+      attempting to solve it practically.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you speaking of my personal affairs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I hold that we who are placed in special circumstances should bear
+      the responsibilities which spring from those circumstances, should uphold
+      the conditions in which we were born, and which we have inherited from our
+      predecessors, and which we ought to pass on to our descendants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I consider it my duty&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a bit,&rdquo; said Rogozhinsky, not permitting the interruption. &ldquo;I am not
+      speaking for myself or my children. The position of my children is
+      assured, and I earn enough for us to live comfortably, and I expect my
+      children will live so too, so that my interest in your action&mdash;which,
+      if you will allow me to say so, is not well considered&mdash;is not based
+      on personal motives; it is on principle that I cannot agree with you. I
+      should advise you to think it well over, to read&mdash;-?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please allow me to settle my affairs, and to choose what to read and what
+      not to read, myself,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, turning pale. Feeling his hands
+      grow cold, and that he was no longer master of himself, he stopped, and
+      began drinking his tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0092" id="link2HCH0092">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIII. THE AIM OF THE LAW.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and how are the children?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked his sister when he was
+      calmer. The sister told him about the children. She said they were staying
+      with their grandmother (their father&rsquo;s mother), and, pleased that his
+      dispute with her husband had come to an end, she began telling him how her
+      children played that they were travelling, just as he used to do with his
+      three dolls, one of them a negro and another which he called the French
+      lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you really remember it all?&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and just fancy, they play in the very same way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unpleasant conversation had been brought to an end, and Nathalie was
+      quieter, but she did not care to talk in her husband&rsquo;s presence of what
+      could be comprehensible only to her brother, so, wishing to start a
+      general conversation, she began talking about the sorrow of Kamenski&rsquo;s
+      mother at losing her only son, who had fallen in a duel, for this
+      Petersburg topic of the day had now reached Moscow. Rogozhinsky expressed
+      disapproval at the state of things that excluded murder in a duel from the
+      ordinary criminal offences. This remark evoked a rejoinder from
+      Nekhludoff, and a new dispute arose on the subject. Nothing was fully
+      explained, neither of the antagonists expressed all he had in his mind,
+      each keeping to his conviction, which condemned the other. Rogozhinsky
+      felt that Nekhludoff condemned him and despised his activity, and he
+      wished to show him the injustice of his opinions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff, on the other hand, felt provoked by his brother-in-law&rsquo;s
+      interference in his affairs concerning the land. And knowing in his heart
+      of hearts that his sister, her husband, and their children, as his heirs,
+      had a right to do so, was indignant that this narrow-minded man persisted
+      with calm assurance to regard as just and lawful what Nekhludoff no longer
+      doubted was folly and crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man&rsquo;s arrogance annoyed Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could the law do?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It could sentence one of the two duellists to the mines like an ordinary
+      murderer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s hands grew cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and what good would that be?&rdquo; he asked, hotly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be just.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As if justice were the aim of the law,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The upholding of class interests! I think the law is only an instrument
+      for upholding the existing order of things beneficial to our class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a perfectly new view,&rdquo; said Rogozhinsky with a quiet smile; &ldquo;the
+      law is generally supposed to have a totally different aim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, so it has in theory but not in practice, as I have found out. The
+      law aims only at preserving the present state of things, and therefore it
+      persecutes and executes those who stand above the ordinary level and wish
+      to raise it&mdash;the so-called political prisoners, as well as those who
+      are below the average&mdash;the so-called criminal types.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not agree with you. In the first place, I cannot admit that the
+      criminals classed as political are punished because they are above the
+      average. In most cases they are the refuse of society, just as much
+      perverted, though in a different way, as the criminal types whom you
+      consider below the average.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I happen to know men who are morally far above their judges; all the
+      sectarians are moral, from&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Rogozhinsky, a man not accustomed to be interrupted when he spoke, did
+      not listen to Nekhludoff, but went on talking at the same time, thereby
+      irritating him still more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor can I admit that the object of the law is the upholding of the
+      present state of things. The law aims at reforming&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A nice kind of reform, in a prison!&rdquo; Nekhludoff put in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or removing,&rdquo; Rogozhinsky went on, persistently, &ldquo;the perverted and
+      brutalised persons that threaten society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what it doesn&rsquo;t do. Society has not the means of doing either
+      the one thing or the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that? I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; said Rogozhinsky with a forced smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that only two reasonable kinds of punishment exist. Those used in
+      the old days: corporal and capital punishment, which, as human nature
+      gradually softens, come more and more into disuse,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, now, this is quite new and very strange to hear from your lips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is reasonable to hurt a man so that he should not do in future
+      what he is hurt for doing, and it is also quite reasonable to cut a man&rsquo;s
+      head off when he is injurious or dangerous to society. These punishments
+      have a reasonable meaning. But what sense is there in locking up in a
+      prison a man perverted by want of occupation and bad example; to place him
+      in a position where he is provided for, where laziness is imposed on him,
+      and where he is in company with the most perverted of men? What reason is
+      there to take a man at public cost (it comes to more than 500 roubles per
+      head) from the Toula to the Irkoatsk government, or from Koursk&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but all the same, people are afraid of those journeys at public
+      cost, and if it were not for such journeys and the prisons, you and I
+      would not be sitting here as we are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The prisons cannot insure our safety, because these people do not stay
+      there for ever, but are set free again. On the contrary, in those
+      establishments men are brought to the greatest vice and degradation, so
+      that the danger is increased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean to say that the penitentiary system should be improved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It cannot be improved. Improved prisons would cost more than all that is
+      being now spent on the people&rsquo;s education, and would lay a still heavier
+      burden on the people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The shortcomings of the penitentiary system in nowise invalidate the law
+      itself,&rdquo; Rogozhinsky continued again, without heeding his brother-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no remedy for these shortcomings,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, raising his
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What of that? Shall we therefore go and kill, or, as a certain statesman
+      proposed, go putting out people&rsquo;s eyes?&rdquo; Rogozhinsky remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; that would be cruel, but it would be effective. What is done now is
+      cruel, and not only ineffective, but so stupid that one cannot understand
+      how people in their senses can take part in so absurd and cruel a business
+      as criminal law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I happen to take part in it,&rdquo; said Rogozhinsky, growing pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is your business. But to me it is incomprehensible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think there are a good many things incomprehensible to you,&rdquo; said
+      Rogozhinsky, with a trembling voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen how one public prosecutor did his very best to get an
+      unfortunate boy condemned, who could have evoked nothing but sympathy in
+      an unperverted mind. I know how another cross-examined a sectarian and put
+      down the reading of the Gospels as a criminal offence; in fact, the whole
+      business of the Law Courts consists in senseless and cruel actions of that
+      sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should not serve if I thought so,&rdquo; said Rogozhinsky, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff noticed a peculiar glitter under his brother-in-law&rsquo;s
+      spectacles. &ldquo;Can it be tears?&rdquo; he thought. And they were really tears of
+      injured pride. Rogozhinsky went up to the window, got out his
+      handkerchief, coughed and rubbed his spectacles, took them off, and wiped
+      his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned to the sofa he lit a cigar, and did not speak any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff felt pained and ashamed of having offended his brother-in-law
+      and his sister to such a degree, especially as he was going away the next
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He parted with them in confusion, and drove home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I have said may be true&mdash;anyhow he did not reply. But it was not
+      said in the right way. How little I must have changed if I could be
+      carried away by ill-feeling to such an extent as to hurt and wound poor
+      Nathalie in such a way!&rdquo; he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0093" id="link2HCH0093">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIV. THE PRISONERS START FOR SIBERIA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The gang of prisoners, among whom was Maslova, was to leave Moscow by rail
+      at 3 p.m.; therefore, in order to see the gang start, and walk to the
+      station with the prisoners Nekhludoff meant to reach the prison before 12
+      o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night before, as he was packing up and sorting his papers, he came
+      upon his diary, and read some bits here and there. The last bit written
+      before he left for Petersburg ran thus: &ldquo;Katusha does not wish to accept
+      my sacrifice; she wishes to make a sacrifice herself. She has conquered,
+      and so have I. She makes me happy by the inner change, which seems to me,
+      though I fear to believe it, to be going on in her. I fear to believe it,
+      yet she seems to be coming back to life.&rdquo; Then further on he read. &ldquo;I have
+      lived through something very hard and very joyful. I learnt that she has
+      behaved very badly in the hospital, and I suddenly felt great pain. I
+      never expected that it could be so painful. I spoke to her with loathing
+      and hatred, then all of a sudden I called to mind how many times I have
+      been, and even still am, though but in thought, guilty of the thing that I
+      hated her for, and immediately I became disgusting to myself, and pitied
+      her and felt happy again. If only we could manage to see the beam in our
+      own eye in time, how kind we should be.&rdquo; Then he wrote: &ldquo;I have been to
+      see Nathalie, and again self-satisfaction made me unkind and spiteful, and
+      a heavy feeling remains. Well, what is to be done? Tomorrow a new life
+      will begin. A final good-bye to the old! Many new impressions have
+      accumulated, but I cannot yet bring them to unity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he awoke the next morning Nekhludoff&rsquo;s first feeling was regret about
+      the affair between him and his brother-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot go away like this,&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;I must go and make it up with
+      them.&rdquo; But when he looked at his watch he saw that he had not time to go,
+      but must hurry so as not to be too late for the departure of the gang. He
+      hastily got everything ready, and sent the things to the station with a
+      servant and Taras, Theodosia&rsquo;s husband, who was going with them. Then he
+      took the first isvostchik he could find and drove off to the prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoners&rsquo; train started two hours before the train by which he was
+      going, so Nekhludoff paid his bill in the lodgings and left for good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was July, and the weather was unbearably hot. From the stones, the
+      walls, the iron of the roofs, which the sultry night had not cooled, the
+      heat streamed into the motionless air. When at rare intervals a slight
+      breeze did arise, it brought but a whiff of hot air filled with dust and
+      smelling of oil paint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were few people in the streets, and those who were out tried to keep
+      on the shady side. Only the sunburnt peasants, with their bronzed faces
+      and bark shoes on their feet, who were mending the road, sat hammering the
+      stones into the burning sand in the sun; while the policemen, in their
+      holland blouses, with revolvers fastened with orange cords, stood
+      melancholy and depressed in the middle of the road, changing from foot to
+      foot; and the tramcars, the horses of which wore holland hoods on their
+      heads, with slits for the ears, kept passing up and down the sunny road
+      with ringing bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff drove up to the prison the gang had not left the yard. The
+      work of delivering and receiving the prisoners that had commenced at 4
+      A.M. was still going on. The gang was to consist of 623 men and 64 women;
+      they had all to be received according to the registry lists. The sick and
+      the weak to be sorted out, and all to be delivered to the convoy. The new
+      inspector, with two assistants, the doctor and medical assistant, the
+      officer of the convoy, and the clerk, were sitting in the prison yard at a
+      table covered with writing materials and papers, which was placed in the
+      shade of a wall. They called the prisoners one by one, examined and
+      questioned them, and took notes. The rays of the sun had gradually reached
+      the table, and it was growing very hot and oppressive for want of air and
+      because of the breathing crowd of prisoners that stood close by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious, will this never come to an end!&rdquo; the convoy officer, a
+      tall, fat, red-faced man with high shoulders, who kept puffing the smoke,
+      of his cigarette into his thick moustache, asked, as he drew in a long
+      puff. &ldquo;You are killing me. From where have you got them all? Are there
+      many more?&rdquo; the clerk inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-four men and the women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you standing there for? Come on,&rdquo; shouted the convoy officer to
+      the prisoners who had not yet passed the revision, and who stood crowded
+      one behind the other. The prisoners had been standing there more than
+      three hours, packed in rows in the full sunlight, waiting their turns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this was going on in the prison yard, outside the gate, besides the
+      sentinel who stood there as usual with a gun, were drawn up about 20
+      carts, to carry the luggage of the prisoners and such prisoners as were
+      too weak to walk, and a group of relatives and friends waiting to see the
+      prisoners as they came out and to exchange a few words if a chance
+      presented itself and to give them a few things. Nekhludoff took his place
+      among the group. He had stood there about an hour when the clanking of
+      chains, the noise of footsteps, authoritative voices, the sound of
+      coughing, and the low murmur of a large crowd became audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This continued for about five minutes, during which several jailers went
+      in and out of the gateway. At last the word of command was given. The gate
+      opened with a thundering noise, the clattering of the chains became
+      louder, and the convoy soldiers, dressed in white blouses and carrying
+      guns, came out into the street and took their places in a large, exact
+      circle in front of the gate; this was evidently a usual, often-practised
+      manoeuvre. Then another command was given, and the prisoners began coming
+      out in couples, with flat, pancake-shaped caps on their shaved heads and
+      sacks over their shoulders, dragging their chained legs and swinging one
+      arm, while the other held up a sack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First came the men condemned to hard labour, all dressed alike in grey
+      trousers and cloaks with marks on the back. All of them&mdash;young and
+      old, thin and fat, pale and red, dark and bearded and beardless, Russians,
+      Tartars, and Jews&mdash;came out, clattering with their chains and briskly
+      swinging their arms as if prepared to go a long distance, but stopped
+      after having taken ten steps, and obediently took their places behind each
+      other, four abreast. Then without interval streamed out more shaved men,
+      dressed in the same manner but with chains only on their legs. These were
+      condemned to exile. They came out as briskly and stopped as suddenly,
+      taking their places four in a row. Then came those exiled by their
+      Communes. Then the women in the same order, first those condemned to hard
+      labour, with grey cloaks and kerchiefs; then the exiled women, and those
+      following their husbands of their own free will, dressed in their own town
+      or village clothing. Some of the women were carrying babies wrapped in the
+      fronts of their grey cloaks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the women came the children, boys and girls, who, like colts in a
+      herd of horses, pressed in among the prisoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men took their places silently, only coughing now and then, or making
+      short remarks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women talked without intermission. Nekhludoff thought he saw Maslova
+      as they were coming out, but she was at once lost in the large crowd, and
+      he could only see grey creatures, seemingly devoid of all that was human,
+      or at any rate of all that was womanly, with sacks on their backs and
+      children round them, taking their places behind the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though all the prisoners had been counted inside the prison walls, the
+      convoy counted them again, comparing the numbers with the list. This took
+      very long, especially as some of the prisoners moved and changed places,
+      which confused the convoy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The convoy soldiers shouted and pushed the prisoners (who complied
+      obediently, but angrily) and counted them over again. When all had been
+      counted, the convoy officer gave a command, and the crowd became agitated.
+      The weak men and women and children rushed, racing each other, towards the
+      carts, and began placing their bags on the carts and climbing up
+      themselves. Women with crying babies, merry children quarrelling for
+      places, and dull, careworn prisoners got into the carts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several of the prisoners took off their caps and came up to the convoy
+      officer with some request. Nekhludoff found out later that they were
+      asking for places on the carts. Nekhludoff saw how the officer, without
+      looking at the prisoners, drew in a whiff from his cigarette, and then
+      suddenly waved his short arm in front of one of the prisoners, who quickly
+      drew his shaved head back between his shoulders as if afraid of a blow,
+      and sprang back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will give you a lift such that you&rsquo;ll remember. You&rsquo;ll get there on
+      foot right enough,&rdquo; shouted the officer. Only one of the men was granted
+      his request&mdash;an old man with chains on his legs; and Nekhludoff saw
+      the old man take off his pancake-shaped cap, and go up to the cart
+      crossing himself. He could not manage to get up on the cart because of the
+      chains that prevented his lifting his old legs, and a woman who was
+      sitting in the cart at last pulled him in by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all the sacks were in the carts, and those who were allowed to get in
+      were seated, the officer took off his cap, wiped his forehead, his bald
+      head and fat, red neck, and crossed himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;March,&rdquo; commanded the officer. The soldiers&rsquo; guns gave a click; the
+      prisoners took off their caps and crossed themselves, those who were
+      seeing them off shouted something, the prisoners shouted in answer, a row
+      arose among the women, and the gang, surrounded by the soldiers in their
+      white blouses, moved forward, raising the dust with their chained feet.
+      The soldiers went in front; then came the convicts condemned to hard
+      labour, clattering with their chains; then the exiled and those exiled by
+      the Communes, chained in couples by their wrists; then the women. After
+      them, on the carts loaded with sacks, came the weak. High up on one of the
+      carts sat a woman closely wrapped up, and she kept shrieking and sobbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0094" id="link2HCH0094">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXV. NOT MEN BUT STRANGE AND TERRIBLE CREATURES?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The procession was such a long one that the carts with the luggage and the
+      weak started only when those in front were already out of sight. When the
+      last of the carts moved, Nekhludoff got into the trap that stood waiting
+      for him and told the isvostchik to catch up the prisoners in front, so
+      that he could see if he knew any of the men in the gang, and then try and
+      find out Maslova among the women and ask her if she had received the
+      things he sent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very hot, and a cloud of dust that was raised by a thousand
+      tramping feet stood all the time over the gang that was moving down the
+      middle of the street. The prisoners were walking quickly, and the
+      slow-going isvostchik&rsquo;s horse was some time in catching them up. Row upon
+      row they passed, those strange and terrible-looking creatures, none of
+      whom Nekhludoff knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On they went, all dressed alike, moving a thousand feet all shod alike,
+      swinging their free arms as if to keep up their spirits. There were so
+      many of them, they all looked so much alike, and they were all placed in
+      such unusual, peculiar circumstances, that they seemed to Nekhludoff to be
+      not men but some sort of strange and terrible creatures. This impression
+      passed when he recognised in the crowd of convicts the murderer Federoff,
+      and among the exiles Okhotin the wit, and another tramp who had appealed
+      to him for assistance. Almost all the prisoners turned and looked at the
+      trap that was passing them and at the gentleman inside. Federoff tossed
+      his head backwards as a sign that he had recognised Nekhludoff, Okhotin
+      winked, but neither of them bowed, considering it not the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as Nekhludoff came up to the women he saw Maslova; she was in the
+      second row. The first in the row was a short-legged, black-eyed, hideous
+      woman, who had her cloak tucked up in her girdle. This was Koroshavka. The
+      next was a pregnant woman, who dragged herself along with difficulty. The
+      third was Maslova; she was carrying her sack on her shoulder, and looking
+      straight before her. Her face looked calm and determined. The fourth in
+      the row was a young, lovely woman who was walking along briskly, dressed
+      in a short cloak, her kerchief tied in peasant fashion. This was
+      Theodosia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff got down and approached the women, meaning to ask Maslova if
+      she had got the things he had sent her, and how she was feeling, but the
+      convoy sergeant, who was walking on that side, noticed him at once, and
+      ran towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not do that, sir. It is against the regulations to approach the
+      gang,&rdquo; shouted the sergeant as he came up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he recognised Nekhludoff (every one in the prison knew
+      Nekhludoff) the sergeant raised his fingers to his cap, and, stopping in
+      front of Nekhludoff, said: &ldquo;Not now; wait till we get to the railway
+      station; here it is not allowed. Don&rsquo;t lag behind; march!&rdquo; he shouted to
+      the convicts, and putting on a brisk air, he ran back to his place at a
+      trot, in spite of the heat and the elegant new boots on his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff went on to the pavement and told the isvostchik to follow him;
+      himself walking, so as to keep the convicts in sight. Wherever the gang
+      passed it attracted attention mixed with horror and compassion. Those who
+      drove past leaned out of the vehicles and followed the prisoners with
+      their eyes. Those on foot stopped and looked with fear and surprise at the
+      terrible sight. Some came up and gave alms to the prisoners. The alms were
+      received by the convoy. Some, as if they were hypnotised, followed the
+      gang, but then stopped, shook their heads, and followed the prisoners only
+      with their eyes. Everywhere the people came out of the gates and doors,
+      and called others to come out, too, or leaned out of the windows looking,
+      silent and immovable, at the frightful procession. At a cross-road a fine
+      carriage was stopped by the gang. A fat coachman, with a shiny face and
+      two rows of buttons on his back, sat on the box; a married couple sat
+      facing the horses, the wife, a pale, thin woman, with a light-coloured
+      bonnet on her head and a bright sunshade in her hand, the husband with a
+      top-hat and a well-cut light-coloured overcoat. On the seat in front sat
+      their children&mdash;a well-dressed little girl, with loose, fair hair,
+      and as fresh as a flower, who also held a bright parasol, and an
+      eight-year-old boy, with a long, thin neck and sharp collarbones, a sailor
+      hat with long ribbons on his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The father was angrily scolding the coachman because he had not passed in
+      front of the gang when he had a chance, and the mother frowned and half
+      closed her eyes with a look of disgust, shielding herself from the dust
+      and the sun with her silk sunshade, which she held close to her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fat coachman frowned angrily at the unjust rebukes of his master&mdash;who
+      had himself given the order to drive along that street&mdash;and with
+      difficulty held in the glossy, black horses, foaming under their harness
+      and impatient to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman wished with all his soul to please the owner of the fine
+      equipage by stopping the gang, yet felt that the dismal solemnity of the
+      procession could not be broken even for so rich a gentleman. He only
+      raised his fingers to his cap to show his respect for riches, and looked
+      severely at the prisoners as if promising in any case to protect the
+      owners of the carriage from them. So the carriage had to wait till the
+      whole of the procession had passed, and could only move on when the last
+      of the carts, laden with sacks and prisoners, rattled by. The hysterical
+      woman who sat on one of the carts, and had grown calm, again began
+      shrieking and sobbing when she saw the elegant carriage. Then the coachman
+      tightened the reins with a slight touch, and the black trotters, their
+      shoes ringing against the paving stones, drew the carriage, softly swaying
+      on its rubber tires, towards the country house where the husband, the
+      wife, the girl, and the boy with the sharp collar-bones were going to
+      amuse themselves. Neither the father nor the mother gave the girl and boy
+      any explanation of what they had seen, so that the children had themselves
+      to find out the meaning of this curious sight. The girl, taking the
+      expression of her father&rsquo;s and mother&rsquo;s faces into consideration, solved
+      the problem by assuming that these people were quite another kind of men
+      and women than her father and mother and their acquaintances, that they
+      were bad people, and that they had therefore to be treated in the manner
+      they were being treated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore the girl felt nothing but fear, and was glad when she could no
+      longer see those people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the boy with the long, thin neck, who looked at the procession of
+      prisoners without taking his eyes off them, solved the question
+      differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He still knew, firmly and without any doubt, for he had it from God, that
+      these people were just the same kind of people as he was, and like all
+      other people, and therefore some one had done these people some wrong,
+      something that ought not to have been done, and he was sorry for them, and
+      felt no horror either of those who were shaved and chained or of those who
+      had shaved and chained them. And so the boy&rsquo;s lips pouted more and more,
+      and he made greater and greater efforts not to cry, thinking it a shame to
+      cry in such a case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0095" id="link2HCH0095">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVI. THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE LORD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff kept up with the quick pace of the convicts. Though lightly
+      clothed he felt dreadfully hot, and it was hard to breathe in the
+      stifling, motionless, burning air filled with dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had walked about a quarter of a mile he again got into the trap,
+      but it felt still hotter in the middle of the street. He tried to recall
+      last night&rsquo;s conversation with his brother-in-law, but the recollections
+      no longer excited him as they had done in the morning. They were dulled by
+      the impressions made by the starting and procession of the gang, and
+      chiefly by the intolerable heat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the pavement, in the shade of some trees overhanging a fence, he saw
+      two schoolboys standing over a kneeling man who sold ices. One of the boys
+      was already sucking a pink spoon and enjoying his ices, the other was
+      waiting for a glass that was being filled with something yellowish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where could I get a drink?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked his isvostchik, feeling an
+      insurmountable desire for some refreshment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a good eating-house close by,&rdquo; the isvostchik answered, and
+      turning a corner, drove up to a door with a large signboard. The plump
+      clerk in a Russian shirt, who stood behind the counter, and the waiters in
+      their once white clothing who sat at the tables (there being hardly any
+      customers) looked with curiosity at the unusual visitor and offered him
+      their services. Nekhludoff asked for a bottle of seltzer water and sat
+      down some way from the window at a small table covered with a dirty cloth.
+      Two men sat at another table with tea-things and a white bottle in front
+      of them, mopping their foreheads, and calculating something in a friendly
+      manner. One of them was dark and bald, and had just such a border of hair
+      at the back as Rogozhinsky. This sight again reminded Nekhludoff of
+      yesterday&rsquo;s talk with his brother-in-law and his wish to see him and
+      Nathalie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall hardly be able to do it before the train starts,&rdquo; he thought;
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d better write.&rdquo; He asked for paper, an envelope, and a stamp, and as
+      he was sipping the cool, effervescent water he considered what he should
+      say. But his thoughts wandered, and he could not manage to compose a
+      letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Nathalie,&mdash;I cannot go away with the heavy impression that
+      yesterday&rsquo;s talk with your husband has left,&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;What next? Shall
+      I ask him to forgive me what I said yesterday? But I only said what I
+      felt, and he will think that I am taking it back. Besides, this
+      interference of his in my private matters. . . . No, I cannot,&rdquo; and again
+      he felt hatred rising in his heart towards that man so foreign to him. He
+      folded the unfinished letter and put it in his pocket, paid, went out, and
+      again got into the trap to catch up the gang. It had grown still hotter.
+      The stones and the walls seemed to be breathing out hot air. The pavement
+      seemed to scorch the feet, and Nekhludoff felt a burning sensation in his
+      hand when he touched the lacquered splashguard of his trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse was jogging along at a weary trot, beating the uneven, dusty
+      road monotonously with its hoofs, the isvostchik kept falling into a doze,
+      Nekhludoff sat without thinking of anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the bottom of a street, in front of a large house, a group of people
+      had collected, and a convoy soldier stood by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked of a porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something the matter with a convict.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff got down and came up to the group. On the rough stones, where
+      the pavement slanted down to the gutter, lay a broadly-built, red-bearded,
+      elderly convict, with his head lower than his feet, and very red in the
+      face. He had a grey cloak and grey trousers on, and lay on his back with
+      the palms of his freckled hands downwards, and at long intervals his
+      broad, high chest heaved, and he groaned, while his bloodshot eyes were
+      fixed on the sky. By him stood a cross-looking policeman, a pedlar, a
+      postman, a clerk, an old woman with a parasol, and a short-haired boy with
+      an empty basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are weak. Having been locked up in prison they&rsquo;ve got weak, and then
+      they lead them through the most broiling heat,&rdquo; said the clerk, addressing
+      Nekhludoff, who had just come up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll die, most likely,&rdquo; said the woman with the parasol, in a doleful
+      tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His shirt should be untied,&rdquo; said the postman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman began, with his thick, trembling fingers, clumsily to untie
+      the tapes that fastened the shirt round the red, sinewy neck. He was
+      evidently excited and confused, but still thought it necessary to address
+      the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you collected here for? It is hot enough without your keeping
+      the wind off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They should have been examined by a doctor, and the weak ones left
+      behind,&rdquo; said the clerk, showing off his knowledge of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman, having undone the tapes of the shirt, rose and looked
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Move on, I tell you. It is not your business, is it? What&rsquo;s there to
+      stare at?&rdquo; he said, and turned to Nekhludoff for sympathy, but not finding
+      any in his face he turned to the convoy soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the soldier stood aside, examining the trodden-down heel of his boot,
+      and was quite indifferent to the policeman&rsquo;s perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those whose business it is don&rsquo;t care. Is it right to do men to death
+      like this? A convict is a convict, but still he is a man,&rdquo; different
+      voices were heard saying in the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put his head up higher, and give him some water,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Water has been sent for,&rdquo; said the policeman, and taking the prisoner
+      under the arms he with difficulty pulled his body a little higher up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s this gathering here?&rdquo; said a decided, authoritative voice, and a
+      police officer, with a wonderfully clean, shiny blouse, and still more
+      shiny top-boots, came up to the assembled crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Move on. No standing about here,&rdquo; he shouted to the crowd, before he knew
+      what had attracted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came near and saw the dying convict, he made a sign of approval
+      with his head, just as if he had quite expected it, and, turning to the
+      policeman, said, &ldquo;How is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman said that, as a gang of prisoners was passing, one of the
+      convicts had fallen down, and the convoy officer had ordered him to be
+      left behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s all right. He must be taken to the police station. Call an
+      isvostchik.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A porter has gone for one,&rdquo; said the policeman, with his fingers raised
+      to his cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shopman began something about the heat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it your business, eh? Move on,&rdquo; said the police officer, and looked so
+      severely at him that the clerk was silenced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to have a little water,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. The police officer
+      looked severely at Nekhludoff also, but said nothing. When the porter
+      brought a mug full of water, he told the policeman to offer some to the
+      convict. The policeman raised the drooping head, and tried to pour a
+      little water down the mouth; but the prisoner could not swallow it, and it
+      ran down his beard, wetting his jacket and his coarse, dirty linen shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pour it on his head,&rdquo; ordered the officer; and the policeman took off the
+      pancake-shaped cap and poured the water over the red curls and bald part
+      of the prisoner&rsquo;s head. His eyes opened wide as if in fear, but his
+      position remained unchanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Streams of dirt trickled down his dusty face, but the mouth continued to
+      gasp in the same regular way, and his whole body shook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what&rsquo;s this? Take this one,&rdquo; said the police officer, pointing to
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s isvostchik. &ldquo;You, there, drive up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am engaged,&rdquo; said the isvostchik, dismally, and without looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my isvostchik; but take him. I will pay you,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff,
+      turning to the isvostchik.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what are you waiting for?&rdquo; shouted the officer. &ldquo;Catch hold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The policeman, the porter, and the convoy soldier lifted the dying man and
+      carried him to the trap, and put him on the seat. But he could not sit up;
+      his head fell back, and the whole of his body glided off the seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make him lie down,&rdquo; ordered the officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, your honour; I&rsquo;ll manage him like this,&rdquo; said the
+      policeman, sitting down by the dying man, and clasping his strong, right
+      arm round the body under the arms. The convoy soldier lifted the
+      stockingless feet, in prison shoes, and put them into the trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The police officer looked around, and noticing the pancake-shaped hat of
+      the convict lifted it up and put it on the wet, drooping head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; he ordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The isvostchik looked angrily round, shook his head, and, accompanied by
+      the convoy soldier, drove back to the police station. The policeman,
+      sitting beside the convict, kept dragging up the body that was continually
+      sliding down from the seat, while the head swung from side to side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The convoy soldier, who was walking by the side of the trap, kept putting
+      the legs in their place. Nekhludoff followed the trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0096" id="link2HCH0096">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVII. SPILLED LIKE WATER ON THE GROUND.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The trap passed the fireman who stood sentinel at the entrance, [the
+      headquarters of the fire brigade and the police stations are generally
+      together in Moscow] drove into the yard of the police station, and stopped
+      at one of the doors. In the yard several firemen with their sleeves tucked
+      up were washing some kind of cart and talking loudly. When the trap
+      stopped, several policemen surrounded it, and taking the lifeless body of
+      the convict under the arms, took him out of the trap, which creaked under
+      him. The policeman who had brought the body got down, shook his numbed
+      arm, took off his cap, and crossed himself. The body was carried through
+      the door and up the stairs. Nekhludoff followed. In the small, dirty room
+      where the body was taken there stood four beds. On two of them sat a
+      couple of sick men in dressing-gowns, one with a crooked mouth, whose neck
+      was bandaged, the other one in consumption. Two of the beds were empty;
+      the convict was laid on one of them. A little man, with glistening eyes
+      and continually moving brows, with only his underclothes and stockings on,
+      came up with quick, soft steps, looked at the convict and then at
+      Nekhludoff, and burst into loud laughter. This was a madman who was being
+      kept in the police hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They wish to frighten me, but no, they won&rsquo;t succeed,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policemen who carried the corpse were followed by a police officer and
+      a medical assistant. The medical assistant came up to the body and touched
+      the freckled hand, already growing cold, which, though still soft, was
+      deadly pale. He held it for a moment, and then let it go. It fell
+      lifelessly on the stomach of the dead man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s ready,&rdquo; said the medical assistant, but, evidently to be quite in
+      order, he undid the wet, brown shirt, and tossing back the curls from his
+      ear, put it to the yellowish, broad, immovable chest of the convict. All
+      were silent. The medical assistant raised himself again, shook his head,
+      and touched with his fingers first one and then the other lid over the
+      open, fixed blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not frightened, I&rsquo;m not frightened.&rdquo; The madman kept repeating these
+      words, and spitting in the direction of the medical assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; asked the police officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! He must be put into the mortuary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure? Mind,&rdquo; said the police officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s time I should know,&rdquo; said the medical assistant, drawing the shirt
+      over the body&rsquo;s chest. &ldquo;However, I will send for Mathew Ivanovitch. Let
+      him have a look. Petrov, call him,&rdquo; and the medical assistant stepped away
+      from the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take him to the mortuary,&rdquo; said the police officer. &ldquo;And then you must
+      come into the office and sign,&rdquo; he added to the convoy soldier, who had
+      not left the convict for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said the soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policemen lifted the body and carried it down again. Nekhludoff wished
+      to follow, but the madman kept him back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not in the plot! Well, then, give me a cigarette,&rdquo; he said.
+      Nekhludoff got out his cigarette case and gave him one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The madman, quickly moving his brows all the time, began relating how they
+      tormented him by thought suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, they are all against me, and torment and torture me through their
+      mediums.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and without listening any further he
+      left the room and went out into the yard, wishing to know where the body
+      would be put.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policemen with their burden had already crossed the yard, and were
+      coming to the door of a cellar. Nekhludoff wished to go up to them, but
+      the police officer stopped him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing? Then go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff obeyed, and went back to his isvostchik, who was dozing. He
+      awoke him, and they drove back towards the railway station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not made a hundred steps when they met a cart accompanied by a
+      convoy soldier with a gun. On the cart lay another convict, who was
+      already dead. The convict lay on his back in the cart, his shaved head,
+      from which the pancake-shaped cap had slid over the black-bearded face
+      down to the nose, shaking and thumping at every jolt. The driver, in his
+      heavy boots, walked by the side of the cart, holding the reins; a
+      policeman followed on foot. Nekhludoff touched his isvostchik&rsquo;s shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just look what they are doing,&rdquo; said the isvostchik, stopping his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff got down and, following the cart, again passed the sentinel and
+      entered the gate of the police station. By this time the firemen had
+      finished washing the cart, and a tall, bony man, the chief of the fire
+      brigade, with a coloured band round his cap, stood in their place, and,
+      with his hands in his pockets, was severely looking at a fat-necked,
+      well-fed, bay stallion that was being led up and down before him by a
+      fireman. The stallion was lame on one of his fore feet, and the chief of
+      the firemen was angrily saying something to a veterinary who stood by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The police officer was also present. When he saw the cart he went up to
+      the convoy soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you bring him from?&rdquo; he asked, shaking his head disapprovingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the Gorbatovskaya,&rdquo; answered the policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A prisoner?&rdquo; asked the chief of the fire brigade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It&rsquo;s the second to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I must say they&rsquo;ve got some queer arrangements. Though of course
+      it&rsquo;s a broiling day,&rdquo; said the chief of the fire brigade; then, turning to
+      the fireman who was leading the lame stallion, he shouted: &ldquo;Put him into
+      the corner stall. And as to you, you hound, I&rsquo;ll teach you how to cripple
+      horses which are worth more than you are, you scoundrel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dead man was taken from the cart by the policemen just in the same way
+      as the first had been, and carried upstairs into the hospital. Nekhludoff
+      followed them as if he were hypnotised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; asked one of the policemen. But Nekhludoff did not
+      answer, and followed where the body was being carried. The madman, sitting
+      on a bed, was smoking greedily the cigarette Nekhludoff had given him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;ve come back,&rdquo; he said, and laughed. When he saw the body he made
+      a face, and said, &ldquo;Again! I am sick of it. I am not a boy, am I, eh?&rdquo; and
+      he turned to Nekhludoff with a questioning smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was looking at the dead man, whose face, which had been hidden
+      by his cap, was now visible. This convict was as handsome in face and body
+      as the other was hideous. He was a man in the full bloom of life.
+      Notwithstanding that he was disfigured by the half of his head being
+      shaved, the straight, rather low forehead, raised a bit over the black,
+      lifeless eyes, was very fine, and so was the nose above the thin, black
+      moustaches. There was a smile on the lips that were already growing blue,
+      a small beard outlined the lower part of the face, and on the shaved side
+      of the head a firm, well-shaped ear was visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One could see what possibilities of a higher life had been destroyed in
+      this man. The fine bones of his hands and shackled feet, the strong
+      muscles of all his well-proportioned limbs, showed what a beautiful,
+      strong, agile human animal this had been. As an animal merely he had been
+      a far more perfect one of his kind than the bay stallion, about the laming
+      of which the fireman was so angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet he had been done to death, and no one was sorry for him as a man, nor
+      was any one sorry that so fine a working animal had perished. The only
+      feeling evinced was that of annoyance because of the bother caused by the
+      necessity of getting this body, threatening putrefaction, out of the way.
+      The doctor and his assistant entered the hospital, accompanied by the
+      inspector of the police station. The doctor was a thick-set man, dressed
+      in pongee silk coat and trousers of the same material, closely fitting his
+      muscular thighs. The inspector was a little fat fellow, with a red face,
+      round as a ball, which he made still broader by a habit he had of filling
+      his cheeks with air, and slowly letting it out again. The doctor sat down
+      on the bed by the side of the dead man, and touched the hands in the same
+      way as his assistant had done, put his ear to the heart, rose, and pulled
+      his trousers straight. &ldquo;Could not be more dead,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector filled his mouth with air and slowly blew it out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which prison is he from?&rdquo; he asked the convoy soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier told him, and reminded him of the chains on the dead man&rsquo;s
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have them taken off; we have got a smith about, the Lord be
+      thanked,&rdquo; said the inspector, and blew up his cheeks again; he went
+      towards the door, slowly letting out the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why has this happened?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor looked at him through his spectacles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why has what happened? Why they die of sunstroke, you mean? This is why:
+      They sit all through the winter without exercise and without light, and
+      suddenly they are taken out into the sunshine, and on a day like this, and
+      they march in a crowd so that they get no air, and sunstroke is the
+      result.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why are they sent out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, as to that, go and ask those who send them. But may I ask who are
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a stranger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, good-afternoon; I have no time.&rdquo; The doctor was vexed; he gave
+      his trousers a downward pull, and went towards the beds of the sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, how are you getting on?&rdquo; he asked the pale man with the crooked
+      mouth and bandaged neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the madman sat on a bed, and having finished his cigarette, kept
+      spitting in the direction of the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff went down into the yard and out of the gate past the firemen&rsquo;s
+      horses and the hens and the sentinel in his brass helmet, and got into the
+      trap, the driver of which had again fallen asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0097" id="link2HCH0097">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE CONVICT TRAIN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff came to the station, the prisoners were all seated in
+      railway carriages with grated windows. Several persons, come to see them
+      off, stood on the platform, but were not allowed to come up to the
+      carriages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The convoy was much troubled that day. On the way from the prison to the
+      station, besides the two Nekhludoff had seen, three other prisoners had
+      fallen and died of sunstroke. One was taken to the nearest police station
+      like the first two, and the other two died at the railway station. [In
+      Moscow, in the beginning of the eighth decade of this century, five
+      convicts died of sunstroke in one day on their way from the Boutyrki
+      prison to the Nijni railway station.] The convoy men were not troubled
+      because five men who might have been alive died while in their charge.
+      This did not trouble them, but they were concerned lest anything that the
+      law required in such cases should be omitted. To convey the bodies to the
+      places appointed, to deliver up their papers, to take them off the lists
+      of those to be conveyed to Nijni&mdash;all this was very troublesome,
+      especially on so hot a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was this that occupied the convoy men, and before it could all be
+      accomplished Nekhludoff and the others who asked for leave to go up to the
+      carriages were not allowed to do so. Nekhludoff, however, was soon allowed
+      to go up, because he tipped the convoy sergeant. The sergeant let
+      Nekhludoff pass, but asked him to be quick and get his talk over before
+      any of the authorities noticed. There were 15 carriages in all, and except
+      one carriage for the officials, they were full of prisoners. As Nekhludoff
+      passed the carriages he listened to what was going on in them. In all the
+      carriages was heard the clanging of chains, the sound of bustle, mixed
+      with loud and senseless language, but not a word was being said about
+      their dead fellow-prisoners. The talk was all about sacks, drinking water,
+      and the choice of seats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking into one of the carriages, Nekhludoff saw convoy soldiers taking
+      the manacles off the hands of the prisoners. The prisoners held out their
+      arms, and one of the soldiers unlocked the manacles with a key and took
+      them off; the other collected them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After he had passed all the other carriages, Nekhludoff came up to the
+      women&rsquo;s carriages. From the second of these he heard a woman&rsquo;s groans:
+      &ldquo;Oh, oh, oh! O God! Oh, oh! O God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff passed this carriage and went up to a window of the third
+      carriage, which a soldier pointed out to him. When he approached his face
+      to the window, he felt the hot air, filled with the smell of perspiration,
+      coming out of it, and heard distinctly the shrill sound of women&rsquo;s voices.
+      All the seats were filled with red, perspiring, loudly-talking women,
+      dressed in prison cloaks and white jackets. Nekhludoff&rsquo;s face at the
+      window attracted their attention. Those nearest ceased talking and drew
+      closer. Maslova, in her white jacket and her head uncovered, sat by the
+      opposite window. The white-skinned, smiling Theodosia sat a little nearer.
+      When she recognised Nekhludoff, she nudged Maslova and pointed to the
+      window. Maslova rose hurriedly, threw her kerchief over her black hair,
+      and with a smile on her hot, red face came up to the window and took hold
+      of one of the bars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it is hot,&rdquo; she said, with a glad smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you get the things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there anything more you want?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff, while the air came
+      out of the hot carriage as out of an oven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want nothing, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we could get a drink?&rdquo; said Theodosia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if we could get a drink,&rdquo; repeated Maslova.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, have you not got any water?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They put some in, but it is all gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Directly, I will ask one of the convoy men. Now we shall not see each
+      other till we get to Nijni.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? Are you going?&rdquo; said Maslova, as if she did not know it, and looked
+      joyfully at Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going by the next train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maslova said nothing, but only sighed deeply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true, sir, that 12 convicts have been done to death?&rdquo; said a
+      severe-looking old prisoner with a deep voice like a man&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Korableva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not hear of 12; I have seen two,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say there were 12 they killed. And will nothing be done to them?
+      Only think! The fiends!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have none of the women fallen ill?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women are stronger,&rdquo; said another of the prisoners&mdash;a short little
+      woman, and laughed; &ldquo;only there&rsquo;s one that has taken it into her head to
+      be delivered. There she goes,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the next carriage,
+      whence proceeded the groans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask if we want anything,&rdquo; said Maslova, trying to keep the smile of
+      joy from her lips; &ldquo;could not this woman be left behind, suffering as she
+      is? There, now, if you would tell the authorities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And one thing more; could she not see her husband, Taras?&rdquo; she added,
+      pointing with her eyes to the smiling Theodosia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is going with you, is he not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, you must not talk,&rdquo; said a convoy sergeant, not the one who had let
+      Nekhludoff come up. Nekhludoff left the carriage and went in search of an
+      official to whom he might speak for the woman in travail and about Taras,
+      but could not find him, nor get an answer from any of the convoy for a
+      long time. They were all in a bustle; some were leading a prisoner
+      somewhere or other, others running to get themselves provisions, some were
+      placing their things in the carriages or attending on a lady who was going
+      to accompany the convoy officer, and they answered Nekhludoff&rsquo;s questions
+      unwillingly. Nekhludoff found the convoy officer only after the second
+      bell had been rung. The officer with his short arm was wiping the
+      moustaches that covered his mouth and shrugging his shoulders, reproving
+      the corporal for something or other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you want?&rdquo; he asked Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got a woman there who is being confined, so I thought best&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let her be confined; we shall see later on,&rdquo; and briskly swinging
+      his short arms, he ran up to his carriage. At the moment the guard passed
+      with a whistle in his hand, and from the people on the platform and from
+      the women&rsquo;s carriages there arose a sound of weeping and words of prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff stood on the platform by the side of Taras, and looked how, one
+      after the other, the carriages glided past him, with the shaved heads of
+      the men at the grated windows. Then the first of the women&rsquo;s carriages
+      came up, with women&rsquo;s heads at the windows, some covered with kerchiefs
+      and some uncovered, then the second, whence proceeded the same groans,
+      then the carriage where Maslova was. She stood with the others at the
+      window, and looked at Nekhludoff with a pathetic smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0098" id="link2HCH0098">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXIX. BROTHER AND SISTER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There were still two hours before the passenger train by which Nekhludoff
+      was going would start. He had thought of using this interval to see his
+      sister again; but after the impressions of the morning he felt much
+      excited and so done up that, sitting down on a sofa in the first-class
+      refreshment-room, he suddenly grew so drowsy that he turned over on to his
+      side, and, laying his face on his hand, fell asleep at once. A waiter in a
+      dress coat with a napkin in his hand woke him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, sir, are you not Prince Nekhludoff? There&rsquo;s a lady looking for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff started up and recollected where he was and all that had
+      happened in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw in his imagination the procession of prisoners, the dead bodies,
+      the railway carriages with barred windows, and the women locked up in
+      them, one of whom was groaning in travail with no one to help her, and
+      another who was pathetically smiling at him through the bars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reality before his eyes was very different, i.e., a table with vases,
+      candlesticks and crockery, and agile waiters moving round the table, and
+      in the background a cupboard and a counter laden with fruit and bottles,
+      behind it a barman, and in front the backs of passengers who had come up
+      for refreshments. When Nekhludoff had risen and sat gradually collecting
+      his thoughts, he noticed that everybody in the room was inquisitively
+      looking at something that was passing by the open doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He also looked, and saw a group of people carrying a chair on which sat a
+      lady whose head was wrapped in a kind of airy fabric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thought he knew the footman who was supporting the chair in
+      front. And also the man behind, and a doorkeeper with gold cord on his
+      cap, seemed familiar. A lady&rsquo;s maid with a fringe and an apron, who was
+      carrying a parcel, a parasol, and something round in a leather case, was
+      walking behind the chair. Then came Prince Korchagin, with his thick lips,
+      apoplectic neck, and a travelling cap on his head; behind him Missy, her
+      cousin Misha, and an acquaintance of Nekhludoff&rsquo;s&mdash;the long-necked
+      diplomat Osten, with his protruding Adam&rsquo;s apple and his unvarying merry
+      mood and expression. He was saying something very emphatically, though
+      jokingly, to the smiling Missy. The Korchagins were moving from their
+      estate near the city to the estate of the Princess&rsquo;s sister on the Nijni
+      railway. The procession&mdash;the men carrying the chair, the maid, and
+      the doctor&mdash;vanished into the ladies&rsquo; waiting-room, evoking a feeling
+      of curiosity and respect in the onlookers. But the old Prince remained and
+      sat down at the table, called a waiter, and ordered food and drink. Missy
+      and Osten also remained in the refreshment-room and were about to sit
+      down, when they saw an acquaintance in the doorway, and went up to her. It
+      was Nathalie Rogozhinsky. Nathalie came into the refreshment-room
+      accompanied by Agraphena Petrovna, and both looked round the room.
+      Nathalie noticed at one and the same moment both her brother and Missy.
+      She first went up to Missy, only nodding to her brother; but, having
+      kissed her, at once turned to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last I have found you,&rdquo; she said. Nekhludoff rose to greet Missy,
+      Misha, and Osten, and to say a few words to them. Missy told him about
+      their house in the country having been burnt down, which necessitated
+      their moving to her aunt&rsquo;s. Osten began relating a funny story about a
+      fire. Nekhludoff paid no attention, and turned to his sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How glad I am that you have come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been here a long time,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Agraphena Petrovna is with me.&rdquo;
+       And she pointed to Agraphena Petrovna, who, in a waterproof and with a
+      bonnet on her head, stood some way off, and bowed to him with kindly
+      dignity and some confusion, not wishing to intrude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We looked for you everywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I had fallen asleep here. How glad I am that you have come,&rdquo; repeated
+      Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I had begun to write to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really?&rdquo; she said, looking frightened. &ldquo;What about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Missy and the gentleman, noticing that an intimate conversation was about
+      to commence between the brother and sister, went away. Nekhludoff and his
+      sister sat down by the window on a velvet-covered sofa, on which lay a
+      plaid, a box, and a few other things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yesterday, after I left you, I felt inclined to return and express my
+      regret, but I did not know how he would take it,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I
+      spoke hastily to your husband, and this tormented me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; said his sister, &ldquo;that you did not mean to. Oh, you know!&rdquo; and
+      the tears came to her eyes, and she touched his hand. The sentence was not
+      clear, but he understood it perfectly, and was touched by what it
+      expressed. Her words meant that, besides the love for her husband which
+      held her in its sway, she prized and considered important the love she had
+      for him, her brother, and that every misunderstanding between them caused
+      her deep suffering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, thank you. Oh! what I have seen to-day!&rdquo; he said, suddenly
+      recalling the second of the dead convicts. &ldquo;Two prisoners have been done
+      to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done to death? How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, done to death. They led them in this heat, and two died of
+      sunstroke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible! What, to-day? just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, just now. I have seen their bodies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why done to death? Who killed them?&rdquo; asked Nathalie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They who forced them to go killed them,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, with
+      irritation, feeling that she looked at this, too, with her husband&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lord!&rdquo; said Agraphena Petrovna, who had come up to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we have not the slightest idea of what is being done to these
+      unfortunate beings. But it ought to be known,&rdquo; added Nekhludoff, and
+      looked at old Korchagin, who sat with a napkin tied round him and a bottle
+      before him, and who looked round at Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nekhludoff,&rdquo; he called out, &ldquo;won&rsquo;t you join me and take some refreshment?
+      It is excellent before a journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff refused, and turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what are you going to do?&rdquo; Nathalie continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I can. I don&rsquo;t know, but I feel I must do something. And I shall do
+      what I am able to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I understand. And how about them?&rdquo; she continued, with a smile and a
+      look towards Korchagin. &ldquo;Is it possible that it is all over?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Completely, and I think without any regret on either side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a pity. I am sorry. I am fond of her. However, it&rsquo;s all right. But
+      why do you wish to bind yourself?&rdquo; she added shyly. &ldquo;Why are you going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I go because I must,&rdquo; answered Nekhludoff, seriously and dryly, as if
+      wishing to stop this conversation. But he felt ashamed of his coldness
+      towards his sister at once. &ldquo;Why not tell her all I am thinking?&rdquo; he
+      thought, &ldquo;and let Agraphena Petrovna also hear it,&rdquo; he thought, with a
+      look at the old servant, whose presence made the wish to repeat his
+      decision to his sister even stronger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean my intention to marry Katusha? Well, you see, I made up my mind
+      to do it, but she refuses definitely and firmly,&rdquo; he said, and his voice
+      shook, as it always did when he spoke of it. &ldquo;She does not wish to accept
+      my sacrifice, but is herself sacrificing what in her position means much,
+      and I cannot accept this sacrifice, if it is only a momentary impulse. And
+      so I am going with her, and shall be where she is, and shall try to
+      lighten her fate as much as I can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nathalie said nothing. Agraphena Petrovna looked at her with a questioning
+      look, and shook her head. At this moment the former procession issued from
+      the ladies&rsquo; room. The same handsome footman (Philip). and the doorkeeper
+      were carrying the Princess Korchagin. She stopped the men who were
+      carrying her, and motioned to Nekhludoff to approach, and, with a pitiful,
+      languishing air, she extended her white, ringed hand, expecting the firm
+      pressure of his hand with a sense of horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Epouvantable!&rdquo; she said, meaning the heat. &ldquo;I cannot stand it! Ce climat
+      me tue!&rdquo; And, after a short talk about the horrors of the Russian climate,
+      she gave the men a sign to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be sure and come,&rdquo; she added, turning her long face towards Nekhludoff as
+      she was borne away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession with the Princess turned to the right towards the
+      first-class carriages. Nekhludoff, with the porter who was carrying his
+      things, and Taras with his bag, turned to the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is my companion,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff to his sister, pointing to Taras,
+      whose story he had told her before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely not third class?&rdquo; said Nathalie, when Nekhludoff stopped in front
+      of a third-class carriage, and Taras and the porter with the things went
+      in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; it is more convenient for me to be with Taras,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;One thing
+      more,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;up to now I have not given the Kousminski land to the
+      peasants; so that, in case of my death, your children will inherit it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dmitri, don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Nathalie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I do give it away, all I can say is that the rest will be theirs, as
+      it is not likely I shall marry; and if I do marry I shall have no
+      children, so that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dmitri, don&rsquo;t talk like that!&rdquo; said Nathalie. And yet Nekhludoff noticed
+      that she was glad to hear him say it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Higher up, by the side of a first-class carriage, there stood a group of
+      people still looking at the carriage into which the Princess Korchagin had
+      been carried. Most of the passengers were already seated. Some of the late
+      comers hurriedly clattered along the boards of the platform, the guard was
+      closing the doors and asking the passengers to get in and those who were
+      seeing them off to come out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff entered the hot, smelling carriage, but at once stepped out
+      again on to the small platform at the back of the carriage. Nathalie stood
+      opposite the carriage, with her fashionable bonnet and cape, by the side
+      of Agraphena Petrovna, and was evidently trying to find something to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not even say ecrivez, because they had long ago laughed at this
+      word, habitually spoken by those about to part. The short conversation
+      about money matters had in a moment destroyed the tender brotherly and
+      sisterly feelings that had taken hold of them. They felt estranged, so
+      that Nathalie was glad when the train moved; and she could only say,
+      nodding her head with a sad and tender look, &ldquo;Goodbye, good-bye, Dmitri.&rdquo;
+       But as soon as the carriage had passed her she thought of how she should
+      repeat her conversation with her brother to her husband, and her face
+      became serious and troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff, too, though he had nothing but the kindest feelings for his
+      sister, and had hidden nothing from her, now felt depressed and
+      uncomfortable with her, and was glad to part. He felt that the Nathalie
+      who was once so near to him no longer existed, and in her place was only a
+      slave of that hairy, unpleasant husband, who was so foreign to him. He saw
+      it clearly when her face lit up with peculiar animation as he spoke of
+      what would peculiarly interest her husband, i.e., the giving up of the
+      land to the peasants and the inheritance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this made him sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0099" id="link2HCH0099">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XL. THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF HUMAN LIFE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The heat in the large third-class carriage, which had been standing in the
+      burning sun all day, was so great that Nekhludoff did not go in, but
+      stopped on the little platform behind the carriage which formed a passage
+      to the next one. But there was not a breath of fresh air here either, and
+      Nekhludoff breathed freely only when the train had passed the buildings
+      and the draught blew across the platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, killed,&rdquo; he repeated to himself, the words he had used to his
+      sister. And in his imagination in the midst of all other impressions there
+      arose with wonderful clearness the beautiful face of the second dead
+      convict, with the smile of the lips, the severe expression of the brows,
+      and the small, firm ear below the shaved bluish skull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what seemed terrible was that he had been murdered, and no one knew
+      who had murdered him. Yet he had been murdered. He was led out like all
+      the rest of the prisoners by Maslennikoff&rsquo;s orders. Maslennikoff had
+      probably given the order in the usual manner, had signed with his stupid
+      flourish the paper with the printed heading, and most certainly would not
+      consider himself guilty. Still less would the careful doctor who examined
+      the convicts consider himself guilty. He had performed his duty
+      accurately, and had separated the weak. How could he have foreseen this
+      terrible heat, or the fact that they would start so late in the day and in
+      such crowds? The prison inspector? But the inspector had only carried into
+      execution the order that on a given day a certain number of exiles and
+      convicts&mdash;men and women&mdash;had to be sent off. The convoy officer
+      could not be guilty either, for his business was to receive a certain
+      number of persons in a certain place, and to deliver up the same number.
+      He conducted them in the usual manner, and could not foresee that two such
+      strong men as those Nekhludoff saw would not be able to stand it and would
+      die. No one is guilty, and yet the men have been murdered by these people
+      who are not guilty of their murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this comes,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, &ldquo;from the fact that all these
+      people, governors, inspectors, police officers, and men, consider that
+      there are circumstances in which human relations are not necessary between
+      human beings. All these men, Maslennikoff, and the inspector, and the
+      convoy officer, if they were not <i>governor, inspector, officer,</i>
+      would have considered twenty times before sending people in such heat in
+      such a mass&mdash;would have stopped twenty times on the way, and, seeing
+      that a man was growing weak, gasping for breath, would have led him into
+      the shade, would have given him water and let him rest, and if an accident
+      had still occurred they would have expressed pity. But they not only did
+      not do it, but hindered others from doing it, because they considered not
+      men and their duty towards them but only the office they themselves
+      filled, and held what that office demanded of them to be above human
+      relations. That&rsquo;s what it is,&rdquo; Nekhludoff went on in his thoughts. &ldquo;If one
+      acknowledges but for a single hour that anything can be more important
+      than love for one&rsquo;s fellowmen, even in some one exceptional case, any
+      crime can be committed without a feeling of guilt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was so engrossed by his thoughts that he did not notice how the
+      weather changed. The sun was covered over by a low-hanging, ragged cloud.
+      A compact, light grey cloud was rapidly coming from the west, and was
+      already falling in heavy, driving rain on the fields and woods far in the
+      distance. Moisture, coming from the cloud, mixed with the air. Now and
+      then the cloud was rent by flashes of lightning, and peals of thunder
+      mingled more and more often with the rattling of the train. The cloud came
+      nearer and nearer, the rain-drops driven by the wind began to spot the
+      platform and Nekhludoff&rsquo;s coat; and he stepped to the other side of the
+      little platform, and, inhaling the fresh, moist air&mdash;filled with the
+      smell of corn and wet earth that had long been waiting for rain&mdash;he
+      stood looking at the gardens, the woods, the yellow rye fields, the green
+      oatfields, the dark-green strips of potatoes in bloom, that glided past.
+      Everything looked as if covered over with varnish&mdash;the green turned
+      greener, the yellow yellower, the black blacker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More! more!&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, gladdened by the sight of gardens and
+      fields revived by the beneficent shower. The shower did not last long.
+      Part of the cloud had come down in rain, part passed over, and the last
+      fine drops fell straight on to the earth. The sun reappeared, everything
+      began to glisten, and in the east&mdash;not very high above the horizon&mdash;appeared
+      a bright rainbow, with the violet tint very distinct and broken only at
+      one end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what was I thinking about?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked himself when all these
+      changes in nature were over, and the train ran into a cutting between two
+      high banks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I was thinking that all those people (inspector, convoy men&mdash;all
+      those in the service) are for the greater part kind people&mdash;cruel
+      only because they are serving.&rdquo; He recalled Maslennikoff&rsquo;s indifference
+      when he told him about what was being done in the prison, the inspector&rsquo;s
+      severity, the cruelty of the convoy officer when he refused places on the
+      carts to those who asked for them, and paid no attention to the fact that
+      there was a woman in travail in the train. All these people were evidently
+      invulnerable and impregnable to the simplest feelings of compassion only
+      because they held offices. &ldquo;As officials they were impermeable to the
+      feelings of humanity, as this paved ground is impermeable to the rain.&rdquo;
+       Thus thought Nekhludoff as he looked at the railway embankment paved with
+      stones of different colours, down which the water was running in streams
+      instead of soaking into the earth. &ldquo;Perhaps it is necessary to pave the
+      banks with stones, but it is sad to look at the ground, which might be
+      yielding corn, grass, bushes, or trees in the same way as the ground
+      visible up there is doing&mdash;deprived of vegetation, and so it is with
+      men,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Perhaps these governors, inspectors, policemen,
+      are needed, but it is terrible to see men deprived of the chief human
+      attribute, that of love and sympathy for one another. The thing is,&rdquo; he
+      continued, &ldquo;that these people consider lawful what is not lawful, and do
+      not consider the eternal, immutable law, written in the hearts of men by
+      God, as law. That is why I feel so depressed when I am with these people.
+      I am simply afraid of them, and really they are terrible, more terrible
+      than robbers. A robber might, after all, feel pity, but they can feel no
+      pity, they are inured against pity as these stones are against vegetation.
+      That is what makes them terrible. It is said that the Pougatcheffs, the
+      Razins [leaders of rebellions in Russia: Stonka Razin in the 17th and
+      Pougatcheff in the 18th century] are terrible. These are a thousand times
+      more terrible,&rdquo; he continued, in his thoughts. &ldquo;If a psychological problem
+      were set to find means of making men of our time&mdash;Christian, humane,
+      simple, kind people&mdash;perform the most horrible crimes without feeling
+      guilty, only one solution could be devised: to go on doing what is being
+      done. It is only necessary that these people should he governors,
+      inspectors, policemen; that they should be fully convinced that there is a
+      kind of business, called government service, which allows men to treat
+      other men as things, without human brotherly relations with them, and also
+      that these people should be so linked together by this government service
+      that the responsibility for the results of their actions should not fall
+      on any one of them separately. Without these conditions, the terrible acts
+      I witnessed to-day would be impossible in our times. It all lies in the
+      fact that men think there are circumstances in which one may deal with
+      human beings without love; and there are no such circumstances. One may
+      deal with things without love. One may cut down trees, make bricks, hammer
+      iron without love; but you cannot deal with men without it, just as one
+      cannot deal with bees without being careful. If you deal carelessly with
+      bees you will injure them, and will yourself be injured. And so with men.
+      It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of
+      human life. It is true that a man cannot force another to love him, as he
+      can force him to work for him; but it does not follow that a man may deal
+      with men without love, especially to demand anything from them. If you
+      feel no love, sit still,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought; &ldquo;occupy yourself with
+      things, with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. You can
+      only eat without injuring yourself when you feel inclined to eat, so you
+      can only deal with men usefully when you love. Only let yourself deal with
+      a man without love, as I did yesterday with my brother-in-law, and there
+      are no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself, as all my life
+      proves. Yes, yes, it is so,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff; &ldquo;it is good; yes, it is
+      good,&rdquo; he repeated, enjoying the freshness after the torturing heat, and
+      conscious of having attained to the fullest clearness on a question that
+      had long occupied him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0100" id="link2HCH0100">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLI. TARAS&rsquo;S STORY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The carriage in which Nekhludoff had taken his place was half filled with
+      people. There were in it servants, working men, factory hands, butchers,
+      Jews, shopmen, workmen&rsquo;s wives, a soldier, two ladies, a young one and an
+      old one with bracelets on her arm, and a severe-looking gentleman with a
+      cockade on his black cap. All these people were sitting quietly; the
+      bustle of taking their places was long over; some sat cracking and eating
+      sunflower seeds, some smoking, some talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taras sat, looking very happy, opposite the door, keeping a place for
+      Nekhludoff, and carrying on an animated conversation with a man in a cloth
+      coat who sat opposite to him, and who was, as Nekhludoff afterwards found
+      out, a gardener going to a new situation. Before reaching the place where
+      Taras sat Nekhludoff stopped between the seats near a reverend-looking old
+      man with a white beard and nankeen coat, who was talking with a young
+      woman in peasant dress. A little girl of about seven, dressed in a new
+      peasant costume, sat, her little legs dangling above the floor, by the
+      side of the woman, and kept cracking seeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man turned round, and, seeing Nekhludoff, he moved the lappets of
+      his coat off the varnished seat next to him, and said, in a friendly
+      manner:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, here&rsquo;s a seat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thanked him, and took the seat. As soon as he was seated the
+      woman continued the interrupted conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was returning to her village, and related how her husband, whom she
+      had been visiting, had received her in town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was there during the carnival, and now, by the Lord&rsquo;s help, I&rsquo;ve been
+      again,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Then, God willing, at Christmas I&rsquo;ll go again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right,&rdquo; said the old man, with a look at Nekhludoff, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s the
+      best way to go and see him, else a young man can easily go to the bad,
+      living in a town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, sir, mine is not such a man. No nonsense of any kind about him;
+      his life is as good as a young maiden&rsquo;s. The money he earns he sends home
+      all to a copeck. And, as to our girl here, he was so glad to see her,
+      there are no words for it,&rdquo; said the woman, and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl, who sat cracking her seeds and spitting out the shells,
+      listened to her mother&rsquo;s words, and, as if to confirm them, looked up with
+      calm, intelligent eyes into Nekhludoff&rsquo;s and the old man&rsquo;s faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if he&rsquo;s good, that&rsquo;s better still,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;And none of
+      that sort of thing?&rdquo; he added, with a look at a couple, evidently factory
+      hands, who sat at the other side of the carriage. The husband, with his
+      head thrown back, was pouring vodka down his throat out of a bottle, and
+      the wife sat holding a bag, out of which they had taken the bottle, and
+      watched him intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, mine neither drinks nor smokes,&rdquo; said the woman who was conversing
+      with the old man, glad of the opportunity of praising her husband once
+      more. &ldquo;No, sir, the earth does not hold many such.&rdquo; And, turning to
+      Nekhludoff, she added, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the sort of man he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could be better,&rdquo; said the old man, looking at the factory worker,
+      who had had his drink and had passed the bottle to his wife. The wife
+      laughed, shook her head, and also raised the bottle to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noticing Nekhludoff&rsquo;s and the old man&rsquo;s look directed towards them, the
+      factory worker addressed the former.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, sir? That we are drinking? Ah, no one sees how we work, but
+      every one sees how we drink. I have earned it, and I am drinking and
+      treating my wife, and no one else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, not knowing what to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, sir. My wife is a steady woman. I am satisfied with my wife,
+      because she can feel for me. Is it right what I&rsquo;m saying, Mavra?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are, take it, I don&rsquo;t want any more,&rdquo; said the wife, returning
+      the bottle to him. &ldquo;And what are you jawing for like that?&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now! She&rsquo;s good&mdash;that good; and suddenly she&rsquo;ll begin
+      squeaking like a wheel that&rsquo;s not greased. Mavra, is it right what I&rsquo;m
+      saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mavra laughed and moved her hand with a tipsy gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my, he&rsquo;s at it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now, she&rsquo;s that good&mdash;that good; but let her get her tail over
+      the reins, and you can&rsquo;t think what she&rsquo;ll be up to. . . . Is it right
+      what I&rsquo;m saying? You must excuse me, sir, I&rsquo;ve had a drop! What&rsquo;s to be
+      done?&rdquo; said the factory worker, and, preparing to go to sleep, put his
+      head in his wife&rsquo;s lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sat a while with the old man, who told him all about himself.
+      The old man was a stove builder, who had been working for 53 years, and
+      had built so many stoves that he had lost count, and now he wanted to
+      rest, but had no time. He had been to town and found employment for the
+      young ones, and was now going to the country to see the people at home.
+      After hearing the old man&rsquo;s story, Nekhludoff went to the place that Taras
+      was keeping for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, sir; sit down; we&rsquo;ll put the bag here,&rdquo; said the
+      gardener, who sat opposite Taras, in a friendly tone, looking up into
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather a tight fit, but no matter since we are friends,&rdquo; said Taras,
+      smiling, and lifting the bag, which weighed more than five stone, as if it
+      were a feather, he carried it across to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plenty of room; besides, we might stand up a bit; and even under the seat
+      it&rsquo;s as comfortable as you could wish. What&rsquo;s the good of humbugging?&rdquo; he
+      said, beaming with friendliness and kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taras spoke of himself as being unable to utter a word when quite sober;
+      but drink, he said, helped him to find the right words, and then he could
+      express everything. And in reality, when he was sober Taras kept silent;
+      but when he had been drinking, which happened rarely and only on special
+      occasions, he became very pleasantly talkative. Then he spoke a great
+      deal, spoke well and very simply and truthfully, and especially with great
+      kindliness, which shone in his gentle, blue eyes and in the friendly smile
+      that never left his lips. He was in such a state to-day. Nekhludoff&rsquo;s
+      approach interrupted the conversation; but when he had put the bag in its
+      place, Taras sat down again, and with his strong hands folded in his lap,
+      and looking straight into the gardener&rsquo;s face, continued his story. He was
+      telling his new acquaintance about his wife and giving every detail: what
+      she was being sent to Siberia for, and why he was now following her.
+      Nekhludoff had never heard a detailed account of this affair, and so he
+      listened with interest. When he came up, the story had reached the point
+      when the attempt to poison was already an accomplished fact, and the
+      family had discovered that it was Theodosia&rsquo;s doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about my troubles that I&rsquo;m talking,&rdquo; said Taras, addressing
+      Nekhludoff with cordial friendliness. &ldquo;I have chanced to come across such
+      a hearty man, and we&rsquo;ve got into conversation, and I&rsquo;m telling him all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then in this way, my friend, the business became known. Mother, she
+      takes that cake. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m going,&rsquo; says she, &lsquo;to the police officer.&rsquo; My father
+      is a just old man. &lsquo;Wait, wife,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;the little woman is a mere
+      child, and did not herself know what she was doing. We must have pity. She
+      may come to her senses.&rsquo; But, dear me, mother would not hear of it. &lsquo;While
+      we keep her here,&rsquo; she says, &lsquo;she may destroy us all like cockroaches.&rsquo; 
+      Well, friend, so she goes off for the police officer. He bounces in upon
+      us at once. Calls for witnesses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and you?&rdquo; asked the gardener.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I, you see, friend, roll about with the pain in my stomach, and
+      vomit. All my inside is turned inside out; I can&rsquo;t even speak. Well, so
+      father he goes and harnesses the mare, and puts Theodosia into the cart,
+      and is off to the police-station, and then to the magistrate&rsquo;s. And she,
+      you know, just as she had done from the first, so also there, confesses
+      all to the magistrate&mdash;where she got the arsenic, and how she kneaded
+      the cake. &lsquo;Why did you do it?&rsquo; says he. &lsquo;Why,&rsquo; says she, &lsquo;because he&rsquo;s
+      hateful to me. I prefer Siberia to a life with him.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s me,&rdquo; and Taras
+      smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, so she confessed all. Then, naturally&mdash;the prison, and father
+      returns alone. And harvest time just coming, and mother the only woman at
+      home, and she no longer strong. So we think what we are to do. Could we
+      not bail her out? So father went to see an official. No go. Then another.
+      I think he went to five of them, and we thought of giving it up. Then we
+      happened to come across a clerk&mdash;such an artful one as you don&rsquo;t
+      often find. &lsquo;You give me five roubles, and I&rsquo;ll get her out,&rsquo; says he. He
+      agreed to do it for three. Well, and what do you think, friend? I went and
+      pawned the linen she herself had woven, and gave him the money. As soon as
+      he had written that paper,&rdquo; drawled out Taras, just as if he were speaking
+      of a shot being fired, &ldquo;we succeeded at once. I went to fetch her myself.
+      Well, friend, so I got to town, put up the mare, took the paper, and went
+      to the prison. &lsquo;What do you want?&rsquo; &lsquo;This is what I want,&rsquo; say I, &lsquo;you&rsquo;ve
+      got my wife here in prison.&rsquo; &lsquo;And have you got a paper?&rsquo; I gave him the
+      paper. He gave it a look. &lsquo;Wait,&rsquo; says he. So I sat down on a bench. It
+      was already past noon by the sun. An official comes out. &lsquo;You are
+      Vargoushoff?&rsquo; &lsquo;I am.&rsquo; &lsquo;Well, you may take her.&rsquo; The gates opened, and they
+      led her out in her own clothes quite all right. &lsquo;Well, come along. Have
+      you come on foot?&rsquo; &lsquo;No, I have the horse here.&rsquo; So I went and paid the
+      ostler, and harnessed, put in all the hay that was left, and covered it
+      with sacking for her to sit on. She got in and wrapped her shawl round
+      her, and off we drove. She says nothing and I say nothing. Just as we were
+      coming up to the house she says, &lsquo;And how&rsquo;s mother; is she alive?&rsquo; &lsquo;Yes,
+      she&rsquo;s alive.&rsquo; &lsquo;And father; is he alive? &lsquo;Yes, he is.&rsquo; &lsquo;Forgive me, Taras,&rsquo; 
+      she says, &lsquo;for my folly. I did not myself know what I was doing.&rsquo; So I
+      say, &lsquo;Words won&rsquo;t mend matters. I have forgiven you long ago,&rsquo; and I said
+      no more. We got home, and she just fell at mother&rsquo;s feet. Mother says,
+      &lsquo;The Lord will forgive you.&rsquo; And father said, &lsquo;How d&rsquo;you do?&rsquo; and &lsquo;What&rsquo;s
+      past is past. Live as best you can. Now,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;is not the time for
+      all that; there&rsquo;s the harvest to be gathered in down at Skorodino,&rsquo; he
+      says. &lsquo;Down on the manured acre, by the Lord&rsquo;s help, the ground has borne
+      such rye that the sickle can&rsquo;t tackle it. It&rsquo;s all interwoven and heavy,
+      and has sunk beneath its weight; that must be reaped. You and Taras had
+      better go and see to it to-morrow.&rsquo; Well, friend, from that moment she
+      took to the work and worked so that every one wondered. At that time we
+      rented three desiatins, and by God&rsquo;s help we had a wonderful crop both of
+      oats and rye. I mow and she binds the sheaves, and sometimes we both of us
+      reap. I am good at work and not afraid of it, but she&rsquo;s better still at
+      whatever she takes up. She&rsquo;s a smart woman, young, and full of life; and
+      as to work, friend, she&rsquo;d grown that eager that I had to stop her. We get
+      home, our fingers swollen, our arms aching, and she, instead of resting,
+      rushes off to the barn to make binders for the sheaves for next day. Such
+      a change!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and to you? Was she kinder, now?&rdquo; asked the gardener.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s beyond question. She clings to me as if we were one soul. Whatever
+      I think she understands. Even mother, angry as she was, could not help
+      saying: &lsquo;It&rsquo;s as if our Theodosia had been transformed; she&rsquo;s quite a
+      different woman now!&rsquo; We were once going to cart the sheaves with two
+      carts. She and I were in the first, and I say, &lsquo;How could you think of
+      doing that, Theodosia?&rsquo; and she says, &lsquo;How could I think of it? just so, I
+      did not wish to live with you. I thought I&rsquo;d rather die than live with
+      you!&rsquo; I say, &lsquo;And now?&rsquo; and she says, &lsquo;Now you&rsquo;re in my heart!&rsquo;&rdquo; Taras
+      stopped, and smiled joyfully, shook his head as if surprised. &ldquo;Hardly had
+      we got the harvest home when I went to soak the hemp, and when I got home
+      there was a summons, she must go to be tried, and we had forgotten all
+      about the matter that she was to be tried for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can only be the evil one,&rdquo; said the gardener. &ldquo;Could any man of
+      himself think of destroying a living soul? We had a fellow once&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and the gardener was about to commence his tale when the train began to
+      stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems we are coming to a station,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go and have a
+      drink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation stopped, and Nekhludoff followed the gardener out of the
+      carriage onto the wet platform of the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0101" id="link2HCH0101">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XLII. LE VRAI GRAND MONDE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before Nekhludoff got out he had noticed in the station yard several
+      elegant equipages, some with three, some with four, well-fed horses, with
+      tinkling bells on their harness. When he stepped out on the wet,
+      dark-coloured boards of the platform, he saw a group of people in front of
+      the first-class carriage, among whom were conspicuous a stout lady with
+      costly feathers on her hat, and a waterproof, and a tall, thin-legged
+      young man in a cycling suit. The young man had by his side an enormous,
+      well-fed dog, with a valuable collar. Behind them stood footmen, holding
+      wraps and umbrellas, and a coachman, who had also come to meet the train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole of the group, from the fat lady down to the coachman who
+      stood holding up his long coat, there lay the stamp of wealth and quiet
+      self-assurance. A curious and servile crowd rapidly gathered round this
+      group&mdash;the station-master, in his red cap, a gendarme, a thin young
+      lady in a Russian costume, with beads round her neck, who made a point of
+      seeing the trains come in all through the summer, a telegraph clerk, and
+      passengers, men and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the young man with the dog Nekhludoff recognised young Korchagin, a
+      gymnasium student. The fat lady was the Princess&rsquo;s sister, to whose estate
+      the Korchagins were now moving. The guard, with his gold cord and shiny
+      top-boots, opened the carriage door and stood holding it as a sign of
+      deference, while Philip and a porter with a white apron carefully carried
+      out the long-faced Princess in her folding chair. The sisters greeted each
+      other, and French sentences began flying about. Would the Princess go in a
+      closed or an open carriage? At last the procession started towards the
+      exit, the lady&rsquo;s maid, with her curly fringe, parasol and leather case in
+      the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff not wishing to meet them and to have to take leave over again,
+      stopped before he got to the door, waiting for the procession to pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Princess, her son, Missy, the doctor, and the maid went out first, the
+      old Prince and his sister-in-law remained behind. Nekhludoff was too far
+      to catch anything but a few disconnected French sentences of their
+      conversation One of the sentences uttered by the Prince, as it often
+      happens, for some unaccountable reason remained in his memory with all its
+      intonations and the sound of the voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Oh, il est du vrai grand monde, du vrai grand monde</i>,&rdquo; said the
+      Prince in his loud, self-assured tone as he went out of the station with
+      his sister-in-law, accompanied by the respectful guards and porters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment from behind the corner of the station suddenly appeared a
+      crowd of workmen in bark shoes, wearing sheepskin coats and carrying bags
+      on their backs. The workmen went up to the nearest carriage with soft yet
+      determined steps, and were about to get in, but were at once driven away
+      by a guard. Without stopping, the workmen passed on, hurrying and jostling
+      one another, to the next carriage and began getting in, catching their
+      bags against the corners and door of the carriage, but another guard
+      caught sight of them from the door of the station, and shouted at them
+      severely. The workmen, who had already got in, hurried out again and went
+      on, with the same soft and firm steps, still further towards Nekhludoff&rsquo;s
+      carriage. A guard was again going to stop them, but Nekhludoff said there
+      was plenty of room inside, and that they had better get in. They obeyed
+      and got in, followed by Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The workmen were about to take their seats, when the gentleman with the
+      cockade and the two ladies, looking at this attempt to settle in their
+      carriage as a personal insult to themselves, indignantly protested and
+      wanted to turn them out. The workmen&mdash;there were 20 of them, old men
+      and quite young ones, all of them wearied, sunburnt, with haggard faces&mdash;began
+      at once to move on through the carriage, catching the seats, the walls,
+      and the doors with their bags. They evidently felt they had offended in
+      some way, and seemed ready to go on indefinitely wherever they were
+      ordered to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you pushing to, you fiends? Sit down here,&rdquo; shouted another
+      guard they met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Voila encore des nouvelles,&rdquo; exclaimed the younger of the two ladies,
+      quite convinced that she would attract Nekhludoff&rsquo;s notice by her good
+      French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other lady with the bracelets kept sniffing and making faces, and
+      remarked something about how pleasant it was to sit with smelly peasants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The workmen, who felt the joy and calm experienced by people who have
+      escaped some kind of danger, threw off their heavy bags with a movement of
+      their shoulders and stowed them away under the seats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gardener had left his own seat to talk with Taras, and now went back,
+      so that there were two unoccupied seats opposite and one next to Taras.
+      Three of the workmen took these seats, but when Nekhludoff came up to
+      them, in his gentleman&rsquo;s clothing, they got so confused that they rose to
+      go away, but Nekhludoff asked them to stay, and himself sat down on the
+      arm of the seat, by the passage down the middle of the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the workmen, a man of about 50, exchanged a surprised and even
+      frightened look with a young man. That Nekhludoff, instead of scolding and
+      driving them away, as was natural to a gentleman, should give up his seat
+      to them, astonished and perplexed them. They even feared that this might
+      have some evil result for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, they soon noticed that there was no underlying plot when they
+      heard Nekhludoff talking quite simply with Taras, and they grew quiet and
+      told one of the lads to sit down on his bag and give his seat to
+      Nekhludoff. At first the elderly workman who sat opposite Nekhludoff
+      shrank and drew back his legs for fear of touching the gentleman, but
+      after a while he grew quite friendly, and in talking to him and Taras even
+      slapped Nekhludoff on the knee when he wanted to draw special attention to
+      what he was saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He told them all about his position and his work in the peat bogs, whence
+      he was now returning home. He had been working there for two and a half
+      months, and was bringing home his wages, which only came to 10 roubles,
+      since part had been paid beforehand when he was hired. They worked, as he
+      explained, up to their knees in water from sunrise to sunset, with two
+      hours&rsquo; interval for dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those who are not used to it find it hard, of course,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but when
+      one&rsquo;s hardened it doesn&rsquo;t matter, if only the food is right. At first the
+      food was bad. Later the people complained, and they got good food, and it
+      was easy to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he told them how, during 28 years he went out to work, and sent all
+      his earnings home. First to his father, then to his eldest brother, and
+      now to his nephew, who was at the head of the household. On himself he
+      spent only two or three roubles of the 50 or 60 he earned a year, just for
+      luxuries&mdash;tobacco and matches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a sinner, when tired I even drink a little vodka sometimes,&rdquo; he
+      added, with a guilty smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he told them how the women did the work at home, and how the
+      contractor had treated them to half a pail of vodka before they started
+      to-day, how one of them had died, and another was returning home ill. The
+      sick workman he was talking about was in a corner of the same carriage. He
+      was a young lad, with a pale, sallow face and bluish lips. He was
+      evidently tormented by intermittent fever. Nekhludoff went up to him, but
+      the lad looked up with such a severe and suffering expression that
+      Nekhludoff did not care to bother him with questions, but advised the
+      elder man to give him quinine, and wrote down the name of the medicine. He
+      wished to give him some money, but the old workman said he would pay for
+      it himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, much as I have travelled, I have never met such a gentleman before.
+      Instead of punching your head, he actually gives up his place to you,&rdquo;
+       said the old man to Taras. &ldquo;It seems there are all sorts of gentlefolk,
+      too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, this is quite a new and different world,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff,
+      looking at these spare, sinewy, limbs, coarse, home-made garments, and
+      sunburnt, kindly, though weary-looking faces, and feeling himself
+      surrounded on all sides with new people and the serious interests, joys,
+      and sufferings of a life of labour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is<i> le vrai grand monde</i>,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, remembering the
+      words of Prince Korchagin and all that idle, luxurious world to which the
+      Korchagins belonged, with their petty, mean interests. And he felt the joy
+      of a traveller on discovering a new, unknown, and beautiful world.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      END OF BOOK II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0106" id="link2H_4_0106">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK III.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0102" id="link2HCH0102">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. MASLOVA MAKES NEW FRIENDS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The gang of prisoners to which Maslova belonged had walked about three
+      thousand three hundred miles. She and the other prisoners condemned for
+      criminal offences had travelled by rail and by steamboats as far as the
+      town of Perm. It was only here that Nekhludoff succeeded in obtaining a
+      permission for her to continue the journey with the political prisoners,
+      as Vera Doukhova, who was among the latter, advised him to do. The journey
+      up to Perm had been very trying to Maslova both morally and physically.
+      Physically, because of the overcrowding, the dirt, and the disgusting
+      vermin, which gave her no peace; morally, because of the equally
+      disgusting men. The men, like the vermin, though they changed at each
+      halting-place, were everywhere alike importunate; they swarmed round her,
+      giving her no rest. Among the women prisoners and the men prisoners, the
+      jailers and the convoy soldiers, the habit of a kind of cynical debauch
+      was so firmly established that unless a female prisoner was willing to
+      utilise her position as a woman she had to be constantly on the watch. To
+      be continually in a state of fear and strife was very trying. And Maslova
+      was specially exposed to attacks, her appearance being attractive and her
+      past known to every one. The decided resistance with which she now met the
+      importunity of all the men seemed offensive to them, and awakened another
+      feeling, that of ill-will towards her. But her position was made a little
+      easier by her intimacy with Theodosia, and Theodosia&rsquo;s husband, who,
+      having heard of the molestations his wife was subject to, had in Nijni
+      been arrested at his own desire in order to be able to protect her, and
+      was now travelling with the gang as a prisoner. Maslova&rsquo;s position became
+      much more bearable when she was allowed to join the political prisoners,
+      who were provided with better accomodations, better food, and were treated
+      less rudely, but besides all this Maslova&rsquo;s condition was much improved
+      because among the political prisoners she was no longer molested by the
+      men, and could live without being reminded of that past which she was so
+      anxious to forget. But the chief advantage of the change lay in the fact
+      that she made the acquaintance of several persons who exercised a decided
+      and most beneficial influence on her character. Maslova was allowed to
+      stop with the political prisoners at all the halting-places, but being a
+      strong and healthy woman she was obliged to march with the criminal
+      convicts. In this way she walked all the way from Tomsk. Two political
+      prisoners also marched with the gang, Mary Pavlovna Schetinina, the girl
+      with the hazel eyes who had attracted Nekhludoff&rsquo;s attention when he had
+      been to visit Doukhova in prison, and one Simonson, who was on his way to
+      the Takoutsk district, the dishevelled dark young fellow with deep-lying
+      eyes, whom Nekhludoff had also noticed during that visit. Mary Pavlovna
+      was walking because she had given her place on the cart to one of the
+      criminals, a woman expecting to be confined, and Simonson because he did
+      not dare to avail himself of a class privilege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These three always started early in the morning before the rest of the
+      political prisoners, who followed later on in the carts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were ready to start in this way just outside a large town, where a
+      new convoy officer had taken charge of the gang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was early on a dull September morning. It kept raining and snowing
+      alternately, and the cold wind blew in sudden gusts. The whole gang of
+      prisoners, consisting of four hundred men and fifty women, was already
+      assembled in the court of the halting station. Some of them were crowding
+      round the chief of the convoy, who was giving to specially appointed
+      prisoners money for two days&rsquo; keep to distribute among the rest, while
+      others were purchasing food from women who had been let into the
+      courtyard. One could hear the voices of the prisoners counting their money
+      and making their purchases, and the shrill voices of the women with the
+      food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simonson, in his rubber jacket and rubber overshoes fastened with a string
+      over his worsted stockings (he was a vegetarian and would not wear the
+      skin of slaughtered animals), was also in the courtyard waiting for the
+      gang to start. He stood by the porch and jotted down in his notebook a
+      thought that had occurred to him. This was what he wrote: &ldquo;If a bacteria
+      watched and examined a human nail it would pronounce it inorganic matter,
+      and thus we, examining our globe and watching its crust, pronounce it to
+      be inorganic. This is incorrect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Katusha and Mary Pavlovna, both wearing top-boots and with shawls tied
+      round their heads, came out of the building into the courtyard where the
+      women sat sheltered from the wind by the northern wall of the court, and
+      vied with one another, offering their goods, hot meat pie, fish,
+      vermicelli, buckwheat porridge, liver, beef, eggs, milk. One had even a
+      roast pig to offer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having bought some eggs, bread, fish, and some rusks, Maslova was putting
+      them into her bag, while Mary Pavlovna was paying the women, when a
+      movement arose among the convicts. All were silent and took their places.
+      The officer came out and began giving the last orders before starting.
+      Everything was done in the usual manner. The prisoners were counted, the
+      chains on their legs examined, and those who were to march in couples
+      linked together with manacles. But suddenly the angry, authoritative voice
+      of the officer shouting something was heard, also the sound of a blow and
+      the crying of a child. All was silent for a moment and then came a hollow
+      murmur from the crowd. Maslova and Mary Pavlovna advanced towards the spot
+      whence the noise proceeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0103" id="link2HCH0103">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. AN INCIDENT OF THE MARCH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This is what Mary Pavlovna and Katusha saw when they came up to the scene
+      whence the noise proceeded. The officer, a sturdy fellow, with fair
+      moustaches, stood uttering words of foul and coarse abuse, and rubbing
+      with his left the palm of his right hand, which he had hurt in hitting a
+      prisoner on the face. In front of him a thin, tall convict, with half his
+      head shaved and dressed in a cloak too short for him and trousers much too
+      short, stood wiping his bleeding face with one hand, and holding a little
+      shrieking girl wrapped in a shawl with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll give it you&rdquo; (foul abuse); &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll teach you to reason&rdquo; (more abuse);
+      &ldquo;you&rsquo;re to give her to the women!&rdquo; shouted the officer. &ldquo;Now, then, on
+      with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The convict, who was exiled by the Commune, had been carrying his little
+      daughter all the way from Tomsk, where his wife had died of typhus, and
+      now the officer ordered him to be manacled. The exile&rsquo;s explanation that
+      he could not carry the child if he was manacled irritated the officer, who
+      happened to be in a bad temper, and he gave the troublesome prisoner a
+      beating. [A fact described by Lineff in his &ldquo;Transportation&rdquo;.] Before the
+      injured convict stood a convoy soldier, and a black-bearded prisoner with
+      manacles on one hand and a look of gloom on his face, which he turned now
+      to the officer, now to the prisoner with the little girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer repeated his orders for the soldiers to take away the girl.
+      The murmur among the prisoners grew louder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the way from Tomsk they were not put on,&rdquo; came a hoarse voice from
+      some one in the rear. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a child, and not a puppy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s he to do with the lassie? That&rsquo;s not the law,&rdquo; said some one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; shouted the officer as if he had been stung, and rushed into
+      the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll teach you the law. Who spoke. You? You?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody says so, because-&rdquo; said a short, broad-faced prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he had finished speaking the officer hit him in the face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mutiny, is it? I&rsquo;ll show you what mutiny means. I&rsquo;ll have you all shot
+      like dogs, and the authorities will be only too thankful. Take the girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd was silent. One convoy soldier pulled away the girl, who was
+      screaming desperately, while another manacled the prisoner, who now
+      submissively held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take her to the women,&rdquo; shouted the officer, arranging his sword belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl, whose face had grown quite red, was trying to disengage
+      her arms from under the shawl, and screamed unceasingly. Mary Pavlovna
+      stepped out from among the crowd and came up to the officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you allow me to carry the little girl?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; asked the officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A political prisoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Pavlovna&rsquo;s handsome face, with the beautiful prominent eyes (he had
+      noticed her before when the prisoners were given into his charge),
+      evidently produced an effect on the officer. He looked at her in silence
+      as if considering, then said: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care; carry her if you like. It is
+      easy for you to show pity; if he ran away who would have to answer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could he run away with the child in his arms?&rdquo; said Mary Pavlovna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no time to talk with you. Take her if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I give her?&rdquo; asked the soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, give her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to me,&rdquo; said Mary Pavlovna, trying to coax the child to come to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the child in the soldier&rsquo;s arms stretched herself towards her father
+      and continued to scream, and would not go to Mary Pavlovna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a bit, Mary Pavlovna,&rdquo; said Maslova, getting a rusk out of her bag;
+      &ldquo;she will come to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl knew Maslova, and when she saw her face and the rusk she
+      let her take her. All was quiet. The gates were opened, and the gang
+      stepped out, the convoy counted the prisoners over again, the bags were
+      packed and tied on to the carts, the weak seated on the top. Maslova with
+      the child in her arms took her place among the women next to Theodosia.
+      Simonson, who had all the time been watching what was going on, stepped
+      with large, determined strides up to the officer, who, having given his
+      orders, was just getting into a trap, and said, &ldquo;You have behaved badly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get to your place; it is no business of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my business to tell you that you have behaved badly and I have said
+      it,&rdquo; said Simonson, looking intently into the officer&rsquo;s face from under
+      his bushy eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ready? March!&rdquo; the officer called out, paying no heed to Simonson, and,
+      taking hold of the driver&rsquo;s shoulder, he got into the trap. The gang
+      started and spread out as it stepped on to the muddy high road with
+      ditches on each side, which passed through a dense forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0104" id="link2HCH0104">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. MARY PAVLOVNA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the hard conditions in which they were placed, life among the
+      political prisoners seemed very good to Katusha after the depraved,
+      luxurious and effeminate life she had led in town for the last six years,
+      and after two months&rsquo; imprisonment with criminal prisoners. The fifteen to
+      twenty miles they did per day, with one day&rsquo;s rest after two days&rsquo; 
+      marching, strengthened her physically, and the fellowship with her new
+      companions opened out to her a life full of interests such as she had
+      never dreamed of. People so wonderful (as she expressed it) as those whom
+      she was now going with she had not only never met but could not even have
+      imagined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now, and I cried when I was sentenced,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Why, I must
+      thank God for it all the days of my life. I have learned to know what I
+      never should have found out else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The motives she understood easily and without effort that guided these
+      people, and, being of the people, fully sympathised with them. She
+      understood that these persons were for the people and against the upper
+      classes, and though themselves belonging to the upper classes had
+      sacrificed their privileges, their liberty and their lives for the people.
+      This especially made her value and admire them. She was charmed with all
+      the new companions, but particularly with Mary Pavlovna, and she was not
+      only charmed with her, but loved her with a peculiar, respectful and
+      rapturous love. She was struck by the fact that this beautiful girl, the
+      daughter of a rich general, who could speak three languages, gave away all
+      that her rich brother sent her, and lived like the simplest working girl,
+      and dressed not only simply, but poorly, paying no heed to her appearance.
+      This trait and a complete absence of coquetry was particularly surprising
+      and therefore attractive to Maslova. Maslova could see that Mary Pavlovna
+      knew, and was even pleased to know, that she was handsome, and yet the
+      effect her appearance had on men was not at all pleasing to her; she was
+      even afraid of it, and felt an absolute disgust to all love affairs. Her
+      men companions knew it, and if they felt attracted by her never permitted
+      themselves to show it to her, but treated her as they would a man; but
+      with strangers, who often molested her, the great physical strength on
+      which she prided herself stood her in good stead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It happened once,&rdquo; she said to Katusha, &ldquo;that a man followed me in the
+      street and would not leave me on any account. At last I gave him such a
+      shaking that he was frightened and ran away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She became a revolutionary, as she said, because she felt a dislike to the
+      life of the well-to-do from childhood up, and loved the life of the common
+      people, and she was always being scolded for spending her time in the
+      servants&rsquo; hall, in the kitchen or the stables instead of the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I found it amusing to be with cooks and the coachmen, and dull with
+      our gentlemen and ladies,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Then when I came to understand
+      things I saw that our life was altogether wrong; I had no mother and I did
+      not care for my father, and so when I was nineteen I left home, and went
+      with a girl friend to work as a factory hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After she left the factory she lived in the country, then returned to town
+      and lived in a lodging, where they had a secret printing press. There she
+      was arrested and sentenced to hard labour. Mary Pavlovna said nothing
+      about it herself, but Katusha heard from others that Mary Pavlovna was
+      sentenced because, when the lodging was searched by the police and one of
+      the revolutionists fired a shot in the dark, she pleaded guilty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as she had learned to know Mary Pavlovna, Katusha noticed that,
+      whatever the conditions she found herself in, Mary Pavlovna never thought
+      of herself, but was always anxious to serve, to help some one, in matters
+      small or great. One of her present companions, Novodvoroff, said of her
+      that she devoted herself to philanthropic amusements. And this was true.
+      The interest of her whole life lay in the search for opportunities of
+      serving others. This kind of amusement had become the habit, the business
+      of her life. And she did it all so naturally that those who knew her no
+      longer valued but simply expected it of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Maslova first came among them, Mary Pavlovna felt repulsed and
+      disgusted. Katusha noticed this, but she also noticed that, having made an
+      effort to overcome these feelings, Mary Pavlovna became particularly
+      tender and kind to her. The tenderness and kindness of so uncommon a being
+      touched Maslova so much that she gave her whole heart, and unconsciously
+      accepting her views, could not help imitating her in everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This devoted love of Katusha touched Mary Pavlovna in her turn, and she
+      learned to love Katusha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These women were also united by the repulsion they both felt to sexual
+      love. The one loathed that kind of love, having experienced all its
+      horrors, the other, never having experienced it, looked on it as something
+      incomprehensible and at the same time as something repugnant and offensive
+      to human dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0105" id="link2HCH0105">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. SIMONSON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mary Pavlovna&rsquo;s influence was one that Maslova submitted to because she
+      loved Mary Pavlovna. Simonson influenced her because he loved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody lives and acts partly according to his own, partly according to
+      other people&rsquo;s, ideas. This is what constitutes one of the great
+      differences among men. To some, thinking is a kind of mental game; they
+      treat their reason as if it were a fly-wheel without a connecting strap,
+      and are guided in their actions by other people&rsquo;s ideas, by custom or
+      laws; while others look upon their own ideas as the chief motive power of
+      all their actions, and always listen to the dictates of their own reason
+      and submit to it, accepting other people&rsquo;s opinions only on rare occasions
+      and after weighing them critically. Simonson was a man of the latter sort;
+      he settled and verified everything according to his own reason and acted
+      on the decisions he arrived at. When a schoolboy he made up his mind that
+      his father&rsquo;s income, made as a paymaster in government office was
+      dishonestly gained, and he told his father that it ought to be given to
+      the people. When his father, instead of listening to him, gave him a
+      scolding, he left his father&rsquo;s house and would not make use of his
+      father&rsquo;s means. Having come to the conclusion that all the existing misery
+      was a result of the people&rsquo;s ignorance, he joined the socialists, who
+      carried on propaganda among the people, as soon as he left the university
+      and got a place as a village schoolmaster. He taught and explained to his
+      pupils and to the peasants what he considered to be just, and openly
+      blamed what he thought unjust. He was arrested and tried. During his trial
+      he determined to tell his judges that his was a just cause, for which he
+      ought not to be tried or punished. When the judges paid no heed to his
+      words, but went on with the trial, he decided not to answer them and kept
+      resolutely silent when they questioned him. He was exiled to the
+      Government of Archangel. There he formulated a religious teaching which
+      was founded on the theory that everything in the world was alive, that
+      nothing is lifeless, and that all the objects we consider to be without
+      life or inorganic are only parts of an enormous organic body which we
+      cannot compass. A man&rsquo;s task is to sustain the life of that huge organism
+      and all its animate parts. Therefore he was against war, capital
+      punishment and every kind of killing, not only of human beings, but also
+      of animals. Concerning marriage, too, he had a peculiar idea of his own;
+      he thought that increase was a lower function of man, the highest function
+      being to serve the already existing lives. He found a confirmation of his
+      theory in the fact that there were phacocytes in the blood. Celibates,
+      according to his opinion, were the same as phacocytes, their function
+      being to help the weak and the sickly particles of the organism. From the
+      moment he came to this conclusion he began to consider himself as well as
+      Mary Pavlovna as phacocytes, and to live accordingly, though as a youth he
+      had been addicted to vice. His love for Katusha did not infringe this
+      conception, because he loved her platonically, and such love he considered
+      could not hinder his activity as a phacocytes, but acted, on the contrary,
+      as an inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not only moral, but also most practical questions he decided in his own
+      way. He applied a theory of his own to all practical business, had rules
+      relating to the number of hours for rest and for work, to the kind of food
+      to eat, the way to dress, to heat and light up the rooms. With all this
+      Simonson was very shy and modest; and yet when he had once made up his
+      mind nothing could make him waver. And this man had a decided influence on
+      Maslova through his love for her. With a woman&rsquo;s instinct Maslova very
+      soon found out that he loved her. And the fact that she could awaken love
+      in a man of that kind raised her in her own estimation. It was
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s magnanimity and what had been in the past that made him offer
+      to marry her, but Simonson loved her such as she was now, loved her simply
+      because of the love he bore her. And she felt that Simonson considered her
+      to be an exceptional woman, having peculiarly high moral qualities. She
+      did not quite know what the qualities he attributed to her were, but in
+      order to be on the safe side and that he should not be disappointed in
+      her, she tried with all her might to awaken in herself all the highest
+      qualities she could conceive, and she tried to be as good as possible.
+      This had begun while they were still in prison, when on a common visiting
+      day she had noticed his kindly dark blue eyes gazing fixedly at her from
+      under his projecting brow. Even then she had noticed that this was a
+      peculiar man, and that he was looking at her in a peculiar manner, and had
+      also noticed the striking combination of sternness&mdash;the unruly hair
+      and the frowning forehead gave him this appearance&mdash;with the
+      child-like kindness and innocence of his look. She saw him again in Tomsk,
+      where she joined the political prisoners. Though they had not uttered a
+      word, their looks told plainly that they had understood one another. Even
+      after that they had had no serious conversation with each other, but
+      Maslova felt that when he spoke in her presence his words were addressed
+      to her, and that he spoke for her sake, trying to express himself as
+      plainly as he could; but it was when he started walking with the criminal
+      prisoners that they grew specially near to one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0106" id="link2HCH0106">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. THE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Until they left Perm Nekhludoff only twice managed to see Katusha, once in
+      Nijni, before the prisoners were embarked on a barge surrounded with a
+      wire netting, and again in Perm in the prison office. At both these
+      interviews he found her reserved and unkind. She answered his questions as
+      to whether she was in want of anything, and whether she was comfortable,
+      evasively and bashfully, and, as he thought, with the same feeling of
+      hostile reproach which she had shown several times before. Her depressed
+      state of mind, which was only the result of the molestations from the men
+      that she was undergoing at the time, tormented Nekhludoff. He feared lest,
+      influenced by the hard and degrading circumstances in which she was placed
+      on the journey, she should again get into that state of despair and
+      discord with her own self which formerly made her irritable with him, and
+      which had caused her to drink and smoke excessively to gain oblivion. But
+      he was unable to help her in any way during this part of the journey, as
+      it was impossible for him to be with her. It was only when she joined the
+      political prisoners that he saw how unfounded his fears were, and at each
+      interview he noticed that inner change he so strongly desired to see in
+      her becoming more and more marked. The first time they met in Tomsk she
+      was again just as she had been when leaving Moscow. She did not frown or
+      become confused when she saw him, but met him joyfully and simply,
+      thanking him for what he had done for her, especially for bringing her
+      among the people with whom she now was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After two months&rsquo; marching with the gang, the change that had taken place
+      within her became noticeable in her appearance. She grew sunburned and
+      thinner, and seemed older; wrinkles appeared on her temples and round her
+      mouth. She had no ringlets on her forehead now, and her hair was covered
+      with the kerchief; in the way it was arranged, as well as in her dress and
+      her manners, there was no trace of coquetry left. And this change, which
+      had taken place and was still progressing in her, made Nekhludoff very
+      happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt for her something he had never experienced before. This feeling
+      had nothing in common with his first poetic love for her, and even less
+      with the sensual love that had followed, nor even with the satisfaction of
+      a duty fulfilled, not unmixed with self-admiration, with which he decided
+      to marry her after the trial. The present feeling was simply one of pity
+      and tenderness. He had felt it when he met her in prison for the first
+      time, and then again when, after conquering his repugnance, he forgave her
+      the imagined intrigue with the medical assistant in the hospital (the
+      injustice done her had since been discovered); it was the same feeling he
+      now had, only with this difference, that formerly it was momentary, and
+      that now it had become permanent. Whatever he was doing, whatever he was
+      thinking now, a feeling of pity and tenderness dwelt with him, and not
+      only pity and tenderness for her, but for everybody. This feeling seemed
+      to have opened the floodgates of love, which had found no outlet in
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s soul, and the love now flowed out to every one he met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this journey Nekhludoff&rsquo;s feelings were so stimulated that he could
+      not help being attentive and considerate to everybody, from the coachman
+      and the convoy soldiers to the prison inspectors and governors whom he had
+      to deal with. Now that Maslova was among the political prisoners,
+      Nekhludoff could not help becoming acquainted with many of them, first in
+      Ekaterinburg, where they had a good deal of freedom and were kept
+      altogether in a large cell, and then on the road when Maslova was marching
+      with three of the men and four of the women. Coming in contact with
+      political exiles in this way made Nekhludoff completely change his mind
+      concerning them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the very beginning of the revolutionary movement in Russia, but
+      especially since that first of March, when Alexander II was murdered,
+      Nekhludoff regarded the revolutionists with dislike and contempt. He was
+      repulsed by the cruelty and secrecy of the methods they employed in their
+      struggles against the government, especially the cruel murders they
+      committed, and their arrogance also disgusted him. But having learned more
+      intimately to know them and all they had suffered at the hands of the
+      government, he saw that they could not be other than they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Terrible and endless as were the torments which were inflicted on the
+      criminals, there was at least some semblance of justice shown them before
+      and after they were sentenced, but in the case of the political prisoners
+      there was not even that semblance, as Nekhludoff saw in the case of
+      Sholostova and that of many and many of his new acquaintances. These
+      people were dealt with like fish caught with a net; everything that gets
+      into the nets is pulled ashore, and then the big fish which are required
+      are sorted out and the little ones are left to perish unheeded on the
+      shore. Having captured hundreds that were evidently guiltless, and that
+      could not be dangerous to the government, they left them imprisoned for
+      years, where they became consumptive, went out of their minds or committed
+      suicide, and kept them only because they had no inducement to set them
+      free, while they might be of use to elucidate some question at a judicial
+      inquiry, safe in prison. The fate of these persons, often innocent even
+      from the government point of view, depended on the whim, the humour of, or
+      the amount of leisure at the disposal of some police officer or spy, or
+      public prosecutor, or magistrate, or governor, or minister. Some one of
+      these officials feels dull, or inclined to distinguish himself, and makes
+      a number of arrests, and imprisons or sets free, according to his own
+      fancy or that of the higher authorities. And the higher official, actuated
+      by like motives, according to whether he is inclined to distinguish
+      himself, or to what his relations to the minister are, exiles men to the
+      other side of the world or keeps them in solitary confinement, condemns
+      them to Siberia, to hard labour, to death, or sets them free at the
+      request of some lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the means that
+      were used against them. And as the military men live in an atmosphere of
+      public opinion that not only conceals from them the guilt of their
+      actions, but sets these actions up as feats of heroism, so these political
+      offenders were also constantly surrounded by an atmosphere of public
+      opinion which made the cruel actions they committed, in the face of danger
+      and at the risk of liberty and life, and all that is dear to men, seem not
+      wicked but glorious actions. Nekhludoff found in this the explanation of
+      the surprising phenomenon that men, with the mildest characters, who
+      seemed incapable of witnessing the sufferings of any living creature, much
+      less of inflicting pain, quietly prepared to murder men, nearly all of
+      them considering murder lawful and just on certain occasions as a means
+      for self-defence, for the attainment of higher aims or for the general
+      welfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The importance they attribute to their cause, and consequently to
+      themselves, flowed naturally from the importance the government attached
+      to their actions, and the cruelty of the punishments it inflicted on them.
+      When Nekhludoff came to know them better he became convinced that they
+      were not the right-down villains that some imagined them to be, nor the
+      complete heroes that others thought them, but ordinary people, just the
+      same as others, among whom there were some good and some bad, and some
+      mediocre, as there are everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were some among them who had turned revolutionists because they
+      honestly considered it their duty to fight the existing evils, but there
+      were also those who chose this work for selfish, ambitious motives; the
+      majority, however, was attracted to the revolutionary idea by the desire
+      for danger, for risks, the enjoyment of playing with one&rsquo;s life, which, as
+      Nekhludoff knew from his military experiences, is quite common to the most
+      ordinary people while they are young and full of energy. But wherein they
+      differed from ordinary people was that their moral standard was a higher
+      one than that of ordinary men. They considered not only self-control, hard
+      living, truthfulness, but also the readiness to sacrifice everything, even
+      life, for the common welfare as their duty. Therefore the best among them
+      stood on a moral level that is not often reached, while the worst were far
+      below the ordinary level, many of them being untruthful, hypocritical and
+      at the same time self-satisfied and proud. So that Nekhludoff learned not
+      only to respect but to love some of his new acquaintances, while he
+      remained more than indifferent to others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0107" id="link2HCH0107">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. KRYLTZOFF&rsquo;S STORY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff grew especially fond of Kryltzoff, a consumptive young man
+      condemned to hard labour, who was going with the same gang as Katusha.
+      Nekhludoff had made his acquaintance already in Ekaterinburg, and talked
+      with him several times on the road after that. Once, in summer, Nekhludoff
+      spent nearly the whole of a day with him at a halting station, and
+      Kryltzoff, having once started talking, told him his story and how he had
+      become a revolutionist. Up to the time of his imprisonment his story was
+      soon told. He lost his father, a rich landed proprietor in the south of
+      Russia, when still a child. He was the only son, and his mother brought
+      him up. He learned easily in the university, as well as the gymnasium, and
+      was first in the mathematical faculty in his year. He was offered a choice
+      of remaining in the university or going abroad. He hesitated. He loved a
+      girl and was thinking of marriage, and taking part in the rural
+      administration. He did not like giving up either offer, and could not make
+      up his mind. At this time his fellow-students at the university asked him
+      for money for a common cause. He did not know that this common cause was
+      revolutionary, which he was not interested in at that time, but gave the
+      money from a sense of comradeship and vanity, so that it should not be
+      said that he was afraid. Those who received the money were caught, a note
+      was found which proved that the money had been given by Kryltzoff, he was
+      arrested, and first kept at the police station, then imprisoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The prison where I was put,&rdquo; Kryltzoff went on to relate (he was sitting
+      on the high shelf bedstead, his elbows on his knees, with sunken chest,
+      the beautiful, intelligent eyes with which he looked at Nekhludoff
+      glistening feverishly)&mdash;&ldquo;they were not specially strict in that
+      prison. We managed to converse, not only by tapping the wall, but could
+      walk about the corridors, share our provisions and our tobacco, and in the
+      evenings we even sang in chorus. I had a fine voice&mdash;yes, if it had
+      not been for mother it would have been all right, even pleasant and
+      interesting. Here I made the acquaintance of the famous Petroff&mdash;he
+      afterwards killed himself with a piece of glass at the fortress&mdash;and
+      also of others. But I was not yet a revolutionary. I also became
+      acquainted with my neighbours in the cells next to mine. They were both
+      caught with Polish proclamations and arrested in the same cause, and were
+      tried for an attempt to escape from the convoy when they were being taken
+      to the railway station. One was a Pole, Lozinsky; the other a Jew,
+      Rozovsky. Yes. Well, this Rozovsky was quite a boy. He said he was
+      seventeen, but he looked fifteen&mdash;thin, small, active, with black,
+      sparkling eyes, and, like most Jews, very musical. His voice was still
+      breaking, and yet he sang beautifully. Yes. I saw them both taken to be
+      tried. They were taken in the morning. They returned in the evening, and
+      said they were condemned to death. No one had expected it. Their case was
+      so unimportant; they only tried to get away from the convoy, and had not
+      even wounded any one. And then it was so unnatural to execute such a child
+      as Rozovsky. And we in prison all came to the conclusion that it was only
+      done to frighten them, and would not be confirmed. At first we were
+      excited, and then we comforted ourselves, and life went on as before. Yes.
+      Well, one evening, a watchman comes to my door and mysteriously announces
+      to me that carpenters had arrived, and were putting up the gallows. At
+      first I did not understand. What&rsquo;s that? What gallows? But the watchman
+      was so excited that I saw at once it was for our two. I wished to tap and
+      communicate with my comrades, but was afraid those two would hear. The
+      comrades were also silent. Evidently everybody knew. In the corridors and
+      in the cells everything was as still as death all that evening. They did
+      not tap the wall nor sing. At ten the watchman came again and announced
+      that a hangman had arrived from Moscow. He said it and went away. I began
+      calling him back. Suddenly I hear Rozovsky shouting to me across the
+      corridor: &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the matter? Why do you call him?&rsquo; I answered something
+      about asking him to get me some tobacco, but he seemed to guess, and asked
+      me: &lsquo;Why did we not sing to-night, why did we not tap the walls?&rsquo; I do not
+      remember what I said, but I went away so as not to speak to him. Yes. It
+      was a terrible night. I listened to every sound all night. Suddenly,
+      towards morning, I hear doors opening and somebody walking&mdash;many
+      persons. I went up to my window. There was a lamp burning in the corridor.
+      The first to pass was the inspector. He was stout, and seemed a resolute,
+      self-satisfied man, but he looked ghastly pale, downcast, and seemed
+      frightened; then his assistant, frowning but resolute; behind them the
+      watchman. They passed my door and stopped at the next, and I hear the
+      assistant calling out in a strange voice: &lsquo;Lozinsky, get up and put on
+      clean linen.&rsquo; Yes. Then I hear the creaking of the door; they entered into
+      his cell. Then I hear Lozinsky&rsquo;s steps going to the opposite side of the
+      corridor. I could only see the inspector. He stood quite pale, and
+      buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, shrugging his shoulders. Yes. Then, as
+      if frightened of something, he moved out of the way. It was Lozinsky, who
+      passed him and came up to my door. A handsome young fellow he was, you
+      know, of that nice Polish type: broad shouldered, his head covered with
+      fine, fair, curly hair as with a cap, and with beautiful blue eyes. So
+      blooming, so fresh, so healthy. He stopped in front of my window, so that
+      I could see the whole of his face. A dreadful, gaunt, livid face.
+      &lsquo;Kryltzoff, have you any cigarettes?&rsquo; I wished to pass him some, but the
+      assistant hurriedly pulled out his cigarette case and passed it to him. He
+      took out one, the assistant struck a match, and he lit the cigarette and
+      began to smoke and seemed to be thinking. Then, as if he had remembered
+      something, he began to speak. &lsquo;It is cruel and unjust. I have committed no
+      crime. I&mdash;&rsquo; I saw something quiver in his white young throat, from
+      which I could not take my eyes, and he stopped. Yes. At that moment I hear
+      Rozovsky shouting in his fine, Jewish voice. Lozinsky threw away the
+      cigarette and stepped from the door. And Rozovsky appeared at the window.
+      His childish face, with the limpid black eyes, was red and moist. He also
+      had clean linen on, the trousers were too wide, and he kept pulling them
+      up and trembled all over. He approached his pitiful face to my window.
+      &lsquo;Kryltzoff, it&rsquo;s true that the doctor has prescribed cough mixture for me,
+      is it not? I am not well. I&rsquo;ll take some more of the mixture.&rsquo; No one
+      answered, and he looked inquiringly, now at me, now at the inspector. What
+      he meant to say I never made out. Yes. Suddenly the assistant again put on
+      a stern expression, and called out in a kind of squeaking tone: &lsquo;Now,
+      then, no nonsense. Let us go.&rsquo; Rozovsky seemed incapable of understanding
+      what awaited him, and hurried, almost ran, in front of him all along the
+      corridor. But then he drew back, and I could hear his shrill voice and his
+      cries, then the trampling of feet, and general hubbub. He was shrieking
+      and sobbing. The sounds came fainter and fainter, and at last the door
+      rattled and all was quiet. Yes. And so they hanged them. Throttled them
+      both with a rope. A watchman, another one, saw it done, and told me that
+      Lozinsky did not resist, but Rozovsky struggled for a long time, so that
+      they had to pull him up on to the scaffold and to force his head into the
+      noose. Yes. This watchman was a stupid fellow. He said: &lsquo;They told me,
+      sir, that it would be frightful, but it was not at all frightful. After
+      they were hanged they only shrugged their shoulders twice, like this.&rsquo; He
+      showed how the shoulders convulsively rose and fell. &lsquo;Then the hangman
+      pulled a bit so as to tighten the noose, and it was all up, and they never
+      budged.&rdquo;&rsquo; And Kryltzoff repeated the watchman&rsquo;s words, &ldquo;Not at all
+      frightful,&rdquo; and tried to smile, but burst into sobs instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time after that he kept silent, breathing heavily, and
+      repressing the sobs that were choking him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From that time I became a revolutionist. Yes,&rdquo; he said, when he was
+      quieter and finished his story in a few words. He belonged to the
+      Narodovoltzy party, and was even at the head of the disorganising group,
+      whose object was to terrorise the government so that it should give up its
+      power of its own accord. With this object he travelled to Petersburg, to
+      Kiev, to Odessa and abroad, and was everywhere successful. A man in whom
+      he had full confidence betrayed him. He was arrested, tried, kept in
+      prison for two years, and condemned to death, but the sentence was
+      mitigated to one of hard labour for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went into consumption while in prison, and in the conditions he was now
+      placed he had scarcely more than a few months longer to live. This he
+      knew, but did not repent of his action, but said that if he had another
+      life he would use it in the same way to destroy the conditions in which
+      such things as he had seen were possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man&rsquo;s story and his intimacy with him explained to Nekhludoff much
+      that he had not previously understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0108" id="link2HCH0108">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. NEKHLUDOFF SEEKS AN INTERVIEW WITH MASLOVA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the day when the convoy officer had the encounter with the prisoners at
+      the halting station about the child, Nekhludoff, who had spent the night
+      at the village inn, woke up late, and was some time writing letters to
+      post at the next Government town, so that he left the inn later than
+      usual, and did not catch up with the gang on the road as he had done
+      previously, but came to the village where the next halting station was as
+      it was growing dusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having dried himself at the inn, which was kept by an elderly woman who
+      had an extraordinarily fat, white neck, he had his tea in a clean room
+      decorated with a great number of icons and pictures and then hurried away
+      to the halting station to ask the officer for an interview with Katusha.
+      At the last six halting stations he could not get the permission for an
+      interview from any of the officers. Though they had been changed several
+      times, not one of them would allow Nekhludoff inside the halting stations,
+      so that he had not seen Katusha for more than a week. This strictness was
+      occasioned by the fact that an important prison official was expected to
+      pass that way. Now this official had passed without looking in at the
+      gang, after all, and Nekhludoff hoped that the officer who had taken
+      charge of the gang in the morning would allow him an interview with the
+      prisoners, as former officers had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landlady offered Nekhludoff a trap to drive him to the halting
+      station, situated at the farther end of the village, but Nekhludoff
+      preferred to walk. A young labourer, a broad-shouldered young fellow of
+      herculean dimensions, with enormous top-boots freshly blackened with
+      strongly smelling tar, offered himself as a guide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dense mist obscured the sky, and it was so dark that when the young
+      fellow was three steps in advance of him Nekhludoff could not see him
+      unless the light of some window happened to fall on the spot, but he could
+      hear the heavy boots wading through the deep, sticky slush. After passing
+      the open place in front of the church and the long street, with its rows
+      of windows shining brightly in the darkness, Nekhludoff followed his guide
+      to the outskirts of the village, where it was pitch dark. But soon here,
+      too, rays of light, streaming through the mist from the lamps in the front
+      of the halting station, became discernible through the darkness. The
+      reddish spots of light grew bigger and bigger; at last the stakes of the
+      palisade, the moving figure of the sentinel, a post painted with white and
+      black stripes and the sentinel&rsquo;s box became visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sentinel called his usual &ldquo;Who goes there?&rdquo; as they approached, and
+      seeing they were strangers treated them with such severity that he would
+      not allow them to wait by the palisade; but Nekhludoff&rsquo;s guide was not
+      abashed by this severity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo, lad! why so fierce? You go and rouse your boss while we wait
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sentinel gave no answer, but shouted something in at the gate and
+      stood looking at the broad-shouldered young labourer scraping the mud off
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s boots with a chip of wood by the light of the lamp. From
+      behind the palisade came the hum of male and female voices. In about three
+      minutes more something rattled, the gate opened, and a sergeant, with his
+      cloak thrown over his shoulders, stepped out of the darkness into the
+      lamplight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sergeant was not as strict as the sentinel, but he was extremely
+      inquisitive. He insisted on knowing what Nekhludoff wanted the officer
+      for, and who he was, evidently scenting his booty and anxious not to let
+      it escape. Nekhludoff said he had come on special business, and would show
+      his gratitude, and would the sergeant take a note for him to the officer.
+      The sergeant took the note, nodded, and went away. Some time after the
+      gate rattled again, and women carrying baskets, boxes, jugs and sacks came
+      out, loudly chattering in their peculiar Siberian dialect as they stepped
+      over the threshold of the gate. None of them wore peasant costumes, but
+      were dressed town fashion, wearing jackets and fur-lined cloaks. Their
+      skirts were tucked up high, and their heads wrapped up in shawls. They
+      examined Nekhludoff and his guide curiously by the light of the lamp. One
+      of them showed evident pleasure at the sight of the broad-shouldered
+      fellow, and affectionately administered to him a dose of Siberian abuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You demon, what are you doing here? The devil take you,&rdquo; she said,
+      addressing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been showing this traveller here the way,&rdquo; answered the young
+      fellow. &ldquo;And what have you been bringing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dairy produce, and I am to bring more in the morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The guide said something in answer that made not only the women but even
+      the sentinel laugh, and, turning to Nekhludoff, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find your way alone? Won&rsquo;t get lost, will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall find it all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you have passed the church it&rsquo;s the second from the two-storied
+      house. Oh, and here, take my staff,&rdquo; he said, handing the stick he was
+      carrying, and which was longer than himself, to Nekhludoff; and splashing
+      through the mud with his enormous boots, he disappeared in the darkness,
+      together with the women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice mingling with the voices of the women was still audible through
+      the fog, when the gate again rattled, and the sergeant appeared and asked
+      Nekhludoff to follow him to the officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0109" id="link2HCH0109">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. NEKHLUDOFF AND THE OFFICER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This halting station, like all such stations along the Siberian road, was
+      surrounded by a courtyard, fenced in with a palisade of sharp-pointed
+      stakes, and consisted of three one-storied houses. One of them, the
+      largest, with grated windows, was for the prisoners, another for the
+      convoy soldiers, and the third, in which the office was, for the officers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were lights in the windows of all the three houses, and, like all
+      such lights, they promised, here in a specially deceptive manner,
+      something cosy inside the walls. Lamps were burning before the porches of
+      the houses and about five lamps more along the walls lit up the yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sergeant led Nekhludoff along a plank which lay across the yard up to
+      the porch of the smallest of the houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had gone up the three steps of the porch he let Nekhludoff pass
+      before him into the ante-room, in which a small lamp was burning, and
+      which was filled with smoky fumes. By the stove a soldier in a coarse
+      shirt with a necktie and black trousers, and with one top-boot on, stood
+      blowing the charcoal in a somovar, using the other boot as bellows. [The
+      long boots worn in Russia have concertina-like sides, and when held to the
+      chimney of the somovar can be used instead of bellows to make the charcoal
+      inside burn up.] When he saw Nekhludoff, the soldier left the somovar and
+      helped him off with his waterproof; then went into the inner room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has come, your honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, ask him in,&rdquo; came an angry voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go in at the door,&rdquo; said the soldier, and went back to the somovar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the next room an officer with fair moustaches and a very red face,
+      dressed in an Austrian jacket that closely fitted his broad chest and
+      shoulders, sat at a covered table, on which were the remains of his dinner
+      and two bottles; there was a strong smell of tobacco and some very strong,
+      cheap scent in the warm room. On seeing Nekhludoff the officer rose and
+      gazed ironically and suspiciously, as it seemed, at the newcomer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it you want?&rdquo; he asked, and, not waiting for a reply, he shouted
+      through the open door:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bernoff, the somovar! What are you about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coming at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll get it &lsquo;at once&rsquo; so that you&rsquo;ll remember it,&rdquo; shouted the officer,
+      and his eyes flashed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m coming,&rdquo; shouted the soldier, and brought in the somovar. Nekhludoff
+      waited while the soldier placed the somovar on the table. When the officer
+      had followed the soldier out of the room with his cruel little eyes
+      looking as if they were aiming where best to hit him, he made the tea, got
+      the four-cornered decanter out of his travelling case and some Albert
+      biscuits, and having placed all this on the cloth he again turned to
+      Nekhludoff. &ldquo;Well, how can I be of service to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to be allowed to visit a prisoner,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff,
+      without sitting down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A political one? That&rsquo;s forbidden by the law,&rdquo; said the officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The woman I mean is not a political prisoner,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But pray take a scat,&rdquo; said the officer. Nekhludoff sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not a political one, but at my request she has been allowed by the
+      higher authorities to join the political prisoners&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I know,&rdquo; interrupted the other; &ldquo;a little dark one? Well, yes,
+      that can be managed. Won&rsquo;t you smoke?&rdquo; He moved a box of cigarettes
+      towards Nekhludoff, and, having carefully poured out two tumblers of tea,
+      he passed one to Nekhludoff. &ldquo;If you please,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you; I should like to see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The night is long. You&rsquo;ll have plenty of time. I shall order her to be
+      sent out to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But could I not see her where she is? Why need she be sent for?&rdquo;
+       Nekhludoff said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In to the political prisoners? It is against the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been allowed to go in several times. If there is any danger of my
+      passing anything in to them I could do it through her just as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no; she would be searched,&rdquo; said the officer, and laughed in an
+      unpleasant manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, why not search me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; we&rsquo;ll manage without that,&rdquo; said the officer, opening the
+      decanter, and holding it out towards Nekhludoff&rsquo;s tumbler of tea. &ldquo;May I?
+      No? Well, just as you like. When you are living here in Siberia you are
+      too glad to meet an educated person. Our work, as you know, is the
+      saddest, and when one is used to better things it is very hard. The idea
+      they have of us is that convoy officers are coarse, uneducated men, and no
+      one seems to remember that we may have been born for a very different
+      position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This officer&rsquo;s red face, his scents, his rings, and especially his
+      unpleasant laughter disgusted Nekhludoff very much, but to-day, as during
+      the whole of his journey, he was in that serious, attentive state which
+      did not allow him to behave slightingly or disdainfully towards any man,
+      but made him feel the necessity of speaking to every one &ldquo;entirely,&rdquo; as he
+      expressed to himself, this relation to men. When he had heard the officer
+      and understood his state of mind, he said in a serious manner:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that in your position, too, some comfort could be found in
+      helping the suffering people,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are their sufferings? You don&rsquo;t know what these people are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are not special people,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff; &ldquo;they are just such people
+      as others, and some of them are quite innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, there are all sorts among them, and naturally one pities them.
+      Others won&rsquo;t let anything off, but I try to lighten their condition where
+      I can. It&rsquo;s better that I should suffer, but not they. Others keep to the
+      law in every detail, even as far as to shoot, but I show pity. May I?&mdash;Take
+      another,&rdquo; he said, and poured out another tumbler of tea for Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who is she, this woman that you want to see?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an unfortunate woman who got into a brothel, and was there falsely
+      accused of poisoning, and she is a very good woman,&rdquo; Nekhludoff answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer shook his head. &ldquo;Yes, it does happen. I can tell you about a
+      certain Emma who lived in Kasan. She was a Hungarian by birth, but she had
+      quite Persian eyes,&rdquo; he continued, unable to restrain a smile at the
+      recollection; &ldquo;there was so much chic about her that a countess&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff interrupted the officer and returned to the former topic of
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that you could lighten the condition of the people while they are
+      in your charge. And in acting that way I am sure you would find great
+      joy!&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, trying to pronounce as distinctly as possible, as
+      he might if talking to a foreigner or a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer looked at Nekhludoff impatiently, waiting for him to stop so
+      as to continue the tale about the Hungarian with Persian eyes, who
+      evidently presented herself very vividly to his imagination and quite
+      absorbed his attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course, this is all quite true,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I do pity them;
+      but I should like to tell you about Emma. What do you think she did&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does not interest me,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, &ldquo;and I will tell you straight,
+      that though I was myself very different at one time, I now hate that kind
+      of relation to women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer gave Nekhludoff a frightened look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you take some more tea?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bernoff!&rdquo; the officer called, &ldquo;take the gentleman to Vakouloff. Tell him
+      to let him into the separate political room. He may remain there till the
+      inspection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0110" id="link2HCH0110">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. THE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Accompanied by the orderly, Nekhludoff went out into the courtyard, which
+      was dimly lit up by the red light of the lamps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where to?&rdquo; asked the convoy sergeant, addressing the orderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into the separate cell, No. 5.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t pass here; the boss has gone to the village and taken the
+      keys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, pass this way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier led Nekhludoff along a board to another entrance. While still
+      in the yard Nekhludoff could hear the din of voices and general commotion
+      going on inside as in a beehive when the bees are preparing to swarm; but
+      when he came nearer and the door opened the din grew louder, and changed
+      into distinct sounds of shouting, abuse and laughter. He heard the clatter
+      of chairs and smelt the well-known foul air. This din of voices and the
+      clatter of the chairs, together with the close smell, always flowed into
+      one tormenting sensation, and produced in Nekhludoff a feeling of moral
+      nausea which grew into physical sickness, the two feelings mingling with
+      and heightening each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first thing Nekhludoff saw, on entering, was a large, stinking tub. A
+      corridor into which several doors opened led from the entrance. The first
+      was the family room, then the bachelors&rsquo; room, and at the very end two
+      small rooms were set apart for the political prisoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The buildings, which were arranged to hold one hundred and fifty
+      prisoners, now that there were four hundred and fifty inside, were so
+      crowded that the prisoners could not all get into the rooms, but filled
+      the passage, too. Some were sitting or lying on the floor, some were going
+      out with empty teapots, or bringing them back filled with boiling water.
+      Among the latter was Taras. He overtook Nekhludoff and greeted him
+      affectionately. The kind face of Taras was disfigured by dark bruises on
+      his nose and under his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened to you?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, something did happen,&rdquo; Taras said, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All because of the woman,&rdquo; added a prisoner, who followed Taras; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s
+      had a row with Blind Fedka.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how&rsquo;s Theodosia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s all right. Here I am bringing her the water for her tea,&rdquo; Taras
+      answered, and went into the family room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff looked in at the door. The room was crowded with women and men,
+      some of whom were on and some under the bedsteads; it was full of steam
+      from the wet clothes that were drying, and the chatter of women&rsquo;s voices
+      was unceasing. The next door led into the bachelors&rsquo; room. This room was
+      still more crowded; even the doorway and the passage in front of it were
+      blocked by a noisy crowd of men, in wet garments, busy doing or deciding
+      something or other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The convoy sergeant explained that it was the prisoner appointed to buy
+      provisions, paying off out of the food money what was owing to a sharper
+      who had won from or lent money to the prisoners, and receiving back little
+      tickets made of playing cards. When they saw the convoy soldier and a
+      gentleman, those who were nearest became silent, and followed them with
+      looks of ill-will. Among them Nekhludoff noticed the criminal Fedoroff,
+      whom he knew, and who always kept a miserable lad with a swelled
+      appearance and raised eyebrows beside him, and also a disgusting,
+      noseless, pock-marked tramp, who was notorious among the prisoners because
+      he killed his comrade in the marshes while trying to escape, and had, as
+      it was rumoured, fed on his flesh. The tramp stood in the passage with his
+      wet cloak thrown over one shoulder, looking mockingly and boldly at
+      Nekhludoff, and did not move out of the way. Nekhludoff passed him by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though this kind of scene had now become quite familiar to him, though he
+      had during the last three months seen these four hundred criminal
+      prisoners over and over again in many different circumstances; in the
+      heat, enveloped in clouds of dust which they raised as they dragged their
+      chained feet along the road, and at the resting places by the way, where
+      the most horrible scenes of barefaced debauchery had occurred, yet every
+      time he came among them, and felt their attention fixed upon him as it was
+      now, shame and consciousness of his sin against them tormented him. To
+      this sense of shame and guilt was added an unconquerable feeling of
+      loathing and horror. He knew that, placed in a position such as theirs,
+      they could not be other than they were, and yet he was unable to stifle
+      his disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s well for them do-nothings,&rdquo; Nekhludoff heard some one say in a
+      hoarse voice as he approached the room of the political prisoners. Then
+      followed a word of obscene abuse, and spiteful, mocking laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0111" id="link2HCH0111">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. MAKAR DEVKIN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When they had passed the bachelors&rsquo; room the sergeant who accompanied
+      Nekhludoff left him, promising to come for him before the inspection would
+      take place. As soon as the sergeant was gone a prisoner, quickly stepping
+      with his bare feet and holding up the chains, came close up to Nekhludoff,
+      enveloping him in the strong, acid smell of perspiration, and said in a
+      mysterious whisper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help the lad, sir; he&rsquo;s got into an awful mess. Been drinking. To-day
+      he&rsquo;s given his name as Karmanoff at the inspection. Take his part, sir. We
+      dare not, or they&rsquo;ll kill us,&rdquo; and looking uneasily round he turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is what had happened. The criminal Kalmanoff had persuaded a young
+      fellow who resembled him in appearance and was sentenced to exile to
+      change names with him and go to the mines instead of him, while he only
+      went to exile. Nekhludoff knew all this. Some convict had told him about
+      this exchange the week before. He nodded as a sign that he understood and
+      would do what was in his power, and continued his way without looking
+      round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff knew this convict, and was surprised by his action. When in
+      Ekaterinburg the convict had asked Nekhludoff to get a permission for his
+      wife to follow him. The convict was a man of medium size and of the most
+      ordinary peasant type, about thirty years old. He was condemned to hard
+      labour for an attempt to murder and rob. His name was Makar Devkin. His
+      crime was a very curious one. In the account he gave of it to Nekhludoff,
+      he said it was not his but his devil&rsquo;s doing. He said that a traveller had
+      come to his father&rsquo;s house and hired his sledge to drive him to a village
+      thirty miles off for two roubles. Makar&rsquo;s father told him to drive the
+      stranger. Makar harnessed the horse, dressed, and sat down to drink tea
+      with the stranger. The stranger related at the tea-table that he was going
+      to be married and had five hundred roubles, which he had earned in Moscow,
+      with him. When he had heard this, Makar went out into the yard and put an
+      axe into the sledge under the straw. &ldquo;And I did not myself know why I was
+      taking the axe,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;&lsquo;Take the axe,&rsquo; says <i>he</i>, and I took it.
+      We got in and started. We drove along all right; I even forgot about the
+      axe. Well, we were getting near the village; only about four miles more to
+      go. The way from the cross-road to the high road was up hill, and I got
+      out. I walked behind the sledge and <i>he</i> whispers to me, &lsquo;What are
+      you thinking about? When you get to the top of the hill you will meet
+      people along the highway, and then there will be the village. He will
+      carry the money away. If you mean to do it, now&rsquo;s the time.&rsquo; I stooped
+      over the sledge as if to arrange the straw, and the axe seemed to jump
+      into my hand of itself. The man turned round. &lsquo;What are you doing?&rsquo; I
+      lifted the axe and tried to knock him down, but he was quick, jumped out,
+      and took hold of my hands. &lsquo;What are you doing, you villain?&rsquo; He threw me
+      down into the snow, and I did not even struggle, but gave in at once. He
+      bound my arms with his girdle, and threw me into the sledge, and took me
+      straight to the police station. I was imprisoned and tried. The commune
+      gave me a good character, said that I was a good man, and that nothing
+      wrong had been noticed about me. The masters for whom I worked also spoke
+      well of me, but we had no money to engage a lawyer, and so I was condemned
+      to four years&rsquo; hard labour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was this man who, wishing to save a fellow-villager, knowing that he
+      was risking his life thereby, told Nekhludoff the prisoner&rsquo;s secret, for
+      doing which (if found out) he should certainly be throttled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0112" id="link2HCH0112">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. MASLOVA AND HER COMPANIONS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The political prisoners were kept in two small rooms, the doors of which
+      opened into a part of the passage partitioned off from the rest. The first
+      person Nekhludoff saw on entering into this part of the passage was
+      Simonson in his rubber jacket and with a log of pine wood in his hands,
+      crouching in front of a stove, the door of which trembled, drawn in by the
+      heat inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he saw Nekhludoff he looked up at him from under his protruding brow,
+      and gave him his hand without rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you have come; I want to speak to you,&rdquo; he said, looking
+      Nekhludoff straight in the eyes with an expression of importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; what is it?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will do later on; I am busy just now,&rdquo; and Simonson turned again
+      towards the stove, which he was heating according to a theory of his own,
+      so as to lose as little heat energy as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was going to enter in at the first door, when Maslova, stooping
+      and pushing a large heap of rubbish and dust towards the stove with a
+      handleless birch broom, came out of the other. She had a white jacket on,
+      her skirt was tucked up, and a kerchief, drawn down to her eyebrows,
+      protected her hair from the dust. When she saw Nekhludoff, she drew
+      herself up, flushing and animated, put down the broom, wiped her hands on
+      her skirt, and stopped right in front of him. &ldquo;You are tidying up the
+      apartments, I see,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, shaking hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; my old occupation,&rdquo; and she smiled. &ldquo;But the dirt! You can&rsquo;t imagine
+      what it is. We have been cleaning and cleaning. Well, is the plaid dry?&rdquo;
+       she asked, turning to Simonson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost,&rdquo; Simonson answered, giving her a strange look, which struck
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, I&rsquo;ll come for it, and will bring the cloaks to dry. Our people
+      are all in here,&rdquo; she said to Nekhludoff, pointing to the first door as
+      she went out of the second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff opened the door and entered a small room dimly lit by a little
+      metal lamp, which was standing low down on the shelf bedstead. It was cold
+      in the room, and there was a smell of the dust, which had not had time to
+      settle, damp and tobacco smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only those who were close to the lamp were clearly visible, the bedsteads
+      were in the shade and wavering shadows glided over the walls. Two men,
+      appointed as caterers, who had gone to fetch boiling water and provisions,
+      were away; most of the political prisoners were gathered together in the
+      small room. There was Nekhludoff&rsquo;s old acquaintance, Vera Doukhova, with
+      her large, frightened eyes, and the swollen vein on her forehead, in a
+      grey jacket with short hair, and thinner and yellower than ever.. She had
+      a newspaper spread out in front of her, and sat rolling cigarettes with a
+      jerky movement of her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emily Rintzeva, whom Nekhludoff considered to be the pleasantest of the
+      political prisoners, was also here. She looked after the housekeeping, and
+      managed to spread a feeling of home comfort even in the midst of the most
+      trying surroundings. She sat beside the lamp, with her sleeves rolled up,
+      wiping cups and mugs, and placing them, with her deft, red and sunburnt
+      hands, on a cloth that was spread on the bedstead. Rintzeva was a
+      plain-looking young woman, with a clever and mild expression of face,
+      which, when she smiled, had a way of suddenly becoming merry, animated and
+      captivating. It was with such a smile that she now welcomed Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, we thought you had gone back to Russia,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here in a dark corner was also Mary Pavlovna, busy with a little,
+      fair-haired girl, who kept prattling in her sweet, childish accents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How nice that you have come,&rdquo; she said to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen Katusha? And we have a visitor here,&rdquo; and she pointed to
+      the little girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was also Anatole Kryltzoff with felt boots on, sitting in a far
+      corner with his feet under him, doubled up and shivering, his arms folded
+      in the sleeves of his cloak, and looking at Nekhludoff with feverish eyes.
+      Nekhludoff was going up to him, but to the right of the door a man with
+      spectacles and reddish curls, dressed in a rubber jacket, sat talking to
+      the pretty, smiling Grabetz. This was the celebrated revolutionist
+      Novodvoroff. Nekhludoff hastened to greet him. He was in a particular
+      hurry about it, because this man was the only one among all the political
+      prisoners whom he disliked. Novodvoroff&rsquo;s eyes glistened through his
+      spectacles as he looked at Nekhludoff and held his narrow hand out to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, are you having a pleasant journey?&rdquo; he asked, with apparent irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there is much that is interesting,&rdquo; Nekhludoff answered, as if he
+      did not notice the irony, but took the question for politeness, and passed
+      on to Kryltzoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Nekhludoff appeared indifferent, he was really far from
+      indifferent, and these words of Novodvoroff, showing his evident desire to
+      say or do something unpleasant, interfered with the state of kindness in
+      which Nekhludoff found himself, and he felt depressed and sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, how are you?&rdquo; he asked, pressing Kryltzoff&rsquo;s cold and trembling
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty well, only I cannot get warm; I got wet through,&rdquo; Kryltzoff
+      answered, quickly replacing his hands into the sleeves of his cloak. &ldquo;And
+      here it is also beastly cold. There, look, the window-panes are broken,&rdquo;
+       and he pointed to the broken panes behind the iron bars. &ldquo;And how are you?
+      Why did you not come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not allowed to, the authorities were so strict, but to-day the
+      officer is lenient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lenient indeed!&rdquo; Kryltzoff remarked. &ldquo;Ask Mary what she did this
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Pavlovna from her place in the corner related what had happened about
+      the little girl that morning when they left the halting station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is absolutely necessary to make a collective protest,&rdquo; said
+      Vera Doukhova, in a determined tone, and yet looking now at one, now at
+      another, with a frightened, undecided look. &ldquo;Valdemar Simonson did
+      protest, but that is not sufficient.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What protest!&rdquo; muttered Kryltzoff, cross and frowning. Her want of
+      simplicity, artificial tone and nervousness had evidently been irritating
+      him for a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you looking for Katusha?&rdquo; he asked, addressing Nekhludoff. &ldquo;She is
+      working all the time. She has cleaned this, the men&rsquo;s room, and now she
+      has gone to clean the women&rsquo;s! Only it is not possible to clean away the
+      fleas. And what is Mary doing there?&rdquo; he asked, nodding towards the corner
+      where Mary Pavlovna sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is combing out her adopted daughter&rsquo;s hair,&rdquo; replied Rintzeva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But won&rsquo;t she let the insects loose on us?&rdquo; asked Kryltzoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I am very careful. She is a clean little girl now. You take her,&rdquo;
+       said Mary, turning to Rintzeva, &ldquo;while I go and help Katusha, and I will
+      also bring him his plaid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rintzeva took the little girl on her lap, pressing her plump, bare, little
+      arms to her bosom with a mother&rsquo;s tenderness, and gave her a bit of sugar.
+      As Mary Pavlovna left the room, two men came in with boiling water and
+      provisions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0113" id="link2HCH0113">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. NABATOFF AND MARKEL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One of the men who came in was a short, thin, young man, who had a
+      cloth-covered sheepskin coat on, and high top-boots. He stepped lightly
+      and quickly, carrying two steaming teapots, and holding a loaf wrapped in
+      a cloth under his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, so our prince has put in an appearance again,&rdquo; he said, as he
+      placed the teapot beside the cups, and handed the bread to Rintzeva. &ldquo;We
+      have bought wonderful things,&rdquo; he continued, as he took off his sheepskin,
+      and flung it over the heads of the others into the corner of the bedstead.
+      &ldquo;Markel has bought milk and eggs. Why, we&rsquo;ll have a regular ball to-day.
+      And Rintzeva is spreading out her aesthetic cleanliness,&rdquo; he said, and
+      looked with a smile at Rintzeva, &ldquo;and now she will make the tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole presence of this man&mdash;his motion, his voice, his look&mdash;seemed
+      to breathe vigour and merriment. The other newcomer was just the reverse
+      of the first. He looked despondent and sad. He was short, bony, had very
+      prominent cheek bones, a sallow complexion, thin lips and beautiful,
+      greenish eyes, rather far apart. He wore an old wadded coat, top-boots and
+      goloshes, and was carrying two pots of milk and two round boxes made of
+      birch bark, which he placed in front of Rintzeva. He bowed to Nekhludoff,
+      bending only his neck, and with his eyes fixed on him. Then, having
+      reluctantly given him his damp hand to shake, he began to take out the
+      provisions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both these political prisoners were of the people; the first was Nabatoff,
+      a peasant; the second, Markel Kondratieff, a factory hand. Markel did not
+      come among the revolutionists till he was quite a man, Nabatoff only
+      eighteen. After leaving the village school, owing to his exceptional
+      talents Nabatoff entered the gymnasium, and maintained himself by giving
+      lessons all the time he studied there, and obtained the gold medal. He did
+      not go to the university because, while still in the seventh class of the
+      gymnasium, he made up his mind to go among the people and enlighten his
+      neglected brethren. This he did, first getting the place of a Government
+      clerk in a large village. He was soon arrested because he read to the
+      peasants and arranged a co-operative industrial association among them.
+      They kept him imprisoned for eight months and then set him free, but he
+      remained under police supervision. As soon as he was liberated he went to
+      another village, got a place as schoolmaster, and did the same as he had
+      done in the first village. He was again taken up and kept fourteen months
+      in prison, where his convictions became yet stronger. After that he was
+      exiled to the Perm Government, from where he escaped. Then he was put to
+      prison for seven months and after that exiled to Archangel. There he
+      refused to take the oath of allegiance that was required of them and was
+      condemned to be exiled to the Takoutsk Government, so that half his life
+      since he reached manhood was passed in prison and exile. All these
+      adventures did not embitter him nor weaken his energy, but rather
+      stimulated it. He was a lively young fellow, with a splendid digestion,
+      always active, gay and vigorous. He never repented of anything, never
+      looked far ahead, and used all his powers, his cleverness, his practical
+      knowledge to act in the present. When free he worked towards the aim he
+      had set himself, the enlightening and the uniting of the working men,
+      especially the country labourers. When in prison he was just as energetic
+      and practical in finding means to come in contact with the outer world,
+      and in arranging his own life and the life of his group as comfortably as
+      the conditions would allow. Above all things he was a communist. He
+      wanted, as it seemed to him, nothing for himself and contented himself
+      with very little, but demanded very much for the group of his comrades,
+      and could work for it either physically or mentally day and night, without
+      sleep or food. As a peasant he had been industrious, observant, clever at
+      his work, and naturally self-controlled, polite without any effort, and
+      attentive not only to the wishes but also the opinions of others. His
+      widowed mother, an illiterate, superstitious, old peasant woman, was still
+      living, and Nabatoff helped her and went to see her while he was free.
+      During the time he spent at home he entered into all the interests of his
+      mother&rsquo;s life, helped her in her work, and continued his intercourse with
+      former playfellows; smoked cheap tobacco with them in so-called &ldquo;dog&rsquo;s
+      feet,&rdquo; [a kind of cigarette that the peasants smoke, made of a bit of
+      paper and bent at one end into a hook] took part in their fist fights, and
+      explained to them how they were all being deceived by the State, and how
+      they ought to disentangle themselves out of the deception they were kept
+      in. When he thought or spoke of what a revolution would do for the people
+      he always imagined this people from whom he had sprung himself left in
+      very nearly the same conditions as they were in, only with sufficient land
+      and without the gentry and without officials. The revolution, according to
+      him, and in this he differed from Novodvoroff and Novodvoroff&rsquo;s follower,
+      Markel Kondratieff, should not alter the elementary forms of the life of
+      the people, should not break down the whole edifice, but should only alter
+      the inner walls of the beautiful, strong, enormous old structure he loved
+      so dearly. He was also a typical peasant in his views on religion, never
+      thinking about metaphysical questions, about the origin of all origin, or
+      the future life. God was to him, as also to Arago, an hypothesis, which he
+      had had no need of up to now. He had no business with the origin of the
+      world, whether Moses or Darwin was right. Darwinism, which seemed so
+      important to his fellows, was only the same kind of plaything of the mind
+      as the creation in six days. The question how the world had originated did
+      not interest him, just because the question how it would be best to live
+      in this world was ever before him. He never thought about future life,
+      always bearing in the depth of his soul the firm and quiet conviction
+      inherited from his forefathers, and common to all labourers on the land,
+      that just as in the world of plants and animals nothing ceases to exist,
+      but continually changes its form, the manure into grain, the grain into a
+      food, the tadpole into a frog, the caterpillar into a butterfly, the acorn
+      into an oak, so man also does not perish, but only undergoes a change. He
+      believed in this, and therefore always looked death straight in the face,
+      and bravely bore the sufferings that lead towards it, but did not care and
+      did not know how to speak about it. He loved work, was always employed in
+      some practical business, and put his comrades in the way of the same kind
+      of practical work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other political prisoner from among the people, Markel Kondratieff,
+      was a very different kind of man. He began to work at the age of fifteen,
+      and took to smoking and drinking in order to stifle a dense sense of being
+      wronged. He first realised he was wronged one Christmas when they, the
+      factory children, were invited to a Christmas tree, got up by the
+      employer&rsquo;s wife, where he received a farthing whistle, an apple, a gilt
+      walnut and a fig, while the employer&rsquo;s children had presents given them
+      which seemed gifts from fairyland, and had cost more than fifty roubles,
+      as he afterwards heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was twenty a celebrated revolutionist came to their factory to
+      work as a working girl, and noticing his superior qualities began giving
+      books and pamphlets to Kondratieff and to talk and explain his position to
+      him, and how to remedy it. When the possibility of freeing himself and
+      others from their oppressed state rose clearly in his mind, the injustice
+      of this state appeared more cruel and more terrible than before, and he
+      longed passionately not only for freedom, but also for the punishment of
+      those who had arranged and who kept up this cruel injustice. Kondratieff
+      devoted himself with passion to the acquirement of knowledge. It was not
+      clear to him how knowledge should bring about the realisation of the
+      social ideal, but he believed that the knowledge that had shown him the
+      injustice of the state in which he lived would also abolish that injustice
+      itself. Besides knowledge would, in his opinion, raise him above others.
+      Therefore he left off drinking and smoking, and devoted all his leisure
+      time to study. The revolutionist gave him lessons, and his thirst for
+      every kind of knowledge, and the facility with which he took it in,
+      surprised her. In two years he had mastered algebra, geometry, history&mdash;which
+      he was specially fond of&mdash;and made acquaintance with artistic and
+      critical, and especially socialistic literature. The revolutionist was
+      arrested, and Kondratieff with her, forbidden books having been found in
+      their possession, and they were imprisoned and then exiled to the Vologda
+      Government. There Kondratieff became acquainted with Novodvoroff, and read
+      a great deal more revolutionary literature, remembered it all, and became
+      still firmer in his socialistic views. While in exile he became leader in
+      a large strike, which ended in the destruction of a factory and the murder
+      of the director. He was again arrested and condemned to Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His religious views were of the same negative nature as his views of the
+      existing economic conditions. Having seen the absurdity of the religion in
+      which he was brought up, and having gained with great effort, and at first
+      with fear, but later with rapture, freedom from it, he did not tire of
+      viciously and with venom ridiculing priests and religious dogmas, as if
+      wishing to revenge himself for the deception that had been practised on
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was ascetic through habit, contented himself with very little, and,
+      like all those used to work from childhood and whose muscles have been
+      developed, he could work much and easily, and was quick at any manual
+      labour; but what he valued most was the leisure in prisons and halting
+      stations, which enabled him to continue his studies. He was now studying
+      the first volume of Karl Marks&rsquo;s, and carefully hid the book in his sack
+      as if it were a great treasure. He behaved with reserve and indifference
+      to all his comrades, except Novodvoroff, to whom he was greatly attached,
+      and whose arguments on all subjects he accepted as unanswerable truths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had an indefinite contempt for women, whom he looked upon as a
+      hindrance in all necessary business. But he pitied Maslova and was gentle
+      with her, for he considered her an example of the way the lower are
+      exploited by the upper classes. The same reason made him dislike
+      Nekhludoff, so that he talked little with him, and never pressed
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s hand, but only held out his own to be pressed when greeting
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0114" id="link2HCH0114">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. LOVE AFFAIRS OF THE EXILES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The stove had burned up and got warm, the tea was made and poured out into
+      mugs and cups, and milk was added to it; rusks, fresh rye and wheat bread,
+      hard-boiled eggs, butter, and calf&rsquo;s head and feet were placed on the
+      cloth. Everybody moved towards the part of the shelf beds which took the
+      place of the table and sat eating and talking. Rintzeva sat on a box
+      pouring out the tea. The rest crowded round her, only Kryltzoff, who had
+      taken off his wet cloak and wrapped himself in his dry plaid and lay in
+      his own place talking to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the cold and damp march and the dirt and disorder they had found
+      here, and after the pains they had taken to get it tidy, after having
+      drunk hot tea and eaten, they were all in the best and brightest of
+      spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that the tramp of feet, the screams and abuse of the criminals,
+      reached them through the wall, reminding them of their surroundings,
+      seemed only to increase the sense of coziness. As on an island in the
+      midst of the sea, these people felt themselves for a brief interval not
+      swamped by the degradation and sufferings which surrounded them; this made
+      their spirits rise, and excited them. They talked about everything except
+      their present position and that which awaited them. Then, as it generally
+      happens among young men, and women especially, if they are forced to
+      remain together, as these people were, all sorts of agreements and
+      disagreements and attractions, curiously blended, had sprung up among
+      them. Almost all of them were in love. Novodvoroff was in love with the
+      pretty, smiling Grabetz. This Grabetz was a young, thoughtless girl who
+      had gone in for a course of study, perfectly indifferent to revolutionary
+      questions, but succumbing to the influence of the day, she compromised
+      herself in some way and was exiled. The chief interest of her life during
+      the time of her trial in prison and in exile was her success with men,
+      just as it had been when she was free. Now on the way she comforted
+      herself with the fact that Novodvoroff had taken a fancy to her, and she
+      fell in love with him. Vera Doukhova, who was very prone to fall in love
+      herself, but did not awaken love in others, though she was always hoping
+      for mutual love, was sometimes drawn to Nabatoff, then to Novodvoroff.
+      Kryltzoff felt something like love for Mary Pavlovna. He loved her with a
+      man&rsquo;s love, but knowing how she regarded this sort of love, hid his
+      feelings under the guise of friendship and gratitude for the tenderness
+      with which she attended to his wants. Nabatoff and Rintzeva were attached
+      to each other by very complicated ties. Just as Mary Pavlovna was a
+      perfectly chaste maiden, in the same way Rintzeva was perfectly chaste as
+      her own husband&rsquo;s wife. When only a schoolgirl of sixteen she fell in love
+      with Rintzeff, a student of the Petersburg University, and married him
+      before he left the university, when she was only nineteen years old.
+      During his fourth year at the university her husband had become involved
+      in the students&rsquo; rows, was exiled from Petersburg, and turned
+      revolutionist. She left the medical courses she was attending, followed
+      him, and also turned revolutionist. If she had not considered her husband
+      the cleverest and best of men she would not have fallen in love with him;
+      and if she had not fallen in love would not have married; but having
+      fallen in love and married him whom she thought the best and cleverest of
+      men, she naturally looked upon life and its aims in the way the best and
+      cleverest of men looked at them. At first he thought the aim of life was
+      to learn, and she looked upon study as the aim of life. He became a
+      revolutionist, and so did she. She could demonstrate very clearly that the
+      existing state of things could not go on, and that it was everybody&rsquo;s duty
+      to fight this state of things and to try to bring about conditions in
+      which the individual could develop freely, etc. And she imagined that she
+      really thought and felt all this, but in reality she only regarded
+      everything her husband thought as absolute truth, and only sought for
+      perfect agreement, perfect identification of her own soul with his which
+      alone could give her full moral satisfaction. The parting with her husband
+      and their child, whom her mother had taken, was very hard to bear; but she
+      bore it firmly and quietly, since it was for her husband&rsquo;s sake and for
+      that cause which she had not the slightest doubt was true, since he served
+      it. She was always with her husband in thoughts, and did not love and
+      could not love any other any more than she had done before. But Nabatoff&rsquo;s
+      devoted and pure love touched and excited her. This moral, firm man, her
+      husband&rsquo;s friend, tried to treat her as a sister, but something more
+      appeared in his behaviour to her, and this something frightened them both,
+      and yet gave colour to their life of hardship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So that in all this circle only Mary Pavlovna and Kondratieff were quite
+      free from love affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0115" id="link2HCH0115">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. CONVERSATIONS IN PRISON.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Expecting to have a private talk with Katusha, as usual, after tea,
+      Nekhludoff sat by the side of Kryltzoff, conversing with him. Among other
+      things he told him the story of Makar&rsquo;s crime and about his request to
+      him. Kryltzoff listened attentively, gazing at Nekhludoff with glistening
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Kryltzoff suddenly, &ldquo;I often think that here we are going side
+      by side with them, and who are they? The same for whose sake we are going,
+      and yet we not only do not know them, but do not even wish to know them.
+      And they, even worse than that, they hate us and look upon us as enemies.
+      This is terrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing terrible about it,&rdquo; broke in Novodvoroff. &ldquo;The masses
+      always worship power only. The government is in power, and they worship it
+      and hate us. To-morrow we shall have the power, and they will worship us,&rdquo;
+       he said with his grating voice. At that moment a volley of abuse and the
+      rattle of chains sounded from behind the wall, something was heard
+      thumping against it and screaming and shrieking, some one was being
+      beaten, and some one was calling out, &ldquo;Murder! help!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear them, the beasts! What intercourse can there be between us and such
+      as them?&rdquo; quietly remarked Novodvoroff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You call them beasts, and Nekhludoff was just telling me about such an
+      action!&rdquo; irritably retorted Kryltzoff, and went on to say how Makar was
+      risking his life to save a fellow-villager. &ldquo;That is not the action of a
+      beast, it is heroism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sentimentality!&rdquo; Novodvoroff ejaculated ironically; &ldquo;it is difficult for
+      us to understand the emotions of these people and the motives on which
+      they act. You see generosity in the act, and it may be simply jealousy of
+      that other criminal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it that you never wish to see anything good in another?&rdquo; Mary
+      Pavlovna said suddenly, flaring up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can one see what does not exist!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How does it not exist, when a man risks dying a terrible death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Novodvoroff, &ldquo;that if we mean to do our work, the first
+      condition is that&rdquo; (here Kondratieff put down the book he was reading by
+      the lamplight and began to listen attentively to his master&rsquo;s words) &ldquo;we
+      should not give way to fancy, but look at things as they are. We should do
+      all in our power for the masses, and expect nothing in return. The masses
+      can only be the object of our activity, but cannot be our fellow-workers
+      as long as they remain in that state of inertia they are in at present,&rdquo;
+       he went on, as if delivering a lecture. &ldquo;Therefore, to expect help from
+      them before the process of development&mdash;that process which we are
+      preparing them for&mdash;has taken place is an illusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What process of development?&rdquo; Kryltzoff began, flushing all over. &ldquo;We say
+      that we are against arbitrary rule and despotism, and is this not the most
+      awful despotism?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No despotism whatever,&rdquo; quietly rejoined Novodvoroff. &ldquo;I am only saying
+      that I know the path that the people must travel, and can show them that
+      path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can you be sure that the path you show is the true path? Is this
+      not the same kind of despotism that lay at the bottom of the Inquisition,
+      all persecutions, and the great revolution? They, too, knew the one true
+      way, by means of their science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their having erred is no proof of my going to err; besides, there is a
+      great difference between the ravings of idealogues and the facts based on
+      sound, economic science.&rdquo; Novodvoroff&rsquo;s voice filled the room; he alone
+      was speaking, all the rest were silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are always disputing,&rdquo; Mary Pavlovna said, when there was a moment&rsquo;s
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you yourself, what do you think about it?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think Kryltzoff is right when he says we should not force our views on
+      the people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, Katusha?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff with a smile, waiting anxiously for
+      her answer, fearing she would say something awkward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think the common people are wronged,&rdquo; she said, and blushed scarlet. &ldquo;I
+      think they are dreadfully wronged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, Maslova, quite right,&rdquo; cried Nabatoff. &ldquo;They are terribly
+      wronged, the people, and they must not be wronged, and therein lies the
+      whole of our task.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A curious idea of the object of revolution,&rdquo; Novodvoroff remarked
+      crossly, and began to smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot talk to him,&rdquo; said Kryltzoff in a whisper, and was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is much better not to talk,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0116" id="link2HCH0116">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. NOVODVOROFF.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Although Novodvoroff was highly esteemed of all the revolutionists, though
+      he was very learned, and considered very wise, Nekhludoff reckoned him
+      among those of the revolutionists who, being below the average moral
+      level, were very far below it. His inner life was of a nature directly
+      opposite to that of Simonson&rsquo;s. Simonson was one of those people (of an
+      essentially masculine type) whose actions follow the dictates of their
+      reason, and are determined by it. Novodvoroff belonged, on the contrary,
+      to the class of people of a feminine type, whose reason is directed partly
+      towards the attainment of aims set by their feelings, partly to the
+      justification of acts suggested by their feelings. The whole of
+      Novodvoroff&rsquo;s revolutionary activity, though he could explain it very
+      eloquently and very convincingly, appeared to Nekhludoff to be founded on
+      nothing but ambition and the desire for supremacy. At first his capacity
+      for assimilating the thoughts of others, and of expressing them correctly,
+      had given him a position of supremacy among pupils and teachers in the
+      gymnasium and the university, where qualities such as his are highly
+      prized, and he was satisfied. When he had finished his studies and
+      received his diploma he suddenly altered his views, and from a modern
+      liberal he turned into a rabid Narodovoletz, in order (so Kryltzoff, who
+      did not like him, said) to gain supremacy in another sphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was devoid of those moral and aesthetic qualities which call forth
+      doubts and hesitation, he very soon acquired a position in the
+      revolutionary world which satisfied him&mdash;that of the leader of a
+      party. Having once chosen a direction, he never doubted or hesitated, and
+      was therefore certain that he never made a mistake. Everything seemed
+      quite simple, clear and certain. And the narrowness and one-sidedness of
+      his views did make everything seem simple and clear. One only had to be
+      logical, as he said. His self-assurance was so great that it either
+      repelled people or made them submit to him. As he carried on his work
+      among very young people, his boundless self-assurance led them to believe
+      him very profound and wise; the majority did submit to him, and he had a
+      great success in revolutionary circles. His activity was directed to the
+      preparation of a rising in which he was to usurp the power and call
+      together a council. A programme, composed by him, should be proposed
+      before the council, and he felt sure that this programme of his solved
+      every problem, and that it would be impossible not to carry it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His comrades respected but did not love him. He did not love any one,
+      looked upon all men of note as upon rivals, and would have willingly
+      treated them as old male monkeys treat young ones if he could have done
+      it. He would have torn all mental power, every capacity, from other men,
+      so that they should not interfere with the display of his talents. He
+      behaved well only to those who bowed before him. Now, on the journey he
+      behaved well to Kondratieff, who was influenced by his propaganda; to Vera
+      Doukhova and pretty little Grabetz, who were both in love with him.
+      Although in principle he was in favour of the woman&rsquo;s movement, yet in the
+      depth of his soul he considered all women stupid and insignificant except
+      those whom he was sentimentally in love with (as he was now in love with
+      Grabetz), and such women he considered to be exceptions, whose merits he
+      alone was capable of discerning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question of the relations of the sexes he also looked upon as
+      thoroughly solved by accepting free union. He had one nominal and one real
+      wife, from both of whom he was separated, having come to the conclusion
+      that there was no real love between them, and now he thought of entering
+      on a free union with Grabetz. He despised Nekhludoff for &ldquo;playing the
+      fool,&rdquo; as Novodvoroff termed it, with Maslova, but especially for the
+      freedom Nekhludoff took of considering the defects of the existing system
+      and the methods of correcting those defects in a manner which was not only
+      not exactly the same as Novodvoroff&rsquo;s, but was Nekhludoff&rsquo;s own&mdash;a
+      prince&rsquo;s, that is, a fool&rsquo;s manner. Nekhludoff felt this relation of
+      Novodvoroff&rsquo;s towards him, and knew to his sorrow that in spite of the
+      state of good will in which he found himself on this journey he could not
+      help paying this man in his own coin, and could not stifle the strong
+      antipathy he felt for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0117" id="link2HCH0117">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. SIMONSON SPEAKS TO NEKHLUDOFF.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The voices of officials sounded from the next room. All the prisoners were
+      silent, and a sergeant, followed by two convoy soldiers, entered. The time
+      of the inspection had come. The sergeant counted every one, and when
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s turn came he addressed him with kindly familiarity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not stay any longer, Prince, after the inspection; you must go
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff knew what this meant, went up to the sergeant and shoved a
+      three-rouble note into his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, what is one to do with you; stay a bit longer, if you like.&rdquo;
+       The sergeant was about to go when another sergeant, followed by a convict,
+      a spare man with a thin beard and a bruise under his eye, came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s about the girl I have come,&rdquo; said the convict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s daddy come,&rdquo; came the ringing accents of a child&rsquo;s voice, and a
+      flaxen head appeared from behind Rintzeva, who, with Katusha&rsquo;s and Mary
+      Pavlovna&rsquo;s help, was making a new garment for the child out of one of
+      Rintzeva&rsquo;s own petticoats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, daughter, it&rsquo;s me,&rdquo; Bousovkin, the prisoner, said softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is quite comfortable here,&rdquo; said Mary Pavlovna, looking with pity at
+      Bousovkin&rsquo;s bruised face. &ldquo;Leave her with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ladies are making me new clothes,&rdquo; said the girl, pointing to
+      Rintzeva&rsquo;s sewing&mdash;&ldquo;nice red ones,&rdquo; she went on, prattling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish to sleep with us?&rdquo; asked Rintzeva, caressing the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I wish. And daddy, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, daddy can&rsquo;t. Well, leave her then,&rdquo; she said, turning to the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you may leave her,&rdquo; said the first sergeant, and went out with the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as they were out of the room Nabatoff went up to Bousovkin,
+      slapped him on the shoulder, and said: &ldquo;I say, old fellow, is it true that
+      Karmanoff wishes to exchange?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bousovkin&rsquo;s kindly, gentle face turned suddenly sad and a veil seemed to
+      dim his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have heard nothing&mdash;hardly,&rdquo; he said, and with the same dimness
+      still over his eyes he turned to the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Aksutka, it seems you&rsquo;re to make yourself comfortable with the
+      ladies,&rdquo; and he hurried away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true about the exchange, and he knows it very well,&rdquo; said Nabatoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall tell the authorities in the next town. I know both prisoners by
+      sight,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All were silent, fearing a recommencement of the dispute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simonson, who had been lying with his arms thrown back behind his head,
+      and not speaking, rose, and determinately walked up to Nekhludoff,
+      carefully passing round those who were sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you listen to me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; and Nekhludoff rose and followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katusha looked up with an expression of suspense, and meeting Nekhludoff&rsquo;s
+      eyes, she blushed and shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I want to speak to you about is this,&rdquo; Simonson began, when they had
+      come out into the passage. In the passage the din of the criminal&rsquo;s voices
+      and shouts sounded louder. Nekhludoff made a face, but Simonson did not
+      seem to take any notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Knowing of your relations to Katerina Maslova,&rdquo; he began seriously and
+      frankly, with his kind eyes looking straight into Nekhludoff&rsquo;s face, &ldquo;I
+      consider it my duty&rdquo;&mdash;He was obliged to stop because two voices were
+      heard disputing and shouting, both at once, close to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you, blockhead, they are not mine,&rdquo; one voice shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May you choke, you devil,&rdquo; snorted the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Mary Pavlovna came out into the passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can one talk here?&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;go in, Vera is alone there,&rdquo; and she
+      went in at the second door, and entered a tiny room, evidently meant for a
+      solitary cell, which was now placed at the disposal of the political women
+      prisoners, Vera Doukhova lay covered up, head and all, on the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has got a headache, and is asleep, so she cannot hear you, and I will
+      go away,&rdquo; said Mary Pavlovna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, stay here,&rdquo; said Simonson; &ldquo;I have no secrets from any
+      one, certainly none from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Mary Pavlovna, and moving her whole body from side to
+      side, like a child, so as to get farther back on to the bed, she settled
+      down to listen, her beautiful hazel eyes seeming to look somewhere far
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, this is my business,&rdquo; Simonson repeated. &ldquo;Knowing of your
+      relations to Katerina Maslova, I consider myself bound to explain to you
+      my relations to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff could not help admiring the simplicity and truthfulness with
+      which Simonson spoke to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that I should like to marry Katerina Maslova&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How strange!&rdquo; said Mary Pavlovna, fixing her eyes on Simonson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;And so I made up my mind to ask her to be my wife,&rdquo; Simonson
+      continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I do? It depends on her,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but she will not come to any decision without you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because as long as your relations with her are unsettled she cannot make
+      up her mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I am concerned, it is finally settled. I should like to do what
+      I consider to be my duty and also to lighten her fate, but on no account
+      would I wish to put any restraint on her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but she does not wish to accept your sacrifice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is no sacrifice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I know that this decision of hers is final.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, there is no need to speak to me,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wants you to acknowledge that you think as she does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I acknowledge that I must not do what I consider to be my duty?
+      All I can say is that I am not free, but she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simonson was silent; then, after thinking a little, he said: &ldquo;Very well,
+      then, I&rsquo;ll tell her. You must not think I am in love with her,&rdquo; he
+      continued; &ldquo;I love her as a splendid, unique, human being who has suffered
+      much. I want nothing from her. I have only an awful longing to help her,
+      to lighten her posi&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was surprised to hear the trembling in Simonson&rsquo;s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;To lighten her position,&rdquo; Simonson continued. &ldquo;If she does not
+      wish to accept your help, let her accept mine. If she consents, I shall
+      ask to be sent to the place where she will be imprisoned. Four years are
+      not an eternity. I would live near her, and perhaps might lighten her fate&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and he again stopped, too agitated to continue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I to say?&rdquo; said Nekhludoff. &ldquo;I am very glad she has found such a
+      protector as you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I wanted to know,&rdquo; Simonson interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to know if, loving her and wishing her happiness, you would
+      consider it good for her to marry me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff decidedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It all depends on her; I only wish that this suffering soul should find
+      rest,&rdquo; said Simonson, with such childlike tenderness as no one could have
+      expected from so morose-looking a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simonson rose, and stretching his lips out to Nekhludoff, smiled shyly and
+      kissed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I shall tell her,&rdquo; and he went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0118" id="link2HCH0118">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. &ldquo;I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY.&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of that?&rdquo; said Mary Pavlovna. &ldquo;In love&mdash;quite in
+      love. Now, that&rsquo;s a thing I never should have expected, that Valdemar
+      Simonson should be in love, and in the silliest, most boyish manner. It is
+      strange, and, to say the truth, it is sad,&rdquo; and she sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she? Katusha? How does she look at it, do you think?&rdquo; Nekhludoff
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She?&rdquo; Mary Pavlovna waited, evidently wishing to give as exact an answer
+      as possible. &ldquo;She? Well, you see, in spite of her past she has one of the
+      most moral natures&mdash;and such fine feelings. She loves you&mdash;loves
+      you well, and is happy to be able to do you even the negative good of not
+      letting you get entangled with her. Marriage with you would be a terrible
+      fall for her, worse than all that&rsquo;s past, and therefore she will never
+      consent to it. And yet your presence troubles her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what am I to do? Ought I to vanish?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Pavlovna smiled her sweet, childlike smile, and said, &ldquo;Yes, partly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is one to vanish partly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am talking nonsense. But as for her, I should like to tell you that she
+      probably sees the silliness of this rapturous kind of love (he has not
+      spoken to her), and is both flattered and afraid of it. I am not competent
+      to judge in such affairs, you know, still I believe that on his part it is
+      the most ordinary man&rsquo;s feeling, though it is masked. He says that this
+      love arouses his energy and is Platonic, but I know that even if it is
+      exceptional, still at the bottom it is degrading.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Pavlovna had wandered from the subject, having started on her
+      favourite theme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but what am I to do?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you should tell her everything; it is always best that everything
+      should be clear. Have a talk with her; I shall call her. Shall I?&rdquo; said
+      Mary Pavlovna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, and Mary Pavlovna went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange feeling overcame Nekhludoff when he was alone in the little room
+      with the sleeping Vera Doukhova, listening to her soft breathing, broken
+      now and then by moans, and to the incessant dirt that came through the two
+      doors that separated him from the criminals. What Simonson had told him
+      freed him from the self-imposed duty, which had seemed hard and strange to
+      him in his weak moments, and yet now he felt something that was not merely
+      unpleasant but painful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a feeling that this offer of Simonson&rsquo;s destroyed the exceptional
+      character of his sacrifice, and thereby lessened its value in his own and
+      others&rsquo; eyes; if so good a man who was not bound to her by any kind of tie
+      wanted to join his fate to hers, then this sacrifice was not so great.
+      There may have also been an admixture of ordinary jealousy. He had got so
+      used to her love that he did not like to admit that she loved another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it also upset the plans he had formed of living near her while she
+      was doing her term. If she married Simonson his presence would be
+      unnecessary, and he would have to form new plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he had time to analyse his feelings the loud din of the prisoners&rsquo; 
+      voices came in with a rush (something special was going on among them
+      to-day) as the door opened to let Katusha in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stepped briskly close up to him and said, &ldquo;Mary Pavlovna has sent me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I must have a talk with you. Sit down. Valdemar Simonson has been
+      speaking to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down and folded her hands in her lap and seemed quite calm, but
+      hardly had Nekhludoff uttered Simonson&rsquo;s name when she flushed crimson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told me he wanted to marry you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face suddenly puckered up with pain, but she said nothing and only
+      cast down her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is asking for my consent or my advice. I told him that it all depends
+      entirely on you&mdash;that you must decide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what does it all mean? Why?&rdquo; she muttered, and looked in his eyes
+      with that peculiar squint that always strangely affected Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat silent for a few minutes looking into each other&rsquo;s eyes, and this
+      look told much to both of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must decide,&rdquo; Nekhludoff repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I to decide? Everything has long been decided.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; you must decide whether you will accept Mr. Simonson&rsquo;s offer,&rdquo; said
+      Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of a wife can I be&mdash;I, a convict? Why should I ruin Mr.
+      Simonson, too?&rdquo; she said, with a frown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but if the sentence should be mitigated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, leave me alone. I have nothing more to say,&rdquo; she said, and rose to
+      leave the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0119" id="link2HCH0119">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. NEVEROFF&rsquo;S FATE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When, following Katusha, Nekhludoff returned to the men&rsquo;s room, he found
+      every one there in agitation. Nabatoff, who went about all over the place,
+      and who got to know everybody, and noticed everything, had just brought
+      news which staggered them all. The news was that he had discovered a note
+      on a wall, written by the revolutionist Petlin, who had been sentenced to
+      hard labour, and who, every one thought, had long since reached the Kara;
+      and now it turned out that he had passed this way quite recently, the only
+      political prisoner among criminal convicts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the 17th of August,&rdquo; so ran the note, &ldquo;I was sent off alone with the
+      criminals. Neveroff was with me, but hanged himself in the lunatic asylum
+      in Kasan. I am well and in good spirits and hope for the best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All were discussing Petlin&rsquo;s position and the possible reasons of
+      Neveroff&rsquo;s suicide. Only Kryltzoff sat silent and preoccupied, his
+      glistening eyes gazing fixedly in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband told me that Neveroff had a vision while still in the
+      Petropavlovski prison,&rdquo; said Rintzeva.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he was a poet, a dreamer; this sort of people cannot stand solitary
+      confinement,&rdquo; said Novodvoroff. &ldquo;Now, I never gave my imagination vent
+      when in solitary confinement, but arranged my days most systematically,
+      and in this way always bore it very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is there unbearable about it? Why, I used to be glad when they
+      locked me up,&rdquo; said Nabatoff cheerfully, wishing to dispel the general
+      depression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fellow&rsquo;s afraid of everything; of being arrested himself and entangling
+      others, and of spoiling the whole business, and then he gets locked up,
+      and all responsibility is at an end, and he can rest; he can just sit and
+      smoke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew him well?&rdquo; asked Mary Pavlovna, glancing anxiously at the
+      altered, haggard expression of Kryltzoff&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neveroff a dreamer?&rdquo; Kryltzoff suddenly began, panting for breath as if
+      he had been shouting or singing for a long time. &ldquo;Neveroff was a man &lsquo;such
+      as the earth bears few of,&rsquo; as our doorkeeper used to express it. Yes, he
+      had a nature like crystal, you could see him right through; he could not
+      lie, he could not dissemble; not simply thin skinned, but with all his
+      nerves laid bare, as if he were flayed. Yes, his was a complicated, rich
+      nature, not such a&mdash; But where is the use of talking?&rdquo; he added, with
+      a vicious frown. &ldquo;Shall we first educate the people and then change the
+      forms of life, or first change the forms and then struggle, using peaceful
+      propaganda or terrorism? So we go on disputing while <i>they</i> kill; <i>they</i>
+      do not dispute&mdash;they know their business; they don&rsquo;t care whether
+      dozens, hundreds of men perish&mdash;and what men! No; that the best
+      should perish is just what they want. Yes, Herzen said that when the
+      Decembrists were withdrawn from circulation the average level of our
+      society sank. I should think so, indeed. Then Herzen himself and his
+      fellows were withdrawn; now is the turn of the Neveroffs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t all be got rid off,&rdquo; said Nabatoff, in his cheerful tones.
+      &ldquo;There will always be left enough to continue the breed. No, there won&rsquo;t,
+      if we show any pity to <i>them</i> there,&rdquo; Nabatoff said, raising his
+      voice; and not letting himself be interrupted, &ldquo;Give me a cigarette.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Anatole, it is not good for you,&rdquo; said Mary Pavlovna. &ldquo;Please do not
+      smoke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, leave me alone,&rdquo; he said angrily, and lit a cigarette, but at once
+      began to cough and to retch, as if he were going to be sick. Having
+      cleared his throat though, he went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What we have been doing is not the thing at all. Not to argue, but for
+      all to unite&mdash;to destroy them&mdash;that&rsquo;s it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>they</i> are also human beings,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, <i>they</i> are not human, they who can do what they are doing&mdash;No&mdash;There,
+      now, I heard that some kind of bombs and balloons have been invented.
+      Well, one ought to go up in such a balloon and sprinkle bombs down on <i>them</i>
+      as if <i>they</i> were bugs, until <i>they</i> are all exterminated&mdash;Yes.
+      Because&mdash;&rdquo; he was going to continue, but, flushing all over, he began
+      coughing worse than before, and a stream of blood rushed from his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nabatoff ran to get ice. Mary Pavlovna brought valerian drops and offered
+      them to him, but he, breathing quickly and heavily, pushed her away with
+      his thin, white hand, and kept his eyes closed. When the ice and cold
+      water had eased Kryltzoff a little, and he had been put to bed,
+      Nekhludoff, having said good-night to everybody, went out with the
+      sergeant, who had been waiting for him some time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The criminals were now quiet, and most of them were asleep. Though the
+      people were lying on and under the bed shelves and in the space between,
+      they could not all be placed inside the rooms, and some of them lay in the
+      passage with their sacks under their heads and covered with their cloaks.
+      The moans and sleepy voices came through the open doors and sounded
+      through the passage. Everywhere lay compact heaps of human beings covered
+      with prison cloaks. Only a few men who were sitting in the bachelors&rsquo; room
+      by the light of a candle end, which they put out when they noticed the
+      sergeant, were awake, and an old man who sat naked under the lamp in the
+      passage picking the vermin off his shirt. The foul air in the political
+      prisoners&rsquo; rooms seemed pure compared to the stinking closeness here. The
+      smoking lamp shone dimly as through a mist, and it was difficult to
+      breathe. Stepping along the passage, one had to look carefully for an
+      empty space, and having put down one foot had to find place for the other.
+      Three persons, who had evidently found no room even in the passage, lay in
+      the anteroom, close to the stinking and leaking tub. One of these was an
+      old idiot, whom Nekhludoff had often seen marching with the gang; another
+      was a boy about twelve; he lay between the two other convicts, with his
+      head on the leg of one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had passed out of the gate Nekhludoff took a deep breath and long
+      continued to breathe in deep draughts of frosty air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0120" id="link2HCH0120">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. WHY IS IT DONE?
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It had cleared up and was starlight. Except in a few places the mud was
+      frozen hard when Nekhludoff returned to his inn and knocked at one of its
+      dark windows. The broad-shouldered labourer came barefooted to open the
+      door for him and let him in. Through a door on the right, leading to the
+      back premises, came the loud snoring of the carters, who slept there, and
+      the sound of many horses chewing oats came from the yard. The front room,
+      where a red lamp was burning in front of the icons, smelt of wormwood and
+      perspiration, and some one with mighty lungs was snoring behind a
+      partition. Nekhludoff undressed, put his leather travelling pillow on the
+      oilcloth sofa, spread out his rug and lay down, thinking over all he had
+      seen and heard that day; the boy sleeping on the liquid that oozed from
+      the stinking tub, with his head on the convict&rsquo;s leg, seemed more dreadful
+      than all else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unexpected and important as his conversation with Simonson and Katusha
+      that evening had been, he did not dwell on it; his situation in relation
+      to that subject was so complicated and indefinite that he drove the
+      thought from his mind. But the picture of those unfortunate beings,
+      inhaling the noisome air, and lying in the liquid oozing out of the
+      stinking tub, especially that of the boy, with his innocent face asleep on
+      the leg of a criminal, came all the more vividly to his mind, and he could
+      not get it out of his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To know that somewhere far away there are men who torture other men by
+      inflicting all sorts of humiliations and inhuman degradation and
+      sufferings on them, or for three months incessantly to look on while men
+      were inflicting these humiliations and sufferings on other men is a very
+      different thing. And Nekhludoff felt it. More than once during these three
+      months he asked himself, &ldquo;Am I mad because I see what others do not, or
+      are they mad that do these things that I see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet they (and there were many of them) did what seemed so astonishing and
+      terrible to him with such quiet assurance that what they were doing was
+      necessary and was important and useful work that it was hard to believe
+      they were mad; nor could he, conscious of the clearness of his thoughts,
+      believe he was mad; and all this kept him continually in a state of
+      perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is how the things he saw during these three months impressed
+      Nekhludoff: From among the people who were free, those were chosen, by
+      means of trials and the administration, who were the most nervous, the
+      most hot tempered, the most excitable, the most gifted, and the strongest,
+      but the least careful and cunning. These people, not a wit more dangerous
+      than many of those who remained free, were first locked in prisons,
+      transported to Siberia, where they were provided for and kept months and
+      years in perfect idleness, and away from nature, their families, and
+      useful work&mdash;that is, away from the conditions necessary for a
+      natural and moral life. This firstly. Secondly, these people were
+      subjected to all sorts of unnecessary indignity in these different Places&mdash;chains,
+      shaved heads, shameful clothing&mdash;that is, they were deprived of the
+      chief motives that induce the weak to live good lives, the regard for
+      public opinion, the sense of shame and the consciousness of human dignity.
+      Thirdly, they were continually exposed to dangers, such as the epidemics
+      so frequent in places of confinement, exhaustion, flogging, not to mention
+      accidents, such as sunstrokes, drowning or conflagrations, when the
+      instinct of self-preservation makes even the kindest, most moral men
+      commit cruel actions, and excuse such actions when committed by others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourthly, these people were forced to associate with others who were
+      particularly depraved by life, and especially by these very institutions&mdash;rakes,
+      murderers and villains&mdash;who act on those who are not yet corrupted by
+      the measures inflicted on them as leaven acts on dough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, fifthly, the fact that all sorts of violence, cruelty, inhumanity,
+      are not only tolerated, but even permitted by the government, when it
+      suits its purposes, was impressed on them most forcibly by the inhuman
+      treatment they were subjected to; by the sufferings inflicted on children,
+      women and old men; by floggings with rods and whips; by rewards offered
+      for bringing a fugitive back, dead or alive; by the separation of husbands
+      and wives, and the uniting them with the wives and husbands of others for
+      sexual intercourse; by shooting or hanging them. To those who were
+      deprived of their freedom, who were in want and misery, acts of violence
+      were evidently still more permissible. All these institutions seemed
+      purposely invented for the production of depravity and vice, condensed to
+      such a degree that no other conditions could produce it, and for the
+      spreading of this condensed depravity and vice broadcast among the whole
+      population.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as if a problem had been set to find the best, the surest means of
+      depraving the greatest number of persons,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, while
+      investigating the deeds that were being done in the prisons and halting
+      stations. Every year hundreds of thousands were brought to the highest
+      pitch of depravity, and when completely depraved they were set free to
+      carry the depravity they had caught in prison among the people. In the
+      prisons of Tamen, Ekaterinburg, Tomsk and at the halting stations
+      Nekhludoff saw how successfully the object society seemed to have set
+      itself was attained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ordinary, simple men with a conception of the demands of the social and
+      Christian Russian peasant morality lost this conception, and found a new
+      one, founded chiefly on the idea that any outrage or violence was
+      justifiable if it seemed profitable. After living in a prison those people
+      became conscious with the whole of their being that, judging by what was
+      happening to themselves, all the moral laws, the respect and the sympathy
+      for others which church and the moral teachers preach, was really set
+      aside, and that, therefore, they, too, need not keep the laws. Nekhludoff
+      noticed the effects of prison life on all the convicts he knew&mdash;on
+      Fedoroff, on Makar, and even on Taras, who, after two months among the
+      convicts, struck Nekhludoff by the want of morality in his arguments.
+      Nekhludoff found out during his journey how tramps, escaping into the
+      marshes, persuade a comrade to escape with them, and then kill him and
+      feed on his flesh. (He saw a living man who was accused of this and
+      acknowledged the fact.) And the most terrible part was that this was not a
+      solitary, but a recurring case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only by a special cultivation of vice, such as was perpetrated in these
+      establishments, could a Russian be brought to the state of this tramp, who
+      excelled Nietzsche&rsquo;s newest teaching, and held that everything was
+      possible and nothing forbidden, and who spread this teaching first among
+      the convicts and then among the people in general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only explanation of all that was being done was the wish to put a stop
+      to crime by fear, by correction, by lawful vengeance as it was written in
+      the books. But in reality nothing in the least resembling any of these
+      results came to pass. Instead of vice being put a stop to, it only spread
+      further; instead of being frightened, the criminals were encouraged (many
+      a tramp returned to prison of his own free will). Instead of being
+      corrected, every kind of vice was systematically instilled, while the
+      desire for vengeance did not weaken by the measures of the government, but
+      was bred in the people who had none of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why is it done?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked himself, but could find no answer.
+      And what seemed most surprising was that all this was not being done
+      accidentally, not by mistake, not once, but that it had continued for
+      centuries, with this difference only, that at first the people&rsquo;s nostrils
+      used to be torn and their ears cut off; then they were branded, and now
+      they were manacled and transported by steam instead of on the old carts.
+      The arguments brought forward by those in government service, who said
+      that the things which aroused his indignation were simply due to the
+      imperfect arrangements of the places of confinement, and that they could
+      all be put to rights if prisons of a modern type were built, did not
+      satisfy Nekhludoff, because he knew that what revolted him was not the
+      consequence of a better or worse arrangement of the prisons. He had read
+      of model prisons with electric bells, of executions by electricity,
+      recommended by Tard; but this refined kind of violence revolted him even
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what revolted Nekhludoff most was that there were men in the law
+      courts and in the ministry who received large salaries, taken from the
+      people, for referring to books written by men like themselves and with
+      like motives, and sorting actions that violated laws made by themselves
+      according to different statutes; and, in obedience to these statutes,
+      sending those guilty of such actions to places where they were completely
+      at the mercy of cruel, hardened inspectors, jailers, convoy soldiers,
+      where millions of them perished body and soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that he had a closer knowledge of prisons, Nekhludoff found out that
+      all those vices which developed among the prisoners&mdash;drunkenness,
+      gambling, cruelty, and all these terrible crimes, even cannibalism&mdash;were
+      not casual, or due to degeneration or to the existence of monstrosities of
+      the criminal type, as science, going hand in hand with the government,
+      explained it, but an unavoidable consequence of the incomprehensible
+      delusion that men may punish one another. Nekhludoff saw that cannibalism
+      did not commence in the marshes, but in the ministry. He saw that his
+      brother-in-law, for example, and, in fact, all the lawyers and officials,
+      from the usher to the minister, do not care in the least for justice or
+      the good of the people about whom they spoke, but only for the roubles
+      they were paid for doing the things that were the source whence all this
+      degradation and suffering flowed. This was quite evident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can it be, then, that all this is done simply through misapprehension?
+      Could it not be managed that all these officials should have their
+      salaries secured to them, and a premium paid them, besides, so that they
+      should leave off, doing all that they were doing now?&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought,
+      and in spite of the fleas, that seemed to spring up round him like water
+      from a fountain whenever he moved, he fell fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0121" id="link2HCH0121">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. THE JOURNEY RESUMED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The carters had left the inn long before Nekhludoff awoke. The landlady
+      had had her tea, and came in wiping her fat, perspiring neck with her
+      handkerchief, and said that a soldier had brought a note from the halting
+      station. The note was from Mary Pavlovna. She wrote that Kryltzoff&rsquo;s
+      attack was more serious than they had imagined. &ldquo;We wished him to be left
+      behind and to remain with him, but this has not been allowed, so that we
+      shall take him on; but we fear the worst. Please arrange so that if he
+      should be left in the next town, one of us might remain with him. If in
+      order to get the permission to stay I should be obliged to get married to
+      him, I am of course ready to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sent the young labourer to the post station to order horses and
+      began packing up hurriedly. Before he had drunk his second tumbler of tea
+      the three-horsed postcart drove up to the porch with ringing bells, the
+      wheels rattling on the frozen mud as on stones. Nekhludoff paid the
+      fat-necked landlady, hurried out and got into the cart, and gave orders to
+      the driver to go on as fast as possible, so as to overtake the gang. Just
+      past the gates of the commune pasture ground they did overtake the carts,
+      loaded with sacks and the sick prisoners, as they rattled over the frozen
+      mud, that was just beginning to be rolled smooth by the wheels (the
+      officer was not there, he had gone in advance). The soldiers, who had
+      evidently been drinking, followed by the side of the road, chatting
+      merrily. There were a great many carts. In each of the first carts sat six
+      invalid criminal convicts, close packed. On each of the last two were
+      three political prisoners. Novodvoroff, Grabetz and Kondratieff sat on
+      one, Rintzeva, Nabatoff and the woman to whom Mary Pavlovna had given up
+      her own place on the other, and on one of the carts lay Kryltzoff on a
+      heap of hay, with a pillow under his head, and Mary Pavlovna sat by him on
+      the edge of the cart. Nekhludoff ordered his driver to stop, got out and
+      went up to Kryltzoff. One of the tipsy soldiers waved his hand towards
+      Nekhludoff, but he paid no attention and started walking by Kryltzoff&rsquo;s
+      side, holding on to the side of the cart with his hand. Dressed in a
+      sheepskin coat, with a fur cap on his head and his mouth bound up with a
+      handkerchief, he seemed paler and thinner than ever. His beautiful eyes
+      looked very large and brilliant. Shaken from side to side by the jottings
+      of the cart, he lay with his eyes fixed on Nekhludoff; but when asked
+      about his health, he only closed his eyes and angrily shook his head. All
+      his energy seemed to be needed in order to bear the jolting of the cart.
+      Mary Pavlovna was on the other side. She exchanged a significant glance
+      with Nekhludoff, which expressed all her anxiety about Kryltzoff&rsquo;s state,
+      and then began to talk at once in a cheerful manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems the officer is ashamed of himself,&rdquo; she shouted, so as to be
+      heard above the rattle of the wheels. &ldquo;Bousovkin&rsquo;s manacles have been
+      removed, and he is carrying his little girl himself. Katusha and Simonson
+      are with him, and Vera, too. She has taken my place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kryltzoff said something that could not be heard because of the noise, and
+      frowning in the effort to repress his cough shook his head. Then
+      Nekhludoff stooped towards him, so as to hear, and Kryltzoff, freeing his
+      mouth of the handkerchief, whispered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much better now. Only not to catch cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff nodded in acquiescence, and again exchanged a glance with Mary
+      Pavlovna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about the problem of the three bodies?&rdquo; whispered Kryltzoff, smiling
+      with great difficulty. &ldquo;The solution is difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff did not understand, but Mary Pavlovna explained that he meant
+      the well-known mathematical problem which defined the position of the sun,
+      moon and earth, which Kryltzoff compared to the relations between
+      Nekhludoff, Katusha and Simonson. Kryltzoff nodded, to show that Mary
+      Pavlovna had explained his joke correctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The decision does not lie with me,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you get my note? Will you do it?&rdquo; Mary Pavlovna asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; answered Nekhludoff; and noticing a look of displeasure on
+      Kryltzoff&rsquo;s face, he returned to his conveyance, and holding with both
+      hands to the sides of the cart, got in, which jolted with him over the
+      ruts of the rough road. He passed the gang, which, with its grey cloaks
+      and sheepskin coats, chains and manacles, stretched over three-quarters of
+      a mile of the road. On the opposite side of the road Nekhludoff noticed
+      Katusha&rsquo;s blue shawl, Vera Doukhova&rsquo;s black coat, and Simonson&rsquo;s crochet
+      cap, white worsted stockings, with bands, like those of sandals, tied
+      round him. Simonson was walking with the woman and carrying on a heated
+      discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they saw Nekhludoff they bowed to him, and Simonson raised his hat in
+      a solemn manner. Nekhludoff, having nothing to say, did not stop, and was
+      soon ahead of the carts. Having got again on to a smoother part of the
+      road, they drove still more quickly, but they had continually to turn
+      aside to let pass long rows of carts that were moving along the road in
+      both directions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road, which was cut up by deep ruts, lay through a thick pine forest,
+      mingled with birch trees and larches, bright with yellow leaves they had
+      not yet shed. By the time Nekhludoff had passed about half the gang he
+      reached the end of the forest. Fields now lay stretched along both sides
+      of the road, and the crosses and cupolas of a monastery appeared in the
+      distance. The clouds had dispersed, and it had cleared up completely; the
+      leaves, the frozen puddles and the gilt crosses and cupolas of the
+      monastery glittered brightly in the sun that had risen above the forest. A
+      little to the right mountains began to gleam white in the blue-grey
+      distance, and the trap entered a large village. The village street was
+      full of people, both Russians and other nationalities, wearing peculiar
+      caps and cloaks. Tipsy men and women crowded and chattered round booths,
+      traktirs, public houses and carts. The vicinity of a town was noticeable.
+      Giving a pull and a lash of the whip to the horse on his right, the driver
+      sat down sideways on the right edge of the seat, so that the reins hung
+      over that side, and with evident desire of showing off, he drove quickly
+      down to the river, which had to be crossed by a ferry. The raft was coming
+      towards them, and had reached the middle of the river. About twenty carts
+      were waiting to cross. Nekhludoff had not long to wait. The raft, which
+      had been pulled far up the stream, quickly approached the landing, carried
+      by the swift waters. The tall, silent, broad-shouldered, muscular
+      ferryman, dressed in sheepskins, threw the ropes and moored the raft with
+      practised hand, landed the carts that were on it, and put those that were
+      waiting on the bank on board. The whole raft was filled with vehicles and
+      horses shuffling at the sight of the water. The broad, swift river
+      splashed against the sides of the ferryboats, tightening their moorings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the raft was full, and Nekhludoff&rsquo;s cart, with the horses taken out
+      of it, stood closely surrounded by other carts on the side of the raft,
+      the ferryman barred the entrance, and, paying no heed to the prayers of
+      those who had not found room in the raft, unfastened the ropes and set
+      off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All was quiet on the raft; one could hear nothing but the tramp of the
+      ferryman&rsquo;s boots and the horses changing from foot to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0122" id="link2HCH0122">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. &ldquo;JUST A WORTHLESS TRAMP.&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff stood on the edge of the raft looking at the broad river. Two
+      pictures kept rising up in his mind. One, that of Kryltzoff, unprepared
+      for death and dying, made a heavy, sorrowful impression on him. The other,
+      that of Katusha, full of energy, having gained the love of such a man as
+      Simonson, and found a true and solid path towards righteousness, should
+      have been pleasant, yet it also created a heavy impression on Nekhludoff&rsquo;s
+      mind, and he could not conquer this impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vibrating sounds of a big brass bell reached them from the town.
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s driver, who stood by his side, and the other men on the raft
+      raised their caps and crossed themselves, all except a short, dishevelled
+      old man, who stood close to the railway and whom Nekhludoff had not
+      noticed before. He did not cross himself, but raised his head and looked
+      at Nekhludoff. This old man wore a patched coat, cloth trousers and worn
+      and patched shoes. He had a small wallet on his back, and a high fur cap
+      with the fur much rubbed on his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you pray, old chap?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff&rsquo;s driver as he replaced
+      and straightened his cap. &ldquo;Are you unbaptized?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s one to pray to?&rdquo; asked the old man quickly, in a determinately
+      aggressive tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To whom? To God, of course,&rdquo; said the driver sarcastically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you just show me where he is, that god.&rdquo; There was something so
+      serious and firm in the expression of the old man, that the driver felt
+      that he had to do with a strong-minded man, and was a bit abashed. And
+      trying not to show this, not to be silenced, and not to be put to shame
+      before the crowd that was observing them, he answered quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where? In heaven, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have you been up there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether I&rsquo;ve been or not, every one knows that you must pray to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one has ever seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the
+      bosom of the Father he hath declared him,&rdquo; said the old man in the same
+      rapid manner, and with a severe frown on his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s clear you are not a Christian, but a hole worshipper. You pray to a
+      hole,&rdquo; said the driver, shoving the handle of his whip into his girdle,
+      pulling straight the harness on one of the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some one laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your faith, Dad?&rdquo; asked a middle-aged man, who stood by his cart
+      on the same side of the raft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no kind of faith, because I believe no one&mdash;no one but
+      myself,&rdquo; said the old man as quickly and decidedly as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you believe yourself?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked, entering into a
+      conversation with him. &ldquo;You might make a mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never in your life,&rdquo; the old man said decidedly, with a toss of his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why are there different faiths?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just because men believe others and do not believe themselves that
+      there are different faiths. I also believed others, and lost myself as in
+      a swamp,&mdash;lost myself so that I had no hope of finding my way out.
+      Old believers and new believers and Judaisers and Khlysty and Popovitzy,
+      and Bespopovitzy and Avstriaks and Molokans and Skoptzy&mdash;every faith
+      praises itself only, and so they all creep about like blind puppies. There
+      are many faiths, but the spirit is one&mdash;in me and in you and in him.
+      So that if every one believes himself all will be united. Every one be
+      himself, and all will be as one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man spoke loudly and often looked round, evidently wishing that as
+      many as possible should hear him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have you long held this faith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? A long time. This is the twenty-third year that they persecute me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Persecute you? How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As they persecuted Christ, so they persecute me. They seize me, and take
+      me before the courts and before the priests, the Scribes and the
+      Pharisees. Once they put me into a madhouse; but they can do nothing
+      because I am free. They say, &lsquo;What is your name?&rsquo; thinking I shall name
+      myself. But I do not give myself a name. I have given up everything: I
+      have no name, no place, no country, nor anything. I am just myself. &lsquo;What
+      is your name?&rsquo; &lsquo;Man.&rsquo; &lsquo;How old are you?&rsquo; I say, &lsquo;I do not count my years
+      and cannot count them, because I always was, I always shall be.&rsquo; &lsquo;Who are
+      your parents?&rsquo; &lsquo;I have no parents except God and Mother Earth. God is my
+      father.&rsquo; &lsquo;And the Tsar? Do you recognise the Tsar?&rsquo; they say. I say, &lsquo;Why
+      not? He is his own Tsar, and I am my own Tsar.&rsquo; &lsquo;Where&rsquo;s the good of
+      talking to him,&rsquo; they say, and I say, &lsquo;I do not ask you to talk to me.&rsquo; 
+      And so they begin tormenting me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where are you going now?&rdquo; asked Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where God will lead me. I work when I can find work, and when I can&rsquo;t I
+      beg.&rdquo; The old man noticed that the raft was approaching the bank and
+      stopped, looking round at the bystanders with a look of triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff got out his purse and offered some money to the old man, but he
+      refused, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not accept this sort of thing&mdash;bread I do accept.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, excuse me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing to excuse, you have not offended me. And it is not
+      possible to offend me.&rdquo; And the old man put the wallet he had taken off
+      again on his back. Meanwhile, the post-cart had been landed and the horses
+      harnessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder you should care to talk to him, sir,&rdquo; said the driver, when
+      Nekhludoff, having tipped the bowing ferryman, got into the cart again.
+      &ldquo;He is just a worthless tramp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0123" id="link2HCH0123">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. NEKHLUDOFF SEES THE GENERAL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When they got to the top of the hill bank the driver turned to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which hotel am I to drive to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which is the best?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing could be better than the Siberian, but Dukeoff&rsquo;s is also good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drive to whichever you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver again seated himself sideways and drove faster. The town was
+      like all such towns. The same kind of houses with attic windows and green
+      roofs, the same kind of cathedral, the same kind of shops and stores in
+      the principal street, and even the same kind of policemen. Only the houses
+      were almost all of them wooden, and the streets were not paved. In one of
+      the chief streets the driver stopped at the door of an hotel, but there
+      was no room to be had, so he drove to another. And here Nekhludoff, after
+      two months, found himself once again in surroundings such as he had been
+      accustomed to as far as comfort and cleanliness went. Though the room he
+      was shown to was simple enough, yet Nekhludoff felt greatly relieved to be
+      there after two months of post-carts, country inns and halting stations.
+      His first business was to clean himself of the lice which he had never
+      been able to get thoroughly rid of after visiting a halting station. When
+      he had unpacked he went to the Russian bath, after which he made himself
+      fit to be seen in a town, put on a starched shirt, trousers that had got
+      rather creased along the seams, a frock-coat and an overcoat, and drove to
+      the Governor of the district. The hotel-keeper called an isvostchik, whose
+      well-fed Kirghiz horse and vibrating trap soon brought Nekhludoff to the
+      large porch of a big building, in front of which stood sentinels and a
+      policeman. The house had a garden in front, and at the back, among the
+      naked branches of aspen and birch trees, there grew thick and dark green
+      pines and firs. The General was not well, and did not receive; but
+      Nekhludoff asked the footman to hand in his card all the same, and the
+      footman came back with a favourable reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are asked to come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hall, the footman, the orderly, the staircase, the dancing-room, with
+      its well-polished floor, were very much the same as in Petersburg, only
+      more imposing and rather dirtier. Nekhludoff was shown into the cabinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General, a bloated, potato-nosed man, with a sanguine disposition,
+      large bumps on his forehead, bald head, and puffs under his eyes, sat
+      wrapped in a Tartar silk dressing-gown smoking a cigarette and sipping his
+      tea out of a tumbler in a silver holder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do, sir? Excuse my dressing-gown; it is better so than if I
+      had not received you at all,&rdquo; he said, pulling up his dressing-gown over
+      his fat neck with its deep folds at the nape. &ldquo;I am not quite well, and do
+      not go out. What has brought you to our remote region?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am accompanying a gang of prisoners, among whom there is a person
+      closely connected with me, said Nekhludoff, and now I have come to see
+      your Excellency partly in behalf of this person, and partly about another
+      business.&rdquo; The General took a whiff and a sip of tea, put his cigarette
+      into a malachite ashpan, with his narrow eyes fixed on Nekhludoff,
+      listening seriously. He only interrupted him once to offer him a
+      cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that
+      liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But
+      being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon felt the impossibility
+      of such a reconciliation; so as not to feel the inner discord in which he
+      was living, he gave himself up more and more to the habit of drinking,
+      which is so widely spread among military men, and was now suffering from
+      what doctors term alcoholism. He was imbued with alcohol, and if he drank
+      any kind of liquor it made him tipsy. Yet strong drink was an absolute
+      necessity to him, he could not live without it, so he was quite drunk
+      every evening; but had grown so used to this state that he did not reel
+      nor talk any special nonsense. And if he did talk nonsense, it was
+      accepted as words of wisdom because of the important and high position
+      which he occupied. Only in the morning, just at the time Nekhludoff came
+      to see him, he was like a reasonable being, could understand what was said
+      to him, and fulfil more or less aptly a proverb he was fond of repeating:
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s tipsy, but he&rsquo;s wise, so he&rsquo;s pleasant in two ways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The higher authorities knew he was a drunkard, but he was more educated
+      than the rest, though his education had stopped at the spot where
+      drunkenness had got hold of him. He was bold, adroit, of imposing
+      appearance, and showed tact even when tipsy; therefore, he was appointed,
+      and was allowed to retain so public and responsible an office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff told him that the person he was interested in was a woman, that
+      she was sentenced, though innocent, and that a petition had been sent to
+      the Emperor in her behalf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, well?&rdquo; said the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was promised in Petersburg that the news concerning her fate should be
+      sent to me not later than this month and to this place-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General stretched his hand with its stumpy fingers towards the table,
+      and rang a bell, still looking at Nekhludoff and puffing at his cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I would like to ask you that this woman should be allowed to remain
+      here until the answer to her petition comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The footman, an orderly in uniform, came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask if Anna Vasilievna is up,&rdquo; said the General to the orderly, &ldquo;and
+      bring some more tea.&rdquo; Then, turning to Nekhludoff, &ldquo;Yes, and what else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My other request concerns a political prisoner who is with the same
+      gang.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me,&rdquo; said the General, with a significant shake of the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is seriously ill&mdash;dying, and he will probably be left here in the
+      hospital, so one of the women prisoners would like to stay behind with
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is no relation of his?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but she is willing to marry him if that will enable her to remain
+      with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General looked fixedly with twinkling eyes at his interlocutor, and,
+      evidently with a wish to discomfit him, listened, smoking in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff had finished, the General took a book off the table, and,
+      wetting his finger, quickly turned over the pages and found the statute
+      relating to marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is she sentenced to?&rdquo; he asked, looking up from the book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She? To hard labour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, the position of one sentenced to that cannot be bettered by
+      marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me. Even if a free man should marry her, she would have to serve
+      her term. The question in such cases is, whose is the heavier punishment,
+      hers or his?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are both sentenced to hard labour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well; so they are quits,&rdquo; said the General, with a laugh. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s got
+      what he has, only as he is sick he may be left behind, and of course what
+      can be done to lighten his fate shall be done. But as for her, even if she
+      did marry him, she could not remain behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Generaless is having her coffee,&rdquo; the footman announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General nodded and continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However, I shall think about it. What are their names? Put them down
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff wrote down the names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff&rsquo;s request to be allowed to see the dying man the General
+      answered by saying, &ldquo;Neither can I do that. Of course I do not suspect
+      you, but you take an interest in him and in the others, and you have
+      money, and here with us anything can be done with money. I have been told
+      to put down bribery. But how can I put down bribery when everybody takes
+      bribes? And the lower their rank the more ready they are to be bribed. How
+      can one find it out across more than three thousand miles? There any
+      official is a little Tsar, just as I am here,&rdquo; and he laughed. &ldquo;You have
+      in all likelihood been to see the political prisoners; you gave money and
+      got permission to see them,&rdquo; he said, with a smile. &ldquo;Is it not so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I quite understand that you had to do it. You pity a political prisoner
+      and wish to see him. And the inspector or the convoy soldier accepts,
+      because he has a salary of twice twenty copecks and a family, and he can&rsquo;t
+      help accepting it. In his place and yours I should have acted in the same
+      way as you and he did. But in my position I do not permit myself to swerve
+      an inch from the letter of the law, just because I am a man, and might be
+      influenced by pity. But I am a member of the executive, and I have been
+      placed in a position of trust on certain conditions, and these conditions
+      I must carry out. Well, so this business is finished. And now let us hear
+      what is going on in the metropolis.&rdquo; And the General began questioning
+      with the evident desire to hear the news and to show how very human he
+      was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0124" id="link2HCH0124">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. THE SENTENCE COMMUTED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By-the-way, where are you staying?&rdquo; asked the General as he was taking
+      leave of Nekhludoff. &ldquo;At Duke&rsquo;s? Well, it&rsquo;s horrid enough there. Come and
+      dine with us at five o&rsquo;clock. You speak English?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s good. You see, an English traveller has just arrived here. He is
+      studying the question of transportation and examining the prisons of
+      Siberia. Well, he is dining with us to-night, and you come and meet him.
+      We dine at five, and my wife expects punctuality. Then I shall also give
+      you an answer what to do about that woman, and perhaps it may be possible
+      to leave some one behind with the sick prisoner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having made his bow to the General, Nekhludoff drove to the post-office,
+      feeling himself in an extremely animated and energetic frame of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The post-office was a low-vaulted room. Several officials sat behind a
+      counter serving the people, of whom there was quite a crowd. One official
+      sat with his head bent to one side and kept stamping the envelopes, which
+      he slipped dexterously under the stamp. Nekhludoff had not long to wait.
+      As soon as he had given his name, everything that had come for him by post
+      was at once handed to him. There was a good deal: letters, and money, and
+      books, and the last number of Fatherland Notes. Nekhludoff took all these
+      things to a wooden bench, on which a soldier with a book in his hand sat
+      waiting for something, took the seat by his side, and began sorting the
+      letters. Among them was one registered letter in a fine envelope, with a
+      distinctly stamped bright red seal. He broke the seal, and seeing a letter
+      from Selenin and some official paper inside the envelope, he felt the
+      blood rush to his face, and his heart stood still. It was the answer to
+      Katusha&rsquo;s petition. What would that answer be? Nekhludoff glanced
+      hurriedly through the letter, written in an illegibly small, hard, and
+      cramped hand, and breathed a sigh of relief. The answer was a favourable
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear friend,&rdquo; wrote Selenin, &ldquo;our last talk has made a profound
+      impression on me. You were right concerning Maslova. I looked carefully
+      through the case, and see that shocking injustice has been done her. It
+      could be remedied only by the Committee of Petitions before which you laid
+      it. I managed to assist at the examination of the case, and I enclose
+      herewith the copy of the mitigation of the sentence. Your aunt, the
+      Countess Katerina Ivanovna, gave me the address which I am sending this
+      to. The original document has been sent to the place where she was
+      imprisoned before her trial, and will from there he probably sent at once
+      to the principal Government office in Siberia. I hasten to communicate
+      this glad news to you and warmly press your hand.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    &ldquo;Yours,
+
+                        &ldquo;SELENIN.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The document ran thus: &ldquo;His Majesty&rsquo;s office for the reception of
+      petitions, addressed to his Imperial name&rdquo;&mdash;here followed the date&mdash;&mdash;&ldquo;by
+      order of the chief of his Majesty&rsquo;s office for the reception of petitions
+      addressed to his Imperial name. The meschanka Katerina Maslova is hereby
+      informed that his Imperial Majesty, with reference to her most loyal
+      petition, condescending to her request, deigns to order that her sentence
+      to hard labour should be commuted to one of exile to the less distant
+      districts of Siberia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was joyful and important news; all that Nekhludoff could have hoped
+      for Katusha, and for himself also, had happened. It was true that the new
+      position she was in brought new complications with it. While she was a
+      convict, marriage with her could only be fictitious, and would have had no
+      meaning except that he would have been in a position to alleviate her
+      condition. And now there was nothing to prevent their living together, and
+      Nekhludoff had not prepared himself for that. And, besides, what of her
+      relations to Simonson? What was the meaning of her words yesterday? If she
+      consented to a union with Simonson, would it be well? He could not unravel
+      all these questions, and gave up thinking about it. &ldquo;It will all clear
+      itself up later on,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;I must not think about it now, but
+      convey the glad news to her as soon as possible, and set her free.&rdquo; He
+      thought that the copy of the document he had received would suffice, so
+      when he left the post-office he told the isvostchik to drive him to the
+      prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he had received no order from the governor to visit the prison that
+      morning, he knew by experience that it was easy to get from the
+      subordinates what the higher officials would not grant, so now he meant to
+      try and get into the prison to bring Katusha the joyful news, and perhaps
+      to get her set free, and at the same time to inquire about Kryltzoff&rsquo;s
+      state of health, and tell him and Mary Pavlovna what the general had said.
+      The prison inspector was a tall, imposing-looking man, with moustaches and
+      whiskers that twisted towards the corners of his mouth. He received
+      Nekhludoff very gravely, and told him plainly that he could not grant an
+      outsider the permission to interview the prisoners without a special order
+      from his chief. To Nekhludoff&rsquo;s remark that he had been allowed to visit
+      the prisoners even in the cities he answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may be so, but I do not allow it,&rdquo; and his tone implied, &ldquo;You city
+      gentlemen may think to surprise and perplex us, but we in Eastern Siberia
+      also know what the law is, and may even teach it you.&rdquo; The copy of a
+      document straight from the Emperor&rsquo;s own office did not have any effect on
+      the prison inspector either. He decidedly refused to let Nekhludoff come
+      inside the prison walls. He only smiled contemptuously at Nekhludoff&rsquo;s
+      naive conclusion, that the copy he had received would suffice to set
+      Maslova free, and declared that a direct order from his own superiors
+      would be needed before any one could be set at liberty. The only things he
+      agreed to do were to communicate to Maslova that a mitigation had arrived
+      for her, and to promise that he would not detain her an hour after the
+      order from his chief to liberate her would arrive. He would also give no
+      news of Kryltzoff, saying he could not even tell if there was such a
+      prisoner; and so Nekhludoff, having accomplished next to nothing, got into
+      his trap and drove back to his hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strictness of the inspector was chiefly due to the fact that an
+      epidemic of typhus had broken out in the prison, owing to twice the number
+      of persons that it was intended for being crowded in it. The isvostchik
+      who drove Nekhludoff said, &ldquo;Quite a lot of people are dying in the prison
+      every day, some kind of disease having sprung up among them, so that as
+      many as twenty were buried in one day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0125" id="link2HCH0125">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. THE GENERAL&rsquo;S HOUSEHOLD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In spite of his ineffectual attempt at the prison, Nekhludoff, still in
+      the same vigorous, energetic frame of mind, went to the Governor&rsquo;s office
+      to see if the original of the document had arrived for Maslova. It had not
+      arrived, so Nekhludoff went back to the hotel and wrote without delay to
+      Selenin and the advocate about it. When he had finished writing he looked
+      at his watch and saw it was time to go to the General&rsquo;s dinner party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the way he again began wondering how Katusha would receive the news of
+      the mitigation of her sentence. Where she would be settled? How he should
+      live with her? What about Simonson? What would his relations to her be? He
+      remembered the change that had taken place in her, and this reminded him
+      of her past. &ldquo;I must forget it for the present,&rdquo; he thought, and again
+      hastened to drive her out of his mind. &ldquo;When the time comes I shall see,&rdquo;
+       he said to himself, and began to think of what he ought to say to the
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner at the General&rsquo;s, with the luxury habitual to the lives of the
+      wealthy and those of high rank, to which Nekhludoff had been accustomed,
+      was extremely enjoyable after he had been so long deprived not only of
+      luxury but even of the most ordinary comforts. The mistress of the house
+      was a Petersburg grande dame of the old school, a maid of honour at the
+      court of Nicholas I., who spoke French quite naturally and Russian very
+      unnaturally. She held herself very erect and, moving her hands, she kept
+      her elbows close to her waist. She was quietly and, somewhat sadly
+      considerate for her husband, and extremely kind to all her visitors,
+      though with a tinge of difference in her behaviour according to their
+      position. She received Nekhludoff as if he were one of them, and her fine,
+      almost imperceptible flattery made him once again aware of his virtues and
+      gave him a feeling of satisfaction. She made him feel that she knew of
+      that honest though rather singular step of his which had brought him to
+      Siberia, and held him to be an exceptional man. This refined flattery and
+      the elegance and luxury of the General&rsquo;s house had the effect of making
+      Nekhludoff succumb to the enjoyment of the handsome surroundings, the
+      delicate dishes and the ease and pleasure of intercourse with educated
+      people of his own class, so that the surroundings in the midst of which he
+      had lived for the last months seemed a dream from which he had awakened to
+      reality. Besides those of the household, the General&rsquo;s daughter and her
+      husband and an aide-de-camp, there were an Englishman, a merchant
+      interested in gold mines, and the governor of a distant Siberian town. All
+      these people seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff. The Englishman, a healthy man
+      with a rosy complexion, who spoke very bad French, but whose command of
+      his own language was very good and oratorically impressive, who had seen a
+      great deal, was very interesting to listen to when he spoke about America,
+      India, Japan and Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young merchant interested in the gold mines, the son of a peasant,
+      whose evening dress was made in London, who had diamond studs to his
+      shirt, possessed a fine library, contributed freely to philanthropic work,
+      and held liberal European views, seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff as a sample
+      of a quite new and good type of civilised European culture, grafted on a
+      healthy, uncultivated peasant stem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The governor of the distant Siberian town was that same man who had been
+      so much talked about in Petersburg at the time Nekhludoff was there. He
+      was plump, with thin, curly hair, soft blue eyes, carefully-tended white
+      hands, with rings on the fingers, a pleasant smile, and very big in the
+      lower part of his body. The master of the house valued this governor
+      because of all the officials he was the only one who would not be bribed.
+      The mistress of the house, who was very fond of music and a very good
+      pianist herself, valued him because he was a good musician and played
+      duets with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was in such good humour that even this man was not unpleasant
+      to him, in spite of what he knew of his vices. The bright, energetic
+      aide-de-camp, with his bluey grey chin, who was continually offering his
+      services, pleased Nekhludoff by his good nature. But it was the charming
+      young couple, the General&rsquo;s daughter and her husband, who pleased
+      Nekhludoff best. The daughter was a plain-looking, simple-minded young
+      woman, wholly absorbed in her two children. Her husband, whom she had
+      fallen in love with and married after a long struggle with her parents,
+      was a Liberal, who had taken honours at the Moscow University, a modest
+      and intellectual young man in Government service, who made up statistics
+      and studied chiefly the foreign tribes, which he liked and tried to save
+      from dying out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of them were not only kind and attentive to Nekhludoff, but evidently
+      pleased to see him, as a new and interesting acquaintance. The General,
+      who came in to dinner in uniform and with a white cross round his neck,
+      greeted Nekhludoff as a friend, and asked the visitors to the side table
+      to take a glass of vodka and something to whet their appetites. The
+      General asked Nekhludoff what he had been doing since he left that
+      morning, and Nekhludoff told him he had been to the post-office and
+      received the news of the mitigation of that person&rsquo;s sentence that he had
+      spoken of in the morning, and again asked for a permission to visit the
+      prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General, apparently displeased that business should be mentioned at
+      dinner, frowned and said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have a glass of vodka,&rdquo; he said, addressing the Englishman, who had just
+      come up to the table. The Englishman drank a glass, and said he had been
+      to see the cathedral and the factory, but would like to visit the great
+      transportation prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that will just fit in,&rdquo; said the General to Nekhludoff. &ldquo;You will be
+      able to go together. Give them a pass,&rdquo; he added, turning to his
+      aide-de-camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When would you like to go?&rdquo; Nekhludoff asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I prefer visiting the prisons in the evening,&rdquo; the Englishman answered.
+      &ldquo;All are indoors and there is no preparation; you find them all as they
+      are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, he would like to see it in all its glory! Let him do so. I have
+      written about it and no attention has been paid to it. Let him find out
+      from foreign publications,&rdquo; the General said, and went up to the dinner
+      table, where the mistress of the house was showing the visitors their
+      places. Nekhludoff sat between his hostess and the Englishman. In front of
+      him sat the General&rsquo;s daughter and the ex-director of the Government
+      department in Petersburg. The conversation at dinner was carried on by
+      fits and starts, now it was India that the Englishman talked about, now
+      the Tonkin expedition that the General strongly disapproved of, now the
+      universal bribery and corruption in Siberia. All these topics did not
+      interest Nekhludoff much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after dinner, over their coffee, Nekhludoff and the Englishman began a
+      very interesting conversation about Gladstone, and Nekhludoff thought he
+      had said many clever things which were noticed by his interlocutor. And
+      Nekhludoff felt it more and more pleasant to be sipping his coffee seated
+      in an easy-chair among amiable, well-bred people. And when at the
+      Englishman&rsquo;s request the hostess went up to the piano with the ex-director
+      of the Government department, and they began to play in well-practised
+      style Beethoven&rsquo;s fifth symphony, Nekhludoff fell into a mental state of
+      perfect self-satisfaction to which he had long been a stranger, as though
+      he had only just found out what a good fellow he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grand piano was a splendid instrument, the symphony was well
+      performed. At least, so it seemed to Nekhludoff, who knew and liked that
+      symphony. Listening to the beautiful andante, he felt a tickling in his
+      nose, he was so touched by his many virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff thanked his hostess for the enjoyment that he had been deprived
+      of for so long, and was about to say goodbye and go when the daughter of
+      the house came up to him with a determined look and said, with a blush,
+      &ldquo;You asked about my children. Would you like to see them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thinks that everybody wants to see her children,&rdquo; said her mother,
+      smiling at her daughter&rsquo;s winning tactlessness. &ldquo;The Prince is not at all
+      interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I am very much interested,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, touched by
+      this overflowing, happy mother-love. &ldquo;Please let me see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s taking the Prince to see her babies,&rdquo; the General shouted, laughing
+      from the card-table, where he sat with his son-in-law, the mine owner and
+      the aide-de-camp. &ldquo;Go, go, pay your tribute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young woman, visibly excited by the thought that judgment was about to
+      be passed on her children, went quickly towards the inner apartments,
+      followed by Nekhludoff. In the third, a lofty room, papered with white and
+      lit up by a shaded lamp, stood two small cots, and a nurse with a white
+      cape on her shoulders sat between the cots. She had a kindly, true
+      Siberian face, with its high cheek-bones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nurse rose and bowed. The mother stooped over the first cot, in which
+      a two-year-old little girl lay peacefully sleeping with her little mouth
+      open and her long, curly hair tumbled over the pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Katie,&rdquo; said the mother, straightening the white and blue crochet
+      coverlet, from under which a little white foot pushed itself languidly
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she not pretty? She&rsquo;s only two years old, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lovely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is Vasiuk, as &lsquo;grandpapa&rsquo; calls him. Quite a different type. A
+      Siberian, is he not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A splendid boy,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, as he looked at the little fatty lying
+      asleep on his stomach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the mother, with a smile full of meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff recalled to his mind chains, shaved heads, fighting debauchery,
+      the dying Kryltzoff, Katusha and the whole of her past, and he began to
+      feel envious and to wish for what he saw here, which now seemed to him
+      pure and refined happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After having repeatedly expressed his admiration of the children, thereby
+      at least partially satisfying their mother, who eagerly drank in this
+      praise, he followed her back to the drawing-room, where the Englishman was
+      waiting for him to go and visit the prison, as they had arranged. Having
+      taken leave of their hosts, the old and the young ones, the Englishman and
+      Nekhludoff went out into the porch of the General&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weather had changed. It was snowing, and the snow fell densely in
+      large flakes, and already covered the road, the roof and the trees in the
+      garden, the steps of the porch, the roof of the trap and the back of the
+      horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman had a trap of his own, and Nekhludoff, having told the
+      coachman to drive to the prison, called his isvostchik and got in with the
+      heavy sense of having to fulfil an unpleasant duty, and followed the
+      Englishman over the soft snow, through which the wheels turned with
+      difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0126" id="link2HCH0126">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. MASLOVA&rsquo;S DECISION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The dismal prison house, with its sentinel and lamp burning under the
+      gateway, produced an even more dismal impression, with its long row of
+      lighted windows, than it had done in the morning, in spite of the white
+      covering that now lay over everything&mdash;the porch, the roof and the
+      walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The imposing inspector came up to the gate and read the pass that had been
+      given to Nekhludoff and the Englishman by the light of the lamp, shrugged
+      his fine shoulders in surprise, but, in obedience to the order, asked the
+      visitors to follow him in. He led them through the courtyard and then in
+      at a door to the right and up a staircase into the office. He offered them
+      a seat and asked what he could do for them, and when he heard that
+      Nekhludoff would like to see Maslova at once, he sent a jailer to fetch
+      her. Then he prepared himself to answer the questions which the Englishman
+      began to put to him, Nekhludoff acting as interpreter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many persons is the prison built to hold?&rdquo; the Englishman asked. &ldquo;How
+      many are confined in it? How many men? How many women? Children? How many
+      sentenced to the mines? How many exiles? How many sick persons?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff translated the Englishman&rsquo;s and the inspector&rsquo;s words without
+      paying any attention to their meaning, and felt an awkwardness he had not
+      in the least expected at the thought of the impending interview. When, in
+      the midst of a sentence he was translating for the Englishman, he heard
+      the sound of approaching footsteps, and the office door opened, and, as
+      had happened many times before, a jailer came in, followed by Katusha, and
+      he saw her with a kerchief tied round her head, and in a prison jacket a
+      heavy sensation came over him. &ldquo;I wish to live, I want a family, children,
+      I want a human life.&rdquo; These thoughts flashed through his mind as she
+      entered the room with rapid steps and blinking her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose and made a few steps to meet her, and her face appeared hard and
+      unpleasant to him. It was again as it had been at the time when she
+      reproached him. She flushed and turned pale, her fingers nervously
+      twisting a corner of her jacket. She looked up at him, then cast down her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that a mitigation has come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the jailer told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that as soon as the original document arrives you may come away and
+      settle where you like. We shall consider&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him hurriedly. &ldquo;What have I to consider? Where Valdemar
+      Simonson goes, there I shall follow.&rdquo; In spite of the excitement she was
+      in she raised her eyes to Nekhludoff&rsquo;s and pronounced these words quickly
+      and distinctly, as if she had prepared what she had to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you see he wishes me to live with him&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and she stopped, quite frightened, and corrected herself. &ldquo;He wishes me to
+      be near him. What more can I desire? I must look upon it as happiness.
+      What else is there for me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of two things,&rdquo; thought he. &ldquo;Either she loves Simonson and does not
+      in the least require the sacrifice I imagined I was bringing her, or she
+      still loves me and refuses me for my own sake, and is burning her ships by
+      uniting her fate with Simonson.&rdquo; And Nekhludoff felt ashamed and knew that
+      he was blushing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you yourself, do you love him?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Loving or not loving, what does it matter? I have given up all that. And
+      then Valdemar Simonson is quite an exceptional man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course,&rdquo; Nekhludoff began. &ldquo;He is a splendid man, and I think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she again interrupted him, as if afraid that he might say too much or
+      that she should not say all. &ldquo;No, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you must forgive me
+      if I am not doing what you wish,&rdquo; and she looked at him with those
+      unfathomable, squinting eyes of hers. &ldquo;Yes, it evidently must be so. You
+      must live, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said just what he had been telling himself a few moments before, but
+      he no longer thought so now and felt very differently. He was not only
+      ashamed, but felt sorry to lose all he was losing with her. &ldquo;I did not
+      expect this,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should you live here and suffer? You have suffered enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not suffered. It was good for me, and I should like to go on
+      serving you if I could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We do not want anything,&rdquo; she said, and looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have done so much for me as it is. If it had not been for you&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She wished to say more, but her voice trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly have no reason to thank me,&rdquo; Nekhludoff said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is the use of our reckoning? God will make up our accounts,&rdquo; she
+      said, and her black eyes began to glisten with the tears that filled them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a good woman you are,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I good?&rdquo; she said through her tears, and a pathetic smile lit up her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you ready?&rdquo; the Englishman asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Directly,&rdquo; replied Nekhludoff and asked her about Kryltzoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She got over her emotion and quietly told him all she knew. Kryltzoff was
+      very weak and had been sent into the infirmary. Mary Pavlovna was very
+      anxious, and had asked to be allowed to go to the infirmary as a nurse,
+      but could not get the permission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I to go?&rdquo; she asked, noticing that the Englishman was waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not say good-bye; I shall see you again,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff, holding
+      out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me,&rdquo; she said so low that he could hardly hear her. Their eyes
+      met, and Nekhludoff knew by the strange look of her squinting eyes and the
+      pathetic smile with which she said not &ldquo;Good-bye&rdquo; but &ldquo;Forgive me,&rdquo; that
+      of the two reasons that might have led to her resolution, the second was
+      the real one. She loved him, and thought that by uniting herself to him
+      she would be spoiling his life. By going with Simonson she thought she
+      would be setting Nekhludoff free, and felt glad that she had done what she
+      meant to do, and yet she suffered at parting from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed his hand, turned quickly and left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff was ready to go, but saw that the Englishman was noting
+      something down, and did not disturb him, but sat down on a wooden seat by
+      the wall, and suddenly a feeling of terrible weariness came over him. It
+      was not a sleepless night that had tired him, not the journey, not the
+      excitement, but he felt terribly tired of living. He leaned against the
+      back of the bench, shut his eyes and in a moment fell into a deep, heavy
+      sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, would you like to look round the cells now?&rdquo; the inspector asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff looked up and was surprised to find himself where he was. The
+      Englishman had finished his notes and expressed a wish to see the cells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff, tired and indifferent, followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0127" id="link2HCH0127">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI. THE ENGLISH VISITOR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When they had passed the anteroom and the sickening, stinking corridor,
+      the Englishman and Nekhludoff, accompanied by the inspector, entered the
+      first cell, where those sentenced to hard labour were confined. The beds
+      took up the middle of the cell and the prisoners were all in bed. There
+      were about 70 of them. When the visitors entered all the prisoners jumped
+      up and stood beside the beds, excepting two, a young man who was in a
+      state of high fever, and an old man who did nothing but groan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman asked if the young man had long been ill. The inspector
+      said that he was taken ill in the morning, but that the old man had long
+      been suffering with pains in the stomach, but could not be removed, as the
+      infirmary had been overfilled for a long time. The Englishman shook his
+      head disapprovingly, said he would like to say a few words to these
+      people, asking Nekhludoff to interpret. It turned out that besides
+      studying the places of exile and the prisons of Siberia, the Englishman
+      had another object in view, that of preaching salvation through faith and
+      by the redemption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell them,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that Christ died for them. If they believe in this
+      they shall be saved.&rdquo; While he spoke, all the prisoners stood silent with
+      their arms at their sides. &ldquo;This book, tell them,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;says all
+      about it. Can any of them read?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were more than 20 who could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman took several bound Testaments out of a hang-bag, and many
+      strong hands with their hard, black nails stretched out from beneath the
+      coarse shirt-sleeves towards him. He gave away two Testaments in this
+      cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same thing happened in the second cell. There was the same foul air,
+      the same icon hanging between the windows, the same tub to the left of the
+      door, and they were all lying side by side close to one another, and
+      jumped up in the same manner and stood stretched full length with their
+      arms by their sides, all but three, two of whom sat up and one remained
+      lying, and did not even look at the newcomers; these three were also ill.
+      The Englishman made the same speech and again gave away two books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the third room four were ill. When the Englishman asked why the sick
+      were not put all together into one cell, the inspector said that they did
+      not wish it themselves, that their diseases were not infectious, and that
+      the medical assistant watched them and attended to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has not set foot here for a fortnight,&rdquo; muttered a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspector did not say anything and led the way to the next cell. Again
+      the door was unlocked, and all got up and stood silent. Again the
+      Englishman gave away Testaments. It was the same in the fifth and sixth
+      cells, in those to the right and those to the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From those sentenced to hard labour they went on to the exiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the exiles to those evicted by the Commune and those who followed of
+      their own free will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everywhere men, cold, hungry, idle, infected, degraded, imprisoned, were
+      shown off like wild beasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman, having given away the appointed number of Testaments,
+      stopped giving any more, and made no speeches. The oppressing sight, and
+      especially the stifling atmosphere, quelled even his energy, and he went
+      from cell to cell, saying nothing but &ldquo;All right&rdquo; to the inspector&rsquo;s
+      remarks about what prisoners there were in each cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff followed as in a dream, unable either to refuse to go on or to
+      go away, and with the same feelings of weariness and hopelessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0128" id="link2HCH0128">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII. KRYLTZOFF AT REST.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In one of the exiles&rsquo; cells Nekhludoff, to his surprise, recognised the
+      strange old man he had seen crossing the ferry that morning. This old man
+      was sitting on the floor by the beds, barefooted, with only a dirty
+      cinder-coloured shirt on, torn on one shoulder, and similar trousers. He
+      looked severely and enquiringly at the newcomers. His emaciated body,
+      visible through the holes of his shirt, looked miserably weak, but in his
+      face was even more concentrated seriousness and animation than when
+      Nekhludoff saw him crossing the ferry. As in all the other cells, so here
+      also the prisoners jumped up and stood erect when the official entered,
+      but the old man remained sitting. His eyes glittered and his brows frowned
+      with wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; the inspector called out to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man did not rise and only smiled contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thy servants are standing before thee. I am not thy servant. Thou bearest
+      the seal&mdash;&rdquo; The old man pointed to the inspector&rsquo;s forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wha-a-t?&rdquo; said the inspector threateningly, and made a step towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know this man,&rdquo; Nekhludoff hastened to say; &ldquo;what is he imprisoned
+      for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The police have sent him here because he has no passport. We ask them not
+      to send such, but they will do it,&rdquo; said the inspector, casting an angry
+      side look at the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so it seems thou, too, art one of Antichrist&rsquo;s army?&rdquo; the old man
+      said to Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am a visitor,&rdquo; said Nekhludoff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, hast thou come to see how Antichrist tortures men? There, look, he
+      has locked them up in a cage, a whole army of them. Men should eat bread
+      in the sweat of their brow. And he has locked them up with no work to do,
+      and feeds them like swine, so that they should turn into beasts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is he saying?&rdquo; asked the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff told him the old man was blaming the inspector for keeping men
+      imprisoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him how he thinks one should treat those who do not keep to the
+      laws,&rdquo; said the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff translated the question. The old man laughed in a strange
+      manner, showing his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The laws?&rdquo; he repeated with contempt. &ldquo;He first robbed everybody, took
+      all the earth, all the rights away from men, killed all those who were
+      against him, and then wrote laws, forbidding robbery and murder. He should
+      have written these laws before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff translated. The Englishman smiled. &ldquo;Well, anyhow, ask him how
+      one should treat thieves and murderers at present?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff again translated his question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him he should take the seal of Antichrist off himself,&rdquo; the old man
+      said, frowning severely; &ldquo;then there will be no thieves and murderers.
+      Tell him so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is crazy,&rdquo; said the Englishman, when Nekhludoff had translated the old
+      man&rsquo;s words, and, shrugging his shoulders, he left the cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do thy business and leave them alone. Every one for himself. God knows
+      whom to execute, whom to forgive, and we do not know,&rdquo; said the old man.
+      &ldquo;Every man be his own chief, then the chiefs will not be wanted. Go, go!&rdquo;
+       he added, angrily frowning and looking with glittering eyes at Nekhludoff,
+      who lingered in the cell. &ldquo;Hast thou not looked on long enough how the
+      servants of Antichrist feed lice on men? Go, go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Nekhludoff went out he saw the Englishman standing by the open door
+      of an empty cell with the inspector, asking what the cell was for. The
+      inspector explained that it was the mortuary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the Englishman when Nekhludoff had translated, and expressed
+      the wish to go in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mortuary was an ordinary cell, not very large. A small lamp hung on
+      the wall and dimly lit up sacks and logs of wood that were piled up in one
+      corner, and four dead bodies lay on the bedshelves to the right. The first
+      body had a coarse linen shirt and trousers on; it was that of a tall man
+      with a small beard and half his head shaved. The body was quite rigid; the
+      bluish hands, that had evidently been folded on the breast, had separated;
+      the legs were also apart and the bare feet were sticking out. Next to him
+      lay a bare-footed old woman in a white petticoat, her head, with its thin
+      plait of hair, uncovered, with a little, pinched yellow face and a sharp
+      nose. Beyond her was another man with something lilac on. This colour
+      reminded Nekhludoff of something. He came nearer and looked at the body.
+      The small, pointed beard sticking upwards, the firm, well-shaped nose, the
+      high, white forehead, the thin, curly hair; he recognised the familiar
+      features and could hardly believe his eyes. Yesterday he had seen this
+      face, angry, excited, and full of suffering; now it was quiet, motionless,
+      and terribly beautiful. Yes, it was Kryltzoff, or at any rate the trace
+      that his material existence had left behind. &ldquo;Why had he suffered? Why had
+      he lived? Does he now understand?&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, and there seemed to
+      be no answer, seemed to be nothing but death, and he felt faint. Without
+      taking leave of the Englishman, Nekhludoff asked the inspector to lead him
+      out into the yard, and feeling the absolute necessity of being alone to
+      think over all that had happened that evening, he drove back to his hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0129" id="link2HCH0129">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII. A NEW LIFE DAWNS FOR NEKHLUDOFF.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff did not go to bed, but went up and down his room for a long
+      time. His business with Katusha was at an end. He was not wanted, and this
+      made him sad and ashamed. His other business was not only unfinished, but
+      troubled him more than ever and demanded his activity. All this horrible
+      evil that he had seen and learned to know lately, and especially to-day in
+      that awful prison, this evil, which had killed that dear Kryltzoff, ruled
+      and was triumphant, and he could foreseen possibility of conquering or
+      even knowing how to conquer it. Those hundreds and thousands of degraded
+      human beings locked up in the noisome prisons by indifferent generals,
+      procureurs, inspectors, rose up in his imagination; he remembered the
+      strange, free old man accusing the officials, and therefore considered
+      mad, and among the corpses the beautiful, waxen face of Kryltzoff, who had
+      died in anger. And again the question as to whether he was mad or those
+      who considered they were in their right minds while they committed all
+      these deeds stood before him with renewed force and demanded an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tired of pacing up and down, tired of thinking, he sat down on the sofa
+      near the lamp and mechanically opened the Testament which the Englishman
+      had given him as a remembrance, and which he had thrown on the table when
+      he emptied his pockets on coming in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is said one can find an answer to everything here,&rdquo; he thought, and
+      opened the Testament at random and began reading Matt. xviii. 1-4: &ldquo;In
+      that hour came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who then is greatest in
+      the Kingdom of Heaven? And He called to Him a little child, and set him in
+      the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn and
+      become as little children, ye shall in nowise enter into the Kingdom of
+      Heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child the
+      same is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, that is true,&rdquo; he said, remembering that he had known the peace
+      and joy of life only when he had humbled himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And whosoever shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth
+      Me, but whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble, it is more
+      profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck
+      and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea.&rdquo; (Matt. xviii. 5, 6.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this for, &lsquo;Whosoever shall receive?&rsquo; Receive where? And what does
+      &lsquo;in my name&rsquo; mean?&rdquo; he asked, feeling that these words did not tell him
+      anything. &ldquo;And why &lsquo;the millstone round his neck and the depths of the
+      sea?&rsquo; No, that is not it: it is not clear,&rdquo; and he remembered how more
+      than once in his life he had taken to reading the Gospels, and how want of
+      clearness in these passages had repulsed him. He went on to read the
+      seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth verses about the occasions of stumbling,
+      and that they must come, and about punishment by casting men into hell
+      fire, and some kind of angels who see the face of the Father in Heaven.
+      &ldquo;What a pity that this is so incoherent,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;yet one feels that
+      there is something good in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the Son of Man came to save that which was lost,&rdquo; he continued to
+      read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How think ye? If any man have a hundred sheep and one of them go astray,
+      doth he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains and seek
+      that which goeth astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto
+      you, he rejoiceth over it more than over the ninety and nine which have
+      not gone astray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in Heaven that one of
+      these little ones should perish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is not the will of the Father that they should perish, and here
+      they are perishing by hundreds and thousands. And there is no possibility
+      of saving them,&rdquo; he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then came Peter and said to him, How oft shall my brother offend me and I
+      forgive him? Until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee
+      until seven times, but until seventy times seven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven likened unto a certain king which made
+      a reckoning with his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was
+      brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as he
+      had not wherewith to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife
+      and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant
+      therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with
+      me; I will pay thee all. And the lord of that servant, being moved with
+      compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. But that servant went
+      out, and found one of his fellow-servants which owed him a hundred pence;
+      and he laid hold on him and took him by the throat, saying, Pay what thou
+      owest. So his fellow-servant fell down and besought him, saying, Have
+      patience with me and I will pay thee. And he would not, but went and cast
+      him into prison till he should pay that which was due. So when his
+      fellow-servants saw what was done, they were exceeding sorry, and came and
+      told unto their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him unto him
+      and saith to him, Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt
+      because thou besought me; shouldst not thou also have mercy on thy
+      fellow-servant as I had mercy on thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is this all?&rdquo; Nekhludoff suddenly exclaimed aloud, and the inner
+      voice of the whole of his being said, &ldquo;Yes, it is all.&rdquo; And it happened to
+      Nekhludoff, as it often happens to men who are living a spiritual life.
+      The thought that seemed strange at first and paradoxical or even to be
+      only a joke, being confirmed more and more often by life&rsquo;s experience,
+      suddenly appeared as the simplest, truest certainty. In this way the idea
+      that the only certain means of salvation from the terrible evil from which
+      men were suffering was that they should always acknowledge themselves to
+      be sinning against God, and therefore unable to punish or correct others,
+      because they were dear to Him. It became clear to him that all the
+      dreadful evil he had been witnessing in prisons and jails and the quiet
+      self-satisfaction of the perpetrators of this evil were the consequences
+      of men trying to do what was impossible; trying to correct evil while
+      being evil themselves; vicious men were trying to correct other vicious
+      men, and thought they could do it by using mechanical means, and the only
+      consequence of all this was that the needs and the cupidity of some men
+      induced them to take up this so-called punishment and correction as a
+      profession, and have themselves become utterly corrupt, and go on
+      unceasingly depraving those whom they torment. Now he saw clearly what all
+      the terrors he had seen came from, and what ought to be done to put a stop
+      to them. The answer he could not find was the same that Christ gave to
+      Peter. It was that we should forgive always an infinite number of times
+      because there are no men who have not sinned themselves, and therefore
+      none can punish or correct others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely it cannot be so simple,&rdquo; thought Nekhludoff, and yet he saw
+      with certainty, strange as it had seemed at first, that it was not only a
+      theoretical but also a practical solution of the question. The usual
+      objection, &ldquo;What is one to do with the evil doers? Surely not let them go
+      unpunished?&rdquo; no longer confused him. This objection might have a meaning
+      if it were proved that punishment lessened crime, or improved the
+      criminal, but when the contrary was proved, and it was evident that it was
+      not in people&rsquo;s power to correct each other, the only reasonable thing to
+      do is to leave off doing the things which are not only useless, but
+      harmful, immoral and cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For many centuries people who were considered criminals have been
+      tortured. Well, and have they ceased to exist? No; their numbers have been
+      increased not alone by the criminals corrupted by punishment but also by
+      those lawful criminals, the judges, procureurs, magistrates and jailers,
+      who judge and punish men. Nekhludoff now understood that society and order
+      in general exists not because of these lawful criminals who judge and
+      punish others, but because in spite of men being thus depraved, they still
+      pity and love one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In hopes of finding a confirmation of this thought in the Gospel,
+      Nekhludoff began reading it from the beginning. When he had read the
+      Sermon on the Mount, which had always touched him, he saw in it for the
+      first time to-day not beautiful abstract thoughts, setting forth for the
+      most part exaggerated and impossible demands, but simple, clear, practical
+      laws. If these laws were carried out in practice (and this was quite
+      possible) they would establish perfectly new and surprising conditions of
+      social life, in which the violence that filled Nekhludoff with such
+      indignation would cease of itself. Not only this, but the greatest
+      blessing that is obtainable to men, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth would
+      be established. There were five of these laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first (Matt. v. 21-26), that man should not only do no murder, but not
+      even be angry with his brother, should not consider any one worthless:
+      &ldquo;Raca,&rdquo; and if he has quarrelled with any one he should make it up with
+      him before bringing his gift to God&mdash;i.e., before praying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second (Matt. v. 27-32), that man should not only not commit adultery
+      but should not even seek for enjoyment in a woman&rsquo;s beauty, and if he has
+      once come together with a woman he should never be faithless to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third (Matt. 33-37), that man should never bind himself by oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fourth (Matt. 38-42), that man should not only not demand an eye for
+      an eye, but when struck on one cheek should hold out the other, should
+      forgive an offence and bear it humbly, and never refuse the service others
+      demand of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fifth (Matt. 43-48), that man should not only not hate his enemy and
+      not fight him, but love him, help him, serve him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nekhludoff sat staring at the lamp and his heart stood still. Recalling
+      the monstrous confusion of the life we lead, he distinctly saw what that
+      life could be if men were brought up to obey these rules, and rapture such
+      as he had long not felt filled his soul, just as if after long days of
+      weariness and suffering he had suddenly found ease and freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not sleep all night, and as it happens to many and many a man who
+      reads the Gospels he understood for the first time the full meaning of the
+      words read so often before but passed by unnoticed. He imbibed all these
+      necessary, important and joyful revelations as a sponge imbibes water. And
+      all he read seemed so familiar and seemed to confirm, to form into a
+      conception, what he had known long ago, but had never realised and never
+      quite believed. Now he realised and believed it, and not only realised and
+      believed that if men would obey these laws they would obtain the highest
+      blessing they can attain to, he also realised and believed that the only
+      duty of every man is to fulfil these laws; that in this lies the only
+      reasonable meaning of life, that every stepping aside from these laws is a
+      mistake which is immediately followed by retribution. This flowed from the
+      whole of the teaching, and was most strongly and clearly illustrated in
+      the parable of the vineyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The husbandman imagined that the vineyard in which they were sent to work
+      for their master was their own, that all that was in was made for them,
+      and that their business was to enjoy life in this vineyard, forgetting the
+      Master and killing all those who reminded them of his existence. &ldquo;Are we
+      not doing the same,&rdquo; Nekhludoff thought, &ldquo;when we imagine ourselves to be
+      masters of our lives, and that life is given us for enjoyment? This
+      evidently is an incongruity. We were sent here by some one&rsquo;s will and for
+      some reason. And we have concluded that we live only for our own joy, and
+      of course we feel unhappy as labourers do when not fulfilling their
+      Master&rsquo;s orders. The Master&rsquo;s will is expressed in these commandments. If
+      men will only fulfil these laws, the Kingdom of Heaven will be established
+      on earth, and men will receive the greatest good that they can attain to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Seek ye first the Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things
+      shall be added unto you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so here it is, the business of my life. Scarcely have I finished one
+      and another has commenced.&rdquo; And a perfectly new life dawned that night for
+      Nekhludoff, not because he had entered into new conditions of life, but
+      because everything he did after that night had a new and quite different
+      significance than before. How this new period of his life will end time
+      alone will prove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [Transcriber&rsquo;s Note: Corrected &ldquo;Are we do not doing the same,&rdquo; to &ldquo;Are we
+      not doing the same,&rdquo; in third last paragraph.]
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy
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+</pre>
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+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/1938.txt b/1938.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b935b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1938.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,20054 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Resurrection
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+Released on October, 1999  [Etext #1938]
+Last Updated: April 8, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RESURRECTION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RESURRECTION
+
+By Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+Translated by Mrs. Louise Maude
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: The following paragraph is on a page of its own, in
+cursive writing, apparently in Tolstoy's own hand.]
+
+     This English version
+     of "Resurrection" is pub-
+     lished by Dodd, Mead and
+     Company by my authority.
+                 Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
+
+Opinions about Tolstoy and his work differ, but on one point there
+surely might be unanimity. A writer of world-wide reputation should be
+at least allowed to know how to spell his own name. Why should any one
+insist on spelling it "Tolstoi" (with one, two or three dots over the
+"i"), when he himself writes it "Tolstoy"? The only reason I have ever
+heard suggested is, that in England and America such outlandish views
+are attributed to him, that an outlandish spelling is desirable to match
+those views.
+
+This novel, written in the rough by Tolstoy some years ago and founded
+upon an actual occurrence, was completely rewritten by him during the
+last year and a half, and all the proceeds have been devoted by him
+to aiding the Doukhobors, a sect who were persecuted in the Caucasus
+(especially from 1895 to 1898) for refusing to learn war. About seven
+thousand three hundred of them are settled in Canada, and about a
+hundred of the leaders are exiled to the remote parts of Siberia.
+
+Anything I may receive for my work in translating the book will go to
+the same cause. "Prevention is better than cure," and I would rather
+help people to abstain from killing and wounding each other than devote
+the money to patch up their wounds after the battle.
+
+LOUISE MAUDE
+
+
+
+
+RESURRECTION
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+
+Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the
+small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paving the
+ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting
+down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with
+the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the
+town.
+
+The sun shone warm, the air was balmy; everywhere, where it did not get
+scraped away, the grass revived and sprang up between the paving-stones
+as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards. The birches,
+the poplars, and the wild cherry unfolded their gummy and fragrant
+leaves, the limes were expanding their opening buds; crows, sparrows,
+and pigeons, filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests
+ready; the flies were buzzing along the walls, warmed by the sunshine.
+All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But
+men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting
+themselves and each other. It was not this spring morning men thought
+sacred and worthy of consideration not the beauty of God's world, given
+for a joy to all creatures, this beauty which inclines the heart to
+peace, to harmony, and to love, but only their own devices for enslaving
+one another.
+
+Thus, in the prison office of the Government town, it was not the fact
+that men and animals had received the grace and gladness of spring that
+was considered sacred and important, but that a notice, numbered and
+with a superscription, had come the day before, ordering that on this
+28th day of April, at 9 a.m., three prisoners at present detained in the
+prison, a man and two women (one of these women, as the chief criminal,
+to be conducted separately), had to appear at Court. So now, on the 28th
+of April, at 8 o'clock, a jailer and soon after him a woman warder with
+curly grey hair, dressed in a jacket with sleeves trimmed with gold,
+with a blue-edged belt round her waist, and having a look of suffering
+on her face, came into the corridor.
+
+"You want Maslova?" she asked, coming up to the cell with the jailer who
+was on duty.
+
+The jailer, rattling the iron padlock, opened the door of the cell, from
+which there came a whiff of air fouler even than that in the corridor,
+and called out, "Maslova! to the Court," and closed the door again.
+
+Even into the prison yard the breeze had brought the fresh vivifying air
+from the fields. But in the corridor the air was laden with the germs of
+typhoid, the smell of sewage, putrefaction, and tar; every newcomer felt
+sad and dejected in it. The woman warder felt this, though she was
+used to bad air. She had just come in from outside, and entering the
+corridor, she at once became sleepy.
+
+From inside the cell came the sound of bustle and women's voices, and
+the patter of bare feet on the floor.
+
+"Now, then, hurry up, Maslova, I say!" called out the jailer, and in a
+minute or two a small young woman with a very full bust came briskly out
+of the door and went up to the jailer. She had on a grey cloak over a
+white jacket and petticoat. On her feet she wore linen stockings and
+prison shoes, and round her head was tied a white kerchief, from under
+which a few locks of black hair were brushed over the forehead with
+evident intent. The face of the woman was of that whiteness peculiar to
+people who have lived long in confinement, and which puts one in mind of
+shoots of potatoes that spring up in a cellar. Her small broad hands and
+full neck, which showed from under the broad collar of her cloak, were
+of the same hue. Her black, sparkling eyes, one with a slight squint,
+appeared in striking contrast to the dull pallor of her face.
+
+She carried herself very straight, expanding her full bosom.
+
+With her head slightly thrown back, she stood in the corridor, looking
+straight into the eyes of the jailer, ready to comply with any order.
+
+The jailer was about to lock the door when a wrinkled and severe-looking
+old woman put out her grey head and began speaking to Maslova. But the
+jailer closed the door, pushing the old woman's head with it. A woman's
+laughter was heard from the cell, and Maslova smiled, turning to the
+little grated opening in the cell door. The old woman pressed her face
+to the grating from the other side, and said, in a hoarse voice:
+
+"Now mind, and when they begin questioning you, just repeat over the
+same thing, and stick to it; tell nothing that is not wanted."
+
+"Well, it could not be worse than it is now, anyhow; I only wish it was
+settled one way or another."
+
+"Of course, it will be settled one way or another," said the jailer,
+with a superior's self-assured witticism. "Now, then, get along! Take
+your places!"
+
+The old woman's eyes vanished from the grating, and Maslova stepped out
+into the middle of the corridor. The warder in front, they descended
+the stone stairs, past the still fouler, noisy cells of the men's
+ward, where they were followed by eyes looking out of every one of the
+gratings in the doors, and entered the office, where two soldiers were
+waiting to escort her. A clerk who was sitting there gave one of the
+soldiers a paper reeking of tobacco, and pointing to the prisoner,
+remarked, "Take her."
+
+The soldier, a peasant from Nijni Novgorod, with a red, pock-marked
+face, put the paper into the sleeve of his coat, winked to his
+companion, a broad-shouldered Tchouvash, and then the prisoner and the
+soldiers went to the front entrance, out of the prison yard, and through
+the town up the middle of the roughly-paved street.
+
+Isvostchiks [cabmen], tradespeople, cooks, workmen, and government
+clerks, stopped and looked curiously at the prisoner; some shook their
+heads and thought, "This is what evil conduct, conduct unlike ours,
+leads to." The children stopped and gazed at the robber with frightened
+looks; but the thought that the soldiers were preventing her from doing
+more harm quieted their fears. A peasant, who had sold his charcoal, and
+had had some tea in the town, came up, and, after crossing himself, gave
+her a copeck. The prisoner blushed and muttered something; she noticed
+that she was attracting everybody's attention, and that pleased her. The
+comparatively fresh air also gladdened her, but it was painful to step
+on the rough stones with the ill-made prison shoes on her feet, which
+had become unused to walking. Passing by a corn-dealer's shop, in front
+of which a few pigeons were strutting about, unmolested by any one, the
+prisoner almost touched a grey-blue bird with her foot; it fluttered up
+and flew close to her ear, fanning her with its wings. She smiled, then
+sighed deeply as she remembered her present position.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MASLOVA'S EARLY LIFE.
+
+The story of the prisoner Maslova's life was a very common one.
+
+Maslova's mother was the unmarried daughter of a village woman,
+employed on a dairy farm, which belonged to two maiden ladies who were
+landowners. This unmarried woman had a baby every year, and, as often
+happens among the village people, each one of these undesired babies,
+after it had been carefully baptised, was neglected by its mother, whom
+it hindered at her work, and left to starve. Five children had died in
+this way. They had all been baptised and then not sufficiently fed, and
+just left to die. The sixth baby, whose father was a gipsy tramp, would
+have shared the same fate, had it not so happened that one of the maiden
+ladies came into the farmyard to scold the dairymaids for sending up
+cream that smelt of the cow. The young woman was lying in the cowshed
+with a fine, healthy, new-born baby. The old maiden lady scolded the
+maids again for allowing the woman (who had just been confined) to lie
+in the cowshed, and was about to go away, but seeing the baby her heart
+was touched, and she offered to stand godmother to the little girl, and
+pity for her little god-daughter induced her to give milk and a little
+money to the mother, so that she should feed the baby; and the little
+girl lived. The old ladies spoke of her as "the saved one." When the
+child was three years old, her mother fell ill and died, and the maiden
+ladies took the child from her old grandmother, to whom she was nothing
+but a burden.
+
+The little black-eyed maiden grew to be extremely pretty, and so full of
+spirits that the ladies found her very entertaining.
+
+The younger of the ladies, Sophia Ivanovna, who had stood godmother to
+the girl, had the kinder heart of the two sisters; Maria Ivanovna, the
+elder, was rather hard. Sophia Ivanovna dressed the little girl in nice
+clothes, and taught her to read and write, meaning to educate her like a
+lady. Maria Ivanovna thought the child should be brought up to work, and
+trained her to be a good servant. She was exacting; she punished, and,
+when in a bad temper, even struck the little girl. Growing up under
+these two different influences, the girl turned out half servant, half
+young lady. They called her Katusha, which sounds less refined than
+Katinka, but is not quite so common as Katka. She used to sew, tidy up
+the rooms, polish the metal cases of the icons and do other light work,
+and sometimes she sat and read to the ladies.
+
+Though she had more than one offer, she would not marry. She felt that
+life as the wife of any of the working men who were courting her would
+be too hard; spoilt as she was by a life of case.
+
+She lived in this manner till she was sixteen, when the nephew of the
+old ladies, a rich young prince, and a university student, came to
+stay with his aunts, and Katusha, not daring to acknowledge it even to
+herself, fell in love with him.
+
+Then two years later this same nephew stayed four days with his aunts
+before proceeding to join his regiment, and the night before he left he
+betrayed Katusha, and, after giving her a 100-rouble note, went away.
+Five months later she knew for certain that she was to be a mother.
+After that everything seemed repugnant to her, her only thought being
+how to escape from the shame that awaited her. She began not only to
+serve the ladies in a half-hearted and negligent way, but once, without
+knowing how it happened, was very rude to them, and gave them notice,
+a thing she repented of later, and the ladies let her go, noticing
+something wrong and very dissatisfied with her. Then she got a
+housemaid's place in a police-officer's house, but stayed there only
+three months, for the police officer, a man of fifty, began to torment
+her, and once, when he was in a specially enterprising mood, she fired
+up, called him "a fool and old devil," and gave him such a knock in the
+chest that he fell. She was turned out for her rudeness. It was useless
+to look for another situation, for the time of her confinement was
+drawing near, so she went to the house of a village midwife, who also
+sold wine. The confinement was easy; but the midwife, who had a case of
+fever in the village, infected Katusha, and her baby boy had to be sent
+to the foundlings' hospital, where, according to the words of the old
+woman who took him there, he at once died. When Katusha went to the
+midwife she had 127 roubles in all, 27 which she had earned and 100
+given her by her betrayer. When she left she had but six roubles; she
+did not know how to keep money, but spent it on herself, and gave to
+all who asked. The midwife took 40 roubles for two months' board and
+attendance, 25 went to get the baby into the foundlings' hospital, and
+40 the midwife borrowed to buy a cow with. Twenty roubles went just for
+clothes and dainties. Having nothing left to live on, Katusha had to
+look out for a place again, and found one in the house of a forester.
+The forester was a married man, but he, too, began to annoy her from the
+first day. He disgusted her, and she tried to avoid him. But he, more
+experienced and cunning, besides being her master, who could send her
+wherever he liked, managed to accomplish his object. His wife found it
+out, and, catching Katusha and her husband in a room all by themselves,
+began beating her. Katusha defended herself, and they had a fight, and
+Katusha got turned out of the house without being paid her wages.
+
+Then Katusha went to live with her aunt in town. The aunt's husband,
+a bookbinder, had once been comfortably off, but had lost all his
+customers, and had taken to drink, and spent all he could lay hands
+on at the public-house. The aunt kept a little laundry, and managed to
+support herself, her children, and her wretched husband. She offered
+Katusha the place of an assistant laundress; but seeing what a life of
+misery and hardship her aunt's assistants led, Katusha hesitated, and
+applied to a registry office for a place. One was found for her with a
+lady who lived with her two sons, pupils at a public day school. A
+week after Katusha had entered the house the elder, a big fellow with
+moustaches, threw up his studies and made love to her, continually
+following her about. His mother laid all the blame on Katusha, and gave
+her notice.
+
+It so happened that, after many fruitless attempts to find a situation,
+Katusha again went to the registry office, and there met a woman with
+bracelets on her bare, plump arms and rings on most of her fingers.
+Hearing that Katusha was badly in want of a place, the woman gave her
+her address, and invited her to come to her house. Katusha went. The
+woman received her very kindly, set cake and sweet wine before her,
+then wrote a note and gave it to a servant to take to somebody. In the
+evening a tall man, with long, grey hair and a white beard, entered the
+room, and sat down at once near Katusha, smiling and gazing at her with
+glistening eyes. He began joking with her. The hostess called him away
+into the next room, and Katusha heard her say, "A fresh one from the
+country," Then the hostess called Katusha aside and told her that the
+man was an author, and that he had a great deal of money, and that if
+he liked her he would not grudge her anything. He did like her, and gave
+her 25 roubles, promising to see her often. The 25 roubles soon went;
+some she paid to her aunt for board and lodging; the rest was spent on
+a hat, ribbons, and such like. A few days later the author sent for her,
+and she went. He gave her another 25 roubles, and offered her a separate
+lodging.
+
+Next door to the lodging rented for her by the author there lived a
+jolly young shopman, with whom Katusha soon fell in love. She told
+the author, and moved to a little lodging of her own. The shopman, who
+promised to marry her, went to Nijni on business without mentioning it
+to her, having evidently thrown her up, and Katusha remained alone. She
+meant to continue living in the lodging by herself, but was informed
+by the police that in this case she would have to get a license. She
+returned to her aunt. Seeing her fine dress, her hat, and mantle, her
+aunt no longer offered her laundry work. As she understood things, her
+niece had risen above that sort of thing. The question as to whether she
+was to become a laundress or not did not occur to Katusha, either. She
+looked with pity at the thin, hard-worked laundresses, some already in
+consumption, who stood washing or ironing with their thin arms in the
+fearfully hot front room, which was always full of soapy steam and
+draughts from the windows, and thought with horror that she might have
+shared the same fate.
+
+Katusha had begun to smoke some time before, and since the young shopman
+had thrown her up she was getting more and more into the habit of
+drinking. It was not so much the flavour of wine that tempted her as the
+fact that it gave her a chance of forgetting the misery she suffered,
+making her feel more unrestrained and more confident of her own worth,
+which she was not when quite sober; without wine she felt sad and
+ashamed. Just at this time a woman came along who offered to place her
+in one of the largest establishments in the city, explaining all the
+advantages and benefits of the situation. Katusha had the choice before
+her of either going into service or accepting this offer--and she chose
+the latter. Besides, it seemed to her as though, in this way, she could
+revenge herself on her betrayer and the shopman and all those who had
+injured her. One of the things that tempted her, and was the cause
+of her decision, was the woman telling her she might order her own
+dresses--velvet, silk, satin, low-necked ball dresses, anything she
+liked. A mental picture of herself in a bright yellow silk trimmed with
+black velvet with low neck and short sleeves conquered her, and she gave
+up her passport. On the same evening the procuress took an isvostchik
+and drove her to the notorious house kept by Carolina Albertovna
+Kitaeva.
+
+From that day a life of chronic sin against human and divine laws
+commenced for Katusha Maslova, a life which is led by hundreds of
+thousands of women, and which is not merely tolerated but sanctioned by
+the Government, anxious for the welfare of its subjects; a life
+which for nine women out of ten ends in painful disease, premature
+decrepitude, and death.
+
+Katusha Maslova lived this life for seven years. During these years she
+twice changed houses, and had once been to the hospital. In the seventh
+year of this life, when she was twenty-six years old, happened that for
+which she was put in prison and for which she was now being taken to
+be tried, after more than three months of confinement with thieves and
+murderers in the stifling air of a prison.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF.
+
+When Maslova, wearied out by the long walk, reached the building,
+accompanied by two soldiers, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, who
+had seduced her, was still lying on his high bedstead, with a feather
+bed on the top of the spring mattress, in a fine, clean, well-ironed
+linen night shirt, smoking a cigarette, and considering what he had to
+do to-day, and what had happened yesterday.
+
+Recalling the evening he had spent with the Korchagins, a wealthy and
+aristocratic family, whose daughter every one expected he would marry,
+he sighed, and, throwing away the end of his cigarette, was going
+to take another out of the silver case; but, changing his mind, he
+resolutely raised his solid frame, and, putting down his smooth, white
+legs, stepped into his slippers, threw his silk dressing gown over his
+broad shoulders, and passed into his dressing-room, walking heavily
+and quickly. There he carefully cleaned his teeth, many of which were
+filled, with tooth powder, and rinsed his mouth with scented elixir.
+After that he washed his hands with perfumed soap, cleaned his long
+nails with particular care, then, from a tap fixed to his marble
+washstand, he let a spray of cold water run over his face and stout
+neck. Having finished this part of the business, he went into a third
+room, where a shower bath stood ready for him. Having refreshed his
+full, white, muscular body, and dried it with a rough bath sheet, he put
+on his fine undergarments and his boots, and sat down before the glass
+to brush his black beard and his curly hair, that had begun to get thin
+above the forehead. Everything he used, everything belonging to his
+toilet, his linen, his clothes, boots, necktie, pin, studs, was of the
+best quality, very quiet, simple, durable and costly.
+
+Nekhludoff dressed leisurely, and went into the dining-room. A table,
+which looked very imposing with its four legs carved in the shape of
+lions' paws, and a huge side-board to match, stood in the oblong room,
+the floor of which had been polished by three men the day before. On
+the table, which was covered with a fine, starched cloth, stood a silver
+coffeepot full of aromatic coffee, a sugar basin, a jug of fresh cream,
+and a bread basket filled with fresh rolls, rusks, and biscuits; and
+beside the plate lay the last number of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, a
+newspaper, and several letters.
+
+Nekhludoff was just going to open his letters, when a stout, middle-aged
+woman in mourning, a lace cap covering the widening parting of her hair,
+glided into the room. This was Agraphena Petrovna, formerly lady's maid
+to Nekhludoff's mother. Her mistress had died quite recently in this
+very house, and she remained with the son as his housekeeper. Agraphena
+Petrovna had spent nearly ten years, at different times, abroad with
+Nekhludoff's mother, and had the appearance and manners of a lady. She
+had lived with the Nekhludoffs from the time she was a child, and had
+known Dmitri Ivanovitch at the time when he was still little Mitinka.
+
+"Good-morning, Dmitri Ivanovitch."
+
+"Good-morning, Agraphena Petrovna. What is it you want?" Nekhludoff
+asked.
+
+"A letter from the princess; either from the mother or the daughter.
+The maid brought it some time ago, and is waiting in my room," answered
+Agraphena Petrovna, handing him the letter with a significant smile.
+
+"All right! Directly!" said Nekhludoff, taking the letter and frowning
+as he noticed Agraphena Petrovna's smile.
+
+That smile meant that the letter was from the younger Princess
+Korchagin, whom Agraphena Petrovna expected him to marry. This
+supposition of hers annoyed Nekhludoff.
+
+"Then I'll tell her to wait?" and Agraphena Petrovna took a crumb brush
+which was not in its place, put it away, and sailed out of the room.
+
+Nekhludoff opened the perfumed note, and began reading it.
+
+The note was written on a sheet of thick grey paper, with rough edges;
+the writing looked English. It said:
+
+Having assumed the task of acting as your memory, I take the liberty of
+reminding you that on this the 28th day of April you have to appear
+at the Law Courts, as juryman, and, in consequence, can on no account
+accompany us and Kolosoff to the picture gallery, as, with your habitual
+flightiness, you promised yesterday; _a moins que vous ne soyez dispose
+a payer la cour d'assise les 300 roubles d'amende que vous vous refusez
+pour votre cheval,_ for not appearing in time. I remembered it last
+night after you were gone, so do not forget.
+
+                      Princess M. Korchagin.
+
+On the other side was a postscript.
+
+_Maman vous fait dire que votre convert vous attendra jusqu'a la nuit.
+Venez absolument a quelle heure que cela soit._
+
+                                    M. K.
+
+Nekhludoff made a grimace. This note was a continuation of that skilful
+manoeuvring which the Princess Korchagin had already practised for two
+months in order to bind him closer and closer with invisible threads.
+And yet, beside the usual hesitation of men past their youth to marry
+unless they are very much in love, Nekhludoff had very good reasons why,
+even if he did make up his mind to it, he could not propose at once. It
+was not that ten years previously he had betrayed and forsaken Maslova;
+he had quite forgotten that, and he would not have considered it a
+reason for not marrying. No! The reason was that he had a liaison with a
+married woman, and, though he considered it broken off, she did not.
+
+Nekhludoff was rather shy with women, and his very shyness awakened in
+this married woman, the unprincipled wife of the marechal de noblesse
+of a district where Nekhludoff was present at an election, the desire
+of vanquishing him. This woman drew him into an intimacy which entangled
+him more and more, while it daily became more distasteful to him. Having
+succumbed to the temptation, Nekhludoff felt guilty, and had not the
+courage to break the tie without her consent. And this was the reason he
+did not feel at liberty to propose to Korchagin even if he had wished to
+do so. Among the letters on the table was one from this woman's husband.
+Seeing his writing and the postmark, Nekhludoff flushed, and felt his
+energies awakening, as they always did when he was facing any kind of
+danger.
+
+But his excitement passed at once. The marechal do noblesse, of the
+district in which his largest estate lay, wrote only to let Nekhludoff
+know that there was to be a special meeting towards the end of May, and
+that Nekhludoff was to be sure and come to "_donner un coup d'epaule_,"
+at the important debates concerning the schools and the roads, as a
+strong opposition by the reactionary party was expected.
+
+The marechal was a liberal, and was quite engrossed in this fight, not
+even noticing the misfortune that had befallen him.
+
+Nekhludoff remembered the dreadful moments he had lived through; once
+when he thought that the husband had found him out and was going to
+challenge him, and he was making up his mind to fire into the air; also
+the terrible scene he had with her when she ran out into the park, and
+in her excitement tried to drown herself in the pond.
+
+"Well, I cannot go now, and can do nothing until I get a reply from
+her," thought Nekhludoff. A week ago he had written her a decisive
+letter, in which he acknowledged his guilt, and his readiness to atone
+for it; but at the same time he pronounced their relations to be at an
+end, for her own good, as he expressed it. To this letter he had as yet
+received no answer. This might prove a good sign, for if she did not
+agree to break off their relations, she would have written at once, or
+even come herself, as she had done before. Nekhludoff had heard that
+there was some officer who was paying her marked attention, and this
+tormented him by awakening jealousy, and at the same time encouraged him
+with the hope of escape from the deception that was oppressing him.
+
+The other letter was from his steward. The steward wrote to tell
+him that a visit to his estates was necessary in order to enter into
+possession, and also to decide about the further management of his
+lands; whether it was to continue in the same way as when his mother was
+alive, or whether, as he had represented to the late lamented princess,
+and now advised the young prince, they had not better increase their
+stock and farm all the land now rented by the peasants themselves. The
+steward wrote that this would be a far more profitable way of managing
+the property; at the same time, he apologised for not having forwarded
+the 3,000 roubles income due on the 1st. This money would be sent on by
+the next mail. The reason for the delay was that he could not get the
+money out of the peasants, who had grown so untrustworthy that he had
+to appeal to the authorities. This letter was partly disagreeable, and
+partly pleasant. It was pleasant to feel that he had power over so
+large a property, and yet disagreeable, because Nekhludoff had been an
+enthusiastic admirer of Henry George and Herbert Spencer. Being himself
+heir to a large property, he was especially struck by the position
+taken up by Spencer in Social Statics, that justice forbids private
+landholding, and with the straightforward resoluteness of his age, had
+not merely spoken to prove that land could not be looked upon as private
+property, and written essays on that subject at the university, but had
+acted up to his convictions, and, considering it wrong to hold landed
+property, had given the small piece of land he had inherited from his
+father to the peasants. Inheriting his mother's large estates, and thus
+becoming a landed proprietor, he had to choose one of two things: either
+to give up his property, as he had given up his father's land ten years
+before, or silently to confess that all his former ideas were mistaken
+and false.
+
+He could not choose the former because he had no means but the landed
+estates (he did not care to serve); moreover, he had formed luxurious
+habits which he could not easily give up. Besides, he had no longer the
+same inducements; his strong convictions, the resoluteness of youth, and
+the ambitious desire to do something unusual were gone. As to the second
+course, that of denying those clear and unanswerable proofs of the
+injustice of landholding, which he had drawn from Spencer's Social
+Statics, and the brilliant corroboration of which he had at a later
+period found in the works of Henry George, such a course was impossible
+to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MISSY.
+
+When Nekhludoff had finished his coffee, he went to his study to look
+at the summons, and find out what time he was to appear at the court,
+before writing his answer to the princess. Passing through his studio,
+where a few studies hung on the walls and, facing the easel, stood an
+unfinished picture, a feeling of inability to advance in art, a sense of
+his incapacity, came over him. He had often had this feeling, of late,
+and explained it by his too finely-developed aesthetic taste; still, the
+feeling was a very unpleasant one. Seven years before this he had given
+up military service, feeling sure that he had a talent for art, and had
+looked down with some disdain at all other activity from the height of
+his artistic standpoint. And now it turned out that he had no right
+to do so, and therefore everything that reminded him of all this was
+unpleasant. He looked at the luxurious fittings of the studio with a
+heavy heart, and it was in no cheerful mood that he entered his study,
+a large, lofty room fitted up with a view to comfort, convenience,
+and elegant appearance. He found the summons at once in a pigeon hole,
+labelled "immediate," of his large writing table. He had to appear at
+the court at 11 o'clock.
+
+Nekhludoff sat down to write a note in reply to the princess, thanking
+her for the invitation, and promising to try and come to dinner. Having
+written one note, he tore it up, as it seemed too intimate. He wrote
+another, but it was too cold; he feared it might give offence, so he
+tore it up, too. He pressed the button of an electric bell, and his
+servant, an elderly, morose-looking man, with whiskers and shaved chin
+and lip, wearing a grey cotton apron, entered at the door.
+
+"Send to fetch an isvostchik, please."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And tell the person who is waiting that I send thanks for the
+invitation, and shall try to come."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It is not very polite, but I can't write; no matter, I shall see her
+today," thought Nekhludoff, and went to get his overcoat.
+
+When he came out of the house, an isvostchik he knew, with india-rubber
+tires to his trap, was at the door waiting for him. "You had hardly gone
+away from Prince Korchagin's yesterday," he said, turning half round,
+"when I drove up, and the Swiss at the door says, 'just gone.'" The
+isvostchik knew that Nekhludoff visited at the Korchagins, and called
+there on the chance of being engaged by him.
+
+"Even the isvostchiks know of my relations with the Korchagins," thought
+Nekhludoff, and again the question whether he should not marry Princess
+Korchagin presented itself to him, and he could not decide it either
+way, any more than most of the questions that arose in his mind at this
+time.
+
+It was in favour of marriage in general, that besides the comforts
+of hearth and home, it made a moral life possible, and chiefly that a
+family would, so Nekhludoff thought, give an aim to his now empty life.
+
+Against marriage in general was the fear, common to bachelors past
+their first youth, of losing freedom, and an unconscious awe before this
+mysterious creature, a woman.
+
+In this particular case, in favour of marrying Missy (her name was Mary,
+but, as is usual among a certain set, a nickname had been given her)
+was that she came of good family, and differed in everything, manner
+of speaking, walking, laughing, from the common people, not by anything
+exceptional, but by her "good breeding"--he could find no other term
+for this quality, though he prized it very highly---and, besides, she
+thought more of him than of anybody else, therefore evidently understood
+him. This understanding of him, i.e., the recognition of his superior
+merits, was to Nekhludoff a proof of her good sense and correct
+judgment. Against marrying Missy in particular, was, that in all
+likelihood, a girl with even higher qualities could be found, that she
+was already 27, and that he was hardly her first love. This last idea
+was painful to him. His pride would not reconcile itself with the
+thought that she had loved some one else, even in the past. Of course,
+she could not have known that she should meet him, but the thought that
+she was capable of loving another offended him. So that he had as many
+reasons for marrying as against it; at any rate, they weighed equally
+with Nekhludoff, who laughed at himself, and called himself the ass of
+the fable, remaining like that animal undecided which haycock to turn
+to.
+
+"At any rate, before I get an answer from Mary Vasilievna (the
+marechal's wife), and finish completely with her, I can do nothing," he
+said to himself. And the conviction that he might, and was even obliged,
+to delay his decision, was comforting. "Well, I shall consider all that
+later on," he said to himself, as the trap drove silently along the
+asphalt pavement up to the doors of the Court.
+
+"Now I must fulfil my public duties conscientiously, as I am in the
+habit of always doing, and as I consider it right to do. Besides, they
+are often interesting." And he entered the hall of the Law Courts, past
+the doorkeeper.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE JURYMEN.
+
+The corridors of the Court were already full of activity. The attendants
+hurried, out of breath, dragging their feet along the ground without
+lifting them, backwards and forwards, with all sorts of messages and
+papers. Ushers, advocates, and law officers passed hither and thither.
+Plaintiffs, and those of the accused who were not guarded, wandered
+sadly along the walls or sat waiting.
+
+"Where is the Law Court?" Nekhludoff asked of an attendant.
+
+"Which? There is the Civil Court and the Criminal Court."
+
+"I am on the jury."
+
+"The Criminal Court you should have said. Here to the right, then to the
+left--the second door."
+
+Nekhludoff followed the direction.
+
+Meanwhile some of the Criminal Court jurymen who were late had hurriedly
+passed into a separate room. At the door mentioned two men stood
+waiting.
+
+One, a tall, fat merchant, a kind-hearted fellow, had evidently partaken
+of some refreshments and a glass of something, and was in most pleasant
+spirits. The other was a shopman of Jewish extraction. They were talking
+about the price of wool when Nekhludoff came up and asked them if this
+was the jurymen's room.
+
+"Yes, my dear sir, this is it. One of us? On the jury, are you?" asked
+the merchant, with a merry wink.
+
+"Ah, well, we shall have a go at the work together," he continued, after
+Nekhludoff had answered in the affirmative. "My name is Baklasheff,
+merchant of the Second Guild," he said, putting out his broad, soft,
+flexible hand.
+
+"With whom have I the honour?"
+
+Nekhludoff gave his name and passed into the jurymen's room.
+
+Inside the room were about ten persons of all sorts. They had come but
+a short while ago, and some were sitting, others walking up and down,
+looking at each other, and making each other's acquaintance. There was a
+retired colonel in uniform; some were in frock coats, others in morning
+coats, and only one wore a peasant's dress.
+
+Their faces all had a certain look of satisfaction at the prospect of
+fulfilling a public duty, although many of them had had to leave their
+businesses, and most were complaining of it.
+
+The jurymen talked among themselves about the weather, the early spring,
+and the business before them, some having been introduced, others just
+guessing who was who. Those who were not acquainted with Nekhludoff made
+haste to get introduced, evidently looking upon this as an honour, and
+he taking it as his due, as he always did when among strangers. Had he
+been asked why he considered himself above the majority of people, he
+could not have given an answer; the life he had been living of late was
+not particularly meritorious. The fact of his speaking English, French,
+and German with a good accent, and of his wearing the best linen,
+clothes, ties, and studs, bought from the most expensive dealers in
+these goods, he quite knew would not serve as a reason for claiming
+superiority. At the same time he did claim superiority, and accepted the
+respect paid him as his due, and was hurt if he did not get it. In the
+jurymen's room his feelings were hurt by disrespectful treatment. Among
+the jury there happened to be a man whom he knew, a former teacher of
+his sister's children, Peter Gerasimovitch. Nekhludoff never knew his
+surname, and even bragged a bit about this. This man was now a master
+at a public school. Nekhludoff could not stand his familiarity, his
+self-satisfied laughter, his vulgarity, in short.
+
+"Ah ha! You're also trapped." These were the words, accompanied with
+boisterous laughter, with which Peter Gerasimovitch greeted Nekhludoff.
+"Have you not managed to get out of it?"
+
+"I never meant to get out of it," replied Nekhludoff, gloomily, and in a
+tone of severity.
+
+"Well, I call this being public spirited. But just wait until you get
+hungry or sleepy; you'll sing to another tune then."
+
+"This son of a priest will be saying 'thou' [in Russian, as in many
+other languages, 'thou' is used generally among people very familiar
+with each other, or by superiors to inferiors] to me next," thought
+Nekhludoff, and walked away, with such a look of sadness on his face,
+as might have been natural if he had just heard of the death of all
+his relations. He came up to a group that had formed itself round a
+clean-shaven, tall, dignified man, who was recounting something with
+great animation. This man was talking about the trial going on in the
+Civil Court as of a case well known to himself, mentioning the judges
+and a celebrated advocate by name. He was saying that it seemed
+wonderful how the celebrated advocate had managed to give such a clever
+turn to the affair that an old lady, though she had the right on her
+side, would have to pay a large sum to her opponent. "The advocate is a
+genius," he said.
+
+The listeners heard it all with respectful attention, and several of
+them tried to put in a word, but the man interrupted them, as if he
+alone knew all about it.
+
+Though Nekhludoff had arrived late, he had to wait a long time. One
+of the members of the Court had not yet come, and everybody was kept
+waiting.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE JUDGES.
+
+The president, who had to take the chair, had arrived early. The
+president was a tall, stout man, with long grey whiskers. Though
+married, he led a very loose life, and his wife did the same, so they
+did not stand in each other's way. This morning he had received a note
+from a Swiss girl, who had formerly been a governess in his house, and
+who was now on her way from South Russia to St. Petersburg. She wrote
+that she would wait for him between five and six p.m. in the Hotel
+Italia. This made him wish to begin and get through the sitting as soon
+as possible, so as to have time to call before six p.m. on the little
+red-haired Clara Vasilievna, with whom he had begun a romance in the
+country last summer. He went into a private room, latched the door, took
+a pair of dumb-bells out of a cupboard, moved his arms 20 times upwards,
+downwards, forwards, and sideways, then holding the dumb-bells above his
+head, lightly bent his knees three times.
+
+"Nothing keeps one going like a cold bath and exercise," he said,
+feeling the biceps of his right arm with his left hand, on the third
+finger of which he wore a gold ring. He had still to do the moulinee
+movement (for he always went through those two exercises before a long
+sitting), when there was a pull at the door. The president quickly put
+away the dumb-bells and opened the door, saying, "I beg your pardon."
+
+One of the members, a high-shouldered, discontented-looking man, with
+gold spectacles, came into the room. "Matthew Nikitich has again not
+come," he said, in a dissatisfied tone.
+
+"Not yet?" said the president, putting on his uniform. "He is always
+late."
+
+"It is extraordinary. He ought to be ashamed of himself," said the
+member, angrily, and taking out a cigarette.
+
+This member, a very precise man, had had an unpleasant encounter with
+his wife in the morning, because she had spent her allowance before the
+end of the month, and had asked him to give her some money in advance,
+but he would not give way to her, and they had a quarrel. The wife told
+him that if he were going to behave so, he need not expect any dinner;
+there would be no dinner for him at home. At this point he left, fearing
+that she might carry out her threat, for anything might be expected from
+her. "This comes of living a good, moral life," he thought, looking at
+the beaming, healthy, cheerful, and kindly president, who, with elbows
+far apart, was smoothing his thick grey whiskers with his fine white
+hands over the embroidered collar of his uniform. "He is always
+contented and merry while I am suffering."
+
+The secretary came in and brought some document.
+
+"Thanks, very much," said the president, lighting a cigarette. "Which
+case shall we take first, then?"
+
+"The poisoning case, I should say," answered the secretary, with
+indifference.
+
+"All right; the poisoning case let it be," said the president, thinking
+that he could get this case over by four o'clock, and then go away. "And
+Matthew Nikitich; has he come?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"And Breve?"
+
+"He is here," replied the secretary.
+
+"Then if you see him, please tell him that we begin with the poisoning
+case." Breve was the public prosecutor, who was to read the indictment
+in this case.
+
+In the corridor the secretary met Breve, who, with up lifted shoulders,
+a portfolio under one arm, the other swinging with the palm turned to
+the front, was hurrying along the corridor, clattering with his heels.
+
+"Michael Petrovitch wants to know if you are ready?" the secretary
+asked.
+
+"Of course; I am always ready," said the public prosecutor. "What are we
+taking first?"
+
+"The poisoning case."
+
+"That's quite right," said the public prosecutor, but did not think it
+at all right. He had spent the night in a hotel playing cards with a
+friend who was giving a farewell party. Up to five in the morning they
+played and drank, so he had no time to look at this poisoning case,
+and meant to run it through now. The secretary, happening to know this,
+advised the president to begin with the poisoning case. The secretary
+was a Liberal, even a Radical, in opinion.
+
+Breve was a Conservative; the secretary disliked him, and envied him his
+position.
+
+"Well, and how about the Skoptzy?" [a religious sect] asked the
+secretary.
+
+"I have already said that I cannot do it without witnesses, and so I
+shall say to the Court."
+
+"Dear me, what does it matter?"
+
+"I cannot do it," said Breve; and, waving his arm, he ran into his
+private room.
+
+He was putting off the case of the Skoptzy on account of the absence
+of a very unimportant witness, his real reason being that if they were
+tried by an educated jury they might possibly be acquitted.
+
+By an agreement with the president this case was to be tried in the
+coming session at a provincial town, where there would be more peasants,
+and, therefore, more chances of conviction.
+
+The movement in the corridor increased. The people crowded most at
+the doors of the Civil Court, in which the case that the dignified man
+talked about was being heard.
+
+An interval in the proceeding occurred, and the old woman came out of
+the court, whose property that genius of an advocate had found means of
+getting for his client, a person versed in law who had no right to it
+whatever. The judges knew all about the case, and the advocate and his
+client knew it better still, but the move they had invented was such
+that it was impossible not to take the old woman's property and not to
+hand it over to the person versed in law.
+
+The old woman was stout, well dressed, and had enormous flowers on her
+bonnet; she stopped as she came out of the door, and spreading out her
+short fat arms and turning to her advocate, she kept repeating. "What
+does it all mean? just fancy!"
+
+The advocate was looking at the flowers in her bonnet, and evidently not
+listening to her, but considering some question or other.
+
+Next to the old woman, out of the door of the Civil Court, his broad,
+starched shirt front glistening from under his low-cut waistcoat, with
+a self-satisfied look on his face, came the celebrated advocate who had
+managed to arrange matters so that the old woman lost all she had, and
+the person versed in the law received more than 100,000 roubles. The
+advocate passed close to the old woman, and, feeling all eyes directed
+towards him, his whole bearing seemed to say: "No expressions of
+deference are required."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE OFFICIALS OF THE COURT.
+
+At last Matthew Nikitich also arrived, and the usher, a thin man, with a
+long neck and a kind of sideways walk, his nether lip protruding to one
+side, which made him resemble a turkey, came into the jurymen's room.
+
+This usher was an honest man, and had a university education, but could
+not keep a place for any length of time, as he was subject to fits of
+drunkenness. Three months before a certain countess, who patronised his
+wife, had found him this place, and he was very pleased to have kept it
+so long.
+
+"Well, sirs, is everybody here?" he asked, putting his pince-nez on his
+nose, and looking round.
+
+"Everybody, I think," said the jolly merchant.
+
+"All right; we'll soon see." And, taking a list from his pocket, he
+began calling out the names, looking at the men, sometimes through and
+sometimes over his pince-nez.
+
+"Councillor of State, [grades such as this are common in Russia, and
+mean very little] J. M. Nikiforoff!"
+
+"I am he," said the dignified-looking man, well versed in the habits of
+the law court.
+
+"Ivan Semionovitch Ivanoff, retired colonel!"
+
+"Here!" replied a thin man, in the uniform of a retired officer.
+
+"Merchant of the Second Guild, Peter Baklasheff!"
+
+"Here we are, ready!" said the good-humoured merchant, with a broad
+smile.
+
+"Lieutenant of the Guards, Prince Dmitri Nekhludoff!"
+
+"I am he," answered Nekhludoff.
+
+The usher bowed to him, looking over his pince-nez, politely and
+pleasantly, as if wishing to distinguish him from the others.
+
+"Captain Youri Demitrievitch-Dantchenko, merchant; Grigori Euphimitch
+Kouleshoff," etc. All but two were present.
+
+"Now please to come to the court, gentlemen," said the usher, pointing
+to the door, with an amiable wave of his hand.
+
+All moved towards the door, pausing to let each other pass. Then they
+went through the corridor into the court.
+
+The court was a large, long room. At one end there was a raised
+platform, with three steps leading up to it, on which stood a table,
+covered with a green cloth trimmed with a fringe of a darker shade. At
+the table were placed three arm-chairs, with high-carved oak backs; on
+the wall behind them hung a full-length, brightly-coloured portrait of
+the Emperor in uniform and ribbon, with one foot in advance, and holding
+a sword. In the right corner hung a case, with an image of Christ
+crowned with thorns, and beneath it stood a lectern, and on the same
+side the prosecuting attorney's desk. On the left, opposite the desk,
+was the secretary's table, and in front of it, nearer the public, an
+oak grating, with the prisoners' bench, as yet unoccupied, behind
+it. Besides all this, there were on the right side of the platform
+high-backed ashwood chairs for the jury, and on the floor below tables
+for the advocates. All this was in the front part of the court, divided
+from the back by a grating.
+
+The back was all taken up by seats in tiers. Sitting on the front seats
+were four women, either servant or factory girls, and two working men,
+evidently overawed by the grandeur of the room, and not venturing to
+speak above a whisper.
+
+Soon after the jury had come in the usher entered, with his sideward
+gait, and stepping to the front, called out in a loud voice, as if he
+meant to frighten those present, "The Court is coming!" Every one got
+up as the members stepped on to the platform. Among them the president,
+with his muscles and fine whiskers. Next came the gloomy member of the
+Court, who was now more gloomy than ever, having met his brother-in-law,
+who informed him that he had just called in to see his sister (the
+member's wife), and that she had told him that there would be no dinner
+there.
+
+"So that, evidently, we shall have to call in at a cook shop," the
+brother-in-law added, laughing.
+
+"It is not at all funny," said the gloomy member, and became gloomier
+still.
+
+Then at last came the third member of the Court, the same Matthew
+Nikitich, who was always late. He was a bearded man, with large, round,
+kindly eyes. He was suffering from a catarrh of the stomach, and,
+according to his doctor's advice, he had begun trying a new treatment,
+and this had kept him at home longer than usual. Now, as he was
+ascending the platform, he had a pensive air. He was in the habit of
+making guesses in answer to all sorts of self-put questions by different
+curious means. Just now he had asked whether the new treatment would be
+beneficial, and had decided that it would cure his catarrh if the number
+of steps from the door to his chair would divide by three. He made 26
+steps, but managed to get in a 27th just by his chair.
+
+The figures of the president and the members in their uniforms, with
+gold-embroidered collars, looked very imposing. They seemed to feel this
+themselves, and, as if overpowered by their own grandeur, hurriedly sat
+down on the high backed chairs behind the table with the green cloth,
+on which were a triangular article with an eagle at the top, two glass
+vases--something like those in which sweetmeats are kept in refreshment
+rooms--an inkstand, pens, clean paper, and good, newly-cut pencils of
+different kinds.
+
+The public prosecutor came in with the judges. With his portfolio under
+one arm, and swinging the other, he hurriedly walked to his seat near
+the window, and was instantly absorbed in reading and looking through
+the papers, not wasting a single moment, in hope of being ready when the
+business commenced. He had been public prosecutor but a short time, and
+had only prosecuted four times before this. He was very ambitious,
+and had firmly made up his mind to get on, and therefore thought it
+necessary to get a conviction whenever he prosecuted. He knew the chief
+facts of the poisoning case, and had already formed a plan of action. He
+only wanted to copy out a few points which he required.
+
+The secretary sat on the opposite side of the platform, and, having
+got ready all the papers he might want, was looking through an article,
+prohibited by the censor, which he had procured and read the day before.
+He was anxious to have a talk about this article with the bearded
+member, who shared his views, but wanted to look through it once more
+before doing so.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SWEARING IN THE JURY.
+
+The president, having looked through some papers and put a few questions
+to the usher and the secretary, gave the order for the prisoners to be
+brought in.
+
+The door behind the grating was instantly opened, and two gendarmes,
+with caps on their heads, and holding naked swords in their hands,
+came in, followed by the prisoners, a red-haired, freckled man, and two
+women. The man wore a prison cloak, which was too long and too wide for
+him. He stuck out his thumbs, and held his arms close to his sides, thus
+keeping the sleeves, which were also too long, from slipping over his
+hands. Without looking at the judges he gazed steadfastly at the form,
+and passing to the other side of it, he sat down carefully at the very
+edge, leaving plenty of room for the others. He fixed his eyes on the
+president, and began moving the muscles of his cheeks, as if whispering
+something. The woman who came next was also dressed in a prison cloak,
+and had a prison kerchief round her head. She had a sallow complexion,
+no eyebrows or lashes, and very red eyes. This woman appeared perfectly
+calm. Having caught her cloak against something, she detached it
+carefully, without any haste, and sat down.
+
+The third prisoner was Maslova.
+
+As soon as she appeared, the eyes of all the men in the court turned
+her way, and remained fixed on her white face, her sparklingly-brilliant
+black eyes and the swelling bosom under the prison cloak. Even the
+gendarme whom she passed on her way to her seat looked at her fixedly
+till she sat down, and then, as if feeling guilty, hurriedly turned
+away, shook himself, and began staring at the window in front of him.
+
+The president paused until the prisoners had taken their seats, and when
+Maslova was seated, turned to the secretary.
+
+Then the usual procedure commenced; the counting of the jury, remarks
+about those who had not come, the fixing of the fines to be exacted
+from them, the decisions concerning those who claimed exemption, the
+appointing of reserve jurymen.
+
+Having folded up some bits of paper and put them in one of the glass
+vases, the president turned up the gold-embroidered cuffs of his uniform
+a little way, and began drawing the lots, one by one, and opening them.
+Nekhludoff was among the jurymen thus drawn. Then, having let down his
+sleeves, the president requested the priest to swear in the jury.
+
+The old priest, with his puffy, red face, his brown gown, and his gold
+cross and little order, laboriously moving his stiff legs, came up to
+the lectern beneath the icon.
+
+The jurymen got up, and crowded towards the lectern.
+
+"Come up, please," said the priest, pulling at the cross on his breast
+with his plump hand, and waiting till all the jury had drawn near. When
+they had all come up the steps of the platform, the priest passed his
+bald, grey head sideways through the greasy opening of the stole, and,
+having rearranged his thin hair, he again turned to the jury. "Now,
+raise your right arms in this way, and put your fingers together, thus,"
+he said, with his tremulous old voice, lifting his fat, dimpled hand,
+and putting the thumb and two first fingers together, as if taking a
+pinch of something. "Now, repeat after me, 'I promise and swear, by the
+Almighty God, by His holy gospels, and by the life-giving cross of
+our Lord, that in this work which,'" he said, pausing between each
+sentence--"don't let your arm down; hold it like this," he remarked to a
+young man who had lowered his arm--"'that in this work which . . . '"
+
+The dignified man with the whiskers, the colonel, the merchant, and
+several more held their arms and fingers as the priest required of
+them, very high, very exactly, as if they liked doing it; others did it
+unwillingly and carelessly. Some repeated the words too loudly, and with
+a defiant tone, as if they meant to say, "In spite of all, I will and
+shall speak." Others whispered very low, and not fast enough, and
+then, as if frightened, hurried to catch up the priest. Some kept their
+fingers tightly together, as if fearing to drop the pinch of invisible
+something they held; others kept separating and folding theirs. Every
+one save the old priest felt awkward, but he was sure he was fulfilling
+a very useful and important duty.
+
+After the swearing in, the president requested the jury to choose
+a foreman, and the jury, thronging to the door, passed out into
+the debating-room, where almost all of them at once began to smoke
+cigarettes. Some one proposed the dignified man as foreman, and he was
+unanimously accepted. Then the jurymen put out their cigarettes and
+threw them away and returned to the court. The dignified man informed
+the president that he was chosen foreman, and all sat down again on the
+high-backed chairs.
+
+Everything went smoothly, quickly, and not without a certain solemnity.
+And this exactitude, order, and solemnity evidently pleased those
+who took part in it: it strengthened the impression that they were
+fulfilling a serious and valuable public duty. Nekhludoff, too, felt
+this.
+
+As soon as the jurymen were seated, the president made a speech on
+their rights, obligations, and responsibilities. While speaking he kept
+changing his position; now leaning on his right, now on his left hand,
+now against the back, then on the arms of his chair, now putting the
+papers straight, now handling his pencil and paper-knife.
+
+According to his words, they had the right of interrogating the
+prisoners through the president, to use paper and pencils, and to
+examine the articles put in as evidence. Their duty was to judge not
+falsely, but justly. Their responsibility meant that if the secrecy of
+their discussion were violated, or communications were established with
+outsiders, they would be liable to punishment. Every one listened with
+an expression of respectful attention. The merchant, diffusing a smell
+of brandy around him, and restraining loud hiccups, approvingly nodded
+his head at every sentence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE PRISONERS QUESTIONED.
+
+When he had finished his speech, the president turned to the male
+prisoner.
+
+"Simeon Kartinkin, rise."
+
+Simeon jumped up, his lips continuing to move nervously and inaudibly.
+
+"Your name?"
+
+"Simon Petrov Kartinkin," he said, rapidly, with a cracked voice, having
+evidently prepared the answer.
+
+"What class do you belong to?"
+
+"Peasant."
+
+"What government, district, and parish?"
+
+"Toula Government, Krapivinskia district, Koupianovski parish, the
+village Borki."
+
+"Your age?"
+
+"Thirty-three; born in the year one thousand eight--"
+
+"What religion?"
+
+"Of the Russian religion, orthodox."
+
+"Married?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir."
+
+"Your occupation?"
+
+"I had a place in the Hotel Mauritania."
+
+"Have you ever been tried before?"
+
+"I never got tried before, because, as we used to live formerly--"
+
+"So you never were tried before?"
+
+"God forbid, never."
+
+"Have you received a copy of the indictment?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"Sit down."
+
+"Euphemia Ivanovna Botchkova," said the president, turning to the next
+prisoner.
+
+But Simon continued standing in front of Botchkova.
+
+"Kartinkin, sit down!" Kartinkin continued standing.
+
+"Kartinkin, sit down!" But Kartinkin sat down only when the usher, with
+his head on one side, and with preternaturally wide-open eyes, ran up,
+and said, in a tragic whisper, "Sit down, sit down!"
+
+Kartinkin sat down as hurriedly as he had risen, wrapping his cloak
+round him, and again began moving his lips silently.
+
+"Your name?" asked the president, with a weary sigh at being obliged to
+repeat the same questions, without looking at the prisoner, but glancing
+over a paper that lay before him. The president was so used to his task
+that, in order to get quicker through it all, he did two things at a
+time.
+
+Botchkova was forty-three years old, and came from the town of Kalomna.
+She, too, had been in service at the Hotel Mauritania.
+
+"I have never been tried before, and have received a copy of the
+indictment." She gave her answers boldly, in a tone of voice as if she
+meant to add to each answer, "And I don't care who knows it, and I won't
+stand any nonsense."
+
+She did not wait to be told, but sat down as soon as she had replied to
+the last question.
+
+"Your name?" turning abruptly to the third prisoner. "You will have to
+rise," he added, softly and gently, seeing that Maslova kept her seat.
+
+Maslova got up and stood, with her chest expanded, looking at the
+president with that peculiar expression of readiness in her smiling
+black eyes.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Lubov," she said.
+
+Nekhludoff had put on his pince-nez, looking at the prisoners while they
+were being questioned.
+
+"No, it is impossible," he thought, not taking his eyes off the
+prisoner. "Lubov! How can it be?" he thought to himself, after hearing
+her answer. The president was going to continue his questions, but
+the member with the spectacles interrupted him, angrily whispering
+something. The president nodded, and turned again to the prisoner.
+
+"How is this," he said, "you are not put down here as Lubov?"
+
+The prisoner remained silent.
+
+"I want your real name."
+
+"What is your baptismal name?" asked the angry member.
+
+"Formerly I used to be called Katerina."
+
+"No, it cannot be," said Nekhludoff to himself; and yet he was now
+certain that this was she, that same girl, half ward, half servant to
+his aunts; that Katusha, with whom he had once been in love, really
+in love, but whom he had betrayed and then abandoned, and never again
+brought to mind, for the memory would have been too painful, would
+have convicted him too clearly, proving that he who was so proud of his
+integrity had treated this woman in a revolting, scandalous way.
+
+Yes, this was she. He now clearly saw in her face that strange,
+indescribable individuality which distinguishes every face from all
+others; something peculiar, all its own, not to be found anywhere else.
+In spite of the unhealthy pallor and the fulness of the face, it was
+there, this sweet, peculiar individuality; on those lips, in the slight
+squint of her eyes, in the voice, particularly in the naive smile, and
+in the expression of readiness on the face and figure.
+
+"You should have said so," remarked the president, again in a gentle
+tone. "Your patronymic?"
+
+"I am illegitimate."
+
+"Well, were you not called by your godfather's name?"
+
+"Yes, Mikhaelovna."
+
+"And what is it she can be guilty of?" continued Nekhludoff, in his
+mind, unable to breathe freely.
+
+"Your family name--your surname, I mean?" the president went on.
+
+"They used to call me by my mother's surname, Maslova."
+
+"What class?"
+
+"Meschanka." [the lowest town class or grade]
+
+"Religion--orthodox?"
+
+"Orthodox."
+
+"Occupation. What was your occupation?"
+
+Maslova remained silent.
+
+"What was your employment?"
+
+"You know yourself," she said, and smiled. Then, casting a hurried look
+round the room, again turned her eyes on the president.
+
+There was something so unusual in the expression of her face, so
+terrible and piteous in the meaning of the words she had uttered, in
+this smile, and in the furtive glance she had cast round the room, that
+the president was abashed, and for a few minutes silence reigned in the
+court. The silence was broken by some one among the public laughing,
+then somebody said "Ssh," and the president looked up and continued:
+
+"Have you ever been tried before?"
+
+"Never," answered Maslova, softly, and sighed.
+
+"Have you received a copy of the indictment?"
+
+"I have," she answered.
+
+"Sit down."
+
+The prisoner leant back to pick up her skirt in the way a fine lady
+picks up her train, and sat down, folding her small white hands in the
+sleeves of her cloak, her eyes fixed on the president. Her face was calm
+again.
+
+The witnesses were called, and some sent away; the doctor who was to act
+as expert was chosen and called into the court.
+
+Then the secretary got up and began reading the indictment. He read
+distinctly, though he pronounced the "I" and "r" alike, with a loud
+voice, but so quickly that the words ran into one another and formed one
+uninterrupted, dreary drone.
+
+The judges bent now on one, now on the other arm of their chairs, then
+on the table, then back again, shut and opened their eyes, and whispered
+to each other. One of the gendarmes several times repressed a yawn.
+
+The prisoner Kartinkin never stopped moving his cheeks. Botchkova sat
+quite still and straight, only now and then scratching her head under
+the kerchief.
+
+Maslova sat immovable, gazing at the reader; only now and then she gave
+a slight start, as if wishing to reply, blushed, sighed heavily, and
+changed the position of her hands, looked round, and again fixed her
+eyes on the reader.
+
+Nekhludoff sat in the front row on his high-backed chair, without
+removing his pince-nez, and looked at Maslova, while a complicated and
+fierce struggle was going on in his soul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE INDICTMENT.
+
+The indictment ran as follows: On the 17th of January, 18--, in the
+lodging-house Mauritania, occurred the sudden death of the Second Guild
+merchant, Therapont Emilianovich Smelkoff, of Kourgan.
+
+The local police doctor of the fourth district certified that death was
+due to rupture of the heart, owing to the excessive use of alcoholic
+liquids. The body of the said Smelkoff was interred. After several days
+had elapsed, the merchant Timokhin, a fellow-townsman and companion
+of the said Smelkoff, returned from St. Petersburg, and hearing the
+circumstances that accompanied the death of the latter, notified his
+suspicions that the death was caused by poison, given with intent to
+rob the said Smelkoff of his money. This suspicion was corroborated on
+inquiry, which proved:
+
+1. That shortly before his death the said Smelkoff had received the sum
+of 3,800 roubles from the bank. When an inventory of the property of the
+deceased was made, only 312 roubles and 16 copecks were found.
+
+2. The whole day and night preceding his death the said Smelkoff spent
+with Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) at her home and in the lodging-house
+Mauritania, which she also visited at the said Smelkoff's request during
+his absence, to get some money, which she took out of his portmanteau in
+the presence of the servants of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia
+Botchkova and Simeon Kartinkin, with a key given her by the said
+Smelkoff. In the portmanteau opened by the said Maslova, the said
+Botchkova and Kartinkin saw packets of 100-rouble bank-notes.
+
+3. On the said Smelkoff's return to the lodging-house Mauritania,
+together with Lubka, the latter, in accordance with the attendant
+Kartinkin's advice, gave the said Smelkoff some white powder given to
+her by the said Kartinkin, dissolved in brandy.
+
+4. The next morning the said Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) sold to her
+mistress, the witness Kitaeva, a brothel-keeper, a diamond ring given to
+her, as she alleged, by the said Smelkoff.
+
+5. The housemaid of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia Botchkova,
+placed to her account in the local Commercial Bank 1,800 roubles. The
+postmortem examination of the body of the said Smelkoff and the chemical
+analysis of his intestines proved beyond doubt the presence of poison
+in the organism, so that there is reason to believe that the said
+Smelkoff's death was caused by poisoning.
+
+When cross-examined, the accused, Maslova, Botchkova, and Kartinkin,
+pleaded not guilty, deposing--Maslova, that she had really been sent by
+Smelkoff from the brothel, where she "works," as she expresses it, to
+the lodging-house Mauritania to get the merchant some money, and that,
+having unlocked the portmanteau with a key given her by the merchant,
+she took out 40 roubles, as she was told to do, and that she had taken
+nothing more; that Botchkova and Kartinkin, in whose presence she
+unlocked and locked the portmanteau, could testify to the truth of the
+statement.
+
+She gave this further evidence--that when she came to the lodging-house
+for the second time she did, at the instigation of Simeon Kartinkin,
+give Smelkoff some kind of powder, which she thought was a narcotic,
+in a glass of brandy, hoping he would fall asleep and that she would be
+able to get away from him; and that Smelkoff, having beaten her, himself
+gave her the ring when she cried and threatened to go away.
+
+The accused, Euphemia Botchkova, stated that she knew nothing about the
+missing money, that she had not even gone into Smelkoff's room, but
+that Lubka had been busy there all by herself; that if anything had
+been stolen, it must have been done by Lubka when she came with the
+merchant's key to get his money.
+
+At this point Maslova gave a start, opened her mouth, and looked at
+Botchkova. "When," continued the secretary, "the receipt for 1,800
+roubles from the bank was shown to Botchkova, and she was asked where
+she had obtained the money, she said that it was her own earnings for
+12 years, and those of Simeon, whom she was going to marry. The accused
+Simeon Kartinkin, when first examined, confessed that he and Botchkova,
+at the instigation of Maslova, who had come with the key from the
+brothel, had stolen the money and divided it equally among themselves
+and Maslova." Here Maslova again started, half-rose from her seat, and,
+blushing scarlet, began to say something, but was stopped by the usher.
+"At last," the secretary continued, reading, "Kartinkin confessed also
+that he had supplied the powders in order to get Smelkoff to sleep. When
+examined the second time he denied having had anything to do with the
+stealing of the money or giving Maslova the powders, accusing her of
+having done it alone."
+
+Concerning the money placed in the bank by Botchkova, he said the same
+as she, that is, that the money was given to them both by the lodgers in
+tips during 12 years' service.
+
+The indictment concluded as follows:
+
+In consequence of the foregoing, the peasant of the village Borki,
+Simeon Kartinkin, 33 years of age, the meschanka Euphemia Botchkova, 43
+years of age, and the meschanka Katerina Maslova, 27 years of age, are
+accused of having on the 17th day of January, 188--, jointly stolen from
+the said merchant, Smelkoff, a ring and money, to the value of 2,500
+roubles, and of having given the said merchant, Smelkoff, poison to
+drink, with intent of depriving him of life, and thereby causing his
+death. This crime is provided for in clause 1,455 of the Penal Code,
+paragraphs 4 and 5.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE TRIAL--MASLOVA CROSS-EXAMINED.
+
+When the reading of the indictment was over, the president, after having
+consulted the members, turned to Kartinkin, with an expression that
+plainly said: Now we shall find out the whole truth down to the minutest
+detail.
+
+"Peasant Simeon Kartinkin," he said, stooping to the left.
+
+Simeon Kartinkin got up, stretched his arms down his sides, and leaning
+forward with his whole body, continued moving his cheeks inaudibly.
+
+"You are accused of having on the 17th January, 188--, together with
+Euphemia Botchkova and Katerina Maslova, stolen money from a portmanteau
+belonging to the merchant Smelkoff, and then, having procured some
+arsenic, persuaded Katerina Maslova to give it to the merchant Smelkoff
+in a glass of brandy, which was the cause of Smelkoff's death. Do you
+plead guilty?" said the president, stooping to the right.
+
+"Not nohow, because our business is to attend on the lodgers, and--"
+
+"You'll tell us that afterwards. Do you plead guilty?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir. I only,--"
+
+"You'll tell us that afterwards. Do you plead guilty?" quietly and
+firmly asked the president.
+
+"Can't do such a thing, because that--"
+
+The usher again rushed up to Simeon Kartinkin, and stopped him in a
+tragic whisper.
+
+The president moved the hand with which he held the paper and placed the
+elbow in a different position with an air that said: "This is finished,"
+and turned to Euphemia Botchkova.
+
+"Euphemia Botchkova, you are accused of having, on the 17th of January,
+188-, in the lodging-house Mauritania, together with Simeon Kartinkin
+and Katerina Maslova, stolen some money and a ring out of the merchant
+Smelkoff's portmanteau, and having shared the money among yourselves,
+given poison to the merchant Smelkoff, thereby causing his death. Do you
+plead guilty?"
+
+"I am not guilty of anything," boldly and firmly replied the prisoner.
+"I never went near the room, but when this baggage went in she did the
+whole business."
+
+"You will say all this afterwards," the president again said, quietly
+and firmly. "So you do not plead guilty?"
+
+"I did not take the money nor give the drink, nor go into the room. Had
+I gone in I should have kicked her out."
+
+"So you do not plead guilty?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Katerina Maslova," the president began, turning to the third prisoner,
+"you are accused of having come from the brothel with the key of the
+merchant Smelkoff's portmanteau, money, and a ring." He said all this
+like a lesson learned by heart, leaning towards the member on his left,
+who was whispering into his ear that a bottle mentioned in the list
+of the material evidence was missing. "Of having stolen out of the
+portmanteau money and a ring," he repeated, "and shared it. Then,
+returning to the lodging house Mauritania with Smelkoff, of giving
+him poison in his drink, and thereby causing his death. Do you plead
+guilty?"
+
+"I am not guilty of anything," she began rapidly. "As I said before
+I say again, I did not take it--I did not take it; I did not take
+anything, and the ring he gave me himself."
+
+"You do not plead guilty of having stolen 2,500 roubles?" asked the
+president.
+
+"I've said I took nothing but the 40 roubles."
+
+"Well, and do you plead guilty of having given the merchant Smelkoff a
+powder in his drink?"
+
+"Yes, that I did. Only I believed what they told me, that they were
+sleeping powders, and that no harm could come of them. I never thought,
+and never wished. . . God is my witness; I say, I never meant this," she
+said.
+
+"So you do not plead guilty of having stolen the money and the ring from
+the merchant Smelkoff, but confess that you gave him the powder?" said
+the president.
+
+"Well, yes, I do confess this, but I thought they were sleeping powders.
+I only gave them to make him sleep; I never meant and never thought of
+worse."
+
+"Very well," said the president, evidently satisfied with the results
+gained. "Now tell us how it all happened," and he leaned back in his
+chair and put his folded hands on the table. "Tell us all about it. A
+free and full confession will be to your advantage."
+
+Maslova continued to look at the president in silence, and blushing.
+
+"Tell us how it happened."
+
+"How it happened?" Maslova suddenly began, speaking quickly. "I came to
+the lodging-house, and was shown into the room. He was there, already
+very drunk." She pronounced the word _he_ with a look of horror in her
+wide-open eyes. "I wished to go away, but he would not let me." She
+stopped, as if having lost the thread, or remembered some thing else.
+
+"Well, and then?"
+
+"Well, what then? I remained a bit, and went home again."
+
+At this moment the public prosecutor raised himself a little, leaning on
+one elbow in an awkward manner.
+
+"You would like to put a question?" said the president, and having
+received an answer in the affirmative, he made a gesture inviting the
+public prosecutor to speak.
+
+"I want to ask, was the prisoner previously acquainted with Simeon
+Kartinkin?" said the public prosecutor, without looking at Maslova, and,
+having put the question, he compressed his lips and frowned.
+
+The president repeated the question. Maslova stared at the public
+prosecutor, with a frightened look.
+
+"With Simeon? Yes," she said.
+
+"I should like to know what the prisoner's acquaintance with Kartinkin
+consisted in. Did they meet often?"
+
+"Consisted in? . . . He invited me for the lodgers; it was not an
+acquaintance at all," answered Maslova, anxiously moving her eyes from
+the president to the public prosecutor and back to the president.
+
+"I should like to know why Kartinkin invited only Maslova, and none
+of the other girls, for the lodgers?" said the public prosecutor, with
+half-closed eyes and a cunning, Mephistophelian smile.
+
+"I don't know. How should I know?" said Maslova, casting a frightened
+look round, and fixing her eyes for a moment on Nekhludoff. "He asked
+whom he liked."
+
+"Is it possible that she has recognised me?" thought Nekhludoff, and the
+blood rushed to his face. But Maslova turned away without distinguishing
+him from the others, and again fixed her eyes anxiously on the public
+prosecutor.
+
+"So the prisoner denies having had any intimate relations with
+Kartinkin? Very well, I have no more questions to ask."
+
+And the public prosecutor took his elbow off the desk, and began writing
+something. He was not really noting anything down, but only going over
+the letters of his notes with a pen, having seen the procureur and
+leading advocates, after putting a clever question, make a note, with
+which, later on, to annihilate their adversaries.
+
+The president did not continue at once, because he was consulting the
+member with the spectacles, whether he was agreed that the questions
+(which had all been prepared be forehand and written out) should be put.
+
+"Well! What happened next?" he then went on.
+
+"I came home," looking a little more boldly only at the president, "and
+went to bed. Hardly had I fallen asleep when one of our girls, Bertha,
+woke me. 'Go, your merchant has come again!' He"--she again uttered the
+word _he_ with evident horror--"he kept treating our girls, and then
+wanted to send for more wine, but his money was all gone, and he sent me
+to his lodgings and told me where the money was, and how much to take.
+So I went."
+
+The president was whispering to the member on his left, but, in order to
+appear as if he had heard, he repeated her last words.
+
+"So you went. Well, what next?"
+
+"I went, and did all he told me; went into his room. I did not go alone,
+but called Simeon Kartinkin and her," she said, pointing to Botchkova.
+
+"That's a lie; I never went in," Botchkova began, but was stopped.
+
+"In their presence I took out four notes," continued Maslova, frowning,
+without looking at Botchkova.
+
+"Yes, but did the prisoner notice," again asked the prosecutor, "how
+much money there was when she was getting out the 40 roubles?"
+
+Maslova shuddered when the prosecutor addressed her; she did not know
+why it was, but she felt that he wished her evil.
+
+"I did not count it, but only saw some 100-rouble notes."
+
+"Ah! The prisoner saw 100-rouble notes. That's all?"
+
+"Well, so you brought back the money," continued the president, looking
+at the clock.
+
+"I did."
+
+"Well, and then?"
+
+"Then he took me back with him," said Maslova.
+
+"Well, and how did you give him the powder? In his drink?"
+
+"How did I give it? I put them in and gave it him."
+
+"Why did you give it him?"
+
+She did not answer, but sighed deeply and heavily.
+
+"He would not let me go," she said, after a moment's silence, "and I was
+quite tired out, and so I went out into the passage and said to Simeon,
+'If he would only let me go, I am so tired.' And he said, 'We are also
+sick of him; we were thinking of giving him a sleeping draught; he will
+fall asleep, and then you can go.' So I said all right. I thought they
+were harmless, and he gave me the packet. I went in. He was lying behind
+the partition, and at once called for brandy. I took a bottle of 'fine
+champagne' from the table, poured out two glasses, one for him and one
+for myself, and put the powders into his glass, and gave it him. Had I
+known how could I have given them to him?"
+
+"Well, and how did the ring come into your possession?" asked the
+president. "When did he give it you?"
+
+"That was when we came back to his lodgings. I wanted to go away, and he
+gave me a knock on the head and broke my comb. I got angry and said I'd
+go away, and he took the ring off his finger and gave it to me so that I
+should not go," she said.
+
+Then the public prosecutor again slightly raised himself, and, putting
+on an air of simplicity, asked permission to put a few more questions,
+and, having received it, bending his head over his embroidered collar,
+he said: "I should like to know how long the prisoner remained in the
+merchant Smelkoff's room."
+
+Maslova again seemed frightened, and she again looked anxiously from the
+public prosecutor to the president, and said hurriedly:
+
+"I do not remember how long."
+
+"Yes, but does the prisoner remember if she went anywhere else in the
+lodging-house after she left Smelkoff?"
+
+Maslova considered for a moment. "Yes, I did go into an empty room next
+to his."
+
+"Yes, and why did you go in?" asked the public prosecutor, forgetting
+himself, and addressing her directly.
+
+"I went in to rest a bit, and to wait for an isvostchik."
+
+"And was Kartinkin in the room with the prisoner, or not?"
+
+"He came in."
+
+"Why did he come in?"
+
+"There was some of the merchant's brandy left, and we finished it
+together."
+
+"Oh, finished it together. Very well! And did the prisoner talk to
+Kartinkin, and, if so, what about?"
+
+Maslova suddenly frowned, blushed very red, and said, hurriedly, "What
+about? I did not talk about anything, and that's all I know. Do what you
+like with me; I am not guilty, and that's all."
+
+"I have nothing more to ask," said the prosecutor, and, drawing up his
+shoulders in an unnatural manner, began writing down, as the prisoner's
+own evidence, in the notes for his speech, that she had been in the
+empty room with Kartinkin.
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"You have nothing more to say?"
+
+"I have told everything," she said, with a sigh, and sat down.
+
+Then the president noted something down, and, having listened to
+something that the member on his left whispered to him, he announced
+a ten-minutes' interval, rose hurriedly, and left the court. The
+communication he had received from the tall, bearded member with
+the kindly eyes was that the member, having felt a slight stomach
+derangement, wished to do a little massage and to take some drops. And
+this was why an interval was made.
+
+When the judges had risen, the advocates, the jury, and the witnesses
+also rose, with the pleasant feeling that part of the business was
+finished, and began moving in different directions.
+
+Nekhludoff went into the jury's room, and sat down by the window.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+TWELVE YEARS BEFORE.
+
+"Yes, this was Katusha."
+
+The relations between Nekhludoff and Katusha had been the following:
+
+Nekhludoff first saw Katusha when he was a student in his third year
+at the University, and was preparing an essay on land tenure during
+the summer vacation, which he passed with his aunts. Until then he had
+always lived, in summer, with his mother and sister on his mother's
+large estate near Moscow. But that year his sister had married, and his
+mother had gone abroad to a watering-place, and he, having his essay to
+write, resolved to spend the summer with his aunts. It was very quiet
+in their secluded estate and there was nothing to distract his mind; his
+aunts loved their nephew and heir very tenderly, and he, too, was fond
+of them and of their simple, old-fashioned life.
+
+During that summer on his aunts' estate, Nekhludoff passed through that
+blissful state of existence when a young man for the first time, without
+guidance from any one outside, realises all the beauty and significance
+of life, and the importance of the task allotted in it to man; when he
+grasps the possibility of unlimited advance towards perfection for one's
+self and for all the world, and gives himself to this task, not only
+hopefully, but with full conviction of attaining to the perfection
+he imagines. In that year, while still at the University, he had read
+Spencer's Social Statics, and Spencer's views on landholding especially
+impressed him, as he himself was heir to large estates. His father had
+not been rich, but his mother had received 10,000 acres of land for her
+dowry. At that time he fully realised all the cruelty and injustice of
+private property in land, and being one of those to whom a sacrifice
+to the demands of conscience gives the highest spiritual enjoyment, he
+decided not to retain property rights, but to give up to the peasant
+labourers the land he had inherited from his father. It was on this land
+question he wrote his essay.
+
+He arranged his life on his aunts' estate in the following manner. He
+got up very early, sometimes at three o'clock, and before sunrise went
+through the morning mists to bathe in the river, under the hill.
+He returned while the dew still lay on the grass and the flowers.
+Sometimes, having finished his coffee, he sat down with his books of
+reference and his papers to write his essay, but very often, instead of
+reading or writing, he left home again, and wandered through the fields
+and the woods. Before dinner he lay down and slept somewhere in the
+garden. At dinner he amused and entertained his aunts with his bright
+spirits, then he rode on horseback or went for a row on the river, and
+in the evening he again worked at his essay, or sat reading or playing
+patience with his aunts.
+
+His joy in life was so great that it agitated him, and kept him awake
+many a night, especially when it was moonlight, so that instead of
+sleeping he wandered about in the garden till dawn, alone with his
+dreams and fancies.
+
+And so, peacefully and happily, he lived through the first month of his
+stay with his aunts, taking no particular notice of their half-ward,
+half-servant, the black-eyed, quick-footed Katusha. Then, at the age
+of nineteen, Nekhludoff, brought up under his mother's wing, was still
+quite pure. If a woman figured in his dreams at all it was only as a
+wife. All the other women, who, according to his ideas he could not
+marry, were not women for him, but human beings.
+
+But on Ascension Day that summer, a neighbour of his aunts', and her
+family, consisting of two young daughters, a schoolboy, and a young
+artist of peasant origin who was staying with them, came to spend the
+day. After tea they all went to play in the meadow in front of the
+house, where the grass had already been mown. They played at the game
+of gorelki, and Katusha joined them. Running about and changing partners
+several times, Nekhludoff caught Katusha, and she became his partner.
+Up to this time he had liked Katusha's looks, but the possibility of any
+nearer relations with her had never entered his mind.
+
+"Impossible to catch those two," said the merry young artist, whose turn
+it was to catch, and who could run very fast with his short, muscular
+legs.
+
+"You! And not catch us?" said Katusha.
+
+"One, two, three," and the artist clapped his hands. Katusha, hardly
+restraining her laughter, changed places with Nekhludoff, behind the
+artist's back, and pressing his large hand with her little rough one,
+and rustling with her starched petticoat, ran to the left. Nekhludoff
+ran fast to the right, trying to escape from the artist, but when he
+looked round he saw the artist running after Katusha, who kept well
+ahead, her firm young legs moving rapidly. There was a lilac bush in
+front of them, and Katusha made a sign with her head to Nekhludoff to
+join her behind it, for if they once clasped hands again they were safe
+from their pursuer, that being a rule of the game. He understood the
+sign, and ran behind the bush, but he did not know that there was a
+small ditch overgrown with nettles there. He stumbled and fell into the
+nettles, already wet with dew, stinging his bands, but rose immediately,
+laughing at his mishap.
+
+Katusha, with her eyes black as sloes, her face radiant with joy, was
+flying towards him, and they caught hold of each other's hands.
+
+"Got stung, I daresay?" she said, arranging her hair with her free hand,
+breathing fast and looking straight up at him with a glad, pleasant
+smile.
+
+"I did not know there was a ditch here," he answered, smiling also, and
+keeping her hand in his. She drew nearer to him, and he himself, not
+knowing how it happened, stooped towards her. She did not move away, and
+he pressed her hand tight and kissed her on the lips.
+
+"There! You've done it!" she said; and, freeing her hand with a swift
+movement, ran away from him. Then, breaking two branches of white lilac
+from which the blossoms were already falling, she began fanning her hot
+face with them; then, with her head turned back to him, she walked away,
+swaying her arms briskly in front of her, and joined the other players.
+
+After this there grew up between Nekhludoff and Katusha those peculiar
+relations which often exist between a pure young man and girl who are
+attracted to each other.
+
+When Katusha came into the room, or even when he saw her white apron
+from afar, everything brightened up in Nekhludoff's eyes, as when the
+sun appears everything becomes more interesting, more joyful, more
+important. The whole of life seemed full of gladness. And she felt the
+same. But it was not only Katusha's presence that had this effect on
+Nekhludoff. The mere thought that Katusha existed (and for her that
+Nekhludoff existed) had this effect.
+
+When he received an unpleasant letter from his mother, or could not get
+on with his essay, or felt the unreasoning sadness that young people are
+often subject to, he had only to remember Katusha and that he should see
+her, and it all vanished. Katusha had much work to do in the house, but
+she managed to get a little leisure for reading, and Nekhludoff gave her
+Dostoievsky and Tourgeneff (whom he had just read himself) to read. She
+liked Tourgeneff's Lull best. They had talks at moments snatched when
+meeting in the passage, on the veranda, or the yard, and sometimes
+in the room of his aunts' old servant, Matrona Pavlovna, with whom he
+sometimes used to drink tea, and where Katusha used to work.
+
+These talks in Matrona Pavlovna's presence were the pleasantest. When
+they were alone it was worse. Their eyes at once began to say something
+very different and far more important than what their mouths uttered.
+Their lips puckered, and they felt a kind of dread of something that
+made them part quickly. These relations continued between Nekhludoff
+and Katusha during the whole time of his first visit to his aunts'.
+They noticed it, and became frightened, and even wrote to Princess
+Elena Ivanovna, Nekhludoff's mother. His aunt, Mary Ivanovna, was
+afraid Dmitri would form an intimacy with Katusha; but her fears were
+groundless, for Nekhludoff, himself hardly conscious of it, loved
+Katusha, loved her as the pure love, and therein lay his safety--his and
+hers. He not only did not feel any desire to possess her, but the very
+thought of it filled him with horror. The fears of the more poetical
+Sophia Ivanovna, that Dmitri, with his thoroughgoing, resolute
+character, having fallen in love with a girl, might make up his mind to
+marry her, without considering either her birth or her station, had more
+ground.
+
+Had Nekhludoff at that time been conscious of his love for Katusha, and
+especially if he had been told that he could on no account join his life
+with that of a girl in her position, it might have easily happened
+that, with his usual straight-forwardness, he would have come to the
+conclusion that there could be no possible reason for him not to marry
+any girl whatever, as long as he loved her. But his aunts did not
+mention their fears to him; and, when he left, he was still unconscious
+of his love for Katusha. He was sure that what he felt for Katusha was
+only one of the manifestations of the joy of life that filled his whole
+being, and that this sweet, merry little girl shared this joy with him.
+Yet, when he was going away, and Katusha stood with his aunts in the
+porch, and looked after him, her dark, slightly-squinting eyes filled
+with tears, he felt, after all, that he was leaving something beautiful,
+precious, something which would never reoccur. And he grew very sad.
+
+"Good-bye, Katusha," he said, looking across Sophia Ivanovna's cap as he
+was getting into the trap. "Thank you for everything."
+
+"Good-bye, Dmitri Ivanovitch," she said, with her pleasant, tender
+voice, keeping back the tears that filled her eyes--and ran away into
+the hall, where she could cry in peace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+LIFE IN THE ARMY.
+
+After that Nekhludoff did not see Katusha for more than three years.
+When he saw her again he had just been promoted to the rank of officer
+and was going to join his regiment. On the way he came to spend a few
+days with his aunts, being now a very different young man from the one
+who had spent the summer with them three years before. He then had been
+an honest, unselfish lad, ready to sacrifice himself for any good cause;
+now he was depraved and selfish, and thought only of his own enjoyment.
+Then God's world seemed a mystery which he tried enthusiastically and
+joyfully to solve; now everything in life seemed clear and simple,
+defined by the conditions of the life he was leading. Then he had felt
+the importance of, and had need of intercourse with, nature, and with
+those who had lived and thought and felt before him--philosophers
+and poets. What he now considered necessary and important were human
+institutions and intercourse with his comrades. Then women seemed
+mysterious and charming--charming by the very mystery that enveloped
+them; now the purpose of women, all women except those of his own family
+and the wives of his friends, was a very definite one: women were the
+best means towards an already experienced enjoyment. Then money was not
+needed, and he did not require even one-third of what his mother allowed
+him; but now this allowance of 1,500 roubles a month did not suffice,
+and he had already had some unpleasant talks about it with his mother.
+
+Then he had looked on his spirit as the I; now it was his healthy strong
+animal I that he looked upon as himself.
+
+And all this terrible change had come about because he had ceased to
+believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done
+because it was too difficult to live believing one's self; believing
+one's self, one had to decide every question not in favour of one's own
+animal life, which is always seeking for easy gratifications, but almost
+in every case against it. Believing others there was nothing to decide;
+everything had been decided already, and decided always in favour of the
+animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his
+own self he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around
+him; believing others he had their approval. So, when Nekhludoff had
+talked of the serious matters of life, of God, truth, riches, and
+poverty, all round him thought it out of place and even rather funny,
+and his mother and aunts called him, with kindly irony, notre cher
+philosophe. But when he read novels, told improper anecdotes, went
+to see funny vaudevilles in the French theatre and gaily repeated the
+jokes, everybody admired and encouraged him. When he considered it
+right to limit his needs, wore an old overcoat, took no wine, everybody
+thought it strange and looked upon it as a kind of showing off; but
+when he spent large sums on hunting, or on furnishing a peculiar and
+luxurious study for himself, everybody admired his taste and gave him
+expensive presents to encourage his hobby. While he kept pure and meant
+to remain so till he married his friends prayed for his health, and even
+his mother was not grieved but rather pleased when she found out that
+he had become a real man and had gained over some French woman from his
+friend. (As to the episode with Katusha, the princess could not without
+horror think that he might possibly have married her.) In the same way,
+when Nekhludoff came of age, and gave the small estate he had inherited
+from his father to the peasants because he considered the holding
+of private property in land wrong, this step filled his mother and
+relations with dismay and served as an excuse for making fun of him to
+all his relatives. He was continually told that these peasants, after
+they had received the land, got no richer, but, on the contrary, poorer,
+having opened three public-houses and left off doing any work. But when
+Nekhludoff entered the Guards and spent and gambled away so much with
+his aristocratic companions that Elena Ivanovna, his mother, had to draw
+on her capital, she was hardly pained, considering it quite natural
+and even good that wild oats should be sown at an early age and in good
+company, as her son was doing. At first Nekhludoff struggled, but all
+that he had considered good while he had faith in himself was considered
+bad by others, and what he had considered evil was looked upon as good
+by those among whom he lived, and the struggle grew too hard. And at
+last Nekhludoff gave in, i.e., left off believing himself and began
+believing others. At first this giving up of faith in himself was
+unpleasant, but it did not long continue to be so. At that time he
+acquired the habit of smoking, and drinking wine, and soon got over this
+unpleasant feeling and even felt great relief.
+
+Nekhludoff, with his passionate nature, gave himself thoroughly to the
+new way of life so approved of by all those around, and he entirely
+stifled the inner voice which demanded something different. This began
+after he moved to St. Petersburg, and reached its highest point when he
+entered the army.
+
+Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of
+complete idleness, i.e., absence of all useful work; frees them of their
+common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional ones to
+the honour of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and, while giving
+them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into
+conditions of servile obedience to those of higher rank than themselves.
+
+But when, to the usual depraving influence of military service with its
+honours, uniforms, flags, its permitted violence and murder, there is
+added the depraving influence of riches and nearness to and intercourse
+with members of the Imperial family, as is the case in the chosen
+regiment of the Guards in which all the officers are rich and of good
+family, then this depraving influence creates in the men who succumb
+to it a perfect mania of selfishness. And this mania of selfishness
+attacked Nekhludoff from the moment he entered the army and began living
+in the way his companions lived. He had no occupation whatever except
+to dress in a uniform, splendidly made and well brushed by other people,
+and, with arms also made and cleaned and handed to him by others, ride
+to reviews on a fine horse which had been bred, broken in and fed by
+others. There, with other men like himself, he had to wave a sword,
+shoot off guns, and teach others to do the same. He had no other work,
+and the highly-placed persons, young and old, the Tsar and those near
+him, not only sanctioned his occupation but praised and thanked him for
+it.
+
+After this was done, it was thought important to eat, and particularly
+to drink, in officers' clubs or the salons of the best restaurants,
+squandering large sums of money, which came from some invisible source;
+then theatres, ballets, women, then again riding on horseback, waving
+of swords and shooting, and again the squandering of money, the wine,
+cards, and women. This kind of life acts on military men even more
+depravingly than on others, because if any other than a military man
+lead such a life he cannot help being ashamed of it in the depth of his
+heart. A military man is, on the contrary, proud of a life of this kind
+especially at war time, and Nekhludoff had entered the army just after
+war with the Turks had been declared. "We are prepared to sacrifice
+our lives at the wars, and therefore a gay, reckless life is not only
+pardonable, but absolutely necessary for us, and so we lead it."
+
+Such were Nekhludoff's confused thoughts at this period of his
+existence, and he felt all the time the delight of being free of the
+moral barriers he had formerly set himself. And the state he lived in
+was that of a chronic mania of selfishness. He was in this state when,
+after three years' absence, he came again to visit his aunts.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE SECOND MEETING WITH MASLOVA.
+
+Nekhludoff went to visit his aunts because their estate lay near the
+road he had to travel in order to join his regiment, which had gone
+forward, because they had very warmly asked him to come, and especially
+because he wanted to see Katusha. Perhaps in his heart he had already
+formed those evil designs against Katusha which his now uncontrolled
+animal self suggested to him, but he did not acknowledge this as his
+intention, but only wished to go back to the spot where he had been so
+happy, to see his rather funny, but dear, kind-hearted old aunts, who
+always, without his noticing it, surrounded him with an atmosphere of
+love and admiration, and to see sweet Katusha, of whom he had retained
+so pleasant a memory.
+
+He arrived at the end of March, on Good Friday, after the thaw had set
+in. It was pouring with rain so that he had not a dry thread on him and
+was feeling very cold, but yet vigorous and full of spirits, as always
+at that time. "Is she still with them?" he thought, as he drove into the
+familiar, old-fashioned courtyard, surrounded by a low brick wall, and
+now filled with snow off the roofs.
+
+He expected she would come out when she heard the sledge bells but she
+did not. Two bare-footed women with pails and tucked-up skirts, who had
+evidently been scrubbing the floors, came out of the side door. She was
+not at the front door either, and only Tikhon, the man-servant, with his
+apron on, evidently also busy cleaning, came out into the front porch.
+His aunt Sophia Ivanovna alone met him in the ante-room; she had a silk
+dress on and a cap on her head. Both aunts had been to church and had
+received communion.
+
+"Well, this is nice of you to come," said Sophia Ivanovna, kissing him.
+"Mary is not well, got tired in church; we have been to communion."
+
+"I congratulate you, Aunt Sophia," [it is usual in Russia to
+congratulate those who have received communion] said Nekhludoff, kissing
+Sophia Ivanovna's hand. "Oh, I beg your pardon, I have made you wet."
+
+"Go to your room--why you are soaking wet. Dear me, you have got
+moustaches! . . . Katusha! Katusha! Get him some coffee; be quick."
+
+"Directly," came the sound of a well-known, pleasant voice from the
+passage, and Nekhludoff's heart cried out "She's here!" and it was as if
+the sun had come out from behind the clouds.
+
+Nekhludoff, followed by Tikhon, went gaily to his old room to change his
+things. He felt inclined to ask Tikhon about Katusha; how she was,
+what she was doing, was she not going to be married? But Tikhon was so
+respectful and at the same time so severe, insisted so firmly on pouring
+the water out of the jug for him, that Nekhludoff could not make up
+his mind to ask him about Katusha, but only inquired about Tikhon's
+grandsons, about the old so-called "brother's" horse, and about the
+dog Polkan. All were alive except Polkan, who had gone mad the summer
+before.
+
+When he had taken off all his wet things and just begun to dress again,
+Nekhludoff heard quick, familiar footsteps and a knock at the door.
+Nekhludoff knew the steps and also the knock. No one but she walked and
+knocked like that.
+
+Having thrown his wet greatcoat over his shoulders, he opened the door.
+
+"Come in." It was she, Katusha, the same, only sweeter than before. The
+slightly squinting naive black eyes looked up in the same old way. Now
+as then, she had on a white apron. She brought him from his aunts
+a piece of scented soap, with the wrapper just taken off, and two
+towels--one a long Russian embroidered one, the other a bath towel. The
+unused soap with the stamped inscription, the towels, and her own self,
+all were equally clean, fresh, undefiled and pleasant. The irrepressible
+smile of joy at the sight of him made the sweet, firm lips pucker up as
+of old.
+
+"How do you do, Dmitri Ivanovitch?" she uttered with difficulty, her
+face suffused with a rosy blush.
+
+"Good-morning! How do you do?" he said, also blushing. "Alive and well?"
+
+"Yes, the Lord be thanked. And here is your favorite pink soap and
+towels from your aunts," she said, putting the soap on the table and
+hanging the towels over the back of a chair.
+
+"There is everything here," said Tikhon, defending the visitor's
+independence, and pointing to Nekhludoff's open dressing case filled
+with brushes, perfume, fixatoire, a great many bottles with silver lids
+and all sorts of toilet appliances.
+
+"Thank my aunts, please. Oh, how glad I am to be here," said Nekhludoff,
+his heart filling with light and tenderness as of old.
+
+She only smiled in answer to these words, and went out. The aunts, who
+had always loved Nekhludoff, welcomed him this time more warmly than
+ever. Dmitri was going to the war, where he might be wounded or killed,
+and this touched the old aunts. Nekhludoff had arranged to stay only a
+day and night with his aunts, but when he had seen Katusha he agreed to
+stay over Easter with them and telegraphed to his friend Schonbock, whom
+he was to have joined in Odessa, that he should come and meet him at his
+aunts' instead.
+
+As soon as he had seen Katusha Nekhludoff's old feelings toward her
+awoke again. Now, just as then, he could not see her white apron without
+getting excited; he could not listen to her steps, her voice, her laugh,
+without a feeling of joy; he could not look at her eyes, black as sloes,
+without a feeling of tenderness, especially when she smiled; and, above
+all, he could not notice without agitation how she blushed when they
+met. He felt he was in love, but not as before, when this love was a
+kind of mystery to him and he would not own, even to himself, that he
+loved, and when he was persuaded that one could love only once; now he
+knew he was in love and was glad of it, and knew dimly what this love
+consisted of and what it might lead to, though he sought to conceal
+it even from himself. In Nekhludoff, as in every man, there were two
+beings: one the spiritual, seeking only that kind of happiness for him
+self which should tend towards the happiness of all; the other, the
+animal man, seeking only his own happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it
+the happiness of the rest of the world. At this period of his mania of
+self-love brought on by life in Petersburg and in the army, this animal
+man ruled supreme and completely crushed the spiritual man in him.
+
+But when he saw Katusha and experienced the same feelings as he had had
+three years before, the spiritual man in him raised its head once more
+and began to assert its rights. And up to Easter, during two whole days,
+an unconscious, ceaseless inner struggle went on in him.
+
+He knew in the depths of his soul that he ought to go away, that there
+was no real reason for staying on with his aunts, knew that no good
+could come of it; and yet it was so pleasant, so delightful, that he did
+not honestly acknowledge the facts to himself and stayed on. On Easter
+eve, the priest and the deacon who came to the house to say mass had had
+(so they said) the greatest difficulty in getting over the three miles
+that lay between the church and the old ladies' house, coming across the
+puddles and the bare earth in a sledge.
+
+Nekhludoff attended the mass with his aunts and the servants, and kept
+looking at Katusha, who was near the door and brought in the censers
+for the priests. Then having given the priests and his aunts the Easter
+kiss, though it was not midnight and therefore not Easter yet, he was
+already going to bed when he heard the old servant Matrona Pavlovna
+preparing to go to the church to get the koulitch and paski [Easter
+cakes] blest after the midnight service. "I shall go too," he thought.
+
+The road to the church was impassable either in a sledge or on wheels,
+so Nekhludoff, who behaved in his aunts' house just as he did at home,
+ordered the old horse, "the brother's horse," to be saddled, and instead
+of going to bed he put on his gay uniform, a pair of tight-fitting
+riding breeches and his overcoat, and got on the old over-fed and heavy
+horse, which neighed continually all the way as he rode in the dark
+through the puddles and snow to the church.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE EARLY MASS.
+
+For Nekhludoff this early mass remained for ever after one of the
+brightest and most vivid memories of his life. When he rode out of the
+darkness, broken only here and there by patches of white snow, into the
+churchyard illuminated by a row of lamps around the church, the service
+had already begun.
+
+The peasants, recognising Mary Ivanovna's nephew, led his horse, which
+was pricking up its ears at the sight of the lights, to a dry place
+where he could get off, put it up for him, and showed him into the
+church, which was full of people. On the right stood the peasants; the
+old men in home-spun coats, and clean white linen bands [long strips of
+linen are worn by the peasants instead of stockings] wrapped round their
+legs, the young men in new cloth coats, bright-coloured belts round
+their waists, and top-boots.
+
+On the left stood the women, with red silk kerchiefs on their
+heads, black velveteen sleeveless jackets, bright red shirt-sleeves,
+gay-coloured green, blue, and red skirts, and thick leather boots.
+The old women, dressed more quietly, stood behind them, with white
+kerchiefs, homespun coats, old-fashioned skirts of dark home-spun
+material, and shoes on their feet. Gaily-dressed children, their hair
+well oiled, went in and out among them.
+
+The men, making the sign of the cross, bowed down and raised their heads
+again, shaking back their hair.
+
+The women, especially the old ones, fixed their eyes on an icon
+surrounded with candies and made the sign of the cross, firmly pressing
+their folded fingers to the kerchief on their foreheads, to their
+shoulders, and their stomachs, and, whispering something, stooped
+or knelt down. The children, imitating the grown-up people, prayed
+earnestly when they knew that they were being observed. The gilt case
+containing the icon glittered, illuminated on all sides by tall candles
+ornamented with golden spirals. The candelabra was filled with tapers,
+and from the choir sounded most merry tunes sung by amateur choristers,
+with bellowing bass and shrill boys' voices among them.
+
+Nekhludoff passed up to the front. In the middle of the church stood
+the aristocracy of the place: a landed proprietor, with his wife and
+son (the latter dressed in a sailor's suit), the police officer, the
+telegraph clerk, a tradesman in top-boots, and the village elder, with
+a medal on his breast; and to the right of the ambo, just behind the
+landed proprietor's wife, stood Matrona Pavlovna in a lilac dress and
+fringed shawl and Katusha in a white dress with a tucked bodice, blue
+sash, and red bow in her black hair.
+
+Everything seemed festive, solemn, bright, and beautiful: the priest in
+his silver cloth vestments with gold crosses; the deacon, the clerk and
+chanter in their silver and gold surplices; the amateur choristers in
+their best clothes, with their well-oiled hair; the merry tunes of the
+holiday hymns that sounded like dance music; and the continual blessing
+of the people by the priests, who held candles decorated with flowers,
+and repeated the cry of "Christ is risen!" "Christ is risen!" All was
+beautiful; but, above all, Katusha, in her white dress, blue sash, and
+the red bow on her black head, her eyes beaming with rapture.
+
+Nekhludoff knew that she felt his presence without looking at him. He
+noticed this as he passed her, walking up to the altar. He had nothing
+to tell her, but he invented something to say and whispered as he passed
+her: "Aunt told me that she would break her fast after the late mass."
+The young blood rushed up to Katusha's sweet face, as it always did
+when she looked at him. The black eyes, laughing and full of joy, gazed
+naively up and remained fixed on Nekhludoff.
+
+"I know," she said, with a smile.
+
+At this moment the clerk was going out with a copper coffee-pot
+[coffee-pots are often used for holding holy water in Russia] of holy
+water in his hand, and, not noticing Katusha, brushed her with his
+surplice. Evidently he brushed against Katusha through wishing to pass
+Nekhludoff at a respectful distance, and Nekhludoff was surprised that
+he, the clerk, did not understand that everything here, yes, and in
+all the world, only existed for Katusha, and that everything else might
+remain unheeded, only not she, because she was the centre of all. For
+her the gold glittered round the icons; for her all these candles in
+candelabra and candlesticks were alight; for her were sung these
+joyful hymns, "Behold the Passover of the Lord" "Rejoice, O ye people!"
+All--all that was good in the world was for her. And it seemed to him
+that Katusha was aware that it was all for her when he looked at her
+well-shaped figure, the tucked white dress, the wrapt, joyous expression
+of her face, by which he knew that just exactly the same that was
+singing in his own soul was also singing in hers.
+
+In the interval between the early and the late mass Nekhludoff left the
+church. The people stood aside to let him pass, and bowed. Some knew
+him; others asked who he was.
+
+He stopped on the steps. The beggars standing there came clamouring
+round him, and he gave them all the change he had in his purse and went
+down. It was dawning, but the sun had not yet risen. The people grouped
+round the graves in the churchyard. Katusha had remained inside.
+Nekhludoff stood waiting for her.
+
+The people continued coming out, clattering with their nailed boots on
+the stone steps and dispersing over the churchyard. A very old man with
+shaking head, his aunts' cook, stopped Nekhludoff in order to give
+him the Easter kiss, his old wife took an egg, dyed yellow, out of her
+handkerchief and gave it to Nekhludoff, and a smiling young peasant in a
+new coat and green belt also came up.
+
+"Christ is risen," he said, with laughing eyes, and coming close to
+Nekhludoff he enveloped him in his peculiar but pleasant peasant smell,
+and, tickling him with his curly beard, kissed him three times straight
+on the mouth with his firm, fresh lips.
+
+While the peasant was kissing Nekhludoff and giving him a dark brown
+egg, the lilac dress of Matrona Pavlovna and the dear black head with
+the red bow appeared.
+
+Katusha caught sight of him over the heads of those in front of her, and
+he saw how her face brightened up.
+
+She had come out with Matrona Pavlovna on to the porch, and stopped
+there distributing alms to the beggars. A beggar with a red scab in
+place of a nose came up to Katusha. She gave him something, drew nearer
+him, and, evincing no sign of disgust, but her eyes still shining with
+joy, kissed him three times. And while she was doing this her eyes met
+Nekhludoff's with a look as if she were asking, "Is this that I am doing
+right?" "Yes, dear, yes, it is right; everything is right, everything is
+beautiful. I love!"
+
+They came down the steps of the porch, and he came up to them.
+
+He did not mean to give them the Easter kiss, but only to be nearer to
+her. Matrona Pavlovna bowed her head, and said with a smile, "Christ is
+risen!" and her tone implied, "To-day we are all equal." She wiped her
+mouth with her handkerchief rolled into a ball and stretched her lips
+towards him.
+
+"He is, indeed," answered Nekhludoff, kissing her. Then he looked
+at Katusha; she blushed, and drew nearer. "Christ is risen, Dmitri
+Ivanovitch."
+
+"He is risen, indeed," answered Nekhludoff, and they kissed twice, then
+paused as if considering whether a third kiss were necessary, and,
+having decided that it was, kissed a third time and smiled.
+
+"You are going to the priests?" asked Nekhludoff.
+
+"No, we shall sit out here a bit, Dmitri Ivanovitch," said Katusha with
+effort, as if she had accomplished some joyous task, and, her whole
+chest heaving with a deep sigh, she looked straight in his face with
+a look of devotion, virgin purity, and love, in her very slightly
+squinting eyes.
+
+In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when
+this love has reached its zenith--a moment when it is unconscious,
+unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it. Such a moment had come
+for Nekhludoff on that Easter eve. When he brought Katusha back to his
+mind, now, this moment veiled all else; the smooth glossy black head,
+the white tucked dress closely fitting her graceful maidenly form, her,
+as yet, un-developed bosom, the blushing cheeks, the tender shining
+black eyes with their slight squint heightened by the sleepless night,
+and her whole being stamped with those two marked features, purity and
+chaste love, love not only for him (he knew that), but for everybody and
+everything, not for the good alone, but for all that is in the world,
+even for that beggar whom she had kissed.
+
+He knew she had that love in her because on that night and morning
+he was conscious of it in himself, and conscious that in this love he
+became one with her. Ah! if it had all stopped there, at the point it
+had reached that night. "Yes, all that horrible business had not yet
+happened on that Easter eve!" he thought, as he sat by the window of the
+jurymen's room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE FIRST STEP.
+
+When he returned from church Nekhludoff broke the fast with his aunts
+and took a glass of spirits and some wine, having got into that habit
+while with his regiment, and when he reached his room fell asleep at
+once, dressed as he was. He was awakened by a knock at the door. He knew
+it was her knock, and got up, rubbing his eyes and stretching himself.
+
+"Katusha, is it you? Come in," said he.
+
+She opened the door.
+
+"Dinner is ready," she said. She still had on the same white dress, but
+not the bow in her hair. She looked at him with a smile, as if she had
+communicated some very good news to him.
+
+"I am coming," he answered, as he rose, taking his comb to arrange his
+hair.
+
+She stood still for a minute, and he, noticing it, threw down his comb
+and made a step towards her, but at that very moment she turned suddenly
+and went with quick light steps along the strip of carpet in the middle
+of the passage.
+
+"Dear me, what a fool I am," thought Nekhludoff. "Why did I not stop
+her?" What he wanted her for he did not know himself, but he felt that
+when she came into his room something should have been done, something
+that is generally done on such occasions, and that he had left it
+undone.
+
+"Katusha, wait," he said.
+
+"What do you want?" she said, stopping.
+
+"Nothing, only--" and, with an effort, remembering how men in his
+position generally behave, he put his arm round her waist.
+
+She stood still and looked into his eyes.
+
+"Don't, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you must not," she said, blushing to tears
+and pushing away his arm with her strong hard hand. Nekhludoff let her
+go, and for a moment he felt not only confused and ashamed but disgusted
+with himself. He should now have believed himself, and then he would
+have known that this confusion and shame were caused by the best
+feelings of his soul demanding to be set free; but he thought it was
+only his stupidity and that he ought to behave as every one else did. He
+caught her up and kissed her on the neck.
+
+This kiss was very different from that first thoughtless kiss behind
+the lilac bush, and very different to the kiss this morning in the
+churchyard. This was a dreadful kiss, and she felt it.
+
+"Oh, what are you doing?" she cried, in a tone as if he had irreparably
+broken something of priceless value, and ran quickly away.
+
+He came into the dining-room. His aunts, elegantly dressed, their family
+doctor, and a neighbour were already there. Everything seemed so very
+ordinary, but in Nekhludoff a storm was raging. He understood nothing
+of what was being said and gave wrong answers, thinking only of Katusha.
+The sound of her steps in the passage brought back the thrill of that
+last kiss and he could think of nothing else. When she came into the
+room he, without looking round, felt her presence with his whole being
+and had to force himself not to look at her.
+
+After dinner he at once went into his bedroom and for a long time walked
+up and down in great excitement, listening to every sound in the house
+and expecting to hear her steps. The animal man inside him had now not
+only lifted its head, but had succeeded in trampling under foot the
+spiritual man of the days of his first visit, and even of that every
+morning. That dreadful animal man alone now ruled over him.
+
+Though he was watching for her all day he could not manage to meet her
+alone. She was probably trying to evade him. In the evening, however,
+she was obliged to go into the room next to his. The doctor had been
+asked to stay the night, and she had to make his bed. When he heard her
+go in Nekhludoff followed her, treading softly and holding his breath as
+if he were going to commit a crime.
+
+She was putting a clean pillow-case on the pillow, holding it by two of
+its corners with her arms inside the pillow-case. She turned round
+and smiled, not a happy, joyful smile as before, but in a frightened,
+piteous way. The smile seemed to tell him that what he was doing was
+wrong. He stopped for a moment. There was still the possibility of a
+struggle. The voice of his real love for her, though feebly, was still
+speaking of her, her feelings, her life. Another voice was saying,
+"Take care I don't let the opportunity for your own happiness, your own
+enjoyment, slip by!" And this second voice completely stifled the first.
+He went up to her with determination and a terrible, ungovernable animal
+passion took possession of him.
+
+With his arm round he made her sit down on the bed; and feeling that
+there was something more to be done he sat down beside her.
+
+"Dmitri Ivanovitch, dear! please let me go," she said, with a piteous
+voice. "Matrona Pavlovna is coming," she cried, tearing herself away.
+Some one was really coming to the door.
+
+"Well, then, I'll come to you in the night," he whispered. "You'll be
+alone?"
+
+"What are you thinking of? On no account. No, no!" she said, but only
+with her lips; the tremulous confusion of her whole being said something
+very different.
+
+It was Matrona Pavlovna who had come to the door. She came in with a
+blanket over her arm, looked reproachfully at Nekhludoff, and began
+scolding Katusha for having taken the wrong blanket.
+
+Nekhludoff went out in silence, but he did not even feel ashamed. He
+could see by Matrona Pavlovna's face that she was blaming him, he knew
+that she was blaming him with reason and felt that he was doing wrong,
+but this novel, low animal excitement, having freed itself of all the
+old feelings of real love for Katusha, ruled supreme, leaving room for
+nothing else. He went about as if demented all the evening, now into his
+aunts', then back into his own room, then out into the porch, thinking
+all the time how he could meet her alone; but she avoided him, and
+Matrona Pavlovna watched her closely.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF AND KATUSHA.
+
+And so the evening passed and night came. The doctor went to bed.
+Nekhludoff's aunts had also retired, and he knew that Matrona Pavlovna
+was now with them in their bedroom so that Katusha was sure to be alone
+in the maids' sitting-room. He again went out into the porch. It was
+dark, damp and warm out of doors, and that white spring mist which
+drives away the last snow, or is diffused by the thawing of the last
+snow, filled the air. From the river under the hill, about a hundred
+steps from the front door, came a strange sound. It was the ice
+breaking. Nekhludoff came down the steps and went up to the window of
+the maids' room, stepping over the puddles on the bits of glazed snow.
+His heart was beating so fiercely in his breast that he seemed to hear
+it, his laboured breath came and went in a burst of long-drawn sighs. In
+the maids' room a small lamp was burning, and Katusha sat alone by the
+table, looking thoughtfully in front of her. Nekhludoff stood a long
+time without moving and waited to see what she, not knowing that she
+was observed, would do. For a minute or two she did not move; then she
+lifted her eyes, smiled and shook her head as if chiding herself, then
+changed her pose and dropped both her arms on the table and again began
+gazing down in front of her. He stood and looked at her, involuntarily
+listening to the beating of his own heart and the strange sounds from
+the river. There on the river, beneath the white mist, the unceasing
+labour went on, and sounds as of something sobbing, cracking, dropping,
+being shattered to pieces mixed with the tinkling of the thin bits of
+ice as they broke against each other like glass.
+
+There he stood, looking at Katusha's serious, suffering face, which
+betrayed the inner struggle of her soul, and he felt pity for her; but,
+strange though it may seem, this pity only confirmed him in his evil
+intention.
+
+He knocked at the window. She started as if she had received an electric
+shock, her whole body trembled, and a look of horror came into her face.
+Then she jumped up, approached the window and brought her face up to the
+pane. The look of terror did not leave her face even when, holding her
+hands up to her eyes like blinkers and peering through the glass, she
+recognised him. Her face was unusually grave; he had never seen it so
+before. She returned his smile, but only in submission to him; there was
+no smile in her soul, only fear. He beckoned her with his hand to come
+out into the yard to him. But she shook her head and remained by the
+window. He brought his face close to the pane and was going to call out
+to her, but at that moment she turned to the door; evidently some one
+inside had called her. Nekhludoff moved away from the window. The fog
+was so dense that five steps from the house the windows could not be
+seen, but the light from the lamp shone red and huge out of a shapeless
+black mass. And on the river the same strange sounds went on, sobbing
+and rustling and cracking and tinkling. Somewhere in the fog, not
+far off, a cock crowed; another answered, and then others, far in the
+village took up the cry till the sound of the crowing blended into one,
+while all around was silent excepting the river. It was the second time
+the cocks crowed that night.
+
+Nekhludoff walked up and down behind the corner of the house, and once
+or twice got into a puddle. Then again came up to the window. The lamp
+was still burning, and she was again sitting alone by the table as
+if uncertain what to do. He had hardly approached the window when she
+looked up. He knocked. Without looking who it was she at once ran out of
+the room, and he heard the outside door open with a snap. He waited
+for her near the side porch and put his arms round her without saying a
+word. She clung to him, put up her face, and met his kiss with her lips.
+Then the door again gave the same sort of snap and opened, and the voice
+of Matrona Pavlovna called out angrily, "Katusha!"
+
+She tore herself away from him and returned into the maids' room. He
+heard the latch click, and then all was quiet. The red light disappeared
+and only the mist remained, and the bustle on the river went on.
+Nekhludoff went up to the window, nobody was to be seen; he knocked, but
+got no answer. He went back into the house by the front door, but could
+not sleep. He got up and went with bare feet along the passage to her
+door, next to Matrona Pavlovna's room. He heard Matrona Pavlovna snoring
+quietly, and was about to go on when she coughed and turned on her
+creaking bed, and his heart fell, and he stood immovable for about five
+minutes. When all was quiet and she began to snore peacefully again, he
+went on, trying to step on the boards that did not creak, and came to
+Katusha's door. There was no sound to be heard. She was probably
+awake, or else he would have heard her breathing. But as soon as he
+had whispered "Katusha" she jumped up and began to persuade him, as if
+angrily, to go away.
+
+"Open! Let me in just for a moment! I implore you!" He hardly knew what
+he was saying.
+
+                   * * * * * * *
+
+When she left him, trembling and silent, giving no answer to his words,
+he again went out into the porch and stood trying to understand the
+meaning of what had happened.
+
+It was getting lighter. From the river below the creaking and tinkling
+and sobbing of the breaking ice came still louder and a gurgling sound
+could now also be heard. The mist had begun to sink, and from above it
+the waning moon dimly lighted up something black and weird.
+
+"What was the meaning of it all? Was it a great joy or a great
+misfortune that had befallen him?" he asked himself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+AFTERWARDS.
+
+The next day the gay, handsome, and brilliant Schonbock joined
+Nekhludoff at his aunts' house, and quite won their hearts by his
+refined and amiable manner, his high spirits, his generosity, and his
+affection for Dmitri.
+
+But though the old ladies admired his generosity it rather perplexed
+them, for it seemed exaggerated. He gave a rouble to some blind beggars
+who came to the gate, gave 15 roubles in tips to the servants, and
+when Sophia Ivanovna's pet dog hurt his paw and it bled, he tore his
+hemstitched cambric handkerchief into strips (Sophia Ivanovna knew that
+such handkerchiefs cost at least 15 roubles a dozen) and bandaged the
+dog's foot. The old ladies had never met people of this kind, and did
+not know that Schonbock owed 200,000 roubles which he was never going to
+pay, and that therefore 25 roubles more or less did not matter a bit to
+him. Schonbock stayed only one day, and he and Nekhludoff both, left
+at night. They could not stay away from their regiment any longer, for
+their leave was fully up.
+
+At the stage which Nekhludoff's selfish mania had now reached he could
+think of nothing but himself. He was wondering whether his conduct, if
+found out, would be blamed much or at all, but he did not consider what
+Katusha was now going through, and what was going to happen to her.
+
+He saw that Schonbock guessed his relations to her and this flattered
+his vanity.
+
+"Ah, I see how it is you have taken such a sudden fancy to your aunts
+that you have been living nearly a week with them," Schonbock remarked
+when he had seen Katusha. "Well, I don't wonder--should have done the
+same. She's charming." Nekhludoff was also thinking that though it was
+a pity to go away before having fully gratified the cravings of his
+love for her, yet the absolute necessity of parting had its advantages
+because it put a sudden stop to relations it would have been very
+difficult for him to continue. Then he thought that he ought to give her
+some money, not for her, not because she might need it, but because it
+was the thing to do.
+
+So he gave her what seemed to him a liberal amount, considering his and
+her station. On the day of his departure, after dinner, he went out and
+waited for her at the side entrance. She flushed up when she saw him
+and wished to pass by, directing his attention to the open door of the
+maids' room by a look, but he stopped her.
+
+"I have come to say good-bye," he said, crumbling in his hand an
+envelope with a 100-rouble note inside. "There, I . . . "
+
+She guessed what he meant, knit her brows, and shaking her head pushed
+his hand away.
+
+"Take it; oh, you must!" he stammered, and thrust the envelope into the
+bib of her apron and ran back to his room, groaning and frowning as if
+he had hurt himself. And for a long time he went up and down writhing as
+in pain, and even stamping and groaning aloud as he thought of this last
+scene. "But what else could I have done? Is it not what happens to every
+one? And if every one does the same . . . well I suppose it can't be
+helped." In this way he tried to get peace of mind, but in vain. The
+recollection of what had passed burned his conscience. In his soul--in
+the very depths of his soul--he knew that he had acted in a base, cruel,
+cowardly manner, and that the knowledge of this act of his must prevent
+him, not only from finding fault with any one else, but even from
+looking straight into other people's eyes; not to mention the
+impossibility of considering himself a splendid, noble, high-minded
+fellow, as he did and had to do to go on living his life boldly and
+merrily. There was only one solution of the problem--i.e., not to think
+about it. He succeeded in doing so. The life he was now entering upon,
+the new surroundings, new friends, the war, all helped him to forget.
+And the longer he lived, the less he thought about it, until at last he
+forgot it completely.
+
+Once only, when, after the war, he went to see his aunts in hopes of
+meeting Katusha, and heard that soon after his last visit she had left,
+and that his aunts had heard she had been confined somewhere or other
+and had gone quite to the bad, his heart ached. According to the time of
+her confinement, the child might or might not have been his. His aunts
+said she had gone wrong, that she had inherited her mother's depraved
+nature, and he was pleased to hear this opinion of his aunts'. It seemed
+to acquit him. At first he thought of trying to find her and her child,
+but then, just because in the depths of his soul he felt so ashamed and
+pained when thinking about her, he did not make the necessary effort to
+find her, but tried to forget his sin again and ceased to think about
+it. And now this strange coincidence brought it all back to his memory,
+and demanded from him the acknowledgment of the heartless, cruel
+cowardice which had made it possible for him to live these nine years
+with such a sin on his conscience. But he was still far from such an
+acknowledgment, and his only fear was that everything might now be found
+out, and that she or her advocate might recount it all and put him to
+shame before every one present.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE TRIAL--RESUMPTION.
+
+In this state of mind Nekhludoff left the Court and went into the
+jurymen's room. He sat by the window smoking all the while, and hearing
+what was being said around him.
+
+The merry merchant seemed with all his heart to sympathise with
+Smelkoff's way of spending his time. "There, old fellow, that was
+something like! Real Siberian fashion! He knew what he was about, no
+fear! That's the sort of wench for me."
+
+The foreman was stating his conviction, that in some way or other the
+expert's conclusions were the important thing. Peter Gerasimovitch
+was joking about something with the Jewish clerk, and they burst out
+laughing. Nekhludoff answered all the questions addressed to him in
+monosyllables and longed only to be left in peace.
+
+When the usher, with his sideways gait, called the jury back to the
+Court, Nekhludoff was seized with fear, as if he were not going to
+judge, but to be judged. In the depth of his soul he felt that he was a
+scoundrel, who ought to be ashamed to look people in the face, yet,
+by sheer force of habit, he stepped on to the platform in his usual
+self-possessed manner, and sat down, crossing his legs and playing with
+his pince-nez.
+
+The prisoners had also been led out, and were now brought in again.
+There were some new faces in the Court witnesses, and Nekhludoff noticed
+that Maslova could not take her eyes off a very fat woman who sat in the
+row in front of the grating, very showily dressed in silk and velvet, a
+high hat with a large bow on her head, and an elegant little reticule on
+her arm, which was bare to the elbow. This was, as he subsequently found
+out, one of the witnesses, the mistress of the establishment to which
+Maslova had belonged.
+
+The examination of the witnesses commenced: they were asked their names,
+religion, etc. Then, after some consultation as to whether the witnesses
+were to be sworn in or not, the old priest came in again, dragging
+his legs with difficulty, and, again arranging the golden cross on his
+breast, swore the witnesses and the expert in the same quiet manner,
+and with the same assurance that he was doing something useful and
+important.
+
+The witnesses having been sworn, all but Kitaeva, the keeper of the
+house, were led out again. She was asked what she knew about this
+affair. Kitaeva nodded her head and the big hat at every sentence
+and smiled affectedly. She gave a very full and intelligent account,
+speaking with a strong German accent. First of all, the hotel servant
+Simeon, whom she knew, came to her establishment on behalf of a rich
+Siberian merchant, and she sent Lubov back with him. After a time
+Lubov returned with the merchant. The merchant was already somewhat
+intoxicated--she smiled as she said this--and went on drinking and
+treating the girls. He was short of money. He sent this same Lubov to
+his lodgings. He had taken a "predilection" to her. She looked at the
+prisoner as she said this.
+
+Nekhludoff thought he saw Maslova smile here, and this seemed disgusting
+to him. A strange, indefinite feeling of loathing, mingled with
+suffering, arose in him.
+
+"And what was your opinion of Maslova?" asked the blushing and confused
+applicant for a judicial post, appointed to act as Maslova's advocate.
+
+"Zee ferry pesht," answered Kitaeva. "Zee yoong voman is etucated and
+elecant. She was prought up in a coot family and can reat French. She
+tid have a trop too moch sometimes, put nefer forcot herself. A ferry
+coot girl."
+
+Katusha looked at the woman, then suddenly turned her eyes on the jury
+and fixed them on Nekhludoff, and her face grew serious and even severe.
+One of her serious eyes squinted, and those two strange eyes for some
+time gazed at Nekhludoff, who, in spite of the terrors that seized him,
+could not take his look off these squinting eyes, with their bright,
+clear whites.
+
+He thought of that dreadful night, with its mist, the ice breaking on
+the river below, and when the waning moon, with horns turned upwards,
+that had risen towards morning, lit up something black and weird. These
+two black eyes now looking at him reminded him of this weird, black
+something. "She has recognised me," he thought, and Nekhludoff shrank as
+if expecting a blow. But she had not recognised him. She sighed quietly
+and again looked at the president. Nekhludoff also sighed. "Oh, if it
+would only get on quicker," he thought.
+
+He now felt the same loathing and pity and vexation as when, out
+shooting, he was obliged to kill a wounded bird. The wounded bird
+struggles in the game bag. One is disgusted and yet feels pity, and one
+is in a hurry to kill the bird and forget it.
+
+Such mixed feelings filled Nekhludoff's breast as he sat listening to
+the examination of the witnesses.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE MEDICAL REPORT.
+
+But, as if to spite him, the case dragged out to a great length. After
+each witness had been examined separately and the expert last of all,
+and a great number of useless questions had been put, with the usual
+air of importance, by the public prosecutor and by both advocates, the
+president invited the jury to examine the objects offered as material
+evidence. They consisted of an enormous diamond ring, which had
+evidently been worn on the first finger, and a test tube in which the
+poison had been analysed. These things had seals and labels attached to
+them.
+
+Just as the witnesses were about to look at these things, the public
+prosecutor rose and demanded that before they did this the results of
+the doctor's examination of the body should be read. The president, who
+was hurrying the business through as fast as he could in order to visit
+his Swiss friend, though he knew that the reading of this paper could
+have no other effect than that of producing weariness and putting off
+the dinner hour, and that the public prosecutor wanted it read simply
+because he knew he had a right to demand it, had no option but to
+express his consent.
+
+The secretary got out the doctor's report and again began to read in his
+weary lisping voice, making no distinction between the "r's" and "l's."
+
+The external examination proved that:
+
+"1. Theropont Smelkoff's height was six feet five inches.
+
+"Not so bad, that. A very good size," whispered the merchant, with
+interest, into Nekhludoff's ear.
+
+"2. He looked about 40 years of age.
+
+"3. The body was of a swollen appearance.
+
+"4. The flesh was of a greenish colour, with dark spots in several
+places.
+
+"5. The skin was raised in blisters of different sizes and in places had
+come off in large pieces.
+
+"6. The hair was chestnut; it was thick, and separated easily from the
+skin when touched.
+
+"7. The eye-balls protruded from their sockets and the cornea had grown
+dim.
+
+"8. Out of the nostrils, both ears, and the mouth oozed serous liquid;
+the mouth was half open.
+
+"9. The neck had almost disappeared, owing to the swelling of the face
+and chest."
+
+And so on and so on.
+
+Four pages were covered with the 27 paragraphs describing all the
+details of the external examination of the enormous, fat, swollen, and
+decomposing body of the merchant who had been making merry in the
+town. The indefinite loathing that Nekhludoff felt was increased by the
+description of the corpse. Katusha's life, and the scrum oozing from
+the nostrils of the corpse, and the eyes that protruded out of their
+sockets, and his own treatment of her--all seemed to belong to the same
+order of things, and he felt surrounded and wholly absorbed by things of
+the same nature.
+
+When the reading of the report of the external examination was ended,
+the president heaved a sigh and raised his hand, hoping it was finished;
+but the secretary at once went on to the description of the internal
+examination. The president's head again dropped into his hand and he
+shut his eyes. The merchant next to Nekhludoff could hardly keep awake,
+and now and then his body swayed to and fro. The prisoners and the
+gendarmes sat perfectly quiet.
+
+The internal examination showed that:
+
+"1. The skin was easily detachable from the bones of the skull, and
+there was no coagulated blood.
+
+"2. The bones of the skull were of average thickness and in sound
+condition.
+
+"3. On the membrane of the brain there were two discoloured spots about
+four inches long, the membrane itself being of a dull white." And so on
+for 13 paragraphs more. Then followed the names and signatures of
+the assistants, and the doctor's conclusion showing that the changes
+observed in the stomach, and to a lesser degree in the bowels and
+kidneys, at the postmortem examination, and described in the official
+report, gave great probability to the conclusion that Smelkoff's death
+was caused by poison which had entered his stomach mixed with alcohol.
+To decide from the state of the stomach what poison had been introduced
+was difficult; but it was necessary to suppose that the poison entered
+the stomach mixed with alcohol, since a great quantity of the latter was
+found in Smelkoff's stomach.
+
+"He could drink, and no mistake," again whispered the merchant, who had
+just waked up.
+
+The reading of this report had taken a full hour, but it had not
+satisfied the public prosecutor, for, when it had been read through and
+the president turned to him, saying, "I suppose it is superfluous to
+read the report of the examination of the internal organs?" he answered
+in a severe tone, without looking at the president, "I shall ask to have
+it read."
+
+He raised himself a little, and showed by his manner that he had a right
+to have this report read, and would claim this right, and that if that
+were not granted it would serve as a cause of appeal.
+
+The member of the Court with the big beard, who suffered from catarrh of
+the stomach, feeling quite done up, turned to the president:
+
+"What is the use of reading all this? It is only dragging it out. These
+new brooms do not sweep clean; they only take a long while doing it."
+
+The member with the gold spectacles said nothing, but only looked
+gloomily in front of him, expecting nothing good, either from his wife
+or life in general. The reading of the report commenced.
+
+"In the year 188-, on February 15th, I, the undersigned, commissioned
+by the medical department, made an examination, No. 638," the secretary
+began again with firmness and raising the pitch of his voice as if to
+dispel the sleepiness that had overtaken all present, "in the presence
+of the assistant medical inspector, of the internal organs:
+
+"1. The right lung and the heart (contained in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+
+"2. The contents of the stomach (in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+
+"3. The stomach itself (in a 6-lb. glass jar).
+
+"4. The liver, the spleen and the kidneys (in a 9-lb. glass jar).
+
+"5. The intestines (in a 9-lb. earthenware jar)."
+
+The president here whispered to one of the members, then stooped to the
+other, and having received their consent, he said: "The Court considers
+the reading of this report superfluous." The secretary stopped reading
+and folded the paper, and the public prosecutor angrily began to write
+down something. "The gentlemen of the jury may now examine the articles
+of material evidence," said the president. The foreman and several of
+the others rose and went to the table, not quite knowing what to do with
+their hands. They looked in turn at the glass, the test tube, and the
+ring. The merchant even tried on the ring.
+
+"Ah! that was a finger," he said, returning to his place; "like a
+cucumber," he added. Evidently the image he had formed in his mind of
+the gigantic merchant amused him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE PROSECUTOR AND THE ADVOCATES.
+
+When the examination of the articles of material evidence was finished,
+the president announced that the investigation was now concluded and
+immediately called on the prosecutor to proceed, hoping that as the
+latter was also a man, he, too, might feel inclined to smoke or dine,
+and show some mercy on the rest. But the public prosecutor showed mercy
+neither to himself nor to any one else. He was very stupid by nature,
+but, besides this, he had had the misfortune of finishing school with a
+gold medal and of receiving a reward for his essay on "Servitude" when
+studying Roman Law at the University, and was therefore self-confident
+and self-satisfied in the highest degree (his success with the ladies
+also conducing to this) and his stupidity had become extraordinary.
+
+When the word was given to him, he got up slowly, showing the whole of
+his graceful figure in his embroidered uniform. Putting his hand on the
+desk he looked round the room, slightly bowing his head, and, avoiding
+the eyes of the prisoners, began to read the speech he had prepared
+while the reports were being read.
+
+"Gentlemen of the jury! The business that now lies before you is, if I
+may so express myself, very characteristic."
+
+The speech of a public prosecutor, according to his views, should always
+have a social importance, like the celebrated speeches made by the
+advocates who have become distinguished. True, the audience consisted of
+three women--a semptress, a cook, and Simeon's sister--and a coachman;
+but this did not matter. The celebrities had begun in the same way. To
+be always at the height of his position, i.e., to penetrate into the
+depths of the psychological significance of crime and to discover the
+wounds of society, was one of the prosecutor's principles.
+
+"You see before you, gentlemen of the jury, a crime characteristic, if
+I may so express myself, of the end of our century; bearing, so to say,
+the specific features of that very painful phenomenon, the corruption to
+which those elements of our present-day society, which are, so to say,
+particularly exposed to the burning rays of this process, are subject."
+
+The public prosecutor spoke at great length, trying not to forget any of
+the notions he had formed in his mind, and, on the other hand, never to
+hesitate, and let his speech flow on for an hour and a quarter without a
+break.
+
+Only once he stopped and for some time stood swallowing his saliva, but
+he soon mastered himself and made up for the interruption by heightened
+eloquence. He spoke, now with a tender, insinuating accent, stepping
+from foot to foot and looking at the jury, now in quiet, business-like
+tones, glancing into his notebook, then with a loud, accusing voice,
+looking from the audience to the advocates. But he avoided looking at
+the prisoners, who were all three fixedly gazing at him. Every new craze
+then in vogue among his set was alluded to in his speech; everything
+that then was, and some things that still are, considered to be the last
+words of scientific wisdom: the laws of heredity and inborn criminality,
+evolution and the struggle for existence, hypnotism and hypnotic
+influence.
+
+According to his definition, the merchant Smelkoff was of the genuine
+Russian type, and had perished in consequence of his generous, trusting
+nature, having fallen into the hands of deeply degraded individuals.
+
+Simeon Kartinkin was the atavistic production of serfdom, a stupefied,
+ignorant, unprincipled man, who had not even any religion. Euphemia was
+his mistress, and a victim of heredity; all the signs of degeneration
+were noticeable in her. The chief wire-puller in this affair was
+Maslova, presenting the phenomenon of decadence in its lowest form.
+"This woman," he said, looking at her, "has, as we have to-day heard
+from her mistress in this court, received an education; she cannot only
+read and write, but she knows French; she is illegitimate, and probably
+carries in her the germs of criminality. She was educated in an
+enlightened, noble family and might have lived by honest work, but she
+deserts her benefactress, gives herself up to a life of shame in which
+she is distinguished from her companions by her education, and chiefly,
+gentlemen of the jury, as you have heard from her mistress, by her power
+of acting on the visitors by means of that mysterious capacity lately
+investigated by science, especially by the school of Charcot, known by
+the name of hypnotic influence. By these means she gets hold of this
+Russian, this kind-hearted Sadko, [Sadko, the hero of a legend] the rich
+guest, and uses his trust in order first to rob and then pitilessly to
+murder him."
+
+"Well, he is piling it on now, isn't he?" said the president with a
+smile, bending towards the serious member.
+
+"A fearful blockhead!" said the serious member.
+
+Meanwhile the public prosecutor went on with his speech. "Gentlemen of
+the jury," gracefully swaying his body, "the fate of society is to a
+certain extent in your power. Your verdict will influence it. Grasp the
+full meaning of this crime, the danger that awaits society from those
+whom I may perhaps be permitted to call pathological individuals, such
+as Maslova. Guard it from infection; guard the innocent and strong
+elements of society from contagion or even destruction."
+
+And as if himself overcome by the significance of the expected verdict,
+the public prosecutor sank into his chair, highly delighted with his
+speech.
+
+The sense of the speech, when divested of all its flowers of rhetoric,
+was that Maslova, having gained the merchant's confidence, hypnotised
+him and went to his lodgings with his key meaning to take all the money
+herself, but having been caught in the act by Simeon and Euphemia had to
+share it with them. Then, in order to hide the traces of the crime, she
+had returned to the lodgings with the merchant and there poisoned him.
+
+After the prosecutor had spoken, a middle-aged man in swallow-tail coat
+and low-cut waistcoat showing a large half-circle of starched white
+shirt, rose from the advocates' bench and made a speech in defence of
+Kartinkin and Botchkova; this was an advocate engaged by them for 300
+roubles. He acquitted them both and put all the blame on Maslova. He
+denied the truth of Maslova's statements that Botchkova and Kartinkin
+were with her when she took the money, laying great stress on the
+point that her evidence could not be accepted, she being charged with
+poisoning. "The 2,500 roubles," the advocate said, "could have been
+easily earned by two honest people getting from three to five roubles
+per day in tips from the lodgers. The merchant's money was stolen by
+Maslova and given away, or even lost, as she was not in a normal state."
+
+The poisoning was committed by Maslova alone; therefore he begged the
+jury to acquit Kartinkin and Botchkova of stealing the money; or if they
+could not acquit them of the theft, at least to admit that it was done
+without any participation in the poisoning.
+
+In conclusion the advocate remarked, with a thrust at the public
+prosecutor, that "the brilliant observations of that gentleman on
+heredity, while explaining scientific facts concerning heredity, were
+inapplicable in this case, as Botchkova was of unknown parentage." The
+public prosecutor put something down on paper with an angry look, and
+shrugged his shoulders in contemptuous surprise.
+
+Then Maslova's advocate rose, and timidly and hesitatingly began his
+speech in her defence.
+
+Without denying that she had taken part in the stealing of the money,
+he insisted on the fact that she had no intention of poisoning Smelkoff,
+but had given him the powder only to make him fall asleep. He tried to
+go in for a little eloquence in giving a description of how Maslova was
+led into a life of debauchery by a man who had remained unpunished while
+she had to bear all the weight of her fall; but this excursion into the
+domain of psychology was so unsuccessful that it made everybody feel
+uncomfortable. When he muttered something about men's cruelty and
+women's helplessness, the president tried to help him by asking him to
+keep closer to the facts of the case. When he had finished the public
+prosecutor got up to reply. He defended his position against the first
+advocate, saying that even if Botchkova was of unknown parentage the
+truth of the doctrine of heredity was thereby in no way invalidated,
+since the laws of heredity were so far proved by science that we can not
+only deduce the crime from heredity, but heredity from the crime. As to
+the statement made in defence of Maslova, that she was the victim of an
+imaginary (he laid a particularly venomous stress on the word imaginary)
+betrayer, he could only say that from the evidence before them it was
+much more likely that she had played the part of temptress to many and
+many a victim who had fallen into her hands. Having said this he sat
+down in triumph. Then the prisoners were offered permission to speak in
+their own defence.
+
+Euphemia Botchkova repeated once more that she knew nothing about it and
+had taken part in nothing, and firmly laid the whole blame on Maslova.
+Simeon Kartinkin only repeated several times: "It is your business, but
+I am innocent; it's unjust." Maslova said nothing in her defence. Told
+she might do so by the president, she only lifted her eyes to him, cast
+a look round the room like a hunted animal, and, dropping her head,
+began to cry, sobbing aloud.
+
+"What is the matter?" the merchant asked Nekhludoff, hearing him utter
+a strange sound. This was the sound of weeping fiercely kept back.
+Nekhludoff had not yet understood the significance of his present
+position, and attributed the sobs he could hardly keep back and the
+tears that filled his eyes to the weakness of his nerves. He put on his
+pince-nez in order to hide the tears, then got out his handkerchief and
+began blowing his nose.
+
+Fear of the disgrace that would befall him if every one in the court
+knew of his conduct stifled the inner working of his soul. This fear
+was, during this first period, stronger than all else.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE SUMMING UP.
+
+After the last words of the prisoners had been heard, the form in which
+the questions were to be put to the jury was settled, which also took
+some time. At last the questions were formulated, and the president
+began the summing up.
+
+Before putting the case to the jury, he spoke to them for some time in a
+pleasant, homely manner, explaining that burglary was burglary and theft
+was theft, and that stealing from a place which was under lock and key
+was stealing from a place under lock and key. While he was explaining
+this, he looked several times at Nekhludoff as if wishing to impress
+upon him these important facts, in hopes that, having understood it,
+Nekhludoff would make his fellow-jurymen also understand it. When he
+considered that the jury were sufficiently imbued with these facts, he
+proceeded to enunciate another truth--namely, that a murder is an
+action which has the death of a human being as its consequence, and that
+poisoning could therefore also be termed murder. When, according to his
+opinion, this truth had also been received by the jury, he went on to
+explain that if theft and murder had been committed at the same time,
+the combination of the crimes was theft with murder.
+
+Although he was himself anxious to finish as soon as possible, although
+he knew that his Swiss friend would be waiting for him, he had grown so
+used to his occupation that, having begun to speak, he could not stop
+himself, and therefore he went on to impress on the jury with much
+detail that if they found the prisoners guilty, they would have the
+right to give a verdict of guilty; and if they found them not guilty,
+to give a verdict of not guilty; and if they found them guilty of one of
+the crimes and not of the other, they might give a verdict of guilty
+on the one count and of not guilty on the other. Then he explained that
+though this right was given them they should use it with reason.
+
+He was going to add that if they gave an affirmative answer to any
+question that was put to them they would thereby affirm everything
+included in the question, so that if they did not wish to affirm the
+whole of the question they should mention the part of the question they
+wished to be excepted. But, glancing at the clock, and seeing it was
+already five minutes to three, he resolved to trust to their being
+intelligent enough to understand this without further comment.
+
+"The facts of this case are the following," began the president, and
+repeated all that had already been said several times by the advocates,
+the public prosecutor and the witnesses.
+
+The president spoke, and the members on each side of him listened with
+deeply-attentive expressions, but looked from time to time at the clock,
+for they considered the speech too long though very good--i.e., such
+as it ought to be. The public prosecutor, the lawyers, and, in fact,
+everyone in the court, shared the same impression. The president
+finished the summing up. Then he found it necessary to tell the jury
+what they all knew, or might have found out by reading it up--i.e., how
+they were to consider the case, count the votes, in case of a tie to
+acquit the prisoners, and so on.
+
+Everything seemed to have been told; but no, the president could not
+forego his right of speaking as yet. It was so pleasant to hear the
+impressive tones of his own voice, and therefore he found it necessary
+to say a few words more about the importance of the rights given to the
+jury, how carefully they should use the rights and how they ought not
+to abuse them, about their being on their oath, that they were the
+conscience of society, that the secrecy of the debating-room should be
+considered sacred, etc.
+
+From the time the president commenced his speech, Maslova watched him
+without moving her eyes as if afraid of losing a single word; so that
+Nekhludoff was not afraid of meeting her eyes and kept looking at her
+all the time. And his mind passed through those phases in which a face
+which we have not seen for many years first strikes us with the outward
+changes brought about during the time of separation, and then gradually
+becomes more and more like its old self, when the changes made by
+time seem to disappear, and before our spiritual eyes rises only the
+principal expression of one exceptional, unique individuality. Yes,
+though dressed in a prison cloak, and in spite of the developed figure,
+the fulness of the bosom and lower part of the face, in spite of a few
+wrinkles on the forehead and temples and the swollen eyes, this was
+certainly the same Katusha who, on that Easter eve, had so innocently
+looked up to him whom she loved, with her fond, laughing eyes full of
+joy and life.
+
+"What a strange coincidence that after ten years, during which I never
+saw her, this case should have come up today when I am on the jury, and
+that it is in the prisoners' dock that I see her again! And how will it
+end? Oh, dear, if they would only get on quicker."
+
+Still he would not give in to the feelings of repentance which began to
+arise within him. He tried to consider it all as a coincidence, which
+would pass without infringing his manner of life. He felt himself in
+the position of a puppy, when its master, taking it by the scruff of
+its neck, rubs its nose in the mess it has made. The puppy whines, draws
+back and wants to get away as far as possible from the effects of its
+misdeed, but the pitiless master does not let go.
+
+And so, Nekhludoff, feeling all the repulsiveness of what he had done,
+felt also the powerful hand of the Master, but he did not feel the whole
+significance of his action yet and would not recognise the Master's
+hand. He did not wish to believe that it was the effect of his deed that
+lay before him, but the pitiless hand of the Master held him and he felt
+he could not get away. He was still keeping up his courage and sat on
+his chair in the first row in his usual self-possessed pose, one leg
+carelessly thrown over the other, and playing with his pince-nez. Yet
+all the while, in the depths of his soul, he felt the cruelty, cowardice
+and baseness, not only of this particular action of his but of his whole
+self-willed, depraved, cruel, idle life; and that dreadful veil which
+had in some unaccountable manner hidden from him this sin of his and
+the whole of his subsequent life was beginning to shake, and he caught
+glimpses of what was covered by that veil.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE VERDICT.
+
+At last the president finished his speech, and lifting the list of
+questions with a graceful movement of his arm he handed it to the
+foreman, who came up to take it. The jury, glad to be able to get
+into the debating-court, got up one after the other and left the room,
+looking as if a bit ashamed of themselves and again not knowing what
+to do with their hands. As soon as the door was closed behind them
+a gendarme came up to it, pulled his sword out of the scabbard, and,
+holding it up against his shoulder, stood at the door. The judges got up
+and went away. The prisoners were also led out. When the jury came
+into the debating-room the first thing they did was to take out their
+cigarettes, as before, and begin smoking. The sense of the unnaturalness
+and falseness of their position, which all of them had experienced
+while sitting in their places in the court, passed when they entered the
+debating-room and started smoking, and they settled down with a feeling
+of relief and at once began an animated conversation.
+
+"'Tisn't the girl's fault. She's got mixed up in it," said the kindly
+merchant. "We must recommend her to mercy."
+
+"That's just what we are going to consider," said the foreman. "We must
+not give way to our personal impressions."
+
+"The president's summing up was good," remarked the colonel.
+
+"Good? Why, it nearly sent me to sleep!"
+
+"The chief point is that the servants could have known nothing about the
+money if Maslova had not been in accord with them," said the clerk of
+Jewish extraction.
+
+"Well, do you think that it was she who stole the money?" asked one of
+the jury.
+
+"I will never believe it," cried the kindly merchant; "it was all that
+red-eyed hag's doing."
+
+"They are a nice lot, all of them," said the colonel.
+
+"But she says she never went into the room."
+
+"Oh, believe her by all means."
+
+"I should not believe that jade, not for the world."
+
+"Whether you believe her or not does not settle the question," said the
+clerk.
+
+"The girl had the key," said the colonel.
+
+"What if she had?" retorted the merchant.
+
+"And the ring?"
+
+"But didn't she say all about it?" again cried the merchant. "The fellow
+had a temper of his own, and had had a drop too much besides, and gave
+the girl a licking; what could be simpler? Well, then he's sorry--quite
+naturally. 'There, never mind,' says he; 'take this.' Why, I heard them
+say he was six foot five high; I should think he must have weighed about
+20 stones."
+
+"That's not the point," said Peter Gerasimovitch. "The question is,
+whether she was the instigator and inciter in this affair, or the
+servants?"
+
+"It was not possible for the servants to do it alone; she had the key."
+
+This kind of random talk went on for a considerable time. At last the
+foreman said: "I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but had we not better take
+our places at the table and discuss the matter? Come, please." And he
+took the chair.
+
+The questions were expressed in the following manner.
+
+1. Is the peasant of the village Borki, Krapivinskia district, Simeon
+Petrov Kartinkin, 33 years of age, guilty of having, in agreement with
+other persons, given the merchant Smelkoff, on the 17th January, 188-,
+in the town of N-----, with intent to deprive him of life, for the
+purpose of robbing him, poisoned brandy, which caused Smelkoff's death,
+and of having stolen from him about 2,500 roubles in money and a diamond
+ring?
+
+2. Is the meschanka Euphemia Ivanovna Botchkova, 43 years of age, guilty
+of the crimes described above?
+
+3. Is the meschanka Katerina Michaelovna Maslova, 27 years of age,
+guilty of the crimes described in the first question?
+
+4. If the prisoner Euphemia Botchkova is not guilty according to the
+first question, is she not guilty of having, on the 17th January, in the
+town of N----, while in service at the hotel Mauritania, stolen from a
+locked portmanteau, belonging to the merchant Smelkoff, a lodger in that
+hotel, and which was in the room occupied by him, 2,500 roubles, for
+which object she unlocked the portmanteau with a key she brought and
+fitted to the lock?
+
+The foreman read the first question.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, what do you think?" This question was quickly
+answered. All agreed to say "Guilty," as if convinced that Kartinkin
+had taken part both in the poisoning and the robbery. An old artelshik,
+[member of an artel, an association of workmen, in which the members
+share profits and liabilities] whose answers were all in favour of
+acquittal, was the only exception.
+
+The foreman thought he did not understand, and began to point out to him
+that everything tended to prove Kartinkin's guilt. The old man answered
+that he did understand, but still thought it better to have pity on him.
+"We are not saints ourselves," and he kept to his opinion.
+
+The answer to the second question concerning Botchkova was, after much
+dispute and many exclamations, answered by the words, "Not guilty,"
+there being no clear proofs of her having taken part in the poisoning--a
+fact her advocate had strongly insisted on. The merchant, anxious to
+acquit Maslova, insisted that Botchkova was the chief instigator of it
+all. Many of the jury shared this view, but the foreman, wishing to be
+in strict accord with the law, declared they had no grounds to consider
+her as an accomplice in the poisoning. After much disputing the
+foreman's opinion triumphed.
+
+To the fourth question concerning Botchkova the answer was "Guilty." But
+on the artelshik's insistence she was recommended to mercy.
+
+The third question, concerning Maslova, raised a fierce dispute. The
+foreman maintained she was guilty both of the poisoning and the theft,
+to which the merchant would not agree. The colonel, the clerk and the
+old artelshik sided with the merchant, the rest seemed shaky, and the
+opinion of the foreman began to gain ground, chiefly because all the
+jurymen were getting tired, and preferred to take up the view that would
+bring them sooner to a decision and thus liberate them.
+
+From all that had passed, and from his former knowledge of Maslova,
+Nekhludoff was certain that she was innocent of both the theft and the
+poisoning. And he felt sure that all the others would come to the same
+conclusion. When he saw that the merchant's awkward defence (evidently
+based on his physical admiration for her, which he did not even try
+to hide) and the foreman's insistence, and especially everybody's
+weariness, were all tending to her condemnation, he longed to state his
+objections, yet dared not, lest his relations with Maslova should be
+discovered. He felt he could not allow things to go on without stating
+his objection; and, blushing and growing pale again, was about to speak
+when Peter Gerasimovitch, irritated by the authoritative manner of
+the foreman, began to raise his objections and said the very things
+Nekhludoff was about to say.
+
+"Allow me one moment," he said. "You seem to think that her having the
+key proves she is guilty of the theft; but what could be easier than
+for the servants to open the portmanteau with a false key after she was
+gone?"
+
+"Of course, of course," said the merchant.
+
+"She could not have taken the money, because in her position she would
+hardly know what to do with it."
+
+"That's just what I say," remarked the merchant.
+
+"But it is very likely that her coming put the idea into the servants'
+heads and that they grasped the opportunity and shoved all the blame
+on her." Peter Gerasimovitch spoke so irritably that the foreman became
+irritated too, and went on obstinately defending the opposite views; but
+Peter Gerasimovitch spoke so convincingly that the majority agreed with
+him, and decided that Maslova was not guilty of stealing the money and
+that the ring was given her.
+
+But when the question of her having taken part in the poisoning was
+raised, her zealous defender, the merchant, declared that she must
+be acquitted, because she could have no reason for the poisoning. The
+foreman, however, said that it was impossible to acquit her, because she
+herself had pleaded guilty to having given the powder.
+
+"Yes, but thinking it was opium," said the merchant.
+
+"Opium can also deprive one of life," said the colonel, who was fond
+of wandering from the subject, and he began telling how his
+brother-in-law's wife would have died of an overdose of opium if there
+had not been a doctor near at hand to take the necessary measures. The
+colonel told his story so impressively, with such self-possession and
+dignity, that no one had the courage to interrupt him. Only the clerk,
+infected by his example, decided to break in with a story of his own:
+"There are some who get so used to it that they can take 40 drops. I
+have a relative--," but the colonel would not stand the interruption,
+and went on to relate what effects the opium had on his brother-in-law's
+wife.
+
+"But, gentlemen, do you know it is getting on towards five o'clock?"
+said one of the jury.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, what are we to say, then?" inquired the foreman.
+"Shall we say she is guilty, but without intent to rob? And without
+stealing any property? Will that do?" Peter Gerasimovitch, pleased with
+his victory, agreed.
+
+"But she must be recommended to mercy," said the merchant.
+
+All agreed; only the old artelshik insisted that they should say "Not
+guilty."
+
+"It comes to the same thing," explained the foreman; "without intent to
+rob, and without stealing any property. Therefore, 'Not guilty,' that's
+evident."
+
+"All right; that'll do. And we recommend her to mercy," said the
+merchant, gaily.
+
+They were all so tired, so confused by the discussions, that nobody
+thought of saying that she was guilty of giving the powder but without
+the intent of taking life. Nekhludoff was so excited that he did not
+notice this omission, and so the answers were written down in the form
+agreed upon and taken to the court.
+
+Rabelais says that a lawyer who was trying a case quoted all sorts of
+laws, read 20 pages of judicial senseless Latin, and then proposed to
+the judges to throw dice, and if the numbers proved odd the defendant
+would be right, if not, the plaintiff.
+
+It was much the same in this case. The resolution was taken, not because
+everybody agreed upon it, but because the president, who had been
+summing up at such length, omitted to say what he always said on such
+occasions, that the answer might be, "Yes, guilty, but without the
+intent of taking life;" because the colonel had related the story of his
+brother-in-law's wife at such great length; because Nekhludoff was too
+excited to notice that the proviso "without intent to take life" had
+been omitted, and thought that the words "without intent" nullified the
+conviction; because Peter Gerasimovitch had retired from the room while
+the questions and answers were being read, and chiefly because, being
+tired, and wishing to get away as soon as possible, all were ready to
+agree with the decision which would bring matters to an end soonest.
+
+The jurymen rang the bell. The gendarme who had stood outside the door
+with his sword drawn put the sword back into the scabbard and stepped
+aside. The judges took their seats and the jury came out one by one.
+
+The foreman brought in the paper with an air of solemnity and handed
+it to the president, who looked at it, and, spreading out his hands
+in astonishment, turned to consult his companions. The president was
+surprised that the jury, having put in a proviso--without intent to
+rob--did not put in a second proviso--without intent to take life. From
+the decision of the jury it followed that Maslova had not stolen, nor
+robbed, and yet poisoned a man without any apparent reason.
+
+"Just see what an absurd decision they have come to," he whispered to
+the member on his left. "This means penal servitude in Siberia, and she
+is innocent."
+
+"Surely you do not mean to say she is innocent?" answered the serious
+member.
+
+"Yes, she is positively innocent. I think this is a case for putting
+Article 817 into practice (Article 817 states that if the Court
+considers the decision of the jury unjust it may set it aside)."
+
+"What do you think?" said the president, turning to the other member.
+The kindly member did not answer at once. He looked at the number on a
+paper before him and added up the figures; the sum would not divide
+by three. He had settled in his mind that if it did divide by three he
+would agree to the president's proposal, but though the sum would not so
+divide his kindness made him agree all the same.
+
+"I, too, think it should be done," he said.
+
+"And you?" asked the president, turning to the serious member.
+
+"On no account," he answered, firmly. "As it is, the papers accuse the
+jury of acquitting prisoners. What will they say if the Court does it?
+I, shall not agree to that on any account."
+
+The president looked at his watch. "It is a pity, but what's to be
+done?" and handed the questions to the foreman to read out. All got
+up, and the foreman, stepping from foot to foot, coughed, and read the
+questions and the answers. All the Court, secretary, advocates, and even
+the public prosecutor, expressed surprise. The prisoners sat impassive,
+evidently not understanding the meaning of the answers. Everybody sat
+down again, and the president asked the prosecutor what punishments the
+prisoners were to be subjected to.
+
+The prosecutor, glad of his unexpected success in getting Maslova
+convicted, and attributing the success entirely to his own eloquence,
+looked up the necessary information, rose and said: "With Simeon
+Kartinkin I should deal according to Statute 1,452 paragraph 93.
+Euphemia Botchkova according to Statute . . ., etc. Katerina Maslova
+according to Statute . . ., etc."
+
+All three punishments were the heaviest that could be inflicted.
+
+"The Court will adjourn to consider the sentence," said the president,
+rising. Everybody rose after him, and with the pleasant feeling of a
+task well done began to leave the room or move about in it.
+
+"D'you know, sirs, we have made a shameful hash of it?" said Peter
+Gerasimovitch, approaching Nekhludoff, to whom the foreman was relating
+something. "Why, we've got her to Siberia."
+
+"What are you saying?" exclaimed Nekhludoff. This time he did not notice
+the teacher's familiarity.
+
+"Why, we did not put in our answer 'Guilty, but without intent of
+causing death.' The secretary just told me the public prosecutor is for
+condemning her to 15 years' penal servitude."
+
+"Well, but it was decided so," said the foreman.
+
+Peter Gerasimovitch began to dispute this, saying that since she did
+not take the money it followed naturally that she could not have had any
+intention of committing murder.
+
+"But I read the answer before going out," said the foreman, defending
+himself, "and nobody objected."
+
+"I had just then gone out of the room," said Peter Gerasimovitch,
+turning to Nekhludoff, "and your thoughts must have been wool-gathering
+to let the thing pass."
+
+"I never imagined this," Nekhludoff replied.
+
+"Oh, you didn't?"
+
+"Oh, well, we can get it put right," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Oh, dear no; it's finished."
+
+Nekhludoff looked at the prisoners. They whose fate was being decided
+still sat motionless behind the grating in front of the soldiers.
+Maslova was smiling. Another feeling stirred in Nekhludoff's soul. Up to
+now, expecting her acquittal and thinking she would remain in the town,
+he was uncertain how to act towards her. Any kind of relations with her
+would be so very difficult. But Siberia and penal servitude at once cut
+off every possibility of any kind of relations with her. The wounded
+bird would stop struggling in the game-bag, and no longer remind him of
+its existence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE TRIAL--THE SENTENCE.
+
+Peter Gerasimovitch's assumption was correct. The president came back
+from the debating room with a paper, and read as follows:--"April 28th,
+188-. By His Imperial Majesty's ukase No. ----- The Criminal Court, on
+the strength of the decision of the jury, in accordance with Section
+3 of Statute 771, Section 3 of Statutes 770 and 777, decrees that the
+peasant, Simeon Kartinkin, 33 years of age, and the meschanka Katerina
+Maslova, 27 years of age, are to be deprived of all property rights and
+to be sent to penal servitude in Siberia, Kartinkin for eight, Maslova
+for four years, with the consequences stated in Statute 25 of the code.
+The meschanka Botchkova, 43 years of age, to be deprived of all special
+personal and acquired rights, and to be imprisoned for three years with
+consequences in accord with Statute 48 of the code. The costs of the
+case to be borne equally by the prisoners; and, in the case of their
+being without sufficient property, the costs to be transferred to the
+Treasury. Articles of material evidence to be sold, the ring to be
+returned, the phials destroyed." Botchkova was condemned to prison,
+Simeon Kartinken and Katerina Maslova to the loss of all special rights
+and privileges and to penal servitude in Siberia, he for eight and she
+for four years.
+
+Kartinkin stood holding his arms close to his sides and moving his lips.
+Botchkova seemed perfectly calm. Maslova, when she heard the sentence,
+blushed scarlet. "I'm not guilty, not guilty!" she suddenly cried, so
+that it resounded through the room. "It is a sin! I am not guilty! I
+never wished--I never thought! It is the truth I am saying--the truth!"
+and sinking on the bench she burst into tears and sobbed aloud. When
+Kartinkin and Botchkova went out she still sat crying, so that a
+gendarme had to touch the sleeve of her cloak.
+
+"No; it is impossible to leave it as it is," said Nekhludoff to himself,
+utterly forgetting his bad thoughts. He did not know why he wished to
+look at her once more, but hurried out into the corridor. There was
+quite a crowd at the door. The advocates and jury were going out,
+pleased to have finished the business, and he was obliged to wait a few
+seconds, and when he at last got out into the corridor she was far
+in front. He hurried along the corridor after her, regardless of the
+attention he was arousing, caught her up, passed her, and stopped. She
+had ceased crying and only sobbed, wiping her red, discoloured face with
+the end of the kerchief on her head. She passed without noticing him.
+Then he hurried back to see the president. The latter had already left
+the court, and Nekhludoff followed him into the lobby and went up to
+him just as he had put on his light grey overcoat and was taking the
+silver-mounted walking-stick which an attendant was handing him.
+
+"Sir, may I have a few words with you concerning some business I have
+just decided upon?" said Nekhludoff. "I am one of the jury."
+
+"Oh, certainly, Prince Nekhludoff. I shall be delighted. I think we
+have met before," said the president, pressing Nekhludoff's hand and
+recalling with pleasure the evening when he first met Nekhludoff, and
+when he had danced so gaily, better than all the young people. "What can
+I do for you?"
+
+"There is a mistake in the answer concerning Maslova. She is not guilty
+of the poisoning and yet she is condemned to penal servitude," said
+Nekhludoff, with a preoccupied and gloomy air.
+
+"The Court passed the sentence in accordance with the answers you
+yourselves gave," said the president, moving towards the front door;
+"though they did not seem to be quite in accord." And he remembered
+that he had been going to explain to the jury that a verdict of "guilty"
+meant guilty of intentional murder unless the words "without intent to
+take life" were added, but had, in his hurry to get the business over,
+omitted to do so.
+
+"Yes, but could not the mistake be rectified?"
+
+"A reason for an appeal can always be found. You will have to speak to
+an advocate," said the president, putting on his hat a little to one
+side and continuing to move towards the door.
+
+"But this is terrible."
+
+"Well, you see, there were two possibilities before Maslova," said the
+president, evidently wishing to be as polite and pleasant to Nekhludoff
+as he could. Then, having arranged his whiskers over his coat collar, he
+put his hand lightly under Nekhludoff's elbow, and, still directing his
+steps towards the front door, he said, "You are going, too?"
+
+"Yes," said Nekhludoff, quickly getting his coat, and following him.
+
+They went out into the bright, merry sunlight, and had to raise their
+voices because of the rattling of the wheels on the pavement.
+
+"The situation is a curious one, you see," said the president; "what lay
+before this Maslova was one of two things: either to be almost acquitted
+and only imprisoned for a short time, or, taking the preliminary
+confinement into consideration, perhaps not at all--or Siberia. There is
+nothing between. Had you but added the words, 'without intent to cause
+death,' she would have been acquitted."
+
+"Yes, it was inexcusable of me to omit that," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"That's where the whole matter lies," said the president, with a smile,
+and looked at his watch. He had only three-quarters of an hour left
+before the time appointed by his Clara would elapse.
+
+"Now, if you like to speak to the advocates you'll have to find a reason
+for an appeal; that can be easily done." Then, turning to an isvostchik,
+he called out, "To the Dvoryanskaya 30 copecks; I never give more."
+
+"All right, your honour; here you are."
+
+"Good-afternoon. If I can be of any use, my address is House Dvornikoff,
+on the Dvoryanskaya; it's easy to remember." And he bowed in a friendly
+manner as he got into the trap and drove off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF CONSULTS AN ADVOCATE.
+
+His conversation with the president and the fresh air quieted Nekhludoff
+a little. He now thought that the feelings experienced by him had been
+exaggerated by the unusual surroundings in which he had spent the whole
+of the morning, and by that wonderful and startling coincidence. Still,
+it was absolutely necessary to take some steps to lighten Maslova's
+fate, and to take them quickly. "Yes, at once! It will be best to find
+out here in the court where the advocate Fanarin or Mikishin lives."
+These were two well-known advocates whom Nekhludoff called to mind. He
+returned to the court, took off his overcoat, and went upstairs. In the
+first corridor he met Fanarin himself. He stopped him, and told him that
+he was just going to look him up on a matter of business.
+
+Fanarin knew Nekhludoff by sight and name, and said he would be very
+glad to be of service to him.
+
+"Though I am rather tired, still, if your business will not take very
+long, perhaps you might tell me what it is now. Will you step in here?"
+And he led Nekhludoff into a room, probably some judge's cabinet. They
+sat down by the table.
+
+"Well, and what is your business?"
+
+"First of all, I must ask you to keep the business private. I do not
+want it known that I take an interest in the affair."
+
+"Oh, that of course. Well?"
+
+"I was on the jury to-day, and we have condemned a woman to Siberia,
+an innocent woman. This bothers me very much." Nekhludoff, to his own
+surprise, blushed and became confused. Fanarin glanced at him rapidly,
+and looked down again, listening.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"We have condemned a woman, and I should like to appeal to a higher
+court."
+
+"To the Senate, you mean," said Fanarin, correcting him.
+
+"Yes, and I should like to ask you to take the case in hand." Nekhludoff
+wanted to get the most difficult part over, and added, "I shall take the
+costs of the case on myself, whatever they may be."
+
+"Oh, we shall settle all that," said the advocate, smiling with
+condescension at Nekhludoff's inexperience in these matters. "What is
+the case?"
+
+Nekhludoff stated what had happened.
+
+"All right. I shall look the case through to-morrow or the day
+after--no--better on Thursday. If you will come to me at six o'clock I
+will give you an answer. Well, and now let us go; I have to make a few
+inquiries here."
+
+Nekhludoff took leave of him and went out. This talk with the advocate,
+and the fact that he had taken measures for Maslova's defence, quieted
+him still further. He went out into the street. The weather was
+beautiful, and he joyfully drew in a long breath of spring air. He was
+at once surrounded by isvostchiks offering their services, but he went
+on foot. A whole swarm of pictures and memories of Katusha and his
+conduct to her began whirling in his brain, and he felt depressed and
+everything appeared gloomy. "No, I shall consider all this later on; I
+must now get rid of all these disagreeable impressions," he thought to
+himself.
+
+He remembered the Korchagin's dinner and looked at his watch. It was
+not yet too late to get there in time. He heard the ring of a passing
+tramcar, ran to catch it, and jumped on. He jumped off again when they
+got to the market-place, took a good isvostchik, and ten minutes later
+was at the entrance of the Korchagins' big house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE HOUSE OF KORCHAGIN.
+
+"Please to walk in, your excellency," said the friendly, fat doorkeeper
+of the Korchagins' big house, opening the door, which moved noiselessly
+on its patent English hinges; "you are expected. They are at dinner.
+My orders were to admit only you." The doorkeeper went as far as the
+staircase and rang.
+
+"Are there any strangers?" asked Nekhludoff, taking off his overcoat.
+
+"Mr. Kolosoff and Michael Sergeivitch only, besides the family."
+
+A very handsome footman with whiskers, in a swallow-tail coat and white
+gloves, looked down from the landing.
+
+"Please to walk up, your excellency," he said. "You are expected."
+
+Nekhludoff went up and passed through the splendid large dancing-room,
+which he knew so well, into the dining-room. There the whole Korchagin
+family--except the mother, Sophia Vasilievna, who never left her
+cabinet--were sitting round the table. At the head of the table sat old
+Korchagin; on his left the doctor, and on his right, a visitor, Ivan
+Ivanovitch Kolosoff, a former Marechal de Noblesse, now a bank director,
+Korchagin's friend and a Liberal. Next on the left side sat Miss Rayner,
+the governess of Missy's little sister, and the four-year-old girl
+herself. Opposite them, Missy's brother, Petia, the only son of the
+Korchagins, a public-school boy of the Sixth Class. It was because of
+his examinations that the whole family were still in town. Next to
+him sat a University student who was coaching him, and Missy's cousin,
+Michael Sergeivitch Telegin, generally called Misha; opposite him,
+Katerina Alexeevna, a 40-year-old maiden lady, a Slavophil; and at the
+foot of the table sat Missy herself, with an empty place by her side.
+
+"Ah! that's right! Sit down. We are still at the fish," said old
+Korchagin with difficulty, chewing carefully with his false teeth,
+and lifting his bloodshot eyes (which had no visible lids to them) to
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"Stephen!" he said, with his mouth full, addressing the stout, dignified
+butler, and pointing with his eyes to the empty place. Though Nekhludoff
+knew Korchagin very well, and had often seen him at dinner, to-day this
+red face with the sensual smacking lips, the fat neck above the napkin
+stuck into his waistcoat, and the whole over-fed military figure, struck
+him very disagreeably. Then Nekhludoff remembered, without wishing to,
+what he knew of the cruelty of this man, who, when in command, used
+to have men flogged, and even hanged, without rhyme or reason, simply
+because he was rich and had no need to curry favour.
+
+"Immediately, your excellency," said Stephen, getting a large soup ladle
+out of the sideboard, which was decorated with a number of silver vases.
+He made a sign with his head to the handsome footman, who began at once
+to arrange the untouched knives and forks and the napkin, elaborately
+folded with the embroidered family crest uppermost, in front of the
+empty place next to Missy. Nekhludoff went round shaking hands with
+every one, and all, except old Korchagin and the ladies, rose when he
+approached. And this walk round the table, this shaking the hands of
+people, with many of whom he never talked, seemed unpleasant and odd. He
+excused himself for being late, and was about to sit down between Missy
+and Katerina Alexeevna, but old Korchagin insisted that if he would not
+take a glass of vodka he should at least take a bit of something to whet
+his appetite, at the side table, on which stood small dishes of lobster,
+caviare, cheese, and salt herrings. Nekhludoff did not know how hungry
+he was until he began to eat, and then, having taken some bread and
+cheese, he went on eating eagerly.
+
+"Well, have you succeeded in undermining the basis of society?"
+asked Kolosoff, ironically quoting an expression used by a retrograde
+newspaper in attacking trial by jury. "Acquitted the culprits and
+condemned the innocent, have you?"
+
+"Undermining the basis--undermining the basis," repeated Prince
+Korchagin, laughing. He had a firm faith in the wisdom and learning of
+his chosen friend and companion.
+
+At the risk of seeming rude, Nekhludoff left Kolosoff's question
+unanswered, and sitting down to his steaming soup, went on eating.
+
+"Do let him eat," said Missy, with a smile. The pronoun him she used as
+a reminder of her intimacy with Nekhludoff. Kolosoff went on in a loud
+voice and lively manner to give the contents of the article against
+trial by jury which had aroused his indignation. Missy's cousin, Michael
+Sergeivitch, endorsed all his statements, and related the contents of
+another article in the same paper. Missy was, as usual, very distinguee,
+and well, unobtrusively well, dressed.
+
+"You must be terribly tired," she said, after waiting until Nekhludoff
+had swallowed what was in his mouth.
+
+"Not particularly. And you? Have you been to look at the pictures?" he
+asked.
+
+"No, we put that off. We have been playing tennis at the Salamatoffs'.
+It is quite true, Mr. Crooks plays remarkably well."
+
+Nekhludoff had come here in order to distract his thoughts, for he
+used to like being in this house, both because its refined luxury had a
+pleasant effect on him and because of the atmosphere of tender flattery
+that unobtrusively surrounded him. But to-day everything in the house
+was repulsive to him--everything: beginning with the doorkeeper, the
+broad staircase, the flowers, the footman, the table decorations, up to
+Missy herself, who to-day seemed unattractive and affected. Kolosoff's
+self-assured, trivial tone of liberalism was unpleasant, as was also the
+sensual, self-satisfied, bull-like appearance of old Korchagin, and the
+French phrases of Katerina Alexeevna, the Slavophil. The constrained
+looks of the governess and the student were unpleasant, too, but most
+unpleasant of all was the pronoun _him_ that Missy had used. Nekhludoff
+had long been wavering between two ways of regarding Missy; sometimes he
+looked at her as if by moonlight, and could see in her nothing but what
+was beautiful, fresh, pretty, clever and natural; then suddenly, as
+if the bright sun shone on her, he saw her defects and could not help
+seeing them. This was such a day for him. To-day he saw all the wrinkles
+of her face, knew which of her teeth were false, saw the way her hair
+was crimped, the sharpness of her elbows, and, above all, how large her
+thumb-nail was and how like her father's.
+
+"Tennis is a dull game," said Kolosoff; "we used to play lapta when we
+were children. That was much more amusing."
+
+"Oh, no, you never tried it; it's awfully interesting," said Missy,
+laying, it seemed to Nekhludoff, a very affected stress on the word
+"awfully." Then a dispute arose in which Michael Sergeivitch, Katerina
+Alexeevna and all the others took part, except the governess, the
+student and the children, who sat silent and wearied.
+
+"Oh, these everlasting disputes!" said old Korchagin, laughing, and he
+pulled the napkin out of his waistcoat, noisily pushed back his chair,
+which the footman instantly caught hold of, and left the table.
+
+Everybody rose after him, and went up to another table on which stood
+glasses of scented water. They rinsed their mouths, then resumed the
+conversation, interesting to no one.
+
+"Don't you think so?" said Missy to Nekhludoff, calling for a
+confirmation of the statement that nothing shows up a man's character
+like a game. She noticed that preoccupied and, as it seemed to her,
+dissatisfied look which she feared, and she wanted to find out what had
+caused it.
+
+"Really, I can't tell; I have never thought about it," Nekhludoff
+answered.
+
+"Will you come to mamma?" asked Missy.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, in a tone which plainly proved that he did not want
+to go, and took out a cigarette.
+
+She looked at him in silence, with a questioning look, and he felt
+ashamed. "To come into a house and give the people the dumps," he
+thought about himself; then, trying to be amiable, said that he would go
+with pleasure if the princess would admit him.
+
+"Oh, yes! Mamma will be pleased. You may smoke there; and Ivan
+Ivanovitch is also there."
+
+The mistress of the house, Princess Sophia Vasilievna, was a recumbent
+lady. It was the eighth year that, when visitors were present, she lay
+in lace and ribbons, surrounded with velvet, gilding, ivory, bronze,
+lacquer and flowers, never going out, and only, as she put it, receiving
+intimate friends, i.e., those who according to her idea stood out from
+the common herd.
+
+Nekhludoff was admitted into the number of these friends because he was
+considered clever, because his mother had been an intimate friend of the
+family, and because it was desirable that Missy should marry him.
+
+Sophia Vasilievna's room lay beyond the large and the small
+drawing-rooms. In the large drawing-room, Missy, who was in front of
+Nekhludoff, stopped resolutely, and taking hold of the back of a small
+green chair, faced him.
+
+Missy was very anxious to get married, and as he was a suitable match
+and she also liked him, she had accustomed herself to the thought that
+he should be hers (not she his). To lose him would be very mortifying.
+She now began talking to him in order to get him to explain his
+intentions.
+
+"I see something has happened," she said. "Tell me, what is the matter
+with you?"
+
+He remembered the meeting in the law court, and frowned and blushed.
+
+"Yes, something has happened," he said, wishing to be truthful; "a very
+unusual and serious event."
+
+"What is it, then? Can you not tell me what it is?" She was pursuing her
+aim with that unconscious yet obstinate cunning often observable in the
+mentally diseased.
+
+"Not now. Please do not ask me to tell you. I have not yet had time
+fully to consider it," and he blushed still more.
+
+"And so you will not tell me?" A muscle twitched in her face and she
+pushed back the chair she was holding. "Well then, come!" She shook her
+head as if to expel useless thoughts, and, faster than usual, went on in
+front of him.
+
+He fancied that her mouth was unnaturally compressed in order to keep
+back the tears. He was ashamed of having hurt her, and yet he knew that
+the least weakness on his part would mean disaster, i.e., would bind
+him to her. And to-day he feared this more than anything, and silently
+followed her to the princess's cabinet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+MISSY'S MOTHER.
+
+Princess Sophia Vasilievna, Missy's mother, had finished her very
+elaborate and nourishing dinner. (She had it always alone, that no one
+should see her performing this unpoetical function.) By her couch stood
+a small table with her coffee, and she was smoking a pachitos. Princess
+Sophia Vasilievna was a long, thin woman, with dark hair, large black
+eyes and long teeth, and still pretended to be young.
+
+Her intimacy with the doctor was being talked about. Nekhludoff had
+known that for some time; but when he saw the doctor sitting by her
+couch, his oily, glistening beard parted in the middle, he not only
+remembered the rumours about them, but felt greatly disgusted. By
+the table, on a low, soft, easy chair, next to Sophia Vasilievna, sat
+Kolosoff, stirring his coffee. A glass of liqueur stood on the table.
+Missy came in with Nekhludoff, but did not remain in the room.
+
+"When mamma gets tired of you and drives you away, then come to me,"
+she said, turning to Kolosoff and Nekhludoff, speaking as if nothing had
+occurred; then she went away, smiling merrily and stepping noiselessly
+on the thick carpet.
+
+"How do you do, dear friend? Sit down and talk," said Princess Sophia
+Vasilievna, with her affected but very naturally-acted smile, showing
+her fine, long teeth--a splendid imitation of what her own had
+once been. "I hear that you have come from the Law Courts very much
+depressed. I think it must be very trying to a person with a heart," she
+added in French.
+
+"Yes, that is so," said Nekhludoff. "One often feels one's own de--one
+feels one has no right to judge."
+
+"Comme, c'est vrai," she cried, as if struck by the truth of this
+remark. She was in the habit of artfully flattering all those with whom
+she conversed. "Well, and what of your picture? It does interest me so.
+If I were not such a sad invalid I should have been to see it long ago,"
+she said.
+
+"I have quite given it up," Nekhludoff replied drily. The falseness of
+her flattery seemed as evident to him to-day as her age, which she was
+trying to conceal, and he could not put himself into the right state to
+behave politely.
+
+"Oh, that _is_ a pity! Why, he has a real talent for art; I have it from
+Repin's own lips," she added, turning to Kolosoff.
+
+"Why is it she is not ashamed of lying so?" Nekhludoff thought, and
+frowned.
+
+When she had convinced herself that Nekhludoff was in a bad temper and
+that one could not get him into an agreeable and clever conversation,
+Sophia Vasilievna turned to Kolosoff, asking his opinion of a new play.
+She asked it in a tone as if Kolosoff's opinion would decide all doubts,
+and each word of this opinion be worthy of being immortalised. Kolosoff
+found fault both with the play and its author, and that led him to
+express his views on art. Princess Sophia Vasilievna, while trying at
+the same time to defend the play, seemed impressed by the truth of his
+arguments, either giving in at once, or at least modifying her opinion.
+Nekhludoff looked and listened, but neither saw nor heard what was going
+on before him.
+
+Listening now to Sophia Vasilievna, now to Kolosoff, Nekhludoff noticed
+that neither he nor she cared anything about the play or each other, and
+that if they talked it was only to gratify the physical desire to
+move the muscles of the throat and tongue after having eaten; and that
+Kolosoff, having drunk vodka, wine and liqueur, was a little tipsy.
+Not tipsy like the peasants who drink seldom, but like people to
+whom drinking wine has become a habit. He did not reel about or talk
+nonsense, but he was in a state that was not normal; excited and
+self-satisfied. Nekhludoff also noticed that during the conversation
+Princess Sophia Vasilievna kept glancing uneasily at the window, through
+which a slanting ray of sunshine, which might vividly light up her aged
+face, was beginning to creep up.
+
+"How true," she said in reference to some remark of Kolosoff's, touching
+the button of an electric bell by the side of her couch. The doctor
+rose, and, like one who is at home, left the room without saying
+anything. Sophia Vasilievna followed him with her eyes and continued the
+conversation.
+
+"Please, Philip, draw these curtains," she said, pointing to the window,
+when the handsome footman came in answer to the bell. "No; whatever you
+may say, there is some mysticism in him; without mysticism there can be
+no poetry," she said, with one of her black eyes angrily following the
+footman's movements as he was drawing the curtains. "Without poetry,
+mysticism is superstition; without mysticism, poetry is--prose," she
+continued, with a sorrowful smile, still not losing sight of the footman
+and the curtains. "Philip, not that curtain; the one on the large
+window," she exclaimed, in a suffering tone. Sophia Vasilievna was
+evidently pitying herself for having to make the effort of saying these
+words; and, to soothe her feelings, she raised to her lips a scented,
+smoking cigarette with her jewel-bedecked fingers.
+
+The broad-chested, muscular, handsome Philip bowed slightly, as
+if begging pardon; and stepping lightly across the carpet with his
+broad-calved, strong, legs, obediently and silently went to the other
+window, and, looking at the princess, carefully began to arrange the
+curtain so that not a single ray dared fall on her. But again he did
+not satisfy her, and again she had to interrupt the conversation about
+mysticism, and correct in a martyred tone the unintelligent Philip,
+who was tormenting her so pitilessly. For a moment a light flashed in
+Philip's eyes.
+
+"'The devil take you! What do you want?' was probably what he said to
+himself," thought Nekhludoff, who had been observing all this scene. But
+the strong, handsome Philip at once managed to conceal the signs of his
+impatience, and went on quietly carrying out the orders of the worn,
+weak, false Sophia Vasilievna.
+
+"Of course, there is a good deal of truth in Lombroso's teaching," said
+Kolosoff, lolling back in the low chair and looking at Sophia Vasilievna
+with sleepy eyes; "but he over-stepped the mark. Oh, yes."
+
+"And you? Do you believe in heredity?" asked Sophia Vasilievna, turning
+to Nekhludoff, whose silence annoyed her. "In heredity?" he asked. "No,
+I don't." At this moment his whole mind was taken up by strange images
+that in some unaccountable way rose up in his imagination. By the side
+of this strong and handsome Philip he seemed at this minute to see the
+nude figure of Kolosoff as an artist's model; with his stomach like a
+melon, his bald head, and his arms without muscle, like pestles. In the
+same dim way the limbs of Sophia Vasilievna, now covered with silks and
+velvets, rose up in his mind as they must be in reality; but this mental
+picture was too horrid and he tried to drive it away.
+
+"Well, you know Missy is waiting for you," she said. "Go and find her.
+She wants to play a new piece by Grieg to you; it is most interesting."
+
+"She did not mean to play anything; the woman is simply lying, for
+some reason or other," thought Nekhludoff, rising and pressing Sophia
+Vasilievna's transparent and bony, ringed hand.
+
+Katerina Alexeevna met him in the drawing-room, and at once began, in
+French, as usual:
+
+"I see the duties of a juryman act depressingly upon you."
+
+"Yes; pardon me, I am in low spirits to-day, and have no right to weary
+others by my presence," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Why are you in low spirits?"
+
+"Allow me not to speak about that," he said, looking round for his hat.
+
+"Don't you remember how you used to say that we must always tell the
+truth? And what cruel truths you used to tell us all! Why do you not
+wish to speak out now? Don't you remember, Missy?" she said, turning to
+Missy, who had just come in.
+
+"We were playing a game then," said Nekhludoff, seriously; "one may
+tell the truth in a game, but in reality we are so bad--I mean I am so
+bad--that I, at least, cannot tell the truth."
+
+"Oh, do not correct yourself, but rather tell us why _we_ are so bad,"
+said Katerina Alexeevna, playing with her words and pretending not to
+notice how serious Nekhludoff was.
+
+"Nothing is worse than to confess to being in low spirits," said Missy.
+"I never do it, and therefore am always in good spirits."
+
+Nekhludoff felt as a horse must feel when it is being caressed to make
+it submit to having the bit put in its mouth and be harnessed, and
+to-day he felt less than ever inclined to draw.
+
+"Well, are you coming into my room? We will try to cheer you up."
+
+He excused himself, saying he had to be at home, and began taking leave.
+Missy kept his hand longer than usual.
+
+"Remember that what is important to you is important to your friends,"
+she said. "Are you coming tomorrow?"
+
+"I hardly expect to," said Nekhludoff; and feeling ashamed, without
+knowing whether for her or for himself, he blushed and went away.
+
+"What is it? _Comme cela m'intrigue_," said Katerina Alexeevna. "I must
+find it out. I suppose it is some _affaire d'amour propre; il est tres
+susceptible, notre cher Mitia_."
+
+"_Plutot une affaire d'amour sale_," Missy was going to say, but stopped
+and looked down with a face from which all the light had gone--a very
+different face from the one with which she had looked at him. She would
+not mention to Katerina Alexeevna even, so vulgar a pun, but only said,
+"We all have our good and our bad days."
+
+"Is it possible that he, too, will deceive?" she thought; "after all
+that has happened it would be very bad of him."
+
+If Missy had had to explain what she meant by "after all that has
+happened," she could have said nothing definite, and yet she knew that
+he had not only excited her hopes but had almost given her a promise. No
+definite words had passed between them--only looks and smiles and hints;
+and yet she considered him as her own, and to lose him would be very
+hard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+THE AWAKENING.
+
+"Shameful and stupid, horrid and shameful!" Nekhludoff kept saying to
+himself, as he walked home along the familiar streets. The depression
+he had felt whilst speaking to Missy would not leave him. He felt that,
+looking at it externally, as it were, he was in the right, for he had
+never said anything to her that could be considered binding, never made
+her an offer; but he knew that in reality he had bound himself to her,
+had promised to be hers. And yet to-day he felt with his whole being
+that he could not marry her.
+
+"Shameful and horrid, horrid and shameful!" he repeated to himself, with
+reference not only to his relations with Missy but also to the rest.
+"Everything is horrid and shameful," he muttered, as he stepped into the
+porch of his house. "I am not going to have any supper," he said to
+his manservant Corney, who followed him into the dining-room, where the
+cloth was laid for supper and tea. "You may go."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Corney, yet he did not go, but began clearing the
+supper off the table. Nekhludoff looked at Corney with a feeling
+of ill-will. He wished to be left alone, and it seemed to him that
+everybody was bothering him in order to spite him. When Corney had gone
+away with the supper things, Nekhludoff moved to the tea urn and
+was about to make himself some tea, but hearing Agraphena Petrovna's
+footsteps, he went hurriedly into the drawing-room, to avoid being seen
+by her, and shut the door after him. In this drawing-room his mother had
+died three months before. On entering the room, in which two lamps with
+reflectors were burning, one lighting up his father's and the other his
+mother's portrait, he remembered what his last relations with his mother
+had been. And they also seemed shameful and horrid. He remembered how,
+during the latter period of her illness, he had simply wished her to
+die. He had said to himself that he wished it for her sake, that she
+might be released from her suffering, but in reality he wished to be
+released from the sight of her sufferings for his own sake.
+
+Trying to recall a pleasant image of her, he went up to look at her
+portrait, painted by a celebrated artist for 800 roubles. She was
+depicted in a very low-necked black velvet dress. There was something
+very revolting and blasphemous in this representation of his mother as
+a half-nude beauty. It was all the more disgusting because three months
+ago, in this very room, lay this same woman, dried up to a mummy. And he
+remembered how a few days before her death she clasped his hand with her
+bony, discoloured fingers, looked into his eyes, and said: "Do not judge
+me, Mitia, if I have not done what I should," and how the tears came
+into her eyes, grown pale with suffering.
+
+"Ah, how horrid!" he said to himself, looking up once more at the
+half-naked woman, with the splendid marble shoulders and arms, and the
+triumphant smile on her lips. "Oh, how horrid!" The bared shoulders of
+the portrait reminded him of another, a young woman, whom he had seen
+exposed in the same way a few days before. It was Missy, who had devised
+an excuse for calling him into her room just as she was ready to go to
+a ball, so that he should see her in her ball dress. It was with disgust
+that he remembered her fine shoulders and arms. "And that father of
+hers, with his doubtful past and his cruelties, and the bel-esprit her
+mother, with her doubtful reputation." All this disgusted him, and also
+made him feel ashamed. "Shameful and horrid; horrid and shameful!"
+
+"No, no," he thought; "freedom from all these false relations with the
+Korchagins and Mary Vasilievna and the inheritance and from all the rest
+must be got. Oh, to breathe freely, to go abroad, to Rome and work at
+my picture!" He remembered the doubts he had about his talent for art.
+"Well, never mind; only just to breathe freely. First Constantinople,
+then Rome. Only just to get through with this jury business, and arrange
+with the advocate first."
+
+Then suddenly there arose in his mind an extremely vivid picture of a
+prisoner with black, slightly-squinting eyes, and how she began to cry
+when the last words of the prisoners had been heard; and he hurriedly
+put out his cigarette, pressing it into the ash-pan, lit another, and
+began pacing up and down the room. One after another the scenes he had
+lived through with her rose in his mind. He recalled that last interview
+with her. He remembered the white dress and blue sash, the early mass.
+"Why, I loved her, really loved her with a good, pure love, that night;
+I loved her even before: yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the
+first time and was writing my composition." And he remembered himself as
+he had been then. A breath of that freshness, youth and fulness of life
+seemed to touch him, and he grew painfully sad. The difference between
+what he had been then and what he was now, was enormous--just as great,
+if not greater than the difference between Katusha in church that night,
+and the prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom
+they judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable
+possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught
+in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of
+which he saw no means of extricating himself even if he wished to,
+which he hardly did. He remembered how proud he was at one time of
+his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the
+truth, and really had been truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in
+lies: in the most dreadful of lies--lies considered as the truth by all
+who surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there was no way out of
+these lies. He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, indulged himself in
+it.
+
+How was he to break off his relations with Mary Vasilievna and her
+husband in such a way as to be able to look him and his children in the
+eyes? How disentangle himself from Missy? How choose between the two
+opposites--the recognition that holding land was unjust and the heritage
+from his mother? How atone for his sin against Katusha? This last, at
+any rate, could not be left as it was. He could not abandon a woman he
+had loved, and satisfy himself by paying money to an advocate to save
+her from hard labour in Siberia. She had not even deserved hard labour.
+Atone for a fault by paying money? Had he not then, when he gave her the
+money, thought he was atoning for his fault?
+
+And he clearly recalled to mind that moment when, having caught her up
+in the passage, he thrust the money into her bib and ran away. "Oh, that
+money!" he thought with the same horror and disgust he had then felt.
+"Oh, dear! oh, dear! how disgusting," he cried aloud as he had done
+then. "Only a scoundrel, a knave, could do such a thing. And I am that
+knave, that scoundrel!" He went on aloud: "But is it possible?"--he
+stopped and stood still--"is it possible that I am really a scoundrel?
+. . . Well, who but I?" he answered himself. "And then, is this the only
+thing?" he went on, convicting himself. "Was not my conduct towards Mary
+Vasilievna and her husband base and disgusting? And my position with
+regard to money? To use riches considered by me unlawful on the plea
+that they are inherited from my mother? And the whole of my idle,
+detestable life? And my conduct towards Katusha to crown all? Knave and
+scoundrel! Let men judge me as they like, I can deceive them; but myself
+I cannot deceive."
+
+And, suddenly, he understood that the aversion he had lately, and
+particularly to-day, felt for everybody--the Prince and Sophia
+Vasilievna and Corney and Missy--was an aversion for himself. And,
+strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was
+something painful yet joyful and quieting.
+
+More than once in Nekhludoff's life there had been what he called a
+"cleansing of the soul." By "cleansing of the soul" he meant a state
+of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life, a total
+cessation of its activity, he began to clear out all the rubbish that
+had accumulated in his soul, and was the cause of the cessation of the
+true life. His soul needed cleansing as a watch does. After such an
+awakening Nekhludoff always made some rules for himself which he meant
+to follow forever after, wrote his diary, and began afresh a life which
+he hoped never to change again. "Turning over a new leaf," he called
+it to himself in English. But each time the temptations of the world
+entrapped him, and without noticing it he fell again, often lower than
+before.
+
+Thus he had several times in his life raised and cleansed himself. The
+first time this happened was during the summer he spent with his aunts;
+that was his most vital and rapturous awakening, and its effects had
+lasted some time. Another awakening was when he gave up civil service
+and joined the army at war time, ready to sacrifice his life. But here
+the choking-up process was soon accomplished. Then an awakening came
+when he left the army and went abroad, devoting himself to art.
+
+From that time until this day a long period had elapsed without
+any cleansing, and therefore the discord between the demands of his
+conscience and the life he was leading was greater than it had ever been
+before. He was horror-struck when he saw how great the divergence was.
+It was so great and the defilement so complete that he despaired of the
+possibility of getting cleansed. "Have you not tried before to perfect
+yourself and become better, and nothing has come of it?" whispered the
+voice of the tempter within. "What is the use of trying any more? Are
+you the only one?--All are alike, such is life," whispered the voice.
+But the free spiritual being, which alone is true, alone powerful,
+alone eternal, had already awakened in Nekhludoff, and he could not but
+believe it. Enormous though the distance was between what he wished
+to be and what he was, nothing appeared insurmountable to the
+newly-awakened spiritual being.
+
+"At any cost I will break this lie which binds me and confess
+everything, and will tell everybody the truth, and act the truth," he
+said resolutely, aloud. "I shall tell Missy the truth, tell her I am a
+profligate and cannot marry her, and have only uselessly upset her.
+I shall tell Mary Vasilievna. . . Oh, there is nothing to tell her. I
+shall tell her husband that I, scoundrel that I am, have been deceiving
+him. I shall dispose of the inheritance in such a way as to acknowledge
+the truth. I shall tell her, Katusha, that I am a scoundrel and have
+sinned towards her, and will do all I can to ease her lot. Yes, I will
+see her, and will ask her to forgive me.
+
+"Yes, I will beg her pardon, as children do." . . . He stopped---"will
+marry her if necessary." He stopped again, folded his hands in front of
+his breast as he used to do when a little child, lifted his eyes, and
+said, addressing some one: "Lord, help me, teach me, come enter within
+me and purify me of all this abomination."
+
+He prayed, asking God to help him, to enter into him and cleanse him;
+and what he was praying for had happened already: the God within him had
+awakened his consciousness. He felt himself one with Him, and therefore
+felt not only the freedom, fulness and joy of life, but all the power of
+righteousness. All, all the best that a man could do he felt capable of
+doing.
+
+His eyes filled with tears as he was saying all this to himself, good
+and bad tears: good because they were tears of joy at the awakening
+of the spiritual being within him, the being which had been asleep all
+these years; and bad tears because they were tears of tenderness to
+himself at his own goodness.
+
+He felt hot, and went to the window and opened it. The window opened
+into a garden. It was a moonlit, quiet, fresh night; a vehicle rattled
+past, and then all was still. The shadow of a tall poplar fell on the
+ground just opposite the window, and all the intricate pattern of its
+bare branches was clearly defined on the clean swept gravel. To the left
+the roof of a coach-house shone white in the moonlight, in front the
+black shadow of the garden wall was visible through the tangled branches
+of the trees.
+
+Nekhludoff gazed at the roof, the moonlit garden, and the shadows of the
+poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.
+
+"How delightful, how delightful; oh, God, how delightful," he said,
+meaning that which was going on in his soul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+
+Maslova reached her cell only at six in the evening, tired and footsore,
+having, unaccustomed as she was to walking, gone 10 miles on the stony
+road that day. She was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence and
+tormented by hunger. During the first interval of her trial, when the
+soldiers were eating bread and hard-boiled eggs in her presence, her
+mouth watered and she realised she was hungry, but considered it beneath
+her dignity to beg of them. Three hours later the desire to eat had
+passed, and she felt only weak. It was then she received the unexpected
+sentence. At first she thought she had made a mistake; she could not
+imagine herself as a convict in Siberia, and could not believe what she
+heard. But seeing the quiet, business-like faces of judges and jury, who
+heard this news as if it were perfectly natural and expected, she grew
+indignant, and proclaimed loudly to the whole Court that she was not
+guilty. Finding that her cry was also taken as something natural
+and expected, and feeling incapable of altering matters, she was
+horror-struck and began to weep in despair, knowing that she must submit
+to the cruel and surprising injustice that had been done her. What
+astonished her most was that young men--or, at any rate, not old
+men--the same men who always looked so approvingly at her (one of them,
+the public prosecutor, she had seen in quite a different humour) had
+condemned her. While she was sitting in the prisoners' room before the
+trial and during the intervals, she saw these men looking in at the open
+door pretending they had to pass there on some business, or enter the
+room and gaze on her with approval. And then, for some unknown reason,
+these same men had condemned her to hard labour, though she was innocent
+of the charge laid against her. At first she cried, but then quieted
+down and sat perfectly stunned in the prisoners' room, waiting to be led
+back. She wanted only two things now--tobacco and strong drink. In this
+state Botchkova and Kartinkin found her when they were led into the same
+room after being sentenced. Botchkova began at once to scold her, and
+call her a "convict."
+
+"Well! What have you gained? justified yourself, have you? What you have
+deserved, that you've got. Out in Siberia you'll give up your finery, no
+fear!"
+
+Maslova sat with her hands inside her sleeves, hanging her head and
+looking in front of her at the dirty floor without moving, only saying:
+"I don't bother you, so don't you bother me. I don't bother you, do I?"
+she repeated this several times, and was silent again. She did brighten
+up a little when Botchkova and Kartinkin were led away and an attendant
+brought her three roubles.
+
+"Are you Maslova?" he asked. "Here you are; a lady sent it you," he
+said, giving her the money.
+
+"A lady--what lady?"
+
+"You just take it. I'm not going to talk to you."
+
+This money was sent by Kitaeva, the keeper of the house in which she
+used to live. As she was leaving the court she turned to the usher with
+the question whether she might give Maslova a little money. The usher
+said she might. Having got permission, she removed the three-buttoned
+Swedish kid glove from her plump, white hand, and from an elegant purse
+brought from the back folds of her silk skirt took a pile of coupons,
+[in Russia coupons cut off interest-bearing papers are often used as
+money] just cut off from the interest-bearing papers which she had
+earned in her establishment, chose one worth 2 roubles and 50 copecks,
+added two 20 and one 10-copeck coins, and gave all this to the usher.
+The usher called an attendant, and in his presence gave the money.
+
+"Belease to giff it accurately," said Carolina Albertovna Kitaeva.
+
+The attendant was hurt by her want of confidence, and that was why he
+treated Maslova so brusquely. Maslova was glad of the money, because
+it could give her the only thing she now desired. "If I could but get
+cigarettes and take a whiff!" she said to herself, and all her thoughts
+centred on the one desire to smoke and drink. She longed for spirits so
+that she tasted them and felt the strength they would give her; and she
+greedily breathed in the air when the fumes of tobacco reached her from
+the door of a room that opened into the corridor. But she had to wait
+long, for the secretary, who should have given the order for her to go,
+forgot about the prisoners while talking and even disputing with one of
+the advocates about the article forbidden by the censor.
+
+At last, about five o'clock, she was allowed to go, and was led away
+through the back door by her escort, the Nijni man and the Tchoovash.
+Then, still within the entrance to the Law Courts, she gave them 50
+copecks, asking them to get her two rolls and some cigarettes. The
+Tchoovash laughed, took the money, and said, "All right; I'll get 'em,"
+and really got her the rolls and the cigarettes and honestly returned
+the change. She was not allowed to smoke on the way, and, with her
+craving unsatisfied, she continued her way to the prison. When she was
+brought to the gate of the prison, a hundred convicts who had arrived by
+rail were being led in. The convicts, bearded, clean-shaven, old, young,
+Russians, foreigners, some with their heads shaved and rattling with the
+chains on their feet, filled the anteroom with dust, noise and an acid
+smell of perspiration. Passing Maslova, all the convicts looked at her,
+and some came up to her and brushed her as they passed.
+
+"Ay, here's a wench--a fine one," said one.
+
+"My respects to you, miss," said another, winking at her. One dark man
+with a moustache, the rest of his face and the back of his head clean
+shaved, rattling with his chains and catching her feet in them, sprang
+near and embraced her.
+
+"What! don't you know your chum? Come, come; don't give yourself airs,"
+showing his teeth and his eyes glittering when she pushed him away.
+
+"You rascal! what are you up to?" shouted the inspector's assistant,
+coming in from behind. The convict shrank back and jumped away. The
+assistant assailed Maslova.
+
+"What are you here for?"
+
+Maslova was going to say she had been brought back from the Law Courts,
+but she was so tired that she did not care to speak.
+
+"She has returned from the Law Courts, sir," said one of the soldiers,
+coming forward with his fingers lifted to his cap.
+
+"Well, hand her over to the chief warder. I won't have this sort of
+thing."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Sokoloff, take her in!" shouted the assistant inspector.
+
+The chief warder came up, gave Maslova a slap on the shoulder, and
+making a sign with his head for her to follow led her into the corridor
+of the women's ward. There she was searched, and as nothing prohibited
+was found on her (she had hidden her box of cigarettes inside a roll)
+she was led to the cell she had left in the morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE CELL.
+
+The cell in which Maslova was imprisoned was a large room 21 feet long
+and 10 feet broad; it had two windows and a large stove. Two-thirds of
+the space were taken up by shelves used as beds. The planks they were
+made of had warped and shrunk. Opposite the door hung a dark-coloured
+icon with a wax candle sticking to it and a bunch of everlastings
+hanging down from it. By the door to the right there was a dark spot on
+the floor on which stood a stinking tub. The inspection had taken place
+and the women were locked up for the night.
+
+The occupants of this room were 15 persons, including three children.
+It was still quite light. Only two of the women were lying down: a
+consumptive woman imprisoned for theft, and an idiot who spent most of
+her time in sleep and who was arrested because she had no passport. The
+consumptive woman was not asleep, but lay with wide open eyes, her cloak
+folded under her head, trying to keep back the phlegm that irritated her
+throat, and not to cough.
+
+Some of the other women, most of whom had nothing on but coarse brown
+holland chemises, stood looking out of the window at the convicts down
+in the yard, and some sat sewing. Among the latter was the old woman,
+Korableva, who had seen Maslova off in the morning. She was a tall,
+strong, gloomy-looking woman; her fair hair, which had begun to turn
+grey on the temples, hung down in a short plait. She was sentenced to
+hard labour in Siberia because she had killed her husband with an axe
+for making up to their daughter. She was at the head of the women in
+the cell, and found means of carrying on a trade in spirits with them.
+Beside her sat another woman sewing a coarse canvas sack. This was the
+wife of a railway watchman, [There are small watchmen's cottages at
+distances of about one mile from each other along the Russian railways,
+and the watchmen or their wives have to meet every train.] imprisoned
+for three months because she did not come out with the flags to meet a
+train that was passing, and an accident had occurred. She was a short,
+snub-nosed woman, with small, black eyes; kind and talkative. The third
+of the women who were sewing was Theodosia, a quiet young girl, white
+and rosy, very pretty, with bright child's eyes, and long fair plaits
+which she wore twisted round her head. She was in prison for attempting
+to poison her husband. She had done this immediately after her wedding
+(she had been given in marriage without her consent at the age of 16)
+because her husband would give her no peace. But in the eight months
+during which she had been let out on bail, she had not only made it up
+with her husband, but come to love him, so that when her trial came
+they were heart and soul to one another. Although her husband, her
+father-in-law, but especially her mother-in-law, who had grown very fond
+of her, did all they could to get her acquitted, she was sentenced to
+hard labour in Siberia. The kind, merry, ever-smiling Theodosia had a
+place next Maslova's on the shelf bed, and had grown so fond of her that
+she took it upon herself as a duty to attend and wait on her. Two
+other women were sitting without any work at the other end of the shelf
+bedstead. One was a woman of about 40, with a pale, thin face, who once
+probably had been very handsome. She sat with her baby at her thin,
+white breast. The crime she had committed was that when a recruit was,
+according to the peasants' view, unlawfully taken from their village,
+and the people stopped the police officer and took the recruit away from
+him, she (an aunt of the lad unlawfully taken) was the first to catch
+hold of the bridle of the horse on which he was being carried off.
+The other, who sat doing nothing, was a kindly, grey-haired old woman,
+hunchbacked and with a flat bosom. She sat behind the stove on the
+bedshelf, and pretended to catch a fat four-year-old boy, who ran
+backwards and forwards in front of her, laughing gaily. This boy had
+only a little shirt on and his hair was cut short. As he ran past the
+old woman he kept repeating, "There, haven't caught me!" This old woman
+and her son were accused of incendiarism. She bore her imprisonment with
+perfect cheerfulness, but was concerned about her son, and chiefly about
+her "old man," who she feared would get into a terrible state with no
+one to wash for him. Besides these seven women, there were four standing
+at one of the open windows, holding on to the iron bars. They were
+making signs and shouting to the convicts whom Maslova had met when
+returning to prison, and who were now passing through the yard. One
+of these women was big and heavy, with a flabby body, red hair, and
+freckled on her pale yellow face, her hands, and her fat neck. She
+shouted something in a loud, raucous voice, and laughed hoarsely. This
+woman was serving her term for theft. Beside her stood an awkward, dark
+little woman, no bigger than a child of ten, with a long waist and very
+short legs, a red, blotchy face, thick lips which did not hide her
+long teeth, and eyes too far apart. She broke by fits and starts into
+screeching laughter at what was going on in the yard. She was to be
+tried for stealing and incendiarism. They called her Khoroshavka. Behind
+her, in a very dirty grey chemise, stood a thin, miserable-looking
+pregnant woman, who was to be tried for concealment of theft. This woman
+stood silent, but kept smiling with pleasure and approval at what was
+going on below. With these stood a peasant woman of medium height,
+the mother of the boy who was playing with the old woman and of a
+seven-year-old girl. These were in prison with her because she had no
+one to leave them with. She was serving her term of imprisonment for
+illicit sale of spirits. She stood a little further from the window
+knitting a stocking, and though she listened to the other prisoners'
+words she shook her head disapprovingly, frowned, and closed her eyes.
+But her seven-year-old daughter stood in her little chemise, her flaxen
+hair done up in a little pigtail, her blue eyes fixed, and, holding
+the red-haired woman by the skirt, attentively listened to the words of
+abuse that the women and the convicts flung at each other, and repeated
+them softly, as if learning them by heart. The twelfth prisoner, who
+paid no attention to what was going on, was a very tall, stately girl,
+the daughter of a deacon, who had drowned her baby in a well. She went
+about with bare feet, wearing only a dirty chemise. The thick, short
+plait of her fair hair had come undone and hung down dishevelled, and
+she paced up and down the free space of the cell, not looking at any
+one, turning abruptly every time she came up to the wall.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+THE PRISONERS.
+
+When the padlock rattled and the door opened to let Maslova into the
+cell, all turned towards her. Even the deacon's daughter stopped for a
+moment and looked at her with lifted brows before resuming her steady
+striding up and down.
+
+Korableva stuck her needle into the brown sacking and looked
+questioningly at Maslova through her spectacles. "Eh, eh, deary me, so
+you have come back. And I felt sure they'd acquit you. So you've got
+it?" She took off her spectacles and put her work down beside her on the
+shelf bed.
+
+"And here have I and the old lady been saying, 'Why, it may well be
+they'll let her go free at once.' Why, it happens, ducky, they'll even
+give you a heap of money sometimes, that's sure," the watchman's wife
+began, in her singing voice: "Yes, we were wondering, 'Why's she so
+long?' And now just see what it is. Well, our guessing was no use. The
+Lord willed otherwise," she went on in musical tones.
+
+"Is it possible? Have they sentenced you?" asked Theodosia, with
+concern, looking at Maslova with her bright blue, child-like eyes; and
+her merry young face changed as if she were going to cry.
+
+Maslova did not answer, but went on to her place, the second from the
+end, and sat down beside Korableva.
+
+"Have you eaten anything?" said Theodosia, rising and coming up to
+Maslova.
+
+Maslova gave no reply, but putting the rolls on the bedstead, took
+off her dusty cloak, the kerchief off her curly black head, and began
+pulling off her shoes. The old woman who had been playing with the boy
+came up and stood in front of Maslova. "Tz, tz, tz," she clicked with
+her tongue, shaking her head pityingly. The boy also came up with her,
+and, putting out his upper lip, stared with wide open eyes at the roll
+Maslova had brought. When Maslova saw the sympathetic faces of her
+fellow-prisoners, her lips trembled and she felt inclined to cry, but
+she succeeded in restraining herself until the old woman and the boy
+came up. When she heard the kind, pitying clicking of the old woman's
+tongue, and met the boy's serious eyes turned from the roll to her face,
+she could bear it no longer; her face quivered and she burst into sobs.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to insist on having a proper advocate?" said
+Norableva. "Well, what is it? Exile?"
+
+Maslova could not answer, but took from inside the roll a box of
+cigarettes, on which was a picture of a lady with hair done up very high
+and dress cut low in front, and passed the box to Korableva. Korableva
+looked at it and shook her head, chiefly because see did not approve of
+Maslova's putting her money to such bad use; but still she took out a
+cigarette, lit it at the lamp, took a puff, and almost forced it into
+Maslova's hand. Maslova, still crying, began greedily to inhale the
+tobacco smoke. "Penal servitude," she muttered, blowing out the smoke
+and sobbing.
+
+"Don't they fear the Lord, the cursed soul-slayers?" muttered Korableva,
+"sentencing the lass for nothing." At this moment the sound of loud,
+coarse laughter came from the women who were still at the window. The
+little girl also laughed, and her childish treble mixed with the hoarse
+and screeching laughter of the others. One of the convicts outside had
+done something that produced this effect on the onlookers.
+
+"Lawks! see the shaved hound, what he's doing," said the red-haired
+woman, her whole fat body shaking with laughter; and leaning against the
+grating she shouted meaning less obscene words.
+
+"Ugh, the fat fright's cackling," said Korableva, who disliked the
+red-haired woman. Then, turning to Maslova again, she asked: "How many
+years?"
+
+"Four," said Maslova, and the tears ran down her cheeks in such
+profusion that one fell on the cigarette. Maslova crumpled it up angrily
+and took another.
+
+Though the watchman's wife did not smoke she picked up the cigarette
+Maslova had thrown away and began straightening it out, talking
+unceasingly.
+
+"There, now, ducky, so it's true," she said. "Truth's gone to the dogs
+and they do what they please, and here we were guessing that you'd go
+free. Norableva says, 'She'll go free.' I say, 'No,' say I. 'No, dear,
+my heart tells me they'll give it her.' And so it's turned out," she
+went on, evidently listening with pleasure to her own voice.
+
+The women who had been standing by the window now also came up to
+Maslova, the convicts who had amused them having gone away. The first to
+come up were the woman imprisoned for illicit trade in spirits, and her
+little girl. "Why such a hard sentence?" asked the woman, sitting down
+by Maslova and knitting fast.
+
+"Why so hard? Because there's no money. That's why! Had there been
+money, and had a good lawyer that's up to their tricks been hired,
+they'd have acquitted her, no fear," said Korableva. "There's
+what's-his-name--that hairy one with the long nose. He'd bring you out
+clean from pitch, mum, he would. Ah, if we'd only had him!"
+
+"Him, indeed," said Khoroshavka. "Why, he won't spit at you for less
+than a thousand roubles."
+
+"Seems you've been born under an unlucky star," interrupted the old
+woman who was imprisoned for incendiarism. "Only think, to entice the
+lad's wife and lock him himself up to feed vermin, and me, too, in my
+old days--" she began to retell her story for the hundredth time. "If
+it isn't the beggar's staff it's the prison. Yes, the beggar's staff and
+the prison don't wait for an invitation."
+
+"Ah, it seems that's the way with all of them," said the spirit trader;
+and after looking at her little girl she put down her knitting, and,
+drawing the child between her knees, began to search her head with deft
+fingers. "Why do you sell spirits?" she went on. "Why? but what's one to
+feed the children on?"
+
+These words brought back to Maslova's mind her craving for drink.
+
+"A little vodka," she said to Korableva, wiping the tears with her
+sleeve and sobbing less frequently.
+
+"All right, fork out," said Korableva.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+A PRISON QUARREL.
+
+Maslova got the money, which she had also hidden in a roll, and passed
+the coupon to Korableva. Korableva accepted it, though she could not
+read, trusting to Khoroshavka, who knew everything, and who said that
+the slip of paper was worth 2 roubles 50 copecks, then climbed up to the
+ventilator, where she had hidden a small flask of vodka. Seeing this,
+the women whose places were further off went away. Meanwhile Maslova
+shook the dust out of her cloak and kerchief, got up on the bedstead,
+and began eating a roll.
+
+"I kept your tea for you," said Theodosia, getting down from the shelf
+a mug and a tin teapot wrapped in a rag, "but I'm afraid it is quite
+cold." The liquid was quite cold and tasted more of tin than of tea, yet
+Maslova filled the mug and began drinking it with her roll. "Finashka,
+here you are," she said, breaking off a bit of the roll and giving it to
+the boy, who stood looking at her mouth.
+
+Meanwhile Korableva handed the flask of vodka and a mug to Maslova, who
+offered some to her and to Khoroshavka. These prisoners were considered
+the aristocracy of the cell because they had some money, and shared what
+they possessed with the others.
+
+In a few moments Maslova brightened up and related merrily what had
+happened at the court, and what had struck her most, i.e., how all the
+men had followed her wherever she went. In the court they all looked at
+her, she said, and kept coming into the prisoners' room while she was
+there.
+
+"One of the soldiers even says, 'It's all to look at you that they
+come.' One would come in, 'Where is such a paper?' or something, but I
+see it is not the paper he wants; he just devours me with his eyes," she
+said, shaking her head. "Regular artists."
+
+"Yes, that's so," said the watchman's wife, and ran on in her musical
+strain, "they're like flies after sugar."
+
+"And here, too," Maslova interrupted her, "the same thing. They can
+do without anything else. But the likes of them will go without bread
+sooner than miss that! Hardly had they brought me back when in comes a
+gang from the railway. They pestered me so, I did not know how to
+rid myself of them. Thanks to the assistant, he turned them off. One
+bothered so, I hardly got away."
+
+"What's he like?" asked Khoroshevka.
+
+"Dark, with moustaches."
+
+"It must be him."
+
+"Him--who?"
+
+"Why, Schegloff; him as has just gone by."
+
+"What's he, this Schegloff?"
+
+"What, she don't know Schegloff? Why, he ran twice from Siberia. Now
+they've got him, but he'll run away. The warders themselves are afraid
+of him," said Khoroshavka, who managed to exchange notes with the male
+prisoners and knew all that went on in the prison. "He'll run away,
+that's flat."
+
+"If he does go away you and I'll have to stay," said Korableva, turning
+to Maslova, "but you'd better tell us now what the advocate says about
+petitioning. Now's the time to hand it in."
+
+Maslova answered that she knew nothing about it.
+
+At that moment the red-haired woman came up to the "aristocracy" with
+both freckled hands in her thick hair, scratching her head with her
+nails.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, Katerina," she began. "First and foremost,
+you'll have to write down you're dissatisfied with the sentence, then
+give notice to the Procureur."
+
+"What do you want here?" said Korableva angrily; "smell the vodka, do
+you? Your chatter's not wanted. We know what to do without your advice."
+
+"No one's speaking to you; what do you stick your nose in for?"
+
+"It's vodka you want; that's why you come wriggling yourself in here."
+
+"Well, offer her some," said Maslova, always ready to share anything she
+possessed with anybody.
+
+"I'll offer her something."
+
+"Come on then," said the red-haired one, advancing towards Korableva.
+"Ah! think I'm afraid of such as you?"
+
+"Convict fright!"
+
+"That's her as says it."
+
+"Slut!"
+
+"I? A slut? Convict! Murderess!" screamed the red-haired one.
+
+"Go away, I tell you," said Korableva gloomily, but the red-haired one
+came nearer and Korableva struck her in the chest. The red-haired woman
+seemed only to have waited for this, and with a sudden movement caught
+hold of Korableva's hair with one hand and with the other struck her in
+the face. Korableva seized this hand, and Maslova and Khoroshavka caught
+the red-haired woman by her arms, trying to pull her away, but she let
+go the old woman's hair with her hand only to twist it round her fist.
+Korableva, with her head bent to one side, was dealing out blows with
+one arm and trying to catch the red-haired woman's hand with her teeth,
+while the rest of the women crowded round, screaming and trying to
+separate the fighters; even the consumptive one came up and stood
+coughing and watching the fight. The children cried and huddled
+together. The noise brought the woman warder and a jailer. The fighting
+women were separated; and Korableva, taking out the bits of torn hair
+from her head, and the red-haired one, holding her torn chemise together
+over her yellow breast, began loudly to complain.
+
+"I know, it's all the vodka. Wait a bit; I'll tell the inspector
+tomorrow. He'll give it you. Can't I smell it? Mind, get it all out of
+the way, or it will be the worse for you," said the warder. "We've no
+time to settle your disputes. Get to your places and be quiet."
+
+But quiet was not soon re-established. For a long time the women went on
+disputing and explaining to one another whose fault it all was. At last
+the warder and the jailer left the cell, the women grew quieter and
+began going to bed, and the old woman went to the icon and commenced
+praying.
+
+"The two jailbirds have met," the red-haired woman suddenly called out
+in a hoarse voice from the other end of the shelf beds, accompanying
+every word with frightfully vile abuse.
+
+"Mind you don't get it again," Korableva replied, also adding words of
+abuse, and both were quiet again.
+
+"Had I not been stopped I'd have pulled your damned eyes out," again
+began the red-haired one, and an answer of the same kind followed from
+Korableva. Then again a short interval and more abuse. But the intervals
+became longer and longer, as when a thunder-cloud is passing, and at
+last all was quiet.
+
+All were in bed, some began to snore; and only the old woman, who always
+prayed a long time, went on bowing before the icon and the deacon's
+daughter, who had got up after the warder left, was pacing up and
+down the room again. Maslova kept thinking that she was now a convict
+condemned to hard labour, and had twice been reminded of this--once by
+Botchkova and once by the red-haired woman--and she could not reconcile
+herself to the thought. Korableva, who lay next to her, turned over in
+her bed.
+
+"There now," said Maslova in a low voice; "who would have thought it?
+See what others do and get nothing for it."
+
+"Never mind, girl. People manage to live in Siberia. As for you, you'll
+not be lost there either," Korableva said, trying to comfort her.
+
+"I know I'll not be lost; still it is hard. It's not such a fate I
+want--I, who am used to a comfortable life."
+
+"Ah, one can't go against God," said Korableva, with a sigh. "One can't,
+my dear."
+
+"I know, granny. Still, it's hard."
+
+They were silent for a while.
+
+"Do you hear that baggage?" whispered Korableva, drawing Maslova's
+attention to a strange sound proceeding from the other end of the room.
+
+This sound was the smothered sobbing of the red-haired woman. The
+red-haired woman was crying because she had been abused and had not got
+any of the vodka she wanted so badly; also because she remembered
+how all her life she had been abused, mocked at, offended, beaten.
+Remembering this, she pitied herself, and, thinking no one heard her,
+began crying as children cry, sniffing with her nose and swallowing the
+salt tears.
+
+"I'm sorry for her," said Maslova.
+
+"Of course one is sorry," said Korableva, "but she shouldn't come
+bothering."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE LEAVEN AT WORK--NEKHLUDOFF'S DOMESTIC CHANGES.
+
+The next morning Nekhludoff awoke, conscious that something had happened
+to him, and even before he had remembered what it was he knew it to be
+something important and good.
+
+"Katusha--the trial!" Yes, he must stop lying and tell the whole truth.
+
+By a strange coincidence on that very morning he received the
+long-expected letter from Mary Vasilievna, the wife of the Marechal
+de Noblesse, the very letter he particularly needed. She gave him full
+freedom, and wished him happiness in his intended marriage.
+
+"Marriage!" he repeated with irony. "How far I am from all that at
+present."
+
+And he remembered the plans he had formed the day before, to tell
+the husband everything, to make a clean breast of it, and express his
+readiness to give him any kind of satisfaction. But this morning this
+did not seem so easy as the day before. And, then, also, why make a man
+unhappy by telling him what he does not know? Yes, if he came and
+asked, he would tell him all, but to go purposely and tell--no! that was
+unnecessary.
+
+And telling the whole truth to Missy seemed just as difficult this
+morning. Again, he could not begin to speak without offence. As in many
+worldly affairs, something had to remain unexpressed. Only one thing he
+decided on, i.e., not to visit there, and to tell the truth if asked.
+
+But in connection with Katusha, nothing was to remain unspoken. "I shall
+go to the prison and shall tell her every thing, and ask her to forgive
+me. And if need be--yes, if need be, I shall marry her," he thought.
+
+This idea, that he was ready to sacrifice all on moral grounds, and
+marry her, again made him feel very tender towards himself. Concerning
+money matters he resolved this morning to arrange them in accord with
+his conviction, that the holding of landed property was unlawful. Even
+if he should not be strong enough to give up everything, he would still
+do what he could, not deceiving himself or others.
+
+It was long since he had met the coming day with so much energy. When
+Agraphena Petrovna came in, he told her, with more firmness than he
+thought himself capable of, that he no longer needed this lodging nor
+her services. There had been a tacit understanding that he was keeping
+up so large and expensive an establishment because he was thinking of
+getting married. The giving up of the house had, therefore, a special
+meaning. Agraphena Petrovna looked at him in surprise.
+
+"I thank you very much, Agraphena Petrovna, for all your care for me,
+but I no longer require so large a house nor so many servants. If you
+wish to help me, be so good as to settle about the things, put them away
+as it used to be done during mamma's life, and when Natasha comes she
+will see to everything." Natasha was Nekhludoff's sister.
+
+Agraphena Petrovna shook her head. "See about the things? Why, they'll
+be required again," she said.
+
+"No, they won't, Agraphena Petrovna; I assure you they won't be
+required," said Nekhludoff, in answer to what the shaking of her head
+had expressed. "Please tell Corney also that I shall pay him two months'
+wages, but shall have no further need of him."
+
+"It is a pity, Dmitri Ivanovitch, that you should think of doing this,"
+she said. "Well, supposing you go abroad, still you'll require a place
+of residence again."
+
+"You are mistaken in your thoughts, Agraphena Petrovna; I am not going
+abroad. If I go on a journey, it will be to quite a different place."
+He suddenly blushed very red. "Yes, I must tell her," he thought; "no
+hiding; everybody must be told."
+
+"A very strange and important thing happened to me yesterday. Do you
+remember my Aunt Mary Ivanovna's Katusha?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Why, I taught her how to sew."
+
+"Well, this Katusha was tried in the Court and I was on the jury."
+
+"Oh, Lord! What a pity!" cried Agraphena Petrovna. "What was she being
+tried for?"
+
+"Murder; and it is I have done it all."
+
+"Well, now this is very strange; how could you do it all?"
+
+"Yes, I am the cause of it all; and it is this that has altered all my
+plans."
+
+"What difference can it make to you?"
+
+"This difference: that I, being the cause of her getting on to that
+path, must do all I can to help her."
+
+"That is just according to your own good pleasure; you are not
+particularly in fault there. It happens to every one, and if one's
+reasonable, it all gets smoothed over and forgotten," she said,
+seriously and severely. "Why should you place it to your account?
+There's no need. I had already heard before that she had strayed from
+the right path. Well, whose fault is it?"
+
+"Mine! that's why I want to put it right."
+
+"It is hard to put right."
+
+"That is my business. But if you are thinking about yourself, then I
+will tell you that, as mamma expressed the wish--"
+
+"I am not thinking about myself. I have been so bountifully treated by
+the dear defunct, that I desire nothing. Lisenka" (her married niece)
+"has been inviting me, and I shall go to her when I am not wanted any
+longer. Only it is a pity you should take this so to heart; it happens
+to everybody."
+
+"Well, I do not think so. And I still beg that you will help me let this
+lodging and put away the things. And please do not be angry with me. I
+am very, very grateful to you for all you have done."
+
+And, strangely, from the moment Nekhludoff realised that it was he who
+was so bad and disgusting to himself, others were no longer disgusting
+to him; on the contrary, he felt a kindly respect for Agraphena
+Petrovna, and for Corney.
+
+He would have liked to go and confess to Corney also, but Corney's
+manner was so insinuatingly deferential that he had not the resolution
+to do it.
+
+On the way to the Law Courts, passing along the same streets with the
+same isvostchik as the day before, he was surprised what a different
+being he felt himself to be. The marriage with Missy, which only
+yesterday seemed so probable, appeared quite impossible now. The day
+before he felt it was for him to choose, and had no doubts that she
+would be happy to marry him; to-day he felt himself unworthy not only of
+marrying, but even of being intimate with her. "If she only knew what
+I am, nothing would induce her to receive me. And only yesterday I was
+finding fault with her because she flirted with N---. Anyhow, even if
+she consented to marry me, could I be, I won't say happy, but at peace,
+knowing that the other was here in prison, and would to-day or to-morrow
+he taken to Siberia with a gang of other prisoners, while I accepted
+congratulations and made calls with my young wife; or while I count the
+votes at the meetings, for and against the motion brought forward by the
+rural inspection, etc., together with the Marechal de Noblesse, whom I
+abominably deceive, and afterwards make appointments with his wife
+(how abominable!) or while I continue to work at my picture, which will
+certainly never get finished? Besides, I have no business to waste
+time on such things. I can do nothing of the kind now," he continued
+to himself, rejoicing at the change he felt within himself. "The first
+thing now is to see the advocate and find out his decision, and then
+. . . then go and see her and tell her everything."
+
+And when he pictured to himself how he would see her, and tell her all,
+confess his sin to her, and tell her that he would do all in his power
+to atone for his sin, he was touched at his own goodness, and the tears
+came to his eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE ABSURDITY OF LAW--REFLECTIONS OF A JURYMAN.
+
+On coming into the Law Courts Nekhludoff met the usher of yesterday, who
+to-day seemed to him much to be pitied, in the corridor, and asked him
+where those prisoners who had been sentenced were kept, and to whom one
+had to apply for permission to visit them. The usher told him that the
+condemned prisoners were kept in different places, and that, until they
+received their sentence in its final form, the permission to visit them
+depended on the president. "I'll come and call you myself, and take you
+to the president after the session. The president is not even here at
+present. After the session! And now please come in; we are going to
+commence."
+
+Nekhludoff thanked the usher for his kindness, and went into the
+jurymen's room. As he was approaching the room, the other jurymen were
+just leaving it to go into the court. The merchant had again partaken
+of a little refreshment, and was as merry as the day before, and greeted
+Nekhludoff like an old friend. And to-day Peter Gerasimovitch did not
+arouse any unpleasant feelings in Nekhludoff by his familiarity and his
+loud laughter. Nekhludoff would have liked to tell all the jurymen about
+his relations to yesterday's prisoner. "By rights," he thought, "I ought
+to have got up yesterday during the trial and disclosed my guilt."
+
+He entered the court with the other jurymen, and witnessed the same
+procedure as the day before.
+
+"The judges are coming," was again proclaimed, and again three men,
+with embroidered collars, ascended the platform, and there was the same
+settling of the jury on the high-backed chairs, the same gendarmes, the
+same portraits, the same priest, and Nekhludoff felt that, though he
+knew what he ought to do, he could not interrupt all this solemnity.
+The preparations for the trials were just the same as the day before,
+excepting that the swearing in of the jury and the president's address
+to them were omitted.
+
+The case before the Court this day was one of burglary. The prisoner,
+guarded by two gendarmes with naked swords, was a thin, narrow-chested
+lad of 20, with a bloodless, sallow face, dressed in a grey cloak.
+He sat alone in the prisoner's dock. This boy was accused of having,
+together with a companion, broken the lock of a shed and stolen several
+old mats valued at 3 roubles [the rouble is worth a little over two
+shillings, and contains 100 copecks] and 67 copecks. According to the
+indictment, a policeman had stopped this boy as he was passing with his
+companion, who was carrying the mats on his shoulder. The boy and
+his companion confessed at once, and were both imprisoned. The boy's
+companion, a locksmith, died in prison, and so the boy was being tried
+alone. The old mats were lying on the table as the objects of material
+evidence. The business was conducted just in the same manner as the day
+before, with the whole armoury of evidence, proofs, witnesses, swearing
+in, questions, experts, and cross-examinations. In answer to every
+question put to him by the president, the prosecutor, or the advocate,
+the policeman (one of the witnesses) in variably ejected the words:
+"just so," or "Can't tell." Yet, in spite of his being stupefied, and
+rendered a mere machine by military discipline, his reluctance to speak
+about the arrest of this prisoner was evident. Another witness, an old
+house proprietor, and owner of the mats, evidently a rich old man, when
+asked whether the mats were his, reluctantly identified them as such.
+When the public prosecutor asked him what he meant to do with these
+mats, what use they were to him, he got angry, and answered: "The devil
+take those mats; I don't want them at all. Had I known there would be
+all this bother about them I should not have gone looking for them, but
+would rather have added a ten-rouble note or two to them, only not to
+be dragged here and pestered with questions. I have spent a lot
+on isvostchiks. Besides, I am not well. I have been suffering from
+rheumatism for the last seven years." It was thus the witness spoke.
+
+The accused himself confessed everything, and looking round stupidly,
+like an animal that is caught, related how it had all happened. Still
+the public prosecutor, drawing up his shoulders as he had done the day
+before, asked subtle questions calculated to catch a cunning criminal.
+
+In his speech he proved that the theft had been committed from a
+dwelling-place, and a lock had been broken; and that the boy, therefore,
+deserved a heavy punishment. The advocate appointed by the Court proved
+that the theft was not committed from a dwelling-place, and that, though
+the crime was a serious one, the prisoner was not so very dangerous
+to society as the prosecutor stated. The president assumed the role of
+absolute neutrality in the same way as he had done on the previous day,
+and impressed on the jury facts which they all knew and could not help
+knowing. Then came an interval, just as the day before, and they smoked;
+and again the usher called out "The judges are coming," and in the
+same way the two gendarmes sat trying to keep awake and threatening the
+prisoner with their naked weapons.
+
+The proceedings showed that this boy was apprenticed by his father at
+a tobacco factory, where he remained five years. This year he had been
+discharged by the owner after a strike, and, having lost his place, he
+wandered about the town without any work, drinking all he possessed. In
+a traktir [cheap restaurant] he met another like himself, who had lost
+his place before the prisoner had, a locksmith by trade and a drunkard.
+One night, those two, both drunk, broke the lock of a shed and took the
+first thing they happened to lay hands on. They confessed all and were
+put in prison, where the locksmith died while awaiting the trial. The
+boy was now being tried as a dangerous creature, from whom society must
+be protected.
+
+"Just as dangerous a creature as yesterday's culprit," thought
+Nekhludoff, listening to all that was going on before him. "They are
+dangerous, and we who judge them? I, a rake, an adulterer, a deceiver.
+We are not dangerous. But, even supposing that this boy is the most
+dangerous of all that are here in the court, what should be done from a
+common-sense point of view when he has been caught? It is clear that he
+is not an exceptional evil-doer, but a most ordinary boy; every one
+sees it--and that he has become what he is simply because he got into
+circumstances that create such characters, and, therefore, to prevent
+such a boy from going wrong the circumstances that create these
+unfortunate beings must be done away with.
+
+"But what do we do? We seize one such lad who happens to get caught,
+knowing well that there are thousands like him whom we have not caught,
+and send him to prison, where idleness, or most unwholesome, useless
+labour is forced on him, in company of others weakened and ensnared by
+the lives they have led. And then we send him, at the public expense,
+from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government, in company with the most
+depraved of men.
+
+"But we do nothing to destroy the conditions in which people like these
+are produced; on the contrary, we support the establishments where
+they are formed. These establishments are well known: factories, mills,
+workshops, public-houses, gin-shops, brothels. And we do not destroy
+these places, but, looking at them as necessary, we support and regulate
+them. We educate in this way not one, but millions of people, and then
+catch one of them and imagine that we have done something, that we have
+guarded ourselves, and nothing more can be expected of us. Have we
+not sent him from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government?" Thus thought
+Nekhludoff with unusual clearness and vividness, sitting in his
+high-backed chair next to the colonel, and listening to the different
+intonations of the advocates', prosecutor's, and president's voices, and
+looking at their self-confident gestures. "And how much and what hard
+effort this pretence requires," continued Nekhludoff in his mind,
+glancing round the enormous room, the portraits, lamps, armchairs,
+uniforms, the thick walls and large windows; and picturing to himself
+the tremendous size of the building, and the still more ponderous
+dimensions of the whole of this organisation, with its army of
+officials, scribes, watchmen, messengers, not only in this place, but
+all over Russia, who receive wages for carrying on this comedy which no
+one needs. "Supposing we spent one-hundredth of these efforts helping
+these castaways, whom we now only regard as hands and bodies, required
+by us for our own peace and comfort. Had some one chanced to take pity
+on him and given some help at the time when poverty made them send him
+to town, it might have been sufficient," Nekhludoff thought, looking at
+the boy's piteous face. "Or even later, when, after 12 hours' work
+at the factory, he was going to the public-house, led away by his
+companions, had some one then come and said, 'Don't go, Vania; it is
+not right,' he would not have gone, nor got into bad ways, and would not
+have done any wrong.
+
+"But no; no one who would have taken pity on him came across this
+apprentice in the years he lived like a poor little animal in the town,
+and with his hair cut close so as not to breed vermin, and ran errands
+for the workmen. No, all he heard and saw, from the older workmen and
+his companions, since he came to live in town, was that he who cheats,
+drinks, swears, who gives another a thrashing, who goes on the loose,
+is a fine fellow. Ill, his constitution undermined by unhealthy labour,
+drink, and debauchery--bewildered as in a dream, knocking aimlessly
+about town, he gets into some sort of a shed, and takes from there some
+old mats, which nobody needs--and here we, all of us educated people,
+rich or comfortably off, meet together, dressed in good clothes and fine
+uniforms, in a splendid apartment, to mock this unfortunate brother of
+ours whom we ourselves have ruined.
+
+"Terrible! It is difficult to say whether the cruelty or the absurdity
+is greater, but the one and the other seem to reach their climax."
+
+Nekhludoff thought all this, no longer listening to what was going on,
+and he was horror-struck by that which was being revealed to him. He
+could not understand why he had not been able to see all this before,
+and why others were unable to see it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+THE PROCUREUR--NEKHLUDOFF REFUSES TO SERVE.
+
+During an interval Nekhludoff got up and went out into the corridor,
+with the intention of not returning to the court. Let them do what they
+liked with him, he could take no more part in this awful and horrid
+tomfoolery.
+
+Having inquired where the Procureur's cabinet was he went straight to
+him. The attendant did not wish to let him in, saying that the Procureur
+was busy, but Nekhludoff paid no heed and went to the door, where he was
+met by an official. He asked to be announced to the Procureur, saying he
+was on the jury and had a very important communication to make.
+
+His title and good clothes were of assistance to him. The official
+announced him to the Procureur, and Nekhludoff was let in. The Procureur
+met him standing, evidently annoyed at the persistence with which
+Nekhludoff demanded admittance.
+
+"What is it you want?" the Procureur asked, severely.
+
+"I am on the jury; my name is Nekhludoff, and it is absolutely necessary
+for me to see the prisoner Maslova," Nekhludoff said, quickly and
+resolutely, blushing, and feeling that he was taking a step which would
+have a decisive influence on his life.
+
+The Procureur was a short, dark man, with short, grizzly hair, quick,
+sparkling eyes, and a thick beard cut close on his projecting lower jaw.
+
+"Maslova? Yes, of course, I know. She was accused of poisoning," the
+Procureur said, quietly. "But why do you want to see her?" And then, as
+if wishing to tone down his question, he added, "I cannot give you the
+permission without knowing why you require it."
+
+"I require it for a particularly important reason."
+
+"Yes?" said the Procureur, and, lifting his eyes, looked attentively at
+Nekhludoff. "Has her case been heard or not?"
+
+"She was tried yesterday, and unjustly sentenced; she is innocent."
+
+"Yes? If she was sentenced only yesterday," went on the Procureur,
+paying no attention to Nekhludoff's statement concerning Maslova's
+innocence, "she must still be in the preliminary detention prison until
+the sentence is delivered in its final form. Visiting is allowed there
+only on certain days; I should advise you to inquire there."
+
+"But I must see her as soon as possible," Nekhludoff said, his jaw
+trembling as he felt the decisive moment approaching.
+
+"Why must you?" said the Procureur, lifting his brows with some
+agitation.
+
+"Because I betrayed her and brought her to the condition which exposed
+her to this accusation."
+
+"All the same, I cannot see what it has to do with visiting her."
+
+"This: that whether I succeed or not in getting the sentence changed I
+want to follow her, and--marry her," said Nekhludoff, touched to tears
+by his own conduct, and at the same time pleased to see the effect he
+produced on the Procureur.
+
+"Really! Dear me!" said the Procureur. "This is certainly a very
+exceptional case. I believe you are a member of the Krasnoporsk rural
+administration?" he asked, as if he remembered having heard before of
+this Nekhludoff, who was now making so strange a declaration.
+
+"I beg your pardon, but I do not think that has anything to do with my
+request," answered Nekhludoff, flushing angrily.
+
+"Certainly not," said the Procureur, with a scarcely perceptible smile
+and not in the least abashed; "only your wish is so extraordinary and so
+out of the common."
+
+"Well; but can I get the permission?"
+
+"The permission? Yes, I will give you an order of admittance directly.
+Take a seat."
+
+He went up to the table, sat down, and began to write. "Please sit
+down."
+
+Nekhludoff continued to stand.
+
+Having written an order of admittance, and handed it to Nekhludoff, the
+Procureur looked curiously at him.
+
+"I must also state that I can no longer take part in the sessions."
+
+"Then you will have to lay valid reasons before the Court, as you, of
+course, know."
+
+"My reasons are that I consider all judging not only useless, but
+immoral."
+
+"Yes," said the Procureur, with the same scarcely perceptible smile,
+as if to show that this kind of declaration was well known to him and
+belonged to the amusing sort. "Yes, but you will certainly understand
+that I as Procureur, can not agree with you on this point. Therefore,
+I should advise you to apply to the Court, which will consider your
+declaration, and find it valid or not valid, and in the latter case will
+impose a fine. Apply, then, to the Court."
+
+"I have made my declaration, and shall apply nowhere else," Nekhludoff
+said, angrily.
+
+"Well, then, good-afternoon," said the Procureur, bowing his head,
+evidently anxious to be rid of this strange visitor.
+
+"Who was that you had here?" asked one of the members of the Court, as
+he entered, just after Nekhludoff left the room.
+
+"Nekhludoff, you know; the same that used to make all sorts of strange
+statements at the Krasnoporsk rural meetings. Just fancy! He is on the
+jury, and among the prisoners there is a woman or girl sentenced to
+penal servitude, whom he says he betrayed, and now he wants to marry
+her."
+
+"You don't mean to say so."
+
+"That's what he told me. And in such a strange state of excitement!"
+
+"There is something abnormal in the young men of to-day."
+
+"Oh, but he is not so very young."
+
+"Yes. But how tiresome your famous Ivoshenka was. He carries the day by
+wearying one out. He talked and talked without end."
+
+"Oh, that kind of people should be simply stopped, or they will become
+real obstructionists."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF ENDEAVOURS TO VISIT MASLOVA.
+
+From the Procureur Nekhludoff went straight to the preliminary detention
+prison. However, no Maslova was to be found there, and the inspector
+explained to Nekhludoff that she would probably be in the old temporary
+prison. Nekhludoff went there.
+
+Yes, Katerina Maslova was there.
+
+The distance between the two prisons was enormous, and Nekhludoff only
+reached the old prison towards evening. He was going up to the door of
+the large, gloomy building, but the sentinel stopped him and rang. A
+warder came in answer to the bell. Nekhludoff showed him his order of
+admittance, but the warder said he could not let him in without the
+inspector's permission. Nekhludoff went to see the inspector. As he was
+going up the stairs he heard distant sounds of some complicated bravura,
+played on the piano. When a cross servant girl, with a bandaged eye,
+opened the door to him, those sounds seemed to escape from the room
+and to strike his car. It was a rhapsody of Liszt's, that everybody was
+tired of, splendidly played but only to one point. When that point was
+reached the same thing was repeated. Nekhludoff asked the bandaged maid
+whether the inspector was in. She answered that he was not in.
+
+"Will he return soon?"
+
+The rhapsody again stopped and recommenced loudly and brilliantly again
+up to the same charmed point.
+
+"I will go and ask," and the servant went away.
+
+"Tell him he is not in and won't be to-day; he is out visiting. What do
+they come bothering for?" came the sound of a woman's voice from behind
+the door, and again the rhapsody rattled on and stopped, and the sound
+of a chair pushed back was heard. It was plain the irritated pianist
+meant to rebuke the tiresome visitor, who had come at an untimely hour.
+"Papa is not in," a pale girl with crimped hair said, crossly, coming
+out into the ante-room, but, seeing a young man in a good coat, she
+softened.
+
+"Come in, please. . . . What is it you want?"
+
+"I want to see a prisoner in this prison."
+
+"A political one, I suppose?"
+
+"No, not a political one. I have a permission from the Procureur."
+
+"Well, I don't know, and papa is out; but come in, please," she said,
+again, "or else speak to the assistant. He is in the office at present;
+apply there. What is your name?"
+
+"I thank you," said Nekhludoff, without answering her question, and went
+out.
+
+The door was not yet closed after him when the same lively tones
+recommenced. In the courtyard Nekhludoff met an officer with bristly
+moustaches, and asked for the assistant-inspector. It was the assistant
+himself. He looked at the order of admittance, but said that he could
+not decide to let him in with a pass for the preliminary prison.
+Besides, it was too late. "Please to come again to-morrow. To morrow, at
+10, everybody is allowed to go in. Come then, and the inspector himself
+will be at home. Then you can have the interview either in the common
+room or, if the inspector allows it, in the office."
+
+And so Nekhludoff did not succeed in getting an interview that day,
+and returned home. As he went along the streets, excited at the idea of
+meeting her, he no longer thought about the Law Courts, but recalled his
+conversations with the Procureur and the inspector's assistant. The
+fact that he had been seeking an interview with her, and had told the
+Procureur, and had been in two prisons, so excited him that it was long
+before he could calm down. When he got home he at once fetched out his
+diary, that had long remained untouched, read a few sentences out of it,
+and then wrote as follows:
+
+"For two years I have not written anything in my diary, and thought I
+never should return to this childishness. Yet it is not childishness,
+but converse with my own self, with this real divine self which lives
+in every man. All this time that I slept there was no one for me to
+converse with. I was awakened by an extraordinary event on the 28th
+of April, in the Law Court, when I was on the jury. I saw her in the
+prisoners' dock, the Katusha betrayed by me, in a prisoner's cloak,
+condemned to penal servitude through a strange mistake, and my own
+fault. I have just been to the Procureur's and to the prison, but I was
+not admitted. I have resolved to do all I can to see her, to confess to
+her, and to atone for my sin, even by a marriage. God help me. My soul
+is at peace and I am full of joy."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+MASLOVA RECALLS THE PAST.
+
+That night Maslova lay awake a long time with her eyes open looking at
+the door, in front of which the deacon's daughter kept passing. She was
+thinking that nothing would induce her to go to the island of Sakhalin
+and marry a convict, but would arrange matters somehow with one of the
+prison officials, the secretary, a warder, or even a warder's assistant.
+"Aren't they all given that way? Only I must not get thin, or else I am
+lost."
+
+She thought of how the advocate had looked at her, and also the
+president, and of the men she met, and those who came in on purpose at
+the court. She recollected how her companion, Bertha, who came to see
+her in prison, had told her about the student whom she had "loved" while
+she was with Kitaeva, and who had inquired about her, and pitied her
+very much. She recalled many to mind, only not Nekhludoff. She never
+brought back to mind the days of her childhood and youth, and her love
+to Nekhludoff. That would have been too painful. These memories lay
+untouched somewhere deep in her soul; she had forgotten him, and never
+recalled and never even dreamt of him. To-day, in the court, she did not
+recognise him, not only because when she last saw him he was in uniform,
+without a beard, and had only a small moustache and thick, curly, though
+short hair, and now was bald and bearded, but because she never thought
+about him. She had buried his memory on that terrible dark night when
+he, returning from the army, had passed by on the railway without
+stopping to call on his aunts. Katusha then knew her condition. Up to
+that night she did not consider the child that lay beneath her heart
+a burden. But on that night everything changed, and the child became
+nothing but a weight.
+
+His aunts had expected Nekhludoff, had asked him to come and see them in
+passing, but he had telegraphed that he could not come, as he had to be
+in Petersburg at an appointed time. When Katusha heard this she made up
+her mind to go to the station and see him. The train was to pass by at
+two o'clock in the night. Katusha having helped the old ladies to bed,
+and persuaded a little girl, the cook's daughter, Mashka, to come with
+her, put on a pair of old boots, threw a shawl over her head, gathered
+up her dress, and ran to the station.
+
+It was a warm, rainy, and windy autumn night. The rain now pelted down
+in warm, heavy drops, now stopped again. It was too dark to see the path
+across the field, and in the wood it was pitch black, so that although
+Katusha knew the way well, she got off the path, and got to the little
+station where the train stopped for three minutes, not before, as she
+had hoped, but after the second bell had been rung. Hurrying up the
+platform, Katusha saw him at once at the windows of a first-class
+carriage. Two officers sat opposite each other on the velvet-covered
+seats, playing cards. This carriage was very brightly lit up; on the
+little table between the seats stood two thick, dripping candles. He sat
+in his closefitting breeches on the arm of the seat, leaning against
+the back, and laughed. As soon as she recognised him she knocked at the
+carriage window with her benumbed hand, but at that moment the last bell
+rang, and the train first gave a backward jerk, and then gradually the
+carriages began to move forward. One of the players rose with the cards
+in his hand, and looked out. She knocked again, and pressed her face to
+the window, but the carriage moved on, and she went alongside looking
+in. The officer tried to lower the window, but could not. Nekhludoff
+pushed him aside and began lowering it himself. The train went faster,
+so that she had to walk quickly. The train went on still faster and the
+window opened. The guard pushed her aside, and jumped in. Katusha ran
+on, along the wet boards of the platform, and when she came to the end
+she could hardly stop herself from falling as she ran down the steps
+of the platform. She was running by the side of the railway, though the
+first-class carriage had long passed her, and the second-class carriages
+were gliding by faster, and at last the third-class carriages still
+faster. But she ran on, and when the last carriage with the lamps at
+the back had gone by, she had already reached the tank which fed the
+engines, and was unsheltered from the wind, which was blowing her shawl
+about and making her skirt cling round her legs. The shawl flew off her
+head, but still she ran on.
+
+"Katerina Michaelovna, you've lost your shawl!" screamed the little
+girl, who was trying to keep up with her.
+
+Katusha stopped, threw back her head, and catching hold of it with both
+hands sobbed aloud. "Gone!" she screamed.
+
+"He is sitting in a velvet arm-chair and joking and drinking, in a
+brightly lit carriage, and I, out here in the mud, in the darkness, in
+the wind and the rain, am standing and weeping," she thought to herself;
+and sat down on the ground, sobbing so loud that the little girl got
+frightened, and put her arms round her, wet as she was.
+
+"Come home, dear," she said.
+
+"When a train passes--then under a carriage, and there will be an end,"
+Katusha was thinking, without heeding the girl.
+
+And she made up her mind to do it, when, as it always happens, when a
+moment of quiet follows great excitement, he, the child--his child--made
+himself known within her. Suddenly all that a moment before had been
+tormenting her, so that it had seemed impossible to live, all her
+bitterness towards him, and the wish to revenge herself, even by dying,
+passed away; she grew quieter, got up, put the shawl on her head, and
+went home.
+
+Wet, muddy, and quite exhausted, she returned, and from that day the
+change which brought her where she now was began to operate in her soul.
+Beginning from that dreadful night, she ceased believing in God and
+in goodness. She had herself believed in God, and believed that other
+people also believed in Him; but after that night she became convinced
+that no one believed, and that all that was said about God and His
+laws was deception and untruth. He whom she loved, and who had loved
+her--yes, she knew that--had thrown her away; had abused her love. Yet
+he was the best of all the people she knew. All the rest were still
+worse. All that afterwards happened to her strengthened her in this
+belief at every step. His aunts, the pious old ladies, turned her out
+when she could no longer serve them as she used to. And of all those she
+met, the women used her as a means of getting money, the men, from the
+old police officer down to the warders of the prison, looked at her as
+on an object for pleasure. And no one in the world cared for aught but
+pleasure. In this belief the old author with whom she had come together
+in the second year of her life of independence had strengthened her. He
+had told her outright that it was this that constituted the happiness of
+life, and he called it poetical and aesthetic.
+
+Everybody lived for himself only, for his pleasure, and all the talk
+concerning God and righteousness was deception. And if sometimes doubts
+arose in her mind and she wondered why everything was so ill-arranged
+in the world that all hurt each other, and made each other suffer, she
+thought it best not to dwell on it, and if she felt melancholy she could
+smoke, or, better still, drink, and it would pass.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+SUNDAY IN PRISON--PREPARING FOR MASS.
+
+On Sunday morning at five o'clock, when a whistle sounded in the
+corridor of the women's ward of the prison, Korableva, who was already
+awake, called Maslova.
+
+"Oh, dear! life again," thought Maslova, with horror, involuntarily
+breathing in the air that had become terribly noisome towards the
+morning. She wished to fall asleep again, to enter into the region of
+oblivion, but the habit of fear overcame sleepiness, and she sat up and
+looked round, drawing her feet under her. The women had all got up; only
+the elder children were still asleep. The spirit-trader was carefully
+drawing a cloak from under the children, so as not to wake them. The
+watchman's wife was hanging up the rags to dry that served the baby
+as swaddling clothes, while the baby was screaming desperately in
+Theodosia's arms, who was trying to quiet it. The consumptive woman was
+coughing with her hands pressed to her chest, while the blood rushed to
+her face, and she sighed loudly, almost screaming, in the intervals of
+coughing. The fat, red-haired woman was lying on her back, with
+knees drawn up, and loudly relating a dream. The old woman accused of
+incendiarism was standing in front of the image, crossing herself and
+bowing, and repeating the same words over and over again. The deacon's
+daughter sat on the bedstead, looking before her, with a dull, sleepy
+face. Khoroshavka was twisting her black, oily, coarse hair round her
+fingers. The sound of slipshod feet was heard in the passage, and the
+door opened to let in two convicts, dressed in jackets and grey trousers
+that did not reach to their ankles. With serious, cross faces they
+lifted the stinking tub and carried it out of the cell. The women went
+out to the taps in the corridor to wash. There the red-haired woman
+again began a quarrel with a woman from another cell.
+
+"Is it the solitary cell you want?" shouted an old jailer, slapping the
+red-haired woman on her bare, fat back, so that it sounded through the
+corridor. "You be quiet."
+
+"Lawks! the old one's playful," said the woman, taking his action for a
+caress.
+
+"Now, then, be quick; get ready for the mass." Maslova had hardly time
+to do her hair and dress when the inspector came with his assistants.
+
+"Come out for inspection," cried a jailer.
+
+Some more prisoners came out of other cells and stood in two rows along
+the corridor; each woman had to place her hand on the shoulder of the
+woman in front of her. They were all counted.
+
+After the inspection the woman warder led the prisoners to church.
+Maslova and Theodosia were in the middle of a column of over a hundred
+women, who had come out of different cells. All were dressed in white
+skirts, white jackets, and wore white kerchiefs on their heads, except
+a few who had their own coloured clothes on. These were wives who, with
+their children, were following their convict husbands to Siberia. The
+whole flight of stairs was filled by the procession. The patter of
+softly-shod feet mingled with the voices and now and then a laugh. When
+turning, on the landing, Maslova saw her enemy, Botchkova, in front, and
+pointed out her angry face to Theodosia. At the bottom of the stairs the
+women stopped talking. Bowing and crossing themselves, they entered the
+empty church, which glistened with gilding. Crowding and pushing one
+another, they took their places on the right.
+
+After the women came the men condemned to banishment, those serving
+their term in the prison, and those exiled by their Communes; and,
+coughing loudly, they took their stand, crowding the left side and the
+middle of the church.
+
+On one side of the gallery above stood the men sentenced to penal
+servitude in Siberia, who had been let into the church before the
+others. Each of them had half his head shaved, and their presence was
+indicated by the clanking of the chains on their feet. On the other side
+of the gallery stood those in preliminary confinement, without chains,
+their heads not shaved.
+
+The prison church had been rebuilt and ornamented by a rich merchant,
+who spent several tens of thousands of roubles on it, and it glittered
+with gay colours and gold. For a time there was silence in the church,
+and only coughing, blowing of noses, the crying of babies, and now and
+then the rattling of chains, was heard. But at last the convicts that
+stood in the middle moved, pressed against each other, leaving a passage
+in the centre of the church, down which the prison inspector passed to
+take his place in front of every one in the nave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE PRISON CHURCH--BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND.
+
+The service began.
+
+It consisted of the following. The priest, having dressed in a strange
+and very inconvenient garb, made of gold cloth, cut and arranged little
+bits of bread on a saucer, and then put them into a cup with wine,
+repeating at the same time different names and prayers. Meanwhile
+the deacon first read Slavonic prayers, difficult to understand in
+themselves, and rendered still more incomprehensible by being read very
+fast, and then sang them turn and turn about with the convicts. The
+contents of the prayers were chiefly the desire for the welfare of
+the Emperor and his family. These petitions were repeated many times,
+separately and together with other prayers, the people kneeling. Besides
+this, several verses from the Acts of the Apostles were read by the
+deacon in a peculiarly strained voice, which made it impossible to
+understand what he read, and then the priest read very distinctly a
+part of the Gospel according to St. Mark, in which it said that Christ,
+having risen from the dead before flying up to heaven to sit down at His
+Father's right hand, first showed Himself to Mary Magdalene, out of whom
+He had driven seven devils, and then to eleven of His disciples, and
+ordered them to preach the Gospel to the whole creation, and the priest
+added that if any one did not believe this he would perish, but he that
+believed it and was baptised should be saved, and should besides drive
+out devils and cure people by laying his hands on them, should talk in
+strange tongues, should take up serpents, and if he drank poison should
+not die, but remain well.
+
+The essence of the service consisted in the supposition that the bits
+cut up by the priest and put by him into the wine, when manipulated and
+prayed over in a certain way, turned into the flesh and blood of God.
+
+These manipulations consisted in the priest's regularly lifting and
+holding up his arms, though hampered by the gold cloth sack he had on,
+then, sinking on to his knees and kissing the table and all that was on
+it, but chiefly in his taking a cloth by two of its corners and waving
+it regularly and softly over the silver saucer and golden cup. It was
+supposed that, at this point, the bread and the wine turned into flesh
+and blood; therefore, this part of the service was performed with the
+greatest solemnity.
+
+"Now, to the blessed, most pure, and most holy Mother of God," the
+priest cried from the golden partition which divided part of the church
+from the rest, and the choir began solemnly to sing that it was very
+right to glorify the Virgin Mary, who had borne Christ without losing
+her virginity, and was therefore worthy of greater honour than some kind
+of cherubim, and greater glory than some kind of seraphim. After this
+the transformation was considered accomplished, and the priest having
+taken the napkin off the saucer, cut the middle bit of bread in four,
+and put it into the wine, and then into his mouth. He was supposed to
+have eaten a bit of God's flesh and swallowed a little of His blood.
+Then the priest drew a curtain, opened the middle door in the partition,
+and, taking the gold cup in his hands, came out of the door, inviting
+those who wished to do so also to come and eat some of God's flesh and
+blood that was contained in the cup. A few children appeared to wish to
+do so.
+
+After having asked the children their names, the priest carefully took
+out of the cup, with a spoon, and shoved a bit of bread soaked in wine
+deep into the mouth of each child in turn, and the deacon, while wiping
+the children's mouths, sang, in a merry voice, that the children were
+eating the flesh and drinking the blood of God. After this the priest
+carried the cup back behind the partition, and there drank all the
+remaining blood and ate up all the bits of flesh, and after having
+carefully sucked his moustaches and wiped his mouth, he stepped briskly
+from behind the partition, the soles of his calfskin boots creaking.
+The principal part of this Christian service was now finished, but
+the priest, wishing to comfort the unfortunate prisoners, added to the
+ordinary service another. This consisted of his going up to the gilt
+hammered-out image (with black face and hands) supposed to represent
+the very God he had been eating, illuminated by a dozen wax candles, and
+proceeding, in a strange, discordant voice, to hum or sing the following
+words:
+
+"Jesu sweetest, glorified of the Apostles, Jesu lauded by the martyrs,
+almighty Monarch, save me, Jesu my Saviour. Jesu, most beautiful, have
+mercy on him who cries to Thee, Saviour Jesu. Born of prayer Jesu, all
+thy saints, all thy prophets, save and find them worthy of the joys of
+heaven. Jesu, lover of men."
+
+Then he stopped, drew breath, crossed himself, bowed to the ground, and
+every one did the same--the inspector, the warders, the prisoners; and
+from above the clinking of the chains sounded more unintermittently.
+Then he continued: "Of angels the Creator and Lord of powers, Jesu most
+wonderful, the angels' amazement, Jesu most powerful, of our forefathers
+the Redeemer. Jesu sweetest, of patriarchs the praise. Jesu most
+glorious, of kings the strength. Jesu most good, of prophets the
+fulfilment. Jesu most amazing, of martyrs the strength. Jesu most
+humble, of monks the joy. Jesu most merciful, of priests the sweetness.
+Jesu most charitable, of the fasting the continence. Jesu most sweet,
+of the just the joy. Jesu most pure, of the celibates the chastity. Jesu
+before all ages of sinners the salvation. Jesu, son of God, have mercy
+on me."
+
+Every time he repeated the word "Jesu" his voice became more and
+more wheezy. At last he came to a stop, and holding up his silk-lined
+cassock, and kneeling down on one knee, he stooped down to the ground
+and the choir began to sing, repeating the words, "Jesu, Son of God,
+have mercy on me," and the convicts fell down and rose again, shaking
+back the hair that was left on their heads, and rattling with the chains
+that were bruising their thin ankles.
+
+This continued for a long time. First came the glorification, which
+ended with the words, "Have mercy on me." Then more glorifications,
+ending with "Alleluia!" And the convicts made the sign of the cross,
+and bowed, first at each sentence, then after every two and then after
+three, and all were very glad when the glorification ended, and the
+priest shut the book with a sigh of relief and retired behind the
+partition. One last act remained. The priest took a large, gilt cross,
+with enamel medallions at the ends, from a table, and came out into the
+centre of the church with it. First the inspector came up and kissed
+the cross, then the jailers, then the convicts, pushing and abusing
+each other in whispers. The priest, talking to the inspector, pushed the
+cross and his hand now against the mouths and now against the noses of
+the convicts, who were trying to kiss both the cross and the hand of the
+priest. And thus ended the Christian service, intended for the comfort
+and the teaching of these strayed brothers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE HUSKS OF RELIGION.
+
+And none of those present, from the inspector down to Maslova, seemed
+conscious of the fact that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeated
+such a great number of times, and whom he praised with all these curious
+expressions, had forbidden the very things that were being done there;
+that He had prohibited not only this meaningless much-speaking and the
+blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine, but had also, in the
+clearest words, forbidden men to call other men their master, and to
+pray in temples; and had ordered that every one should pray in solitude,
+had forbidden to erect temples, saying that He had come to destroy
+them, and that one should worship, not in a temple, but in spirit and
+in truth; and, above all, that He had forbidden not only to judge, to
+imprison, to torment, to execute men, as was being done here, but had
+prohibited any kind of violence, saying that He had come to give freedom
+to the captives.
+
+No one present seemed conscious that all that was going on here was the
+greatest blasphemy and a supreme mockery of that same Christ in whose
+name it was being done. No one seemed to realise that the gilt cross
+with the enamel medallions at the ends, which the priest held out to the
+people to be kissed, was nothing but the emblem of that gallows on which
+Christ had been executed for denouncing just what was going on here.
+That these priests, who imagined they were eating and drinking the body
+and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine, did in reality eat
+and drink His flesh and His blood, but not as wine and bits of bread,
+but by ensnaring "these little ones" with whom He identified Himself,
+by depriving them of the greatest blessings and submitting them to most
+cruel torments, and by hiding from men the tidings of great joy which
+He had brought. That thought did not enter into the mind of any one
+present.
+
+The priest did his part with a quiet conscience, because he was brought
+up from childhood to consider that the only true faith was the faith
+which had been held by all the holy men of olden times and was still
+held by the Church, and demanded by the State authorities. He did not
+believe that the bread turned into flesh, that it was useful for the
+soul to repeat so many words, or that he had actually swallowed a bit of
+God. No one could believe this, but he believed that one ought to hold
+this faith. What strengthened him most in this faith was the fact that,
+for fulfilling the demands of this faith, he had for the last 15 years
+been able to draw an income, which enabled him to keep his family, send
+his son to a gymnasium and his daughter to a school for the daughters of
+the clergy. The deacon believed in the same manner, and even more firmly
+than the priest, for he had forgotten the substance of the dogmas of
+this faith, and knew only that the prayers for the dead, the masses,
+with and without the acathistus, all had a definite price, which real
+Christians readily paid, and, therefore, he called out his "have mercy,
+have mercy," very willingly, and read and said what was appointed, with
+the same quiet certainty of its being necessary to do so with which
+other men sell faggots, flour, or potatoes. The prison inspector and the
+warders, though they had never understood or gone into the meaning of
+these dogmas and of all that went on in church, believed that they must
+believe, because the higher authorities and the Tsar himself believed in
+it. Besides, though faintly (and themselves unable to explain why), they
+felt that this faith defended their cruel occupations. If this faith
+did not exist it would have been more difficult, perhaps impossible, for
+them to use all their powers to torment people, as they were now doing,
+with a quiet conscience. The inspector was such a kind-hearted man that
+he could not have lived as he was now living unsupported by his faith.
+Therefore, he stood motionless, bowed and crossed himself zealously,
+tried to feel touched when the song about the cherubims was being sung,
+and when the children received communion he lifted one of them, and held
+him up to the priest with his own hands.
+
+The great majority of the prisoners believed that there lay a mystic
+power in these gilt images, these vestments, candles, cups, crosses,
+and this repetition of incomprehensible words, "Jesu sweetest" and "have
+mercy"--a power through which might be obtained much convenience in this
+and in the future life. Only a few clearly saw the deception that was
+practised on the people who adhered to this faith, and laughed at it in
+their hearts; but the majority, having made several attempts to get the
+conveniences they desired, by means of prayers, masses, and candles, and
+not having got them (their prayers remaining unanswered), were each of
+them convinced that their want of success was accidental, and that
+this organisation, approved by the educated and by archbishops, is very
+important and necessary, if not for this, at any rate for the next life.
+
+Maslova also believed in this way. She felt, like the rest, a mixed
+sensation of piety and dulness. She stood at first in a crowd behind a
+railing, so that she could see no one but her companions; but when those
+to receive communion moved on, she and Theodosia stepped to the front,
+and they saw the inspector, and, behind him, standing among the warders,
+a little peasant, with a very light beard and fair hair. This was
+Theodosia's husband, and he was gazing with fixed eyes at his wife.
+During the acathistus Maslova occupied herself in scrutinising him and
+talking to Theodosia in whispers, and bowed and made the sign of the
+cross only when every one else did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+VISITING DAY--THE MEN'S WARD.
+
+Nekhludoff left home early. A peasant from the country was still driving
+along the side street and calling out in a voice peculiar to his trade,
+"Milk! milk! milk!"
+
+The first warm spring rain had fallen the day before, and now wherever
+the ground was not paved the grass shone green. The birch trees in the
+gardens looked as if they were strewn with green fluff, the wild cherry
+and the poplars unrolled their long, balmy buds, and in shops and
+dwelling-houses the double window-frames were being removed and the
+windows cleaned.
+
+In the Tolkoochi [literally, jostling market, where second-hand clothes
+and all sorts of cheap goods are sold] market, which Nekhludoff had to
+pass on his way, a dense crowd was surging along the row of booths, and
+tattered men walked about selling top-boots, which they carried under
+their arms, and renovated trousers and waistcoats, which hung over their
+shoulders.
+
+Men in clean coats and shining boots, liberated from the factories, it
+being Sunday, and women with bright silk kerchiefs on their heads and
+cloth jackets trimmed with jet, were already thronging at the door of
+the traktir. Policemen, with yellow cords to their uniforms and carrying
+pistols, were on duty, looking out for some disorder which might
+distract the ennui that oppressed them. On the paths of the boulevards
+and on the newly-revived grass, children and dogs ran about, playing,
+and the nurses sat merrily chattering on the benches. Along the streets,
+still fresh and damp on the shady side, but dry in the middle, heavy
+carts rumbled unceasingly, cabs rattled and tramcars passed ringing by.
+The air vibrated with the pealing and clanging of church bells, that
+were calling the people to attend to a service like that which was now
+being conducted in the prison. And the people, dressed in their Sunday
+best, were passing on their way to their different parish churches.
+
+The isvostchik did not drive Nekhludoff up to the prison itself, but to
+the last turning that led to the prison.
+
+Several persons--men and women--most of them carrying small bundles,
+stood at this turning, about 100 steps from the prison. To the right
+there were several low wooden buildings; to the left, a two-storeyed
+house with a signboard. The huge brick building, the prison proper, was
+just in front, and the visitors were not allowed to come up to it. A
+sentinel was pacing up and down in front of it, and shouted at any one
+who tried to pass him.
+
+At the gate of the wooden buildings, to the right, opposite the
+sentinel, sat a warder on a bench, dressed in uniform, with gold cords,
+a notebook in his hands. The visitors came up to him, and named the
+persons they wanted to see, and he put the names down. Nekhludoff also
+went up, and named Katerina Maslova. The warder wrote down the name.
+
+"Why--don't they admit us yet?" asked Nekhludoff.
+
+"The service is going on. When the mass is over, you'll be admitted."
+
+Nekhludoff stepped aside from the waiting crowd. A man in tattered
+clothes, crumpled hat, with bare feet and red stripes all over his face,
+detached himself from the crowd, and turned towards the prison.
+
+"Now, then, where are you going?" shouted the sentinel with the gun.
+
+"And you hold your row," answered the tramp, not in the least abashed by
+the sentinel's words, and turned back. "Well, if you'll not let me in,
+I'll wait. But, no! Must needs shout, as if he were a general."
+
+The crowd laughed approvingly. The visitors were, for the greater
+part, badly-dressed people; some were ragged, but there were also
+some respectable-looking men and women. Next to Nekhludoff stood a
+clean-shaven, stout, and red-cheeked man, holding a bundle, apparently
+containing under-garments. This was the doorkeeper of a bank; he had
+come to see his brother, who was arrested for forgery. The good-natured
+fellow told Nekhludoff the whole story of his life, and was going to
+question him in turn, when their attention was aroused by a student and
+a veiled lady, who drove up in a trap, with rubber tyres, drawn by a
+large thoroughbred horse. The student was holding a large bundle. He
+came up to Nekhludoff, and asked if and how he could give the rolls he
+had brought in alms to the prisoners. His fiancee wished it (this lady
+was his fiancee), and her parents had advised them to take some rolls to
+the prisoners.
+
+"I myself am here for the first time," said Nekhludoff, "and don't know;
+but I think you had better ask this man," and he pointed to the warder
+with the gold cords and the book, sitting on the right.
+
+As they were speaking, the large iron door with a window in it opened,
+and an officer in uniform, followed by another warder, stepped out.
+The warder with the notebook proclaimed that the admittance of visitors
+would now commence. The sentinel stepped aside, and all the visitors
+rushed to the door as if afraid of being too late; some even ran. At
+the door there stood a warder who counted the visitors as they came
+in, saying aloud, 16, 17, and so on. Another warder stood inside the
+building and also counted the visitors as they entered a second door,
+touching each one with his hand, so that when they went away again
+not one visitor should be able to remain inside the prison and not
+one prisoner might get out. The warder, without looking at whom he was
+touching, slapped Nekhludoff on the back, and Nekhludoff felt hurt by
+the touch of the warder's hand; but, remembering what he had come about,
+he felt ashamed of feeling dissatisfied and taking offence.
+
+The first apartment behind the entrance doors was a large vaulted room
+with iron bars to the small windows. In this room, which was called the
+meeting-room, Nekhludoff was startled by the sight of a large picture of
+the Crucifixion.
+
+"What's that for?" he thought, his mind involuntarily connecting the
+subject of the picture with liberation and not with imprisonment.
+
+He went on, slowly letting the hurrying visitors pass before, and
+experiencing a mingled feeling of horror at the evil-doers locked up in
+this building, compassion for those who, like Katusha and the boy they
+tried the day before, must be here though guiltless, and shyness and
+tender emotion at the thought of the interview before him. The warder
+at the other end of the meeting-room said something as they passed, but
+Nekhludoff, absorbed by his own thoughts, paid no attention to him, and
+continued to follow the majority of the visitors, and so got into the
+men's part of the prison instead of the women's.
+
+Letting the hurrying visitors pass before him, he was the last to get
+into the interviewing-room. As soon as Nekhludoff opened the door of
+this room, he was struck by the deafening roar of a hundred voices
+shouting at once, the reason of which he did not at once understand. But
+when he came nearer to the people, he saw that they were all pressing
+against a net that divided the room in two, like flies settling on
+sugar, and he understood what it meant. The two halves of the room,
+the windows of which were opposite the door he had come in by, were
+separated, not by one, but by two nets reaching from the floor to the
+ceiling. The wire nets were stretched 7 feet apart, and soldiers were
+walking up and down the space between them. On the further side of the
+nets were the prisoners, on the nearer, the visitors. Between them was
+a double row of nets and a space of 7 feet wide, so that they could not
+hand anything to one another, and any one whose sight was not very
+good could not even distinguish the face on the other side. It was also
+difficult to talk; one had to scream in order to be heard.
+
+On both sides were faces pressed close to the nets, faces of wives,
+husbands, fathers, mothers, children, trying to see each other's
+features and to say what was necessary in such a way as to be
+understood.
+
+But as each one tried to be heard by the one he was talking to, and
+his neighbour tried to do the same, they did their best to drown each
+other's voices' and that was the cause of the din and shouting which
+struck Nekhludoff when he first came in. It was impossible to understand
+what was being said and what were the relations between the different
+people. Next Nekhludoff an old woman with a kerchief on her head stood
+trembling, her chin pressed close to the net, and shouting something to
+a young fellow, half of whose head was shaved, who listened attentively
+with raised brows. By the side of the old woman was a young man in
+a peasant's coat, who listened, shaking his head, to a boy very like
+himself. Next stood a man in rags, who shouted, waving his arm and
+laughing. Next to him a woman, with a good woollen shawl on her
+shoulders, sat on the floor holding a baby in her lap and crying
+bitterly. This was apparently the first time she saw the greyheaded man
+on the other side in prison clothes, and with his head shaved. Beyond
+her was the doorkeeper, who had spoken to Nekhludoff outside; he was
+shouting with all his might to a greyhaired convict on the other side.
+
+When Nekhludoff found that he would have to speak in similar conditions,
+a feeling of indignation against those who were able to make and enforce
+these conditions arose in him; he was surprised that, placed in such
+a dreadful position, no one seemed offended at this outrage on human
+feelings. The soldiers, the inspector, the prisoners themselves, acted
+as if acknowledging all this to be necessary.
+
+Nekhludoff remained in this room for about five minutes, feeling
+strangely depressed, conscious of how powerless he was, and at variance
+with all the world. He was seized with a curious moral sensation like
+seasickness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+VISITING DAY--THE WOMEN'S WARD.
+
+"Well, but I must do what I came here for," he said, trying to pick up
+courage. "What is to be done now?" He looked round for an official, and
+seeing a thin little man in the uniform of an officer going up and down
+behind the people, he approached him.
+
+"Can you tell me, sir," he said, with exceedingly strained politeness of
+manner, "where the women are kept, and where one is allowed to interview
+them?"
+
+"Is it the women's ward you want to go to?"
+
+"Yes, I should like to see one of the women prisoners," Nekhludoff said,
+with the same strained politeness.
+
+"You should have said so when you were in the hall. Who is it, then,
+that you want to see?"
+
+"I want to see a prisoner called Katerina Maslova."
+
+"Is she a political one?"
+
+"No, she is simply . . ."
+
+"What! Is she sentenced?"
+
+"Yes; the day before yesterday she was sentenced," meekly answered
+Nekhludoff, fearing to spoil the inspector's good humour, which seemed
+to incline in his favour.
+
+"If you want to go to the women's ward please to step this way," said
+the officer, having decided from Nekhludoff's appearance that he was
+worthy of attention. "Sideroff, conduct the gentleman to the women's
+ward," he said, turning to a moustached corporal with medals on his
+breast.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+At this moment heart-rending sobs were heard coming from some one near
+the net.
+
+Everything here seemed strange to Nekhludoff; but strangest of all was
+that he should have to thank and feel obligation towards the inspector
+and the chief warders, the very men who were performing the cruel deeds
+that were done in this house.
+
+The corporal showed Nekhludoff through the corridor, out of the men's
+into the women's interviewing-room.
+
+This room, like that of the men, was divided by two wire nets; but it
+was much smaller, and there were fewer visitors and fewer prisoners, so
+that there was less shouting than in the men's room. Yet the same thing
+was going on here, only, between the nets instead of soldiers there was
+a woman warder, dressed in a blue-edged uniform jacket, with gold cords
+on the sleeves, and a blue belt. Here also, as in the men's room, the
+people were pressing close to the wire netting on both sides; on the
+nearer side, the townspeople in varied attire; on the further side, the
+prisoners, some in white prison clothes, others in their own coloured
+dresses. The whole length of the net was taken up by the people standing
+close to it. Some rose on tiptoe to be heard across the heads of others;
+some sat talking on the floor.
+
+The most remarkable of the prisoners, both by her piercing screams and
+her appearance, was a thin, dishevelled gipsy. Her kerchief had slipped
+off her curly hair, and she stood near a post in the middle of the
+prisoner's division, shouting something, accompanied by quick gestures,
+to a gipsy man in a blue coat, girdled tightly below the waist. Next
+the gipsy man, a soldier sat on the ground talking to prisoner; next the
+soldier, leaning close to the net, stood a young peasant, with a fair
+beard and a flushed face, keeping back his tears with difficulty. A
+pretty, fair-haired prisoner, with bright blue eyes, was speaking to
+him. These two were Theodosia and her husband. Next to them was a tramp,
+talking to a broad-faced woman; then two women, then a man, then again a
+woman, and in front of each a prisoner. Maslova was not among them. But
+some one stood by the window behind the prisoners, and Nekhludoff knew
+it was she. His heart began to beat faster, and his breath stopped. The
+decisive moment was approaching. He went up to the part of the net where
+he could see the prisoner, and recognised her at once. She stood behind
+the blue-eyed Theodosia, and smiled, listening to what Theodosia was
+saying. She did not wear the prison cloak now, but a white dress,
+tightly drawn in at the waist by a belt, and very full in the bosom.
+From under her kerchief appeared the black ringlets of her fringe, just
+the same as in the court.
+
+"Now, in a moment it will be decided," he thought.
+
+"How shall I call her? Or will she come herself?"
+
+She was expecting Bertha; that this man had come to see her never
+entered her head.
+
+"Whom do you want?" said the warder who was walking between the nets,
+coming up to Nekhludoff.
+
+"Katerina Maslova," Nekhludoff uttered, with difficulty.
+
+"Katerina Maslova, some one to see you," cried the warder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF VISITS MASLOVA.
+
+Maslova looked round, and with head thrown back and expanded chest,
+came up to the net with that expression of readiness which he well
+knew, pushed in between two prisoners, and gazed at Nekhludoff with a
+surprised and questioning look. But, concluding from his clothing he was
+a rich man, she smiled.
+
+"Is it me you want?" she asked, bringing her smiling face, with the
+slightly squinting eyes, nearer the net.
+
+"I, I--I wished to see--" Nekhludoff did not know how to address her. "I
+wished to see you--I--" He was not speaking louder than usual.
+
+"No; nonsense, I tell you!" shouted the tramp who stood next to him.
+"Have you taken it or not?"
+
+"Dying, I tell you; what more do you want?" some one else was screaming
+at his other side. Maslova could not hear what Nekhludoff was saying,
+but the expression of his face as he was speaking reminded her of him.
+She did not believe her own eyes; still the smile vanished from her face
+and a deep line of suffering appeared on her brow.
+
+"I cannot hear what you are saying," she called out, wrinkling her brow
+and frowning more and more.
+
+"I have come," said Nekhludoff. "Yes, I am doing my duty--I am
+confessing," thought Nekhludoff; and at this thought the tears came in
+his eyes, and he felt a choking sensation in his throat, and holding on
+with both hands to the net, he made efforts to keep from bursting into
+tears.
+
+"I say, why do you shove yourself in where you're not wanted?" some one
+shouted at one side of him.
+
+"God is my witness; I know nothing," screamed a prisoner from the other
+side.
+
+Noticing his excitement, Maslova recognised him.
+
+"You're like . . . but no; I don't know you," she shouted, without
+looking at him, and blushing, while her face grew still more stern.
+
+"I have come to ask you to forgive me," he said, in a loud but
+monotonous voice, like a lesson learnt by heart. Having said these words
+he became confused; but immediately came the thought that, if he felt
+ashamed, it was all the better; he had to bear this shame, and he
+continued in a loud voice:
+
+"Forgive me; I have wronged you terribly."
+
+She stood motionless and without taking her squinting eyes off him.
+
+He could not continue to speak, and stepping away from the net he tried
+to suppress the sobs that were choking him.
+
+The inspector, the same officer who had directed Nekhludoff to the
+women's ward, and whose interest he seemed to have aroused, came into
+the room, and, seeing Nekhludoff not at the net, asked him why he was
+not talking to her whom he wanted to see. Nekhludoff blew his nose, gave
+himself a shake, and, trying to appear calm, said:
+
+"It's so inconvenient through these nets; nothing can be heard."
+
+Again the inspector considered for a moment.
+
+"Ah, well, she can be brought out here for awhile. Mary Karlovna,"
+turning to the warder, "lead Maslova out."
+
+A minute later Maslova came out of the side door. Stepping softly, she
+came up close to Nekhludoff, stopped, and looked up at him from under
+her brows. Her black hair was arranged in ringlets over her forehead in
+the same way as it had been two days ago; her face, though unhealthy and
+puffy, was attractive, and looked perfectly calm, only the glittering
+black eyes glanced strangely from under the swollen lids.
+
+"You may talk here," said the inspector, and shrugging his shoulders he
+stepped aside with a look of surprise. Nekhludoff moved towards a seat
+by the wall.
+
+Maslova cast a questioning look at the inspector, and then, shrugging
+her shoulders in surprise, followed Nekhludoff to the bench, and having
+arranged her skirt, sat down beside him.
+
+"I know it is hard for you to forgive me," he began, but stopped. His
+tears were choking him. "But though I can't undo the past, I shall now
+do what is in my power. Tell me--"
+
+"How have you managed to find me?" she said, without answering his
+question, neither looking away from him nor quite at him, with her
+squinting eyes.
+
+"O God, help me! Teach me what to do," Nekhludoff thought, looking at
+her changed face. "I was on the jury the day before yesterday," he said.
+"You did not recognise me?"
+
+"No, I did not; there was not time for recognitions. I did not even
+look," she said.
+
+"There was a child, was there not?" he asked.
+
+"Thank God! he died at once," she answered, abruptly and viciously.
+
+"What do you mean? Why?"
+
+"I was so ill myself, I nearly died," she said, in the same quiet voice,
+which Nekhludoff had not expected and could not understand.
+
+"How could my aunts have let you go?"
+
+"Who keeps a servant that has a baby? They sent me off as soon as
+they noticed. But why speak of this? I remember nothing. That's all
+finished."
+
+"No, it is not finished; I wish to redeem my sin."
+
+"There's nothing to redeem. What's been has been and is passed," she
+said; and, what he never expected, she looked at him and smiled in an
+unpleasantly luring, yet piteous, manner.
+
+Maslova never expected to see him again, and certainly not here and not
+now; therefore, when she first recognised him, she could not keep back
+the memories which she never wished to revive. In the first moment she
+remembered dimly that new, wonderful world of feeling and of thought
+which had been opened to her by the charming young man who loved her
+and whom she loved, and then his incomprehensible cruelty and the whole
+string of humiliations and suffering which flowed from and followed that
+magic joy. This gave her pain, and, unable to understand it, she did
+what she was always in the habit of doing, she got rid of these memories
+by enveloping them in the mist of a depraved life. In the first moment,
+she associated the man now sitting beside her with the lad she had
+loved; but feeling that this gave her pain, she dissociated them again.
+Now, this well-dressed, carefully-got-up gentleman with perfumed beard
+was no longer the Nekhludoff whom she had loved but only one of the
+people who made use of creatures like herself when they needed them,
+and whom creatures like herself had to make use of in their turn as
+profitably as they could; and that is why she looked at him with a
+luring smile and considered silently how she could best make use of him.
+
+"That's all at an end," she said. "Now I'm condemned to Siberia," and
+her lip trembled as she was saying this dreadful word.
+
+"I knew; I was certain you were not guilty," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Guilty! of course not; as if I could be a thief or a robber." She
+stopped, considering in what way she could best get something out of
+him.
+
+"They say here that all depends on the advocate," she began. "A petition
+should be handed in, only they say it's expensive."
+
+"Yes, most certainly," said Nekhludoff. "I have already spoken to an
+advocate."
+
+"No money ought to be spared; it should be a good one," she said.
+
+"I shall do all that is possible."
+
+They were silent, and then she smiled again in the same way.
+
+"And I should like to ask you . . . a little money if you can . . . not
+much; ten roubles, I do not want more," she said, suddenly.
+
+"Yes, yes," Nekhludoff said, with a sense of confusion, and felt for his
+purse.
+
+She looked rapidly at the inspector, who was walking up and down the
+room. "Don't give it in front of him; he'd take it away."
+
+Nekhludoff took out his purse as soon as the inspector had turned his
+back; but had no time to hand her the note before the inspector faced
+them again, so he crushed it up in his hand.
+
+"This woman is dead," Nekhludoff thought, looking at this once sweet,
+and now defiled, puffy face, lit up by an evil glitter in the black,
+squinting eyes which were now glancing at the hand in which he held
+the note, then following the inspector's movements, and for a moment he
+hesitated. The tempter that had been speaking to him in the night again
+raised its voice, trying to lead him out of the realm of his inner into
+the realm of his outer life, away from the question of what he should
+do to the question of what the consequences would be, and what would be
+practical.
+
+"You can do nothing with this woman," said the voice; "you will only
+tie a stone round your neck, which will help to drown you and hinder you
+from being useful to others.
+
+"Is it not better to give her all the money that is here, say good-bye,
+and finish with her forever?" whispered the voice.
+
+But here he felt that now, at this very moment, something most important
+was taking place in his soul--that his inner life was, as it were,
+wavering in the balance, so that the slightest effort would make it sink
+to this side or the other. And he made this effort by calling to his
+assistance that God whom he had felt in his soul the day before, and
+that God instantly responded. He resolved to tell her everything now--at
+once.
+
+"Katusha, I have come to ask you to forgive me, and you have given me no
+answer. Have you forgiven me? Will you ever forgive me?" he asked.
+
+She did not listen to him, but looked at his hand and at the inspector,
+and when the latter turned she hastily stretched out her hand, grasped
+the note, and hid it under her belt.
+
+"That's odd, what you are saying there," she said, with a smile of
+contempt, as it seemed to him.
+
+Nekhludoff felt that there was in her soul one who was his enemy and who
+was protecting her, such as she was now, and preventing him from getting
+at her heart. But, strange to say, this did not repel him, but drew him
+nearer to her by some fresh, peculiar power. He knew that he must waken
+her soul, that this was terribly difficult, but the very difficulty
+attracted him. He now felt towards her as he had never felt towards her
+or any one else before. There was nothing personal in this feeling: he
+wanted nothing from her for himself, but only wished that she might not
+remain as she now was, that she might awaken and become again what she
+had been.
+
+"Katusha, why do you speak like that? I know you; I remember you--and
+the old days in Papovo."
+
+"What's the use of recalling what's past?" she remarked, drily.
+
+"I am recalling it in order to put it right, to atone for my sin,
+Katusha," and he was going to say that he would marry her, but,
+meeting her eyes, he read in them something so dreadful, so coarse, so
+repellent, that he could not go on.
+
+At this moment the visitors began to go. The inspector came up to
+Nekhludoff and said that the time was up.
+
+"Good-bye; I have still much to say to you, but you see it is impossible
+to do so now," said Nekhludoff, and held out his hand. "I shall come
+again."
+
+"I think you have said all."
+
+She took his hand but did not press it.
+
+"No; I shall try to see you again, somewhere where we can talk, and then
+I shall tell you what I have to say-something very important."
+
+"Well, then, come; why not?" she answered, and smiled with that
+habitual, inviting, and promising smile which she gave to the men whom
+she wished to please.
+
+"You are more than a sister to me," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"That's odd," she said again, and went behind the grating.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+MASLOVA'S VIEW OF LIFE.
+
+Before the first interview, Nekhludoff thought that when she saw him
+and knew of his intention to serve her, Katusha would be pleased and
+touched, and would be Katusha again; but, to his horror, he found
+that Katusha existed no more, and there was Maslova in her place. This
+astonished and horrified him.
+
+What astonished him most was that Katusha was not ashamed of her
+position--not the position of a prisoner (she was ashamed of that), but
+her position as a prostitute. She seemed satisfied, even proud of it.
+And, yet, how could it be otherwise? Everybody, in order to be able to
+act, has to consider his occupation important and good. Therefore, in
+whatever position a person is, he is certain to form such a view of the
+life of men in general which will make his occupation seem important and
+good.
+
+It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute,
+acknowledging his or her profession as evil, is ashamed of it. But the
+contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in
+a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of
+life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In
+order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to
+the circle of those people who share their views of life and their own
+place in it. This surprises us, where the persons concerned are thieves,
+bragging about their dexterity, prostitutes vaunting their depravity, or
+murderers boasting of their cruelty. This surprises us only because the
+circle, the atmosphere in which these people live, is limited, and we
+are outside it. But can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich
+boast of their wealth, i.e., robbery; the commanders in the army pride
+themselves on victories, i.e., murder; and those in high places vaunt
+their power, i.e., violence? We do not see the perversion in the views
+of life held by these people, only because the circle formed by them is
+more extensive, and we ourselves are moving inside of it.
+
+And in this manner Maslova had formed her views of life and of her own
+position. She was a prostitute condemned to Siberia, and yet she had a
+conception of life which made it possible for her to be satisfied with
+herself, and even to pride herself on her position before others.
+
+According to this conception, the highest good for all men without
+exception--old, young, schoolboys, generals, educated and uneducated,
+was connected with the relation of the sexes; therefore, all men, even
+when they pretended to be occupied with other things, in reality
+took this view. She was an attractive woman, and therefore she was an
+important and necessary person. The whole of her former and present life
+was a confirmation of the correctness of this conception.
+
+With such a view of life, she was by no means the lowest, but a very
+important person. And Maslova prized this view of life more than
+anything; she could not but prize it, for, if she lost the importance
+that such a view of life gave her among men, she would lose the meaning
+of her life. And, in order not to lose the meaning of her life, she
+instinctively clung to the set that looked at life in the same way as
+she did. Feeling that Nekhludoff wanted to lead her out into another
+world, she resisted him, foreseeing that she would have to lose her
+place in life, with the self-possession and self-respect it gave her.
+For this reason she drove from her the recollections of her early youth
+and her first relations with Nekhludoff. These recollections did not
+correspond with her present conception of the world, and were therefore
+quite rubbed out of her mind, or, rather, lay somewhere buried and
+untouched, closed up and plastered over so that they should not escape,
+as when bees, in order to protect the result of their labour, will
+sometimes plaster a nest of worms. Therefore, the present Nekhludoff
+was not the man she had once loved with a pure love, but only a rich
+gentleman whom she could, and must, make use of, and with whom she could
+only have the same relations as with men in general.
+
+"No, I could not tell her the chief thing," thought Nekhludoff, moving
+towards the front doors with the rest of the people. "I did not tell her
+that I would marry her; I did not tell her so, but I will," he thought.
+
+The two warders at the door let out the visitors, counting them again,
+and touching each one with their hands, so that no extra person should
+go out, and none remain within. The slap on his shoulder did not offend
+Nekhludoff this time; he did not even notice it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+FANARIN, THE ADVOCATE--THE PETITION.
+
+Nekhludoff meant to rearrange the whole of his external life, to let
+his large house and move to an hotel, but Agraphena Petrovna pointed out
+that it was useless to change anything before the winter. No one would
+rent a town house for the summer; anyhow, he would have to live and keep
+his things somewhere. And so all his efforts to change his manner
+of life (he meant to live more simply: as the students live) led to
+nothing. Not only did everything remain as it was, but the house was
+suddenly filled with new activity. All that was made of wool or fur was
+taken out to be aired and beaten. The gate-keeper, the boy, the cook,
+and Corney himself took part in this activity. All sorts of strange
+furs, which no one ever used, and various uniforms were taken out and
+hung on a line, then the carpets and furniture were brought out, and the
+gate-keeper and the boy rolled their sleeves up their muscular arms and
+stood beating these things, keeping strict time, while the rooms were
+filled with the smell of naphthaline.
+
+When Nekhludoff crossed the yard or looked out of the window and saw
+all this going on, he was surprised at the great number of things there
+were, all quite useless. Their only use, Nekhludoff thought, was the
+providing of exercise for Agraphena Petrovna, Corney, the gate-keeper,
+the boy, and the cook.
+
+"But it's not worth while altering my manner of life now," he thought,
+"while Maslova's case is not decided. Besides, it is too difficult. It
+will alter of itself when she will be set free or exiled, and I follow
+her."
+
+On the appointed day Nekhludoff drove up to the advocate Fanarin's own
+splendid house, which was decorated with huge palms and other plants,
+and wonderful curtains, in fact, with all the expensive luxury
+witnessing to the possession of much idle money, i.e., money acquired
+without labour, which only those possess who grow rich suddenly. In
+the waiting-room, just as in a doctor's waiting-room, he found many
+dejected-looking people sitting round several tables, on which lay
+illustrated papers meant to amuse them, awaiting their turns to be
+admitted to the advocate. The advocate's assistant sat in the room at a
+high desk, and having recognised Nekhludoff, he came up to him and said
+he would go and announce him at once. But the assistant had not reached
+the door before it opened and the sounds of loud, animated voices were
+heard; the voice of a middle-aged, sturdy merchant, with a red face and
+thick moustaches, and the voice of Fanarin himself. Fanarin was also
+a middle-aged man of medium height, with a worn look on his face. Both
+faces bore the expression which you see on the faces of those who have
+just concluded a profitable but not quite honest transaction.
+
+"Your own fault, you know, my dear sir," Fanarin said, smiling.
+
+"We'd all be in 'eaven were it not for hour sins."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes; we all know that," and both laughed un-naturally.
+
+"Oh, Prince Nekhludoff! Please to step in," said Fanarin, seeing him,
+and, nodding once more to the merchant, he led Nekhludoff into his
+business cabinet, furnished in a severely correct style.
+
+"Won't you smoke?" said the advocate, sitting down opposite Nekhludoff
+and trying to conceal a smile, apparently still excited by the success
+of the accomplished transaction.
+
+"Thanks; I have come about Maslova's case."
+
+"Yes, yes; directly! But oh, what rogues these fat money bags are!"
+he said. "You saw this here fellow. Why, he has about twelve million
+roubles, and he cannot speak correctly; and if he can get a twenty-five
+rouble note out of you he'll have it, if he's to wrench it out with his
+teeth."
+
+"He says ''eaven' and 'hour,' and you say 'this here fellow,'"
+Nekhludoff thought, with an insurmountable feeling of aversion towards
+this man who wished to show by his free and easy manner that he and
+Nekhludoff belonged to one and the same camp, while his other clients
+belonged to another.
+
+"He has worried me to death--a fearful scoundrel. I felt I must relieve
+my feelings," said the advocate, as if to excuse his speaking about
+things that had no reference to business. "Well, how about your case?
+I have read it attentively, but do not approve of it. I mean that
+greenhorn of an advocate has left no valid reason for an appeal."
+
+"Well, then, what have you decided?"
+
+"One moment. Tell him," he said to his assistant, who had just come in,
+"that I keep to what I have said. If he can, it's all right; if not, no
+matter."
+
+"But he won't agree."
+
+"Well, no matter," and the advocate frowned.
+
+"There now, and it is said that we advocates get our money for nothing,"
+he remarked, after a pause. "I have freed one insolvent debtor from a
+totally false charge, and now they all flock to me. Yet every such case
+costs enormous labour. Why, don't we, too, 'lose bits of flesh in the
+inkstand?' as some writer or other has said. Well, as to your case, or,
+rather, the case you are taking an interest in. It has been conducted
+abominably. There is no good reason for appealing. Still," he continued,
+"we can but try to get the sentence revoked. This is what I have noted
+down." He took up several sheets of paper covered with writing, and
+began to read rapidly, slurring over the uninteresting legal terms and
+laying particular stress on some sentences. "To the Court of Appeal,
+criminal department, etc., etc. According to the decisions, etc., the
+verdict, etc., So-and-so Maslova pronounced guilty of having caused the
+death through poison of the merchant Smelkoff, and has, according to
+Statute 1454 of the penal code, been sentenced to Siberia," etc., etc.
+He stopped. Evidently, in spite of his being so used to it, he still
+felt pleasure in listening to his own productions. "This sentence is
+the direct result of the most glaring judicial perversion and error,"
+he continued, impressively, "and there are grounds for its revocation.
+Firstly, the reading of the medical report of the examination of
+Smelkoff's intestines was interrupted by the president at the very
+beginning. This is point one."
+
+"But it was the prosecuting side that demanded this reading," Nekhludoff
+said, with surprise.
+
+"That does not matter. There might have been reasons for the defence to
+demand this reading, too."
+
+"Oh, but there could have been no reason whatever for that."
+
+"It is a ground for appeal, though. To continue: 'Secondly,' he went
+on reading, 'when Maslova's advocate, in his speech for the defence,
+wishing to characterise Maslova's personality, referred to the causes of
+her fall, he was interrupted by the president calling him to order
+for the alleged deviation from the direct subject. Yet, as has been
+repeatedly pointed out by the Senate, the elucidation of the criminal's
+characteristics and his or her moral standpoint in general has a
+significance of the first importance in criminal cases, even if only
+as a guide in the settling of the question of imputation.' That's point
+two," he said, with a look at Nekhludoff.
+
+"But he spoke so badly that no one could make anything of it,"
+Nekhludoff said, still more astonished.
+
+"The fellow's quite a fool, and of course could not be expected to say
+anything sensible," Fanarin said, laughing; "but, all the same, it will
+do as a reason for appeal. Thirdly: 'The president, in his summing up,
+contrary to the direct decree of section 1, statute 801, of the criminal
+code, omitted to inform the jury what the judicial points are that
+constitute guilt; and did not mention that having admitted the fact of
+Maslova having administered the poison to Smelkoff, the jury had a right
+not to impute the guilt of murder to her, since the proofs of wilful
+intent to deprive Smelkoff of life were absent, and only to pronounce
+her guilty of carelessness resulting in the death of the merchant, which
+she did not desire.' This is the chief point."
+
+"Yes; but we ought to have known that ourselves. It was our mistake."
+
+"And now the fourth point," the advocate continued. "The form of the
+answer given by the jury contained an evident contradiction. Maslova
+is accused of wilfully poisoning Smelkoff, her one object being that of
+cupidity, the only motive to commit murder she could have had. The jury
+in their verdict acquit her of the intent to rob, or participation in
+the stealing of valuables, from which it follows that they intended
+also to acquit her of the intent to murder, and only through a
+misunderstanding, which arose from the incompleteness of the president's
+summing up, omitted to express it in due form in their answer. Therefore
+an answer of this kind by the jury absolutely demanded the application
+of statutes 816 and 808 of the criminal code of procedure, i.e., an
+explanation by the president to the jury of the mistake made by them,
+and another debate on the question of the prisoner's guilt."
+
+"Then why did the president not do it?"
+
+"I, too, should like to know why," Fanarin said, laughing.
+
+"Then the Senate will, of course, correct this error?"
+
+"That will all depend on who will preside there at the time. Well, now,
+there it is. I have further said," he continued, rapidly, "a verdict of
+this kind gave the Court no right to condemn Maslova to be punished as
+a criminal, and to apply section 3, statute 771 of the penal code to her
+case. This is a decided and gross violation of the basic principles of
+our criminal law. In view of the reasons stated, I have the honour of
+appealing to you, etc., etc., the refutation, according to 909, 910, and
+section 2, 912 and 928 statute of the criminal code, etc., etc. . . .
+to carry this case before another department of the same Court for a
+further examination. There; all that can be done is done, but, to be
+frank, I have little hope of success, though, of course, it all depends
+on what members will be present at the Senate. If you have any influence
+there you can but try."
+
+"I do know some."
+
+"All right; only be quick about it. Else they'll all go off for a change
+of air; then you may have to wait three months before they return. Then,
+in case of failure, we have still the possibility of appealing to His
+Majesty. This, too, depends on the private influence you can bring to
+work. In this case, too, I am at your service; I mean as to the working
+of the petition, not the influence."
+
+"Thank you. Now as to your fees?"
+
+"My assistant will hand you the petition and tell you."
+
+"One thing more. The Procureur gave me a pass for visiting this person
+in prison, but they tell me I must also get a permission from the
+governor in order to get an interview at another time and in another
+place than those appointed. Is this necessary?"
+
+"Yes, I think so. But the governor is away at present; a vice-governor
+is in his place. And he is such an impenetrable fool that you'll
+scarcely be able to do anything with him."
+
+"Is it Meslennikoff?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I know him," said Nekhludoff, and got up to go. At this moment a
+horribly ugly, little, bony, snub-nosed, yellow-faced woman flew into
+the room. It was the advocate's wife, who did not seem to be in the
+least bit troubled by her ugliness. She was attired in the most original
+manner; she seemed enveloped in something made of velvet and silk,
+something yellow and green, and her thin hair was crimped.
+
+She stepped out triumphantly into the ante-room, followed by a tall,
+smiling man, with a greenish complexion, dressed in a coat with silk
+facings, and a white tie. This was an author. Nekhludoff knew him by
+sight.
+
+She opened the cabinet door and said, "Anatole, you must come to
+me. Here is Simeon Ivanovitch, who will read his poems, and you must
+absolutely come and read about Garshin."
+
+Nekhludoff noticed that she whispered something to her husband, and,
+thinking it was something concerning him, wished to go away, but she
+caught him up and said: "I beg your pardon, Prince, I know you, and,
+thinking an introduction superfluous, I beg you to stay and take part
+in our literary matinee. It will be most interesting. M. Fanarin will
+read."
+
+"You see what a lot I have to do," said Fanarin, spreading out his hands
+and smilingly pointing to his wife, as if to show how impossible it was
+to resist so charming a creature.
+
+Nekhludoff thanked the advocate's wife with extreme politeness for the
+honour she did him in inviting him, but refused the invitation with a
+sad and solemn look, and left the room.
+
+"What an affected fellow!" said the advocate's wife, when he had gone
+out.
+
+In the ante-room the assistant handed him a ready-written petition,
+and said that the fees, including the business with the Senate and the
+commission, would come to 1,000 roubles, and explained that M. Fanarin
+did not usually undertake this kind of business, but did it only to
+oblige Nekhludoff.
+
+"And about this petition. Who is to sign it?"
+
+"The prisoner may do it herself, or if this is inconvenient, M. Fanarin
+can, if he gets a power of attorney from her."
+
+"Oh, no. I shall take the petition to her and get her to sign it," said
+Nekhludoff, glad of the opportunity of seeing her before the appointed
+day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+A PRISON FLOGGING.
+
+At the usual time the jailer's whistle sounded in the corridors of the
+prison, the iron doors of the cells rattled, bare feet pattered, heels
+clattered, and the prisoners who acted as scavengers passed along the
+corridors, filling the air with disgusting smells. The prisoners washed,
+dressed, and came out for revision, then went to get boiling water for
+their tea.
+
+The conversation at breakfast in all the cells was very lively. It was
+all about two prisoners who were to be flogged that day. One, Vasiliev,
+was a young man of some education, a clerk, who had killed his mistress
+in a fit of jealousy. His fellow-prisoners liked him because he
+was merry and generous and firm in his behaviour with the prison
+authorities. He knew the laws and insisted on their being carried out.
+Therefore he was disliked by the authorities. Three weeks before a
+jailer struck one of the scavengers who had spilt some soup over his new
+uniform. Vasiliev took the part of the scavenger, saying that it was not
+lawful to strike a prisoner.
+
+"I'll teach you the law," said the jailer, and gave Vasiliev a scolding.
+Vasiliev replied in like manner, and the jailer was going to hit him,
+but Vasiliev seized the jailer's hands, held them fast for about three
+minutes, and, after giving the hands a twist, pushed the jailer out of
+the door. The jailer complained to the inspector, who ordered Vasiliev
+to be put into a solitary cell.
+
+The solitary cells were a row of dark closets, locked from outside, and
+there were neither beds, nor chairs, nor tables in them, so that the
+inmates had to sit or lie on the dirty floor, while the rats, of which
+there were a great many in those cells, ran across them. The rats were
+so bold that they stole the bread from the prisoners, and even attacked
+them if they stopped moving. Vasiliev said he would not go into the
+solitary cell, because he had not done anything wrong; but they used
+force. Then he began struggling, and two other prisoners helped him to
+free himself from the jailers. All the jailers assembled, and among them
+was Petrov, who was distinguished for his strength. The prisoners got
+thrown down and pushed into the solitary cells.
+
+The governor was immediately informed that something very like a
+rebellion had taken place. And he sent back an order to flog the two
+chief offenders, Vasiliev and the tramp, Nepomnishy, giving each thirty
+strokes with a birch rod. The flogging was appointed to take place in
+the women's interviewing-room.
+
+All this was known in the prison since the evening, and it was being
+talked about with animation in all the cells.
+
+Korableva, Khoroshevka, Theodosia, and Maslova sat together in their
+corner, drinking tea, all of them flushed and animated by the vodka they
+had drunk, for Maslova, who now had a constant supply of vodka, freely
+treated her companions to it.
+
+"He's not been a-rioting, or anything," Korableva said, referring to
+Vasiliev, as she bit tiny pieces off a lump of sugar with her strong
+teeth. "He only stuck up for a chum, because it's not lawful to strike
+prisoners nowadays."
+
+"And he's a fine fellow, I've heard say," said Theodosia, who sat
+bareheaded, with her long plaits round her head, on a log of wood
+opposite the shelf bedstead on which the teapot stood.
+
+"There, now, if you were to ask _him_," the watchman's wife said to
+Maslova (by him she meant Nekhludoff).
+
+"I shall tell him. He'll do anything for me," Maslova said, tossing her
+head, and smiling.
+
+"Yes, but when is he coming? and they've already gone to fetch them,"
+said Theodosia. "It is terrible," she added, with a sigh.
+
+"I once did see how they flogged a peasant in the village.
+Father-in-law, he sent me once to the village elder. Well, I went,
+and there . . . " The watchman's wife began her long story, which was
+interrupted by the sound of voices and steps in the corridor above them.
+
+The women were silent, and sat listening.
+
+"There they are, hauling him along, the devils!" Khoroshavka said.
+"They'll do him to death, they will. The jailers are so enraged with him
+because he never would give in to them."
+
+All was quiet again upstairs, and the watchman's wife finished her story
+of how she was that frightened when she went into the barn and saw
+them flogging a peasant, her inside turned at the sight, and so on.
+Khoroshevka related how Schegloff had been flogged, and never uttered
+a sound. Then Theodosia put away the tea things, and Korableva and the
+watchman's wife took up their sewing. Maslova sat down on the bedstead,
+with her arms round her knees, dull and depressed. She was about to lie
+down and try to sleep, when the woman warder called her into the office
+to see a visitor.
+
+"Now, mind, and don't forget to tell him about us," the old woman
+(Menshova) said, while Maslova was arranging the kerchief on her head
+before the dim looking-glass. "We did not set fire to the house, but he
+himself, the fiend, did it; his workman saw him do it, and will not damn
+his soul by denying it. You just tell to ask to see my Mitri. Mitri
+will tell him all about it, as plain as can be. Just think of our being
+locked up in prison when we never dreamt of any ill, while he, the
+fiend, is enjoying himself at the pub, with another man's wife."
+
+"That's not the law," remarked Korableva.
+
+"I'll tell him--I'll tell him," answered Maslova. "Suppose I have
+another drop, just to keep up courage," she added, with a wink; and
+Korableva poured out half a cup of vodka, which Maslova drank. Then,
+having wiped her mouth and repeating the words "just to keep up
+courage," tossing her head and smiling gaily, she followed the warder
+along the corridor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF AGAIN VISITS MASLOVA.
+
+Nekhludoff had to wait in the hall for a long time. When he had arrived
+at the prison and rung at the entrance door, he handed the permission of
+the Procureur to the jailer on duty who met him.
+
+"No, no," the jailer on duty said hurriedly, "the inspector is engaged."
+
+"In the office?" asked Nekhludoff.
+
+"No, here in the interviewing-room.".
+
+"Why, is it a visiting day to-day?"
+
+"No; it's special business."
+
+"I should like to see him. What am I to do?" said Nekhludoff.
+
+"When the inspector comes out you'll tell him--wait a bit," said the
+jailer.
+
+At this moment a sergeant-major, with a smooth, shiny face and
+moustaches impregnated with tobacco smoke, came out of a side door, with
+the gold cords of his uniform glistening, and addressed the jailer in a
+severe tone.
+
+"What do you mean by letting any one in here? The office. . . ."
+
+"I was told the inspector was here," said Nekhludoff, surprised at the
+agitation he noticed in the sergeant-major's manner.
+
+At this moment the inner door opened, and Petrov came out, heated and
+perspiring.
+
+"He'll remember it," he muttered, turning to the sergeant major. The
+latter pointed at Nekhludoff by a look, and Petrov knitted his brows and
+went out through a door at the back.
+
+"Who will remember it? Why do they all seem so confused? Why did the
+sergeant-major make a sign to him?" Nekhludoff thought.
+
+The sergeant-major, again addressing Nekhludoff, said: "You cannot meet
+here; please step across to the office." And Nekhludoff was about to
+comply when the inspector came out of the door at the back, looking even
+more confused than his subordinates, and sighing continually. When he
+saw Nekhludoff he turned to the jailer.
+
+"Fedotoff, have Maslova, cell 5, women's ward, taken to the office."
+
+"Will you come this way, please," he said, turning to Nekhludoff. They
+ascended a steep staircase and entered a little room with one window, a
+writing-table, and a few chairs in it. The inspector sat down.
+
+"Mine are heavy, heavy duties," he remarked, again addressing
+Nekhludoff, and took out a cigarette.
+
+"You are tired, evidently," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Tired of the whole of the service--the duties are very trying. One
+tries to lighten their lot and only makes it worse; my only thought is
+how to get away. Heavy, heavy duties!"
+
+Nekhludoff did not know what the inspector's particular difficulties
+were, but he saw that to-day he was in a peculiarly dejected and
+hopeless condition, calling for pity.
+
+"Yes, I should think the duties were heavy for a kind-hearted man," he
+said. "Why do you serve in this capacity?"
+
+"I have a family."
+
+"But, if it is so hard--"
+
+"Well, still you know it is possible to be of use in some measure; I
+soften down all I can. Another in my place would conduct the affairs
+quite differently. Why, we have more than 2,000 persons here. And what
+persons! One must know how to manage them. It is easier said than done,
+you know. After all, they are also men; one cannot help pitying them."
+The inspector began telling Nekhludoff of a fight that had lately taken
+place among the convicts, which had ended by one man being killed.
+
+The story was interrupted by the entrance of Maslova, who was
+accompanied by a jailer.
+
+Nekhludoff saw her through the doorway before she had noticed the
+inspector. She was following the warder briskly, smiling and tossing her
+head. When she saw the inspector she suddenly changed, and gazed at
+him with a frightened look; but, quickly recovering, she addressed
+Nekhludoff boldly and gaily.
+
+"How d'you do?" she said, drawling out her words, and smilingly took his
+hand and shook it vigorously, not like the first time.
+
+"Here, I've brought you a petition to sign," said Nekhludoff, rather
+surprised by the boldness with which she greeted him to-day.
+
+"The advocate has written out a petition which you will have to sign,
+and then we shall send it to Petersburg."
+
+"All right! That can be done. Anything you like," she said, with a wink
+and a smile.
+
+And Nekhludoff drew a folded paper from his pocket and went up to the
+table.
+
+"May she sign it here?" asked Nekhludoff, turning to the inspector.
+
+"It's all right, it's all right! Sit down. Here's a pen; you can write?"
+said the inspector.
+
+"I could at one time," she said; and, after arranging her skirt and the
+sleeves of her jacket, she sat down at the table, smiled awkwardly, took
+the pen with her small, energetic hand, and glanced at Nekhludoff with a
+laugh.
+
+Nekhludoff told her what to write and pointed out the place where to
+sign.
+
+Sighing deeply as she dipped her pen into the ink, and carefully shaking
+some drops off the pen, she wrote her name.
+
+"Is it all?" she asked, looking from Nekhludoff to the inspector, and
+putting the pen now on the inkstand, now on the papers.
+
+"I have a few words to tell you," Nekhludoff said, taking the pen from
+her.
+
+"All right; tell me," she said. And suddenly, as if remembering
+something, or feeling sleepy, she grew serious.
+
+The inspector rose and left the room, and Nekhludoff remained with her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+MASLOVA REFUSES TO MARRY.
+
+The jailer who had brought Maslova in sat on a windowsill at some
+distance from them.
+
+The decisive moment had come for Nekhludoff. He had been incessantly
+blaming himself for not having told her the principal thing at the first
+interview, and was now determined to tell her that he would marry her.
+She was sitting at the further side of the table. Nekhludoff sat down
+opposite her. It was light in the room, and Nekhludoff for the first
+time saw her face quite near. He distinctly saw the crowsfeet round her
+eyes, the wrinkles round her mouth, and the swollen eyelids. He felt
+more sorry than before. Leaning over the table so as not to be heard by
+the jailer--a man of Jewish type with grizzly whiskers, who sat by the
+window--Nekhludoff said:
+
+"Should this petition come to nothing we shall appeal to the Emperor.
+All that is possible shall be done."
+
+"There, now, if we had had a proper advocate from the first," she
+interrupted. "My defendant was quite a silly. He did nothing but pay me
+compliments," she said, and laughed. "If it had then been known that I
+was acquainted with you, it would have been another matter. They think
+every one's a thief."
+
+"How strange she is to-day," Nekhludoff thought, and was just going to
+say what he had on his mind when she began again:
+
+"There's something I want to say. We have here an old woman; such a fine
+one, d'you know, she just surprises every one; she is imprisoned for
+nothing, and her son, too, and everybody knows they are innocent, though
+they are accused of having set fire to a house. D'you know, hearing I
+was acquainted with you, she says: 'Tell him to ask to see my son; he'll
+tell him all about it."' Thus spoke Maslova, turning her head from side
+to side, and glancing at Nekhludoff. "Their name's Menshoff. Well, will
+you do it? Such a fine old thing, you know; you can see at once she's
+innocent. You'll do it, there's a dear," and she smiled, glanced up at
+him, and then cast down her eyes.
+
+"All right. I'll find out about them," Nekhludoff said, more and more
+astonished by her free-and-easy manner. "But I was going to speak to you
+about myself. Do you remember what I told you last time?"
+
+"You said a lot last time. What was it you told me?" she said,
+continuing to smile and to turn her head from side to side.
+
+"I said I had come to ask you to forgive me," he began.
+
+"What's the use of that? Forgive, forgive, where's the good of--"
+
+"To atone for my sin, not by mere words, but in deed. I have made up my
+mind to marry you."
+
+An expression of fear suddenly came over her face. Her squinting eyes
+remained fixed on him, and yet seemed not to be looking at him.
+
+"What's that for?" she said, with an angry frown.
+
+"I feel that it is my duty before God to do it."
+
+"What God have you found now? You are not saying what you ought to. God,
+indeed! What God? You ought to have remembered God then," she said, and
+stopped with her mouth open. It was only now that Nekhludoff noticed
+that her breath smelled of spirits, and that he understood the cause of
+her excitement.
+
+"Try and be calm," he said.
+
+"Why should I be calm?" she began, quickly, flushing scarlet. "I am a
+convict, and you are a gentleman and a prince. There's no need for you
+to soil yourself by touching me. You go to your princesses; my price is
+a ten-rouble note."
+
+"However cruelly you may speak, you cannot express what I myself am
+feeling," he said, trembling all over; "you cannot imagine to what
+extent I feel myself guilty towards you."
+
+"Feel yourself guilty?" she said, angrily mimicking him. "You did not
+feel so then, but threw me 100 roubles. That's your price."
+
+"I know, I know; but what is to be done now?" said Nekhludoff. "I have
+decided not to leave you, and what I have said I shall do."
+
+"And I say you sha'n't," she said, and laughed aloud.
+
+"Katusha," he said, touching her hand.
+
+"You go away. I am a convict and you a prince, and you've no business
+here," she cried, pulling away her hand, her whole appearance
+transformed by her wrath. "You've got pleasure out of me in this life,
+and want to save yourself through me in the life to come. You are
+disgusting to me--your spectacles and the whole of your dirty fat mug.
+Go, go!" she screamed, starting to her feet.
+
+The jailer came up to them.
+
+"What are you kicking up this row for?' That won't--"
+
+"Let her alone, please," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"She must not forget herself," said the jailer. "Please wait a little,"
+said Nekhludoff, and the jailer returned to the window.
+
+Maslova sat down again, dropping her eyes and firmly clasping her small
+hands.
+
+Nekhludoff stooped over her, not knowing what to do.
+
+"You do not believe me?" he said.
+
+"That you mean to marry me? It will never be. I'll rather hang myself.
+So there!"
+
+"Well, still I shall go on serving you."
+
+"That's your affair, only I don't want anything from you. I am telling
+you the plain truth," she said. "Oh, why did I not die then?" she added,
+and began to cry piteously.
+
+Nekhludoff could not speak; her tears infected him.
+
+She lifted her eyes, looked at him in surprise, and began to wipe her
+tears with her kerchief.
+
+The jailer came up again and reminded them that it was time to part.
+
+Maslova rose.
+
+"You are excited. If it is possible, I shall come again tomorrow; you
+think it over," said Nekhludoff.
+
+She gave him no answer and, without looking up, followed the jailer out
+of the room.
+
+"Well, lass, you'll have rare times now," Korableva said, when Maslova
+returned to the cell. "Seems he's mighty sweet on you; make the most
+of it while he's after you. He'll help you out. Rich people can do
+anything."
+
+"Yes, that's so," remarked the watchman's wife, with her musical voice.
+"When a poor man thinks of getting married, there's many a slip 'twixt
+the cup and the lip; but a rich man need only make up his mind and it's
+done. We knew a toff like that duckie. What d'you think he did?"
+
+"Well, have you spoken about my affairs?" the old woman asked.
+
+But Maslova gave her fellow-prisoners no answer; she lay down on the
+shelf bedstead, her squinting eyes fixed on a corner of the room, and
+lay there until the evening.
+
+A painful struggle went on in her soul. What Nekhludoff had told her
+called up the memory of that world in which she had suffered and which
+she had left without having understood, hating it. She now feared to
+wake from the trance in which she was living. Not having arrived at any
+conclusion when evening came, she again bought some vodka and drank with
+her companions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+VERA DOUKHOVA.
+
+"So this is what it means, this," thought Nekhludoff as he left the
+prison, only now fully understanding his crime. If he had not tried to
+expiate his guilt he would never have found out how great his crime was.
+Nor was this all; she, too, would never have felt the whole horror of
+what had been done to her. He only now saw what he had done to the soul
+of this woman; only now she saw and understood what had been done to
+her.
+
+Up to this time Nekhludoff had played with a sensation of
+self-admiration, had admired his own remorse; now he was simply filled
+with horror. He knew he could not throw her up now, and yet he could not
+imagine what would come of their relations to one another.
+
+Just as he was going out, a jailer, with a disagreeable, insinuating
+countenance, and a cross and medals on his breast, came up and handed
+him a note with an air of mystery.
+
+"Here is a note from a certain person, your honour," he said to
+Nekhludoff as he gave him the envelope.
+
+"What person?"
+
+"You will know when you read it. A political prisoner. I am in that
+ward, so she asked me; and though it is against the rules, still
+feelings of humanity--" The jailer spoke in an unnatural manner.
+
+Nekhludoff was surprised that a jailer of the ward where political
+prisoners were kept should pass notes inside the very prison walls, and
+almost within sight of every one; he did not then know that this was
+both a jailer and a spy. However, he took the note and read it on coming
+out of the prison.
+
+The note was written in a bold hand, and ran as follows: "Having heard
+that you visit the prison, and are interested in the case of a criminal
+prisoner, the desire of seeing you arose in me. Ask for a permission
+to see me. I can give you a good deal of information concerning your
+protegee, and also our group.--Yours gratefully, VERA DOUKHOVA."
+
+Vera Doukhova had been a school-teacher in an out-of-the-way village of
+the Novgorod Government, where Nekhludoff and some friends of his had
+once put up while bear hunting. Nekhludoff gladly and vividly recalled
+those old days, and his acquaintance with Doukhova. It was just before
+Lent, in an isolated spot, 40 miles from the railway. The hunt had
+been successful; two bears had been killed; and the company were having
+dinner before starting on their return journey, when the master of the
+hut where they were putting up came in to say that the deacon's daughter
+wanted to speak to Prince Nekhludoff. "Is she pretty?" some one asked.
+"None of that, please," Nekhludoff said, and rose with a serious look
+on his face. Wiping his mouth, and wondering what the deacon's daughter
+might want of him, he went into the host's private hut.
+
+There he found a girl with a felt hat and a warm cloak on--a sinewy,
+ugly girl; only her eyes with their arched brows were beautiful.
+
+"Here, miss, speak to him," said the old housewife; "this is the prince
+himself. I shall go out meanwhile."
+
+"In what way can I be of service to you?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"I--I--I see you are throwing away your money on such nonsense--on
+hunting," began the girl, in great confusion. "I know--I only want one
+thing--to be of use to the people, and I can do nothing because I know
+nothing--" Her eyes were so truthful, so kind, and her expression of
+resoluteness and yet bashfulness was so touching, that Nekhludoff, as
+it often happened to him, suddenly felt as if he were in her position,
+understood, and sympathised.
+
+"What can I do, then?"
+
+"I am a teacher, but should like to follow a course of study; and I
+am not allowed to do so. That is, not that I am not allowed to; they'd
+allow me to, but I have not got the means. Give them to me, and when I
+have finished the course I shall repay you. I am thinking the rich kill
+bears and give the peasants drink; all this is bad. Why should they not
+do good? I only want 80 roubles. But if you don't wish to, never mind,"
+she added, gravely.
+
+"On the contrary, I am very grateful to you for this opportunity. . . .
+I will bring it at once," said Nekhludoff.
+
+He went out into the passage, and there met one of his comrades, who
+had been overhearing his conversation. Paying no heed to his chaffing,
+Nekhludoff got the money out of his bag and took it to her.
+
+"Oh, please, do not thank me; it is I who should thank you," he said.
+
+It was pleasant to remember all this now; pleasant to remember that
+he had nearly had a quarrel with an officer who tried to make an
+objectionable joke of it, and how another of his comrades had taken his
+part, which led to a closer friendship between them. How successful the
+whole of that hunting expedition had been, and how happy he had felt
+when returning to the railway station that night. The line of sledges,
+the horses in tandem, glide quickly along the narrow road that lies
+through the forest, now between high trees, now between low firs weighed
+down by the snow, caked in heavy lumps on their branches. A red light
+flashes in the dark, some one lights an aromatic cigarette. Joseph, a
+bear driver, keeps running from sledge to sledge, up to his knees in
+snow, and while putting things to rights he speaks about the elk which
+are now going about on the deep snow and gnawing the bark off the aspen
+trees, of the bears that are lying asleep in their deep hidden dens, and
+his breath comes warm through the opening in the sledge cover. All this
+came back to Nekhludoff's mind; but, above all, the joyous sense of
+health, strength, and freedom from care: the lungs breathing in the
+frosty air so deeply that the fur cloak is drawn tightly on his chest,
+the fine snow drops off the low branches on to his face, his body
+is warm, his face feels fresh, and his soul is free from care,
+self-reproach, fear, or desire. How beautiful it was. And now, O God!
+what torment, what trouble!
+
+Evidently Vera Doukhova was a revolutionist and imprisoned as such. He
+must see her, especially as she promised to advise him how to lighten
+Maslova's lot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+THE VICE-GOVERNOR OF THE PRISON.
+
+Awaking early the next morning, Nekhludoff remembered what he had done
+the day before, and was seized with fear.
+
+But in spite of this fear, he was more determined than ever to continue
+what he had begun.
+
+Conscious of a sense of duty, he left the house and went to see
+Maslennikoff in order to obtain from him a permission to visit Maslova
+in prison, and also the Menshoffs--mother and son--about whom Maslova
+had spoken to him. Nekhludoff had known this Maslennikoff a long time;
+they had been in the regiment together. At that time Maslennikoff was
+treasurer to the regiment.
+
+He was a kind-hearted and zealous officer, knowing and wishing to know
+nothing beyond the regiment and the Imperial family. Now Nekhludoff
+saw him as an administrator, who had exchanged the regiment for an
+administrative office in the government where he lived. He was married
+to a rich and energetic woman, who had forced him to exchange military
+for civil service. She laughed at him, and caressed him, as if he were
+her own pet animal. Nekhludoff had been to see them once during the
+winter, but the couple were so uninteresting to him that he had not gone
+again.
+
+At the sight of Nekhludoff Maslennikoff's face beamed all over. He had
+the same fat red face, and was as corpulent and as well dressed as in
+his military days. Then, he used to be always dressed in a well-brushed
+uniform, made according to the latest fashion, tightly fitting his chest
+and shoulders; now, it was a civil service uniform he wore, and that,
+too, tightly fitted his well-fed body and showed off his broad chest,
+and was cut according to the latest fashion. In spite of the difference
+in age (Maslennikoff was 40), the two men were very familiar with one
+another.
+
+"Halloo, old fellow! How good of you to come! Let us go and see my wife.
+I have just ten minutes to spare before the meeting. My chief is away,
+you know. I am at the head of the Government administration," he said,
+unable to disguise his satisfaction.
+
+"I have come on business."
+
+"What is it?" said Maslennikoff, in an anxious and severe tone, putting
+himself at once on his guard.
+
+"There is a person, whom I am very much interested in, in prison" (at
+the word "prison" Maslennikoff's face grew stern); "and I should like to
+have an interview in the office, and not in the common visiting-room. I
+have been told it depended on you."
+
+"Certainly, mon cher," said Maslennikoff, putting both hands on
+Nekhludoff's knees, as if to tone down his grandeur; "but remember, I am
+monarch only for an hour."
+
+"Then will you give me an order that will enable me to see her?"
+
+"It's a woman?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is she there for?"
+
+"Poisoning, but she has been unjustly condemned."
+
+"Yes, there you have it, your justice administered by jury, ils n'en
+font point d'autres," he said, for some unknown reason, in French. "I
+know you do not agree with me, but it can't be helped, c'est mon opinion
+bien arretee," he added, giving utterance to an opinion he had for the
+last twelve months been reading in the retrograde Conservative paper. "I
+know you are a Liberal."
+
+"I don't know whether I am a Liberal or something else," Nekhludoff
+said, smiling; it always surprised him to find himself ranked with a
+political party and called a Liberal, when he maintained that a man
+should be heard before he was judged, that before being tried all men
+were equal, that nobody at all ought to be ill-treated and beaten, but
+especially those who had not yet been condemned by law. "I don't know
+whether I am a Liberal or not; but I do know that however had the
+present way of conducting a trial is, it is better than the old."
+
+"And whom have you for an advocate?"
+
+"I have spoken to Fanarin."
+
+"Dear me, Fanarin!" said Meslennikoff, with a grimace, recollecting how
+this Fanarin had examined him as a witness at a trial the year before
+and had, in the politest manner, held him up to ridicule for half an
+hour.
+
+"I should not advise you to have anything to do with him. _Fanarin est
+un homme tare_."
+
+"I have one more request to make," said Nekhludoff, without answering
+him. "There's a girl whom I knew long ago, a teacher; she is a very
+pitiable little thing, and is now also imprisoned, and would like to see
+me. Could you give me a permission to visit her?"
+
+Meslennikoff bent his head on one side and considered.
+
+"She's a political one?"
+
+"Yes, I have been told so."
+
+"Well, you see, only relatives get permission to visit political
+prisoners. Still, I'll give you an open order. _Je sais que vous
+n'abuserez pas_. What's the name of your protegee? Doukhova? _Elle est
+jolie?_"
+
+"Hideuse."
+
+Maslennikoff shook his head disapprovingly, went up to the table, and
+wrote on a sheet of paper, with a printed heading: "The bearer, Prince
+Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, is to be allowed to interview in the
+prison office the meschanka Maslova, and also the medical assistant,
+Doukhova," and he finished with an elaborate flourish.
+
+"Now you'll be able to see what order we have got there. And it is
+very difficult to keep order, it is so crowded, especially with people
+condemned to exile; but I watch strictly, and love the work. You will
+see they are very comfortable and contented. But one must know
+how to deal with them. Only a few days ago we had a little
+trouble--insubordination; another would have called it mutiny, and would
+have made many miserable, but with us it all passed quietly. We must
+have solicitude on one hand, firmness and power on the other," and he
+clenched the fat, white, turquoise-ringed fist, which issued out of
+the starched cuff of his shirt sleeve, fastened with a gold stud.
+"Solicitude and firm power."
+
+"Well, I don't know about that," said Nekhludoff. "I went there twice,
+and felt very much depressed."
+
+"Do you know, you ought to get acquainted with the Countess Passek,"
+continued Maslennikoff, growing talkative. "She has given herself up
+entirely to this sort of work. Elle fait beaucoup de bien. Thanks to
+her--and, perhaps I may add without false modesty, to me--everything has
+been changed, changed in such a way that the former horrors no longer
+exist, and they are really quite comfortable there. Well, you'll see.
+There's Fanarin. I do not know him personally; besides, my social
+position keeps our ways apart; but he is positively a bad man, and
+besides, he takes the liberty of saying such things in the court--such
+things!"
+
+"Well, thank you," Nekhludoff said, taking the paper, and without
+listening further he bade good-day to his former comrade.
+
+"And won't you go in to see my wife?"
+
+"No, pray excuse me; I have no time now."
+
+"Dear me, why she will never forgive me," said Maslennikoff,
+accompanying his old acquaintance down to the first landing, as he was
+in the habit of doing to persons of not the greatest, but the second
+greatest importance, with whom he classed Nekhludoff; "now do go in, if
+only for a moment."
+
+But Nekhludoff remained firm; and while the footman and the door-keeper
+rushed to give him his stick and overcoat, and opened the door, outside
+of which there stood a policeman, Nekhludoff repeated that he really
+could not come in.
+
+"Well, then; on Thursday, please. It is her 'at-home.' I will tell her
+you will come," shouted Maslennikoff from the stairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+THE CELLS.
+
+Nekhludoff drove that day straight from Maslennikoff's to the prison,
+and went to the inspector's lodging, which he now knew. He was again
+struck by the sounds of the same piano of inferior quality; but this
+time it was not a rhapsody that was being played, but exercises by
+Clementi, again with the same vigour, distinctness, and quickness. The
+servant with the bandaged eye said the inspector was in, and showed
+Nekhludoff to a small drawing-room, in which there stood a sofa and,
+in front of it, a table, with a large lamp, which stood on a piece of
+crochet work, and the paper shade of which was burnt on one side. The
+chief inspector entered, with his usual sad and weary look.
+
+"Take a seat, please. What is it you want?" he said, buttoning up the
+middle button of his uniform.
+
+"I have just been to the vice-governor's, and got this order from him. I
+should like to see the prisoner Maslova."
+
+"Markova?" asked the inspector, unable to bear distinctly because of the
+music.
+
+"Maslova!"
+
+"Well, yes." The inspector got up and went to the door whence proceeded
+Clementi's roulades.
+
+"Mary, can't you stop just a minute?" he said, in a voice that showed
+that this music was the bane of his life. "One can't hear a word."
+
+The piano was silent, but one could hear the sound of reluctant steps,
+and some one looked in at the door.
+
+The inspector seemed to feel eased by the interval of silence, lit a
+thick cigarette of weak tobacco, and offered one to Nekhludoff.
+
+Nekhludoff refused.
+
+"What I want is to see Maslova."
+
+"Oh, yes, that can be managed. Now, then, what do you want?" he said,
+addressing a little girl of five or six, who came into the room and
+walked up to her father with her head turned towards Nekhludoff, and her
+eyes fixed on him.
+
+"There, now, you'll fall down," said the inspector, smiling, as the
+little girl ran up to him, and, not looking where she was going, caught
+her foot in a little rug.
+
+"Well, then, if I may, I shall go."
+
+"It's not very convenient to see Maslova to-day," said the inspector.
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Well, you know, it's all your own fault," said the inspector, with a
+slight smile. "Prince, give her no money into her hands. If you like,
+give it me. I will keep it for her. You see, you gave her some money
+yesterday; she got some spirits (it's an evil we cannot manage to root
+out), and to-day she is quite tipsy, even violent."
+
+"Can this be true?"
+
+"Oh, yes, it is. I have even been obliged to have recourse to severe
+measures, and to put her into a separate cell. She is a quiet woman in
+an ordinary way. But please do not give her any money. These people are
+so--" What had happened the day before came vividly back to Nekhludoff's
+mind, and again he was seized with fear.
+
+"And Doukhova, a political prisoner; might I see her?"
+
+"Yes, if you like," said the inspector. He embraced the little girl,
+who was still looking at Nekhludoff, got up, and, tenderly motioning
+her aside, went into the ante-room. Hardly had he got into the overcoat
+which the maid helped him to put on, and before he had reached the door,
+the distinct sounds of Clementi's roulades again began.
+
+"She entered the Conservatoire, but there is such disorder there. She
+has a great gift," said the inspector, as they went down the stairs.
+"She means to play at concerts."
+
+The inspector and Nekhludoff arrived at the prison. The gates were
+instantly opened as they appeared. The jailers, with their fingers
+lifted to their caps, followed the inspector with their eyes. Four
+men, with their heads half shaved, who were carrying tubs filled with
+something, cringed when they saw the inspector. One of them frowned
+angrily, his black eyes glaring.
+
+"Of course a talent like that must be developed; it would not do to bury
+it, but in a small lodging, you know, it is rather hard." The inspector
+went on with the conversation, taking no notice of the prisoners.
+
+"Who is it you want to see?"
+
+"Doukhova."
+
+"Oh, she's in the tower. You'll have to wait a little," he said.
+
+"Might I not meanwhile see the prisoners Menshoff, mother and son, who
+are accused of incendiarism?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Cell No. 21. Yes, they can be sent for."
+
+"But might I not see Menshoff in his cell?"
+
+"Oh, you'll find the waiting-room more pleasant."
+
+"No. I should prefer the cell. It is more interesting."
+
+"Well, you have found something to be interested in!"
+
+Here the assistant, a smartly-dressed officer, entered the side door.
+
+"Here, see the Prince into Menshoff's cell, No. 21," said the inspector
+to his assistant, "and then take him to the office. And I'll go and
+call--What's her name? Vera Doukhova."
+
+The inspector's assistant was young, with dyed moustaches, and diffusing
+the smell of eau-de-cologne. "This way, please," he said to Nekhludoff,
+with a pleasant smile. "Our establishment interests you?"
+
+"Yes, it does interest me; and, besides, I look upon it as a duty to
+help a man who I heard was confined here, though innocent."
+
+The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Yes, that may happen," he said quietly, politely stepping aside to let
+the visitor enter, the stinking corridor first. "But it also happens
+that they lie. Here we are."
+
+The doors of the cells were open, and some of the prisoners were in the
+corridor. The assistant nodded slightly to the jailers, and cast a side
+glance at the prisoners, who, keeping close to the wall, crept back to
+their cells, or stood like soldiers, with their arms at their sides,
+following the official with their eyes. After passing through one
+corridor, the assistant showed Nekhludoff into another to the left,
+separated from the first by an iron door. This corridor was darker, and
+smelt even worse than the first. The corridor had doors on both sides,
+with little holes in them about an inch in diameter. There was only an
+old jailer, with an unpleasant face, in this corridor.
+
+"Where is Menshoff?" asked the inspector's assistant.
+
+"The eighth cell to the left."
+
+"And these? Are they occupied?" asked Nekhludoff.
+
+"Yes, all but one."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+NO. 21.
+
+"May I look in?" asked Nekhludoff.
+
+"Oh, certainly," answered the assistant, smiling, and turned to the
+jailer with some question.
+
+Nekhludoff looked into one of the little holes, and saw a tall young man
+pacing up and down the cell. When the man heard some one at the door he
+looked up with a frown, but continued walking up and down.
+
+Nekhludoff looked into another hole. His eye met another large eye
+looking out of the hole at him, and he quickly stepped aside. In the
+third cell he saw a very small man asleep on the bed, covered, head and
+all, with his prison cloak. In the fourth a broad-faced man was sitting
+with his elbows on his knees and his head low down. At the sound of
+footsteps this man raised his head and looked up. His face, especially
+his large eyes, bore the expression of hopeless dejection. One could see
+that it did not even interest him to know who was looking into his
+cell. Whoever it might be, he evidently hoped for nothing good from him.
+Nekhludoff was seized with dread, and went to Menshoff's cell, No. 21,
+without stopping to look through any more holes. The jailer unlocked the
+door and opened it. A young man, with long neck, well-developed muscles,
+a small head, and kind, round eyes, stood by the bed, hastily putting
+on his cloak, and looking at the newcomers with a frightened face.
+Nekhludoff was specially struck by the kind, round eyes that were
+throwing frightened and inquiring glances in turns at him, at the
+jailer, and at the assistant, and back again.
+
+"Here's a gentleman wants to inquire into your affair."
+
+"Thank you kindly."
+
+"Yes, I was told about you," Nekhludoff said, going through the cell up
+to the dirty grated window, "and I should like to hear all about it from
+yourself."
+
+Menshoff also came up to the window, and at once started telling his
+story, at first looking shyly at the inspector's assistant, but growing
+gradually bolder. When the assistant left the cell and went into the
+corridor to give some order the man grew quite bold. The story was told
+with the accent and in the manner common to a most ordinary good peasant
+lad. To hear it told by a prisoner dressed in this degrading clothing,
+and inside a prison, seemed very strange to Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff
+listened, and at the same time kept looking around him--at the low
+bedstead with its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall,
+and the piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant
+in his prison cloak and shoes, and he felt sadder and sadder, and would
+have liked not to believe what this good-natured fellow was saying. It
+seemed too dreadful to think that men could do such a thing as to take
+a man, dress him in convict clothes, and put him in this horrible place
+without any reason only because he himself had been injured. And yet the
+thought that this seemingly true story, told with such a good-natured
+expression on the face, might be an invention and a lie was still
+more dreadful. This was the story: The village public-house keeper had
+enticed the young fellow's wife. He tried to get justice by all sorts
+of means. But everywhere the public-house keeper managed to bribe the
+officials, and was acquitted. Once, he took his wife back by force, but
+she ran away next day. Then he came to demand her back, but, though he
+saw her when he came in, the public-house keeper told him she was not
+there, and ordered him to go away. He would not go, so the public-house
+keeper and his servant beat him so that they drew blood. The next day
+a fire broke out in the public-house, and the young man and his mother
+were accused of having set the house on fire. He had not set it on fire,
+but was visiting a friend at the time.
+
+"And it is true that you did not set it on fire?"
+
+"It never entered my head to do it, sir. It must be my enemy that did
+it himself. They say he had only just insured it. Then they said it was
+mother and I that did it, and that we had threatened him. It is true I
+once did go for him, my heart couldn't stand it any longer."
+
+"Can this be true?"
+
+"God is my witness it is true. Oh, sir, be so good--" and Nekhludoff had
+some difficulty to prevent him from bowing down to the ground. "You see
+I am perishing without any reason." His face quivered and he turned
+up the sleeve of his cloak and began to cry, wiping the tears with the
+sleeve of his dirty shirt.
+
+"Are you ready?" asked the assistant.
+
+"Yes. Well, cheer up. We will consult a good lawyer, and will do what we
+can," said Nekhludoff, and went out. Menshoff stood close to the door,
+so that the jailer knocked him in shutting it, and while the jailer was
+locking it he remained looking out through the little hole.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT.
+
+Passing back along the broad corridor (it was dinner time, and the cell
+doors were open), among the men dressed in their light yellow cloaks,
+short, wide trousers, and prison shoes, who were looking eagerly at him,
+Nekhludoff felt a strange mixture of sympathy for them, and horror and
+perplexity at the conduct of those who put and kept them here, and,
+besides, he felt, he knew not why, ashamed of himself calmly examining
+it all.
+
+In one of the corridors, some one ran, clattering with his shoes, in
+at the door of a cell. Several men came out from here, and stood in
+Nekhludoff's way, bowing to him.
+
+"Please, your honour (we don't know what to call you), get our affair
+settled somehow."
+
+"I am not an official. I know nothing about it."
+
+"Well, anyhow, you come from outside; tell somebody--one of the
+authorities, if need be," said an indignant voice. "Show some pity
+on us, as a human being. Here we are suffering the second month for
+nothing."
+
+"What do you mean? Why?" said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Why? We ourselves don't know why, but are sitting here the second
+month."
+
+"Yes, it's quite true, and it is owing to an accident," said the
+inspector. "These people were taken up because they had no passports,
+and ought to have been sent back to their native government; but the
+prison there is burnt, and the local authorities have written, asking us
+not to send them on. So we have sent all the other passportless people
+to their different governments, but are keeping these."
+
+"What! For no other reason than that?" Nekhludoff exclaimed, stopping at
+the door.
+
+A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes, surrounded
+him and the assistant, and several began talking at once. The assistant
+stopped them.
+
+"Let some one of you speak."
+
+A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty, stepped out
+from the rest. He told Nekhludoff that all of them had been ordered back
+to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no
+passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue.
+The same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to
+renew their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said
+anything; but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in
+prison the second month, as if they were criminals.
+
+"We are all masons, and belong to the same artel. We are told that the
+prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault. Do help
+us."
+
+Nekhludoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-looking old
+man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey,
+many-legged louse that was creeping along the good-looking man's cheek.
+
+"How's that? Is it possible for such a reason?" Nekhludoff said, turning
+to the assistant.
+
+"Yes, they should have been sent off and taken back to their homes,"
+calmly said the assistant, "but they seem to have been forgotten or
+something."
+
+Before the assistant had finished, a small, nervous man, also in prison
+dress, came out of the crowd, and, strangely contorting his mouth, began
+to say that they were being ill-used for nothing.
+
+"Worse than dogs," he began.
+
+"Now, now; not too much of this. Hold your tongue, or you know--"
+
+"What do I know?" screamed the little man, desperately. "What is our
+crime?"
+
+"Silence!" shouted the assistant, and the little man was silent.
+
+"But what is the meaning of all this?" Nekhludoff thought to himself
+as he came out of the cell, while a hundred eyes were fixed upon him
+through the openings of the cell doors and from the prisoners that met
+him, making him feel as if he were running the gauntlet.
+
+"Is it really possible that perfectly innocent people are kept here?"
+Nekhludoff uttered when they left the corridor.
+
+"What would you have us do? They lie so. To hear them talk they are all
+of them innocent," said the inspector's assistant. "But it does happen
+that some are really imprisoned for nothing."
+
+"Well, these have done nothing."
+
+"Yes, we must admit it. Still, the people are fearfully spoilt. There
+are such types--desperate fellows, with whom one has to look sharp.
+To-day two of that sort had to be punished."
+
+"Punished? How?"
+
+"Flogged with a birch-rod, by order."
+
+"But corporal punishment is abolished."
+
+"Not for such as are deprived of their rights. They are still liable to
+it."
+
+Nekhludoff thought of what he had seen the day before while waiting
+in the hall, and now understood that the punishment was then being
+inflicted, and the mixed feeling of curiosity, depression, perplexity,
+and moral nausea, that grew into physical sickness, took hold of him
+more strongly than ever before.
+
+Without listening to the inspector's assistant, or looking round, he
+hurriedly left the corridor, and went to the office. The inspector was
+in the office, occupied with other business, and had forgotten to send
+for Doukhova. He only remembered his promise to have her called when
+Nekhludoff entered the office.
+
+"Sit down, please. I'll send for her at once," said the inspector.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+PRISONERS AND FRIENDS.
+
+The office consisted of two rooms. The first room, with a large,
+dilapidated stove and two dirty windows, had a black measure for
+measuring the prisoners in one corner, and in another corner hung a
+large image of Christ, as is usual in places where they torture people.
+In this room stood several jailers. In the next room sat about twenty
+persons, men and women in groups and in pairs, talking in low voices.
+There was a writing table by the window.
+
+The inspector sat down by the table, and offered Nekhludoff a chair
+beside him. Nekhludoff sat down, and looked at the people in the room.
+
+The first who drew his attention was a young man with a pleasant face,
+dressed in a short jacket, standing in front of a middle-aged woman
+with dark eyebrows, and he was eagerly telling her something and
+gesticulating with his hands. Beside them sat an old man, with blue
+spectacles, holding the hand of a young woman in prisoner's clothes, who
+was telling him something. A schoolboy, with a fixed, frightened look on
+his face, was gazing at the old man. In one corner sat a pair of
+lovers. She was quite young and pretty, and had short, fair hair, looked
+energetic, and was elegantly dressed; he had fine features, wavy hair,
+and wore a rubber jacket. They sat in their corner and seemed stupefied
+with love. Nearest to the table sat a grey-haired woman dressed in
+black, evidently the mother of a young, consumptive-looking fellow, in
+the same kind of jacket. Her head lay on his shoulder. She was trying
+to say something, but the tears prevented her from speaking; she began
+several times, but had to stop. The young man held a paper in his hand,
+and, apparently not knowing what to do, kept folding and pressing it
+with an angry look on his face.
+
+Beside them was a short-haired, stout, rosy girl, with very prominent
+eyes, dressed in a grey dress and a cape; she sat beside the weeping
+mother, tenderly stroking her. Everything about this girl was beautiful;
+her large, white hands, her short, wavy hair, her firm nose and lips,
+but the chief charm of her face lay in her kind, truthful hazel eyes.
+The beautiful eyes turned away from the mother for a moment when
+Nekhludoff came in, and met his look. But she turned back at once and
+said something to the mother.
+
+Not far from the lovers a dark, dishevelled man, with a gloomy face, sat
+angrily talking to a beardless visitor, who looked as if he belonged to
+the Scoptsy sect.
+
+At the very door stood a young man in a rubber jacket, who seemed more
+concerned about the impression he produced on the onlooker than about
+what he was saying. Nekhludoff, sitting by the inspector's side, looked
+round with strained curiosity. A little boy with closely-cropped hair
+came up to him and addressed him in a thin little voice.
+
+"And whom are you waiting for?"
+
+Nekhludoff was surprised at the question, but looking at the boy, and
+seeing the serious little face with its bright, attentive eyes fixed
+on him, answered him seriously that he was waiting for a woman of his
+acquaintance.
+
+"Is she, then, your sister?" the boy asked.
+
+"No, not my sister," Nekhludoff answered in surprise.
+
+"And with whom are you here?" he inquired of the boy.
+
+"I? With mamma; she is a political one," he replied.
+
+"Mary Pavlovna, take Kolia!" said the inspector, evidently considering
+Nekhludoff's conversation with the boy illegal.
+
+Mary Pavlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhludoff's
+attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps,
+approached Nekhludoff and the boy.
+
+"What is he asking you? Who you are?" she inquired with a slight smile,
+and looking straight into his face with a trustful look in her kind,
+prominent eyes, and as simply as if there could be no doubt whatever
+that she was and must be on sisterly terms with everybody.
+
+"He likes to know everything," she said, looking at the boy with so
+sweet and kind a smile that both the boy and Nekhludoff were obliged to
+smile back.
+
+"He was asking me whom I have come to see."
+
+"Mary Pavlovna, it is against the rules to speak to strangers. You know
+it is," said the inspector.
+
+"All right, all right," she said, and went back to the consumptive lad's
+mother, holding Kolia's little hand in her large, white one, while he
+continued gazing up into her face.
+
+"Whose is this little boy?" Nekhludoff asked of the inspector.
+
+"His mother is a political prisoner, and he was born in prison,"
+said the inspector, in a pleased tone, as if glad to point out how
+exceptional his establishment was.
+
+"Is it possible?"
+
+"Yes, and now he is going to Siberia with her."
+
+"And that young girl?"
+
+"I cannot answer your question," said the inspector, shrugging his
+shoulders. "Besides, here is Doukhova."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+VERA DOUKHOVA EXPLAINS.
+
+Through a door, at the back of the room, entered, with a wriggling gait,
+the thin, yellow Vera Doukhova, with her large, kind eyes.
+
+"Thanks for having come," she said, pressing Nekhludoff's hand. "Do you
+remember me? Let us sit down."
+
+"I did not expect to see you like this."
+
+"Oh, I am very happy. It is so delightful, so delightful, that I desire
+nothing better," said Vera Doukhova, with the usual expression of fright
+in the large, kind, round eyes fixed on Nekhludoff, and twisting the
+terribly thin, sinewy neck, surrounded by the shabby, crumpled, dirty
+collar of her bodice. Nekhludoff asked her how she came to be in prison.
+
+In answer she began relating all about her affairs with great animation.
+Her speech was intermingled with a great many long words, such as
+propaganda, disorganisation, social groups, sections and sub-sections,
+about which she seemed to think everybody knew, but which Nekhludoff had
+never heard of.
+
+She told him all the secrets of the Nardovolstvo, [literally, "People's
+Freedom," a revolutionary movement] evidently convinced that he was
+pleased to hear them. Nekhludoff looked at her miserable little neck,
+her thin, unkempt hair, and wondered why she had been doing all these
+strange things, and why she was now telling all this to him. He pitied
+her, but not as he had pitied Menshoff, the peasant, kept for no fault
+of his own in the stinking prison. She was pitiable because of the
+confusion that filled her mind. It was clear that she considered herself
+a heroine, and was ready to give her life for a cause, though she could
+hardly have explained what that cause was and in what its success would
+lie.
+
+The business that Vera Doukhova wanted to see Nekhludoff about was
+the following: A friend of hers, who had not even belonged to their
+"sub-group," as she expressed it, had been arrested with her about five
+months before, and imprisoned in the Petropavlovsky fortress because
+some prohibited books and papers (which she had been asked to keep) had
+been found in her possession. Vera Doukhova felt herself in some measure
+to blame for her friend's arrest, and implored Nekhludoff, who had
+connections among influential people, to do all he could in order to set
+this friend free.
+
+Besides this, Doukhova asked him to try and get permission for
+another friend of hers, Gourkevitch (who was also imprisoned in the
+Petropavlovsky fortress), to see his parents, and to procure some
+scientific books which he required for his studies. Nekhludoff promised
+to do what he could when he went to Petersburg.
+
+As to her own story, this is what she said: Having finished a course
+of midwifery, she became connected with a group of adherents to the
+Nardovolstvo, and made up her mind to agitate in the revolutionary
+movement. At first all went on smoothly. She wrote proclamations
+and occupied herself with propaganda work in the factories; then, an
+important member having been arrested, their papers were seized and all
+concerned were arrested. "I was also arrested, and shall be exiled. But
+what does it matter? I feel perfectly happy." She concluded her story
+with a piteous smile.
+
+Nekhludoff made some inquiries concerning the girl with the prominent
+eyes. Vera Doukhova told him that this girl was the daughter of a
+general, and had been long attached to the revolutionary party, and was
+arrested because she had pleaded guilty to having shot a gendarme.
+She lived in a house with some conspirators, where they had a secret
+printing press. One night, when the police came to search this house,
+the occupiers resolved to defend themselves, put out the light, and
+began destroying the things that might incriminate them. The police
+forced their way in, and one of the conspirators fired, and mortally
+wounded a gendarme. When an inquiry was instituted, this girl said that
+it was she who had fired, although she had never had a revolver in her
+hands, and would not have hurt a fly. And she kept to it, and was now
+condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.
+
+"An altruistic, fine character," said Vera Doukhova, approvingly.
+
+The third business that Vera Doukhova wanted to talk about concerned
+Maslova. She knew, as everybody does know in prison, the story of
+Maslova's life and his connection with her, and advised him to take
+steps to get her removed into the political prisoner's ward, or into
+the hospital to help to nurse the sick, of which there were very many at
+that time, so that extra nurses were needed.
+
+Nekhludoff thanked her for the advice, and said he would try to act upon
+it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF AND THE PRISONERS.
+
+Their conversation was interrupted by the inspector, who said that the
+time was up, and the prisoners and their friends must part. Nekhludoff
+took leave of Vera Doukhova and went to the door, where he stopped to
+watch what was going on.
+
+The inspector's order called forth only heightened animation among the
+prisoners in the room, but no one seemed to think of going. Some rose
+and continued to talk standing, some went on talking without rising.
+A few began crying and taking leave of each other. The mother and
+her consumptive son seemed especially pathetic. The young fellow kept
+twisting his bit of paper and his face seemed angry, so great were his
+efforts not to be infected by his mother's emotion. The mother, hearing
+that it was time to part, put her head on his shoulder and sobbed and
+sniffed aloud.
+
+The girl with the prominent eyes--Nekhludoff could not help watching
+her--was standing opposite the sobbing mother, and was saying something
+to her in a soothing tone. The old man with the blue spectacles stood
+holding his daughter's hand and nodding in answer to what she said. The
+young lovers rose, and, holding each other's hands, looked silently into
+one another's eyes.
+
+"These are the only two who are merry," said a young man with a short
+coat who stood by Nekhludoff's side, also looking at those who were
+about to part, and pointed to the lovers. Feeling Nekhludoff's and
+the young man's eyes fixed on them, the lovers--the young man with the
+rubber coat and the pretty girl--stretched out their arms, and with
+their hands clasped in each other's, danced round and round again.
+"To-night they are going to be married here in prison, and she will
+follow him to Siberia," said the young man.
+
+"What is he?"
+
+"A convict, condemned to penal servitude. Let those two at least have a
+little joy, or else it is too painful," the young man added, listening
+to the sobs of the consumptive lad's mother.
+
+"Now, my good people! Please, please do not oblige me to have recourse
+to severe measures," the inspector said, repeating the same words
+several times over. "Do, please," he went on in a weak, hesitating
+manner. "It is high time. What do you mean by it? This sort of thing is
+quite impossible. I am now asking you for the last time," he repeated
+wearily, now putting out his cigarette and then lighting another.
+
+It was evident that, artful, old, and common as were the devices
+enabling men to do evil to others without feeling responsible for it,
+the inspector could not but feel conscious that he was one of those who
+were guilty of causing the sorrow which manifested itself in this
+room. And it was apparent that this troubled him sorely. At length the
+prisoners and their visitors began to go--the first out of the inner,
+the latter out of the outer door. The man with the rubber jacket passed
+out among them, and the consumptive youth and the dishevelled man. Mary
+Pavlovna went out with the boy born in prison.
+
+The visitors went out too. The old man with the blue spectacles,
+stepping heavily, went out, followed by Nekhludoff.
+
+"Yes, a strange state of things this," said the talkative young man, as
+if continuing an interrupted conversation, as he descended the stairs
+side by side with Nekhludoff. "Yet we have reason to be grateful to the
+inspector who does not keep strictly to the rules, kind-hearted fellow.
+If they can get a talk it does relieve their hearts a bit, after all!"
+
+While talking to the young man, who introduced himself as Medinzeff,
+Nekhludoff reached the hall. There the inspector came up to them with
+weary step.
+
+"If you wish to see Maslova," he said, apparently desiring to be polite
+to Nekhludoff, "please come to-morrow."
+
+"Very well," answered Nekhludoff, and hurried away, experiencing
+more than ever that sensation of moral nausea which he always felt on
+entering the prison.
+
+The sufferings of the evidently innocent Menshoff seemed terrible, and
+not so much his physical suffering as the perplexity, the distrust in
+the good and in God which he must feel, seeing the cruelty of the people
+who tormented him without any reason.
+
+Terrible were the disgrace and sufferings cast on these hundreds of
+guiltless people simply because something was not written on paper as it
+should have been. Terrible were the brutalised jailers, whose occupation
+is to torment their brothers, and who were certain that they were
+fulfilling an important and useful duty; but most terrible of all seemed
+this sickly, elderly, kind-hearted inspector, who was obliged to part
+mother and son, father and daughter, who were just the same sort of
+people as he and his own children.
+
+"What is it all for?" Nekhludoff asked himself, and could not find an
+answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+THE VICE-GOVERNOR'S "AT-HOME".
+
+The next day Nekhludoff went to see the advocate, and spoke to him
+about the Menshoffs' case, begging him to undertake their defence. The
+advocate promised to look into the case, and if it turned out to be as
+Nekhludoff said he would in all probability undertake the defence free
+of charge. Then Nekhludoff told him of the 130 men who were kept in
+prison owing to a mistake. "On whom did it depend? Whose fault was it?"
+
+The advocate was silent for a moment, evidently anxious to give a
+correct reply.
+
+"Whose fault is it? No one's," he said, decidedly. "Ask the Procureur,
+he'll say it is the Governor's; ask the Governor, he'll say it is the
+Procureur's fault. No one is in fault."
+
+"I am just going to see the Vice-Governor. I shall tell him."
+
+"Oh, that's quite useless," said the advocate, with a smile. "He is such
+a--he is not a relation or friend of yours?--such a blockhead, if I may
+say so, and yet a crafty animal at the same time."
+
+Nekhludoff remembered what Maslennikoff had said about the advocate, and
+did not answer, but took leave and went on to Maslennikoff's. He had
+to ask Maslennikoff two things: about Maslova's removal to the prison
+hospital, and about the 130 passportless men innocently imprisoned.
+Though it was very hard to petition a man whom he did not respect, and
+by whose orders men were flogged, yet it was the only means of gaining
+his end, and he had to go through with it.
+
+As he drove up to Maslennikoff's house Nekhludoff saw a number of
+different carriages by the front door, and remembered that it was
+Maslennikoff's wife's "at-home" day, to which he had been invited. At
+the moment Nekhludoff drove up there was a carriage in front of the
+door, and a footman in livery, with a cockade in his hat, was helping
+a lady down the doorstep. She was holding up her train, and showing her
+thin ankles, black stockings, and slippered feet. Among the carriages
+was a closed landau, which he knew to be the Korchagins'.
+
+The grey-haired, red-checked coachman took off his hat and bowed in a
+respectful yet friendly manner to Nekhludoff, as to a gentleman he knew
+well. Nekhludoff had not had time to inquire for Maslennikoff, when the
+latter appeared on the carpeted stairs, accompanying a very important
+guest not only to the first landing but to the bottom of the stairs.
+This very important visitor, a military man, was speaking in French
+about a lottery for the benefit of children's homes that were to be
+founded in the city, and expressed the opinion that this was a good
+occupation for the ladies. "It amuses them, and the money comes."
+
+_"Qu'elles s'amusent et que le bon dieu les benisse. M. Nekhludoff!_ How
+d'you do? How is it one never sees you?" he greeted Nekhludoff. "_Allez
+presenter vos devoirs a Madame._ And the Korchagins are here et Nadine
+Bukshevden. _Toutes les jolies femmes de la ville,_" said the important
+guest, slightly raising his uniformed shoulders as he presented them to
+his own richly liveried servant to have his military overcoat put on.
+"_Au revoir, mon cher._" And he pressed Maslennikoff's hand.
+
+"Now, come up; I am so glad," said Maslennikoff, grasping Nekhludoff's
+hand. In spite of his corpulency Maslennikoff hurried quickly up the
+stairs. He was in particularly good spirits, owing to the attention paid
+him by the important personage. Every such attention gave him the same
+sense of delight as is felt by an affectionate dog when its master pats
+it, strokes it, or scratches its ears. It wags its tail, cringes,
+jumps about, presses its ears down, and madly rushes about in a circle.
+Maslennikoff was ready to do the same. He did not notice the serious
+expression on Nekhludoff's face, paid no heed to his words, but pulled
+him irresistibly towards the drawing-room, so that it was impossible for
+Nekhludoff not to follow. "Business after wards. I shall do whatever
+you want," said Meslennikoff, as he drew Nekhludoff through the dancing
+hall. "Announce Prince Nekhludoff," he said to a footman, without
+stopping on his way. The footman started off at a trot and passed them.
+
+"_Vous n'avez qu' a ordonner._ But you must see my wife. As it is, I got
+it for letting you go without seeing her last time."
+
+By the time they reached the drawing-room the footman had already
+announced Nekhludoff, and from between the bonnets and heads that
+surrounded it the smiling face of Anna Ignatievna, the Vice-Governor's
+wife, beamed on Nekhludoff. At the other end of the drawing-room several
+ladies were seated round the tea-table, and some military men and some
+civilians stood near them. The clatter of male and female voices went on
+unceasingly.
+
+"Enfin! you seem to have quite forgotten us. How have we offended?"
+With these words, intended to convey an idea of intimacy which had never
+existed between herself and Nekhludoff, Anna Ignatievna greeted the
+newcomer.
+
+"You are acquainted?--Madam Tilyaevsky, M. Chernoff. Sit down a bit
+nearer. Missy _vene donc a notre table on vous apportera votre_ the
+. . . And you," she said, having evidently forgotten his name, to an officer
+who was talking to Missy, "do come here. A cup of tea, Prince?"
+
+"I shall never, never agree with you. It's quite simple; she did not
+love," a woman's voice was heard saying.
+
+"But she loved tarts."
+
+"Oh, your eternal silly jokes!" put in, laughingly, another lady
+resplendent in silks, gold, and jewels.
+
+"C'est excellent these little biscuits, and so light. I think I'll take
+another."
+
+"Well, are you moving soon?"
+
+"Yes, this is our last day. That's why we have come. Yes, it must be
+lovely in the country; we are having a delightful spring."
+
+Missy, with her hat on, in a dark-striped dress of some kind that fitted
+her like a skin, was looking very handsome. She blushed when she saw
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"And I thought you had left," she said to him.
+
+"I am on the point of leaving. Business is keeping me in town, and it is
+on business I have come here."
+
+"Won't you come to see mamma? She would like to see you," she said, and
+knowing that she was saying what was not true, and that he knew it also,
+she blushed still more.
+
+"I fear I shall scarcely have time," Nekhludoff said gloomily, trying
+to appear as if he had not noticed her blush. Missy frowned angrily,
+shrugged her shoulders, and turned towards an elegant officer, who
+grasped the empty cup she was holding, and knocking his sword against
+the chairs, manfully carried the cup across to another table.
+
+"You must contribute towards the Home fund."
+
+"I am not refusing, but only wish to keep my bounty fresh for the
+lottery. There I shall let it appear in all its glory."
+
+"Well, look out for yourself," said a voice, followed by an evidently
+feigned laugh.
+
+Anna Ignatievna was in raptures; her "at-home" had turned out a
+brilliant success. "Micky tells me you are busying yourself with prison
+work. I can understand you so well," she said to Nekhludoff. "Micky (she
+meant her fat husband, Maslennikoff) may have other defects, but you
+know how kind-hearted he is. All these miserable prisoners are his
+children. He does not regard them in any other light. _Il est d'une
+bonte---_" and she stopped, finding no words to do justice to this bonte
+of his, and quickly turned to a shrivelled old woman with bows of lilac
+ribbon all over, who came in just then.
+
+Having said as much as was absolutely necessary, and with as little
+meaning as conventionality required, Nekhludoff rose and went up to
+Meslennikoff. "Can you give me a few minutes' hearing, please?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Well, what is it?"
+
+"Let us come in here."
+
+They entered a small Japanese sitting-room, and sat down by the window.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+THE VICE-GOVERNOR SUSPICIOUS.
+
+"Well? _Je suis a vous_. Will you smoke? But wait a bit; we must be
+careful and not make a mess here," said Maslennikoff, and brought an
+ashpan. "Well?"
+
+"There are two matters I wish to ask you about."
+
+"Dear me!"
+
+An expression of gloom and dejection came over Maslennikoff's
+countenance, and every trace of the excitement, like that of the dog's
+whom its master has scratched behind the cars, vanished completely. The
+sound of voices reached them from the drawing-room. A woman's voice was
+heard, saying, _"Jamais je ne croirais,"_ and a man's voice from
+the other side relating something in which the names of la Comtesse
+Voronzoff and Victor Apraksine kept recurring. A hum of voices, mixed
+with laughter, came from another side. Maslennikoff tried to listen to
+what was going on in the drawing-room and to what Nekhludoff was saying
+at the same time.
+
+"I am again come about that same woman," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Oh, yes; I know. The one innocently condemned."
+
+"I would like to ask that she should be appointed to serve in the prison
+hospital. I have been told that this could be arranged."
+
+Maslennikoff compressed his lips and meditated. "That will be scarcely
+possible," he said. "However, I shall see what can be done, and shall
+wire you an answer tomorrow."
+
+"I have been told that there were many sick, and help was needed."
+
+"All right, all right. I shall let you know in any case."
+
+"Please do," said Nekhludoff.
+
+The sound of a general and even a natural laugh came from the
+drawing-room.
+
+"That's all that Victor. He is wonderfully sharp when he is in the right
+vein," said Maslennikoff.
+
+"The next thing I wanted to tell you," said Nekhludoff, "is that 130
+persons are imprisoned only because their passports are overdue. They
+have been kept here a month."
+
+And he related the circumstances of the case.
+
+"How have you come to know of this?" said Maslennikoff, looking uneasy
+and dissatisfied.
+
+"I went to see a prisoner, and these men came and surrounded me in the
+corridor, and asked . . ."
+
+"What prisoner did you go to see?"
+
+"A peasant who is kept in prison, though innocent. I have put his case
+into the hands of a lawyer. But that is not the point."
+
+"Is it possible that people who have done no wrong are imprisoned only
+because their passports are overdue? And . . ."
+
+"That's the Procureur's business," Maslennikoff interrupted, angrily.
+"There, now, you see what it is you call a prompt and just form of
+trial. It is the business of the Public Prosecutor to visit the prison
+and to find out if the prisoners are kept there lawfully. But that set
+play cards; that's all they do."
+
+"Am I to understand that you can do nothing?" Nekhludoff said,
+despondently, remembering that the advocate had foretold that the
+Governor would put the blame on the Procureur.
+
+"Oh, yes, I can. I shall see about it at once."
+
+"So much the worse for her. _C'est un souffre douleur_," came the voice
+of a woman, evidently indifferent to what she was saying, from the
+drawing-room.
+
+"So much the better. I shall take it also," a man's voice was heard to
+say from the other side, followed by the playful laughter of a woman,
+who was apparently trying to prevent the man from taking something away
+from her.
+
+"No, no; not on any account," the woman's voice said.
+
+"All right, then. I shall do all this," Maslennikoff repeated, and put
+out the cigarette he held in his white, turquoise-ringed hand. "And now
+let us join the ladies."
+
+"Wait a moment," Nekhludoff said, stopping at the door of the
+drawing-room. "I was told that some men had received corporal punishment
+in the prison yesterday. Is this true?"
+
+Maslennikoff blushed.
+
+"Oh, that's what you are after? No, mon cher, decidedly it won't do to
+let you in there; you want to get at everything. Come, come; Anna is
+calling us," he said, catching Nekhludoff by the arm, and again becoming
+as excited as after the attention paid him by the important person, only
+now his excitement was not joyful, but anxious.
+
+Nekhludoff pulled his arm away, and without taking leave of any one
+and without saying a word, he passed through the drawing-room with a
+dejected look, went down into the hall, past the footman, who sprang
+towards him, and out at the street door.
+
+"What is the matter with him? What have you done to him?" asked Anna of
+her husband.
+
+"This is _a la Francaise_," remarked some one.
+
+"_A la Francaise_, indeed--it is _a la Zoulou_."
+
+"Oh, but he's always been like that."
+
+Some one rose, some one came in, and the clatter went on its course.
+The company used this episode with Nekhludoff as a convenient topic of
+conversation for the rest of the "at-home."
+
+On the day following his visit to Maslennikoff, Nekhludoff received a
+letter from him, written in a fine, firm hand, on thick, glazed paper,
+with a coat-of-arms, and sealed with sealing-wax. Maslennikoff said
+that he had written to the doctor concerning Maslova's removal to the
+hospital, and hoped Nekhludoff's wish would receive attention. The
+letter was signed, "Your affectionate elder comrade," and the signature
+ended with a large, firm, and artistic flourish. "Fool!" Nekhludoff
+could not refrain from saying, especially because in the word
+"comrade" he felt Maslennikoff's condescension towards him, i.e., while
+Maslennikoff was filling this position, morally most dirty and shameful,
+he still thought himself a very important man, and wished, if not
+exactly to flatter Nekhludoff, at least to show that he was not too
+proud to call him comrade.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF'S THIRD INTERVIEW WITH MASLOVA IN PRISON.
+
+One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own
+special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid,
+energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man
+that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener
+energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say
+of one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is wicked and
+foolish. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is
+untrue. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in
+all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower,
+there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same
+with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality,
+and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often
+becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man, In some
+people these changes are very rapid, and Nekhludoff was such a man.
+These changes in him were due to physical and to spiritual causes. At
+this time he experienced such a change.
+
+That feeling of triumph and joy at the renewal of life which he had
+experienced after the trial and after the first interview with Katusha,
+vanished completely, and after the last interview fear and revulsion
+took the place of that joy. He was determined not to leave her, and not
+to change his decision of marrying her, if she wished it; but it seemed
+very hard, and made him suffer.
+
+On the day after his visit to Maslennikoff, he again went to the prison
+to see her.
+
+The inspector allowed him to speak to her, only not in the advocate's
+room nor in the office, but in the women's visiting-room. In spite
+of his kindness, the inspector was more reserved with Nekhludoff than
+hitherto.
+
+An order for greater caution had apparently been sent, as a result of
+his conversation with Meslennikoff.
+
+"You may see her," the inspector said; "but please remember what I
+said as regards money. And as to her removal to the hospital, that his
+excellency wrote to me about, it can be done; the doctor would agree.
+Only she herself does not wish it. She says, 'Much need have I to carry
+out the slops for the scurvy beggars.' You don't know what these people
+are, Prince," he added.
+
+Nekhludoff did not reply, but asked to have the interview. The
+inspector called a jailer, whom Nekhludoff followed into the women's
+visiting-room, where there was no one but Maslova waiting. She came from
+behind the grating, quiet and timid, close up to him, and said, without
+looking at him:
+
+"Forgive me, Dmitri Ivanovitch, I spoke hastily the day before
+yesterday."
+
+"It is not for me to forgive you," Nekhludoff began.
+
+"But all the same, you must leave me," she interrupted, and in the
+terribly squinting eyes with which she looked at him Nekhludoff read the
+former strained, angry expression.
+
+"Why should I leave you?"
+
+"So."
+
+"But why so?"
+
+She again looked up, as it seemed to him, with the same angry look.
+
+"Well, then, thus it is," she said. "You must leave me. It is true
+what I am saying. I cannot. You just give it up altogether." Her lips
+trembled and she was silent for a moment. "It is true. I'd rather hang
+myself."
+
+Nekhludoff felt that in this refusal there was hatred and unforgiving
+resentment, but there was also something besides, something good. This
+confirmation of the refusal in cold blood at once quenched all the
+doubts in Nekhludoff's bosom, and brought back the serious, triumphant
+emotion he had felt in relation to Katusha.
+
+"Katusha, what I have said I will again repeat," he uttered, very
+seriously. "I ask you to marry me. If you do not wish it, and for as
+long as you do not wish it, I shall only continue to follow you, and
+shall go where you are taken."
+
+"That is your business. I shall not say anything more," she answered,
+and her lips began to tremble again.
+
+He, too, was silent, feeling unable to speak.
+
+"I shall now go to the country, and then to Petersburg," he said, when
+he was quieter again. "I shall do my utmost to get your--our case, I
+mean, reconsidered, and by the help of God the sentence may be revoked."
+
+"And if it is not revoked, never mind. I have deserved it, if not in
+this case, in other ways," she said, and he saw how difficult it was for
+her to keep down her tears.
+
+"Well, have you seen Menshoff?" she suddenly asked, to hide her emotion.
+"It's true they are innocent, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, I think so."
+
+"Such a splendid old woman," she said.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"Well, and as to the hospital?" she suddenly said, and looking at him
+with her squinting eyes. "If you like, I will go, and I shall not drink
+any spirits, either."
+
+Nekhludoff looked into her eyes. They were smiling.
+
+"Yes, yes, she is quite a different being," Nekhludoff thought. After
+all his former doubts, he now felt something he had never before
+experienced--the certainty that love is invincible.
+
+When Maslova returned to her noisome cell after this interview, she took
+off her cloak and sat down in her place on the shelf bedstead with her
+hands folded on her lap. In the cell were only the consumptive woman,
+the Vladimir woman with her baby, Menshoff's old mother, and the
+watchman's wife. The deacon's daughter had the day before been declared
+mentally diseased and removed to the hospital. The rest of the women
+were away, washing clothes. The old woman was asleep, the cell door
+stood open, and the watchman's children were in the corridor outside.
+The Vladimir woman, with her baby in her arms, and the watchman's
+wife, with the stocking she was knitting with deft fingers, came up to
+Maslova. "Well, have you had a chat?" they asked. Maslova sat silent on
+the high bedstead, swinging her legs, which did not reach to the floor.
+
+"What's the good of snivelling?" said the watchman's wife. "The chief
+thing's not to go down into the dumps. Eh, Katusha? Now, then!" and she
+went on, quickly moving her fingers.
+
+Maslova did not answer.
+
+"And our women have all gone to wash," said the Vladimir woman. "I
+heard them say much has been given in alms to-day. Quite a lot has been
+brought."
+
+"Finashka," called out the watchman's wife, "where's the little imp gone
+to?"
+
+She took a knitting needle, stuck it through both the ball and the
+stocking, and went out into the corridor.
+
+At this moment the sound of women's voices was heard from the corridor,
+and the inmates of the cell entered, with their prison shoes, but
+no stockings on their feet. Each was carrying a roll, some even two.
+Theodosia came at once up to Maslova.
+
+"What's the matter; is anything wrong?" Theodosia asked, looking
+lovingly at Maslova with her clear, blue eyes. "This is for our tea,"
+and she put the rolls on a shelf.
+
+"Why, surely he has not changed his mind about marrying?" asked
+Korableva.
+
+"No, he has not, but I don't wish to," said Maslova, "and so I told
+him."
+
+"More fool you!" muttered Korableva in her deep tones.
+
+"If one's not to live together, what's the use of marrying?" said
+Theodosia.
+
+"There's your husband--he's going with you," said the watchman's wife.
+
+"Well, of course, we're married," said Theodosia. "But why should he go
+through the ceremony if he is not to live with her?"
+
+"Why, indeed! Don't be a fool! You know if he marries her she'll roll in
+wealth," said Korableva.
+
+"He says, 'Wherever they take you, I'll follow,'" said Maslova. "If he
+does, it's well; if he does not, well also. I am not going to ask him
+to. Now he is going to try and arrange the matter in Petersburg. He is
+related to all the Ministers there. But, all the same, I have no need of
+him," she continued.
+
+"Of course not," suddenly agreed Korableva, evidently thinking about
+something else as she sat examining her bag. "Well, shall we have a
+drop?"
+
+"You have some," replied Maslova. "I won't."
+
+END OF BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PROPERTY IN LAND.
+
+It was possible for Maslova's case to come before the Senate in a
+fortnight, at which time Nekhludoff meant to go to Petersburg, and, if
+need be, to appeal to the Emperor (as the advocate who had drawn up the
+petition advised) should the appeal be disregarded (and, according to
+the advocate, it was best to be prepared for that, since the causes for
+appeal were so slight). The party of convicts, among whom was Maslova,
+would very likely leave in the beginning of June. In order to be able to
+follow her to Siberia, as Nekhludoff was firmly resolved to do, he was
+now obliged to visit his estates, and settle matters there. Nekhludoff
+first went to the nearest, Kousminski, a large estate that lay in the
+black earth district, and from which he derived the greatest part of his
+income.
+
+He had lived on that estate in his childhood and youth, and had been
+there twice since, and once, at his mother's request, he had taken a
+German steward there, and had with him verified the accounts. The state
+of things there and the peasants' relations to the management, i.e.,
+the landlord, had therefore been long known to him. The relations of the
+peasants to the administration were those of utter dependence on that
+management. Nekhludoff knew all this when still a university student,
+he had confessed and preached Henry Georgeism, and, on the basis of that
+teaching, had given the land inherited from his father to the peasants.
+It is true that after entering the army, when he got into the habit of
+spending 20,000 roubles a year, those former occupations ceased to be
+regarded as a duty, and were forgotten, and he not only left off asking
+himself where the money his mother allowed him came from, but even
+avoided thinking about it. But his mother's death, the coming into the
+property, and the necessity of managing it, again raised the question
+as to what his position in reference to private property in land was. A
+month before Nekhludoff would have answered that he had not the strength
+to alter the existing order of things; that it was not he who was
+administering the estate; and would one way or another have eased his
+conscience, continuing to live far from his estates, and having the
+money sent him. But now he decided that he could not leave things to go
+on as they were, but would have to alter them in a way unprofitable
+to himself, even though he had all these complicated and difficult
+relations with the prison world which made money necessary, as well as a
+probable journey to Siberia before him. Therefore he decided not to farm
+the land, but to let it to the peasants at a low rent, to enable them
+to cultivate it without depending on a landlord. More than once, when
+comparing the position of a landowner with that of an owner of serfs,
+Nekhludoff had compared the renting of land to the peasants instead
+of cultivating it with hired labour, to the old system by which serf
+proprietors used to exact a money payment from their serfs in place of
+labour. It was not a solution of the problem, and yet a step towards the
+solution; it was a movement towards a less rude form of slavery. And it
+was in this way he meant to act.
+
+Nekhludoff reached Kousminski about noon. Trying to simplify his life
+in every way, he did not telegraph, but hired a cart and pair at the
+station. The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen coat, with a belt
+below his long waist. He was glad to talk to the gentleman, especially
+because while they were talking his broken-winded white horse and the
+emaciated spavined one could go at a foot-pace, which they always liked
+to do.
+
+The driver spoke about the steward at Kousminski without knowing that he
+was driving "the master." Nekhludoff had purposely not told him who he
+was.
+
+"That ostentatious German," said the driver (who had been to town and
+read novels) as he sat sideways on the box, passing his hand from
+the top to the bottom of his long whip, and trying to show off his
+accomplishments--"that ostentatious German has procured three light
+bays, and when he drives out with his lady---oh, my! At Christmas he had
+a Christmas-tree in the big house. I drove some of the visitors there.
+It had 'lectric lights; you could not see the like of it in the whole
+of the government. What's it to him, he has cribbed a heap of money. I
+heard say he has bought an estate."
+
+Nekhludoff had imagined that he was quite indifferent to the way the
+steward managed his estate, and what advantages the steward derived from
+it. The words of the long-waisted driver, however, were not pleasant to
+hear.
+
+A dark cloud now and then covered the sun; the larks were soaring above
+the fields of winter corn; the forests were already covered with fresh
+young green; the meadows speckled with grazing cattle and horses. The
+fields were being ploughed, and Nekhludoff enjoyed the lovely day. But
+every now and then he had an unpleasant feeling, and, when he asked
+himself what it was caused by, he remembered what the driver had told
+him about the way the German was managing Kousminski. When he got to his
+estate and set to work this unpleasant feeling vanished.
+
+Looking over the books in the office, and a talk with the foreman, who
+naively pointed out the advantages to be derived from the facts that the
+peasants had very little land of their own and that it lay in the midst
+of the landlord's fields, made Nekhludoff more than ever determined to
+leave off farming and to let his land to the peasants.
+
+From the office books and his talk with the foreman, Nekhludoff found
+that two-thirds of the best of the cultivated land was still being
+tilled with improved machinery by labourers receiving fixed wages, while
+the other third was tilled by the peasants at the rate of five roubles
+per desiatin [about two and three-quarter acres]. So that the peasants
+had to plough each desiatin three times, harrow it three times, sow
+and mow the corn, make it into sheaves, and deliver it on the threshing
+ground for five roubles, while the same amount of work done by wage
+labour came to at least 10 roubles. Everything the peasants got from the
+office they paid for in labour at a very high price. They paid in labour
+for the use of the meadows, for wood, for potato-stalks, and were nearly
+all of them in debt to the office. Thus, for the land that lay beyond
+the cultivated fields, which the peasants hired, four times the price
+that its value would bring in if invested at five per cent was taken
+from the peasants.
+
+Nekhludoff had known all this before, but he now saw it in a new light,
+and wondered how he and others in his position could help seeing how
+abnormal such conditions are. The steward's arguments that if the land
+were let to the peasants the agricultural implements would fetch next to
+nothing, as it would be impossible to get even a quarter of their value
+for them, and that the peasants would spoil the land, and how great a
+loser Nekhludoff would be, only strengthened Nekhludoff in the opinion
+that he was doing a good action in letting the land to the peasants
+and thus depriving himself of a large part of his income. He decided to
+settle this business now, at once, while he was there. The reaping and
+selling of the corn he left for the steward to manage in due season, and
+also the selling of the agricultural implements and useless buildings.
+But he asked his steward to call the peasants of the three neighbouring
+villages that lay in the midst of his estate (Kousminski) to a meeting,
+at which he would tell them of his intentions and arrange about the
+price at which they were to rent the land.
+
+With the pleasant sense of the firmness he had shown in the face of the
+steward's arguments, and his readiness to make a sacrifice, Nekhludoff
+left the office, thinking over the business before him, and strolled
+round the house, through the neglected flower-garden--this year the
+flowers were planted in front of the steward's house--over the tennis
+ground, now overgrown with dandelions, and along the lime-tree walk,
+where he used to smoke his cigar, and where he had flirted with the
+pretty Kirimova, his mother's visitor. Having briefly prepared in his
+mind the speech he was going to make to the peasants, he again went in
+to the steward, and, after tea, having once more arranged his thoughts,
+he went into the room prepared for him in the big house, which used to
+be a spare bedroom.
+
+In this clean little room, with pictures of Venice on the walls, and a
+mirror between the two windows, there stood a clean bed with a spring
+mattress, and by the side of it a small table, with a decanter of water,
+matches, and an extinguisher. On a table by the looking-glass lay his
+open portmanteau, with his dressing-case and some books in it; a Russian
+book, The Investigation of the Laws of Criminality, and a German and
+an English book on the same subject, which he meant to read while
+travelling in the country. But it was too late to begin to-day, and he
+began preparing to go to bed.
+
+An old-fashioned inlaid mahogany arm-chair stood in the corner of
+the room, and this chair, which Nekhludoff remembered standing in his
+mother's bedroom, suddenly raised a perfectly unexpected sensation in
+his soul. He was suddenly filled with regret at the thought of the house
+that would tumble to ruin, and the garden that would run wild, and the
+forest that would be cut down, and all these farmyards, stables, sheds,
+machines, horses, cows which he knew had cost so much effort, though not
+to himself, to acquire and to keep. It had seemed easy to give up all
+this, but now it was hard, not only to give this, but even to let the
+land and lose half his income. And at once a consideration, which proved
+that it was unreasonable to let the land to the peasants, and thus to
+destroy his property, came to his service. "I must not hold property in
+land. If I possess no property in land, I cannot keep up the house and
+farm. And, besides, I am going to Siberia, and shall not need either
+the house or the estate," said one voice. "All this is so," said another
+voice, "but you are not going to spend all your life in Siberia. You may
+marry, and have children, and must hand the estate on to them in as good
+a condition as you received it. There is a duty to the land, too.
+To give up, to destroy everything is very easy; to acquire it very
+difficult. Above all, you must consider your future life, and what
+you will do with yourself, and you must dispose of your property
+accordingly. And are you really firm in your resolve? And then, are you
+really acting according to your conscience, or are you acting in order
+to be admired of men?" Nekhludoff asked himself all this, and had to
+acknowledge that he was influenced by the thought of what people would
+say about him. And the more he thought about it the more questions
+arose, and the more unsolvable they seemed.
+
+In hopes of ridding himself of these thoughts by falling asleep, and
+solving them in the morning when his head would be fresh, he lay down on
+his clean bed. But it was long before he could sleep. Together with the
+fresh air and the moonlight, the croaking of the frogs entered the room,
+mingling with the trills of a couple of nightingales in the park and
+one close to the window in a bush of lilacs in bloom. Listening to
+the nightingales and the frogs, Nekhludoff remembered the inspector's
+daughter, and her music, and the inspector; that reminded him of
+Maslova, and how her lips trembled, like the croaking of the frogs, when
+she said, "You must just leave it." Then the German steward began going
+down to the frogs, and had to be held back, but he not only went down
+but turned into Maslova, who began reproaching Nekhludoff, saying, "You
+are a prince, and I am a convict." "No, I must not give in," thought
+Nekhludoff, waking up, and again asking himself, "Is what I am doing
+right? I do not know, and no matter, no matter, I must only fall asleep
+now." And he began himself to descend where he had seen the inspector
+and Maslova climbing down to, and there it all ended.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+EFFORTS AT LAND RESTORATION.
+
+The next day Nekhludoff awoke at nine o'clock. The young office clerk
+who attended on "the master" brought him his boots, shining as they had
+never shone before, and some cold, beautifully clear spring water, and
+informed him that the peasants were already assembling.
+
+Nekhludoff jumped out of bed, and collected his thoughts. Not a trace
+of yesterday's regret at giving up and thus destroying his property
+remained now. He remembered this feeling of regret with surprise; he was
+now looking forward with joy to the task before him, and could not help
+being proud of it. He could see from the window the old tennis ground,
+overgrown with dandelions, on which the peasants were beginning to
+assemble. The frogs had not croaked in vain the night before; the day
+was dull. There was no wind; a soft warm rain had begun falling in the
+morning, and hung in drops on leaves, twigs, and grass. Besides the
+smell of the fresh vegetation, the smell of damp earth, asking for more
+rain, entered in at the window. While dressing, Nekhludoff several times
+looked out at the peasants gathered on the tennis ground. One by one
+they came, took off their hats or caps to one another, and took their
+places in a circle, leaning on their sticks. The steward, a stout,
+muscular, strong young man, dressed in a short pea-jacket, with a
+green stand-up collar, and enormous buttons, came to say that all had
+assembled, but that they might wait until Nekhludoff had finished his
+breakfast--tea and coffee, whichever he pleased; both were ready.
+
+"No, I think I had better go and see them at once," said Nekhludoff,
+with an unexpected feeling of shyness and shame at the thought of the
+conversation he was going to have with the peasants. He was going to
+fulfil a wish of the peasants, the fulfilment of which they did not
+even dare to hope for--to let the land to them at a low price, i.e.,
+to confer a great boon; and yet he felt ashamed of something. When
+Nekhludoff came up to the peasants, and the fair, the curly, the bald,
+the grey heads were bared before him, he felt so confused that he
+could say nothing. The rain continued to come down in small drops,
+that remained on the hair, the beards, and the fluff of the men's rough
+coats. The peasants looked at "the master," waiting for him to speak,
+and he was so abashed that he could not speak. This confused silence
+was broken by the sedate, self-assured German steward, who considered
+himself a good judge of the Russian peasant, and who spoke Russian
+remarkably well. This strong, over-fed man, and Nekhludoff himself,
+presented a striking contrast to the peasants, with their thin, wrinkled
+faces and the shoulder blades protruding beneath their coarse coats.
+
+"Here's the Prince wanting to do you a favor, and to let the land to
+you; only you are not worthy of it," said the steward.
+
+"How are we not worthy of it, Vasili Karlovitch? Don't we work for you?
+We were well satisfied with the deceased lady--God have mercy on her
+soul--and the young Prince will not desert us now. Our thanks to him,"
+said a redhaired, talkative peasant.
+
+"Yes, that's why I have called you together. I should like to let you
+have all the land, if you wish it."
+
+The peasants said nothing, as if they did not understand or did not
+believe it.
+
+"Let's see. Let us have the land? What do you mean?" asked a middle-aged
+man.
+
+"To let it to you, that you might have the use of it, at a low rent."
+
+"A very agreeable thing," said an old man.
+
+"If only the pay is such as we can afford," said another.
+
+"There's no reason why we should not rent the land."
+
+"We are accustomed to live by tilling the ground."
+
+"And it's quieter for you, too, that way. You'll have to do nothing
+but receive the rent. Only think of all the sin and worry now!" several
+voices were heard saying.
+
+"The sin is all on your side," the German remarked. "If only you did
+your work, and were orderly."
+
+"That's impossible for the likes of us," said a sharp-nosed old man.
+"You say, 'Why do you let the horse get into the corn?' just as if I
+let it in. Why, I was swinging my scythe, or something of the kind,
+the livelong day, till the day seemed as long as a year, and so I fell
+asleep while watching the herd of horses at night, and it got into your
+oats, and now you're skinning me."
+
+"And you should keep order."
+
+"It's easy for you to talk about order, but it's more than our strength
+will bear," answered a tall, dark, hairy middleaged man.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to put up a fence?"
+
+"You give us the wood to make it of," said a short, plain-looking
+peasant. "I was going to put up a fence last year, and you put me to
+feed vermin in prison for three months. That was the end of that fence."
+
+"What is it he is saying?" asked Nekhludoff, turning to the steward.
+
+"Der ersto Dieb im Dorfe," [The greatest thief in the village] answered
+the steward in German. "He is caught stealing wood from the forest every
+year." Then turning to the peasant, he added, "You must learn to respect
+other people's property."
+
+"Why, don't we respect you?" said an old man. "We are obliged to respect
+you. Why, you could twist us into a rope; we are in your hands."
+
+"Eh, my friend, it's impossible to do you. It's you who are ever ready
+to do us," said the steward.
+
+"Do you, indeed. Didn't you smash my jaw for me, and I got nothing for
+it? No good going to law with the rich, it seems."
+
+"You should keep to the law."
+
+A tournament of words was apparently going on without those who took
+part in it knowing exactly what it was all about; but it was noticeable
+that there was bitterness on one side, restricted by fear, and on the
+other a consciousness of importance and power. It was very trying to
+Nekhludoff to listen to all this, so he returned to the question of
+arranging the amount and the terms of the rent.
+
+"Well, then, how about the land? Do you wish to take it, and what price
+will you pay if I let you have the whole of it?"
+
+"The property is yours: it is for you to fix the price."
+
+Nekhludoff named the price. Though it was far below that paid in the
+neighbourhood, the peasants declared it too high, and began bargaining,
+as is customary among them. Nekhludoff thought his offer would be
+accepted with pleasure, but no signs of pleasure were visible.
+
+One thing only showed Nekhludoff that his offer was a profitable one
+to the peasants. The question as to who would rent the land, the whole
+commune or a special society, was put, and a violent dispute arose among
+those peasants who were in favour of excluding the weak and those not
+likely to pay the rent regularly, and the peasants who would have to be
+excluded on that score. At last, thanks to the steward, the amount and
+the terms of the rent were fixed, and the peasants went down the hill
+towards their villages, talking noisily, while Nekhludoff and the
+steward went into the office to make up the agreement. Everything was
+settled in the way Nekhludoff wished and expected it to be. The peasants
+had their land 30 per cent. cheaper than they could have got it anywhere
+in the district, the revenue from the land was diminished by half, but
+was more than sufficient for Nekhludoff, especially as there would be
+money coming in for a forest he sold, as well as for the agricultural
+implements, which would be sold, too. Everything seemed excellently
+arranged, yet he felt ashamed of something. He could see that the
+peasants, though they spoke words of thanks, were not satisfied, and
+had expected something greater. So it turned out that he had deprived
+himself of a great deal, and yet not done what the peasants had
+expected.
+
+The next day the agreement was signed, and accompanied by several old
+peasants, who had been chosen as deputies, Nekhludoff went out, got
+into the steward's elegant equipage (as the driver from the station had
+called it), said "good-bye" to the peasants, who stood shaking their
+heads in a dissatisfied and disappointed manner, and drove off to the
+station. Nekhludoff was dissatisfied with himself without knowing why,
+but all the time he felt sad and ashamed of something.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+OLD ASSOCIATIONS.
+
+From Kousminski Nekhludoff went to the estate he had inherited from his
+aunts, the same where he first met Katusha. He meant to arrange about
+the land there in the way he had done in Kousminski. Besides this, he
+wished to find out all he could about Katusha and her baby, and when and
+how it had died. He got to Panovo early one morning, and the first thing
+that struck him when he drove up was the look of decay and dilapidation
+that all the buildings bore, especially the house itself. The iron
+roofs, which had once been painted green, looked red with rust, and
+a few sheets of iron were bent back, probably by a storm. Some of the
+planks which covered the house from outside were torn away in several
+places; these were easier to get by breaking the rusty nails that held
+them. Both porches, but especially the side porch he remembered so well,
+were rotten and broken; only the banister remained. Some of the windows
+were boarded up, and the building in which the foreman lived, the
+kitchen, the stables--all were grey and decaying. Only the garden had
+not decayed, but had grown, and was in full bloom; from over the fence
+the cherry, apple, and plum trees looked like white clouds. The lilac
+bushes that formed the hedge were in full bloom, as they had been
+when, 14 years ago, Nekhludoff had played gorelki with the 15-year-old
+Katusha, and had fallen and got his hand stung by the nettles behind one
+of those lilac bushes. The larch that his aunt Sophia had planted near
+the house, which then was only a short stick, had grown into a tree,
+the trunk of which would have made a beam, and its branches were covered
+with soft yellow green needles as with down. The river, now within its
+banks, rushed noisily over the mill dam. The meadow the other side of
+the river was dotted over by the peasants' mixed herds. The foreman,
+a student, who had left the seminary without finishing the course, met
+Nekhludoff in the yard, with a smile on his face, and, still smiling,
+asked him to come into the office, and, as if promising something
+exceptionally good by this smile, he went behind a partition. For a
+moment some whispering was heard behind the partition. The isvostchik
+who had driven Nekhludoff from the station, drove away after receiving
+a tip, and all was silent. Then a barefooted girl passed the window;
+she had on an embroidered peasant blouse, and long earrings in her ears;
+then a man walked past, clattering with his nailed boots on the trodden
+path.
+
+Nekhludoff sat down by the little casement, and looked out into the
+garden and listened. A soft, fresh spring breeze, smelling of newly-dug
+earth, streamed in through the window, playing with the hair on his damp
+forehead and the papers that lay on the window-sill, which was all cut
+about with a knife.
+
+"Tra-pa-trop, tra-pa-trop," comes a sound from the river, as the women
+who were washing clothes there slapped them in regular measure with
+their wooden bats, and the sound spread over the glittering surface of
+the mill pond while the rhythmical sound of the falling water came from
+the mill, and a frightened fly suddenly flew loudly buzzing past his
+ear.
+
+And all at once Nekhludoff remembered how, long ago, when he was young
+and innocent, he had heard the women's wooden bats slapping the wet
+clothes above the rhythmical sound from the mill, and in the same way
+the spring breeze had blown about the hair on his wet forehead and the
+papers on the window-sill, which was all cut about with a knife, and
+just in the same way a fly had buzzed loudly past his car.
+
+It was not exactly that he remembered himself as a lad of 15, but he
+seemed to feel himself the same as he was then, with the same freshness
+and purity, and full of the same grand possibilities for the future, and
+at the same time, as it happens in a dream, he knew that all this could
+be no more, and he felt terribly sad. "At what time would you like
+something to eat?" asked the foreman, with a smile.
+
+"When you like; I am not hungry. I shall go for a walk through the
+village."
+
+"Would you not like to come into the house? Everything is in order
+there. Have the goodness to look in. If the outside---"
+
+"Not now; later on. Tell me, please, have you got a woman here called
+Matrona Kharina?" (This was Katusha's aunt, the village midwife.)
+
+"Oh, yes; in the village she keeps a secret pot-house. I know she does,
+and I accuse her of it and scold her; but as to taking her up, it would
+be a pity. An old woman, you know; she has grandchildren," said the
+foreman, continuing to smile in the same manner, partly wishing to
+be pleasant to the master, and partly because he was convinced that
+Nekhludoff understood all these matters just as well as he did himself.
+
+"Where does she live? I shall go across and see her."
+
+"At the end of the village; the further side, the third from the end. To
+the left there is a brick cottage, and her hut is beyond that. But I'd
+better see you there," the foreman said with a graceful smile.
+
+"No, thanks, I shall find it; and you be so good as to call a meeting
+of the peasants, and tell them that I want to speak to them about
+the land," said Nekhludoff, with the intention of coming to the same
+agreement with the peasants here as he had done in Kousminski, and, if
+possible, that same evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE PEASANTS' LOT.
+
+When Nekhludoff came out of the gate he met the girl with the long
+earrings on the well-trodden path that lay across the pasture
+ground, overgrown with dock and plantain leaves. She had a long,
+brightly-coloured apron on, and was quickly swinging her left arm in
+front of herself as she stepped briskly with her fat, bare feet. With
+her right arm she was pressing a fowl to her stomach. The fowl, with
+red comb shaking, seemed perfectly calm; he only rolled up his eyes and
+stretched out and drew in one black leg, clawing the girl's apron. When
+the girl came nearer to "the master," she began moving more slowly, and
+her run changed into a walk. When she came up to him she stopped, and,
+after a backward jerk with her head, bowed to him; and only when he had
+passed did she recommence to run homeward with the cock. As he went down
+towards the well, he met an old woman, who had a coarse dirty blouse on,
+carrying two pails full of water, that hung on a yoke across her bent
+back. The old woman carefully put down the pails and bowed, with the
+same backward jerk of her head.
+
+After passing the well Nekhludoff entered the village. It was a bright,
+hot day, and oppressive, though only ten o'clock. At intervals the sun
+was hidden by the gathering clouds. An unpleasant, sharp smell of manure
+filled the air in the street. It came from carts going up the hillside,
+but chiefly from the disturbed manure heaps in the yards of the huts,
+by the open gates of which Nekhludoff had to pass. The peasants,
+barefooted, their shirts and trousers soiled with manure, turned to look
+at the tall, stout gentleman with the glossy silk ribbon on his grey hat
+who was walking up the village street, touching the ground every other
+step with a shiny, bright-knobbed walking-stick. The peasants returning
+from the fields at a trot and jotting in their empty carts, took
+off their hats, and, in their surprise, followed with their eyes the
+extraordinary man who was walking up their street. The women came out
+of the gates or stood in the porches of their huts, pointing him out to
+each other and gazing at him as he passed.
+
+When Nekhludoff was passing the fourth gate, he was stopped by a cart
+that was coming out, its wheels creaking, loaded high with manure, which
+was pressed down, and was covered with a mat to sit on. A six-year-old
+boy, excited by the prospect of a drive, followed the cart. A young
+peasant, with shoes plaited out of bark on his feet, led the horse out
+of the yard. A long-legged colt jumped out of the gate; but, seeing
+Nekhludoff, pressed close to the cart, and scraping its legs against the
+wheels, jumped forward, past its excited, gently-neighing mother, as she
+was dragging the heavy load through the gateway. The next horse was led
+out by a barefooted old man, with protruding shoulder-blades, in a dirty
+shirt and striped trousers.
+
+When the horses got out on to the hard road, strewn over with bits
+of dry, grey manure, the old man returned to the gate, and bowed to
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"You are our ladies' nephew, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, I am their nephew."
+
+"You've kindly come to look us up, eh?" said the garrulous old man.
+
+"Yes, I have. Well, how are you getting on?"
+
+"How do we get on? We get on very badly," the old man drawled, as if it
+gave him pleasure.
+
+"Why so badly?" Nekhludoff asked, stepping inside the gate.
+
+"What is our life but the very worst life?" said the old man, following
+Nekhludoff into that part of the yard which was roofed over.
+
+Nekhludoff stopped under the roof.
+
+"I have got 12 of them there," continued the old man, pointing to two
+women on the remainder of the manure heap, who stood perspiring with
+forks in their hands, the kerchiefs tumbling off their heads, with their
+skirts tucked up, showing the calves of their dirty, bare legs. "Not a
+month passes but I have to buy six poods [a pood is 36 English pounds]
+of corn, and where's the money to come from?"
+
+"Have you not got enough corn of your own?"
+
+"My own?" repeated the old man, with a smile of contempt; "why I have
+only got land for three, and last year we had not enough to last till
+Christmas."
+
+"What do you do then?"
+
+"What do we do? Why, I hire out as a labourer; and then I borrowed some
+money from your honour. We spent it all before Lent, and the tax is not
+paid yet."
+
+"And how much is the tax?"
+
+"Why, it's 17 roubles for my household. Oh, Lord, such a life! One
+hardly knows one's self how one manages to live it."
+
+"May I go into your hut?" asked Nekhludoff, stepping across the yard
+over the yellow-brown layers of manure that had been raked up by the
+forks, and were giving off a strong smell.
+
+"Why not? Come in," said the old man, and stepping quickly with his
+bare feet over the manure, the liquid oozing between his toes, he passed
+Nekhludoff and opened the door of the hut.
+
+The women arranged the kerchiefs on their heads and let down their
+skirts, and stood looking with surprise at the clean gentleman with gold
+studs to his sleeves who was entering their house. Two little girls,
+with nothing on but coarse chemises, rushed out of the hut. Nekhludoff
+took off his hat, and, stooping to get through the low door, entered,
+through a passage into the dirty, narrow hut, that smelt of sour food,
+and where much space was taken up by two weaving looms. In the hut an
+old woman was standing by the stove, with the sleeves rolled up over her
+thin, sinewy brown arms.
+
+"Here is our master come to see us," said the old man.
+
+"I'm sure he's very welcome," said the old woman, kindly.
+
+"I would like to see how you live."
+
+"Well, you see how we live. The hut is coming down, and might kill one
+any day; but my old man he says it's good enough, and so we live like
+kings," said the brisk old woman, nervously jerking her head. "I'm
+getting the dinner; going to feed the workers."
+
+"And what are you going to have for dinner?"
+
+"Our food is very good. First course, bread and kvas; [kvas is a kind of
+sour, non-intoxicant beer made of rye] second course, kvas and bread,"
+said the old woman, showing her teeth, which were half worn away.
+
+"No," seriously; "let me see what you are going to eat."
+
+"To eat?" said the old man, laughing. "Ours is not a very cunning meal.
+You just show him, wife."
+
+"Want to see our peasant food? Well, you are an inquisitive gentleman,
+now I come to look at you. He wants to know everything. Did I not tell
+you bread and kvas and then we'll have soup. A woman brought us some
+fish, and that's what the soup is made of, and after that, potatoes."
+
+"Nothing more?"
+
+"What more do you want? We'll also have a little milk," said the old
+woman, looking towards the door. The door stood open, and the passage
+outside was full of people--boys, girls, women with babies--thronged
+together to look at the strange gentleman who wanted to see the
+peasants' food. The old woman seemed to pride herself on the way she
+behaved with a gentleman.
+
+"Yes, it's a miserable life, ours; that goes without saying, sir," said
+the old man. "What are you doing there?" he shouted to those in the
+passage. "Well, good-bye," said Nekhludoff, feeling ashamed and uneasy,
+though unable to account for the feeling.
+
+"Thank you kindly for having looked us up," said the old man.
+
+The people in the passage pressed closer together to let Nekhludoff
+pass, and he went out and continued his way up the street.
+
+Two barefooted boys followed him out of the passage the elder in a
+shirt that had once been white, the other in a worn and faded pink one.
+Nekhludoff looked back at them.
+
+"And where are you going now?" asked the boy with the white shirt.
+Nekhludoff answered: "To Matrona Kharina. Do you know her?" The boy
+with the pink shirt began laughing at something; but the elder asked,
+seriously:
+
+"What Matrona is that? Is she old?"
+
+"Yes, she is old."
+
+"Oh--oh," he drawled; "that one; she's at the other end of the village;
+we'll show you. Yes, Fedka, we'll go with him. Shall we?"
+
+"Yes, but the horses?"
+
+"They'll be all right, I dare say."
+
+Fedka agreed, and all three went up the street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MASLOVA'S AUNT.
+
+Nekhludoff felt more at ease with the boys than with the grown-up
+people, and he began talking to them as they went along. The little
+one with the pink shirt stopped laughing, and spoke as sensibly and as
+exactly as the elder one.
+
+"Can you tell me who are the poorest people you have got here?" asked
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"The poorest? Michael is poor, Simon Makhroff, and Martha, she is very
+poor."
+
+"And Anisia, she is still poorer; she's not even got a cow. They go
+begging," said little Fedka.
+
+"She's not got a cow, but they are only three persons, and Martha's
+family are five," objected the elder boy.
+
+"But the other's a widow," the pink boy said, standing up for Anisia.
+
+"You say Anisia is a widow, and Martha is no better than a widow," said
+the elder boy; "she's also no husband."
+
+"And where is her husband?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"Feeding vermin in prison," said the elder boy, using this expression,
+common among the peasants.
+
+"A year ago he cut down two birch trees in the land-lord's forest," the
+little pink boy hurried to say, "so he was locked up; now he's sitting
+the sixth month there, and the wife goes begging. There are three
+children and a sick grandmother," he went on with his detailed account.
+
+"And where does she live?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"In this very house," answered the boy, pointing to a hut, in front
+of which, on the footpath along which Nekhludoff was walking, a tiny,
+flaxen-headed infant stood balancing himself with difficulty on his
+rickety legs.
+
+"Vaska! Where's the little scamp got to?" shouted a woman, with a dirty
+grey blouse, and a frightened look, as she ran out of the house, and,
+rushing forward, seized the baby before Nekhludoff came up to it, and
+carried it in, just as if she were afraid that Nekhludoff would hurt her
+child.
+
+This was the woman whose husband was imprisoned for Nekhludoff's birch
+trees.
+
+"Well, and this Matrona, is she also poor?" Nekhludoff asked, as they
+came up to Matrona's house.
+
+"She poor? No. Why, she sells spirits," the thin, pink little boy
+answered decidedly.
+
+When they reached the house Nekhludoff left the boys outside and went
+through the passage into the hut. The hut was 14 feet long. The bed
+that stood behind the big stove was not long enough for a tall person
+to stretch out on. "And on this very bed," Nekhludoff thought, "Katusha
+bore her baby and lay ill afterwards." The greater part of the hut was
+taken up by a loom, on which the old woman and her eldest granddaughter
+were arranging the warp when Nekhludoff came in, striking his forehead
+against the low doorway. Two other grandchildren came rushing in after
+Nekhludoff, and stopped, holding on to the lintels of the door.
+
+"Whom do you want?" asked the old woman, crossly. She was in a bad
+temper because she could not manage to get the warp right, and, besides,
+carrying on an illicit trade in spirits, she was always afraid when any
+stranger came in.
+
+"I am--the owner of the neighbouring estates, and should like to speak
+to you."
+
+"Dear me; why, it's you, my honey; and I, fool, thought it was just some
+passer-by. Dear me, you--it's you, my precious," said the old woman,
+with simulated tenderness in her voice.
+
+"I should like to speak to you alone," said Nekhludoff, with a glance
+towards the door, where the children were standing, and behind them a
+woman holding a wasted, pale baby, with a sickly smile on its face, who
+had a little cap made of different bits of stuff on its head.
+
+"What are you staring at? I'll give it you. Just hand me my crutch," the
+old woman shouted to those at the door.
+
+"Shut the door, will you!" The children went away, and the woman closed
+the door.
+
+"And I was thinking, who's that? And it's 'the master' himself. My
+jewel, my treasure. Just think," said the old woman, "where he has
+deigned to come. Sit down here, your honour," she said, wiping the seat
+with her apron. "And I was thinking what devil is it coming in, and it's
+your honour, 'the master' himself, the good gentleman, our benefactor.
+Forgive me, old fool that I am; I'm getting blind."
+
+Nekhludoff sat down, and the old woman stood in front of him, leaning
+her cheek on her right hand, while the left held up the sharp elbow of
+her right arm.
+
+"Dear me, you have grown old, your honour; and you used to be as fresh
+as a daisy. And now! Cares also, I expect?"
+
+"This is what I have come about: Do you remember Katusha Maslova?"
+
+"Katerina? I should think so. Why, she is my niece. How could I help
+remembering; and the tears I have shed because of her. Why, I know all
+about it. Eh, sir, who has not sinned before God? who has not offended
+against the Tsar? We know what youth is. You used to be drinking tea and
+coffee, so the devil got hold of you. He is strong at times. What's to
+be done? Now, if you had chucked her; but no, just see how you rewarded
+her, gave her a hundred roubles. And she? What has she done? Had she
+but listened to me she might have lived all right. I must say the truth,
+though she is my niece: that girl's no good. What a good place I found
+her! She would not submit, but abused her master. Is it for the likes
+of us to scold gentlefolk? Well, she was sent away. And then at the
+forester's. She might have lived there; but no, she would not."
+
+"I want to know about the child. She was confined at your house, was she
+not? Where's the child?"
+
+"As to the child, I considered that well at the time. She was so bad
+I never thought she would get up again. Well, so I christened the baby
+quite properly, and we sent it to the Foundlings'. Why should one let
+an innocent soul languish when the mother is dying? Others do like this:
+they just leave the baby, don't feed it, and it wastes away. But, thinks
+I, no; I'd rather take some trouble, and send it to the Foundlings'.
+There was money enough, so I sent it off."
+
+"Did you not get its registration number from the Foundlings' Hospital?"
+
+"Yes, there was a number, but the baby died," she said. "It died as soon
+as she brought it there."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"That same woman who used to live in Skorodno. She made a business of
+it. Her name was Malania. She's dead now. She was a wise woman. What do
+you think she used to do? They'd bring her a baby, and she'd keep it and
+feed it; and she'd feed it until she had enough of them to take to the
+Foundlings'. When she had three or four, she'd take them all at once.
+She had such a clever arrangement, a sort of big cradle--a double one
+she could put them in one way or the other. It had a handle. So she'd
+put four of them in, feet to feet and the heads apart, so that they
+should not knock against each other. And so she took four at once. She'd
+put some pap in a rag into their mouths to keep 'em silent, the pets."
+
+"Well, go on."
+
+"Well, she took Katerina's baby in the same way, after keeping it a
+fortnight, I believe. It was in her house it began to sicken."
+
+"And was it a fine baby?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"Such a baby, that if you wanted a finer you could not find one. Your
+very image," the old woman added, with a wink.
+
+"Why did it sicken? Was the food bad?"
+
+"Eh, what food? Only just a pretence of food. Naturally, when it's not
+one's own child. Only enough to get it there alive. She said she
+just managed to get it to Moscow, and there it died. She brought a
+certificate--all in order. She was such a wise woman."
+
+That was all Nekhludoff could find out concerning his child.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+REFLECTIONS OF A LANDLORD.
+
+Again striking his head against both doors, Nekhludoff went out into the
+street, where the pink and the white boys were waiting for him. A few
+newcomers were standing with them. Among the women, of whom several
+had babies in their arms, was the thin woman with the baby who had the
+patchwork cap on its head. She held lightly in her arms the bloodless
+infant, who kept strangely smiling all over its wizened little face, and
+continually moving its crooked thumbs.
+
+Nekhludoff knew the smile to be one of suffering. He asked who the woman
+was.
+
+"It is that very Anisia I told you about," said the elder boy.
+
+Nekhludoff turned to Anisia.
+
+"How do you live?" he asked. "By what means do you gain your
+livelihood?"
+
+"How do I live? I go begging," said Anisia, and began to cry.
+
+Nekhludoff took out his pocket-book, and gave the woman a 10-rouble
+note. He had not had time to take two steps before another woman with
+a baby caught him up, then an old woman, then another young one. All of
+them spoke of their poverty, and asked for help. Nekhludoff gave them
+the 60 roubles--all in small notes--which he had with him, and, terribly
+sad at heart, turned home, i.e., to the foreman's house.
+
+The foreman met Nekhludoff with a smile, and informed him that the
+peasants would come to the meeting in the evening. Nekhludoff thanked
+him, and went straight into the garden to stroll along the paths strewn
+over with the petals of apple-blossom and overgrown with weeds, and to
+think over all he had seen.
+
+At first all was quiet, but soon Nekhludoff heard from behind the
+foreman's house two angry women's voices interrupting each other, and
+now and then the voice of the ever-smiling foreman. Nekhludoff listened.
+
+"My strength's at an end. What are you about, dragging the very cross
+[those baptized in the Russo-Greek Church always wear a cross round
+their necks] off my neck," said an angry woman's voice.
+
+"But she only got in for a moment," said another voice. "Give it her
+back, I tell you. Why do you torment the beast, and the children, too,
+who want their milk?"
+
+"Pay, then, or work it off," said the foreman's voice.
+
+Nekhludoff left the garden and entered the porch, near which stood two
+dishevelled women--one of them pregnant and evidently near her time.
+On one of the steps of the porch, with his hands in the pockets of his
+holland coat, stood the foreman. When they saw the master, the women
+were silent, and began arranging the kerchiefs on their heads, and the
+foreman took his hands out of his pockets and began to smile.
+
+This is what had happened. From the foreman's words, it seemed that the
+peasants were in the habit of letting their calves and even their cows
+into the meadow belonging to the estate. Two cows belonging to the
+families of these two women were found in the meadow, and driven into
+the yard. The foreman demanded from the women 30 copecks for each cow
+or two days' work. The women, however, maintained that the cows had got
+into the meadow of their own accord; that they had no money, and asked
+that the cows, which had stood in the blazing sun since morning without
+food, piteously lowing, should be returned to them, even if it had to be
+on the understanding that the price should be worked off later on.
+
+"How often have I not begged of you," said the smiling foreman, looking
+back at Nekhludoff as if calling upon him to be a witness, "if you drive
+your cattle home at noon, that you should have an eye on them?"
+
+"I only ran to my little one for a bit, and they got away."
+
+"Don't run away when you have undertaken to watch the cows."
+
+"And who's to feed the little one? You'd not give him the breast, I
+suppose?" said the other woman. "Now, if they had really damaged the
+meadow, one would not take it so much to heart; but they only strayed in
+a moment."
+
+"All the meadows are damaged," the foreman said, turning to Nekhludoff.
+"If I exact no penalty there will be no hay."
+
+"There, now, don't go sinning like that; my cows have never been caught
+there before," shouted the pregnant woman.
+
+"Now that one has been caught, pay up or work it off."
+
+"All right, I'll work it off; only let me have the cow now, don't
+torture her with hunger," she cried, angrily. "As it is, I have no rest
+day or night. Mother-in-law is ill, husband taken to drink; I'm all
+alone to do all the work, and my strength's at an end. I wish you'd
+choke, you and your working it off."
+
+Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and went
+back into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but there was
+nothing more to think about.
+
+Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering
+how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for
+such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were
+dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed
+habits of life adapted to this process: there was the great mortality
+among the children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding,
+especially of the aged. And so gradually had the people come to this
+condition that they did not realise the full horrors of it, and did
+not complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it
+should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of
+the people's great want was one that they themselves knew and always
+pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been
+taken from them by the landlords.
+
+And how evident it was that the children and the aged died because they
+had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no pasture land, and
+no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was quite evident that all the
+misery of the people or, at least by far the greater part of it, was
+caused by the fact that the land which should feed them was not in their
+hands, but in the hands of those who, profiting by their rights to the
+land, live by the work of these people. The land so much needed by men
+was tilled by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so
+that the corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy
+themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. He understood
+this as clearly as he understood that horses when they have eaten all
+the grass in the inclosure where they are kept will have to grow thin
+and starve unless they are put where they can get food off other land.
+
+This was terrible, and must not go on. Means must be found to alter it,
+or at least not to take part in it. "And I will find them," he thought,
+as he walked up and down the path under the birch trees.
+
+In scientific circles, Government institutions, and in the papers we
+talk about the causes of the poverty among the people and the means of
+ameliorating their condition; but we do not talk of the only sure means
+which would certainly lighten their condition, i.e., giving back to them
+the land they need so much.
+
+Henry George's fundamental position recurred vividly to his mind and how
+he had once been carried away by it, and he was surprised that he could
+have forgotten it. The earth cannot be any one's property; it cannot be
+bought or sold any more than water, air, or sunshine. All have an equal
+right to the advantages it gives to men. And now he knew why he had felt
+ashamed to remember the transaction at Kousminski. He had been deceiving
+himself. He knew that no man could have a right to own land, yet he had
+accepted this right as his, and had given the peasants something which,
+in the depth of his heart, he knew he had no right to. Now he would not
+act in this way, and would alter the arrangement in Kousminski also. And
+he formed a project in his mind to let the land to the peasants, and to
+acknowledge the rent they paid for it to be their property, to be kept
+to pay the taxes and for communal uses. This was, of course, not the
+single-tax system, still it was as near an approach to it as could be
+had under existing circumstances. His chief consideration, however, was
+that in this way he would no longer profit by the possession of landed
+property.
+
+When he returned to the house the foreman, with a specially pleasant
+smile, asked him if he would not have his dinner now, expressing the
+fear that the feast his wife was preparing, with the help of the girl
+with the earrings, might be overdone.
+
+The table was covered with a coarse, unbleached cloth and an embroidered
+towel was laid on it in lieu of a napkin. A vieux-saxe soup tureen with
+a broken handle stood on the table, full of potato soup, the stock made
+of the fowl that had put out and drawn in his black leg, and was now
+cut, or rather chopped, in pieces, which were here and there covered
+with hairs. After the soup more of the same fowl with the hairs was
+served roasted, and then curd pasties, very greasy, and with a great
+deal of sugar. Little appetising as all this was, Nekhludoff hardly
+noticed what he was eating; he was occupied with the thought which had
+in a moment dispersed the sadness with which he had returned from the
+village.
+
+The foreman's wife kept looking in at the door, whilst the frightened
+maid with the earrings brought in the dishes; and the foreman smiled
+more and more joyfully, priding himself on his wife's culinary skill.
+After dinner, Nekhludoff succeeded, with some trouble, in making the
+foreman sit down. In order to revise his own thoughts, and to express
+them to some one, he explained his project of letting the land to the
+peasants, and asked the foreman for his opinion. The foreman, smiling
+as if he had thought all this himself long ago, and was very pleased
+to hear it, did not really understand it at all. This was not because
+Nekhludoff did not express himself clearly, but because according to
+this project it turned out that Nekhludoff was giving up his own
+profit for the profit of others, and the thought that every one is only
+concerned about his own profit, to the harm of others, was so deeply
+rooted in the foreman's conceptions that he imagined he did not
+understand something when Nekhludoff said that all the income from the
+land must be placed to form the communal capital of the peasants.
+
+"Oh, I see; then you, of course, will receive the percentages from that
+capital," said the foreman, brightening up.
+
+"Dear me! no. Don't you see, I am giving up the land altogether."
+
+"But then you will not get any income," said the foreman, smiling no
+longer.
+
+"Yes, I am going to give it up."
+
+The foreman sighed heavily, and then began smiling again. Now he
+understood. He understood that Nekhludoff was not quite normal, and
+at once began to consider how he himself could profit by Nekhludoff's
+project of giving up the land, and tried to see this project in such a
+way that he might reap some advantage from it. But when he saw that this
+was impossible he grew sorrowful, and the project ceased to interest
+him, and he continued to smile only in order to please the master.
+
+Seeing that the foreman did not understand him, Nekhludoff let him go
+and sat down by the window-sill, that was all cut about and inked over,
+and began to put his project down on paper.
+
+The sun went down behind the limes, that were covered with fresh green,
+and the mosquitoes swarmed in, stinging Nekhludoff. Just as he finished
+his notes, he heard the lowing of cattle and the creaking of opening
+gates from the village, and the voices of the peasants gathering
+together for the meeting. He told the foreman not to call the peasants
+up to the office, as he meant to go into the village himself and meet
+the men where they would assemble. Having hurriedly drank a cup of tea
+offered him by the foreman, Nekhludoff went to the village.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE DISINHERITED.
+
+From the crowd assembled in front of the house of the village elder
+came the sound of voices; but as soon as Nekhludoff came up the talking
+ceased, and all the peasants took off their caps, just as those in
+Kousminski had done. The peasants here were of a much poorer class than
+those in Kousminski. The men wore shoes made of bark and homespun shirts
+and coats. Some had come straight from their work in their shirts and
+with bare feet.
+
+Nekhludoff made an effort, and began his speech by telling the peasants
+of his intention to give up his land to them altogether. The peasants
+were silent, and the expression on their faces did not undergo any
+change.
+
+"Because I hold," said Nekhludoff, "and believe that every one has a
+right to the use of the land."
+
+"That's certain. That's so, exactly," said several voices.
+
+Nekhludoff went on to say that the revenue from the land ought to be
+divided among all, and that he would therefore suggest that they
+should rent the land at a price fixed by themselves, the rent to form
+a communal fund for their own use. Words of approval and agreement were
+still to be heard, but the serious faces of the peasants grew still more
+serious, and the eyes that had been fixed on the gentleman dropped, as
+if they were unwilling to put him to shame by letting him see that every
+one had understood his trick, and that no one would be deceived by him.
+
+Nekhludoff spoke clearly, and the peasants were intelligent, but they
+did not and could not understand him, for the same reason that the
+foreman had so long been unable to understand him.
+
+They were fully convinced that it is natural for every man to consider
+his own interest. The experience of many generations had proved to them
+that the landlords always considered their own interest to the detriment
+of the peasants. Therefore, if a landlord called them to a meeting and
+made them some kind of a new offer, it could evidently only be in order
+to swindle them more cunningly than before.
+
+"Well, then, what are you willing to rent the land at?" asked
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"How can we fix a price? We cannot do it. The land is yours, and the
+power is in your hands," answered some voices from among the crowd.
+
+"Oh, not at all. You will yourselves have the use of the money for
+communal purposes."
+
+"We cannot do it; the commune is one thing, and this is another."
+
+"Don't you understand?" said the foreman, with a smile (he had followed
+Nekhludoff to the meeting), "the Prince is letting the land to you
+for money, and is giving you the money back to form a capital for the
+commune."
+
+"We understand very well," said a cross, toothless old man, without
+raising his eyes. "Something like a bank; we should have to pay at a
+fixed time. We do not wish it; it is hard enough as it is, and that
+would ruin us completely."
+
+"That's no go. We prefer to go on the old way," began several
+dissatisfied, and even rude, voices.
+
+The refusals grew very vehement when Nekhludoff mentioned that he would
+draw up an agreement which would have to be signed by him and by them.
+
+"Why sign? We shall go on working as we have done hitherto. What is all
+this for? We are ignorant men."
+
+"We can't agree, because this sort of thing is not what we have been
+used to. As it was, so let it continue to be. Only the seeds we should
+like to withdraw."
+
+This meant that under the present arrangement the seeds had to be
+provided by the peasants, and they wanted the landlord to provide them.
+
+"Then am I to understand that you refuse to accept the land?" Nekhludoff
+asked, addressing a middle-aged, barefooted peasant, with a tattered
+coat, and a bright look on his face, who was holding his worn cap
+with his left hand, in a peculiarly straight position, in the same way
+soldiers hold theirs when commanded to take them off.
+
+"Just so," said this peasant, who had evidently not yet rid himself of
+the military hypnotism he had been subjected to while serving his time.
+
+"It means that you have sufficient land," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"No, sir, we have not," said the ex-soldier, with an artificially
+pleased look, carefully holding his tattered cap in front of him, as if
+offering it to any one who liked to make use of it.
+
+"Well, anyhow, you'd better think over what I have said." Nekhludoff
+spoke with surprise, and again repeated his offer.
+
+"We have no need to think about it; as we have said, so it will be,"
+angrily muttered the morose, toothless old man.
+
+"I shall remain here another day, and if you change your minds, send to
+let me know."
+
+The peasants gave no answer.
+
+So Nekhludoff did not succeed in arriving at any result from this
+interview.
+
+"If I might make a remark, Prince," said the foreman, when they got
+home, "you will never come to any agreement with them; they are so
+obstinate. At a meeting these people just stick in one place, and there
+is no moving them. It is because they are frightened of everything. Why,
+these very peasants--say that white-haired one, or the dark one, who
+were refusing, are intelligent peasants. When one of them comes to the
+office and one makes him sit down to cup of tea it's like in the Palace
+of Wisdom--he is quite diplomatist," said the foreman, smiling; "he will
+consider everything rightly. At a meeting it's a different man--he keeps
+repeating one and the same . . ."
+
+"Well, could not some of the more intelligent men be asked to come
+here?" said Nekhludoff. "I would carefully explain it to them."
+
+"That can be done," said the smiling foreman.
+
+"Well, then, would you mind calling them here to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, certainly I will," said the foreman, and smiled still more
+joyfully. "I shall call them to-morrow."
+
+"Just hear him; he's not artful, not he," said a blackhaired peasant,
+with an unkempt beard, as he sat jolting from side to side on a well-fed
+mare, addressing an old man in a torn coat who rode by his side. The two
+men were driving a herd of the peasants' horses to graze in the night,
+alongside the highroad and secretly, in the landlord's forest.
+
+"Give you the land for nothing--you need only sign--have they not
+done the likes of us often enough? No, my friend, none of your humbug.
+Nowadays we have a little sense," he added, and began shouting at a colt
+that had strayed.
+
+He stopped his horse and looked round, but the colt had not remained
+behind; it had gone into the meadow by the roadside. "Bother that son
+of a Turk; he's taken to getting into the landowner's meadows," said the
+dark peasant with the unkempt beard, hearing the cracking of the sorrel
+stalks that the neighing colt was galloping over as he came running back
+from the scented meadow.
+
+"Do you hear the cracking? We'll have to send the women folk to weed
+the meadow when there's a holiday," said the thin peasant with the torn
+coat, "or else we'll blunt our scythes."
+
+"Sign," he says. The unkempt man continued giving his opinion of the
+landlord's speech. "'Sign,' indeed, and let him swallow you up."
+
+"That's certain," answered the old man. And then they were silent, and
+the tramping of the horses' feet along the highroad was the only sound
+to be heard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GOD'S PEACE IN THE HEART.
+
+When Nekhludoff returned he found that the office had been arranged as
+a bedroom for him. A high bedstead, with a feather bed and two large
+pillows, had been placed in the room. The bed was covered with a dark
+red doublebedded silk quilt, which was elaborately and finely quilted,
+and very stiff. It evidently belonged to the trousseau of the foreman's
+wife. The foreman offered Nekhludoff the remains of the dinner, which
+the latter refused, and, excusing himself for the poorness of the fare
+and the accommodation, he left Nekhludoff alone.
+
+The peasants' refusal did not at all bother Nekhludoff. On the contrary,
+though at Kousminski his offer had been accepted and he had even been
+thanked for it, and here he was met with suspicion and even enmity, he
+felt contented and joyful.
+
+It was close and dirty in the office. Nekhludoff went out into the yard,
+and was going into the garden, but he remembered: that night, the window
+of the maid-servant's room, the side porch, and he felt uncomfortable,
+and did not like to pass the spot desecrated by guilty memories. He
+sat down on the doorstep, and breathing in the warm air, balmy with the
+strong scent of fresh birch leaves, he sat for a long time looking into
+the dark garden and listening to the mill, the nightingales, and some
+other bird that whistled monotonously in the bush close by. The light
+disappeared from the foreman's window; in the cast, behind the barn,
+appeared the light of the rising moon, and sheet lightning began to
+light up the dilapidated house, and the blooming, over-grown garden more
+and more frequently. It began to thunder in the distance, and a black
+cloud spread over one-third of the sky. The nightingales and the other
+birds were silent. Above the murmur of the water from the mill came the
+cackling of geese, and then in the village and in the foreman's yard
+the first cocks began to crow earlier than usual, as they do on warm,
+thundery nights. There is a saying that if the cocks crow early the
+night will be a merry one. For Nekhludoff the night was more than merry;
+it was a happy, joyful night. Imagination renewed the impressions of
+that happy summer which he had spent here as an innocent lad, and he
+felt himself as he had been not only at that but at all the best moments
+of his life. He not only remembered but felt as he had felt when, at
+the age of 14, he prayed that God would show him the truth; or when as
+a child he had wept on his mother's lap, when parting from her, and
+promising to be always good, and never give her pain; he felt as he did
+when he and Nikolenka Irtenieff resolved always to support each other in
+living a good life and to try to make everybody happy.
+
+He remembered how he had been tempted in Kousminski, so that he had
+begun to regret the house and the forest and the farm and the land, and
+he asked himself if he regretted them now, and it even seemed strange to
+think that he could regret them. He remembered all he had seen to-day;
+the woman with the children, and without her husband, who was in prison
+for having cut down trees in his (Nekhludoff's) forest, and the terrible
+Matrona, who considered, or at least talked as if she considered,
+that women of her position must give themselves to the gentlefolk; he
+remembered her relation to the babies, the way in which they were taken
+to the Foundlings' Hospital, and the unfortunate, smiling, wizened
+baby with the patchwork cap, dying of starvation. And then he suddenly
+remembered the prison, the shaved heads, the cells, the disgusting
+smells, the chains, and, by the side of it all, the madly lavish city
+lift of the rich, himself included.
+
+The bright moon, now almost full, rose above the barn. Dark shadows fell
+across the yard, and the iron roof of the ruined house shone bright.
+As if unwilling to waste this light, the nightingales again began their
+trills.
+
+Nekhludoff called to mind how he had begun to consider his life in
+the garden of Kousminski when deciding what he was going to do, and
+remembered how confused he had become, how he could not arrive at any
+decision, how many difficulties each question had presented. He asked
+himself these questions now, and was surprised how simple it all was. It
+was simple because he was not thinking now of what would be the results
+for himself, but only thought of what he had to do. And, strange to say,
+what he had to do for himself he could not decide, but what he had to do
+for others he knew without any doubt. He had no doubt that he must
+not leave Katusha, but go on helping her. He had no doubt that he must
+study, investigate, clear up, understand all this business concerning
+judgment and punishment, which he felt he saw differently to other
+people. What would result from it all he did not know, but he knew for
+certain that he must do it. And this firm assurance gave him joy.
+
+The black cloud had spread all over the sky; the lightning flashed
+vividly across the yard and the old house with its tumble-down porches,
+the thunder growled overhead. All the birds were silent, but the leaves
+rustled and the wind reached the step where Nekhludoff stood and played
+with his hair. One drop came down, then another; then they came drumming
+on the dock leaves and on the iron of the roof, and all the air was
+filled by a bright flash, and before Nekhludoff could count three a
+fearful crash sounded over head and spread pealing all over the sky.
+
+Nekhludoff went in.
+
+"Yes, yes," he thought. "The work that our life accomplishes, the whole
+of this work, the meaning of it is not, nor can be, intelligible to
+me. What were my aunts for? Why did Nikolenka Irtenieff die? Why am
+I living? What was Katusha for? And my madness? Why that war? Why my
+subsequent lawless life? To understand it, to understand the whole
+of the Master's will is not in my power. But to do His will, that is
+written down in my conscience, is in my power; that I know for certain.
+And when I am fulfilling it I have sureness and peace."
+
+The rain came down in torrents and rushed from the roof into a tub
+beneath; the lightning lit up the house and yard less frequently.
+Nekhludoff went into his room, undressed, and lay down, not without
+fear of the bugs, whose presence the dirty, torn wall-papers made him
+suspect.
+
+"Yes, to feel one's self not the master but a servant," he thought, and
+rejoiced at the thought. His fears were not vain. Hardly had he put out
+his candle when the vermin attacked and stung him. "To give up the land
+and go to Siberia. Fleas, bugs, dirt! Ah, well; if it must be borne, I
+shall bear it." But, in spite of the best of intentions, he could not
+bear it, and sat down by the open window and gazed with admiration at
+the retreating clouds and the reappearing moon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE LAND SETTLEMENT.
+
+It was morning before Nekhludoff could fall asleep, and therefore he
+woke up late. At noon seven men, chosen from among the peasants at
+the foreman's invitation, came into the orchard, where the foreman
+had arranged a table and benches by digging posts into the ground,
+and fixing boards on the top, under the apple trees. It took some time
+before the peasants could be persuaded to put on their caps and to sit
+down on the benches. Especially firm was the ex-soldier, who to-day had
+bark shoes on. He stood erect, holding his cap as they do at
+funerals, according to military regulation. When one of them, a
+respectable-looking, broad-shouldered old man, with a curly, grizzly
+beard like that of Michael Angelo's "Moses," and grey hair that curled
+round the brown, bald forehead, put on his big cap, and, wrapping his
+coat round him, got in behind the table and sat down, the rest followed
+his example. When all had taken their places Nekhludoff sat down
+opposite them, and leaning on the table over the paper on which he had
+drawn up his project, he began explaining it.
+
+Whether it was that there were fewer present, or that he was occupied
+with the business in hand and not with himself, anyhow, this
+time Nekhludoff felt no confusion. He involuntarily addressed the
+broad-shouldered old man with white ringlets in his grizzly beard,
+expecting approbation or objections from him. But Nekhludoff's
+conjecture was wrong. The respectable-looking old patriarch, though he
+nodded his handsome head approvingly or shook it, and frowned when the
+others raised an objection, evidently understood with great difficulty,
+and only when the others repeated what Nekhludoff had said in their own
+words. A little, almost beardless old fellow, blind in one eye, who sat
+by the side of the patriarch, and had a patched nankeen coat and old
+boots on, and, as Nekhludoff found out later, was an oven-builder,
+understood much better. This man moved his brows quickly, attending to
+Nekhludoff's words with an effort, and at once repeated them in his
+own way. An old, thick-set man with a white beard and intelligent eyes
+understood as quickly, and took every opportunity to put in an ironical
+joke, clearly wishing to show off. The ex-soldier seemed also to
+understand matters, but got mixed, being used to senseless soldiers'
+talk. A tall man with a small beard, a long nose, and a bass voice, who
+wore clean, home-made clothes and new bark-plaited shoes, seemed to be
+the one most seriously interested. This man spoke only when there
+was need of it. The two other old men, the same toothless one who
+had shouted a distinct refusal at the meeting the day before to every
+proposal of Nekhludoff's, and a tall, white lame old man with a kind
+face, his thin legs tightly wrapped round with strips of linen, said
+little, though they listened attentively. First of all Nekhludoff
+explained his views in regard to personal property in land. "The land,
+according to my idea, can neither be bought nor sold, because if it
+could be, he who has got the money could buy it all, and exact anything
+he liked for the use of the land from those who have none."
+
+"That's true," said the long-nosed man, in a deep bass.
+
+"Just so," said the ex-soldier.
+
+"A woman gathers a little grass for her cow; she's caught and
+imprisoned," said the white-bearded old man.
+
+"Our own land is five versts away, and as to renting any it's
+impossible; the price is raised so high that it won't pay," added the
+cross, toothless old man. "They twist us into ropes, worse than during
+serfdom."
+
+"I think as you do, and I count it a sin to possess land, so I wish to
+give it away," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Well, that's a good thing," said the old man, with curls like Angelo's
+"Moses," evidently thinking that Nekhludoff meant to let the land.
+
+"I have come here because I no longer wish to possess any land, and now
+we must consider the best way of dividing it."
+
+"Just give it to the peasants, that's all," said the cross, toothless
+old man.
+
+Nekhludoff was abashed for a moment, feeling a suspicion of his not
+being honest in these words, but he instantly recovered, and made use of
+the remark, in order to express what was in his mind, in reply.
+
+"I should be glad to give it them," he said, "but to whom, and how?
+To which of the peasants? Why, to your commune, and not to that of
+Deminsk." (That was the name of a neighbouring village with very little
+land.) All were silent. Then the ex-soldier said, "Just so."
+
+"Now, then, tell me how would you divide the land among the peasants if
+you had to do it?" said Nekhludoff.
+
+"We should divide it up equally, so much for every man," said the
+oven-builder, quickly raising and lowering his brows.
+
+"How else? Of course, so much per man," said the good natured lame man
+with the white strips of linen round his legs.
+
+Every one confirmed this statement, considering it satisfactory.
+
+"So much per man? Then are the servants attached to the house also to
+have a share?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"Oh, no," said the ex-soldier, trying to appear bold and merry. But the
+tall, reasonable man would not agree with him.
+
+"If one is to divide, all must share alike," he said, in his deep bass,
+after a little consideration.
+
+"It can't be done," said Nekhludoff, who had already prepared his reply.
+"If all are to share alike, then those who do not work themselves--do
+not plough--will sell their shares to the rich. The rich will again get
+at the land. Those who live by working the land will multiply, and land
+will again be scarce. Then the rich will again get those who need land
+into their power."
+
+"Just so," quickly said the ex-soldier.
+
+"Forbid to sell the land; let only him who ploughs it have it," angrily
+interrupted the oven-builder.
+
+To this Nekhludoff replied that it was impossible to know who was
+ploughing for himself and who for another.
+
+The tall, reasonable man proposed that an arrangement be made so that
+they should all plough communally, and those who ploughed should get the
+produce and those who did not should get nothing.
+
+To this communistic project Nekhludoff had also an answer ready. He said
+that for such an arrangement it would be necessary that all should have
+ploughs, and that all the horses should be alike, so that none should
+be left behind, and that ploughs and horses and all the implements would
+have to be communal property, and that in order to get that, all the
+people would have to agree.
+
+"Our people could not be made to agree in a lifetime," said the cross
+old man.
+
+"We should have regular fights," said the white-bearded old man with the
+laughing eyes. "So that the thing is not as simple as it looks,"
+said Nekhludoff, "and this is a thing not only we but many have been
+considering. There is an American, Henry George. This is what he has
+thought out, and I agree with him."
+
+"Why, you are the master, and you give it as you like. What's it to you?
+The power is yours," said the cross old man.
+
+This confused Nekhludoff, but he was pleased to see that not he alone
+was dissatisfied with this interruption.
+
+"You wait a bit, Uncle Simon; let him tell us about it," said the
+reasonable man, in his imposing bass.
+
+This emboldened Nekhludoff, and he began to explain Henry George's
+single-tax system "The earth is no man's; it is God's," he began.
+
+"Just so; that it is," several voices replied.
+
+"The land is common to all. All have the same right to it, but there is
+good land and bad land, and every one would like to take the good land.
+How is one to do in order to get it justly divided? In this way: he that
+will use the good land must pay those who have got no land the value of
+the land he uses," Nekhludoff went on, answering his own question. "As
+it would be difficult to say who should pay whom, and money is needed
+for communal use, it should be arranged that he who uses the good land
+should pay the amount of the value of his land to the commune for its
+needs. Then every one would share equally. If you want to use land pay
+for it--more for the good, less for the bad land. If you do not wish to
+use land, don't pay anything, and those who use the land will pay the
+taxes and the communal expenses for you."
+
+"Well, he had a head, this George," said the oven-builder, moving his
+brows. "He who has good land must pay more."
+
+"If only the payment is according to our strength," said the tall man
+with the bass voice, evidently foreseeing how the matter would end.
+
+"The payment should be not too high and not too low. If it is too high
+it will not get paid, and there will be a loss; and if it is too low it
+will be bought and sold. There would be a trading in land. This is what
+I wished to arrange among you here."
+
+"That is just, that is right; yes, that would do," said the peasants.
+
+"He has a head, this George," said the broad-shouldered old man with the
+curls. "See what he has invented."
+
+"Well, then, how would it be if I wished to take some land?" asked the
+smiling foreman.
+
+"If there is an allotment to spare, take it and work it," said
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"What do you want it for? You have sufficient as it is," said the old
+man with the laughing eyes.
+
+With this the conference ended.
+
+Nekhludoff repeated his offer, and advised the men to talk it over with
+the rest of the commune and to return with the answer.
+
+The peasants said they would talk it over and bring an answer, and left
+in a state of excitement. Their loud talk was audible as they went along
+the road, and up to late in the night the sound of voices came along the
+river from the village.
+
+The next day the peasants did not go to work, but spent it in
+considering the landlord's offer. The commune was divided into two
+parties--one which regarded the offer as a profitable one to themselves
+and saw no danger in agreeing with it, and another which suspected and
+feared the offer it did not understand. On the third day, however, all
+agreed, and some were sent to Nekhludoff to accept his offer. They were
+influenced in their decision by the explanation some of the old men gave
+of the landlord's conduct, which did away with all fear of deceit. They
+thought the gentleman had begun to consider his soul, and was acting as
+he did for its salvation. The alms which Nekhludoff had given away while
+in Panovo made his explanation seem likely. The fact that Nekhludoff
+had never before been face to face with such great poverty and so bare
+a life as the peasants had come to in this place, and was so appalled
+by it, made him give away money in charity, though he knew that this was
+not reasonable. He could not help giving the money, of which he now had
+a great deal, having received a large sum for the forest he had sold
+the year before, and also the hand money for the implements and stock in
+Kousminski. As soon as it was known that the master was giving money in
+charity, crowds of people, chiefly women, began to come to ask him for
+help. He did not in the least know how to deal with them, how to decide,
+how much, and whom to give to. He felt that to refuse to give money, of
+which he had a great deal, to poor people was impossible, yet to give
+casually to those who asked was not wise. The last day he spent in
+Panovo, Nekhludoff looked over the things left in his aunts' house, and
+in the bottom drawer of the mahogany wardrobe, with the brass lions'
+heads with rings through them, he found many letters, and amongst them a
+photograph of a group, consisting of his aunts, Sophia Ivanovna and Mary
+Ivanovna, a student, and Katusha. Of all the things in the house he took
+only the letters and the photograph. The rest he left to the miller who,
+at the smiling foreman's recommendation, had bought the house and all it
+contained, to be taken down and carried away, at one-tenth of the real
+value.
+
+Recalling the feeling of regret at the loss of his property which he had
+felt in Kousminski, Nekhludoff was surprised how he could have felt this
+regret. Now he felt nothing but unceasing joy at the deliverance, and
+a sensation of newness something like that which a traveller must
+experience when discovering new countries.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF RETURNS TO TOWN.
+
+The town struck Nekhludoff in a new and peculiar light on his return.
+He came back in the evening, when the gas was lit, and drove from
+the railway station to his house, where the rooms still smelt of
+naphthaline. Agraphena Petrovna and Corney were both feeling tired and
+dissatisfied, and had even had a quarrel over those things that seemed
+made only to be aired and packed away. Nekhludoff's room was empty, but
+not in order, and the way to it was blocked up with boxes, so that his
+arrival evidently hindered the business which, owing to a curious kind
+of inertia, was going on in this house. The evident folly of these
+proceedings, in which he had once taken part, was so distasteful to
+Nekhludoff after the impressions the misery of the life of the peasants
+had made on him, that he decided to go to a hotel the next day, leaving
+Agraphena Petrovna to put away the things as she thought fit until his
+sister should come and finally dispose of everything in the house.
+
+Nekhludoff left home early and chose a couple of rooms in a very modest
+and not particularly clean lodging-house within easy reach of the
+prison, and, having given orders that some of his things should be sent
+there, he went to see the advocate. It was cold out of doors. After some
+rainy and stormy weather it had turned out cold, as it often does in
+spring. It was so cold that Nekhludoff felt quite chilly in his light
+overcoat, and walked fast hoping to get warmer. His mind was filled
+with thoughts of the peasants, the women, children, old men, and all the
+poverty and weariness which he seemed to have seen for the first time,
+especially the smiling, old-faced infant writhing with his calfless
+little legs, and he could not help contrasting what was going on in the
+town. Passing by the butchers', fishmongers', and clothiers' shops, he
+was struck, as if he saw them for the first time, by the appearance
+of the clean, well-fed shopkeepers, like whom you could not find one
+peasant in the country. These men were apparently convinced that the
+pains they took to deceive the people who did not know much about their
+goods was not a useless but rather an important business. The coachmen
+with their broad hips and rows of buttons down their sides, and the
+door-keepers with gold cords on their caps, the servant-girls with their
+aprons and curly fringes, and especially the smart isvostchiks with
+the nape of their necks clean shaved, as they sat lolling back in their
+traps, and examined the passers-by with dissolute and contemptuous
+air, looked well fed. In all these people Nekhludoff could not now help
+seeing some of these very peasants who had been driven into the town by
+lack of land. Some of the peasants driven to the town had found means
+of profiting by the conditions of town life and had become like the
+gentlefolk and were pleased with their position; others were in a worse
+position than they had been in the country and were more to be pitied
+than the country people.
+
+Such seemed the bootmakers Nekhludoff saw in the cellar, the pale,
+dishevelled washerwomen with their thin, bare, arms ironing at an open
+window, out of which streamed soapy steam; such the two house-painters
+with their aprons, stockingless feet, all bespattered and smeared with
+paint, whom Nekhludoff met--their weak, brown arms bared to above the
+elbows--carrying a pailful of paint, and quarrelling with each other.
+Their faces looked haggard and cross. The dark faces of the carters
+jolting along in their carts bore the same expression, and so did the
+faces of the tattered men and women who stood begging at the street
+corners. The same kind of faces were to be seen at the open, windows of
+the eating-houses which Nekhludoff passed. By the dirty tables on which
+stood tea things and bottles, and between which waiters dressed in white
+shirts were rushing hither and thither, sat shouting and singing red,
+perspiring men with stupefied faces. One sat by the window with
+lifted brows and pouting lips and fixed eyes as if trying to remember
+something.
+
+"And why are they all gathered here?" Nekhludoff thought, breathing
+in together with the dust which the cold wind blew towards him the air
+filled with the smell of rank oil and fresh paint.
+
+In one street he met a row of carts loaded with something made of iron,
+that rattled so on the uneven pavement that it made his ears and head
+ache. He started walking still faster in order to pass the row of carts,
+when he heard himself called by name. He stopped and saw an officer with
+sharp pointed moustaches and shining face who sat in the trap of a swell
+isvostchik and waved his hand in a friendly manner, his smile disclosing
+unusually long, white teeth.
+
+"Nekhludoff! Can it be you?"
+
+Nekhludoff's first feeling was one of pleasure. "Ah, Schonbock!" he
+exclaimed joyfully; but he knew the next moment that there was nothing
+to be joyful about.
+
+This was that Schonbock who had been in the house of Nekhludoff's aunts
+that day, and whom Nekhludoff had quite lost out of sight, but about
+whom he had heard that in spite of his debts he had somehow managed to
+remain in the cavalry, and by some means or other still kept his place
+among the rich. His gay, contented appearance corroborated this report.
+
+"What a good thing that I have caught you. There is no one in town. Ah,
+old fellow; you have grown old," he said, getting out of the trap and
+moving his shoulders about. "I only knew you by your walk. Look here, we
+must dine together. Is there any place where they feed one decently?"
+
+"I don't think I can spare the time," Nekhludoff answered, thinking only
+of how he could best get rid of his companion without hurting him.
+
+"And what has brought you here?" he asked.
+
+"Business, old fellow. Guardianship business. I am a guardian now. I am
+managing Samanoff's affairs--the millionaire, you know. He has softening
+of the brain, and he's got fifty-four thousand desiatins of land,"
+he said, with peculiar pride, as if he had himself made all these
+desiatins. "The affairs were terribly neglected. All the land was let
+to the peasants. They did not pay anything. There were more than eighty
+thousand roubles debts. I changed it all in one year, and have got 70
+per cent. more out of it. What do you think of that?" he asked proudly.
+
+Nekhludoff remembered having heard that this Schonbock, just because, he
+had spent all he had, had attained by some special influence the post of
+guardian to a rich old man who was squandering his property--and was now
+evidently living by this guardianship.
+
+"How am I to get rid of him without offending him?" thought Nekhludoff,
+looking at this full, shiny face with the stiffened moustache and
+listening to his friendly, good-humoured chatter about where one gets
+fed best, and his bragging about his doings as a guardian.
+
+"Well, then, where do we dine?"
+
+"Really, I have no time to spare," said Nekhludoff, glancing at his
+watch.
+
+"Then, look here. To-night, at the races--will you be there?"
+
+"No, I shall not be there."
+
+"Do come. I have none of my own now, but I back Grisha's horses. You
+remember; he has a fine stud. You'll come, won't you? And we'll have
+some supper together."
+
+"No, I cannot have supper with you either," said Nekhludoff with a
+smile.
+
+"Well, that's too bad! And where are you off to now? Shall I give you a
+lift?"
+
+"I am going to see an advocate, close to here round the corner."
+
+"Oh, yes, of course. You have got something to do with the prisons--have
+turned into a prisoners' mediator, I hear," said Schonbock, laughing.
+"The Korchagins told me. They have left town already. What does it all
+mean? Tell me."
+
+"Yes, yes, it is quite true," Nekhludoff answered; "but I cannot tell
+you about it in the street."
+
+"Of course; you always were a crank. But you will come to the races?"
+
+"No. I neither can nor wish to come. Please do not be angry with me."
+
+"Angry? Dear me, no. Where do you live?" And suddenly his face became
+serious, his eyes fixed, and he drew up his brows. He seemed to be
+trying to remember something, and Nekhludoff noticed the same dull
+expression as that of the man with the raised brows and pouting lips
+whom he had seen at the window of the eating-house.
+
+"How cold it is! Is it not? Have you got the parcels?" said Schonbock,
+turning to the isvostchik.
+
+"All right. Good-bye. I am very glad indeed to have met you," and
+warmly pressing Nekhludoff's hand, he jumped into the trap and waved
+his white-gloved hand in front of his shiny face, with his usual smile,
+showing his exceptionally white teeth.
+
+"Can I have also been like that?" Nekhludoff thought, as he continued
+his way to the advocate's. "Yes, I wished to be like that, though I was
+not quite like it. And I thought of living my life in that way."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+AN ADVOCATE'S VIEWS ON JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS.
+
+Nekhludoff was admitted by the advocate before his turn. The advocate at
+once commenced to talk about the Menshoffs' case, which he had read with
+indignation at the inconsistency of the accusation.
+
+"This case is perfectly revolting," he said; "it is very likely that
+the owner himself set fire to the building in order to get the insurance
+money, and the chief thing is that there is no evidence to prove the
+Menshoffs' guilt. There are no proofs whatever. It is all owing to the
+special zeal of the examining magistrate and the carelessness of the
+prosecutor. If they are tried here, and not in a provincial court, I
+guarantee that they will be acquitted, and I shall charge nothing.
+Now then, the next case, that of Theodosia Birukoff. The appeal to the
+Emperor is written. If you go to Petersburg, you'd better take it with
+you, and hand it in yourself, with a request of your own, or else they
+will only make a few inquiries, and nothing will come of it. You must
+try and get at some of the influential members of the Appeal Committee."
+
+"Well, is this all?"
+
+"No; here I have a letter . . . I see you have turned into a pipe--a
+spout through which all the complaints of the prison are poured," said
+the advocate, with a smile. "It is too much; you'll not be able to
+manage it."
+
+"No, but this is a striking case," said Nekhludoff, and gave a brief
+outline of the case of a peasant who began to read the Gospels to the
+peasants in the village, and to discuss them with his friends. The
+priests regarded this as a crime and informed the authorities. The
+magistrate examined him and the public prosecutor drew up an act of
+indictment, and the law courts committed him for trial.
+
+"This is really too terrible," Nekhludoff said. "Can it be true?"
+
+"What are you surprised at?"
+
+"Why, everything. I can understand the police-officer, who simply obeys
+orders, but the prosecutor drawing up an act of that kind. An educated
+man . . ."
+
+"That is where the mistake lies, that we are in the habit of considering
+that the prosecutors and the judges in general are some kind of liberal
+persons. There was a time when they were such, but now it is quite
+different. They are just officials, only troubled about pay-day.
+They receive their salaries and want them increased, and there their
+principles end. They will accuse, judge, and sentence any one you like."
+
+"Yes; but do laws really exist that can condemn a man to Siberia for
+reading the Bible with his friends?"
+
+"Not only to be exiled to the less remote parts of Siberia, but even to
+the mines, if you can only prove that reading the Bible they took the
+liberty of explaining it to others not according to orders, and in this
+way condemned the explanations given by the Church. Blaming the Greek
+orthodox religion in the presence of the common people means, according
+to Statute . . . the mines."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"I assure you it is so. I always tell these gentlemen, the judges,"
+the advocate continued, "that I cannot look at them without gratitude,
+because if I am not in prison, and you, and all of us, it is only owing
+to their kindness. To deprive us of our privileges, and send us all to
+the less remote parts of Siberia, would be an easy thing for them."
+
+"Well, if it is so, and if everything depends on the Procureur and
+others who can, at will, either enforce the laws or not, what are the
+trials for?"
+
+The advocate burst into a merry laugh. "You do put strange questions.
+My dear sir, that is philosophy. Well, we might have a talk about that,
+too. Could you come on Saturday? You will meet men of science, literary
+men, and artists at my house, and then we might discuss these general
+questions," said the advocate, pronouncing the words "general questions"
+with ironical pathos. "You have met my wife? Do come."
+
+"Thank you; I will try to," said Nekhludoff, and felt that he was saying
+an untruth, and knew that if he tried to do anything it would be to keep
+away froth the advocate's literary evening, and the circle of the men of
+science, art, and literature.
+
+The laugh with which the advocate met Nekhludoff's remark that trials
+could have no meaning if the judges might enforce the laws or not,
+according to their notion, and the tone with which he pronounced the
+words "philosophy" and "general questions" proved to Nekhludoff how very
+differently he and the advocate and, probably, the advocate's friends,
+looked at things; and he felt that in spite of the distance that now
+existed between himself and his former companions, Schonbock, etc.,
+the difference between himself and the circle of the advocate and his
+friends was still greater.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+WHY THE PEASANTS FLOCK TO TOWN.
+
+The prison was a long way off and it was getting late, so Nekhludoff
+took an isvostchik. The isvostchik, a middle-aged man with an
+intelligent and kind face, turned round towards Nekhludoff as they were
+driving along one of the streets and pointed to a huge house that was
+being built there.
+
+"Just see what a tremendous house they have begun to build," he said, as
+if he was partly responsible for the building of the house and proud of
+it. The house was really immense and was being built in a very original
+style. The strong pine beams of the scaffolding were firmly fixed
+together with iron bands and a plank wall separated the building from
+the street.
+
+On the boards of the scaffolding workmen, all bespattered with plaster,
+moved hither and thither like ants. Some were laying bricks, some hewing
+stones, some carrying up the heavy hods and pails and bringing them down
+empty. A fat and finely-dressed gentleman--probably the architect--stood
+by the scaffolding, pointing upward and explaining something to a
+contractor, a peasant from the Vladimir Government, who was respectfully
+listening to him. Empty carts were coming out of the gate by which the
+architect and the contractor were standing, and loaded ones were going
+in. "And how sure they all are--those that do the work as well as those
+that make them do it--that it ought to be; that while their wives at
+home, who are with child, are labouring beyond their strength, and their
+children with the patchwork caps, doomed soon to the cold grave, smile
+with suffering and contort their little legs, they must be building this
+stupid and useless palace for some stupid and useless person--one of
+those who spoil and rob them," Nekhludoff thought, while looking at the
+house.
+
+"Yes, it is a stupid house," he said, uttering his thought out aloud.
+
+"Why stupid?" replied the isvostchik, in an offended tone. "Thanks to
+it, the people get work; it's not stupid."
+
+"But the work is useless."
+
+"It can't be useless, or why should it be done?" said the isvostchik.
+"The people get bread by it."
+
+Nekhludoff was silent, and it would have been difficult to talk because
+of the clatter the wheels made.
+
+When they came nearer the prison, and the isvostchik turned off the
+paved on to the macadamised road, it became easier to talk, and he again
+turned to Nekhludoff.
+
+"And what a lot of these people are flocking to the town nowadays; it's
+awful," he said, turning round on the box and pointing to a party of
+peasant workmen who were coming towards them, carrying saws, axes,
+sheepskins, coats, and bags strapped to their shoulders.
+
+"More than in other years?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"By far. This year every place is crowded, so that it's just terrible.
+The employers just fling the workmen about like chaff. Not a job to be
+got."
+
+"Why is that?"
+
+"They've increased. There's no room for them."
+
+"Well, what if they have increased? Why do not they stay in the
+village?"
+
+"There's nothing for them to do in the village--no land to be had."
+
+Nekhludoff felt as one does when touching a sore place. It feels as if
+the bruised part was always being hit; yet it is only because the place
+is sore that the touch is felt.
+
+"Is it possible that the same thing is happening everywhere?" he
+thought, and began questioning the isvostchik about the quantity of land
+in his village, how much land the man himself had, and why he had left
+the country.
+
+"We have a desiatin per man, sir," he said. "Our family have three men's
+shares of the land. My father and a brother are at home, and manage the
+land, and another brother is serving in the army. But there's nothing to
+manage. My brother has had thoughts of coming to Moscow, too."
+
+"And cannot land be rented?"
+
+"How's one to rent it nowadays? The gentry, such as they were, have
+squandered all theirs. Men of business have got it all into their own
+hands. One can't rent it from them. They farm it themselves. We have
+a Frenchman ruling in our place; he bought the estate from our former
+landlord, and won't let it--and there's an end of it."
+
+"Who's that Frenchman?"
+
+"Dufour is the Frenchman's name. Perhaps you've heard of him. He makes
+wigs for the actors in the big theatre; it is a good business, so he's
+prospering. He bought it from our lady, the whole of the estate, and now
+he has us in his power; he just rides on us as he pleases. The Lord be
+thanked, he is a good man himself; only his wife, a Russian, is such a
+brute that--God have mercy on us. She robs the people. It's awful. Well,
+here's the prison. Am I to drive you to the entrance? I'm afraid they'll
+not let us do it, though."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+NURSE MASLOVA.
+
+When he rang the bell at the front entrance Nekhludoff's heart stood
+still with horror as he thought of the state he might find Maslova in
+to-day, and at the mystery that he felt to be in her and in the people
+that were collected in the prison. He asked the jailer who opened the
+door for Maslova. After making the necessary inquiry the jailer informed
+him that she was in the hospital. Nekhludoff went there. A kindly old
+man, the hospital doorkeeper, let him in at once and, after asking
+Nekhludoff whom he wanted, directed him to the children's ward. A young
+doctor saturated with carbolic acid met Nekhludoff in the passage and
+asked him severely what he wanted. This doctor was always making all
+sorts of concessions to the prisoners, and was therefore continually
+coming into conflict with the prison authorities and even with the head
+doctor. Fearing lest Nekhludoff should demand something unlawful, and
+wishing to show that he made no exceptions for any one, he pretended to
+be cross. "There are no women here; it is the children's ward," he said.
+
+"Yes, I know; but a prisoner has been removed here to be an assistant
+nurse."
+
+"Yes, there are two such here. Then whom do you want?"
+
+"I am closely connected with one of them, named Maslova," Nekhludoff
+answered, "and should like to speak to her. I am going to Petersburg to
+hand in an appeal to the Senate about her case and should like to give
+her this. It is only a photo," Nekhludoff said, taking an envelope out
+of his pocket.
+
+"All right, you may do that," said the doctor, relenting, and turning to
+an old woman with a white apron, he told her to call the prisoner--Nurse
+Maslova.
+
+"Will you take a seat, or go into the waiting-room?"
+
+"Thanks," said Nekhludoff, and profiting by the favourable change in
+the manner of the doctor towards him asked how they were satisfied with
+Maslova in the hospital.
+
+"Oh, she is all right. She works fairly well, if you the conditions of
+her former life into account. But here she is."
+
+The old nurse came in at one of the doors, followed by Maslova, who wore
+a blue striped dress, a white apron, a kerchief that quite covered her
+hair. When she saw Nekhludoff her face flushed, and she stopped as if
+hesitating, then frowned, and with downcast eyes went quickly towards
+him along the strip of carpet in the middle of the passage. When she
+came up to Nekhludoff she did not wish to give him her hand, and then
+gave it, growing redder still. Nekhludoff had not seen her since the
+day when she begged forgiveness for having been in a passion, and he
+expected to find her the same as she was then. But to-day she was
+quite different. There was something new in the expression of her face,
+reserve and shyness, and, as it seemed to him, animosity towards him. He
+told her what he had already said to the doctor, i.e., that he was going
+to Petersburg, and he handed her the envelope with the photograph which
+he had brought from Panovo.
+
+"I found this in Panovo--it's an old photo; perhaps you would like it.
+Take it."
+
+Lifting her dark eyebrows, she looked at him with surprise in her
+squinting eyes, as if asking, "What is this for?" took the photo
+silently and put it in the bib of her apron.
+
+"I saw your aunt there," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Did you?" she said, indifferently.
+
+"Are you all right here?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"Oh, yes, it's all right," she said.
+
+"Not too difficult?"
+
+"Oh, no. But I am not used to it yet."
+
+"I am glad, for your sake. Anyhow, it is better than there."
+
+"Than where--there?" she asked, her face flushing again.
+
+"There--in the prison," Nekhludoff hurriedly answered.
+
+"Why better?" she asked.
+
+"I think the people are better. Here are none such as there must be
+there."
+
+"There are many good ones there," she said.
+
+"I have been seeing about the Menshoffs, and hope they will be
+liberated," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"God grant they may. Such a splendid old woman," she said, again
+repeating her opinion of the old woman, and slightly smiling.
+
+"I am going to Petersburg to-day. Your case will come on soon, and I
+hope the sentence will be repealed."
+
+"Whether it is repealed or not won't matter now," she said.
+
+"Why not now?"
+
+"So," she said, looking with a quick, questioning glance into his eyes.
+
+Nekhludoff understood the word and the look to mean that she wished
+to know whether he still kept firm to his decision or had accepted her
+refusal.
+
+"I do not know why it does not matter to you," he said. "It certainly
+does not matter as far as I am concerned whether you are acquitted or
+not. I am ready to do what I told you in any case," he said decidedly.
+
+She lifted her head and her black squinting eyes remained fixed on him
+and beyond him, and her face beamed with joy. But the words she spoke
+were very different from what her eyes said.
+
+"You should not speak like that," she said.
+
+"I am saying it so that you should know."
+
+"Everything has been said about that, and there is no use speaking," she
+said, with difficulty repressing a smile.
+
+A sudden noise came from the hospital ward, and the sound of a child
+crying.
+
+"I think they are calling me," she said, and looked round uneasily.
+
+"Well, good-bye, then," he said. She pretended not to see his extended
+hand, and, without taking it, turned away and hastily walked along the
+strip of carpet, trying to hide the triumph she felt.
+
+"What is going on in her? What is she thinking? What does she feel? Does
+she mean to prove me, or can she really not forgive me? Is it that she
+cannot or that she will not express what she feels and thinks? Has she
+softened or hardened?" he asked himself, and could find no answer. He
+only knew that she had altered and that an important change was going on
+in her soul, and this change united him not only to her but also to Him
+for whose sake that change was being wrought. And this union brought on
+a state of joyful animation and tenderness.
+
+When she returned to the ward, in which there stood eight small beds,
+Maslova began, in obedience to the nurse's order, to arrange one of the
+beds; and, bending over too far with the sheet, she slipped and nearly
+fell down.
+
+A little convalescent boy with a bandaged neck, who was looking at her,
+laughed. Maslova could no longer contain herself and burst into loud
+laughter, and such contagious laughter that several of the children also
+burst out laughing, and one of the sisters rebuked her angrily.
+
+"What are you giggling at? Do you think you are where you used to be?
+Go and fetch the food." Maslova obeyed and went where she was sent; but,
+catching the eye of the bandaged boy who was not allowed to laugh, she
+again burst out laughing.
+
+Whenever she was alone Maslova again and again pulled the photograph
+partly out of the envelope and looked at it admiringly; but only in the
+evening when she was off duty and alone in the bedroom which she shared
+with a nurse, did she take it quite out of the envelope and gaze long
+at the faded yellow photograph, caressing with, her eyes every detail
+of faces and clothing, the steps of the veranda, and the bushes which
+served as a background to his and hers and his aunts' faces, and could
+not cease from admiring especially herself--her pretty young face with
+the curly hair round the forehead. She was so absorbed that she did not
+hear her fellow-nurse come into the room.
+
+"What is it that he's given you?" said the good-natured, fat nurse,
+stooping over the photograph.
+
+"Who's this? You?"
+
+"Who else?" said Maslova, looking into her companion's face with a
+smile.
+
+"And who's this?"
+
+"Himself."
+
+"And is this his mother?"
+
+"No, his aunt. Would you not have known me?"
+
+"Never. The whole face is altered. Why, it must be 10 years since then."
+
+"Not years, but a lifetime," said Maslova. And suddenly her animation
+went, her face grew gloomy, and a deep line appeared between her brows.
+
+"Why so? Your way of life must have been an easy one."
+
+"Easy, indeed," Maslova reiterated, closing her eyes and shaking her
+head. "It is hell."
+
+"Why, what makes it so?"
+
+"What makes it so! From eight till four in the morning, and every night
+the same!"
+
+"Then why don't they give it up?"
+
+"They can't give it up if they want to. But what's the use of talking?"
+Maslova said, jumping up and throwing the photograph into the drawer of
+the table. And with difficulty repressing angry tears, she ran out into
+the passage and slammed the door.
+
+While looking at the group she imagined herself such as she was there
+and dreamt of her happiness then and of the possibility of happiness
+with him now. But her companion's words reminded her of what she was now
+and what she had been, and brought back all the horrors of that life,
+which she had felt but dimly, and not allowed herself to realise.
+
+It was only now that the memory of all those terrible nights came
+vividly back to her, especially one during the carnival when she was
+expecting a student who had promised to buy her out. She remembered how
+she--wearing her low necked silk dress stained with wine, a red bow in
+her untidy hair, wearied, weak, half tipsy, having seen her visitors
+off, sat down during an interval in the dancing by the piano beside the
+bony pianiste with the blotchy face, who played the accompaniments
+to the violin, and began complaining of her hard fate; and how this
+pianiste said that she, too, was feeling how heavy her position was and
+would like to change it; and how Clara suddenly came up to them; and how
+they all three decided to change their life. They thought that the night
+was over, and were about to go away, when suddenly the noise of tipsy
+voices was heard in the ante-room. The violinist played a tune and the
+pianiste began hammering the first figure of a quadrille on the piano,
+to the tune of a most merry Russian song. A small, perspiring man,
+smelling of spirits, with a white tie and swallow-tail coat, which he
+took off after the first figure, came up to her, hiccoughing, and
+caught her up, while another fat man, with a beard, and also wearing a
+dress-coat (they had come straight from a ball) caught Clara up, and for
+a long time they turned, danced, screamed, drank. . . . And so it
+went on for another year, and another, and a third. How could she help
+changing? And he was the cause of it all. And, suddenly, all her former
+bitterness against him reawoke; she wished to scold, to reproach him.
+She regretted having neglected the opportunity of repeating to him once
+more that she knew him, and would not give in to him--would not let him
+make use of her spiritually as he had done physically.
+
+And she longed for drink in order to stifle the feeling of pity to
+herself and the useless feeling of reproach to him. And she would have
+broken her word if she had been inside the prison. Here she could not
+get any spirits except by applying to the medical assistant, and she was
+afraid of him because he made up to her, and intimate relations with
+men were disgusting to her now. After sitting a while on a form in the
+passage she returned to her little room, and without paying any heed to
+her companion's words, she wept for a long time over her wrecked life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+AN ARISTOCRATIC CIRCLE.
+
+Nekhludoff had four matters to attend to in Petersburg. The first was
+the appeal to the Senate in Maslova's case; the second, to hand in
+Theodosia Birukoff's petition to the committee; the third, to comply
+with Vera Doukhova's requests--i.e., try to get her friend Shoustova
+released from prison, and get permission for a mother to visit her son
+in prison. Vera Doukhova had written to him about this, and he was
+going to the Gendarmerie Office to attend to these two matters, which he
+counted as one.
+
+The fourth matter he meant to attend to was the case of some sectarians
+who had been separated from their families and exiled to the Caucasus
+because they read and discussed the Gospels. It was not so much to
+them as to himself he had promised to do all he could to clear up this
+affair.
+
+Since his last visit to Maslennikoff, and especially since he had been
+in the country, Nekhludoff had not exactly formed a resolution but felt
+with his whole nature a loathing for that society in which he had lived
+till then, that society which so carefully hides the sufferings of
+millions in order to assure ease and pleasure to a small number of
+people, that the people belonging to this society do not and cannot
+see these sufferings, nor the cruelty and wickedness of their life.
+Nekhludoff could no longer move in this society without feeling ill at
+ease and reproaching himself. And yet all the ties of relationship and
+friendship, and his own habits, were drawing him back into this society.
+Besides, that which alone interested him now, his desire to help Maslova
+and the other sufferers, made it necessary to ask for help and service
+from persons belonging to that society, persons whom he not only could
+not respect, but who often aroused in him indignation and a feeling of
+contempt.
+
+When he came to Petersburg and stopped at his aunt's--his mother's
+sister, the Countess Tcharsky, wife of a former minister--Nekhludoff at
+once found himself in the very midst of that aristocratic circle which
+had grown so foreign to him. This was very unpleasant, but there was no
+possibility of getting out of it. To put up at an hotel instead of at
+his aunt's house would have been to offend his aunt, and, besides, his
+aunt had important connections and might be extremely useful in all
+these matters he meant to attend to.
+
+"What is this I hear about you? All sorts of marvels," said the Countess
+Katerina Ivanovna Tcharsky, as she gave him his coffee immediately after
+his arrival. "_Vous posez pour un Howard_. Helping criminals, going the
+round of prisons, setting things right."
+
+"Oh, no. I never thought of it."
+
+"Why not? It is a good thing, only there seems to be some romantic story
+connected with it. Let us hear all about it."
+
+Nekhludoff told her the whole truth about his relations to Maslova.
+
+"Yes, yes, I remember your poor mother telling me about it. That was
+when you were staying with those old women. I believe they wished to
+marry you to their ward (the Countess Katerina Ivanovna had always
+despised Nekhludoff's aunts on his father's side). So it's she. _Elle
+est encore jolie?_"
+
+Katerina Ivanovna was a strong, bright, energetic, talkative woman of
+60. She was tall and very stout, and had a decided black moustache
+on her lip. Nekhludoff was fond of her and had even as a child been
+infected by her energy and mirth.
+
+"No, ma tante, that's at an end. I only wish to help her, because she is
+innocently accused. I am the cause of it and the cause of her fate being
+what it is. I feel it my duty to do all I can for her."
+
+"But what is this I have heard about your intention of marrying her?"
+
+"Yes, it was my intention, but she does not wish it."
+
+Katerina Ivanovna looked at her nephew with raised brows and drooping
+eyeballs, in silent amazement. Suddenly her face changed, and with a
+look of pleasure she said: "Well, she is wiser than you. Dear me, you
+are a fool. And you would have married her?"
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+"After her having been what she was?"
+
+"All the more, since I was the cause of it."
+
+"Well, you are a simpleton," said his aunt, repressing a smile, "a
+terrible simpleton; but it is just because you are such a terrible
+simpleton that I love you." She repeated the word, evidently liking it,
+as it seemed to correctly convey to her mind the idea of her nephew's
+moral state. "Do you know--What a lucky chance. Aline has a wonderful
+home--the Magdalene Home. I went there once. They are terribly
+disgusting. After that I had to pray continually. But Aline is devoted
+to it, body and soul, so we shall place her there--yours, I mean."
+
+"But she is condemned to Siberia. I have come on purpose to appeal about
+it. This is one of my requests to you."
+
+"Dear me, and where do you appeal to in this case?"
+
+"To the Senate."
+
+"Ah, the Senate! Yes, my dear Cousin Leo is in the Senate, but he is in
+the heraldry department, and I don't know any of the real ones. They are
+all some kind of Germans--Gay, Fay, Day--tout l'alphabet, or else all
+sorts of Ivanoffs, Simenoffs, Nikitines, or else Ivanenkos, Simonenkos,
+Nikitenkos, pour varier. Des gens de l'autre monde. Well, it is all the
+same. I'll tell my husband, he knows them. He knows all sorts of people.
+I'll tell him, but you will have to explain, he never understands me.
+Whatever I may say, he always maintains he does not understand it. C'est
+un parti pris, every one understands but only not he."
+
+At this moment a footman with stockinged legs came in with a note on a
+silver platter.
+
+"There now, from Aline herself. You'll have a chance of hearing
+Kiesewetter."
+
+"Who is Kiesewetter?"
+
+"Kiesewetter? Come this evening, and you will find out who he is. He
+speaks in such a way that the most hardened criminals sink on their
+knees and weep and repent."
+
+The Countess Katerina Ivanovna, however strange it may seem, and however
+little it seemed in keeping with the rest of her character, was a
+staunch adherent to that teaching which holds that the essence of
+Christianity lies in the belief in redemption. She went to meetings
+where this teaching, then in fashion, was being preached, and assembled
+the "faithful" in her own house. Though this teaching repudiated all
+ceremonies, icons, and sacraments, Katerina Ivanovna had icons in every
+room, and one on the wall above her bed, and she kept all that the
+Church prescribed without noticing any contradiction in that.
+
+"There now; if your Magdalene could hear him she would be converted,"
+said the Countess. "Do stay at home to-night; you will hear him. He is a
+wonderful man."
+
+"It does not interest me, ma tante."
+
+"But I tell you that it is interesting, and you must come home. Now you
+may go. What else do you want of me? _Videz votre sac_."
+
+"The next is in the fortress."
+
+"In the fortress? I can give you a note for that to the Baron
+Kriegsmuth. _Cest un tres brave homme_. Oh, but you know him; he was a
+comrade of your father's. _Il donne dans le spiritisme_. But that does
+not matter, he is a good fellow. What do you want there?"
+
+"I want to get leave for a mother to visit her son who is imprisoned
+there. But I was told that this did not depend on Kriegsmuth but on
+Tcherviansky."
+
+"I do not like Tcherviansky, but he is Mariette's husband; we might ask
+her. She will do it for me. _Elle est tres gentille_."
+
+"I have also to petition for a woman who is imprisoned there without
+knowing what for."
+
+"No fear; she knows well enough. They all know it very well, and it
+serves them right, those short-haired [many advanced women wear their
+hair short, like men] ones."
+
+"We do not know whether it serves them right or not. But they suffer.
+You are a Christian and believe in the Gospel teaching and yet you are
+so pitiless."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. The Gospels are the Gospels, but what
+is disgusting remains disgusting. It would be worse if I pretended to
+love Nihilists, especially short-haired women Nihilists, when I cannot
+bear them."
+
+"Why can you not bear them?"
+
+"You ask why, after the 1st of March?" [The Emperor Alexander II was
+killed on the first of March, old style.]
+
+"They did not all take part in it on the 1st of March."
+
+"Never mind; they should not meddle with what is no business of theirs.
+It's not women's business."
+
+"Yet you consider that Mariette may take part in business."
+
+"Mariette? Mariette is Mariette, and these are goodness knows what. Want
+to teach everybody."
+
+"Not to teach but simply to help the people."
+
+"One knows whom to help and whom not to help without them."
+
+"But the peasants are in great need. I have just returned from the
+country. Is it necessary, that the peasants should work to the very
+limits of their strength and never have sufficient to eat while we are
+living in the greatest luxury?" said Nekhludoff, involuntarily led on by
+his aunt's good nature into telling her what he was in his thoughts.
+
+"What do you want, then? That I should work and not eat anything?"
+
+"No, I do not wish you not to eat. I only wish that we should all work
+and all eat." He could not help smiling as he said it.
+
+Again raising her brow and drooping her eyeballs his aunt looked at him
+curiously. "_Mon cher vous finirez mal_," she said.
+
+Just then the general, and former minister, Countess Tcharsky's husband,
+a tall, broad-shouldered man, came into the room.
+
+"Ah, Dmitri, how d'you do?" he said, turning his freshly-shaved cheek to
+Nekhludoff to be kissed. "When did you get here?" And he silently kissed
+his wife on the forehead.
+
+"_Non il est impayable_," the Countess said, turning to her husband.
+"He wants me to go and wash clothes and live on potatoes. He is an awful
+fool, but all the same do what he is going to ask of you. A terrible
+simpleton," she added. "Have you heard? Kamenskaya is in such despair
+that they fear for her life," she said to her husband. "You should go
+and call there."
+
+"Yes; it is dreadful," said her husband.
+
+"Go along, then, and talk to him. I must write some letters."
+
+Hardly had Nekhludoff stepped into the room next the drawing-room than
+she called him back.
+
+"Shall I write to Mariette, then?"
+
+"Please, ma tante."
+
+"I shall leave a blank for what you want to say about the short-haired
+one, and she will give her husband his orders, and he'll do it. Do not
+think me wicked; they are all so disgusting, your prologues, but _je
+ne leur veux pas de mal_, bother them. Well, go, but be sure to stay at
+home this evening to hear Kiesewetter, and we shall have some prayers.
+And if only you do not resist _cela vous fera beaucoup de bien_. I
+know your poor mother and all of you were always very backward in these
+things."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+AN AVERAGE STATESMAN.
+
+Count Ivan Michaelovitch had been a minister, and was a man of strong
+convictions. The convictions of Count Ivan Michaelovitch consisted in
+the belief that, just as it was natural for a bird to feed on worms,
+to be clothed in feathers and down, and to fly in the air, so it
+was natural for him to feed on the choicest and most expensive food,
+prepared by highly-paid cooks, to wear the most comfortable and most
+expensive clothing, to drive with the best and fastest horses, and that,
+therefore, all these things should be ready found for him. Besides this,
+Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered that the more money he could get out
+of the treasury by all sorts of means, the more orders he had, including
+different diamond insignia of something or other, and the oftener he
+spoke to highly-placed individuals of both sexes, so much the better it
+was.
+
+All the rest Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered insignificant and
+uninteresting beside these dogmas. All the rest might be as it was, or
+just the reverse. Count Ivan Michaelovitch lived and acted according
+to these lights for 40 years, and at the end of 40 years reached the
+position of a Minister of State. The chief qualities that enabled
+Count Ivan Michaelovitch to reach this position were his capacity of
+understanding the meaning of documents and laws and of drawing up,
+though clumsily, intelligible State papers, and of spelling them
+correctly; secondly, his very stately appearance, which enabled him,
+when necessary, to seem not only extremely proud, but unapproachable
+and majestic, while at other times he could be abjectly and almost
+passionately servile; thirdly, the absence of any general principles
+or rules, either of personal or administrative morality, which made it
+possible for him either to agree or disagree with anybody according to
+what was wanted at the time. When acting thus his only endeavour was
+to sustain the appearance of good breeding and not to seem too plainly
+inconsistent. As for his actions being moral or not, in themselves, or
+whether they were going to result in the highest welfare or greatest
+evil for the whole of the Russian Empire, or even the entire world, that
+was quite indifferent to him. When he became minister, not only
+those dependent on him (and there were great many of them) and people
+connected with him, but many strangers and even he himself were
+convinced that he was a very clever statesman. But after some time had
+elapsed and he had done nothing and had nothing to show, and when in
+accordance with the law of the struggle for existence others, like
+himself, who had learnt to write and understand documents, stately and
+unprincipled officials, had displaced him, he turned out to be not
+only far from clever but very limited and badly educated. Though
+self-assured, his views hardly reaching the level of those in the
+leading articles of the Conservative papers, it became apparent
+that there was nothing in him to distinguish him from those other
+badly-educated and self-assured officials who had pushed him out, and
+he himself saw it. But this did not shake his conviction that he had to
+receive a great deal of money out of the Treasury every year, and new
+decorations for his dress clothes. This conviction was so firm that no
+one had the pluck to refuse these things to him, and he received yearly,
+partly in form of a pension, partly as a salary for being a member in
+a Government institution and chairman of all sorts of committees
+and councils, several tens of thousands of roubles, besides the
+right--highly prized by him--of sewing all sorts of new cords to his
+shoulders and trousers, and ribbons to wear under and enamel stars
+to fix on to his dress coat. In consequence of this Count Ivan
+Michaelovitch had very high connections.
+
+Count Ivan Michaelovitch listened to Nekhludoff as he was wont to listen
+to the reports of the permanent secretary of his department, and, having
+heard him, said he would give him two notes, one to the Senator Wolff,
+of the Appeal Department. "All sorts of things are reported of him, but
+dans tous les cas c'est un homme tres comme ii faut," he said. "He is
+indebted to me, and will do all that is possible." The other note Count
+Ivan Michaelovitch gave Nekhludoff was to an influential member of
+the Petition Committee. The story of Theodosia Birukoff as told by
+Nekhludoff interested him very much. When Nekhludoff said that he
+thought of writing to the Empress, the Count replied that it certainly
+was a very touching story, and might, if occasion presented itself, he
+told her, but he could not promise. Let the petition be handed in in due
+form.
+
+Should there be an opportunity, and if a petit comite were called on
+Thursday, he thought he would tell her the story. As soon as Nekhludoff
+had received these two notes, and a note to Mariette from his aunt, he
+at once set off to these different places.
+
+First he went to Mariette's. He had known her as a half-grown girl, the
+daughter of an aristocratic but not wealthy family, and had heard how
+she had married a man who was making a career, whom Nekhludoff had heard
+badly spoken of; and, as usual, he felt it hard to ask a favour of a man
+he did not esteem. In these cases he always felt an inner dissension
+and dissatisfaction, and wavered whether to ask the favour or not, and
+always resolved to ask. Besides feeling himself in a false position
+among those to whose set he no longer regarded himself as belonging, who
+yet regarded him as belonging to them, he felt himself getting into the
+old accustomed rut, and in spite of himself fell into the thoughtless
+and immoral tone that reigned in that circle. He felt that from the
+first, with his aunt, he involuntarily fell into a bantering tone while
+talking about serious matters.
+
+Petersburg in general affected him with its usual physically
+invigorating and mentally dulling effect.
+
+Everything so clean, so comfortably well-arranged and the people so
+lenient in moral matters, that life seemed very easy.
+
+A fine, clean, and polite isvostchik drove him past fine, clean, polite
+policemen, along the fine, clean, watered streets, past fine, clean
+houses to the house in which Mariette lived. At the front door stood
+a pair of English horses, with English harness, and an English-looking
+coachman on the box, with the lower part of his face shaved, proudly
+holding a whip. The doorkeeper, dressed in a wonderfully clean livery,
+opened the door into the hall, where in still cleaner livery with gold
+cords stood the footman with his splendid whiskers well combed out,
+and the orderly on duty in a brand-new uniform. "The general does not
+receive, and the generaless does not receive either. She is just going
+to drive out."
+
+Nekhludoff took out Katerina Ivanovna's letter, and going up to a table
+on which lay a visitors' book, began to write that he was sorry not to
+have been able to see any one; when the footman went up the staircase
+the doorkeeper went out and shouted to the coachman, and the orderly
+stood up rigid with his arms at his sides following with his eyes a
+little, slight lady, who was coming down the stairs with rapid steps not
+in keeping with all the grandeur.
+
+Mariette had a large hat on, with feathers, a black dress and cape, and
+new black gloves. Her face was covered by a veil.
+
+When she saw Nekhludoff she lifted the veil off a very pretty face with
+bright eyes that looked inquiringly at him.
+
+"Ah, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff," she said, with a soft,
+pleasant voice. "I should have known--"
+
+"What! you even remember my name?"
+
+"I should think so. Why, I and my sisters have even been in love with
+you," she said, in French. "But, dear me, how you have altered. Oh, what
+a pity I have to go out. But let us go up again," she said and stopped
+hesitatingly. Then she looked at the clock. "No, I can't. I am going to
+Kamenskaya's to attend a mass for the dead. She is terribly afflicted."
+
+"Who is this Kamenskaya?"
+
+"Have you not heard? Her son was killed in a duel. He fought Posen. He
+was the only son. Terrible I The mother is very much afflicted."
+
+"Yes. I have heard of it."
+
+"No, I had better go, and you must come again, to-night or to-morrow,"
+she said, and went to the door with quick, light steps.
+
+"I cannot come to-night," he said, going out after her; "but I have
+a request to make you," and he looked at the pair of bays that were
+drawing up to the front door.
+
+"What is this?"
+
+"This is a letter from aunt to you," said Nekhludoff, handing her
+a narrow envelope, with a large crest. "You'll find all about it in
+there."
+
+"I know Countess Katerina Ivanovna thinks I have some influence with my
+husband in business matters. She is mistaken. I can do nothing and do
+not like to interfere. But, of course, for you I am willing to be false
+to my principle. What is this business about?" she said, searching in
+vain for her pocket with her little black gloved hand.
+
+"There is a girl imprisoned in the fortress, and she is ill and
+innocent."
+
+"What is her name?"
+
+"Lydia Shoustova. It's in the note."
+
+"All right; I'll see what I can do," she said, and lightly jumped into
+her little, softly upholstered, open carriage, its brightly-varnished
+splash-guards glistening in the sunshine, and opened her parasol. The
+footman got on the box and gave the coachman a sign. The carriage moved,
+but at that moment she touched the coachman with her parasol and the
+slim-legged beauties, the bay mares, stopped, bending their beautiful
+necks and stepping from foot to foot.
+
+"But you must come, only, please, without interested motives," and she
+looked at him with a smile, the force of which she well knew, and, as if
+the performance over and she were drawing the curtain, she dropped
+the veil over her face again. "All right," and she again touched the
+coachman.
+
+Nekhludoff raised his hat, and the well-bred bays, slightly snorting,
+set off, their shoes clattering on the pavement, and the carriage rolled
+quickly and smoothly on its new rubber tyres, giving a jump only now and
+then over some unevenness of the road.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+AN UP-TO-DATE SENATOR.
+
+When Nekhludoff remembered the smiles that had passed between him and
+Mariette, he shook his head.
+
+"You have hardly time to turn round before you are again drawn into
+this life," he thought, feeling that discord and those doubts which the
+necessity to curry favour from people he did not esteem caused.
+
+After considering where to go first, so as not to have to retrace his
+steps, Nekhludoff set off for the Senate. There he was shown into the
+office where he found a great many very polite and very clean officials
+in the midst of a magnificent apartment. Maslova's petition was received
+and handed on to that Wolf, to whom Nekhludoff had a letter from his
+uncle, to be examined and reported on.
+
+"There will be a meeting of the Senate this week," the official said to
+Nekhludoff, "but Maslova's case will hardly come before that meeting."
+
+"It might come before the meeting on Wednesday, by special request," one
+of the officials remarked.
+
+During the time Nekhludoff waited in the office, while some information
+was being taken, he heard that the conversation in the Senate was all
+about the duel, and he heard a detailed account of how a young man,
+Kaminski, had been killed. It was here he first heard all the facts of
+the case which was exciting the interest of all Petersburg. The story
+was this: Some officers were eating oysters and, as usual, drinking very
+much, when one of them said something ill-natured about the regiment to
+which Kaminski belonged, and Kaminski called him a liar. The other hit
+Kaminski. The next day they fought. Kaminski was wounded in the stomach
+and died two hours later. The murderer and the seconds were arrested,
+but it was said that though they were arrested and in the guardhouse
+they would be set free in a fortnight.
+
+From the Senate Nekhludoff drove to see an influential member of the
+petition Committee, Baron Vorobioff, who lived in a splendid house
+belonging to the Crown. The doorkeeper told Nekhludoff in a severe tone
+that the Baron could not be seen except on his reception days; that he
+was with His Majesty the Emperor to-day, and the next day he would again
+have to deliver a report. Nekhludoff left his uncle's letter with the
+doorkeeper and went on to see the Senator Wolf. Wolf had just had his
+lunch, and was as usual helping digestion by smoking a cigar and pacing
+up and down the room, when Nekhludoff came in. Vladimir Vasilievitch
+Wolf was certainly _un homme tres comme il faut_, and prized this
+quality very highly, and from that elevation he looked down at everybody
+else. He could not but esteem this quality of his very highly, because
+it was thanks to it alone that he had made a brilliant career, the very
+career he desired, i.e., by marriage he obtained a fortune which brought
+him in 18,000 roubles a year, and by his own exertions the post of a
+senator. He considered himself not only _un homme tres comme il faut_,
+but also a man of knightly honour. By honour he understood not accepting
+secret bribes from private persons. But he did not consider it dishonest
+to beg money for payment of fares and all sorts of travelling expenses
+from the Crown, and to do anything the Government might require of him
+in return. To ruin hundreds of innocent people, to cause them to be
+imprisoned, to be exiled because of their love for their people and the
+religion of their fathers, as he had done in one of the governments of
+Poland when he was governor there. He did not consider it dishonourable,
+but even thought it a noble, manly and patriotic action. Nor did he
+consider it dishonest to rob his wife and sister-in-law, as he had
+done, but thought it a wise way of arranging his family life. His family
+consisted of his commonplace wife, his sister-in-law, whose fortune
+he had appropriated by selling her estate and putting the money to his
+account, and his meek, frightened, plain daughter, who lived a lonely,
+weary life, from which she had lately begun to look for relaxation in
+evangelicism, attending meetings at Aline's, and the Countess Katerina
+Ivanovna. Wolf's son, who had grown a beard at the age of 15, and had at
+that age begun to drink and lead a depraved life, which he continued to
+do till the age of 20, when he was turned out by his father because
+he never finished his studies, moved in a low set and made debts which
+committed the father. The father had once paid a debt of 250 roubles for
+his son, then another of 600 roubles, but warned the son that he did it
+for the last time, and that if the son did not reform he would be turned
+out of the house and all further intercourse between him and his family
+would he put a stop to. The son did not reform, but made a debt of a
+thousand roubles, and took the liberty of telling his father that life
+at home was a torment anyhow. Then Wolf declared to his son that he
+might go where he pleased--that he was no son of his any longer. Since
+then Wolf pretended he had no son, and no one at home dared speak to him
+about his son, and Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was firmly convinced that
+he had arranged his family life in the best way. Wolf stopped pacing
+up and down his study, and greeted Nekhludoff with a friendly though
+slightly ironical smile. This was his way of showing how comme il faut
+he was, and how superior to the majority of men. He read the note which
+Nekhludoff handed to him.
+
+"Please take a seat, and excuse me if I continue to walk up and down,
+with your permission," he said, putting his hands into his coat pockets,
+and began again to walk with light, soft steps across his large, quietly
+and stylishly furnished study. "Very pleased to make your acquaintance
+and of course very glad to do anything that Count Ivan Michaelovitch
+wishes," he said, blowing the fragrant blue smoke out of his mouth and
+removing his cigar carefully so as not to drop the ash.
+
+"I should only like to ask that the case might come on soon, so that
+if the prisoner has to go to Siberia she might set off early," said
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"Yes, yes, with one of the first steamers from Nijni. I know," said
+Wolf, with his patronising smile, always knowing in advance whatever one
+wanted to tell him.
+
+"What is the prisoner's name?"
+
+"Maslova."
+
+Wolf went up to the table and looked at a paper that lay on a piece of
+cardboard among other business papers.
+
+"Yes, yes. Maslova. All right, I will ask the others. We shall hear the
+case on Wednesday."
+
+"Then may I telegraph to the advocate?"
+
+"The advocate! What's that for? But if you like, why not?"
+
+"The causes for appeal may be insufficient," said Nekhludoff, "but
+I think the case will show that the sentence was passed owing to a
+misunderstanding."
+
+"Yes, yes; it may be so, but the Senate cannot decide the case on its
+merits," said Wolf, looking seriously at the ash of his cigar. "The
+Senate only considers the exactness of the application of the laws and
+their right interpretation."
+
+"But this seems to me to be an exceptional case."
+
+"I know, I know! All cases are exceptional. We shall do our duty. That's
+all." The ash was still holding on, but had began breaking, and was in
+danger of falling.
+
+"Do you often come to Petersburg?" said Wolf, holding his cigar so that
+the ash should not fall. But the ash began to shake, and Wolf carefully
+carried it to the ashpan, into which it fell.
+
+"What a terrible thing this is with regard to Kaminski," he said. "A
+splendid young man. The only son. Especially the mother's position," he
+went on, repeating almost word for word what every one in Petersburg
+was at that time saying about Kaminski. Wolf spoke a little about the
+Countess Katerina Ivanovna and her enthusiasm for the new religious
+teaching, which he neither approved nor disapproved of, but which was
+evidently needless to him who was so comme il faut, and then rang the
+bell.
+
+Nekhludoff bowed.
+
+"If it is convenient, come and dine on Wednesday, and I will give you a
+decisive answer," said Wolf, extending his hand.
+
+It was late, and Nekhludoff returned to his aunt's.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+COUNTESS KATERINA IVANOVNA'S DINNER PARTY.
+
+Countess Katerina Ivanovna's dinner hour was half-past seven, and the
+dinner was served in a new manner that Nekhludoff had not yet seen
+anywhere. After they had placed the dishes on the table the waiters left
+the room and the diners helped themselves. The men would not let the
+ladies take the trouble of moving, and, as befitted the stronger sex,
+they manfully took on themselves the burden of putting the food on
+the ladies' plates and of filling their glasses. When one course was
+finished, the Countess pressed the button of an electric bell fitted
+to the table and the waiters stepped in noiselessly and quickly carried
+away the dishes, changed the plates, and brought in the next course.
+The dinner was very refined, the wines very costly. A French chef was
+working in the large, light kitchens, with two white-clad assistants.
+There were six persons at dinner, the Count and Countess, their son
+(a surly officer in the Guards who sat with his elbows on the table),
+Nekhludoff, a French lady reader, and the Count's chief steward, who
+had come up from the country. Here, too, the conversation was about the
+duel, and opinions were given as to how the Emperor regarded the case.
+It was known that the Emperor was very much grieved for the mother's
+sake, and all were grieved for her, and as it was also known that the
+Emperor did not mean to be very severe to the murderer, who defended
+the honour of his uniform, all were also lenient to the officer who had
+defended the honour of his uniform. Only the Countess Katerina Ivanovna,
+with her free thoughtlessness, expressed her disapproval.
+
+"They get drunk, and kill unobjectionable young men. I should not
+forgive them on any account," she said.
+
+"Now, that's a thing I cannot understand," said the Count.
+
+"I know that you never can understand what I say," the Countess began,
+and turning to Nekhludoff, she added:
+
+"Everybody understands except my husband. I say I am sorry for the
+mother, and I do not wish him to be contented, having killed a man."
+Then her son, who had been silent up to then, took the murderer's part,
+and rudely attacked his mother, arguing that an officer could not behave
+in any other way, because his fellow-officers would condemn him and turn
+him out of the regiment. Nekhludoff listened to the conversation without
+joining in. Having been an officer himself, he understood, though he
+did not agree with, young Tcharsky's arguments, and at the same time
+he could not help contrasting the fate of the officer with that of a
+beautiful young convict whom he had seen in the prison, and who was
+condemned to the mines for having killed another in a fight. Both had
+turned murderers through drunkenness. The peasant had killed a man in
+a moment of irritation, and he was parted from his wife and family, had
+chains on his legs, and his head shaved, and was going to hard labour in
+Siberia, while the officer was sitting in a fine room in the guardhouse,
+eating a good dinner, drinking good wine, and reading books, and would
+be set free in a day or two to live as he had done before, having only
+become more interesting by the affair. Nekhludoff said what he had been
+thinking, and at first his aunt, Katerina Ivanovna, seemed to agree with
+him, but at last she became silent as the rest had done, and Nekhludoff
+felt that he had committed something akin to an impropriety. In the
+evening, soon after dinner, the large hall, with high-backed carved
+chairs arranged in rows as for a meeting, and an armchair next to a
+little table, with a bottle of water for the speaker, began to fill
+with people come to hear the foreigner, Kiesewetter, preach. Elegant
+equipages stopped at the front entrance. In the hall sat richly-dressed
+ladies in silks and velvets and lace, with false hair and false busts
+and drawn-in waists, and among them men in uniform and evening dress,
+and about five persons of the common class, i.e., two men-servants, a
+shop-keeper, a footman, and a coachman. Kiesewetter, a thick-set, grisly
+man, spoke English, and a thin young girl, with a pince-nez, translated
+it into Russian promptly and well. He was saying that our sins were so
+great, the punishment for them so great and so unavoidable, that it was
+impossible to live anticipating such punishment. "Beloved brothers and
+sisters, let us for a moment consider what we are doing, how we are
+living, how we have offended against the all-loving Lord, and how
+we make Christ suffer, and we cannot but understand that there is no
+forgiveness possible for us, no escape possible, that we are all doomed
+to perish. A terrible fate awaits us---everlasting torment," he said,
+with tears in his trembling voice. "Oh, how can we be saved, brothers?
+How can we be saved from this terrible, unquenchable fire? The house is
+in flames; there is no escape."
+
+He was silent for a while, and real tears flowed down his cheeks. It
+was for about eight years that each time when he got to this part of his
+speech, which he himself liked so well, he felt a choking in his throat
+and an irritation in his nose, and the tears came in his eyes, and these
+tears touched him still more. Sobs were heard in the room. The Countess
+Katerina Ivanovna sat with her elbows on an inlaid table, leaning her
+head on her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. The coachman looked
+with fear and surprise at the foreigner, feeling as if he was about to
+run him down with the pole of his carriage and the foreigner would
+not move out of his way. All sat in positions similar to that Katerina
+Ivanovna had assumed. Wolf's daughter, a thin, fashionably-dressed girl,
+very like her father, knelt with her face in her hands.
+
+The orator suddenly uncovered his face, and smiled a very real-looking
+smile, such as actors express joy with, and began again with a sweet,
+gentle voice:
+
+"Yet there is a way to be saved. Here it is--a joyful, easy way. The
+salvation is the blood shed for us by the only son of God, who gave
+himself up to torments for our sake. His sufferings, His blood, will
+save us. Brothers and sisters," he said, again with tears in his voice,
+"let us praise the Lord, who has given His only begotten son for the
+redemption of mankind. His holy blood . . ."
+
+Nekhludoff felt so deeply disgusted that he rose silently, and frowning
+and keeping back a groan of shame, he left on tiptoe, and went to his
+room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+OFFICIALDOM.
+
+Hardly had Nekhludoff finished dressing the next morning, just as he
+was about to go down, the footman brought him a card from the Moscow
+advocate. The advocate had come to St. Petersburg on business of his
+own, and was going to be present when Maslova's case was examined in the
+Senate, if that would be soon. The telegram sent by Nekhludoff crossed
+him on the way. Having found out from Nekhludoff when the case was going
+to be heard, and which senators were to be present, he smiled. "Exactly,
+all the three types of senators," he said. "Wolf is a Petersburg
+official; Skovorodnikoff is a theoretical, and Bay a practical lawyer,
+and therefore the most alive of them all," said the advocate. "There is
+most hope of him. Well, and how about the Petition Committee?"
+
+"Oh, I'm going to Baron Vorobioff to-day. I could not get an audience
+with him yesterday."
+
+"Do you know why he is _Baron_ Vorobioff?" said the advocate, noticing
+the slightly ironical stress that Nekhludoff put on this foreign title,
+followed by so very Russian a surname.
+
+"That was because the Emperor Paul rewarded the grandfather--I think he
+was one of the Court footmen--by giving him this title. He managed to
+please him in some way, so he made him a baron. 'It's my wish, so don't
+gainsay me!' And so there's a _Baron_ Vorobioff, and very proud of the
+title. He is a dreadful old humbug."
+
+"Well, I'm going to see him," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"That's good; we can go together. I shall give you a lift."
+
+As they were going to start, a footman met Nekhludoff in the ante-room,
+and handed him a note from Mariette:
+
+_Pour vous faire plaisir, f'ai agi tout a fait contre mes principes et
+j'ai intercede aupres de mon mari pour votre protegee. Il se trouve
+que cette personne pout etre relaxee immediatement. Mon mari a ecrit au
+commandant. Venez donc disinterestedly. Je vous attends._
+
+                          _M._
+
+"Just fancy!" said Nekhludoff to the advocate. "Is this not dreadful?
+A woman whom they are keeping in solitary confinement for seven months
+turns out to be quite innocent, and only a word was needed to get her
+released."
+
+"That's always so. Well, anyhow, you have succeeded in getting what you
+wanted."
+
+"Yes, but this success grieves me. Just think what must be going on
+there. Why have they been keeping her?"
+
+"Oh, it's best not to look too deeply into it. Well, then, I shall give
+you a lift, if I may," said the advocate, as they left the house, and
+a fine carriage that the advocate had hired drove up to the door. "It's
+Baron Vorobioff you are going to see?"
+
+The advocate gave the driver his directions, and the two good horses
+quickly brought Nekhludoff to the house in which the Baron lived. The
+Baron was at home. A young official in uniform, with a long, thin neck,
+a much protruding Adam's apple, and an extremely light walk, and two
+ladies were in the first room.
+
+"Your name, please?" the young man with the Adam's apple asked, stepping
+with extreme lightness and grace across from the ladies to Nekhludoff.
+
+Nekhludoff gave his name.
+
+"The Baron was just mentioning you," said the young man, the Baron's
+adjutant, and went out through an inner door. He returned, leading a
+weeping lady dressed in mourning. With her bony fingers the lady was
+trying to pull her tangled veil over her face in order to hide her
+tears.
+
+"Come in, please," said the young man to Nekhludoff, lightly stepping up
+to the door of the study and holding it open. When Nekhludoff came in,
+he saw before him a thick-set man of medium height, with short hair,
+in a frock coat, who was sitting in an armchair opposite a large
+writing-table, and looking gaily in front of himself. The kindly, rosy
+red face, striking by its contrast with the white hair, moustaches, and
+beard, turned towards Nekhludoff with a friendly smile.
+
+"Very glad to see you. Your mother and I were old acquaintances and
+friends. I have seen you as a boy, and later on as an officer. Sit
+down and tell me what I can do for you. Yes, yes," he said, shaking his
+cropped white head, while Nekhludoff was telling him Theodosia's story.
+"Go on, go on. I quite understand. It is certainly very touching. And
+have you handed in the petition?"
+
+"I have got the petition ready," Nekhludoff said, getting it out of his
+pocket; "but I thought of speaking to you first in hopes that the case
+would then get special attention paid to it."
+
+"You have done very well. I shall certainly report it myself," said the
+Baron, unsuccessfully trying to put an expression of pity on his merry
+face. "Very touching! It is clear she was but a child; the husband
+treated her roughly, this repelled her, but as time went on they fell in
+love with each other. Yes I will report the case."
+
+"Count Ivan Michaelovitch was also going to speak about it."
+
+Nekhludoff had hardly got these words out when the Baron's face changed.
+
+"You had better hand in the petition into the office, after all, and I
+shall do what I can," he said.
+
+At this moment the young official again entered the room, evidently
+showing off his elegant manner of walking.
+
+"That lady is asking if she may say a few words more."
+
+"Well, ask her in. Ah, mon cher, how many tears we have to see shed! If
+only we could dry them all. One does all that lies within one's power."
+
+The lady entered.
+
+"I forgot to ask you that he should not be allowed to give up the
+daughter, because he is ready . . ."
+
+"But I have already told you that I should do all I can."
+
+"Baron, for the love of God! You will save the mother?"
+
+She seized his hand, and began kissing it.
+
+"Everything shall be done."
+
+When the lady went out Nekhludoff also began to take leave.
+
+"We shall do what we can. I shall speak about it at the Ministry of
+Justice, and when we get their answer we shall do what we can."
+
+Nekhludoff left the study, and went into the office again. Just as in
+the Senate office, he saw, in a splendid apartment, a number of very
+elegant officials, clean, polite, severely correct and distinguished in
+dress and in speech.
+
+"How many there are of them; how very many and how well fed they all
+look! And what clean shirts and hands they all have, and how well all
+their boots are polished! Who does it for them? How comfortable they
+all are, as compared not only with the prisoners, but even with the
+peasants!" These thoughts again involuntarily came to Nekhludoff's mind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+AN OLD GENERAL OF REPUTE.
+
+The man on whom depended the easing of the fate of the Petersburg
+prisoners was an old General of repute--a baron of German descent,
+who, as it was said of him, had outlived his wits. He had received a
+profusion of orders, but only wore one of them, the Order of the White
+Cross. He had received this order, which he greatly valued, while
+serving in the Caucasus, because a number of Russian peasants, with
+their hair cropped, and dressed in uniform and armed with guns and
+bayonets, had killed at his command more than a thousand men who were
+defending their liberty, their homes, and their families. Later on
+he served in Poland, and there also made Russian peasants commit many
+different crimes, and got more orders and decorations for his uniform.
+Then he served somewhere else, and now that he was a weak, old man
+he had this position, which insured him a good house, an income and
+respect. He strictly observed all the regulations which were prescribed
+"from above," and was very zealous in the fulfilment of these
+regulations, to which he ascribed a special importance, considering that
+everything else in the world might be changed except the regulations
+prescribed "from above." His duty was to keep political prisoners,
+men and women, in solitary confinement in such a way that half of them
+perished in 10 years' time, some going out of their minds, some dying
+of consumption, some committing suicide by starving themselves to death,
+cutting their veins with bits of glass, hanging, or burning themselves
+to death.
+
+The old General was not ignorant of this; it all happened within his
+knowledge; but these cases no more touched his conscience than accidents
+brought on by thunderstorms, floods, etc. These cases occurred as a
+consequence of the fulfilment of regulations prescribed "from above" by
+His Imperial Majesty. These regulations had to be carried out
+without fail, and therefore it was absolutely useless to think of the
+consequences of their fulfilment. The old General did not even allow
+himself to think of such things, counting it his patriotic duty as a
+soldier not to think of them for fear of getting weak in the carrying
+out of these, according to his opinion, very important obligations. Once
+a week the old General made the round of the cells, one of the duties of
+his position, and asked the prisoners if they had any requests to make.
+The prisoners had all sorts of requests. He listened to them quietly, in
+impenetrable silence, and never fulfilled any of their requests, because
+they were all in disaccord with the regulations. Just as Nekhludoff
+drove up to the old General's house, the high notes of the bells on the
+belfry clock chimed "Great is the Lord," and then struck two. The sound
+of these chimes brought back to Nekhludoff's mind what he had read
+in the notes of the Decembrists [the Decembrists were a group who
+attempted, but failed, to put an end to absolutism in Russia at the time
+of the accession of Nicholas the First] about the way this sweet music
+repeated every hour re-echoes in the hearts of those imprisoned for
+life.
+
+Meanwhile the old General was sitting in his darkened drawing-room at
+an inlaid table, turning a saucer on a piece of paper with the aid of
+a young artist, the brother of one of his subordinates. The thin,
+weak, moist fingers of the artist were pressed against the wrinkled and
+stiff-jointed fingers of the old General, and the hands joined in this
+manner were moving together with the saucer over a paper that had all
+the letters of the alphabet written on it. The saucer was answering the
+questions put by the General as to how souls will recognise each other
+after death.
+
+When Nekhludoff sent in his card by an orderly acting as footman, the
+soul of Joan of Arc was speaking by the aid of the saucer. The soul of
+Joan of Arc had already spelt letter by letter the words: "They well
+knew each other," and these words had been written down. When the
+orderly came in the saucer had stopped first on b, then on y, and began
+jerking hither and thither. This jerking was caused by the General's
+opinion that the next letter should be b, i.e., Joan of Arc ought to
+say that the souls will know each other by being cleansed of all that
+is earthly, or something of the kind, clashing with the opinion of the
+artist, who thought the next letter should be l, i.e., that the souls
+should know each other by light emanating from their astral bodies. The
+General, with his bushy grey eyebrows gravely contracted, sat gazing at
+the hands on the saucer, and, imagining that it was moving of its own
+accord, kept pulling the saucer towards b. The pale-faced young artist,
+with his thin hair combed back behind his cars, was looking with his
+lifeless blue eyes into a dark corner of the drawing-room, nervously
+moving his lips and pulling the saucer towards l.
+
+The General made a wry face at the interruption, but after a moment's
+pause he took the card, put on his pince-nez, and, uttering a groan,
+rose, in spite of the pain in his back, to his full height, rubbing his
+numb fingers.
+
+"Ask him into the study."
+
+"With your excellency's permission I will finish it alone," said the
+artist, rising. "I feel the presence."
+
+"All right, finish alone," the General said, severely and decidedly, and
+stepped quickly, with big, firm and measured strides, into his study.
+
+"Very pleased to see you," said the General to Nekhludoff, uttering the
+friendly words in a gruff tone, and pointing to an armchair by the side
+of the writing-table. "Have you been in Petersburg long?"
+
+Nekhludoff replied that he had only lately arrived.
+
+"Is the Princess, your mother, well?"
+
+"My mother is dead."
+
+"Forgive me; I am very sorry. My son told me he had met you."
+
+The General's son was making the same kind of career for himself that
+the father had done, and, having passed the Military Academy, was now
+serving in the Inquiry Office, and was very proud of his duties there.
+His occupation was the management of Government spies.
+
+"Why, I served with your father. We were friends--comrades. And you; are
+you also in the Service?"
+
+"No, I am not."
+
+The General bent his head disapprovingly.
+
+"I have a request to make, General."
+
+"Very pleased. In what way can I be of service to you?"
+
+"If my request is out of place pray pardon me. But I am obliged to make
+it."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"There is a certain Gourkevitch imprisoned in the fortress; his mother
+asks for an interview with him, or at least to be allowed to send him
+some books."
+
+The General expressed neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction at
+Nekhludoff's request, but bending his head on one side he closed his
+eyes as if considering. In reality he was not considering anything, and
+was not even interested in Nekhludoff's questions, well knowing that he
+would answer them according to the law. He was simply resting mentally
+and not thinking at all.
+
+"You see," he said at last, "this does not depend on me. There is a
+regulation, confirmed by His Majesty, concerning interviews; and as to
+books, we have a library, and they may have what is permitted."
+
+"Yes, but he wants scientific books; he wishes to study."
+
+"Don't you believe it," growled the General. "It's not study he wants;
+it is just only restlessness."
+
+"But what is to be done? They must occupy their time somehow in their
+hard condition," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"They are always complaining," said the General. "We know them."
+
+He spoke of them in a general way, as if they were all a specially bad
+race of men. "They have conveniences here which can be found in few
+places of confinement," said the General, and he began to enumerate the
+comforts the prisoners enjoyed, as if the aim of the institution was to
+give the people imprisoned there a comfortable home.
+
+"It is true it used to be rather rough, but now they are very well kept
+here," he continued. "They have three courses for dinner--and one of
+them meat--cutlets, or rissoles; and on Sundays they get a fourth--a
+sweet dish. God grant every Russian may eat as well as they do."
+
+Like all old people, the General, having once got on to a familiar
+topic, enumerated the various proofs he had often given before of the
+prisoners being exacting and ungrateful.
+
+"They get books on spiritual subjects and old journals. We have a
+library. Only they rarely read. At first they seem interested, later on
+the new books remain uncut, and the old ones with their leaves unturned.
+We tried them," said the old General, with the dim likeness of a smile.
+"We put bits of paper in on purpose, which remained just as they had
+been placed. Writing is also not forbidden," he continued. "A slate is
+provided, and a slate pencil, so that they can write as a pastime. They
+can wipe the slate and write again. But they don't write, either. Oh,
+they very soon get quite tranquil. At first they seem restless, but
+later on they even grow fat and become very quiet." Thus spoke the
+General, never suspecting the terrible meaning of his words.
+
+Nekhludoff listened to the hoarse old voice, looked at the stiff limbs,
+the swollen eyelids under the grey brows, at the old, clean-shaved,
+flabby jaw, supported by the collar of the military uniform, at the
+white cross that this man was so proud of, chiefly because he had gained
+it by exceptionally cruel and extensive slaughter, and knew that it was
+useless to reply to the old man or to explain the meaning of his own
+words to him.
+
+He made another effort, and asked about the prisoner Shoustova, for
+whose release, as he had been informed that morning, orders were given.
+
+"Shoustova--Shoustova? I cannot remember all their names, there are so
+many of them," he said, as if reproaching them because there were so
+many. He rang, and ordered the secretary to be called. While waiting for
+the latter, he began persuading Nekhludoff to serve, saying that "honest
+noblemen," counting himself among the number, "were particularly needed
+by the Tsar and--the country," he added, evidently only to round off
+his sentence. "I am old, yet I am serving still, as well as my strength
+allows."
+
+The secretary, a dry, emaciated man, with restless, intelligent eyes,
+came in and reported that Shoustova was imprisoned in some queer,
+fortified place, and that he had received no orders concerning her.
+
+"When we get the order we shall let her out the same day. We do not keep
+them; we do not value their visits much," said the General, with another
+attempt at a playful smile, which only distorted his old face.
+
+Nekhludoff rose, trying to keep from expressing the mixed feelings of
+repugnance and pity which he felt towards this terrible old man. The
+old man on his part considered that he should not be too severe on the
+thoughtless and evidently misguided son of his old comrade, and should
+not leave him without advice.
+
+"Good-bye, my dear fellow; do not take it amiss. It is my affection that
+makes me say it. Do not keep company with such people as we have at our
+place here. There are no innocent ones among them. All these people
+are most immoral. We know them," he said, in a tone that admitted no
+possibility of doubt. And he did not doubt, not because the thing was
+so, but because if it was not so, he would have to admit himself to
+be not a noble hero living out the last days of a good life, but a
+scoundrel, who sold, and still continued in his old age to sell, his
+conscience.
+
+"Best of all, go and serve," he continued; "the Tsar needs honest
+men--and the country," he added. "Well, supposing I and the others
+refused to serve, as you are doing? Who would be left? Here we are,
+finding fault with the order of things, and yet not wishing to help the
+Government."
+
+With a deep sigh Nekhludoff made a low bow, shook the large, bony hand
+condescendingly stretched out to him and left the room.
+
+The General shook his head reprovingly, and rubbing his back, he again
+went into the drawing-room where the artist was waiting for him. He had
+already written down the answer given by the soul of Joan of Arc. The
+General put on his pince-nez and read, "Will know one another by light
+emanating from their astral bodies."
+
+"Ah," said the General, with approval, and closed his eyes. "But how is
+one to know if the light of all is alike?" he asked, and again crossed
+fingers with the artist on the saucer.
+
+The isvostchik drove Nekhludoff out of the gate.
+
+It is dull here, sir, he said, turning to Nekhludoff. "I almost wished
+to drive off without waiting for you."
+
+Nekhludoff agreed. "Yes, it is dull," and he took a deep breath, and
+looked up with a sense of relief at the grey clouds that were floating
+in the sky, and at the glistening ripples made by the boats and steamers
+on the Neva.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+MASLOVA'S APPEAL.
+
+The next day Maslova's case was to be examined at the Senate, and
+Nekhludoff and the advocate met at the majestic portal of the building,
+where several carriages were waiting. Ascending the magnificent and
+imposing staircase to the first floor, the advocate, who knew all the
+ins and outs of the place, turned to the left and entered through a door
+which had the date of the introduction of the Code of Laws above it.
+
+After taking off his overcoat in the first narrow room, he found out
+from the attendant that the Senators had all arrived, and that the last
+had just come in. Fanarin, in his swallow-tail coat, a white tie above
+the white shirt-front, and a self-confident smile on his lips, passed
+into the next room. In this room there were to the right a large
+cupboard and a table, and to the left a winding staircase, which an
+elegant official in uniform was descending with a portfolio under his
+arm. In this room an old man with long, white hair and a patriarchal
+appearance attracted every one's attention. He wore a short coat and
+grey trousers. Two attendants stood respectfully beside him. The old man
+with white hair entered the cupboard and shut himself in.
+
+Fanarin noticed a fellow-advocate dressed in the same way as himself,
+with a white tie and dress coat, and at once entered into an animated
+conversation with him.
+
+Nekhludoff was meanwhile examining the people in the room. The public
+consisted of about 15 persons, of whom two were ladies--a young one with
+a pince-nez, and an old, grey-haired one.
+
+A case of libel was to be heard that day, and therefore the public were
+more numerous than usual--chiefly persons belonging to the journalistic
+world.
+
+The usher, a red-cheeked, handsome man in a fine uniform, came up to
+Fanarin and asked him what his business was. When he heard that it was
+the case of Maslova, he noted something down and walked away. Then the
+cupboard door opened and the old man with the patriarchal appearance
+stepped out, no longer in a short coat but in a gold-trimmed attire,
+which made him look like a bird, and with metal plates on his
+breast. This funny costume seemed to make the old man himself feel
+uncomfortable, and, walking faster than his wont, he hurried out of the
+door opposite the entrance.
+
+"That is Bay, a most estimable man," Fanarin said to Nekhludoff, and
+then having introduced him to his colleague, he explained the case that
+was about to be heard, which he considered very interesting.
+
+The hearing of the case soon commenced, and Nekhludoff, with the
+public, entered the left side of the Senate Chamber. They all, including
+Fanarin, took their places behind a grating. Only the Petersburg
+advocate went up to a desk in front of the grating.
+
+The Senate Chamber was not so big as the Criminal Court; and was more
+simply furnished, only the table in front of the senators was covered
+with crimson, gold-trimmed velvet, instead of green cloth; but the
+attributes of all places of judgment, i.e., the mirror of justice, the
+icon, the emblem of hypocrisy, and the Emperor's portrait, the emblem of
+servility, were there.
+
+The usher announced, in the same solemn manner: "The Court is coming."
+Every one rose in the same way, and the senators entered in their
+uniforms and sat down on highbacked chairs and leant on the table,
+trying to appear natural, just in the same way as the judges in the
+Court of Law. There were four senators present--Nikitin, who took the
+chair, a clean-shaved man with a narrow face and steely eyes; Wolf, with
+significantly compressed lips, and little white hands, with which he
+kept turning over the pages of the business papers; Skovorodnikoff,
+a heavy, fat, pockmarked man--the learned lawyer; and Bay, the
+patriarchal-looking man who had arrived last.
+
+With the advocates entered the chief secretary and public prosecutor, a
+lean, clean-shaven young man of medium height, a very dark complexion,
+and sad, black eyes. Nekhludoff knew him at once, in spite of his
+curious uniform and the fact that he had not seen him for six years. He
+had been one of his best friends in Nekhludoff's student days.
+
+"The public prosecutor Selenin?" Nekhludoff asked, turning to the
+advocate.
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"I know him well. He is a fine fellow."
+
+"And a good public prosecutor; business-like. Now he is the man you
+should have interested."
+
+"He will act according to his conscience in any case," said Nekhludoff,
+recalling the intimate relations and friendship between himself and
+Selenin, and the attractive qualities of the latter--purity, honesty,
+and good breeding in its best sense.
+
+"Yes, there is no time now," whispered Fanarin, who was listening to the
+report of the case that had commenced.
+
+The Court of Justice was accused of having left a decision of the Court
+of Law unaltered.
+
+Nekhludoff listened and tried to make out the meaning of what was going
+on; but, just as in the Criminal Court, his chief difficulty was
+that not the evidently chief point, but some side issues, were being
+discussed. The case was that of a newspaper which had published the
+account of a swindle arranged by a director of a limited liability
+company. It seemed that the only important question was whether the
+director of the company really abused his trust, and how to stop him
+from doing it. But the questions under consideration were whether the
+editor had a right to publish this article of his contributor, and what
+he had been guilty of in publishing it: slander or libel, and in what
+way slander included libel, or libel included slander, and something
+rather incomprehensible to ordinary people about all sorts of statutes
+and resolutions passed by some General Department.
+
+The only thing clear to Nekhludoff was that, in spite of what Wolf had
+so strenuously insisted on, the day before, i.e., that the Senate could
+not try a case on its merits, in this case he was evidently strongly
+in favour of repealing the decision of the Court of Justice, and that
+Selenin, in spite of his characteristic reticence, stated the opposite
+opinion with quite unexpected warmth. The warmth, which surprised
+Nekhludoff, evinced by the usually self-controlled Selenin, was due to
+his knowledge of the director's shabbiness in money matters, and the
+fact, which had accidentally come to his cars, that Wolf had been to a
+swell dinner party at the swindler's house only a few days before.
+
+Now that Wolf spoke on the case, guardedly enough, but with evident
+bias, Selenin became excited, and expressed his opinion with too much
+nervous irritation for an ordinary business transaction.
+
+It was clear that Selenin's speech had offended Wolf. He grew red, moved
+in his chair, made silent gestures of surprise, and at last rose, with
+a very dignified and injured look, together with the other senators, and
+went out into the debating-room.
+
+"What particular case have you come about?" the usher asked again,
+addressing Fanarin.
+
+"I have already told you: Maslova's case."
+
+"Yes, quite so. It is to be heard to-day, but--"
+
+"But what?" the advocate asked.
+
+"Well, you see, this case was to be examined without taking sides,
+so that the senators will hardly come out again after passing the
+resolution. But I will inform them."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I'll inform them; I'll inform them." And the usher again put something
+down on his paper.
+
+The Senators really meant to pronounce their decision concerning the
+libel case, and then to finish the other business, Maslova's case among
+it, over their tea and cigarettes, without leaving the debating-room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE APPEAL DISMISSED.
+
+As soon as the Senators were seated round the table in the
+debating-room, Wolf began to bring forward with great animation all the
+motives in favour of a repeal. The chairman, an ill-natured man at
+best, was in a particularly bad humour that day. His thoughts were
+concentrated on the words he had written down in his memoranda on the
+occasion when not he but Viglanoff was appointed to the important post
+he had long coveted. It was the chairman, Nikitin's, honest conviction
+that his opinions of the officials of the two upper classes with which
+he was in connection would furnish valuable material for the historians.
+He had written a chapter the day before in which the officials of the
+upper classes got it hot for preventing him, as he expressed it, from
+averting the ruin towards which the present rulers of Russia were
+driving it, which simply meant that they had prevented his getting a
+better salary. And now he was considering what a new light to posterity
+this chapter would shed on events.
+
+"Yes, certainly," he said, in reply to the words addressed to him by
+Wolf, without listening to them.
+
+Bay was listening to Wolf with a sad face and drawing a garland on the
+paper that lay before him. Bay was a Liberal of the very first water. He
+held sacred the Liberal traditions of the sixth decade of this century,
+and if he ever overstepped the limits of strict neutrality it was always
+in the direction of Liberalism. So in this case; beside the fact that
+the swindling director, who was prosecuting for libel, was a bad lot,
+the prosecution of a journalist for libel in itself tending, as it did,
+to restrict the freedom of the press, inclined Bay to reject the appeal.
+
+When Wolf concluded his arguments Bay stopped drawing his garland and
+began in a sad and gentle voice (he was sad because he was obliged to
+demonstrate such truisms) concisely, simply and convincingly to show
+how unfounded the accusation was, and then, bending his white head, he
+continued drawing his garland.
+
+Skovorodnikoff, who sat opposite Wolf, and, with his fat fingers, kept
+shoving his beard and moustaches into his mouth, stopped chewing his
+beard as soon as Bay was silent, and said with a loud, grating voice,
+that, notwithstanding the fact of the director being a terrible
+scoundrel, he would have been for the repeal of the sentence if there
+were any legal reasons for it; but, as there were none, he was of Bay's
+opinion. He was glad to put this spoke in Wolf's wheel.
+
+The chairman agreed with Skovorodnikoff, and the appeal was rejected.
+
+Wolf was dissatisfied, especially because it was like being caught
+acting with dishonest partiality; so he pretended to be indifferent,
+and, unfolding the document which contained Maslova's case, he became
+engrossed in it. Meanwhile the Senators rang and ordered tea, and began
+talking about the event that, together with the duel, was occupying the
+Petersburgers.
+
+It was the case of the chief of a Government department, who was accused
+of the crime provided for in Statute 995.
+
+"What nastiness," said Bay, with disgust.
+
+"Why; where is the harm of it? I can show you a Russian book containing
+the project of a German writer, who openly proposes that it should not
+be considered a crime," said Skovorodnikoff, drawing in greedily the
+fumes of the crumpled cigarette, which he held between his fingers close
+to the palm, and he laughed boisterously.
+
+"Impossible!" said Bay.
+
+"I shall show it you," said Skovorodnikoff, giving the full title of the
+book, and even its date and the name of its editor.
+
+"I hear he has been appointed governor to some town in Siberia."
+
+"That's fine. The archdeacon will meet him with a crucifix. They ought
+to appoint an archdeacon of the same sort," said Skovorodnikoff. "I
+could recommend them one," and he threw the end of his cigarette into
+his saucer, and again shoved as much of his beard and moustaches as he
+could into his mouth and began chewing them.
+
+The usher came in and reported the advocate's and Nekhludoff's desire to
+be present at the examination of Maslova's case.
+
+"This case," Wolf said, "is quite romantic," and he told them what he
+knew about Nekhludoff's relations with Maslova. When they had spoken
+a little about it and finished their tea and cigarettes, the Senators
+returned into the Senate Chamber and proclaimed their decision in the
+libel case, and began to hear Maslova's case.
+
+Wolf, in his thin voice, reported Maslova's appeal very fully, but
+again not without some bias and an evident wish for the repeal of the
+sentence.
+
+"Have you anything to add?" the chairman said, turning to Fanarin.
+Fanarin rose, and standing with his broad white chest expanded, proved
+point by point, with wonderful exactness and persuasiveness, how the
+Court had in six points strayed from the exact meaning of the law; and
+besides this he touched, though briefly, on the merits of the case, and
+on the crying injustice of the sentence. The tone of his speech was one
+of apology to the Senators, who, with their penetration and judicial
+wisdom, could not help seeing and understanding it all better than he
+could. He was obliged to speak only because the duty he had undertaken
+forced him to do so.
+
+After Fanarin's speech one might have thought that there could not
+remain the least doubt that the Senate ought to repeal the decision of
+the Court. When he had finished his speech, Fanarin looked round with a
+smile of triumph, seeing which Nekhludoff felt certain that the case was
+won. But when he looked at the Senators he saw that Fanarin smiled and
+triumphed all alone. The Senators and the Public Prosecutor did not
+smile nor triumph, but looked like people wearied, and who were thinking
+"We have often heard the like of you; it is all in vain," and were only
+too glad when he stopped and ceased uselessly detaining them there.
+Immediately after the end of the advocate's speech the chairman turned
+to the Public Prosecutor. Selenin briefly and clearly expressed
+himself in favour of leaving the decision of the Court unaltered, as
+he considered all the reasons for appealing inadequate. After this the
+Senators went out into the debating-room. They were divided in their
+opinions. Wolf was in favour of altering the decision. Bay, when he
+had understood the case, took up the same side with fervour, vividly
+presenting the scene at the court to his companions as he clearly saw it
+himself. Nikitin, who always was on the side of severity and formality,
+took up the other side. All depended on Skovorodnikoff's vote, and he
+voted for rejecting the appeal, because Nekhludoff's determination to
+marry the woman on moral grounds was extremely repugnant to him.
+
+Skovorodnikoff was a materialist, a Darwinian, and counted every
+manifestation of abstract morality, or, worse still, religion, not only
+as a despicable folly, but as a personal affront to himself. All this
+bother about a prostitute, and the presence of a celebrated advocate and
+Nekhludoff in the Senate were in the highest degree repugnant to him.
+So he shoved his beard into his mouth and made faces, and very skilfully
+pretended to know nothing of this case, excepting that the reasons for
+an appeal were insufficient, and that he, therefore, agreed with the
+chairman to leave the decision of the Court unaltered.
+
+So the sentence remained unrepealed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+AN OLD FRIEND.
+
+"Terrible," said Nekhludoff, as he went out into the waiting-room with
+the advocate, who was arranging the papers in his portfolio. "In a
+matter which is perfectly clear they attach all the importance to the
+form and reject the appeal. Terrible!"
+
+"The case was spoiled in the Criminal Court," said the advocate.
+
+"And Selenin, too, was in favour of the rejection. Terrible! terrible!"
+Nekhludoff repeated. "What is to be done now?"
+
+"We will appeal to His Majesty, and you can hand in the petition
+yourself while you are here. I will write it for you."
+
+At this moment little Wolf, with his stars and uniform, came out into
+the waiting-room and approached Nekhludoff. "It could not be helped,
+dear Prince. The reasons for an appeal were not sufficient," he said,
+shrugging his narrow shoulders and closing his eyes, and then he went
+his way.
+
+After Wolf, Selenin came out too, having heard from the Senators that
+his old friend Nekhludoff was there.
+
+"Well, I never expected to see you here," he said, coming up to
+Nekhludoff, and smiling only with his lips while his eyes remained sad.
+"I did not know you were in Petersburg."
+
+"And I did not know you were Public Prosecutor-in-Chief."
+
+"How is it you are in the Senate?" asked Selenin. "I had heard, by the
+way, that you were in Petersburg. But what are you doing here?"
+
+"Here? I am here because I hoped to find justice and save a woman
+innocently condemned."
+
+"What woman?"
+
+"The one whose case has just been decided."
+
+"Oh! Maslova's case," said Selenin, suddenly remembering it. "The appeal
+had no grounds whatever."
+
+"It is not the appeal; it's the woman who is innocent, and is being
+punished."
+
+Selenin sighed. "That may well be, but----"
+
+"Not _may be_, but is."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because I was on the jury. I know how we made the mistake."
+
+Selenin became thoughtful. "You should have made a statement at the
+time," he said.
+
+"I did make the statement."
+
+"It should have been put down in an official report. If this had been
+added to the petition for the appeal--"
+
+"Yes, but still, as it is, the verdict is evidently absurd."
+
+"The Senate has no right to say so. If the Senate took upon itself to
+repeal the decision of the law courts according to its own views as
+to the justice of the decisions in themselves, the verdict of the jury
+would lose all its meaning, not to mention that the Senate would have
+no basis to go upon, and would run the risk of infringing justice rather
+than upholding it," said Selenin, calling to mind the case that had just
+been heard.
+
+"All I know is that this woman is quite innocent, and that the last
+hope of saving her from an unmerited punishment is gone. The grossest
+injustice has been confirmed by the highest court."
+
+"It has not been confirmed. The Senate did not and cannot enter into
+the merits of the case in itself," said Selenin. Always busy and rarely
+going out into society, he had evidently heard nothing of Nekhludoff's
+romance. Nekhludoff noticed it, and made up his mind that it was best to
+say nothing about his special relations with Maslova.
+
+"You are probably staying with your aunt," Selenin remarked, apparently
+wishing to change the subject. "She told me you were here yesterday, and
+she invited me to meet you in the evening, when some foreign preacher
+was to lecture," and Selenin again smiled only with his lips.
+
+"Yes, I was there, but left in disgust," said Nekhludoff angrily, vexed
+that Selenin had changed the subject.
+
+"Why with disgust? After all, it is a manifestation of religious
+feeling, though one-sided and sectarian," said Selenin.
+
+"Why, it's only some kind of whimsical folly."
+
+"Oh, dear, no. The curious thing is that we know the teaching of our
+church so little that we see some new kind of revelation in what are,
+after all, our own fundamental dogmas," said Selenin, as if hurrying to
+let his old friend know his new views.
+
+Nekhludoff looked at Selenin scrutinisingly and with surprise, and
+Selenin dropped his eyes, in which appeared an expression not only of
+sadness but also of ill-will.
+
+"Do you, then, believe in the dogmas of the church?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"Of course I do," replied Selenin, gazing straight into Nekhludoff's
+eyes with a lifeless look.
+
+Nekhludoff sighed. "It is strange," he said.
+
+"However, we shall have a talk some other time," said Selenin. "I
+am coming," he added, in answer to the usher, who had respectfully
+approached him. "Yes, we must meet again," he went on with a sigh. "But
+will it be possible for me to find you? You will always find me in at
+seven o'clock. My address is Nadejdinskaya," and he gave the number.
+"Ah, time does not stand still," and he turned to go, smiling only with
+his lips.
+
+"I will come if I can," said Nekhludoff, feeling that a man once
+near and dear to him had, by this brief conversation, suddenly become
+strange, distant, and incomprehensible, if not hostile to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR.
+
+When Nekhludoff knew Selenin as a student, he was a good son, a true
+friend, and for his years an educated man of the world, with much tact;
+elegant, handsome, and at the same time truthful and honest. He learned
+well, without much exertion and with no pedantry, receiving gold medals
+for his essays. He considered the service of mankind, not only in words
+but in acts, to be the aim of his young life. He saw no other way of
+being useful to humanity than by serving the State. Therefore, as soon
+as he had completed his studies, he systematically examined all the
+activities to which he might devote his life, and decided to enter the
+Second Department of the Chancellerie, where the laws are drawn up, and
+he did so. But, in spite of the most scrupulous and exact discharge of
+the duties demanded of him, this service gave no satisfaction to his
+desire of being useful, nor could he awake in himself the consciousness
+that he was doing "the right thing."
+
+This dissatisfaction was so much increased by the friction with his very
+small-minded and vain fellow officials that he left the Chancellerie and
+entered the Senate. It was better there, but the same dissatisfaction
+still pursued him; he felt it to be very different from what he had
+expected, and from what ought to be.
+
+And now that he was in the Senate his relatives obtained for him the
+post of Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and he had to go in a carriage,
+dressed in an embroidered uniform and a white linen apron, to thank
+all sorts of people for having placed him in the position of a lackey.
+However much he tried he could find no reasonable explanation for the
+existence of this post, and felt, more than in the Senate, that it
+was not "the right thing," and yet he could not refuse it for fear of
+hurting those who felt sure they were giving him much pleasure by this
+appointment, and because it flattered the lowest part of his nature. It
+pleased him to see himself in a mirror in his gold-embroidered uniform,
+and to accept the deference paid him by some people because of his
+position.
+
+Something of the same kind happened when he married. A very brilliant
+match, from a worldly point of view, was arranged for him, and he
+married chiefly because by refusing he would have had to hurt the
+young lady who wished to be married to him, and those who arranged the
+marriage, and also because a marriage with a nice young girl of noble
+birth flattered his vanity and gave him pleasure. But this marriage
+very soon proved to be even less "the right thing" than the Government
+service and his position at Court.
+
+After the birth of her first child the wife decided to have no more,
+and began leading that luxurious worldly life in which he now had to
+participate whether he liked or not.
+
+She was not particularly handsome, and was faithful to him, and she
+seemed, in spite of all the efforts it cost her, to derive nothing but
+weariness from the life she led, yet she perseveringly continued to live
+it, though it was poisoning her husband's life. And all his efforts
+to alter this life was shattered, as against a stone wall, by her
+conviction, which all her friends and relatives supported, that all was
+as it should be.
+
+The child, a little girl with bare legs and long golden curls, was a
+being perfectly foreign to him, chiefly because she was trained quite
+otherwise than he wished her to be. There sprung up between the husband
+and wife the usual misunderstanding, without even the wish to understand
+each other, and then a silent warfare, hidden from outsiders and
+tempered by decorum. All this made his life at home a burden, and became
+even less "the right thing" than his service and his post.
+
+But it was above all his attitude towards religion which was not "the
+right thing." Like every one of his set and his time, by the growth of
+his reason he broke without the least effort the nets of the religious
+superstitions in which he was brought up, and did not himself exactly
+know when it was that he freed himself of them. Being earnest and
+upright, he did not, during his youth and intimacy with Nekhludoff as a
+student, conceal his rejection of the State religion. But as years
+went on and he rose in the service, and especially at the time of the
+reaction towards conservatism in society, his spiritual freedom stood in
+his way.
+
+At home, when his father died, he had to be present at the masses
+said for his soul, and his mother wished him to go to confession or to
+communion, and it was in a way expected, by public opinion, but above
+all, Government service demanded that he should be present at all sorts
+of services, consecrations, thanksgivings, and the like. Hardly a day
+passed without some outward religious form having to be observed.
+
+When present at these services he had to pretend that he believed in
+something which he did not believe in, and being truthful he could not
+do this. The alternative was, having made up his mind that all these
+outward signs were deceitful, to alter his life in such a way that he
+would not have to be present at such ceremonials. But to do what
+seemed so simple would have cost a great deal. Besides encountering the
+perpetual hostility of all those who were near to him, he would have to
+give up the service and his position, and sacrifice his hopes of being
+useful to humanity by his service, now and in the future. To make such a
+sacrifice one would have to be firmly convinced of being right.
+
+And he was firmly convinced he was right, as no educated man of our
+time can help being convinced who knows a little history and how the
+religions, and especially Church Christianity, originated.
+
+But under the stress of his daily life he, a truthful man, allowed a
+little falsehood to creep in. He said that in order to do justice to
+an unreasonable thing one had to study the unreasonable thing. It was a
+little falsehood, but it sunk him into the big falsehood in which he was
+now caught.
+
+Before putting to himself the question whether the orthodoxy in which
+he was born and bred, and which every one expected him to accept, and
+without which he could not continue his useful occupation, contained the
+truth, he had already decided the answer. And to clear up the question
+he did not read Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, or Comte, but
+the philosophical works of Hegel and the religious works of Vinet and
+Khomyakoff, and naturally found in them what he wanted, i.e., something
+like peace of mind and a vindication of that religious teaching in which
+he was educated, which his reason had long ceased to accept, but without
+which his whole life was filled with unpleasantness which could all be
+removed by accepting the teaching.
+
+And so he adopted all the usual sophistries which go to prove that
+a single human reason cannot know the truth, that the truth is only
+revealed to an association of men, and can only be known by revelation,
+that revelation is kept by the church, etc. And so he managed to be
+present at prayers, masses for the dead, to confess, make signs of the
+cross in front of icons, with a quiet mind, without being conscious of
+the lie, and to continue in the service which gave him the feeling of
+being useful and some comfort in his joyless family life. Although he
+believed this, he felt with his entire being that this religion of his,
+more than all else, was not "the right thing," and that is why his eyes
+always looked sad.
+
+And seeing Nekhludoff, whom he had known before all these lies had
+rooted themselves within him, reminded him of what he then was. It was
+especially after he had hurried to hint at his religious views that he
+had most strongly felt all this "not the right thing," and had become
+painfully sad. Nekhludoff felt it also after the first joy of meeting
+his old friend had passed, and therefore, though they promised each
+other to meet, they did not take any steps towards an interview, and did
+not again see each other during this stay of Nekhludoff's in Petersburg.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MARIETTE TEMPTS NEKHLUDOFF.
+
+When they left the Senate, Nekhludoff and the advocate walked on
+together, the advocate having given the driver of his carriage orders
+to follow them. The advocate told Nekhludoff the story of the chief of a
+Government department, about whom the Senators had been talking: how the
+thing was found out, and how the man, who according to law should
+have been sent to the mines, had been appointed Governor of a town
+in Siberia. Then he related with particular pleasure how several
+high-placed persons stole a lot of money collected for the erection of
+the still unfinished monument which they had passed that morning; also,
+how the mistress of So-and-so got a lot of money at the Stock Exchange,
+and how So-and-so agreed with So-and-so to sell him his wife. The
+advocate began another story about a swindle, and all sorts of crimes
+committed by persons in high places, who, instead of being in prison,
+sat on presidential chairs in all sorts of Government institutions.
+These tales, of which the advocate seemed to have an unending supply,
+gave him much pleasure, showing as they did, with perfect clearness,
+that his means of getting money were quite just and innocent compared
+to the means which the highest officials in Petersburg made use of.
+The advocate was therefore surprised when Nekhludoff took an isvostchik
+before hearing the end of the story, said good-bye, and left him.
+Nekhludoff felt very sad. It was chiefly the rejection of the appeal by
+the Senate, confirming the senseless torments that the innocent Maslova
+was enduring, that saddened him, and also the fact that this rejection
+made it still harder for him to unite his fate with hers. The stories
+about existing evils, which the advocate recounted with such relish,
+heightened his sadness, and so did the cold, unkind look that the
+once sweet-natured, frank, noble Selenin had given him, and which kept
+recurring to his mind.
+
+On his return the doorkeeper handed him a note, and said, rather
+scornfully, that some kind of woman had written it in the hall. It was
+a note from Shoustova's mother. She wrote that she had come to thank
+her daughter's benefactor and saviour, and to implore him to come to see
+them on the Vasilievsky, 5th Line, house No. --. This was very necessary
+because of Vera Doukhova. He need not be afraid that they would weary
+him with expressions of gratitude. They would not speak their gratitude,
+but be simply glad to see him. Would he not come next morning, if he
+could?
+
+There was another note from Bogotyreff, a former fellow-officer,
+aide-de-camp to the Emperor, whom Nekhludoff had asked to hand
+personally to the Emperor his petition on behalf of the sectarians.
+Bogotyreff wrote, in his large, firm hand, that he would put the
+petition into the Emperor's own hands, as he had promised; but that it
+had occurred to him that it might be better for Nekhludoff first to go
+and see the person on whom the matter depended.
+
+After the impressions received during the last few days, Nekhludoff felt
+perfectly hopeless of getting anything done. The plans he had formed
+in Moscow seemed now something like the dreams of youth, which are
+inevitably followed by disillusion when life comes to be faced. Still,
+being now in Petersburg, he considered it his duty to do all he had
+intended, and he resolved next day, after consulting Bogotyreff, to
+act on his advice and see the person on whom the case of the sectarians
+depended.
+
+He got out the sectarians' petition from his portfolio, and began
+reading it over, when there was a knock at his door, and a footman came
+in with a message from the Countess Katerina Ivanovna, who asked him to
+come up and have a cup of tea with her.
+
+Nekhludoff said he would come at once, and having put the papers back
+into the portfolio, he went up to his aunt's. He looked out of a window
+on his way, and saw Mariette's pair of bays standing in front of the
+house, and he suddenly brightened and felt inclined to smile.
+
+Mariette, with a hat on her head, not in black but with a light dress
+of many shades, sat with a cup in her hand beside the Countess's easy
+chair, prattling about something while her beautiful, laughing
+eyes glistened. She had said something funny--something indecently
+funny--just as Nekhludoff entered the room. He knew it by the way she
+laughed, and by the way the good-natured Countess Katerina Ivanovna's
+fat body was shaking with laughter; while Mariette, her smiling mouth
+slightly drawn to one side, her head a little bent, a peculiarly
+mischievous expression in her merry, energetic face, sat silently
+looking at her companion. From a few words which he overheard,
+Nekhludoff guessed that they were talking of the second piece of
+Petersburg news, the episode of the Siberian Governor, and that it was
+in reference to this subject that Mariette had said something so funny
+that the Countess could not control herself for a long time.
+
+"You will kill me," she said, coughing.
+
+After saying "How d'you do?" Nekhludoff sat down. He was about to
+censure Mariette in his mind for her levity when, noticing the serious
+and even slightly dissatisfied look in his eyes, she suddenly, to please
+him, changed not only the expression of her face, but also the attitude
+of her mind; for she felt the wish to please him as soon as she looked
+at him. She suddenly turned serious, dissatisfied with her life, as if
+seeking and striving after something; it was not that she pretended, but
+she really reproduced in herself the very same state of mind that he was
+in, although it would have been impossible for her to express in words
+what was the state of Nekhludoff's mind at that moment.
+
+She asked him how he had accomplished his tasks. He told her about his
+failure in the Senate and his meeting Selenin.
+
+"Oh, what a pure soul! He is, indeed, a chevalier sans peur et sans
+reproche. A pure soul!" said both ladies, using the epithet commonly
+applied to Selenin in Petersburg society.
+
+"What is his wife like?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"His wife? Well, I do not wish to judge, but she does not understand
+him."
+
+"Is it possible that he, too, was for rejecting the appeal?" Mariette
+asked with real sympathy. "It is dreadful. How sorry I am for her," she
+added with a sigh.
+
+He frowned, and in order to change the subject began to speak about
+Shoustova, who had been imprisoned in the fortress and was now set free
+through the influence of Mariette's husband. He thanked her for her
+trouble, and was going on to say how dreadful he thought it, that this
+woman and the whole of her family had suffered merely, because no one
+had reminded the authorities about them, but Mariette interrupted him
+and expressed her own indignation.
+
+"Say nothing about it to me," she said. "When my husband told me she
+could be set free, it was this that struck me, 'What was she kept in
+prison for if she is innocent?'" She went on expressing what Nekhludoff
+was about to say.
+
+"It is revolting--revolting."
+
+Countess Katerina Ivanovna noticed that Mariette was coquetting with her
+nephew, and this amused her. "What do you think?" she said, when they
+were silent. "Supposing you come to Aline's to-morrow night. Kiesewetter
+will be there. And you, too," she said, turning to Mariette. "_Il vous a
+remarque_," she went on to her nephew. "He told me that what you say (I
+repeated it all to him) is a very good sign, and that you will certainly
+come to Christ. You must come absolutely. Tell him to, Mariette, and
+come yourself."
+
+"Countess, in the first place, I have no right whatever to give any kind
+of advice to the Prince," said Mariette, and gave Nekhludoff a look that
+somehow established a full comprehension between them of their attitude
+in relation to the Countess's words and evangelicalism in general.
+"Secondly, I do not much care, you know."
+
+"Yes, I know you always do things the wrong way round, and according to
+your own ideas."
+
+"My own ideas? I have faith like the most simple peasant woman," said
+Mariette with a smile. "And, thirdly, I am going to the French Theatre
+to-morrow night."
+
+"Ah! And have you seen that--What's her name?" asked Countess Katerina
+Ivanovna. Mariette gave the name of a celebrated French actress.
+
+"You must go, most decidedly; she is wonderful."
+
+"Whom am I to see first, ma tante--the actress or the preacher?"
+Nekhludoff said with a smile.
+
+"Please don't catch at my words."
+
+"I should think the preacher first and then the actress, or else the
+desire for the sermon might vanish altogether," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"No; better begin with the French Theatre, and do penance afterwards."
+
+"Now, then, you are not to hold me up for ridicule. The preacher is the
+preacher and the theatre is the theatre. One need not weep in order to
+be saved. One must have faith, and then one is sure to be gay."
+
+"You, ma tante, preach better than any preacher."
+
+"Do you know what?" said Mariette. "Come into my box to-morrow."
+
+"I am afraid I shall not be able to."
+
+The footman interrupted the conversation by announcing a visitor. It
+was the secretary of a philanthropic society of which the Countess was
+president.
+
+"Oh, that is the dullest of men. I think I shall receive him out there,
+and return to you later on. Mariette, give him his tea," said the
+Countess, and left the room, with her quick, wriggling walk.
+
+Mariette took the glove off her firm, rather flat hand, the fourth
+finger of which was covered with rings.
+
+"Want any?" she said, taking hold of the silver teapot, under which a
+spirit lamp was burning, and extending her little finger curiously. Her
+face looked sad and serious.
+
+"It is always terribly painful to me to notice that people whose opinion
+I value confound me with the position I am placed in." She seemed ready
+to cry as she said these last words. And though these words had no
+meaning, or at any rate a very indefinite meaning, they seemed to be of
+exceptional depth, meaning, or goodness to Nekhludoff, so much was he
+attracted by the look of the bright eyes which accompanied the words of
+this young, beautiful, and well-dressed woman.
+
+Nekhludoff looked at her in silence, and could not take his eyes from
+her face.
+
+"You think I do not understand you and all that goes on in you. Why,
+everybody knows what you are doing. _C'est le secret de polichinelle_.
+And I am delighted with your work, and think highly of you."
+
+"Really, there is nothing to be delighted with; and I have done so
+little as Yet."
+
+"No matter. I understand your feelings, and I understand her. All
+right, all right. I will say nothing more about it," she said, noticing
+displeasure on his face. "But I also understand that after seeing all
+the suffering and the horror in the prisons," Mariette went on, her only
+desire that of attracting him, and guessing with her woman's instinct
+what was dear and important to him, "you wish to help the sufferers,
+those who are made to suffer so terribly by other men, and their cruelty
+and indifference. I understand the willingness to give one's life, and
+could give mine in such a cause, but we each have our own fate."
+
+"Are you, then, dissatisfied with your fate?"
+
+"I?" she asked, as if struck with surprise that such a question could
+be put to her. "I have to be satisfied, and am satisfied. But there is a
+worm that wakes up--"
+
+"And he must not be allowed to fall asleep again. It is a voice that
+must be obeyed," Nekhludoff said, falling into the trap.
+
+Many a time later on Nekhludoff remembered with shame his talk with her.
+He remembered her words, which were not so much lies as imitations of
+his own, and her face, which seemed looking at him with sympathetic
+attention when he told her about the terrors of the prison and of his
+impressions in the country.
+
+When the Countess returned they were talking not merely like old, but
+like exclusive friends who alone understood one another. They were
+talking about the injustice of power, of the sufferings of the
+unfortunate, the poverty of the people, yet in reality in the midst of
+the sound of their talk their eyes, gazing at each other, kept asking,
+"Can you love me?" and answering, "I can," and the sex-feeling, taking
+the most unexpected and brightest forms, drew them to each other. As she
+was going away she told him that she would always be willing to serve
+him in any way she could, and asked him to come and see her, if only for
+a moment, in the theatre next day, as she had a very important thing to
+tell him about.
+
+"Yes, and when shall I see you again?" she added, with a sigh, carefully
+drawing the glove over her jewelled hand.
+
+"Say you will come."
+
+Nekhludoff promised.
+
+That night, when Nekhludoff was alone in his room, and lay down after
+putting out his candle, he could not sleep. He thought of Maslova, of
+the decision of the Senate, of his resolve to follow her in any case, of
+his having given up the land. The face of Mariette appeared to him as if
+in answer to those thoughts--her look, her sigh, her words, "When shall
+I see you again?" and her smile seemed vivid as if he really saw her,
+and he also smiled. "Shall I be doing right in going to Siberia? And
+have I done right in divesting myself of my wealth?" And the answers to
+the questions on this Petersburg night, on which the daylight streamed
+into the window from under the blind, were quite indefinite. All seemed
+mixed in his head. He recalled his former state of mind, and the former
+sequence of his thoughts, but they had no longer their former power or
+validity.
+
+"And supposing I have invented all this, and am unable to live it
+through--supposing I repent of having acted right," he thought; and
+unable to answer he was seized with such anguish and despair as he had
+long not felt. Unable to free himself from his perplexity, he fell into
+a heavy sleep, such as he had slept after a heavy loss at cards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+LYDIA SHOUSTOVA'S HOME.
+
+Nekhludoff awoke next morning feeling as if he had been guilty of some
+iniquity the day before. He began considering. He could not remember
+having done anything wrong; he had committed no evil act, but he had had
+evil thoughts. He had thought that all his present resolutions to marry
+Katusha and to give up his land were unachievable dreams; that he should
+be unable to bear it; that it was artificial, unnatural; and that he
+would have to go on living as he lived.
+
+He had committed no evil action, but, what was far worse than an
+evil action, he had entertained evil thoughts whence all evil actions
+proceed. An evil action may not be repeated, and can be repented of; but
+evil thoughts generate all evil actions.
+
+An evil action only smooths the path for other evil acts; evil thoughts
+uncontrollably drag one along that path.
+
+When Nekhludoff repeated in his mind the thoughts of the day before, he
+was surprised that he could for a moment have believed these thoughts.
+However new and difficult that which he had decided to do might be, he
+knew that it was the only possible way of life for him now, and however
+easy and natural it might have been to return to his former state, he
+knew that state to be death.
+
+Yesterday's temptation seemed like the feeling when one awakes from deep
+sleep, and, without feeling sleepy, wants to lie comfortably in bed a
+little longer, yet knows that it is time to rise and commence the glad
+and important work that awaits one.
+
+On that, his last day in Petersburg, he went in the morning to the
+Vasilievski Ostrov to see Shoustova. Shoustova lived on the second
+floor, and having been shown the back stairs, Nekhludoff entered
+straight into the hot kitchen, which smelt strongly of food. An elderly
+woman, with turned-up sleeves, with an apron and spectacles, stood by
+the fire stirring something in a steaming pan.
+
+"Whom do you want?" she asked severely, looking at him over her
+spectacles.
+
+Before Nekhludoff had time to answer, an expression of fright and joy
+appeared on her face.
+
+"Oh, Prince!" she exclaimed, wiping her hands on her apron. "But why
+have you come the back way? Our Benefactor! I am her mother. They have
+nearly killed my little girl. You have saved us," she said, catching
+hold of Nekhludoff's hand and trying to kiss it.
+
+"I went to see you yesterday. My sister asked me to. She is here. This
+way, this way, please," said Shoustova's mother, as she led the way
+through a narrow door, and a dark passage, arranging her hair and
+pulling at her tucked-up skirt. "My sister's name is Kornilova. You must
+have heard of her," she added, stopping before a closed door. "She was
+mixed up in a political affair. An extremely clever woman!"
+
+Shoustova's mother opened the door and showed Nekhludoff into a little
+room where on a sofa with a table before it sat a plump, short girl with
+fair hair that curled round her pale, round face, which was very like
+her mother's. She had a striped cotton blouse on.
+
+Opposite her, in an armchair, leaning forward, so that he was nearly
+bent double, sat a young fellow with a slight, black beard and
+moustaches.
+
+"Lydia, Prince Nekhludoff!" he said.
+
+The pale girl jumped up, nervously pushing back a lock of hair behind
+her ear, and gazing at the newcomer with a frightened look in her large,
+grey eyes.
+
+"So you are that dangerous woman whom Vera Doukhova wished me to
+intercede for?" Nekhludoff asked, with a smile.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Lydia Shoustova, her broad, kind, child-like smile
+disclosing a row of beautiful teeth. "It was aunt who was so anxious to
+see you. Aunt!" she called out, in a pleasant, tender voice through a
+door.
+
+"Your imprisonment grieved Vera Doukhova very much," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Take a seat here, or better here," said Shoustova, pointing to the
+battered easy-chair from which the young man had just risen.
+
+"My cousin, Zakharov," she said, noticing that Nekhludoff looked at the
+young man.
+
+The young man greeted the visitor with a smile as kindly as Shoustova's,
+and when Nekhludoff sat down he brought himself another chair, and sat
+by his side. A fair-haired schoolboy of about 10 also came into the room
+and silently sat down on the window-sill.
+
+"Vera Doukhova is a great friend of my aunt's, but I hardly know her,"
+said Shoustova.
+
+Then a woman with a very pleasant face, with a white blouse and leather
+belt, came in from the next room.
+
+"How do you do? Thanks for coming," she began as soon as she had taken
+the place next Shoustova's on the sofa.
+
+"Well, and how is Vera. You have seen her? How does she bear her fate?"
+
+"She does not complain," said Nekhludoff. "She says she feels perfectly
+happy."'
+
+"Ah, that's like Vera. I know her," said the aunt, smiling and shaking
+her head. "One must know her. She has a fine character. Everything for
+others; nothing for herself."
+
+"No, she asked nothing for herself, but only seemed concerned about your
+niece. What seemed to trouble her most was, as she said, that your niece
+was imprisoned for nothing."
+
+"Yes, that's true," said the aunt. "It is a dreadful business. She
+suffered, in reality, because of me."
+
+"Not at all, aunt. I should have taken the papers without you all the
+same."
+
+"Allow me to know better," said the aunt. "You see," she went on to
+Nekhludoff, "it all happened because a certain person asked me to keep
+his papers for a time, and I, having no house at the time, brought them
+to her. And that very night the police searched her room and took her
+and the papers, and have kept her up to now, demanding that she should
+say from whom she had them."
+
+"But I never told them," said Shoustova quickly, pulling nervously at a
+lock that was not even out of place.
+
+"I never said you did," answered the aunt.
+
+"If they took Mitin up it was certainly not through me," said Shoustova,
+blushing, and looking round uneasily.
+
+"Don't speak about it, Lydia dear," said her mother.
+
+"Why not? I should like to relate it," said Shoustova, no longer smiling
+nor pulling her lock, but twisting it round her finger and getting
+redder.
+
+"Don't forget what happened yesterday when you began talking about it."
+
+"Not at all---Leave me alone, mamma. I did not tell, I only kept quiet.
+When he examined me about Mitin and about aunt, I said nothing, and told
+him I would not answer."
+
+"Then this--Petrov--"
+
+"Petrov is a spy, a gendarme, and a blackguard," put in the aunt, to
+explain her niece's words to Nekhludoff.
+
+"Then he began persuading," continued Shoustova, excitedly and
+hurriedly. "'Anything you tell me,' he said, 'can harm no one; on the
+contrary, if you tell me, we may be able to set free innocent people
+whom we may be uselessly tormenting.' Well, I still said I would not
+tell. Then he said, 'All right, don't tell, but do not deny what I am
+going to say.' And he named Mitin."
+
+"Don't talk about it," said the aunt.
+
+"Oh, aunt, don't interrupt," and she went on pulling the lock of hair
+and looking round. "And then, only fancy, the next day I hear--they let
+me know by knocking at the wall--that Mitin is arrested. Well, I think
+I have betrayed him, and this tormented me so--it tormented me so that I
+nearly went mad."
+
+"And it turned out that it was not at all because of you he was taken
+up?"
+
+"Yes, but I didn't know. I think, 'There, now, I have betrayed him.' I
+walk and walk up and down from wall to wall, and cannot help thinking.
+I think, 'I have betrayed him.' I lie down and cover myself up, and hear
+something whispering, 'Betrayed! betrayed Mitin! Mitin betrayed!' I
+know it is an hallucination, but cannot help listening. I wish to
+fall asleep, I cannot. I wish not to think, and cannot cease. That is
+terrible!" and as Shoustova spoke she got more and more excited, and
+twisted and untwisted the lock of hair round her finger.
+
+"Lydia, dear, be calm," the mother said, touching her shoulder.
+
+But Shoustova could not stop herself.
+
+"It is all the more terrible--" she began again, but did not finish, and
+jumping up with a cry rushed out of the room.
+
+Her mother turned to follow her.
+
+"They ought to be hanged, the rascals!" said the schoolboy who was
+sitting on the window-sill.
+
+"What's that?" said the mother.
+
+"I only said--Oh, it's nothing," the schoolboy answered, and taking a
+cigarette that lay on the table, he began to smoke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+LYDIA'S AUNT.
+
+"Yes, that solitary confinement is terrible for the young," said the
+aunt, shaking her head and also lighting a cigarette.
+
+"I should say for every one," Nekhludoff replied.
+
+"No, not for all," answered the aunt. "For the real revolutionists, I
+have been told, it is rest and quiet. A man who is wanted by the police
+lives in continual anxiety, material want, and fear for himself and
+others, and for his cause, and at last, when he is taken up and it is
+all over, and all responsibility is off his shoulders, he can sit and
+rest. I have been told they actually feel joyful when taken up. But the
+young and innocent (they always first arrest the innocent, like Lydia),
+for them the first shock is terrible. It is not that they deprive you of
+freedom; and the bad food and bad air--all that is nothing. Three times
+as many privations would be easily borne if it were not for the moral
+shock when one is first taken."
+
+"Have you experienced it?"
+
+"I? I was twice in prison," she answered, with a sad, gentle smile.
+"When I was arrested for the first time I had done nothing. I was 22,
+had a child, and was expecting another. Though the loss of freedom and
+the parting with my child and husband were hard, they were nothing when
+compared with what I felt when I found out that I had ceased being a
+human creature and had become a thing. I wished to say good-bye to my
+little daughter. I was told to go and get into the trap. I asked where I
+was being taken to. The answer was that I should know when I got there.
+I asked what I was accused of, but got no reply. After I had been
+examined, and after they had undressed me and put numbered prison
+clothes on me, they led me to a vault, opened a door, pushed me in, and
+left me alone; a sentinel, with a loaded gun, paced up and down in front
+of my door, and every now and then looked in through a crack--I felt
+terribly depressed. What struck me most at the time was that the
+gendarme officer who examined me offered me a cigarette. So he knew that
+people liked smoking, and must know that they liked freedom and light;
+and that mothers love their children, and children their mothers. Then
+how could they tear me pitilessly from all that was dear to me, and
+lock me up in prison like a wild animal? That sort of thing could not
+be borne without evil effects. Any one who believes in God and men, and
+believes that men love one another, will cease to believe it after all
+that. I have ceased to believe in humanity since then, and have grown
+embittered," she finished, with a smile.
+
+Shoustova's mother came in at the door through which her daughter had
+gone out, and said that Lydia was very much upset, and would not come in
+again.
+
+"And what has this young life been ruined for?" said the aunt. "What is
+especially painful to me is that I am the involuntary cause of it."
+
+"She will recover in the country, with God's help," said the mother. "We
+shall send her to her father."
+
+"Yes, if it were not for you she would have perished altogether," said
+the aunt. "Thank you. But what I wished to see you for is this: I wished
+to ask you to take a letter to Vera Doukhova," and she got the letter
+out of her pocket.
+
+"The letter is not closed; you may read and tear it up, or hand it to
+her, according to how far it coincides with your principles," she said.
+"It contains nothing compromising."
+
+Nekhludoff took the letter, and, having promised to give it to Vera
+Doukhova, he took his leave and went away. He sealed the letter without
+reading it, meaning to take it to its destination.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+THE STATE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.
+
+The last thing that kept Nekhludoff in Petersburg was the case of the
+sectarians, whose petition he intended to get his former fellow-officer,
+Aide-de-camp Bogatyreff, to hand to the Tsar. He came to Bogatyreff in
+the morning, and found him about to go out, though still at breakfast.
+Bogatyreff was not tall, but firmly built and wonderfully strong (he
+could bend a horseshoe), a kind, honest, straight, and even liberal man.
+In spite of these qualities, he was intimate at Court, and very fond of
+the Tsar and his family, and by some strange method he managed, while
+living in that highest circle, to see nothing but the good in it and to
+take no part in the evil and corruption. He never condemned anybody
+nor any measure, and either kept silent or spoke in a bold, loud voice,
+almost shouting what he had to say, and often laughing in the same
+boisterous manner. And he did not do it for diplomatic reasons, but
+because such was his character.
+
+"Ah, that's right that you have come. Would you like some breakfast?
+Sit down, the beefsteaks are fine! I always begin with something
+substantial--begin and finish, too. Ha! ha! ha! Well, then, have a glass
+of wine," he shouted, pointing to a decanter of claret. "I have been
+thinking of you. I will hand on the petition. I shall put it into his
+own hands. You may count on that, only it occurred to me that it would
+be best for you to call on Toporoff."
+
+Nekhludoff made a wry face at the mention of Toporoff.
+
+"It all depends on him. He will be consulted, anyhow. And perhaps he may
+himself meet your wishes."
+
+"If you advise it I shall go."
+
+"That's right. Well, and how does Petersburg agree with you?" shouted
+Bogatyreff. "Tell me. Eh?"
+
+"I feel myself getting hypnotised," replied Nekhludoff.
+
+"Hypnotised!" Bogatyreff repeated, and burst out laughing. "You won't
+have anything? Well, just as you please," and he wiped his moustaches
+with his napkin. "Then you'll go? Eh? If he does not do it, give the
+petition to me, and I shall hand it on to-morrow." Shouting these words,
+he rose, crossed himself just as naturally as he had wiped his mouth,
+and began buckling on his sword.
+
+"And now good-bye; I must go. We are both going out," said Nekhludoff,
+and shaking Bogatyreff's strong, broad hand, and with the sense of
+pleasure which the impression of something healthy and unconsciously
+fresh always gave him, Nekhludoff parted from Bogatyreff on the
+door-steps.
+
+Though he expected no good result from his visit, still Nekhludoff,
+following Bogatyreff's advice, went to see Toporoff, on whom the
+sectarians' fate depended.
+
+The position occupied by Toporoff, involving as it did an incongruity of
+purpose, could only be held by a dull man devoid of moral sensibility.
+Toporoff possessed both these negative qualities. The incongruity of the
+position he occupied was this. It was his duty to keep up and to defend,
+by external measures, not excluding violence, that Church which, by its
+own declaration, was established by God Himself and could not be shaken
+by the gates of hell nor by anything human. This divine and immutable
+God-established institution had to be sustained and defended by a human
+institution--the Holy Synod, managed by Toporoff and his officials.
+Toporoff did not see this contradiction, nor did he wish to see it, and
+he was therefore much concerned lest some Romish priest, some pastor, or
+some sectarian should destroy that Church which the gates of hell could
+not conquer.
+
+Toporoff, like all those who are quite destitute of the fundamental
+religious feeling that recognises the equality and brotherhood of men,
+was fully convinced that the common people were creatures entirely
+different from himself, and that the people needed what he could very
+well do without, for at the bottom of his heart he believed in nothing,
+and found such a state very convenient and pleasant. Yet he feared lest
+the people might also come to such a state, and looked upon it as his
+sacred duty, as he called it, to save the people therefrom.
+
+A certain cookery book declares that some crabs like to be boiled alive.
+In the same way he thought and spoke as if the people liked being kept
+in superstition; only he meant this in a literal sense, whereas the
+cookery book did not mean its words literally.
+
+His feelings towards the religion he was keeping up were the same as
+those of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his fowls on.
+Carrion was very disgusting, but the fowls liked it; therefore it was
+right to feed the fowls on carrion. Of course all this worship of the
+images of the Iberian, Kasan and Smolensk Mothers of God was a gross
+superstition, but the people liked it and believed in it, and therefore
+the superstition must be kept up.
+
+Thus thought Toporoff, not considering that the people only liked
+superstition because there always have been, and still are, men like
+himself who, being enlightened, instead of using their light to help
+others to struggle out of their dark ignorance, use it to plunge them
+still deeper into it.
+
+When Nekhludoff entered the reception-room Toporoff was in his study
+talking with an abbess, a lively and aristocratic lady, who was
+spreading the Greek orthodox faith in Western Russia among the Uniates
+(who acknowledge the Pope of Rome), and who have the Greek religion
+enforced on them. An official who was in the reception-room inquired
+what Nekhludoff wanted, and when he heard that Nekhludoff meant to
+hand in a petition to the Emperor, he asked him if he would allow the
+petition to be read first. Nekhludoff gave it him, and the official took
+it into the study. The abbess, with her hood and flowing veil and her
+long train trailing behind, left the study and went out, her white hands
+(with their well-tended nails) holding a topaz rosary. Nekhludoff was
+not immediately asked to come in. Toporoff was reading the petition
+and shaking his head. He was unpleasantly surprised by the clear and
+emphatic wording of it.
+
+"If it gets into the hands of the Emperor it may cause
+misunderstandings, and unpleasant questions may be asked," he thought
+as he read. Then he put the petition on the table, rang, and ordered
+Nekhludoff to be asked in.
+
+He remembered the case of the sectarians; he had had a petition from
+them before. The case was this: These Christians, fallen away from the
+Greek Orthodox Church, were first exhorted and then tried by law, but
+were acquitted. Then the Archdeacon and the Governor arranged, on the
+plea that their marriages were illegal, to exile these sectarians,
+separating the husbands, wives, and children. These fathers and
+wives were now petitioning that they should not be parted. Toporoff
+recollected the first time the case came to his notice: he had at that
+time hesitated whether he had not better put a stop to it. But then
+he thought no harm could result from his confirming the decision to
+separate and exile the different members of the sectarian families,
+whereas allowing the peasant sect to remain where it was might have a
+bad effect on the rest of the inhabitants of the place and cause them
+to fall away from Orthodoxy. And then the affair also proved the zeal
+of the Archdeacon, and so he let the case proceed along the lines it had
+taken. But now that they had a defender such as Nekhludoff, who had some
+influence in Petersburg, the case might be specially pointed out to the
+Emperor as something cruel, or it might get into the foreign papers.
+Therefore he at once took an unexpected decision.
+
+"How do you do?" he said, with the air of a very busy man, receiving
+Nekhludoff standing, and at once starting on the business. "I know
+this case. As soon as I saw the names I recollected this unfortunate
+business," he said, taking up the petition and showing it to Nekhludoff.
+"And I am much indebted to you for reminding me of it. It is the
+over-zealousness of the provincial authorities."
+
+Nekhludoff stood silent, looking with no kindly feelings at the
+immovable, pale mask of a face before him.
+
+"And I shall give orders that these measures should be revoked and the
+people reinstated in their homes."
+
+"So that I need not make use of this petition?"
+
+"I promise you most assuredly," answered Toporoff, laying a stress on
+the word I, as if quite convinced that his honesty, his word was the
+best guarantee. "It will be best if I write at once. Take a seat,
+please."
+
+He went up to the table and began to write. As Nekhludoff sat down he
+looked at the narrow, bald skull, at the fat, blue-veined hand that was
+swiftly guiding the pen, and wondered why this evidently indifferent man
+was doing what he did and why he was doing it with such care.
+
+"Well, here you are," said Toporoff, sealing the envelope; "you may let
+your clients know," and he stretched his lips to imitate a smile.
+
+"Then what did these people suffer for?" Nekhludoff asked, as he took
+the envelope.
+
+Toporoff raised his head and smiled, as if Nekhludoff's question gave
+him pleasure. "That I cannot tell. All I can say is that the interests
+of the people guarded by us are so important that too great a zeal
+in matters of religion is not so dangerous or so harmful as the
+indifference which is now spreading--"
+
+"But how is it that in the name of religion the very first demands of
+righteousness are violated--families are separated?"
+
+Toporoff continued to smile patronisingly, evidently thinking what
+Nekhludoff said very pretty. Anything that Nekhludoff could say he would
+have considered very pretty and very one-sided, from the height of what
+he considered his far-reaching office in the State.
+
+"It may seem so from the point of view of a private individual," he
+said, "but from an administrative point of view it appears in a rather
+different light. However, I must bid you good-bye, now," said Toporoff,
+bowing his head and holding out his hand, which Nekhludoff pressed.
+
+"The interests of the people! Your interests is what you mean!" thought
+Nekhludoff as he went out. And he ran over in his mind the people in
+whom is manifested the activity of the institutions that uphold religion
+and educate the people. He began with the woman punished for the
+illicit sale of spirits, the boy for theft, the tramp for tramping, the
+incendiary for setting a house on fire, the banker for fraud, and that
+unfortunate Lydia Shoustova imprisoned only because they hoped to get
+such information as they required from her. Then he thought of the
+sectarians punished for violating Orthodoxy, and Gourkevitch for wanting
+constitutional government, and Nekhludoff clearly saw that all these
+people were arrested, locked up, exiled, not really because they
+transgressed against justice or behaved unlawfully, but only because
+they were an obstacle hindering the officials and the rich from enjoying
+the property they had taken away from the people. And the woman who sold
+wine without having a license, and the thief knocking about the town,
+and Lydia Shoustova hiding proclamations, and the sectarians upsetting
+superstitions, and Gourkevitch desiring a constitution, were a real
+hindrance. It seemed perfectly clear to Nekhludoff that all these
+officials, beginning with his aunt's husband, the Senators, and
+Toporoff, down to those clean and correct gentlemen who sat at the
+tables in the Ministry Office, were not at all troubled by the fact that
+that in such a state of things the innocent had to suffer, but were only
+concerned how to get rid of the really dangerous, so that the rule
+that ten guilty should escape rather than that one innocent should
+be condemned was not observed, but, on the contrary, for the sake of
+getting rid of one really dangerous person, ten who seemed dangerous
+were punished, as, when cutting a rotten piece out of anything, one has
+to cut away some that is good.
+
+This explanation seemed very simple and clear to Nekhludoff; but its
+very simplicity and clearness made him hesitate to accept it. Was it
+possible that so complicated a phenomenon could have so simple and
+terrible an explanation? Was it possible that all these words about
+justice, law, religion, and God, and so on, were mere words, hiding the
+coarsest cupidity and cruelty?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+THE MEANING OF MARIETTE'S ATTRACTION.
+
+Nekhludoff would have left Petersburg on the evening of the same day,
+but he had promised Mariette to meet her at the theatre, and though he
+knew that he ought not to keep that promise, he deceived himself into
+the belief that it would not be right to break his word.
+
+"Am I capable of withstanding these temptations?" he asked himself not
+quite honestly. "I shall try for the last time."
+
+He dressed in his evening clothes, and arrived at the theatre during the
+second act of the eternal Dame aux Camelias, in which a foreign actress
+once again, and in a novel manner, showed how women die of consumption.
+
+The theatre was quite full. Mariette's box was at once, and with great
+deference, shown to Nekhludoff at his request. A liveried servant stood
+in the corridor outside; he bowed to Nekhludoff as to one whom he knew,
+and opened the door of the box.
+
+All the people who sat and stood in the boxes on the opposite side,
+those who sat near and those who were in the parterre, with their grey,
+grizzly, bald, or curly heads--all were absorbed in watching the thin,
+bony actress who, dressed in silks and laces, was wriggling before them,
+and speaking in an unnatural voice.
+
+Some one called "Hush!" when the door opened, and two streams, one of
+cool, the other of hot, air touched Nekhludoff's face.
+
+Mariette and a lady whom he did not know, with a red cape and a big,
+heavy head-dress, were in the box, and two men also, Mariette's
+husband, the General, a tall, handsome man with a severe, inscrutable
+countenance, a Roman nose, and a uniform padded round the chest, and a
+fair man, with a bit of shaved chin between pompous whiskers.
+
+Mariette, graceful, slight, elegant, her low-necked dress showing her
+firm, shapely, slanting shoulders, with a little black mole where they
+joined her neck, immediately turned, and pointed with her face to a
+chair behind her in an engaging manner, and smiled a smile that seemed
+full of meaning to Nekhludoff.
+
+The husband looked at him in the quiet way in which he did everything,
+and bowed. In the look he exchanged with his wife, the master, the owner
+of a beautiful woman, was to be seen at once.
+
+When the monologue was over the theatre resounded with the clapping of
+hands. Mariette rose, and holding up her rustling silk skirt, went into
+the back of the box and introduced Nekhludoff to her husband.
+
+The General, without ceasing to smile with his eyes, said he was very
+pleased, and then sat inscrutably silent.
+
+"I ought to have left to-day, had I not promised," said Nekhludoff to
+Mariette.
+
+"If you do not care to see me," said Mariette, in answer to what his
+words implied, "you will see a wonderful actress. Was she not splendid
+in the last scene?" she asked, turning to her husband.
+
+The husband bowed his head.
+
+"This sort of thing does not touch me," said Nekhludoff. "I have seen so
+much real suffering lately that--"
+
+"Yes, sit down and tell me."
+
+The husband listened, his eyes smiling more and more ironically. "I have
+been to see that woman whom they have set free, and who has been kept in
+prison for so long; she is quite broken down."
+
+"That is the woman I spoke to you about," Mariette said to her husband.
+
+"Oh, yes, I was very pleased that she could be set free," said the
+husband quietly, nodding and smiling under his moustache with evident
+irony, so it seemed to Nekhludoff. "I shall go and have a smoke."
+
+Nekhludoff sat waiting to hear what the something was that Mariette had
+to tell him. She said nothing, and did not even try to say anything, but
+joked and spoke about the performance, which she thought ought to touch
+Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff saw that she had nothing to tell, but only wished
+to show herself to him in all the splendour of her evening toilet, with
+her shoulders and little mole; and this was pleasant and yet repulsive
+to him.
+
+The charm that had veiled all this sort of thing from Nekhludoff was
+not removed, but it was as if he could see what lay beneath. Looking at
+Mariette, he admired her, and yet he knew that she was a liar, living
+with a husband who was making his career by means of the tears and lives
+of hundreds and hundreds of people, and that she was quite indifferent
+about it, and that all she had said the day before was untrue. What she
+wanted--neither he nor she knew why--was to make him fall in love with
+her. This both attracted and disgusted him. Several times, on the point
+of going away, he took up his hat, and then stayed on.
+
+But at last, when the husband returned with a strong smell of tobacco
+in his thick moustache, and looked at Nekhludoff with a patronising,
+contemptuous air, as if not recognising him, Nekhludoff left the box
+before the door was closed again, found his overcoat, and went out of
+the theatre. As he was walking home along the Nevski, he could not help
+noticing a well-shaped and aggressively finely-dressed woman, who was
+quietly walking in front of him along the broad asphalt pavement. The
+consciousness of her detestable power was noticeable in her face and
+the whole of her figure. All who met or passed that woman looked at her.
+Nekhludoff walked faster than she did and, involuntarily, also looked
+her in the face. The face, which was probably painted, was handsome,
+and the woman looked at him with a smile and her eyes sparkled. And,
+curiously enough, Nekhludoff was suddenly reminded of Mariette, because
+he again felt both attracted and disgusted just as when in the theatre.
+
+Having hurriedly passed her, Nekhludoff turned off on to the Morskaya,
+and passed on to the embankment, where, to the surprise of a policeman,
+he began pacing up and down the pavement.
+
+"The other one gave me just such a smile when I entered the theatre," he
+thought, "and the meaning of the smile was the same. The only difference
+is, that this one said plainly, 'If you want me, take me; if not, go
+your way,' and the other one pretended that she was not thinking of
+this, but living in some high and refined state, while this was really
+at the root. Besides, this one was driven to it by necessity, while
+the other amused herself by playing with that enchanting, disgusting,
+frightful passion. This woman of the street was like stagnant, smelling
+water offered to those whose thirst was greater than their disgust; that
+other one in the theatre was like the poison which, unnoticed, poisons
+everything it gets into."
+
+Nekhludoff recalled his liaison with the Marechal's wife, and shameful
+memories rose before him.
+
+"The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting," thought he,
+"but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the
+height of our spiritual life and despise it; and--whether one has
+fallen or resisted--one remains what one was before. But when that
+same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and
+demands our worship--then we are swallowed up by it completely, and
+worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is
+awful."
+
+Nekhludoff perceived all this now as clearly as he saw the palace, the
+sentinels, the fortress, the river, the boats, and the Stock Exchange.
+And just as on this northern summer night there was no restful darkness
+on the earth, but only a dismal, dull light coming from an invisible
+source, so in Nekhludoff's soul there was no longer the restful
+darkness, ignorance. Everything seemed clear. It was clear that
+everything considered important and good was insignificant and
+repulsive, and that all the glamour and luxury hid the old, well-known
+crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the
+splendour which men were capable of inventing.
+
+Nekhludoff wished to forget all this, not to see it, but he could no
+longer help seeing it. Though he could not see the source of the light
+which revealed it to him any more than he could see the source of the
+light which lay over Petersburg; and though the light appeared to
+him dull, dismal, and unnatural, yet he could not help seeing what it
+revealed, and he felt both joyful and anxious.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+FOR HER SAKE AND FOR GOD'S.
+
+On his return to Moscow Nekhludoff went at once to the prison hospital
+to bring Maslova the sad news that the Senate had confirmed the decision
+of the Court, and that she must prepare to go to Siberia. He had little
+hope of the success of his petition to the Emperor, which the advocate
+had written for him, and which he now brought with him for Maslova to
+sign. And, strange to say, he did not at present even wish to succeed;
+he had got used to the thought of going to Siberia and living among the
+exiled and the convicts, and he could not easily picture to himself how
+his life and Maslova's would shape if she were acquitted. He remembered
+the thought of the American writer, Thoreau, who at the time when
+slavery existed in America said that "under a government that
+imprisons any unjustly the true place for a just man is also a prison."
+Nekhludoff, especially after his visit to Petersburg and all he
+discovered there, thought in the same way.
+
+"Yes, the only place befitting an honest man in Russia at the present
+time is a prison," he thought, and even felt that this applied to him
+personally, when he drove up to the prison and entered its walls.
+
+The doorkeeper recognised Nekhludoff, and told him at once that Maslova
+was no longer there.
+
+"Where is she, then?"
+
+"In the cell again."
+
+"Why has she been removed?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"Oh, your excellency, what are such people?" said the doorkeeper,
+contemptuously. "She's been carrying on with the medical assistant, so
+the head doctor ordered her back."
+
+Nekhludoff had had no idea how near Maslova and the state of her mind
+were to him. He was stunned by the news.
+
+He felt as one feels at the news of a great and unforeseen misfortune,
+and his pain was very severe. His first feeling was one of shame. He,
+with his joyful idea of the change that he imagined was going on in her
+soul, now seemed ridiculous in his own eyes. He thought that all her
+pretence of not wishing to accept his sacrifice, all the reproaches and
+tears, were only the devices of a depraved woman, who wished to use
+him to the best advantage. He seemed to remember having seen signs of
+obduracy at his last interview with her. All this flashed through his
+mind as he instinctively put on his hat and left the hospital.
+
+"What am I to do now? Am I still bound to her? Has this action of hers
+not set me free?" And as he put these questions to himself he knew at
+once that if he considered himself free, and threw her up, he would be
+punishing himself, and not her, which was what he wished to do, and he
+was seized with fear.
+
+"No, what has happened cannot alter--it can only strengthen my resolve.
+Let her do what flows from the state her mind is in. If it is carrying
+on with the medical assistant, let her carry on with the medical
+assistant; that is her business. I must do what my conscience demands of
+me. And my conscience expects me to sacrifice my freedom. My resolution
+to marry her, if only in form, and to follow wherever she may be sent,
+remains unalterable." Nekhludoff said all this to himself with vicious
+obstinacy as he left the hospital and walked with resolute steps towards
+the big gates of the prison. He asked the warder on duty at the gate
+to inform the inspector that he wished to see Maslova. The warder knew
+Nekhludoff, and told him of an important change that had taken place
+in the prison. The old inspector had been discharged, and a new, very
+severe official appointed in his place.
+
+"They are so strict nowadays, it's just awful," said the jailer. "He is
+in here; they will let him know directly."
+
+The new inspector was in the prison and soon came to Nekhludoff. He was
+a tall, angular man, with high cheek bones, morose, and very slow in his
+movements.
+
+"Interviews are allowed in the visiting room on the appointed days," he
+said, without looking at Nekhludoff.
+
+"But I have a petition to the Emperor, which I want signed."
+
+"You can give it to me."
+
+"I must see the prisoner myself. I was always allowed to before."
+
+"That was so, before," said the inspector, with a furtive glance at
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"I have a permission from the governor," insisted Nekhludoff, and took
+out his pocket-book.
+
+"Allow me," said the inspector, taking the paper from Nekhludoff with
+his long, dry, white fingers, on the first of which was a gold ring,
+still without looking him in the eyes. He read the paper slowly. "Step
+into the office, please."
+
+This time the office was empty. The inspector sat down by the table
+and began sorting some papers that lay on it, evidently intending to be
+present at the interview.
+
+When Nekhludoff asked whether he might see the political prisoner,
+Doukhova, the inspector answered, shortly, that he could not.
+"Interviews with political prisoners are not permitted," he said, and
+again fixed his attention on his papers. With a letter to Doukhova in
+his pocket, Nekhludoff felt as if he had committed some offence, and his
+plans had been discovered and frustrated.
+
+When Maslova entered the room the inspector raised his head, and,
+without looking at either her or Nekhludoff, remarked: "You may talk,"
+and went on sorting his papers. Maslova had again the white jacket,
+petticoat and kerchief on. When she came up to Nekhludoff and saw his
+cold, hard look, she blushed scarlet, and crumbling the hem of her
+jacket with her hand, she cast down her eyes. Her confusion, so it
+seemed to Nekhludoff, confirmed the hospital doorkeeper's words.
+
+Nekhludoff had meant to treat her in the same way as before, but could
+not bring himself to shake hands with her, so disgusting was she to him
+now.
+
+"I have brought you bad news," he said, in a monotonous voice, without
+looking at her or taking her hand. "The Senate has refused."
+
+"I knew it would," she said, in a strange tone, as if she were gasping
+for breath.
+
+Formerly Nekhludoff would have asked why she said she knew it would;
+now he only looked at her. Her eyes were full of tears. But this did not
+soften him; it roused his irritation against her even more.
+
+The inspector rose and began pacing up and down the room.
+
+In spite of the disgust Nekhludoff was feeling at the moment, he
+considered it right to express his regret at the Senate's decision.
+
+"You must not despair," he said. "The petition to the Emperor may meet
+with success, and I hope---"
+
+"I'm not thinking of that," she said, looking piteously at him with her
+wet, squinting eyes.
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"You have been to the hospital, and they have most likely told you about
+me--"
+
+"What of that? That is your affair," said Nekhludoff coldly, and
+frowned. The cruel feeling of wounded pride that had quieted down rose
+with renewed force when she mentioned the hospital.
+
+"He, a man of the world, whom any girl of the best families would think
+it happiness to marry, offered himself as a husband to this woman,
+and she could not even wait, but began intriguing with the medical
+assistant," thought he, with a look of hatred.
+
+"Here, sign this petition," he said, taking a large envelope from his
+pocket, and laying the paper on the table. She wiped the tears with a
+corner of her kerchief, and asked what to write and where.
+
+He showed her, and she sat down and arranged the cuff of her right
+sleeve with her left hand; he stood behind her, and silently looked
+at her back, which shook with suppressed emotion, and evil and good
+feelings were fighting in his breast--feelings of wounded pride and of
+pity for her who was suffering--and the last feeling was victorious.
+
+He could not remember which came first; did the pity for her first enter
+his heart, or did he first remember his own sins--his own repulsive
+actions, the very same for which he was condemning her? Anyhow, he both
+felt himself guilty and pitied her.
+
+Having signed the petition and wiped her inky finger on her petticoat,
+she got up and looked at him.
+
+"Whatever happens, whatever comes of it, my resolve remains unchanged,"
+said Nekhludoff. The thought that he had forgiven her heightened his
+feeling of pity and tenderness for her, and he wished to comfort her. "I
+will do what I have said; wherever they take you I shall be with you."
+
+"What's the use?" she interrupted hurriedly, though her whole face
+lighted up.
+
+"Think what you will want on the way--"
+
+"I don't know of anything in particular, thank you."
+
+The inspector came up, and without waiting for a remark from him
+Nekhludoff took leave, and went out with peace, joy, and love towards
+everybody in his heart such as he had never felt before. The certainty
+that no action of Maslova could change his love for her filled him with
+joy and raised him to a level which he had never before attained. Let
+her intrigue with the medical assistant; that was her business. He loved
+her not for his own but for her sake and for God's.
+
+And this intrigue, for which Maslova was turned out of the hospital,
+and of which Nekhludoff believed she was really guilty, consisted of the
+following:
+
+Maslova was sent by the head nurse to get some herb tea from the
+dispensary at the end of the corridor, and there, all alone, she found
+the medical assistant, a tall man, with a blotchy face, who had for a
+long time been bothering her. In trying to get away from him Maslova
+gave him such a push that he knocked his head against a shelf, from
+which two bottles fell and broke. The head doctor, who was passing at
+that moment, heard the sound of breaking glass, and saw Maslova run out,
+quite red, and shouted to her:
+
+"Ah, my good woman, if you start intriguing here, I'll send you about
+your business. What is the meaning of it?" he went on, addressing the
+medical assistant, and looking at him over his spectacles.
+
+The assistant smiled, and began to justify himself. The doctor gave no
+heed to him, but, lifting his head so that he now looked through his
+spectacles, he entered the ward. He told the inspector the same day to
+send another more sedate assistant-nurse in Maslova's place. And this
+was her "intrigue" with the medical assistant.
+
+Being turned out for a love intrigue was particularly painful to
+Maslova, because the relations with men, which had long been repulsive
+to her, had become specially disgusting after meeting Nekhludoff. The
+thought that, judging her by her past and present position, every man,
+the blotchy assistant among them, considered he had a right to offend
+her, and was surprised at her refusal, hurt her deeply, and made her
+pity herself and brought tears to her eyes.
+
+When she went out to Nekhludoff this time she wished to clear herself of
+the false charge which she knew he would certainly have heard about. But
+when she began to justify herself she felt he did not believe her, and
+that her excuses would only strengthen his suspicions; tears choked her,
+and she was silent.
+
+Maslova still thought and continued to persuade herself that she had
+never forgiven him, and hated him, as she told him at their second
+interview, but in reality she loved him again, and loved him so that she
+did all he wished her to do; left off drinking, smoking, coquetting, and
+entered the hospital because she knew he wished it. And if every time he
+reminded her of it, she refused so decidedly to accept his sacrifice and
+marry him, it was because she liked repeating the proud words she had
+once uttered, and because she knew that a marriage with her would be a
+misfortune for him.
+
+She had resolutely made up her mind that she would not accept his
+sacrifice, and yet the thought that he despised her and believed that
+she still was what she had been, and did not notice the change that had
+taken place in her, was very painful. That he could still think she had
+done wrong while in the hospital tormented her more than the news that
+her sentence was confirmed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE ASTONISHING INSTITUTION CALLED CRIMINAL LAW.
+
+Maslova might be sent off with the first gang of prisoners, therefore
+Nekhludoff got ready for his departure. But there was so much to be done
+that he felt that he could not finish it, however much time he might
+have. It was quite different now from what it had been. Formerly he used
+to be obliged to look for an occupation, the interest of which always
+centred in one person, i.e., Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, and
+yet, though every interest of his life was thus centred, all these
+occupations were very wearisome. Now all his occupations related to
+other people and not to Dmitri Ivanovitch, and they were all interesting
+and attractive, and there was no end to them. Nor was this all. Formerly
+Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff's occupations always made him feel vexed
+and irritable; now they produced a joyful state of mind. The business at
+present occupying Nekhludoff could be divided under three headings.
+He himself, with his usual pedantry, divided it in that way, and
+accordingly kept the papers referring to it in three different
+portfolios. The first referred to Maslova, and was chiefly that of
+taking steps to get her petition to the Emperor attended to, and
+preparing for her probable journey to Siberia.
+
+The second was about his estates. In Panovo he had given the land to
+the peasants on condition of their paying rent to be put to their own
+communal use. But he had to confirm this transaction by a legal deed,
+and to make his will, in accordance with it. In Kousminski the state of
+things was still as he had first arranged it, i.e., he was to receive
+the rent; but the terms had to be fixed, and also how much of the money
+he would use to live on, and how much he would leave for the peasants'
+use. As he did not know what his journey to Siberia would cost him, he
+could not decide to lose this revenue altogether, though he reduced the
+income from it by half.
+
+The third part of his business was to help the convicts, who applied
+more and more often to him. At first when he came in contact with
+the prisoners, and they appealed to him for help, he at once began
+interceding for them, hoping to lighten their fate, but he soon had so
+many applications that he felt the impossibility of attending to all of
+them, and that naturally led him to take up another piece of work, which
+at last roused his interest even more than the three first. This new
+part of his business was finding an answer to the following questions:
+What was this astonishing institution called criminal law, of which the
+results were that in the prison, with some of the inmates of which
+he had lately become acquainted, and in all those other places of
+confinement, from the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petersburg to the
+island of Sakhalin, hundreds and thousands of victims were pining? What
+did this strange criminal law exist for? How had it originated?
+
+From his personal relations with the prisoners, from notes by some of
+those in confinement, and by questioning the advocate and the prison
+priest, Nekhludoff came to the conclusion that the convicts, the
+so-called criminals, could be divided into five classes. The first were
+quite innocent people, condemned by judicial blunder. Such were the
+Menshoffs, supposed to be incendiaries, Maslova, and others. There
+were not many of these; according to the priest's words, only seven per
+cent., but their condition excited particular interest.
+
+To the second class belong persons condemned for actions done under
+peculiar circumstances, i.e., in a fit of passion, jealousy, or
+drunkenness, circumstances under which those who judged them would
+surely have committed the same actions.
+
+The third class consisted of people punished for having committed
+actions which, according to their understanding, were quite natural,
+and even good, but which those other people, the men who made the laws,
+considered to be crimes. Such were the persons who sold spirits without
+a license, smugglers, those who gathered grass and wood on large estates
+and in the forests belonging to the Crown; the thieving miners; and
+those unbelieving people who robbed churches.
+
+To the fourth class belonged those who were imprisoned only because they
+stood morally higher than the average level of society. Such were the
+Sectarians, the Poles, the Circassians rebelling in order to regain
+their independence, the political prisoners, the Socialists, the
+strikers condemned for withstanding the authorities. There was,
+according to Nekhludoff's observations, a very large percentage
+belonging to this class; among them some of the best of men.
+
+The fifth class consisted of persons who had been far more sinned
+against by society than they had sinned against it. These were
+castaways, stupefied by continual oppression and temptation, such as the
+boy who had stolen the rugs, and hundreds of others whom Nekhludoff had
+seen in the prison and out of it. The conditions under which they lived
+seemed to lead on systematically to those actions which are termed
+crimes. A great many thieves and murderers with whom he had lately come
+in contact, according to Nekhludoff's estimate, belonged to this class.
+To this class Nekhludoff also reckoned those depraved, demoralised
+creatures whom the new school of criminology classify as the criminal
+type, and the existence of which is considered to be the chief proof
+of the necessity of criminal law and punishment. This demoralised,
+depraved, abnormal type was, according to Nekhludoff, exactly the same
+as that against whom society had sinned, only here society had sinned
+not directly against them, but against their parents and forefathers.
+
+Among this latter class Nekhludoff was specially struck by one Okhotin,
+an inveterate thief, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, brought up
+in a doss-house, who, up to the age of 30, had apparently never met with
+any one whose morality was above that of a policeman, and who had
+got into a band of thieves when quite young. He was gifted with an
+extraordinary sense of humour, by means of which he made himself very
+attractive. He asked Nekhludoff for protection, at the same time making
+fun of himself, the lawyers, the prison, and laws human and divine.
+
+Another was the handsome Fedoroff, who, with a band of robbers, of
+whom he was the chief, had robbed and murdered an old man, an official.
+Fedoroff was a peasant, whose father had been unlawfully deprived of his
+house, and who, later on, when serving as a soldier, had suffered much
+because he had fallen in love with an officer's mistress. He had a
+fascinating, passionate nature, that longed for enjoyment at any cost.
+He had never met anybody who restrained himself for any cause whatever,
+and had never heard a word about any aim in life other than enjoyment.
+
+Nekhludoff distinctly saw that both these men were richly endowed by
+nature, but had been neglected and crippled like uncared-for plants.
+
+He had also met a tramp and a woman who had repelled him by their
+dulness and seeming cruelty, but even in them he could find no trace of
+the criminal type written about by the Italian school, but only saw in
+them people who were repulsive to him personally, just in the same way
+as some he had met outside the prison, in swallow-tail coats wearing
+epaulettes, or bedecked with lace. And so the investigation of the
+reasons why all these very different persons were put in prison, while
+others just like them were going about free and even judging them,
+formed a fourth task for Nekhludoff.
+
+He hoped to find an answer to this question in books, and bought all
+that referred to it. He got the works of Lombroso, Garofalo, Ferry,
+List, Maudsley, Tard, and read them carefully. But as he read he became
+more and more disappointed. It happened to him as it always happens
+to those who turn to science not in order to play a part in it, nor
+to write, nor to dispute, nor to teach, but simply for an answer to an
+every-day question of life. Science answered thousands of different very
+subtle and ingenious questions touching criminal law, but not the one
+he was trying to solve. He asked a very simple question: "Why, and
+with what right, do some people lock up, torment, exile, flog, and kill
+others, while they are themselves just like those whom they torment,
+flog, and kill?" And in answer he got deliberations as to whether human
+beings had free will or not. Whether signs of criminality could be
+detected by measuring the skulls or not. What part heredity played in
+crime. Whether immorality could be inherited. What madness is, what
+degeneration is, and what temperament is. How climate, food, ignorance,
+imitativeness, hypnotism, or passion act. What society is. What are its
+duties, etc., etc.
+
+These disquisitions reminded him of the answer he once got from a little
+boy whom he met coming home from school. Nekhludoff asked him if he had
+learned his spelling.
+
+"I have," answered the boy.
+
+"Well, then, tell me, how do you spell 'leg'?"
+
+"A dog's leg, or what kind of leg?" the boy answered, with a sly look.
+
+Answers in the form of new questions, like the boy's, was all Nekhludoff
+got in reply to his one primary question. He found much that was clever,
+learned much that was interesting, but what he did not find was an
+answer to the principal question: By what right some people punish
+others?
+
+Not only did he not find any answer, but all the arguments were brought
+forward in order to explain and vindicate punishment, the necessity of
+which was taken as an axiom.
+
+Nekhludoff read much, but only in snatches, and putting down his failure
+to this superficial way of reading, hoped to find the answer later on.
+He would not allow himself to believe in the truth of the answer which
+began, more and more often, to present itself to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF'S SISTER AND HER HUSBAND.
+
+The gang of prisoners, with Maslova among them, was to start on the 5th
+July. Nekhludoff arranged to start on the same day.
+
+The day before, Nekhludoff's sister and her husband came to town to see
+him.
+
+Nekhludoff's sister, Nathalie Ivanovna Rogozhinsky, was 10 years older
+than her brother. She had been very fond of him when he was a boy, and
+later on, just before her marriage, they grew very close to each other,
+as if they were equals, she being a young woman of 25, he a lad of 15.
+At that time she was in love with his friend, Nikolenka Irtenieff, since
+dead. They both loved Nikolenka, and loved in him and in themselves that
+which is good, and which unites all men. Since then they had both been
+depraved, he by military service and a vicious life, she by marriage
+with a man whom she loved with a sensual love, who did not care for the
+things that had once been so dear and holy to her and to her brother,
+nor even understand the meaning of those aspirations towards moral
+perfection and the service of mankind, which once constituted her life,
+and put them down to ambition and the wish to show off; that being the
+only explanation comprehensible to him.
+
+Nathalie's husband had been a man without a name and without means, but
+cleverly steering towards Liberalism or Conservatism, according to which
+best suited his purpose, he managed to make a comparatively brilliant
+judicial career. Some peculiarity which made him attractive to women
+assisted him when he was no longer in his first youth. While travelling
+abroad he made Nekhludoff's acquaintance, and managed to make Nathalie,
+who was also no longer a girl, fall in love with him, rather against her
+mother's wishes who considered a marriage with him to be a misalliance
+for her daughter. Nekhludoff, though he tried to hide it from himself,
+though he fought against it, hated his brother-in-law.
+
+Nekhludoff had a strong antipathy towards him because of the vulgarity
+of his feelings, his assurance and narrowness, but chiefly because of
+Nathalie, who managed to love him in spite of the narrowness of his
+nature, and loved him so selfishly, so sensually, and stifled for his
+sake all the good that had been in her.
+
+It always hurt Nekhludoff to think of Nathalie as the wife of that
+hairy, self-assured man with the shiny, bald patch on his head. He could
+not even master a feeling of revulsion towards their children, and when
+he heard that she was again going to have a baby, he felt something like
+sorrow that she had once more been infected with something bad by this
+man who was so foreign to him. The Rogozhinskys had come to Moscow
+alone, having left their two children--a boy and a girl--at home, and
+stopped in the best rooms of the best hotel. Nathalie at once went to
+her mother's old house, but hearing from Agraphena Petrovna that her
+brother had left, and was living in a lodging-house, she drove there.
+The dirty servant met her in the stuffy passage, dark but for a lamp
+which burnt there all day. He told her that the Prince was not in.
+
+Nathalie asked to be shown into his rooms, as she wished to leave a note
+for him, and the man took her up.
+
+Nathalie carefully examined her brother's two little rooms. She noticed
+in everything the love of cleanliness and order she knew so well in
+him, and was struck by the novel simplicity of the surroundings. On his
+writing-table she saw the paper-weight with the bronze dog on the top
+which she remembered; the tidy way in which his different portfolios and
+writing utensils were placed on the table was also familiar, and so was
+the large, crooked ivory paper knife which marked the place in a French
+book by Tard, which lay with other volumes on punishment and a book
+in English by Henry George. She sat down at the table and wrote a note
+asking him to be sure to come that same day, and shaking her head in
+surprise at what she saw, she returned to her hotel.
+
+Two questions regarding her brother now interested Nathalie: his
+marriage with Katusha, which she had heard spoken about in their
+town--for everybody was speaking about it--and his giving away the land
+to the peasants, which was also known, and struck many as something of
+a political nature, and dangerous. The marriage with Katusha pleased
+her in a way. She admired that resoluteness which was so like him and
+herself as they used to be in those happy times before her marriage. And
+yet she was horrified when she thought her brother was going to marry
+such a dreadful woman. The latter was the stronger feeling of the two,
+and she decided to use all her influence to prevent him from doing it,
+though she knew how difficult this would be.
+
+The other matter, the giving up of the land to the peasants, did not
+touch her so nearly, but her husband was very indignant about it, and
+expected her to influence her brother against it.
+
+Rogozhinsky said that such an action was the height of inconsistency,
+flightiness, and pride, the only possible explanation of which was the
+desire to appear original, to brag, to make one's self talked about.
+
+"What sense could there be in letting the land to the peasants, on
+condition that they pay the rent to themselves?" he said. "If he was
+resolved to do such a thing, why not sell the land to them through the
+Peasants' Bank? There might have been some sense in that. In fact, this
+act verges on insanity."
+
+And Rogozhinsky began seriously thinking about putting Nekhludoff under
+guardianship, and demanded of his wife that she should speak seriously
+to her brother about his curious intention.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF'S ANARCHISM.
+
+As soon as Nekhludoff returned that evening and saw his sister's note
+on the table he started to go and see her. He found Nathalie alone,
+her husband having gone to take a rest in the next room. She wore a
+tightly-fitting black silk dress, with a red bow in front. Her black
+hair was crimped and arranged according to the latest fashion.
+
+The pains she took to appear young, for the sake of her husband, whose
+equal she was in years, were very obvious.
+
+When she saw her brother she jumped up and hurried towards him, with her
+silk dress rustling. They kissed, and looked smilingly at each other.
+There passed between them that mysterious exchange of looks, full of
+meaning, in which all was true, and which cannot be expressed in words.
+Then came words which were not true. They had not met since their
+mother's death.
+
+"You have grown stouter and younger," he said, and her lips puckered up
+with pleasure.
+
+"And you have grown thinner."
+
+"Well, and how is your husband?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"He is taking a rest; he did not sleep all night." There was much to
+say, but it was not said in words; only their looks expressed what their
+words failed to say.
+
+"I went to see you."
+
+"Yes, I know. I moved because the house is too big for me. I was lonely
+there, and dull. I want nothing of all that is there, so that you had
+better take it all--the furniture, I mean, and things."
+
+"Yes, Agraphena Petrovna told me. I went there. Thanks, very much.
+But--"
+
+At this moment the hotel waiter brought in a silver tea-set. While he
+set the table they were silent. Then Nathalie sat down at the table and
+made the tea, still in silence. Nekhludoff also said nothing.
+
+At last Nathalie began resolutely. "Well, Dmitri, I know all about it."
+And she looked at him.
+
+"What of that? l am glad you know."
+
+"How can you hope to reform her after the life she has led?" she asked.
+
+He sat quite straight on a small chair, and listened attentively, trying
+to understand her and to answer rightly. The state of mind called forth
+in him by his last interview with Maslova still filled his soul with
+quiet joy and good will to all men.
+
+"It is not her but myself I wish to reform," he replied.
+
+Nathalie sighed.
+
+"There are other means besides marriage to do that."
+
+"But I think it is the best. Besides, it leads me into that world in
+which I can be of use."
+
+"I cannot believe you will be happy," said Nathalie.
+
+"It's not my happiness that is the point."
+
+"Of course, but if she has a heart she cannot be happy--cannot even wish
+it."
+
+"She does not wish it."
+
+"I understand; but life--"
+
+"Yes--life?"
+
+"Demands something different."
+
+"It demands nothing but that we should do what is right," said
+Nekhludoff, looking into her face, still handsome, though slightly
+wrinkled round eyes and mouth.
+
+"I do not understand," she said, and sighed.
+
+"Poor darling; how could she change so?" he thought, calling back to his
+mind Nathalie as she had been before her marriage, and feeling towards
+her a tenderness woven out of innumerable memories of childhood. At that
+moment Rogozhinsky entered the room, with head thrown back and expanded
+chest, and stepping lightly and softly in his usual manner, his
+spectacles, his bald patch, and his black beard all glistening.
+
+"How do you do? How do you do?" he said, laying an unnatural and
+intentional stress on his words. (Though, soon after the marriage,
+they had tried to be more familiar with each other, they had never
+succeeded.)
+
+They shook hands, and Rogozhinsky sank softly into an easy-chair.
+
+"Am I not interrupting your conversation?"
+
+"No, I do not wish to hide what I am saying or doing from any one."
+
+As soon as Nekhludoff saw the hairy hands, and heard the patronising,
+self-assured tones, his meekness left him in a moment.
+
+"Yes, we were talking about his intentions," said Nathalie. "Shall I
+give you a cup of tea?" she added, taking the teapot.
+
+"Yes, please. What particular intentions do you mean?"
+
+"That of going to Siberia with the gang of prisoners, among whom is the
+woman I consider myself to have wronged," uttered Nekhludoff.
+
+"I hear not only to accompany her, but more than that."
+
+"Yes, and to marry her if she wishes it."
+
+"Dear me! But if you do not object I should like to ask you to explain
+your motives. I do not understand them."
+
+"My motives are that this woman--that this woman's first step on her way
+to degradation--" Nekhludoff got angry with himself, and was unable to
+find the right expression. "My motives are that I am the guilty one, and
+she gets the punishment."
+
+"If she is being punished she cannot be innocent, either."
+
+"She is quite innocent." And Nekhludoff related the whole incident with
+unnecessary warmth.
+
+"Yes, that was a case of carelessness on the part of the president, the
+result of which was a thoughtless answer on the part of the jury; but
+there is the Senate for cases like that."
+
+"The Senate has rejected the appeal."
+
+"Well, if the Senate has rejected it, there cannot have been sufficient
+reasons for an appeal," said Rogozhinsky, evidently sharing the
+prevailing opinion that truth is the product of judicial decrees. "The
+Senate cannot enter into the question on its merits. If there is a real
+mistake, the Emperor should be petitioned."
+
+"That has been done, but there is no probability of success. They will
+apply to the Department of the Ministry, the Department will consult the
+Senate, the Senate will repeat its decision, and, as usual, the innocent
+will get punished."
+
+"In the first place, the Department of the Ministry won't consult the
+Senate," said Rogozhinsky, with a condescending smile; "it will give
+orders for the original deeds to be sent from the Law Court, and if
+it discovers a mistake it will decide accordingly. And, secondly, the
+innocent are never punished, or at least in very rare, exceptional
+cases. It is the guilty who are punished," Rogozhinsky said
+deliberately, and smiled self-complacently.
+
+"And I have become fully convinced that most of those condemned by law
+are innocent."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Innocent in the literal sense. Just as this woman is innocent of
+poisoning any one; as innocent as a peasant I have just come to know, of
+the murder he never committed; as a mother and son who were on the point
+of being condemned for incendiarism, which was committed by the owner of
+the house that was set on fire."
+
+"Well, of course there always have been and always will be judicial
+errors. Human institutions cannot be perfect."
+
+"And, besides, there are a great many people convicted who are innocent
+of doing anything considered wrong by the society they have grown up
+in."
+
+"Excuse me, this is not so; every thief knows that stealing is wrong,
+and that we should not steal; that it is immoral," said Rogozhinsky,
+with his quiet, self-assured, slightly contemptuous smile, which
+specially irritated Nekhludoff.
+
+"No, he does not know it; they say to him 'don't steal,' and he knows
+that the master of the factory steals his labour by keeping back his
+wages; that the Government, with its officials, robs him continually by
+taxation."
+
+"Why, this is anarchism," Rogozhinsky said, quietly defining his
+brother-in-law's words.
+
+"I don't know what it is; I am only telling you the truth," Nekhludoff
+continued. "He knows that the Government is robbing him, knows that we
+landed proprietors have robbed him long since, robbed him of the land
+which should be the common property of all, and then, if he picks up dry
+wood to light his fire on that land stolen from him, we put him in jail,
+and try to persuade him that he is a thief. Of course he knows that not
+he but those who robbed him of the land are thieves, and that to get any
+restitution of what has been robbed is his duty towards his family."
+
+"I don't understand, or if I do I cannot agree with it. The land must
+be somebody's property," began Rogozhinsky quietly, and, convinced that
+Nekhludoff was a Socialist, and that Socialism demands that all the land
+should be divided equally, that such a division would be very foolish,
+and that he could easily prove it to be so, he said. "If you divided
+it equally to-day, it would to-morrow be again in the hands of the most
+industrious and clever."
+
+"Nobody is thinking of dividing the land equally. The land must not
+be anybody's property; must not be a thing to be bought and sold or
+rented."
+
+"The rights of property are inborn in man; without them the cultivation
+of land would present no interest. Destroy the rights of property and
+we lapse into barbarism." Rogozhinsky uttered this authoritatively,
+repeating the usual argument in favour of private ownership of land
+which is supposed to be irrefutable, based on the assumption that
+people's desire to possess land proves that they need it.
+
+"On the contrary, only when the land is nobody's property will it cease
+to lie idle, as it does now, while the landlords, like dogs in the
+manger, unable themselves to put it to use, will not let those use it
+who are able."
+
+"But, Dmitri Ivanovitch, what you are saying is sheer madness. Is it
+possible to abolish property in land in our age? I know it is your old
+hobby. But allow me to tell you straight," and Rogozhinsky grew pale,
+and his voice trembled. It was evident that this question touched him
+very nearly. "I should advise you to consider this question well before
+attempting to solve it practically."
+
+"Are you speaking of my personal affairs?"
+
+"Yes, I hold that we who are placed in special circumstances should
+bear the responsibilities which spring from those circumstances, should
+uphold the conditions in which we were born, and which we have
+inherited from our predecessors, and which we ought to pass on to our
+descendants."
+
+"I consider it my duty--"
+
+"Wait a bit," said Rogozhinsky, not permitting the interruption. "I am
+not speaking for myself or my children. The position of my children is
+assured, and I earn enough for us to live comfortably, and I expect my
+children will live so too, so that my interest in your action--which,
+if you will allow me to say so, is not well considered--is not based
+on personal motives; it is on principle that I cannot agree with you. I
+should advise you to think it well over, to read---?"
+
+"Please allow me to settle my affairs, and to choose what to read and
+what not to read, myself," said Nekhludoff, turning pale. Feeling
+his hands grow cold, and that he was no longer master of himself, he
+stopped, and began drinking his tea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE AIM OF THE LAW.
+
+"Well, and how are the children?" Nekhludoff asked his sister when he
+was calmer. The sister told him about the children. She said they were
+staying with their grandmother (their father's mother), and, pleased
+that his dispute with her husband had come to an end, she began telling
+him how her children played that they were travelling, just as he used
+to do with his three dolls, one of them a negro and another which he
+called the French lady.
+
+"Can you really remember it all?" said Nekhludoff, smiling.
+
+"Yes, and just fancy, they play in the very same way."
+
+The unpleasant conversation had been brought to an end, and Nathalie was
+quieter, but she did not care to talk in her husband's presence of what
+could be comprehensible only to her brother, so, wishing to start a
+general conversation, she began talking about the sorrow of Kamenski's
+mother at losing her only son, who had fallen in a duel, for this
+Petersburg topic of the day had now reached Moscow. Rogozhinsky
+expressed disapproval at the state of things that excluded murder in a
+duel from the ordinary criminal offences. This remark evoked a rejoinder
+from Nekhludoff, and a new dispute arose on the subject. Nothing was
+fully explained, neither of the antagonists expressed all he had in
+his mind, each keeping to his conviction, which condemned the other.
+Rogozhinsky felt that Nekhludoff condemned him and despised his
+activity, and he wished to show him the injustice of his opinions.
+
+Nekhludoff, on the other hand, felt provoked by his brother-in-law's
+interference in his affairs concerning the land. And knowing in his
+heart of hearts that his sister, her husband, and their children, as his
+heirs, had a right to do so, was indignant that this narrow-minded
+man persisted with calm assurance to regard as just and lawful what
+Nekhludoff no longer doubted was folly and crime.
+
+This man's arrogance annoyed Nekhludoff.
+
+"What could the law do?" he asked.
+
+"It could sentence one of the two duellists to the mines like an
+ordinary murderer."
+
+Nekhludoff's hands grew cold.
+
+"Well, and what good would that be?" he asked, hotly.
+
+"It would be just."
+
+"As if justice were the aim of the law," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"What else?"
+
+"The upholding of class interests! I think the law is only an instrument
+for upholding the existing order of things beneficial to our class."
+
+"This is a perfectly new view," said Rogozhinsky with a quiet smile;
+"the law is generally supposed to have a totally different aim."
+
+"Yes, so it has in theory but not in practice, as I have found out. The
+law aims only at preserving the present state of things, and therefore
+it persecutes and executes those who stand above the ordinary level and
+wish to raise it--the so-called political prisoners, as well as those
+who are below the average--the so-called criminal types."
+
+"I do not agree with you. In the first place, I cannot admit that the
+criminals classed as political are punished because they are above the
+average. In most cases they are the refuse of society, just as much
+perverted, though in a different way, as the criminal types whom you
+consider below the average."
+
+"But I happen to know men who are morally far above their judges; all
+the sectarians are moral, from--"
+
+But Rogozhinsky, a man not accustomed to be interrupted when he spoke,
+did not listen to Nekhludoff, but went on talking at the same time,
+thereby irritating him still more.
+
+"Nor can I admit that the object of the law is the upholding of the
+present state of things. The law aims at reforming--"
+
+"A nice kind of reform, in a prison!" Nekhludoff put in.
+
+"Or removing," Rogozhinsky went on, persistently, "the perverted and
+brutalised persons that threaten society."
+
+"That's just what it doesn't do. Society has not the means of doing
+either the one thing or the other."
+
+"How is that? I don't understand," said Rogozhinsky with a forced smile.
+
+"I mean that only two reasonable kinds of punishment exist. Those used
+in the old days: corporal and capital punishment, which, as human nature
+gradually softens, come more and more into disuse," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"There, now, this is quite new and very strange to hear from your lips."
+
+"Yes, it is reasonable to hurt a man so that he should not do in future
+what he is hurt for doing, and it is also quite reasonable to cut a
+man's head off when he is injurious or dangerous to society. These
+punishments have a reasonable meaning. But what sense is there in
+locking up in a prison a man perverted by want of occupation and bad
+example; to place him in a position where he is provided for, where
+laziness is imposed on him, and where he is in company with the most
+perverted of men? What reason is there to take a man at public cost (it
+comes to more than 500 roubles per head) from the Toula to the Irkoatsk
+government, or from Koursk--"
+
+"Yes, but all the same, people are afraid of those journeys at public
+cost, and if it were not for such journeys and the prisons, you and I
+would not be sitting here as we are."
+
+"The prisons cannot insure our safety, because these people do not
+stay there for ever, but are set free again. On the contrary, in those
+establishments men are brought to the greatest vice and degradation, so
+that the danger is increased."
+
+"You mean to say that the penitentiary system should be improved."
+
+"It cannot be improved. Improved prisons would cost more than all that
+is being now spent on the people's education, and would lay a still
+heavier burden on the people."
+
+"The shortcomings of the penitentiary system in nowise invalidate
+the law itself," Rogozhinsky continued again, without heeding his
+brother-in-law.
+
+"There is no remedy for these shortcomings," said Nekhludoff, raising
+his voice.
+
+"What of that? Shall we therefore go and kill, or, as a certain
+statesman proposed, go putting out people's eyes?" Rogozhinsky remarked.
+
+"Yes; that would be cruel, but it would be effective. What is done
+now is cruel, and not only ineffective, but so stupid that one cannot
+understand how people in their senses can take part in so absurd and
+cruel a business as criminal law."
+
+"But I happen to take part in it," said Rogozhinsky, growing pale.
+
+"That is your business. But to me it is incomprehensible."
+
+"I think there are a good many things incomprehensible to you," said
+Rogozhinsky, with a trembling voice.
+
+"I have seen how one public prosecutor did his very best to get an
+unfortunate boy condemned, who could have evoked nothing but sympathy in
+an unperverted mind. I know how another cross-examined a sectarian and
+put down the reading of the Gospels as a criminal offence; in fact, the
+whole business of the Law Courts consists in senseless and cruel actions
+of that sort."
+
+"I should not serve if I thought so," said Rogozhinsky, rising.
+
+Nekhludoff noticed a peculiar glitter under his brother-in-law's
+spectacles. "Can it be tears?" he thought. And they were really tears
+of injured pride. Rogozhinsky went up to the window, got out his
+handkerchief, coughed and rubbed his spectacles, took them off, and
+wiped his eyes.
+
+When he returned to the sofa he lit a cigar, and did not speak any more.
+
+Nekhludoff felt pained and ashamed of having offended his brother-in-law
+and his sister to such a degree, especially as he was going away the
+next day.
+
+He parted with them in confusion, and drove home.
+
+"All I have said may be true--anyhow he did not reply. But it was not
+said in the right way. How little I must have changed if I could be
+carried away by ill-feeling to such an extent as to hurt and wound poor
+Nathalie in such a way!" he thought.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE PRISONERS START FOR SIBERIA.
+
+The gang of prisoners, among whom was Maslova, was to leave Moscow by
+rail at 3 p.m.; therefore, in order to see the gang start, and walk
+to the station with the prisoners Nekhludoff meant to reach the prison
+before 12 o'clock.
+
+The night before, as he was packing up and sorting his papers, he came
+upon his diary, and read some bits here and there. The last bit written
+before he left for Petersburg ran thus: "Katusha does not wish to accept
+my sacrifice; she wishes to make a sacrifice herself. She has conquered,
+and so have I. She makes me happy by the inner change, which seems
+to me, though I fear to believe it, to be going on in her. I fear to
+believe it, yet she seems to be coming back to life." Then further on
+he read. "I have lived through something very hard and very joyful. I
+learnt that she has behaved very badly in the hospital, and I suddenly
+felt great pain. I never expected that it could be so painful. I spoke
+to her with loathing and hatred, then all of a sudden I called to mind
+how many times I have been, and even still am, though but in thought,
+guilty of the thing that I hated her for, and immediately I became
+disgusting to myself, and pitied her and felt happy again. If only we
+could manage to see the beam in our own eye in time, how kind we
+should be." Then he wrote: "I have been to see Nathalie, and again
+self-satisfaction made me unkind and spiteful, and a heavy feeling
+remains. Well, what is to be done? Tomorrow a new life will begin. A
+final good-bye to the old! Many new impressions have accumulated, but I
+cannot yet bring them to unity."
+
+When he awoke the next morning Nekhludoff's first feeling was regret
+about the affair between him and his brother-in-law.
+
+"I cannot go away like this," he thought. "I must go and make it up with
+them." But when he looked at his watch he saw that he had not time to
+go, but must hurry so as not to be too late for the departure of the
+gang. He hastily got everything ready, and sent the things to the
+station with a servant and Taras, Theodosia's husband, who was going
+with them. Then he took the first isvostchik he could find and drove off
+to the prison.
+
+The prisoners' train started two hours before the train by which he was
+going, so Nekhludoff paid his bill in the lodgings and left for good.
+
+It was July, and the weather was unbearably hot. From the stones, the
+walls, the iron of the roofs, which the sultry night had not cooled, the
+heat streamed into the motionless air. When at rare intervals a slight
+breeze did arise, it brought but a whiff of hot air filled with dust and
+smelling of oil paint.
+
+There were few people in the streets, and those who were out tried to
+keep on the shady side. Only the sunburnt peasants, with their bronzed
+faces and bark shoes on their feet, who were mending the road, sat
+hammering the stones into the burning sand in the sun; while the
+policemen, in their holland blouses, with revolvers fastened with
+orange cords, stood melancholy and depressed in the middle of the road,
+changing from foot to foot; and the tramcars, the horses of which wore
+holland hoods on their heads, with slits for the ears, kept passing up
+and down the sunny road with ringing bells.
+
+When Nekhludoff drove up to the prison the gang had not left the yard.
+The work of delivering and receiving the prisoners that had commenced
+at 4 A.M. was still going on. The gang was to consist of 623 men and 64
+women; they had all to be received according to the registry lists.
+The sick and the weak to be sorted out, and all to be delivered to the
+convoy. The new inspector, with two assistants, the doctor and medical
+assistant, the officer of the convoy, and the clerk, were sitting in the
+prison yard at a table covered with writing materials and papers, which
+was placed in the shade of a wall. They called the prisoners one by one,
+examined and questioned them, and took notes. The rays of the sun had
+gradually reached the table, and it was growing very hot and oppressive
+for want of air and because of the breathing crowd of prisoners that
+stood close by.
+
+"Good gracious, will this never come to an end!" the convoy officer,
+a tall, fat, red-faced man with high shoulders, who kept puffing the
+smoke, of his cigarette into his thick moustache, asked, as he drew in
+a long puff. "You are killing me. From where have you got them all? Are
+there many more?" the clerk inquired.
+
+"Twenty-four men and the women."
+
+"What are you standing there for? Come on," shouted the convoy officer
+to the prisoners who had not yet passed the revision, and who stood
+crowded one behind the other. The prisoners had been standing there more
+than three hours, packed in rows in the full sunlight, waiting their
+turns.
+
+While this was going on in the prison yard, outside the gate, besides
+the sentinel who stood there as usual with a gun, were drawn up about 20
+carts, to carry the luggage of the prisoners and such prisoners as were
+too weak to walk, and a group of relatives and friends waiting to see
+the prisoners as they came out and to exchange a few words if a chance
+presented itself and to give them a few things. Nekhludoff took his
+place among the group. He had stood there about an hour when the
+clanking of chains, the noise of footsteps, authoritative voices, the
+sound of coughing, and the low murmur of a large crowd became audible.
+
+This continued for about five minutes, during which several jailers went
+in and out of the gateway. At last the word of command was given. The
+gate opened with a thundering noise, the clattering of the chains became
+louder, and the convoy soldiers, dressed in white blouses and carrying
+guns, came out into the street and took their places in a large, exact
+circle in front of the gate; this was evidently a usual, often-practised
+manoeuvre. Then another command was given, and the prisoners began
+coming out in couples, with flat, pancake-shaped caps on their shaved
+heads and sacks over their shoulders, dragging their chained legs and
+swinging one arm, while the other held up a sack.
+
+First came the men condemned to hard labour, all dressed alike in grey
+trousers and cloaks with marks on the back. All of them--young and old,
+thin and fat, pale and red, dark and bearded and beardless, Russians,
+Tartars, and Jews--came out, clattering with their chains and briskly
+swinging their arms as if prepared to go a long distance, but stopped
+after having taken ten steps, and obediently took their places behind
+each other, four abreast. Then without interval streamed out more shaved
+men, dressed in the same manner but with chains only on their legs.
+These were condemned to exile. They came out as briskly and stopped as
+suddenly, taking their places four in a row. Then came those exiled by
+their Communes. Then the women in the same order, first those condemned
+to hard labour, with grey cloaks and kerchiefs; then the exiled women,
+and those following their husbands of their own free will, dressed in
+their own town or village clothing. Some of the women were carrying
+babies wrapped in the fronts of their grey cloaks.
+
+With the women came the children, boys and girls, who, like colts in a
+herd of horses, pressed in among the prisoners.
+
+The men took their places silently, only coughing now and then, or
+making short remarks.
+
+The women talked without intermission. Nekhludoff thought he saw Maslova
+as they were coming out, but she was at once lost in the large crowd,
+and he could only see grey creatures, seemingly devoid of all that was
+human, or at any rate of all that was womanly, with sacks on their backs
+and children round them, taking their places behind the men.
+
+Though all the prisoners had been counted inside the prison walls, the
+convoy counted them again, comparing the numbers with the list. This
+took very long, especially as some of the prisoners moved and changed
+places, which confused the convoy.
+
+The convoy soldiers shouted and pushed the prisoners (who complied
+obediently, but angrily) and counted them over again. When all had
+been counted, the convoy officer gave a command, and the crowd became
+agitated. The weak men and women and children rushed, racing each
+other, towards the carts, and began placing their bags on the carts
+and climbing up themselves. Women with crying babies, merry children
+quarrelling for places, and dull, careworn prisoners got into the carts.
+
+Several of the prisoners took off their caps and came up to the convoy
+officer with some request. Nekhludoff found out later that they were
+asking for places on the carts. Nekhludoff saw how the officer, without
+looking at the prisoners, drew in a whiff from his cigarette, and then
+suddenly waved his short arm in front of one of the prisoners, who
+quickly drew his shaved head back between his shoulders as if afraid of
+a blow, and sprang back.
+
+"I will give you a lift such that you'll remember. You'll get there on
+foot right enough," shouted the officer. Only one of the men was granted
+his request--an old man with chains on his legs; and Nekhludoff saw the
+old man take off his pancake-shaped cap, and go up to the cart crossing
+himself. He could not manage to get up on the cart because of the chains
+that prevented his lifting his old legs, and a woman who was sitting in
+the cart at last pulled him in by the arm.
+
+When all the sacks were in the carts, and those who were allowed to get
+in were seated, the officer took off his cap, wiped his forehead, his
+bald head and fat, red neck, and crossed himself.
+
+"March," commanded the officer. The soldiers' guns gave a click; the
+prisoners took off their caps and crossed themselves, those who were
+seeing them off shouted something, the prisoners shouted in answer, a
+row arose among the women, and the gang, surrounded by the soldiers in
+their white blouses, moved forward, raising the dust with their chained
+feet. The soldiers went in front; then came the convicts condemned to
+hard labour, clattering with their chains; then the exiled and those
+exiled by the Communes, chained in couples by their wrists; then the
+women. After them, on the carts loaded with sacks, came the weak. High
+up on one of the carts sat a woman closely wrapped up, and she kept
+shrieking and sobbing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+NOT MEN BUT STRANGE AND TERRIBLE CREATURES?
+
+The procession was such a long one that the carts with the luggage and
+the weak started only when those in front were already out of sight.
+When the last of the carts moved, Nekhludoff got into the trap that
+stood waiting for him and told the isvostchik to catch up the prisoners
+in front, so that he could see if he knew any of the men in the gang,
+and then try and find out Maslova among the women and ask her if she had
+received the things he sent.
+
+It was very hot, and a cloud of dust that was raised by a thousand
+tramping feet stood all the time over the gang that was moving down
+the middle of the street. The prisoners were walking quickly, and the
+slow-going isvostchik's horse was some time in catching them up. Row
+upon row they passed, those strange and terrible-looking creatures, none
+of whom Nekhludoff knew.
+
+On they went, all dressed alike, moving a thousand feet all shod alike,
+swinging their free arms as if to keep up their spirits. There were so
+many of them, they all looked so much alike, and they were all placed in
+such unusual, peculiar circumstances, that they seemed to Nekhludoff
+to be not men but some sort of strange and terrible creatures. This
+impression passed when he recognised in the crowd of convicts the
+murderer Federoff, and among the exiles Okhotin the wit, and another
+tramp who had appealed to him for assistance. Almost all the prisoners
+turned and looked at the trap that was passing them and at the gentleman
+inside. Federoff tossed his head backwards as a sign that he had
+recognised Nekhludoff, Okhotin winked, but neither of them bowed,
+considering it not the thing.
+
+As soon as Nekhludoff came up to the women he saw Maslova; she was in
+the second row. The first in the row was a short-legged, black-eyed,
+hideous woman, who had her cloak tucked up in her girdle. This was
+Koroshavka. The next was a pregnant woman, who dragged herself along
+with difficulty. The third was Maslova; she was carrying her sack on
+her shoulder, and looking straight before her. Her face looked calm
+and determined. The fourth in the row was a young, lovely woman who was
+walking along briskly, dressed in a short cloak, her kerchief tied in
+peasant fashion. This was Theodosia.
+
+Nekhludoff got down and approached the women, meaning to ask Maslova if
+she had got the things he had sent her, and how she was feeling, but the
+convoy sergeant, who was walking on that side, noticed him at once, and
+ran towards him.
+
+"You must not do that, sir. It is against the regulations to approach
+the gang," shouted the sergeant as he came up.
+
+But when he recognised Nekhludoff (every one in the prison knew
+Nekhludoff) the sergeant raised his fingers to his cap, and, stopping
+in front of Nekhludoff, said: "Not now; wait till we get to the railway
+station; here it is not allowed. Don't lag behind; march!" he shouted to
+the convicts, and putting on a brisk air, he ran back to his place at a
+trot, in spite of the heat and the elegant new boots on his feet.
+
+Nekhludoff went on to the pavement and told the isvostchik to follow
+him; himself walking, so as to keep the convicts in sight. Wherever the
+gang passed it attracted attention mixed with horror and compassion.
+Those who drove past leaned out of the vehicles and followed the
+prisoners with their eyes. Those on foot stopped and looked with fear
+and surprise at the terrible sight. Some came up and gave alms to the
+prisoners. The alms were received by the convoy. Some, as if they were
+hypnotised, followed the gang, but then stopped, shook their heads, and
+followed the prisoners only with their eyes. Everywhere the people
+came out of the gates and doors, and called others to come out, too,
+or leaned out of the windows looking, silent and immovable, at the
+frightful procession. At a cross-road a fine carriage was stopped by the
+gang. A fat coachman, with a shiny face and two rows of buttons on his
+back, sat on the box; a married couple sat facing the horses, the wife,
+a pale, thin woman, with a light-coloured bonnet on her head and a
+bright sunshade in her hand, the husband with a top-hat and a well-cut
+light-coloured overcoat. On the seat in front sat their children--a
+well-dressed little girl, with loose, fair hair, and as fresh as a
+flower, who also held a bright parasol, and an eight-year-old boy, with
+a long, thin neck and sharp collarbones, a sailor hat with long ribbons
+on his head.
+
+The father was angrily scolding the coachman because he had not passed
+in front of the gang when he had a chance, and the mother frowned and
+half closed her eyes with a look of disgust, shielding herself from the
+dust and the sun with her silk sunshade, which she held close to her
+face.
+
+The fat coachman frowned angrily at the unjust rebukes of his
+master--who had himself given the order to drive along that street--and
+with difficulty held in the glossy, black horses, foaming under their
+harness and impatient to go on.
+
+The policeman wished with all his soul to please the owner of the fine
+equipage by stopping the gang, yet felt that the dismal solemnity of
+the procession could not be broken even for so rich a gentleman. He only
+raised his fingers to his cap to show his respect for riches, and looked
+severely at the prisoners as if promising in any case to protect the
+owners of the carriage from them. So the carriage had to wait till the
+whole of the procession had passed, and could only move on when the last
+of the carts, laden with sacks and prisoners, rattled by. The hysterical
+woman who sat on one of the carts, and had grown calm, again began
+shrieking and sobbing when she saw the elegant carriage. Then the
+coachman tightened the reins with a slight touch, and the black
+trotters, their shoes ringing against the paving stones, drew the
+carriage, softly swaying on its rubber tires, towards the country
+house where the husband, the wife, the girl, and the boy with the sharp
+collar-bones were going to amuse themselves. Neither the father nor the
+mother gave the girl and boy any explanation of what they had seen, so
+that the children had themselves to find out the meaning of this curious
+sight. The girl, taking the expression of her father's and mother's
+faces into consideration, solved the problem by assuming that these
+people were quite another kind of men and women than her father and
+mother and their acquaintances, that they were bad people, and that they
+had therefore to be treated in the manner they were being treated.
+
+Therefore the girl felt nothing but fear, and was glad when she could no
+longer see those people.
+
+But the boy with the long, thin neck, who looked at the procession
+of prisoners without taking his eyes off them, solved the question
+differently.
+
+He still knew, firmly and without any doubt, for he had it from God,
+that these people were just the same kind of people as he was, and like
+all other people, and therefore some one had done these people some
+wrong, something that ought not to have been done, and he was sorry for
+them, and felt no horror either of those who were shaved and chained or
+of those who had shaved and chained them. And so the boy's lips pouted
+more and more, and he made greater and greater efforts not to cry,
+thinking it a shame to cry in such a case.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE LORD.
+
+Nekhludoff kept up with the quick pace of the convicts. Though lightly
+clothed he felt dreadfully hot, and it was hard to breathe in the
+stifling, motionless, burning air filled with dust.
+
+When he had walked about a quarter of a mile he again got into the trap,
+but it felt still hotter in the middle of the street. He tried to recall
+last night's conversation with his brother-in-law, but the recollections
+no longer excited him as they had done in the morning. They were dulled
+by the impressions made by the starting and procession of the gang, and
+chiefly by the intolerable heat.
+
+On the pavement, in the shade of some trees overhanging a fence, he saw
+two schoolboys standing over a kneeling man who sold ices. One of the
+boys was already sucking a pink spoon and enjoying his ices, the other
+was waiting for a glass that was being filled with something yellowish.
+
+"Where could I get a drink?" Nekhludoff asked his isvostchik, feeling an
+insurmountable desire for some refreshment.
+
+"There is a good eating-house close by," the isvostchik answered, and
+turning a corner, drove up to a door with a large signboard. The plump
+clerk in a Russian shirt, who stood behind the counter, and the waiters
+in their once white clothing who sat at the tables (there being hardly
+any customers) looked with curiosity at the unusual visitor and offered
+him their services. Nekhludoff asked for a bottle of seltzer water and
+sat down some way from the window at a small table covered with a dirty
+cloth. Two men sat at another table with tea-things and a white bottle
+in front of them, mopping their foreheads, and calculating something in
+a friendly manner. One of them was dark and bald, and had just such a
+border of hair at the back as Rogozhinsky. This sight again reminded
+Nekhludoff of yesterday's talk with his brother-in-law and his wish to
+see him and Nathalie.
+
+"I shall hardly be able to do it before the train starts," he thought;
+"I'd better write." He asked for paper, an envelope, and a stamp, and as
+he was sipping the cool, effervescent water he considered what he should
+say. But his thoughts wandered, and he could not manage to compose a
+letter.
+
+"My dear Nathalie,--I cannot go away with the heavy impression that
+yesterday's talk with your husband has left," he began. "What next?
+Shall I ask him to forgive me what I said yesterday? But I only said
+what I felt, and he will think that I am taking it back. Besides, this
+interference of his in my private matters. . . . No, I cannot," and
+again he felt hatred rising in his heart towards that man so foreign
+to him. He folded the unfinished letter and put it in his pocket, paid,
+went out, and again got into the trap to catch up the gang. It had grown
+still hotter. The stones and the walls seemed to be breathing out hot
+air. The pavement seemed to scorch the feet, and Nekhludoff felt a
+burning sensation in his hand when he touched the lacquered splashguard
+of his trap.
+
+The horse was jogging along at a weary trot, beating the uneven, dusty
+road monotonously with its hoofs, the isvostchik kept falling into a
+doze, Nekhludoff sat without thinking of anything.
+
+At the bottom of a street, in front of a large house, a group of people
+had collected, and a convoy soldier stood by.
+
+"What has happened?" Nekhludoff asked of a porter.
+
+"Something the matter with a convict."
+
+Nekhludoff got down and came up to the group. On the rough stones,
+where the pavement slanted down to the gutter, lay a broadly-built,
+red-bearded, elderly convict, with his head lower than his feet, and
+very red in the face. He had a grey cloak and grey trousers on, and lay
+on his back with the palms of his freckled hands downwards, and at
+long intervals his broad, high chest heaved, and he groaned, while
+his bloodshot eyes were fixed on the sky. By him stood a cross-looking
+policeman, a pedlar, a postman, a clerk, an old woman with a parasol,
+and a short-haired boy with an empty basket.
+
+"They are weak. Having been locked up in prison they've got weak, and
+then they lead them through the most broiling heat," said the clerk,
+addressing Nekhludoff, who had just come up.
+
+"He'll die, most likely," said the woman with the parasol, in a doleful
+tone.
+
+"His shirt should be untied," said the postman.
+
+The policeman began, with his thick, trembling fingers, clumsily to
+untie the tapes that fastened the shirt round the red, sinewy neck. He
+was evidently excited and confused, but still thought it necessary to
+address the crowd.
+
+"What have you collected here for? It is hot enough without your keeping
+the wind off."
+
+"They should have been examined by a doctor, and the weak ones left
+behind," said the clerk, showing off his knowledge of the law.
+
+The policeman, having undone the tapes of the shirt, rose and looked
+round.
+
+"Move on, I tell you. It is not your business, is it? What's there
+to stare at?" he said, and turned to Nekhludoff for sympathy, but not
+finding any in his face he turned to the convoy soldier.
+
+But the soldier stood aside, examining the trodden-down heel of his
+boot, and was quite indifferent to the policeman's perplexity.
+
+"Those whose business it is don't care. Is it right to do men to death
+like this? A convict is a convict, but still he is a man," different
+voices were heard saying in the crowd.
+
+"Put his head up higher, and give him some water," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Water has been sent for," said the policeman, and taking the prisoner
+under the arms he with difficulty pulled his body a little higher up.
+
+"What's this gathering here?" said a decided, authoritative voice, and
+a police officer, with a wonderfully clean, shiny blouse, and still more
+shiny top-boots, came up to the assembled crowd.
+
+"Move on. No standing about here," he shouted to the crowd, before he
+knew what had attracted it.
+
+When he came near and saw the dying convict, he made a sign of approval
+with his head, just as if he had quite expected it, and, turning to the
+policeman, said, "How is this?"
+
+The policeman said that, as a gang of prisoners was passing, one of the
+convicts had fallen down, and the convoy officer had ordered him to be
+left behind.
+
+"Well, that's all right. He must be taken to the police station. Call an
+isvostchik."
+
+"A porter has gone for one," said the policeman, with his fingers raised
+to his cap.
+
+The shopman began something about the heat.
+
+"Is it your business, eh? Move on," said the police officer, and looked
+so severely at him that the clerk was silenced.
+
+"He ought to have a little water," said Nekhludoff. The police officer
+looked severely at Nekhludoff also, but said nothing. When the porter
+brought a mug full of water, he told the policeman to offer some to the
+convict. The policeman raised the drooping head, and tried to pour a
+little water down the mouth; but the prisoner could not swallow it, and
+it ran down his beard, wetting his jacket and his coarse, dirty linen
+shirt.
+
+"Pour it on his head," ordered the officer; and the policeman took off
+the pancake-shaped cap and poured the water over the red curls and bald
+part of the prisoner's head. His eyes opened wide as if in fear, but his
+position remained unchanged.
+
+Streams of dirt trickled down his dusty face, but the mouth continued to
+gasp in the same regular way, and his whole body shook.
+
+"And what's this? Take this one," said the police officer, pointing to
+Nekhludoff's isvostchik. "You, there, drive up."
+
+"I am engaged," said the isvostchik, dismally, and without looking up.
+
+"It is my isvostchik; but take him. I will pay you," said Nekhludoff,
+turning to the isvostchik.
+
+"Well, what are you waiting for?" shouted the officer. "Catch hold."
+
+The policeman, the porter, and the convoy soldier lifted the dying man
+and carried him to the trap, and put him on the seat. But he could not
+sit up; his head fell back, and the whole of his body glided off the
+seat.
+
+"Make him lie down," ordered the officer.
+
+"It's all right, your honour; I'll manage him like this," said the
+policeman, sitting down by the dying man, and clasping his strong,
+right arm round the body under the arms. The convoy soldier lifted the
+stockingless feet, in prison shoes, and put them into the trap.
+
+The police officer looked around, and noticing the pancake-shaped hat of
+the convict lifted it up and put it on the wet, drooping head.
+
+"Go on," he ordered.
+
+The isvostchik looked angrily round, shook his head, and, accompanied
+by the convoy soldier, drove back to the police station. The policeman,
+sitting beside the convict, kept dragging up the body that was
+continually sliding down from the seat, while the head swung from side
+to side.
+
+The convoy soldier, who was walking by the side of the trap, kept
+putting the legs in their place. Nekhludoff followed the trap.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+SPILLED LIKE WATER ON THE GROUND.
+
+The trap passed the fireman who stood sentinel at the entrance, [the
+headquarters of the fire brigade and the police stations are generally
+together in Moscow] drove into the yard of the police station, and
+stopped at one of the doors. In the yard several firemen with their
+sleeves tucked up were washing some kind of cart and talking loudly.
+When the trap stopped, several policemen surrounded it, and taking the
+lifeless body of the convict under the arms, took him out of the trap,
+which creaked under him. The policeman who had brought the body got
+down, shook his numbed arm, took off his cap, and crossed himself.
+The body was carried through the door and up the stairs. Nekhludoff
+followed. In the small, dirty room where the body was taken there stood
+four beds. On two of them sat a couple of sick men in dressing-gowns,
+one with a crooked mouth, whose neck was bandaged, the other one in
+consumption. Two of the beds were empty; the convict was laid on one of
+them. A little man, with glistening eyes and continually moving brows,
+with only his underclothes and stockings on, came up with quick, soft
+steps, looked at the convict and then at Nekhludoff, and burst into loud
+laughter. This was a madman who was being kept in the police hospital.
+
+"They wish to frighten me, but no, they won't succeed," he said.
+
+The policemen who carried the corpse were followed by a police officer
+and a medical assistant. The medical assistant came up to the body and
+touched the freckled hand, already growing cold, which, though still
+soft, was deadly pale. He held it for a moment, and then let it go. It
+fell lifelessly on the stomach of the dead man.
+
+"He's ready," said the medical assistant, but, evidently to be quite in
+order, he undid the wet, brown shirt, and tossing back the curls from
+his ear, put it to the yellowish, broad, immovable chest of the convict.
+All were silent. The medical assistant raised himself again, shook his
+head, and touched with his fingers first one and then the other lid over
+the open, fixed blue eyes.
+
+"I'm not frightened, I'm not frightened." The madman kept repeating
+these words, and spitting in the direction of the medical assistant.
+
+"Well?" asked the police officer.
+
+"Well! He must be put into the mortuary."
+
+"Are you sure? Mind," said the police officer.
+
+"It's time I should know," said the medical assistant, drawing the shirt
+over the body's chest. "However, I will send for Mathew Ivanovitch. Let
+him have a look. Petrov, call him," and the medical assistant stepped
+away from the body.
+
+"Take him to the mortuary," said the police officer. "And then you must
+come into the office and sign," he added to the convoy soldier, who had
+not left the convict for a moment.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the soldier.
+
+The policemen lifted the body and carried it down again. Nekhludoff
+wished to follow, but the madman kept him back.
+
+"You are not in the plot! Well, then, give me a cigarette," he said.
+Nekhludoff got out his cigarette case and gave him one.
+
+The madman, quickly moving his brows all the time, began relating how
+they tormented him by thought suggestion.
+
+"Why, they are all against me, and torment and torture me through their
+mediums."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Nekhludoff, and without listening any further
+he left the room and went out into the yard, wishing to know where the
+body would be put.
+
+The policemen with their burden had already crossed the yard, and were
+coming to the door of a cellar. Nekhludoff wished to go up to them, but
+the police officer stopped him.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Nothing? Then go away."
+
+Nekhludoff obeyed, and went back to his isvostchik, who was dozing. He
+awoke him, and they drove back towards the railway station.
+
+They had not made a hundred steps when they met a cart accompanied by
+a convoy soldier with a gun. On the cart lay another convict, who was
+already dead. The convict lay on his back in the cart, his shaved head,
+from which the pancake-shaped cap had slid over the black-bearded face
+down to the nose, shaking and thumping at every jolt. The driver, in
+his heavy boots, walked by the side of the cart, holding the reins;
+a policeman followed on foot. Nekhludoff touched his isvostchik's
+shoulder.
+
+"Just look what they are doing," said the isvostchik, stopping his
+horse.
+
+Nekhludoff got down and, following the cart, again passed the sentinel
+and entered the gate of the police station. By this time the firemen had
+finished washing the cart, and a tall, bony man, the chief of the fire
+brigade, with a coloured band round his cap, stood in their place, and,
+with his hands in his pockets, was severely looking at a fat-necked,
+well-fed, bay stallion that was being led up and down before him by a
+fireman. The stallion was lame on one of his fore feet, and the chief of
+the firemen was angrily saying something to a veterinary who stood by.
+
+The police officer was also present. When he saw the cart he went up to
+the convoy soldier.
+
+"Where did you bring him from?" he asked, shaking his head
+disapprovingly.
+
+"From the Gorbatovskaya," answered the policeman.
+
+"A prisoner?" asked the chief of the fire brigade.
+
+"Yes. It's the second to-day."
+
+"Well, I must say they've got some queer arrangements. Though of course
+it's a broiling day," said the chief of the fire brigade; then, turning
+to the fireman who was leading the lame stallion, he shouted: "Put him
+into the corner stall. And as to you, you hound, I'll teach you how to
+cripple horses which are worth more than you are, you scoundrel."
+
+The dead man was taken from the cart by the policemen just in the same
+way as the first had been, and carried upstairs into the hospital.
+Nekhludoff followed them as if he were hypnotised.
+
+"What do you want?" asked one of the policemen. But Nekhludoff did
+not answer, and followed where the body was being carried. The madman,
+sitting on a bed, was smoking greedily the cigarette Nekhludoff had
+given him.
+
+"Ah, you've come back," he said, and laughed. When he saw the body he
+made a face, and said, "Again! I am sick of it. I am not a boy, am I,
+eh?" and he turned to Nekhludoff with a questioning smile.
+
+Nekhludoff was looking at the dead man, whose face, which had been
+hidden by his cap, was now visible. This convict was as handsome in face
+and body as the other was hideous. He was a man in the full bloom of
+life. Notwithstanding that he was disfigured by the half of his head
+being shaved, the straight, rather low forehead, raised a bit over the
+black, lifeless eyes, was very fine, and so was the nose above the
+thin, black moustaches. There was a smile on the lips that were already
+growing blue, a small beard outlined the lower part of the face, and on
+the shaved side of the head a firm, well-shaped ear was visible.
+
+One could see what possibilities of a higher life had been destroyed
+in this man. The fine bones of his hands and shackled feet, the strong
+muscles of all his well-proportioned limbs, showed what a beautiful,
+strong, agile human animal this had been. As an animal merely he had
+been a far more perfect one of his kind than the bay stallion, about the
+laming of which the fireman was so angry.
+
+Yet he had been done to death, and no one was sorry for him as a man,
+nor was any one sorry that so fine a working animal had perished. The
+only feeling evinced was that of annoyance because of the bother caused
+by the necessity of getting this body, threatening putrefaction, out of
+the way. The doctor and his assistant entered the hospital, accompanied
+by the inspector of the police station. The doctor was a thick-set man,
+dressed in pongee silk coat and trousers of the same material, closely
+fitting his muscular thighs. The inspector was a little fat fellow, with
+a red face, round as a ball, which he made still broader by a habit he
+had of filling his cheeks with air, and slowly letting it out again. The
+doctor sat down on the bed by the side of the dead man, and touched
+the hands in the same way as his assistant had done, put his ear to the
+heart, rose, and pulled his trousers straight. "Could not be more dead,"
+he said.
+
+The inspector filled his mouth with air and slowly blew it out again.
+
+"Which prison is he from?" he asked the convoy soldier.
+
+The soldier told him, and reminded him of the chains on the dead man's
+feet.
+
+"I'll have them taken off; we have got a smith about, the Lord be
+thanked," said the inspector, and blew up his cheeks again; he went
+towards the door, slowly letting out the air.
+
+"Why has this happened?" Nekhludoff asked the doctor.
+
+The doctor looked at him through his spectacles.
+
+"Why has what happened? Why they die of sunstroke, you mean? This is
+why: They sit all through the winter without exercise and without light,
+and suddenly they are taken out into the sunshine, and on a day like
+this, and they march in a crowd so that they get no air, and sunstroke
+is the result."
+
+"Then why are they sent out?"
+
+"Oh, as to that, go and ask those who send them. But may I ask who are
+you?"
+
+"I am a stranger."
+
+"Ah, well, good-afternoon; I have no time." The doctor was vexed; he
+gave his trousers a downward pull, and went towards the beds of the
+sick.
+
+"Well, how are you getting on?" he asked the pale man with the crooked
+mouth and bandaged neck.
+
+Meanwhile the madman sat on a bed, and having finished his cigarette,
+kept spitting in the direction of the doctor.
+
+Nekhludoff went down into the yard and out of the gate past the
+firemen's horses and the hens and the sentinel in his brass helmet, and
+got into the trap, the driver of which had again fallen asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE CONVICT TRAIN.
+
+When Nekhludoff came to the station, the prisoners were all seated in
+railway carriages with grated windows. Several persons, come to see
+them off, stood on the platform, but were not allowed to come up to the
+carriages.
+
+The convoy was much troubled that day. On the way from the prison to the
+station, besides the two Nekhludoff had seen, three other prisoners
+had fallen and died of sunstroke. One was taken to the nearest police
+station like the first two, and the other two died at the railway
+station. [In Moscow, in the beginning of the eighth decade of this
+century, five convicts died of sunstroke in one day on their way from
+the Boutyrki prison to the Nijni railway station.] The convoy men were
+not troubled because five men who might have been alive died while in
+their charge. This did not trouble them, but they were concerned lest
+anything that the law required in such cases should be omitted. To
+convey the bodies to the places appointed, to deliver up their papers,
+to take them off the lists of those to be conveyed to Nijni--all this
+was very troublesome, especially on so hot a day.
+
+It was this that occupied the convoy men, and before it could all be
+accomplished Nekhludoff and the others who asked for leave to go up to
+the carriages were not allowed to do so. Nekhludoff, however, was soon
+allowed to go up, because he tipped the convoy sergeant. The sergeant
+let Nekhludoff pass, but asked him to be quick and get his talk over
+before any of the authorities noticed. There were 15 carriages in all,
+and except one carriage for the officials, they were full of prisoners.
+As Nekhludoff passed the carriages he listened to what was going on in
+them. In all the carriages was heard the clanging of chains, the sound
+of bustle, mixed with loud and senseless language, but not a word was
+being said about their dead fellow-prisoners. The talk was all about
+sacks, drinking water, and the choice of seats.
+
+Looking into one of the carriages, Nekhludoff saw convoy soldiers taking
+the manacles off the hands of the prisoners. The prisoners held out
+their arms, and one of the soldiers unlocked the manacles with a key and
+took them off; the other collected them.
+
+After he had passed all the other carriages, Nekhludoff came up to the
+women's carriages. From the second of these he heard a woman's groans:
+"Oh, oh, oh! O God! Oh, oh! O God!"
+
+Nekhludoff passed this carriage and went up to a window of the third
+carriage, which a soldier pointed out to him. When he approached his
+face to the window, he felt the hot air, filled with the smell of
+perspiration, coming out of it, and heard distinctly the shrill sound
+of women's voices. All the seats were filled with red, perspiring,
+loudly-talking women, dressed in prison cloaks and white jackets.
+Nekhludoff's face at the window attracted their attention. Those nearest
+ceased talking and drew closer. Maslova, in her white jacket and her
+head uncovered, sat by the opposite window. The white-skinned, smiling
+Theodosia sat a little nearer. When she recognised Nekhludoff, she
+nudged Maslova and pointed to the window. Maslova rose hurriedly, threw
+her kerchief over her black hair, and with a smile on her hot, red face
+came up to the window and took hold of one of the bars.
+
+"Well, it is hot," she said, with a glad smile.
+
+"Did you get the things?"
+
+"Yes, thank you."
+
+"Is there anything more you want?" asked Nekhludoff, while the air came
+out of the hot carriage as out of an oven.
+
+"I want nothing, thank you."
+
+"If we could get a drink?" said Theodosia.
+
+"Yes, if we could get a drink," repeated Maslova.
+
+"Why, have you not got any water?"
+
+"They put some in, but it is all gone."
+
+"Directly, I will ask one of the convoy men. Now we shall not see each
+other till we get to Nijni."
+
+"Why? Are you going?" said Maslova, as if she did not know it, and
+looked joyfully at Nekhludoff.
+
+"I am going by the next train."
+
+Maslova said nothing, but only sighed deeply.
+
+"Is it true, sir, that 12 convicts have been done to death?" said a
+severe-looking old prisoner with a deep voice like a man's.
+
+It was Korableva.
+
+"I did not hear of 12; I have seen two," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"They say there were 12 they killed. And will nothing be done to them?
+Only think! The fiends!"
+
+"And have none of the women fallen ill?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"Women are stronger," said another of the prisoners--a short little
+woman, and laughed; "only there's one that has taken it into her head to
+be delivered. There she goes," she said, pointing to the next carriage,
+whence proceeded the groans.
+
+"You ask if we want anything," said Maslova, trying to keep the smile
+of joy from her lips; "could not this woman be left behind, suffering as
+she is? There, now, if you would tell the authorities."
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"And one thing more; could she not see her husband, Taras?" she added,
+pointing with her eyes to the smiling Theodosia.
+
+"He is going with you, is he not?"
+
+"Sir, you must not talk," said a convoy sergeant, not the one who had
+let Nekhludoff come up. Nekhludoff left the carriage and went in search
+of an official to whom he might speak for the woman in travail and about
+Taras, but could not find him, nor get an answer from any of the convoy
+for a long time. They were all in a bustle; some were leading a prisoner
+somewhere or other, others running to get themselves provisions, some
+were placing their things in the carriages or attending on a lady
+who was going to accompany the convoy officer, and they answered
+Nekhludoff's questions unwillingly. Nekhludoff found the convoy officer
+only after the second bell had been rung. The officer with his short
+arm was wiping the moustaches that covered his mouth and shrugging his
+shoulders, reproving the corporal for something or other.
+
+"What is it you want?" he asked Nekhludoff.
+
+"You've got a woman there who is being confined, so I thought best--"
+
+"Well, let her be confined; we shall see later on," and briskly swinging
+his short arms, he ran up to his carriage. At the moment the guard
+passed with a whistle in his hand, and from the people on the platform
+and from the women's carriages there arose a sound of weeping and words
+of prayer.
+
+Nekhludoff stood on the platform by the side of Taras, and looked how,
+one after the other, the carriages glided past him, with the shaved
+heads of the men at the grated windows. Then the first of the women's
+carriages came up, with women's heads at the windows, some covered with
+kerchiefs and some uncovered, then the second, whence proceeded the same
+groans, then the carriage where Maslova was. She stood with the others
+at the window, and looked at Nekhludoff with a pathetic smile.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+BROTHER AND SISTER.
+
+There were still two hours before the passenger train by which
+Nekhludoff was going would start. He had thought of using this interval
+to see his sister again; but after the impressions of the morning he
+felt much excited and so done up that, sitting down on a sofa in the
+first-class refreshment-room, he suddenly grew so drowsy that he turned
+over on to his side, and, laying his face on his hand, fell asleep at
+once. A waiter in a dress coat with a napkin in his hand woke him.
+
+"Sir, sir, are you not Prince Nekhludoff? There's a lady looking for
+you."
+
+Nekhludoff started up and recollected where he was and all that had
+happened in the morning.
+
+He saw in his imagination the procession of prisoners, the dead bodies,
+the railway carriages with barred windows, and the women locked up in
+them, one of whom was groaning in travail with no one to help her, and
+another who was pathetically smiling at him through the bars.
+
+The reality before his eyes was very different, i.e., a table with
+vases, candlesticks and crockery, and agile waiters moving round the
+table, and in the background a cupboard and a counter laden with fruit
+and bottles, behind it a barman, and in front the backs of passengers
+who had come up for refreshments. When Nekhludoff had risen and sat
+gradually collecting his thoughts, he noticed that everybody in the
+room was inquisitively looking at something that was passing by the open
+doors.
+
+He also looked, and saw a group of people carrying a chair on which sat
+a lady whose head was wrapped in a kind of airy fabric.
+
+Nekhludoff thought he knew the footman who was supporting the chair in
+front. And also the man behind, and a doorkeeper with gold cord on his
+cap, seemed familiar. A lady's maid with a fringe and an apron, who was
+carrying a parcel, a parasol, and something round in a leather case,
+was walking behind the chair. Then came Prince Korchagin, with his thick
+lips, apoplectic neck, and a travelling cap on his head; behind him
+Missy, her cousin Misha, and an acquaintance of Nekhludoff's--the
+long-necked diplomat Osten, with his protruding Adam's apple and his
+unvarying merry mood and expression. He was saying something very
+emphatically, though jokingly, to the smiling Missy. The Korchagins were
+moving from their estate near the city to the estate of the Princess's
+sister on the Nijni railway. The procession--the men carrying the
+chair, the maid, and the doctor--vanished into the ladies' waiting-room,
+evoking a feeling of curiosity and respect in the onlookers. But the old
+Prince remained and sat down at the table, called a waiter, and ordered
+food and drink. Missy and Osten also remained in the refreshment-room
+and were about to sit down, when they saw an acquaintance in the
+doorway, and went up to her. It was Nathalie Rogozhinsky. Nathalie came
+into the refreshment-room accompanied by Agraphena Petrovna, and both
+looked round the room. Nathalie noticed at one and the same moment both
+her brother and Missy. She first went up to Missy, only nodding to her
+brother; but, having kissed her, at once turned to him.
+
+"At last I have found you," she said. Nekhludoff rose to greet Missy,
+Misha, and Osten, and to say a few words to them. Missy told him about
+their house in the country having been burnt down, which necessitated
+their moving to her aunt's. Osten began relating a funny story about a
+fire. Nekhludoff paid no attention, and turned to his sister.
+
+"How glad I am that you have come."
+
+"I have been here a long time," she said. "Agraphena Petrovna is with
+me." And she pointed to Agraphena Petrovna, who, in a waterproof and
+with a bonnet on her head, stood some way off, and bowed to him with
+kindly dignity and some confusion, not wishing to intrude.
+
+"We looked for you everywhere."
+
+"And I had fallen asleep here. How glad I am that you have come,"
+repeated Nekhludoff. "I had begun to write to you."
+
+"Really?" she said, looking frightened. "What about?"
+
+Missy and the gentleman, noticing that an intimate conversation was
+about to commence between the brother and sister, went away. Nekhludoff
+and his sister sat down by the window on a velvet-covered sofa, on which
+lay a plaid, a box, and a few other things.
+
+"Yesterday, after I left you, I felt inclined to return and express my
+regret, but I did not know how he would take it," said Nekhludoff. "I
+spoke hastily to your husband, and this tormented me."
+
+"I knew," said his sister, "that you did not mean to. Oh, you know!" and
+the tears came to her eyes, and she touched his hand. The sentence was
+not clear, but he understood it perfectly, and was touched by what it
+expressed. Her words meant that, besides the love for her husband which
+held her in its sway, she prized and considered important the love she
+had for him, her brother, and that every misunderstanding between them
+caused her deep suffering.
+
+"Thank you, thank you. Oh! what I have seen to-day!" he said, suddenly
+recalling the second of the dead convicts. "Two prisoners have been done
+to death."
+
+"Done to death? How?"
+
+"Yes, done to death. They led them in this heat, and two died of
+sunstroke."
+
+"Impossible! What, to-day? just now?"
+
+"Yes, just now. I have seen their bodies."
+
+"But why done to death? Who killed them?" asked Nathalie.
+
+"They who forced them to go killed them," said Nekhludoff, with
+irritation, feeling that she looked at this, too, with her husband's
+eyes.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" said Agraphena Petrovna, who had come up to them.
+
+"Yes, we have not the slightest idea of what is being done to these
+unfortunate beings. But it ought to be known," added Nekhludoff, and
+looked at old Korchagin, who sat with a napkin tied round him and a
+bottle before him, and who looked round at Nekhludoff.
+
+"Nekhludoff," he called out, "won't you join me and take some
+refreshment? It is excellent before a journey."
+
+Nekhludoff refused, and turned away.
+
+"But what are you going to do?" Nathalie continued.
+
+"What I can. I don't know, but I feel I must do something. And I shall
+do what I am able to."
+
+"Yes, I understand. And how about them?" she continued, with a smile and
+a look towards Korchagin. "Is it possible that it is all over?"
+
+"Completely, and I think without any regret on either side."
+
+"It is a pity. I am sorry. I am fond of her. However, it's all right.
+But why do you wish to bind yourself?" she added shyly. "Why are you
+going?"
+
+"I go because I must," answered Nekhludoff, seriously and dryly, as if
+wishing to stop this conversation. But he felt ashamed of his coldness
+towards his sister at once. "Why not tell her all I am thinking?" he
+thought, "and let Agraphena Petrovna also hear it," he thought, with
+a look at the old servant, whose presence made the wish to repeat his
+decision to his sister even stronger.
+
+"You mean my intention to marry Katusha? Well, you see, I made up my
+mind to do it, but she refuses definitely and firmly," he said, and his
+voice shook, as it always did when he spoke of it. "She does not wish
+to accept my sacrifice, but is herself sacrificing what in her position
+means much, and I cannot accept this sacrifice, if it is only a
+momentary impulse. And so I am going with her, and shall be where she
+is, and shall try to lighten her fate as much as I can."
+
+Nathalie said nothing. Agraphena Petrovna looked at her with a
+questioning look, and shook her head. At this moment the former
+procession issued from the ladies' room. The same handsome footman
+(Philip). and the doorkeeper were carrying the Princess Korchagin. She
+stopped the men who were carrying her, and motioned to Nekhludoff to
+approach, and, with a pitiful, languishing air, she extended her white,
+ringed hand, expecting the firm pressure of his hand with a sense of
+horror.
+
+"Epouvantable!" she said, meaning the heat. "I cannot stand it! Ce
+climat me tue!" And, after a short talk about the horrors of the Russian
+climate, she gave the men a sign to go on.
+
+"Be sure and come," she added, turning her long face towards Nekhludoff
+as she was borne away.
+
+The procession with the Princess turned to the right towards the
+first-class carriages. Nekhludoff, with the porter who was carrying his
+things, and Taras with his bag, turned to the left.
+
+"This is my companion," said Nekhludoff to his sister, pointing to
+Taras, whose story he had told her before.
+
+"Surely not third class?" said Nathalie, when Nekhludoff stopped in
+front of a third-class carriage, and Taras and the porter with the
+things went in.
+
+"Yes; it is more convenient for me to be with Taras," he said. "One
+thing more," he added; "up to now I have not given the Kousminski
+land to the peasants; so that, in case of my death, your children will
+inherit it."
+
+"Dmitri, don't!" said Nathalie.
+
+"If I do give it away, all I can say is that the rest will be theirs,
+as it is not likely I shall marry; and if I do marry I shall have no
+children, so that--"
+
+"Dmitri, don't talk like that!" said Nathalie. And yet Nekhludoff
+noticed that she was glad to hear him say it.
+
+Higher up, by the side of a first-class carriage, there stood a group of
+people still looking at the carriage into which the Princess Korchagin
+had been carried. Most of the passengers were already seated. Some of
+the late comers hurriedly clattered along the boards of the platform,
+the guard was closing the doors and asking the passengers to get in and
+those who were seeing them off to come out.
+
+Nekhludoff entered the hot, smelling carriage, but at once stepped out
+again on to the small platform at the back of the carriage. Nathalie
+stood opposite the carriage, with her fashionable bonnet and cape,
+by the side of Agraphena Petrovna, and was evidently trying to find
+something to say.
+
+She could not even say ecrivez, because they had long ago laughed
+at this word, habitually spoken by those about to part. The short
+conversation about money matters had in a moment destroyed the tender
+brotherly and sisterly feelings that had taken hold of them. They felt
+estranged, so that Nathalie was glad when the train moved; and she
+could only say, nodding her head with a sad and tender look, "Goodbye,
+good-bye, Dmitri." But as soon as the carriage had passed her she
+thought of how she should repeat her conversation with her brother to
+her husband, and her face became serious and troubled.
+
+Nekhludoff, too, though he had nothing but the kindest feelings for
+his sister, and had hidden nothing from her, now felt depressed and
+uncomfortable with her, and was glad to part. He felt that the Nathalie
+who was once so near to him no longer existed, and in her place was only
+a slave of that hairy, unpleasant husband, who was so foreign to him. He
+saw it clearly when her face lit up with peculiar animation as he spoke
+of what would peculiarly interest her husband, i.e., the giving up of
+the land to the peasants and the inheritance.
+
+And this made him sad.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF HUMAN LIFE.
+
+The heat in the large third-class carriage, which had been standing in
+the burning sun all day, was so great that Nekhludoff did not go in,
+but stopped on the little platform behind the carriage which formed a
+passage to the next one. But there was not a breath of fresh air here
+either, and Nekhludoff breathed freely only when the train had passed
+the buildings and the draught blew across the platform.
+
+"Yes, killed," he repeated to himself, the words he had used to his
+sister. And in his imagination in the midst of all other impressions
+there arose with wonderful clearness the beautiful face of the second
+dead convict, with the smile of the lips, the severe expression of the
+brows, and the small, firm ear below the shaved bluish skull.
+
+And what seemed terrible was that he had been murdered, and no one knew
+who had murdered him. Yet he had been murdered. He was led out like all
+the rest of the prisoners by Maslennikoff's orders. Maslennikoff had
+probably given the order in the usual manner, had signed with his stupid
+flourish the paper with the printed heading, and most certainly would
+not consider himself guilty. Still less would the careful doctor who
+examined the convicts consider himself guilty. He had performed his duty
+accurately, and had separated the weak. How could he have foreseen this
+terrible heat, or the fact that they would start so late in the day and
+in such crowds? The prison inspector? But the inspector had only carried
+into execution the order that on a given day a certain number of exiles
+and convicts--men and women--had to be sent off. The convoy officer
+could not be guilty either, for his business was to receive a certain
+number of persons in a certain place, and to deliver up the same number.
+He conducted them in the usual manner, and could not foresee that two
+such strong men as those Nekhludoff saw would not be able to stand it
+and would die. No one is guilty, and yet the men have been murdered by
+these people who are not guilty of their murder.
+
+"All this comes," Nekhludoff thought, "from the fact that all these
+people, governors, inspectors, police officers, and men, consider that
+there are circumstances in which human relations are not necessary
+between human beings. All these men, Maslennikoff, and the inspector,
+and the convoy officer, if they were not _governor, inspector, officer,_
+would have considered twenty times before sending people in such heat
+in such a mass--would have stopped twenty times on the way, and, seeing
+that a man was growing weak, gasping for breath, would have led him
+into the shade, would have given him water and let him rest, and if an
+accident had still occurred they would have expressed pity. But they
+not only did not do it, but hindered others from doing it, because they
+considered not men and their duty towards them but only the office they
+themselves filled, and held what that office demanded of them to be
+above human relations. That's what it is," Nekhludoff went on in his
+thoughts. "If one acknowledges but for a single hour that anything
+can be more important than love for one's fellowmen, even in some
+one exceptional case, any crime can be committed without a feeling of
+guilt."
+
+Nekhludoff was so engrossed by his thoughts that he did not notice how
+the weather changed. The sun was covered over by a low-hanging, ragged
+cloud. A compact, light grey cloud was rapidly coming from the west, and
+was already falling in heavy, driving rain on the fields and woods far
+in the distance. Moisture, coming from the cloud, mixed with the air.
+Now and then the cloud was rent by flashes of lightning, and peals of
+thunder mingled more and more often with the rattling of the train. The
+cloud came nearer and nearer, the rain-drops driven by the wind began
+to spot the platform and Nekhludoff's coat; and he stepped to the other
+side of the little platform, and, inhaling the fresh, moist air--filled
+with the smell of corn and wet earth that had long been waiting for
+rain--he stood looking at the gardens, the woods, the yellow rye fields,
+the green oatfields, the dark-green strips of potatoes in bloom, that
+glided past. Everything looked as if covered over with varnish--the
+green turned greener, the yellow yellower, the black blacker.
+
+"More! more!" said Nekhludoff, gladdened by the sight of gardens and
+fields revived by the beneficent shower. The shower did not last long.
+Part of the cloud had come down in rain, part passed over, and the last
+fine drops fell straight on to the earth. The sun reappeared,
+everything began to glisten, and in the east--not very high above the
+horizon--appeared a bright rainbow, with the violet tint very distinct
+and broken only at one end.
+
+"Why, what was I thinking about?" Nekhludoff asked himself when all
+these changes in nature were over, and the train ran into a cutting
+between two high banks.
+
+"Oh! I was thinking that all those people (inspector, convoy men--all
+those in the service) are for the greater part kind people--cruel only
+because they are serving." He recalled Maslennikoff's indifference when
+he told him about what was being done in the prison, the inspector's
+severity, the cruelty of the convoy officer when he refused places on
+the carts to those who asked for them, and paid no attention to the fact
+that there was a woman in travail in the train. All these people were
+evidently invulnerable and impregnable to the simplest feelings of
+compassion only because they held offices. "As officials they were
+impermeable to the feelings of humanity, as this paved ground is
+impermeable to the rain." Thus thought Nekhludoff as he looked at the
+railway embankment paved with stones of different colours, down which
+the water was running in streams instead of soaking into the earth.
+"Perhaps it is necessary to pave the banks with stones, but it is sad
+to look at the ground, which might be yielding corn, grass, bushes, or
+trees in the same way as the ground visible up there is doing--deprived
+of vegetation, and so it is with men," thought Nekhludoff. "Perhaps
+these governors, inspectors, policemen, are needed, but it is terrible
+to see men deprived of the chief human attribute, that of love and
+sympathy for one another. The thing is," he continued, "that these
+people consider lawful what is not lawful, and do not consider the
+eternal, immutable law, written in the hearts of men by God, as law.
+That is why I feel so depressed when I am with these people. I am
+simply afraid of them, and really they are terrible, more terrible than
+robbers. A robber might, after all, feel pity, but they can feel
+no pity, they are inured against pity as these stones are against
+vegetation. That is what makes them terrible. It is said that the
+Pougatcheffs, the Razins [leaders of rebellions in Russia: Stonka Razin
+in the 17th and Pougatcheff in the 18th century] are terrible. These are
+a thousand times more terrible," he continued, in his thoughts. "If
+a psychological problem were set to find means of making men of our
+time--Christian, humane, simple, kind people--perform the most horrible
+crimes without feeling guilty, only one solution could be devised: to
+go on doing what is being done. It is only necessary that these people
+should he governors, inspectors, policemen; that they should be fully
+convinced that there is a kind of business, called government service,
+which allows men to treat other men as things, without human brotherly
+relations with them, and also that these people should be so linked
+together by this government service that the responsibility for the
+results of their actions should not fall on any one of them separately.
+Without these conditions, the terrible acts I witnessed to-day would be
+impossible in our times. It all lies in the fact that men think there
+are circumstances in which one may deal with human beings without love;
+and there are no such circumstances. One may deal with things without
+love. One may cut down trees, make bricks, hammer iron without love; but
+you cannot deal with men without it, just as one cannot deal with bees
+without being careful. If you deal carelessly with bees you will injure
+them, and will yourself be injured. And so with men. It cannot be
+otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life. It
+is true that a man cannot force another to love him, as he can force
+him to work for him; but it does not follow that a man may deal with men
+without love, especially to demand anything from them. If you feel no
+love, sit still," Nekhludoff thought; "occupy yourself with things, with
+yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. You can only eat
+without injuring yourself when you feel inclined to eat, so you can only
+deal with men usefully when you love. Only let yourself deal with a man
+without love, as I did yesterday with my brother-in-law, and there are
+no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself, as all my life
+proves. Yes, yes, it is so," thought Nekhludoff; "it is good; yes, it is
+good," he repeated, enjoying the freshness after the torturing heat, and
+conscious of having attained to the fullest clearness on a question that
+had long occupied him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+TARAS'S STORY.
+
+The carriage in which Nekhludoff had taken his place was half filled
+with people. There were in it servants, working men, factory hands,
+butchers, Jews, shopmen, workmen's wives, a soldier, two ladies, a
+young one and an old one with bracelets on her arm, and a severe-looking
+gentleman with a cockade on his black cap. All these people were sitting
+quietly; the bustle of taking their places was long over; some sat
+cracking and eating sunflower seeds, some smoking, some talking.
+
+Taras sat, looking very happy, opposite the door, keeping a place for
+Nekhludoff, and carrying on an animated conversation with a man in
+a cloth coat who sat opposite to him, and who was, as Nekhludoff
+afterwards found out, a gardener going to a new situation. Before
+reaching the place where Taras sat Nekhludoff stopped between the seats
+near a reverend-looking old man with a white beard and nankeen coat, who
+was talking with a young woman in peasant dress. A little girl of about
+seven, dressed in a new peasant costume, sat, her little legs dangling
+above the floor, by the side of the woman, and kept cracking seeds.
+
+The old man turned round, and, seeing Nekhludoff, he moved the lappets
+of his coat off the varnished seat next to him, and said, in a friendly
+manner:
+
+"Please, here's a seat."
+
+Nekhludoff thanked him, and took the seat. As soon as he was seated the
+woman continued the interrupted conversation.
+
+She was returning to her village, and related how her husband, whom she
+had been visiting, had received her in town.
+
+"I was there during the carnival, and now, by the Lord's help, I've been
+again," she said. "Then, God willing, at Christmas I'll go again."
+
+"That's right," said the old man, with a look at Nekhludoff, "it's the
+best way to go and see him, else a young man can easily go to the bad,
+living in a town."
+
+"Oh, no, sir, mine is not such a man. No nonsense of any kind about him;
+his life is as good as a young maiden's. The money he earns he sends
+home all to a copeck. And, as to our girl here, he was so glad to see
+her, there are no words for it," said the woman, and smiled.
+
+The little girl, who sat cracking her seeds and spitting out the shells,
+listened to her mother's words, and, as if to confirm them, looked up
+with calm, intelligent eyes into Nekhludoff's and the old man's faces.
+
+"Well, if he's good, that's better still," said the old man. "And none
+of that sort of thing?" he added, with a look at a couple, evidently
+factory hands, who sat at the other side of the carriage. The husband,
+with his head thrown back, was pouring vodka down his throat out of a
+bottle, and the wife sat holding a bag, out of which they had taken the
+bottle, and watched him intently.
+
+"No, mine neither drinks nor smokes," said the woman who was conversing
+with the old man, glad of the opportunity of praising her husband once
+more. "No, sir, the earth does not hold many such." And, turning to
+Nekhludoff, she added, "That's the sort of man he is."
+
+"What could be better," said the old man, looking at the factory worker,
+who had had his drink and had passed the bottle to his wife. The wife
+laughed, shook her head, and also raised the bottle to her lips.
+
+Noticing Nekhludoff's and the old man's look directed towards them, the
+factory worker addressed the former.
+
+"What is it, sir? That we are drinking? Ah, no one sees how we work,
+but every one sees how we drink. I have earned it, and I am drinking and
+treating my wife, and no one else."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Nekhludoff, not knowing what to say.
+
+"True, sir. My wife is a steady woman. I am satisfied with my wife,
+because she can feel for me. Is it right what I'm saying, Mavra?"
+
+"There you are, take it, I don't want any more," said the wife,
+returning the bottle to him. "And what are you jawing for like that?"
+she added.
+
+"There now! She's good--that good; and suddenly she'll begin squeaking
+like a wheel that's not greased. Mavra, is it right what I'm saying?"
+
+Mavra laughed and moved her hand with a tipsy gesture.
+
+"Oh, my, he's at it again."
+
+"There now, she's that good--that good; but let her get her tail over
+the reins, and you can't think what she'll be up to. . . . Is it right
+what I'm saying? You must excuse me, sir, I've had a drop! What's to be
+done?" said the factory worker, and, preparing to go to sleep, put his
+head in his wife's lap.
+
+Nekhludoff sat a while with the old man, who told him all about himself.
+The old man was a stove builder, who had been working for 53 years, and
+had built so many stoves that he had lost count, and now he wanted to
+rest, but had no time. He had been to town and found employment for the
+young ones, and was now going to the country to see the people at home.
+After hearing the old man's story, Nekhludoff went to the place that
+Taras was keeping for him.
+
+"It's all right, sir; sit down; we'll put the bag here," said the
+gardener, who sat opposite Taras, in a friendly tone, looking up into
+Nekhludoff's face.
+
+"Rather a tight fit, but no matter since we are friends," said Taras,
+smiling, and lifting the bag, which weighed more than five stone, as if
+it were a feather, he carried it across to the window.
+
+"Plenty of room; besides, we might stand up a bit; and even under
+the seat it's as comfortable as you could wish. What's the good of
+humbugging?" he said, beaming with friendliness and kindness.
+
+Taras spoke of himself as being unable to utter a word when quite sober;
+but drink, he said, helped him to find the right words, and then he
+could express everything. And in reality, when he was sober Taras kept
+silent; but when he had been drinking, which happened rarely and only on
+special occasions, he became very pleasantly talkative. Then he spoke
+a great deal, spoke well and very simply and truthfully, and especially
+with great kindliness, which shone in his gentle, blue eyes and in the
+friendly smile that never left his lips. He was in such a state to-day.
+Nekhludoff's approach interrupted the conversation; but when he had put
+the bag in its place, Taras sat down again, and with his strong hands
+folded in his lap, and looking straight into the gardener's face,
+continued his story. He was telling his new acquaintance about his wife
+and giving every detail: what she was being sent to Siberia for, and why
+he was now following her. Nekhludoff had never heard a detailed account
+of this affair, and so he listened with interest. When he came up, the
+story had reached the point when the attempt to poison was already an
+accomplished fact, and the family had discovered that it was Theodosia's
+doing.
+
+"It's about my troubles that I'm talking," said Taras, addressing
+Nekhludoff with cordial friendliness. "I have chanced to come across
+such a hearty man, and we've got into conversation, and I'm telling him
+all."
+
+"I see," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Well, then in this way, my friend, the business became known. Mother,
+she takes that cake. 'I'm going,' says she, 'to the police officer.' My
+father is a just old man. 'Wait, wife,' says he, 'the little woman is
+a mere child, and did not herself know what she was doing. We must have
+pity. She may come to her senses.' But, dear me, mother would not hear
+of it. 'While we keep her here,' she says, 'she may destroy us all like
+cockroaches.' Well, friend, so she goes off for the police officer. He
+bounces in upon us at once. Calls for witnesses."
+
+"Well, and you?" asked the gardener.
+
+"Well, I, you see, friend, roll about with the pain in my stomach, and
+vomit. All my inside is turned inside out; I can't even speak. Well, so
+father he goes and harnesses the mare, and puts Theodosia into the cart,
+and is off to the police-station, and then to the magistrate's. And she,
+you know, just as she had done from the first, so also there, confesses
+all to the magistrate--where she got the arsenic, and how she kneaded
+the cake. 'Why did you do it?' says he. 'Why,' says she, 'because he's
+hateful to me. I prefer Siberia to a life with him.' That's me," and
+Taras smiled.
+
+"Well, so she confessed all. Then, naturally--the prison, and father
+returns alone. And harvest time just coming, and mother the only woman
+at home, and she no longer strong. So we think what we are to do. Could
+we not bail her out? So father went to see an official. No go. Then
+another. I think he went to five of them, and we thought of giving it
+up. Then we happened to come across a clerk--such an artful one as you
+don't often find. 'You give me five roubles, and I'll get her out,' says
+he. He agreed to do it for three. Well, and what do you think, friend? I
+went and pawned the linen she herself had woven, and gave him the money.
+As soon as he had written that paper," drawled out Taras, just as if he
+were speaking of a shot being fired, "we succeeded at once. I went to
+fetch her myself. Well, friend, so I got to town, put up the mare, took
+the paper, and went to the prison. 'What do you want?' 'This is what I
+want,' say I, 'you've got my wife here in prison.' 'And have you got a
+paper?' I gave him the paper. He gave it a look. 'Wait,' says he. So I
+sat down on a bench. It was already past noon by the sun. An official
+comes out. 'You are Vargoushoff?' 'I am.' 'Well, you may take her.' The
+gates opened, and they led her out in her own clothes quite all right.
+'Well, come along. Have you come on foot?' 'No, I have the horse here.'
+So I went and paid the ostler, and harnessed, put in all the hay that
+was left, and covered it with sacking for her to sit on. She got in and
+wrapped her shawl round her, and off we drove. She says nothing and I
+say nothing. Just as we were coming up to the house she says, 'And how's
+mother; is she alive?' 'Yes, she's alive.' 'And father; is he alive?
+'Yes, he is.' 'Forgive me, Taras,' she says, 'for my folly. I did not
+myself know what I was doing.' So I say, 'Words won't mend matters. I
+have forgiven you long ago,' and I said no more. We got home, and she
+just fell at mother's feet. Mother says, 'The Lord will forgive you.'
+And father said, 'How d'you do?' and 'What's past is past. Live as
+best you can. Now,' says he, 'is not the time for all that; there's
+the harvest to be gathered in down at Skorodino,' he says. 'Down on the
+manured acre, by the Lord's help, the ground has borne such rye that
+the sickle can't tackle it. It's all interwoven and heavy, and has sunk
+beneath its weight; that must be reaped. You and Taras had better go
+and see to it to-morrow.' Well, friend, from that moment she took to the
+work and worked so that every one wondered. At that time we rented three
+desiatins, and by God's help we had a wonderful crop both of oats and
+rye. I mow and she binds the sheaves, and sometimes we both of us
+reap. I am good at work and not afraid of it, but she's better still at
+whatever she takes up. She's a smart woman, young, and full of life; and
+as to work, friend, she'd grown that eager that I had to stop her. We
+get home, our fingers swollen, our arms aching, and she, instead of
+resting, rushes off to the barn to make binders for the sheaves for next
+day. Such a change!"
+
+"Well, and to you? Was she kinder, now?" asked the gardener.
+
+"That's beyond question. She clings to me as if we were one soul.
+Whatever I think she understands. Even mother, angry as she was, could
+not help saying: 'It's as if our Theodosia had been transformed; she's
+quite a different woman now!' We were once going to cart the sheaves
+with two carts. She and I were in the first, and I say, 'How could you
+think of doing that, Theodosia?' and she says, 'How could I think of it?
+just so, I did not wish to live with you. I thought I'd rather die
+than live with you!' I say, 'And now?' and she says, 'Now you're in
+my heart!'" Taras stopped, and smiled joyfully, shook his head as if
+surprised. "Hardly had we got the harvest home when I went to soak the
+hemp, and when I got home there was a summons, she must go to be tried,
+and we had forgotten all about the matter that she was to be tried for."
+
+"It can only be the evil one," said the gardener. "Could any man of
+himself think of destroying a living soul? We had a fellow once--" and
+the gardener was about to commence his tale when the train began to
+stop.
+
+"It seems we are coming to a station," he said. "I'll go and have a
+drink."
+
+The conversation stopped, and Nekhludoff followed the gardener out of
+the carriage onto the wet platform of the station.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+LE VRAI GRAND MONDE.
+
+Before Nekhludoff got out he had noticed in the station yard several
+elegant equipages, some with three, some with four, well-fed horses,
+with tinkling bells on their harness. When he stepped out on the wet,
+dark-coloured boards of the platform, he saw a group of people in front
+of the first-class carriage, among whom were conspicuous a stout
+lady with costly feathers on her hat, and a waterproof, and a tall,
+thin-legged young man in a cycling suit. The young man had by his side
+an enormous, well-fed dog, with a valuable collar. Behind them stood
+footmen, holding wraps and umbrellas, and a coachman, who had also come
+to meet the train.
+
+On the whole of the group, from the fat lady down to the coachman who
+stood holding up his long coat, there lay the stamp of wealth and quiet
+self-assurance. A curious and servile crowd rapidly gathered round this
+group--the station-master, in his red cap, a gendarme, a thin young lady
+in a Russian costume, with beads round her neck, who made a point of
+seeing the trains come in all through the summer, a telegraph clerk, and
+passengers, men and women.
+
+In the young man with the dog Nekhludoff recognised young Korchagin,
+a gymnasium student. The fat lady was the Princess's sister, to whose
+estate the Korchagins were now moving. The guard, with his gold cord and
+shiny top-boots, opened the carriage door and stood holding it as a sign
+of deference, while Philip and a porter with a white apron carefully
+carried out the long-faced Princess in her folding chair. The sisters
+greeted each other, and French sentences began flying about. Would the
+Princess go in a closed or an open carriage? At last the procession
+started towards the exit, the lady's maid, with her curly fringe,
+parasol and leather case in the rear.
+
+Nekhludoff not wishing to meet them and to have to take leave over
+again, stopped before he got to the door, waiting for the procession to
+pass.
+
+The Princess, her son, Missy, the doctor, and the maid went out first,
+the old Prince and his sister-in-law remained behind. Nekhludoff was too
+far to catch anything but a few disconnected French sentences of their
+conversation One of the sentences uttered by the Prince, as it often
+happens, for some unaccountable reason remained in his memory with all
+its intonations and the sound of the voice.
+
+"_Oh, il est du vrai grand monde, du vrai grand monde_," said the Prince
+in his loud, self-assured tone as he went out of the station with his
+sister-in-law, accompanied by the respectful guards and porters.
+
+At this moment from behind the corner of the station suddenly appeared
+a crowd of workmen in bark shoes, wearing sheepskin coats and carrying
+bags on their backs. The workmen went up to the nearest carriage with
+soft yet determined steps, and were about to get in, but were at
+once driven away by a guard. Without stopping, the workmen passed
+on, hurrying and jostling one another, to the next carriage and began
+getting in, catching their bags against the corners and door of the
+carriage, but another guard caught sight of them from the door of the
+station, and shouted at them severely. The workmen, who had already got
+in, hurried out again and went on, with the same soft and firm steps,
+still further towards Nekhludoff's carriage. A guard was again going to
+stop them, but Nekhludoff said there was plenty of room inside, and that
+they had better get in. They obeyed and got in, followed by Nekhludoff.
+
+The workmen were about to take their seats, when the gentleman with the
+cockade and the two ladies, looking at this attempt to settle in their
+carriage as a personal insult to themselves, indignantly protested and
+wanted to turn them out. The workmen--there were 20 of them, old men
+and quite young ones, all of them wearied, sunburnt, with haggard
+faces--began at once to move on through the carriage, catching the
+seats, the walls, and the doors with their bags. They evidently felt
+they had offended in some way, and seemed ready to go on indefinitely
+wherever they were ordered to go.
+
+"Where are you pushing to, you fiends? Sit down here," shouted another
+guard they met.
+
+"Voila encore des nouvelles," exclaimed the younger of the two ladies,
+quite convinced that she would attract Nekhludoff's notice by her good
+French.
+
+The other lady with the bracelets kept sniffing and making faces,
+and remarked something about how pleasant it was to sit with smelly
+peasants.
+
+The workmen, who felt the joy and calm experienced by people who have
+escaped some kind of danger, threw off their heavy bags with a movement
+of their shoulders and stowed them away under the seats.
+
+The gardener had left his own seat to talk with Taras, and now went
+back, so that there were two unoccupied seats opposite and one next to
+Taras. Three of the workmen took these seats, but when Nekhludoff came
+up to them, in his gentleman's clothing, they got so confused that they
+rose to go away, but Nekhludoff asked them to stay, and himself sat down
+on the arm of the seat, by the passage down the middle of the carriage.
+
+One of the workmen, a man of about 50, exchanged a surprised and even
+frightened look with a young man. That Nekhludoff, instead of scolding
+and driving them away, as was natural to a gentleman, should give up his
+seat to them, astonished and perplexed them. They even feared that this
+might have some evil result for them.
+
+However, they soon noticed that there was no underlying plot when they
+heard Nekhludoff talking quite simply with Taras, and they grew quiet
+and told one of the lads to sit down on his bag and give his seat to
+Nekhludoff. At first the elderly workman who sat opposite Nekhludoff
+shrank and drew back his legs for fear of touching the gentleman, but
+after a while he grew quite friendly, and in talking to him and Taras
+even slapped Nekhludoff on the knee when he wanted to draw special
+attention to what he was saying.
+
+He told them all about his position and his work in the peat bogs,
+whence he was now returning home. He had been working there for two and
+a half months, and was bringing home his wages, which only came to 10
+roubles, since part had been paid beforehand when he was hired. They
+worked, as he explained, up to their knees in water from sunrise to
+sunset, with two hours' interval for dinner.
+
+"Those who are not used to it find it hard, of course," he said; "but
+when one's hardened it doesn't matter, if only the food is right. At
+first the food was bad. Later the people complained, and they got good
+food, and it was easy to work."
+
+Then he told them how, during 28 years he went out to work, and sent all
+his earnings home. First to his father, then to his eldest brother, and
+now to his nephew, who was at the head of the household. On himself he
+spent only two or three roubles of the 50 or 60 he earned a year, just
+for luxuries--tobacco and matches.
+
+"I'm a sinner, when tired I even drink a little vodka sometimes," he
+added, with a guilty smile.
+
+Then he told them how the women did the work at home, and how the
+contractor had treated them to half a pail of vodka before they started
+to-day, how one of them had died, and another was returning home ill.
+The sick workman he was talking about was in a corner of the same
+carriage. He was a young lad, with a pale, sallow face and bluish lips.
+He was evidently tormented by intermittent fever. Nekhludoff went up to
+him, but the lad looked up with such a severe and suffering expression
+that Nekhludoff did not care to bother him with questions, but advised
+the elder man to give him quinine, and wrote down the name of the
+medicine. He wished to give him some money, but the old workman said he
+would pay for it himself.
+
+"Well, much as I have travelled, I have never met such a gentleman
+before. Instead of punching your head, he actually gives up his place
+to you," said the old man to Taras. "It seems there are all sorts of
+gentlefolk, too."
+
+"Yes, this is quite a new and different world," thought Nekhludoff,
+looking at these spare, sinewy, limbs, coarse, home-made garments,
+and sunburnt, kindly, though weary-looking faces, and feeling himself
+surrounded on all sides with new people and the serious interests, joys,
+and sufferings of a life of labour.
+
+"Here is_ le vrai grand monde_," thought Nekhludoff, remembering the
+words of Prince Korchagin and all that idle, luxurious world to which
+the Korchagins belonged, with their petty, mean interests. And he felt
+the joy of a traveller on discovering a new, unknown, and beautiful
+world.
+
+
+END OF BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MASLOVA MAKES NEW FRIENDS.
+
+The gang of prisoners to which Maslova belonged had walked about three
+thousand three hundred miles. She and the other prisoners condemned for
+criminal offences had travelled by rail and by steamboats as far as the
+town of Perm. It was only here that Nekhludoff succeeded in obtaining a
+permission for her to continue the journey with the political prisoners,
+as Vera Doukhova, who was among the latter, advised him to do. The
+journey up to Perm had been very trying to Maslova both morally and
+physically. Physically, because of the overcrowding, the dirt, and the
+disgusting vermin, which gave her no peace; morally, because of the
+equally disgusting men. The men, like the vermin, though they changed
+at each halting-place, were everywhere alike importunate; they swarmed
+round her, giving her no rest. Among the women prisoners and the men
+prisoners, the jailers and the convoy soldiers, the habit of a kind of
+cynical debauch was so firmly established that unless a female prisoner
+was willing to utilise her position as a woman she had to be constantly
+on the watch. To be continually in a state of fear and strife was very
+trying. And Maslova was specially exposed to attacks, her appearance
+being attractive and her past known to every one. The decided resistance
+with which she now met the importunity of all the men seemed offensive
+to them, and awakened another feeling, that of ill-will towards her. But
+her position was made a little easier by her intimacy with Theodosia,
+and Theodosia's husband, who, having heard of the molestations his wife
+was subject to, had in Nijni been arrested at his own desire in order
+to be able to protect her, and was now travelling with the gang as a
+prisoner. Maslova's position became much more bearable when she was
+allowed to join the political prisoners, who were provided with better
+accomodations, better food, and were treated less rudely, but besides
+all this Maslova's condition was much improved because among the
+political prisoners she was no longer molested by the men, and could
+live without being reminded of that past which she was so anxious to
+forget. But the chief advantage of the change lay in the fact that she
+made the acquaintance of several persons who exercised a decided and
+most beneficial influence on her character. Maslova was allowed to stop
+with the political prisoners at all the halting-places, but being a
+strong and healthy woman she was obliged to march with the criminal
+convicts. In this way she walked all the way from Tomsk. Two political
+prisoners also marched with the gang, Mary Pavlovna Schetinina, the girl
+with the hazel eyes who had attracted Nekhludoff's attention when he had
+been to visit Doukhova in prison, and one Simonson, who was on his
+way to the Takoutsk district, the dishevelled dark young fellow with
+deep-lying eyes, whom Nekhludoff had also noticed during that visit.
+Mary Pavlovna was walking because she had given her place on the cart
+to one of the criminals, a woman expecting to be confined, and Simonson
+because he did not dare to avail himself of a class privilege.
+
+These three always started early in the morning before the rest of the
+political prisoners, who followed later on in the carts.
+
+They were ready to start in this way just outside a large town, where a
+new convoy officer had taken charge of the gang.
+
+It was early on a dull September morning. It kept raining and snowing
+alternately, and the cold wind blew in sudden gusts. The whole gang of
+prisoners, consisting of four hundred men and fifty women, was already
+assembled in the court of the halting station. Some of them were
+crowding round the chief of the convoy, who was giving to specially
+appointed prisoners money for two days' keep to distribute among the
+rest, while others were purchasing food from women who had been let into
+the courtyard. One could hear the voices of the prisoners counting their
+money and making their purchases, and the shrill voices of the women
+with the food.
+
+Simonson, in his rubber jacket and rubber overshoes fastened with a
+string over his worsted stockings (he was a vegetarian and would not
+wear the skin of slaughtered animals), was also in the courtyard waiting
+for the gang to start. He stood by the porch and jotted down in his
+notebook a thought that had occurred to him. This was what he wrote:
+"If a bacteria watched and examined a human nail it would pronounce
+it inorganic matter, and thus we, examining our globe and watching its
+crust, pronounce it to be inorganic. This is incorrect."
+
+Katusha and Mary Pavlovna, both wearing top-boots and with shawls tied
+round their heads, came out of the building into the courtyard where the
+women sat sheltered from the wind by the northern wall of the court,
+and vied with one another, offering their goods, hot meat pie, fish,
+vermicelli, buckwheat porridge, liver, beef, eggs, milk. One had even a
+roast pig to offer.
+
+Having bought some eggs, bread, fish, and some rusks, Maslova was
+putting them into her bag, while Mary Pavlovna was paying the women,
+when a movement arose among the convicts. All were silent and took their
+places. The officer came out and began giving the last orders before
+starting. Everything was done in the usual manner. The prisoners were
+counted, the chains on their legs examined, and those who were to
+march in couples linked together with manacles. But suddenly the angry,
+authoritative voice of the officer shouting something was heard, also
+the sound of a blow and the crying of a child. All was silent for a
+moment and then came a hollow murmur from the crowd. Maslova and Mary
+Pavlovna advanced towards the spot whence the noise proceeded.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+AN INCIDENT OF THE MARCH.
+
+This is what Mary Pavlovna and Katusha saw when they came up to the
+scene whence the noise proceeded. The officer, a sturdy fellow, with
+fair moustaches, stood uttering words of foul and coarse abuse, and
+rubbing with his left the palm of his right hand, which he had hurt in
+hitting a prisoner on the face. In front of him a thin, tall convict,
+with half his head shaved and dressed in a cloak too short for him and
+trousers much too short, stood wiping his bleeding face with one hand,
+and holding a little shrieking girl wrapped in a shawl with the other.
+
+"I'll give it you" (foul abuse); "I'll teach you to reason" (more
+abuse); "you're to give her to the women!" shouted the officer. "Now,
+then, on with them."
+
+The convict, who was exiled by the Commune, had been carrying his little
+daughter all the way from Tomsk, where his wife had died of typhus, and
+now the officer ordered him to be manacled. The exile's explanation that
+he could not carry the child if he was manacled irritated the officer,
+who happened to be in a bad temper, and he gave the troublesome prisoner
+a beating. [A fact described by Lineff in his "Transportation".] Before
+the injured convict stood a convoy soldier, and a black-bearded prisoner
+with manacles on one hand and a look of gloom on his face, which he
+turned now to the officer, now to the prisoner with the little girl.
+
+The officer repeated his orders for the soldiers to take away the girl.
+The murmur among the prisoners grew louder.
+
+"All the way from Tomsk they were not put on," came a hoarse voice from
+some one in the rear. "It's a child, and not a puppy."
+
+"What's he to do with the lassie? That's not the law," said some one
+else.
+
+"Who's that?" shouted the officer as if he had been stung, and rushed
+into the crowd.
+
+"I'll teach you the law. Who spoke. You? You?"
+
+"Everybody says so, because-" said a short, broad-faced prisoner.
+
+Before he had finished speaking the officer hit him in the face.
+
+"Mutiny, is it? I'll show you what mutiny means. I'll have you all
+shot like dogs, and the authorities will be only too thankful. Take the
+girl."
+
+The crowd was silent. One convoy soldier pulled away the girl, who was
+screaming desperately, while another manacled the prisoner, who now
+submissively held out his hand.
+
+"Take her to the women," shouted the officer, arranging his sword belt.
+
+The little girl, whose face had grown quite red, was trying to disengage
+her arms from under the shawl, and screamed unceasingly. Mary Pavlovna
+stepped out from among the crowd and came up to the officer.
+
+"Will you allow me to carry the little girl?" she said.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the officer.
+
+"A political prisoner."
+
+Mary Pavlovna's handsome face, with the beautiful prominent eyes (he
+had noticed her before when the prisoners were given into his charge),
+evidently produced an effect on the officer. He looked at her in silence
+as if considering, then said: "I don't care; carry her if you like. It
+is easy for you to show pity; if he ran away who would have to answer?"
+
+"How could he run away with the child in his arms?" said Mary Pavlovna.
+
+"I have no time to talk with you. Take her if you like."
+
+"Shall I give her?" asked the soldier.
+
+"Yes, give her."
+
+"Come to me," said Mary Pavlovna, trying to coax the child to come to
+her.
+
+But the child in the soldier's arms stretched herself towards her father
+and continued to scream, and would not go to Mary Pavlovna.
+
+"Wait a bit, Mary Pavlovna," said Maslova, getting a rusk out of her
+bag; "she will come to me."
+
+The little girl knew Maslova, and when she saw her face and the rusk
+she let her take her. All was quiet. The gates were opened, and the gang
+stepped out, the convoy counted the prisoners over again, the bags were
+packed and tied on to the carts, the weak seated on the top. Maslova
+with the child in her arms took her place among the women next to
+Theodosia. Simonson, who had all the time been watching what was going
+on, stepped with large, determined strides up to the officer, who,
+having given his orders, was just getting into a trap, and said, "You
+have behaved badly."
+
+"Get to your place; it is no business of yours."
+
+"It is my business to tell you that you have behaved badly and I have
+said it," said Simonson, looking intently into the officer's face from
+under his bushy eyebrows.
+
+"Ready? March!" the officer called out, paying no heed to Simonson, and,
+taking hold of the driver's shoulder, he got into the trap. The gang
+started and spread out as it stepped on to the muddy high road with
+ditches on each side, which passed through a dense forest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MARY PAVLOVNA.
+
+In spite of the hard conditions in which they were placed, life among
+the political prisoners seemed very good to Katusha after the depraved,
+luxurious and effeminate life she had led in town for the last six
+years, and after two months' imprisonment with criminal prisoners. The
+fifteen to twenty miles they did per day, with one day's rest after two
+days' marching, strengthened her physically, and the fellowship with her
+new companions opened out to her a life full of interests such as she
+had never dreamed of. People so wonderful (as she expressed it) as those
+whom she was now going with she had not only never met but could not
+even have imagined.
+
+"There now, and I cried when I was sentenced," she said. "Why, I must
+thank God for it all the days of my life. I have learned to know what I
+never should have found out else."
+
+The motives she understood easily and without effort that guided these
+people, and, being of the people, fully sympathised with them. She
+understood that these persons were for the people and against the
+upper classes, and though themselves belonging to the upper classes
+had sacrificed their privileges, their liberty and their lives for the
+people. This especially made her value and admire them. She was charmed
+with all the new companions, but particularly with Mary Pavlovna,
+and she was not only charmed with her, but loved her with a peculiar,
+respectful and rapturous love. She was struck by the fact that this
+beautiful girl, the daughter of a rich general, who could speak three
+languages, gave away all that her rich brother sent her, and lived like
+the simplest working girl, and dressed not only simply, but poorly,
+paying no heed to her appearance. This trait and a complete absence
+of coquetry was particularly surprising and therefore attractive to
+Maslova. Maslova could see that Mary Pavlovna knew, and was even pleased
+to know, that she was handsome, and yet the effect her appearance had on
+men was not at all pleasing to her; she was even afraid of it, and felt
+an absolute disgust to all love affairs. Her men companions knew it, and
+if they felt attracted by her never permitted themselves to show it to
+her, but treated her as they would a man; but with strangers, who often
+molested her, the great physical strength on which she prided herself
+stood her in good stead.
+
+"It happened once," she said to Katusha, "that a man followed me in the
+street and would not leave me on any account. At last I gave him such a
+shaking that he was frightened and ran away."
+
+She became a revolutionary, as she said, because she felt a dislike to
+the life of the well-to-do from childhood up, and loved the life of the
+common people, and she was always being scolded for spending her time
+in the servants' hall, in the kitchen or the stables instead of the
+drawing-room.
+
+"And I found it amusing to be with cooks and the coachmen, and dull with
+our gentlemen and ladies," she said. "Then when I came to understand
+things I saw that our life was altogether wrong; I had no mother and I
+did not care for my father, and so when I was nineteen I left home, and
+went with a girl friend to work as a factory hand."
+
+After she left the factory she lived in the country, then returned to
+town and lived in a lodging, where they had a secret printing press.
+There she was arrested and sentenced to hard labour. Mary Pavlovna
+said nothing about it herself, but Katusha heard from others that Mary
+Pavlovna was sentenced because, when the lodging was searched by the
+police and one of the revolutionists fired a shot in the dark, she
+pleaded guilty.
+
+As soon as she had learned to know Mary Pavlovna, Katusha noticed
+that, whatever the conditions she found herself in, Mary Pavlovna never
+thought of herself, but was always anxious to serve, to help some one,
+in matters small or great. One of her present companions, Novodvoroff,
+said of her that she devoted herself to philanthropic amusements. And
+this was true. The interest of her whole life lay in the search for
+opportunities of serving others. This kind of amusement had become the
+habit, the business of her life. And she did it all so naturally that
+those who knew her no longer valued but simply expected it of her.
+
+When Maslova first came among them, Mary Pavlovna felt repulsed and
+disgusted. Katusha noticed this, but she also noticed that, having made
+an effort to overcome these feelings, Mary Pavlovna became particularly
+tender and kind to her. The tenderness and kindness of so uncommon
+a being touched Maslova so much that she gave her whole heart, and
+unconsciously accepting her views, could not help imitating her in
+everything.
+
+This devoted love of Katusha touched Mary Pavlovna in her turn, and she
+learned to love Katusha.
+
+These women were also united by the repulsion they both felt to sexual
+love. The one loathed that kind of love, having experienced all its
+horrors, the other, never having experienced it, looked on it as
+something incomprehensible and at the same time as something repugnant
+and offensive to human dignity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+SIMONSON.
+
+Mary Pavlovna's influence was one that Maslova submitted to because she
+loved Mary Pavlovna. Simonson influenced her because he loved her.
+
+Everybody lives and acts partly according to his own, partly according
+to other people's, ideas. This is what constitutes one of the great
+differences among men. To some, thinking is a kind of mental game; they
+treat their reason as if it were a fly-wheel without a connecting strap,
+and are guided in their actions by other people's ideas, by custom or
+laws; while others look upon their own ideas as the chief motive power
+of all their actions, and always listen to the dictates of their own
+reason and submit to it, accepting other people's opinions only on rare
+occasions and after weighing them critically. Simonson was a man of the
+latter sort; he settled and verified everything according to his own
+reason and acted on the decisions he arrived at. When a schoolboy
+he made up his mind that his father's income, made as a paymaster in
+government office was dishonestly gained, and he told his father that it
+ought to be given to the people. When his father, instead of listening
+to him, gave him a scolding, he left his father's house and would not
+make use of his father's means. Having come to the conclusion that all
+the existing misery was a result of the people's ignorance, he joined
+the socialists, who carried on propaganda among the people, as soon as
+he left the university and got a place as a village schoolmaster.
+He taught and explained to his pupils and to the peasants what he
+considered to be just, and openly blamed what he thought unjust. He was
+arrested and tried. During his trial he determined to tell his judges
+that his was a just cause, for which he ought not to be tried or
+punished. When the judges paid no heed to his words, but went on with
+the trial, he decided not to answer them and kept resolutely silent when
+they questioned him. He was exiled to the Government of Archangel. There
+he formulated a religious teaching which was founded on the theory that
+everything in the world was alive, that nothing is lifeless, and that
+all the objects we consider to be without life or inorganic are only
+parts of an enormous organic body which we cannot compass. A man's task
+is to sustain the life of that huge organism and all its animate parts.
+Therefore he was against war, capital punishment and every kind of
+killing, not only of human beings, but also of animals. Concerning
+marriage, too, he had a peculiar idea of his own; he thought that
+increase was a lower function of man, the highest function being to
+serve the already existing lives. He found a confirmation of his
+theory in the fact that there were phacocytes in the blood. Celibates,
+according to his opinion, were the same as phacocytes, their function
+being to help the weak and the sickly particles of the organism. From
+the moment he came to this conclusion he began to consider himself as
+well as Mary Pavlovna as phacocytes, and to live accordingly, though
+as a youth he had been addicted to vice. His love for Katusha did not
+infringe this conception, because he loved her platonically, and such
+love he considered could not hinder his activity as a phacocytes, but
+acted, on the contrary, as an inspiration.
+
+Not only moral, but also most practical questions he decided in his own
+way. He applied a theory of his own to all practical business, had rules
+relating to the number of hours for rest and for work, to the kind of
+food to eat, the way to dress, to heat and light up the rooms. With all
+this Simonson was very shy and modest; and yet when he had once made
+up his mind nothing could make him waver. And this man had a decided
+influence on Maslova through his love for her. With a woman's instinct
+Maslova very soon found out that he loved her. And the fact that
+she could awaken love in a man of that kind raised her in her own
+estimation. It was Nekhludoff's magnanimity and what had been in the
+past that made him offer to marry her, but Simonson loved her such as
+she was now, loved her simply because of the love he bore her. And she
+felt that Simonson considered her to be an exceptional woman, having
+peculiarly high moral qualities. She did not quite know what the
+qualities he attributed to her were, but in order to be on the safe side
+and that he should not be disappointed in her, she tried with all her
+might to awaken in herself all the highest qualities she could conceive,
+and she tried to be as good as possible. This had begun while they
+were still in prison, when on a common visiting day she had noticed his
+kindly dark blue eyes gazing fixedly at her from under his projecting
+brow. Even then she had noticed that this was a peculiar man, and that
+he was looking at her in a peculiar manner, and had also noticed the
+striking combination of sternness--the unruly hair and the frowning
+forehead gave him this appearance--with the child-like kindness and
+innocence of his look. She saw him again in Tomsk, where she joined the
+political prisoners. Though they had not uttered a word, their looks
+told plainly that they had understood one another. Even after that they
+had had no serious conversation with each other, but Maslova felt that
+when he spoke in her presence his words were addressed to her, and that
+he spoke for her sake, trying to express himself as plainly as he could;
+but it was when he started walking with the criminal prisoners that they
+grew specially near to one another.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
+
+Until they left Perm Nekhludoff only twice managed to see Katusha, once
+in Nijni, before the prisoners were embarked on a barge surrounded with
+a wire netting, and again in Perm in the prison office. At both these
+interviews he found her reserved and unkind. She answered his questions
+as to whether she was in want of anything, and whether she was
+comfortable, evasively and bashfully, and, as he thought, with the same
+feeling of hostile reproach which she had shown several times
+before. Her depressed state of mind, which was only the result of the
+molestations from the men that she was undergoing at the time, tormented
+Nekhludoff. He feared lest, influenced by the hard and degrading
+circumstances in which she was placed on the journey, she should again
+get into that state of despair and discord with her own self which
+formerly made her irritable with him, and which had caused her to drink
+and smoke excessively to gain oblivion. But he was unable to help her in
+any way during this part of the journey, as it was impossible for him to
+be with her. It was only when she joined the political prisoners that he
+saw how unfounded his fears were, and at each interview he noticed that
+inner change he so strongly desired to see in her becoming more and more
+marked. The first time they met in Tomsk she was again just as she had
+been when leaving Moscow. She did not frown or become confused when she
+saw him, but met him joyfully and simply, thanking him for what he had
+done for her, especially for bringing her among the people with whom she
+now was.
+
+After two months' marching with the gang, the change that had taken
+place within her became noticeable in her appearance. She grew sunburned
+and thinner, and seemed older; wrinkles appeared on her temples and
+round her mouth. She had no ringlets on her forehead now, and her hair
+was covered with the kerchief; in the way it was arranged, as well as in
+her dress and her manners, there was no trace of coquetry left. And this
+change, which had taken place and was still progressing in her, made
+Nekhludoff very happy.
+
+He felt for her something he had never experienced before. This feeling
+had nothing in common with his first poetic love for her, and even less
+with the sensual love that had followed, nor even with the satisfaction
+of a duty fulfilled, not unmixed with self-admiration, with which he
+decided to marry her after the trial. The present feeling was simply one
+of pity and tenderness. He had felt it when he met her in prison for
+the first time, and then again when, after conquering his repugnance,
+he forgave her the imagined intrigue with the medical assistant in the
+hospital (the injustice done her had since been discovered); it was the
+same feeling he now had, only with this difference, that formerly it was
+momentary, and that now it had become permanent. Whatever he was doing,
+whatever he was thinking now, a feeling of pity and tenderness dwelt
+with him, and not only pity and tenderness for her, but for everybody.
+This feeling seemed to have opened the floodgates of love, which had
+found no outlet in Nekhludoff's soul, and the love now flowed out to
+every one he met.
+
+During this journey Nekhludoff's feelings were so stimulated that he
+could not help being attentive and considerate to everybody, from the
+coachman and the convoy soldiers to the prison inspectors and governors
+whom he had to deal with. Now that Maslova was among the political
+prisoners, Nekhludoff could not help becoming acquainted with many of
+them, first in Ekaterinburg, where they had a good deal of freedom and
+were kept altogether in a large cell, and then on the road when Maslova
+was marching with three of the men and four of the women. Coming in
+contact with political exiles in this way made Nekhludoff completely
+change his mind concerning them.
+
+From the very beginning of the revolutionary movement in Russia, but
+especially since that first of March, when Alexander II was murdered,
+Nekhludoff regarded the revolutionists with dislike and contempt. He
+was repulsed by the cruelty and secrecy of the methods they employed
+in their struggles against the government, especially the cruel murders
+they committed, and their arrogance also disgusted him. But having
+learned more intimately to know them and all they had suffered at the
+hands of the government, he saw that they could not be other than they
+were.
+
+Terrible and endless as were the torments which were inflicted on the
+criminals, there was at least some semblance of justice shown them
+before and after they were sentenced, but in the case of the political
+prisoners there was not even that semblance, as Nekhludoff saw in the
+case of Sholostova and that of many and many of his new acquaintances.
+These people were dealt with like fish caught with a net; everything
+that gets into the nets is pulled ashore, and then the big fish which
+are required are sorted out and the little ones are left to perish
+unheeded on the shore. Having captured hundreds that were evidently
+guiltless, and that could not be dangerous to the government, they left
+them imprisoned for years, where they became consumptive, went out of
+their minds or committed suicide, and kept them only because they had
+no inducement to set them free, while they might be of use to elucidate
+some question at a judicial inquiry, safe in prison. The fate of these
+persons, often innocent even from the government point of view, depended
+on the whim, the humour of, or the amount of leisure at the disposal
+of some police officer or spy, or public prosecutor, or magistrate,
+or governor, or minister. Some one of these officials feels dull, or
+inclined to distinguish himself, and makes a number of arrests, and
+imprisons or sets free, according to his own fancy or that of the
+higher authorities. And the higher official, actuated by like motives,
+according to whether he is inclined to distinguish himself, or to what
+his relations to the minister are, exiles men to the other side of the
+world or keeps them in solitary confinement, condemns them to Siberia,
+to hard labour, to death, or sets them free at the request of some lady.
+
+They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the
+means that were used against them. And as the military men live in an
+atmosphere of public opinion that not only conceals from them the guilt
+of their actions, but sets these actions up as feats of heroism,
+so these political offenders were also constantly surrounded by
+an atmosphere of public opinion which made the cruel actions they
+committed, in the face of danger and at the risk of liberty and life,
+and all that is dear to men, seem not wicked but glorious actions.
+Nekhludoff found in this the explanation of the surprising phenomenon
+that men, with the mildest characters, who seemed incapable of
+witnessing the sufferings of any living creature, much less of
+inflicting pain, quietly prepared to murder men, nearly all of them
+considering murder lawful and just on certain occasions as a means
+for self-defence, for the attainment of higher aims or for the general
+welfare.
+
+The importance they attribute to their cause, and consequently to
+themselves, flowed naturally from the importance the government attached
+to their actions, and the cruelty of the punishments it inflicted on
+them. When Nekhludoff came to know them better he became convinced that
+they were not the right-down villains that some imagined them to be, nor
+the complete heroes that others thought them, but ordinary people, just
+the same as others, among whom there were some good and some bad, and
+some mediocre, as there are everywhere.
+
+There were some among them who had turned revolutionists because they
+honestly considered it their duty to fight the existing evils, but there
+were also those who chose this work for selfish, ambitious motives; the
+majority, however, was attracted to the revolutionary idea by the desire
+for danger, for risks, the enjoyment of playing with one's life, which,
+as Nekhludoff knew from his military experiences, is quite common to
+the most ordinary people while they are young and full of energy. But
+wherein they differed from ordinary people was that their moral standard
+was a higher one than that of ordinary men. They considered not only
+self-control, hard living, truthfulness, but also the readiness to
+sacrifice everything, even life, for the common welfare as their duty.
+Therefore the best among them stood on a moral level that is not often
+reached, while the worst were far below the ordinary level, many of them
+being untruthful, hypocritical and at the same time self-satisfied and
+proud. So that Nekhludoff learned not only to respect but to love some
+of his new acquaintances, while he remained more than indifferent to
+others.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+KRYLTZOFF'S STORY.
+
+Nekhludoff grew especially fond of Kryltzoff, a consumptive young man
+condemned to hard labour, who was going with the same gang as Katusha.
+Nekhludoff had made his acquaintance already in Ekaterinburg, and
+talked with him several times on the road after that. Once, in summer,
+Nekhludoff spent nearly the whole of a day with him at a halting
+station, and Kryltzoff, having once started talking, told him his
+story and how he had become a revolutionist. Up to the time of his
+imprisonment his story was soon told. He lost his father, a rich landed
+proprietor in the south of Russia, when still a child. He was the only
+son, and his mother brought him up. He learned easily in the university,
+as well as the gymnasium, and was first in the mathematical faculty
+in his year. He was offered a choice of remaining in the university
+or going abroad. He hesitated. He loved a girl and was thinking of
+marriage, and taking part in the rural administration. He did not like
+giving up either offer, and could not make up his mind. At this time
+his fellow-students at the university asked him for money for a common
+cause. He did not know that this common cause was revolutionary, which
+he was not interested in at that time, but gave the money from a sense
+of comradeship and vanity, so that it should not be said that he was
+afraid. Those who received the money were caught, a note was found which
+proved that the money had been given by Kryltzoff, he was arrested, and
+first kept at the police station, then imprisoned.
+
+"The prison where I was put," Kryltzoff went on to relate (he was
+sitting on the high shelf bedstead, his elbows on his knees, with
+sunken chest, the beautiful, intelligent eyes with which he looked at
+Nekhludoff glistening feverishly)--"they were not specially strict in
+that prison. We managed to converse, not only by tapping the wall, but
+could walk about the corridors, share our provisions and our tobacco,
+and in the evenings we even sang in chorus. I had a fine voice--yes, if
+it had not been for mother it would have been all right, even pleasant
+and interesting. Here I made the acquaintance of the famous Petroff--he
+afterwards killed himself with a piece of glass at the fortress--and
+also of others. But I was not yet a revolutionary. I also became
+acquainted with my neighbours in the cells next to mine. They were both
+caught with Polish proclamations and arrested in the same cause, and
+were tried for an attempt to escape from the convoy when they were being
+taken to the railway station. One was a Pole, Lozinsky; the other a
+Jew, Rozovsky. Yes. Well, this Rozovsky was quite a boy. He said he
+was seventeen, but he looked fifteen--thin, small, active, with black,
+sparkling eyes, and, like most Jews, very musical. His voice was still
+breaking, and yet he sang beautifully. Yes. I saw them both taken to be
+tried. They were taken in the morning. They returned in the evening, and
+said they were condemned to death. No one had expected it. Their case
+was so unimportant; they only tried to get away from the convoy, and had
+not even wounded any one. And then it was so unnatural to execute such
+a child as Rozovsky. And we in prison all came to the conclusion that it
+was only done to frighten them, and would not be confirmed. At first
+we were excited, and then we comforted ourselves, and life went on
+as before. Yes. Well, one evening, a watchman comes to my door and
+mysteriously announces to me that carpenters had arrived, and were
+putting up the gallows. At first I did not understand. What's that? What
+gallows? But the watchman was so excited that I saw at once it was
+for our two. I wished to tap and communicate with my comrades, but was
+afraid those two would hear. The comrades were also silent. Evidently
+everybody knew. In the corridors and in the cells everything was as
+still as death all that evening. They did not tap the wall nor sing.
+At ten the watchman came again and announced that a hangman had arrived
+from Moscow. He said it and went away. I began calling him back.
+Suddenly I hear Rozovsky shouting to me across the corridor: 'What's the
+matter? Why do you call him?' I answered something about asking him to
+get me some tobacco, but he seemed to guess, and asked me: 'Why did we
+not sing to-night, why did we not tap the walls?' I do not remember
+what I said, but I went away so as not to speak to him. Yes. It was a
+terrible night. I listened to every sound all night. Suddenly, towards
+morning, I hear doors opening and somebody walking--many persons. I went
+up to my window. There was a lamp burning in the corridor. The first
+to pass was the inspector. He was stout, and seemed a resolute,
+self-satisfied man, but he looked ghastly pale, downcast, and seemed
+frightened; then his assistant, frowning but resolute; behind them the
+watchman. They passed my door and stopped at the next, and I hear the
+assistant calling out in a strange voice: 'Lozinsky, get up and put on
+clean linen.' Yes. Then I hear the creaking of the door; they entered
+into his cell. Then I hear Lozinsky's steps going to the opposite side
+of the corridor. I could only see the inspector. He stood quite pale,
+and buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, shrugging his shoulders. Yes.
+Then, as if frightened of something, he moved out of the way. It was
+Lozinsky, who passed him and came up to my door. A handsome young fellow
+he was, you know, of that nice Polish type: broad shouldered, his head
+covered with fine, fair, curly hair as with a cap, and with beautiful
+blue eyes. So blooming, so fresh, so healthy. He stopped in front of my
+window, so that I could see the whole of his face. A dreadful, gaunt,
+livid face. 'Kryltzoff, have you any cigarettes?' I wished to pass him
+some, but the assistant hurriedly pulled out his cigarette case and
+passed it to him. He took out one, the assistant struck a match, and he
+lit the cigarette and began to smoke and seemed to be thinking. Then,
+as if he had remembered something, he began to speak. 'It is cruel and
+unjust. I have committed no crime. I--' I saw something quiver in his
+white young throat, from which I could not take my eyes, and he stopped.
+Yes. At that moment I hear Rozovsky shouting in his fine, Jewish
+voice. Lozinsky threw away the cigarette and stepped from the door.
+And Rozovsky appeared at the window. His childish face, with the limpid
+black eyes, was red and moist. He also had clean linen on, the trousers
+were too wide, and he kept pulling them up and trembled all over. He
+approached his pitiful face to my window. 'Kryltzoff, it's true that the
+doctor has prescribed cough mixture for me, is it not? I am not well.
+I'll take some more of the mixture.' No one answered, and he looked
+inquiringly, now at me, now at the inspector. What he meant to say
+I never made out. Yes. Suddenly the assistant again put on a stern
+expression, and called out in a kind of squeaking tone: 'Now, then, no
+nonsense. Let us go.' Rozovsky seemed incapable of understanding what
+awaited him, and hurried, almost ran, in front of him all along the
+corridor. But then he drew back, and I could hear his shrill voice
+and his cries, then the trampling of feet, and general hubbub. He was
+shrieking and sobbing. The sounds came fainter and fainter, and at
+last the door rattled and all was quiet. Yes. And so they hanged them.
+Throttled them both with a rope. A watchman, another one, saw it done,
+and told me that Lozinsky did not resist, but Rozovsky struggled for
+a long time, so that they had to pull him up on to the scaffold and to
+force his head into the noose. Yes. This watchman was a stupid fellow.
+He said: 'They told me, sir, that it would be frightful, but it was
+not at all frightful. After they were hanged they only shrugged their
+shoulders twice, like this.' He showed how the shoulders convulsively
+rose and fell. 'Then the hangman pulled a bit so as to tighten the
+noose, and it was all up, and they never budged."' And Kryltzoff
+repeated the watchman's words, "Not at all frightful," and tried to
+smile, but burst into sobs instead.
+
+For a long time after that he kept silent, breathing heavily, and
+repressing the sobs that were choking him.
+
+"From that time I became a revolutionist. Yes," he said, when he was
+quieter and finished his story in a few words. He belonged to the
+Narodovoltzy party, and was even at the head of the disorganising group,
+whose object was to terrorise the government so that it should give
+up its power of its own accord. With this object he travelled
+to Petersburg, to Kiev, to Odessa and abroad, and was everywhere
+successful. A man in whom he had full confidence betrayed him. He was
+arrested, tried, kept in prison for two years, and condemned to death,
+but the sentence was mitigated to one of hard labour for life.
+
+He went into consumption while in prison, and in the conditions he was
+now placed he had scarcely more than a few months longer to live. This
+he knew, but did not repent of his action, but said that if he had
+another life he would use it in the same way to destroy the conditions
+in which such things as he had seen were possible.
+
+This man's story and his intimacy with him explained to Nekhludoff much
+that he had not previously understood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF SEEKS AN INTERVIEW WITH MASLOVA.
+
+On the day when the convoy officer had the encounter with the prisoners
+at the halting station about the child, Nekhludoff, who had spent
+the night at the village inn, woke up late, and was some time writing
+letters to post at the next Government town, so that he left the inn
+later than usual, and did not catch up with the gang on the road as
+he had done previously, but came to the village where the next halting
+station was as it was growing dusk.
+
+Having dried himself at the inn, which was kept by an elderly woman who
+had an extraordinarily fat, white neck, he had his tea in a clean room
+decorated with a great number of icons and pictures and then hurried
+away to the halting station to ask the officer for an interview
+with Katusha. At the last six halting stations he could not get the
+permission for an interview from any of the officers. Though they had
+been changed several times, not one of them would allow Nekhludoff
+inside the halting stations, so that he had not seen Katusha for
+more than a week. This strictness was occasioned by the fact that
+an important prison official was expected to pass that way. Now this
+official had passed without looking in at the gang, after all, and
+Nekhludoff hoped that the officer who had taken charge of the gang in
+the morning would allow him an interview with the prisoners, as former
+officers had done.
+
+The landlady offered Nekhludoff a trap to drive him to the halting
+station, situated at the farther end of the village, but Nekhludoff
+preferred to walk. A young labourer, a broad-shouldered young fellow
+of herculean dimensions, with enormous top-boots freshly blackened with
+strongly smelling tar, offered himself as a guide.
+
+A dense mist obscured the sky, and it was so dark that when the young
+fellow was three steps in advance of him Nekhludoff could not see him
+unless the light of some window happened to fall on the spot, but he
+could hear the heavy boots wading through the deep, sticky slush. After
+passing the open place in front of the church and the long street,
+with its rows of windows shining brightly in the darkness, Nekhludoff
+followed his guide to the outskirts of the village, where it was pitch
+dark. But soon here, too, rays of light, streaming through the mist
+from the lamps in the front of the halting station, became discernible
+through the darkness. The reddish spots of light grew bigger and bigger;
+at last the stakes of the palisade, the moving figure of the sentinel, a
+post painted with white and black stripes and the sentinel's box became
+visible.
+
+The sentinel called his usual "Who goes there?" as they approached, and
+seeing they were strangers treated them with such severity that he would
+not allow them to wait by the palisade; but Nekhludoff's guide was not
+abashed by this severity.
+
+"Hallo, lad! why so fierce? You go and rouse your boss while we wait
+here?"
+
+The sentinel gave no answer, but shouted something in at the gate and
+stood looking at the broad-shouldered young labourer scraping the mud
+off Nekhludoff's boots with a chip of wood by the light of the lamp.
+From behind the palisade came the hum of male and female voices. In
+about three minutes more something rattled, the gate opened, and a
+sergeant, with his cloak thrown over his shoulders, stepped out of the
+darkness into the lamplight.
+
+The sergeant was not as strict as the sentinel, but he was extremely
+inquisitive. He insisted on knowing what Nekhludoff wanted the officer
+for, and who he was, evidently scenting his booty and anxious not to let
+it escape. Nekhludoff said he had come on special business, and would
+show his gratitude, and would the sergeant take a note for him to the
+officer. The sergeant took the note, nodded, and went away. Some time
+after the gate rattled again, and women carrying baskets, boxes, jugs
+and sacks came out, loudly chattering in their peculiar Siberian dialect
+as they stepped over the threshold of the gate. None of them wore
+peasant costumes, but were dressed town fashion, wearing jackets and
+fur-lined cloaks. Their skirts were tucked up high, and their heads
+wrapped up in shawls. They examined Nekhludoff and his guide curiously
+by the light of the lamp. One of them showed evident pleasure at the
+sight of the broad-shouldered fellow, and affectionately administered to
+him a dose of Siberian abuse.
+
+"You demon, what are you doing here? The devil take you," she said,
+addressing him.
+
+"I've been showing this traveller here the way," answered the young
+fellow. "And what have you been bringing here?"
+
+"Dairy produce, and I am to bring more in the morning."
+
+The guide said something in answer that made not only the women but even
+the sentinel laugh, and, turning to Nekhludoff, he said:
+
+"You'll find your way alone? Won't get lost, will you?"
+
+"I shall find it all right."
+
+"When you have passed the church it's the second from the two-storied
+house. Oh, and here, take my staff," he said, handing the stick he
+was carrying, and which was longer than himself, to Nekhludoff; and
+splashing through the mud with his enormous boots, he disappeared in the
+darkness, together with the women.
+
+His voice mingling with the voices of the women was still audible
+through the fog, when the gate again rattled, and the sergeant appeared
+and asked Nekhludoff to follow him to the officer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF AND THE OFFICER.
+
+This halting station, like all such stations along the Siberian
+road, was surrounded by a courtyard, fenced in with a palisade of
+sharp-pointed stakes, and consisted of three one-storied houses. One of
+them, the largest, with grated windows, was for the prisoners, another
+for the convoy soldiers, and the third, in which the office was, for the
+officers.
+
+There were lights in the windows of all the three houses, and, like
+all such lights, they promised, here in a specially deceptive manner,
+something cosy inside the walls. Lamps were burning before the porches
+of the houses and about five lamps more along the walls lit up the yard.
+
+The sergeant led Nekhludoff along a plank which lay across the yard up
+to the porch of the smallest of the houses.
+
+When he had gone up the three steps of the porch he let Nekhludoff pass
+before him into the ante-room, in which a small lamp was burning, and
+which was filled with smoky fumes. By the stove a soldier in a coarse
+shirt with a necktie and black trousers, and with one top-boot on, stood
+blowing the charcoal in a somovar, using the other boot as bellows. [The
+long boots worn in Russia have concertina-like sides, and when held to
+the chimney of the somovar can be used instead of bellows to make the
+charcoal inside burn up.] When he saw Nekhludoff, the soldier left the
+somovar and helped him off with his waterproof; then went into the inner
+room.
+
+"He has come, your honour."
+
+"Well, ask him in," came an angry voice.
+
+"Go in at the door," said the soldier, and went back to the somovar.
+
+In the next room an officer with fair moustaches and a very red face,
+dressed in an Austrian jacket that closely fitted his broad chest and
+shoulders, sat at a covered table, on which were the remains of his
+dinner and two bottles; there was a strong smell of tobacco and some
+very strong, cheap scent in the warm room. On seeing Nekhludoff the
+officer rose and gazed ironically and suspiciously, as it seemed, at the
+newcomer.
+
+"What is it you want?" he asked, and, not waiting for a reply, he
+shouted through the open door:
+
+"Bernoff, the somovar! What are you about?"
+
+"Coming at once."
+
+"You'll get it 'at once' so that you'll remember it," shouted the
+officer, and his eyes flashed.
+
+"I'm coming," shouted the soldier, and brought in the somovar.
+Nekhludoff waited while the soldier placed the somovar on the table.
+When the officer had followed the soldier out of the room with his cruel
+little eyes looking as if they were aiming where best to hit him, he
+made the tea, got the four-cornered decanter out of his travelling case
+and some Albert biscuits, and having placed all this on the cloth he
+again turned to Nekhludoff. "Well, how can I be of service to you?"
+
+"I should like to be allowed to visit a prisoner," said Nekhludoff,
+without sitting down.
+
+"A political one? That's forbidden by the law," said the officer.
+
+"The woman I mean is not a political prisoner," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Yes. But pray take a scat," said the officer. Nekhludoff sat down.
+
+"She is not a political one, but at my request she has been allowed by
+the higher authorities to join the political prisoners--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I know," interrupted the other; "a little dark one? Well,
+yes, that can be managed. Won't you smoke?" He moved a box of cigarettes
+towards Nekhludoff, and, having carefully poured out two tumblers of
+tea, he passed one to Nekhludoff. "If you please," he said.
+
+"Thank you; I should like to see--"
+
+"The night is long. You'll have plenty of time. I shall order her to be
+sent out to you."
+
+"But could I not see her where she is? Why need she be sent for?"
+Nekhludoff said.
+
+"In to the political prisoners? It is against the law."
+
+"I have been allowed to go in several times. If there is any danger of
+my passing anything in to them I could do it through her just as well."
+
+"Oh, no; she would be searched," said the officer, and laughed in an
+unpleasant manner.
+
+"Well, why not search me?"
+
+"All right; we'll manage without that," said the officer, opening the
+decanter, and holding it out towards Nekhludoff's tumbler of tea. "May
+I? No? Well, just as you like. When you are living here in Siberia you
+are too glad to meet an educated person. Our work, as you know, is the
+saddest, and when one is used to better things it is very hard. The idea
+they have of us is that convoy officers are coarse, uneducated men, and
+no one seems to remember that we may have been born for a very different
+position."
+
+This officer's red face, his scents, his rings, and especially his
+unpleasant laughter disgusted Nekhludoff very much, but to-day, as
+during the whole of his journey, he was in that serious, attentive state
+which did not allow him to behave slightingly or disdainfully towards
+any man, but made him feel the necessity of speaking to every one
+"entirely," as he expressed to himself, this relation to men. When he
+had heard the officer and understood his state of mind, he said in a
+serious manner:
+
+"I think that in your position, too, some comfort could be found in
+helping the suffering people," he said.
+
+"What are their sufferings? You don't know what these people are."
+
+"They are not special people," said Nekhludoff; "they are just such
+people as others, and some of them are quite innocent."
+
+"Of course, there are all sorts among them, and naturally one pities
+them. Others won't let anything off, but I try to lighten their
+condition where I can. It's better that I should suffer, but not they.
+Others keep to the law in every detail, even as far as to shoot, but
+I show pity. May I?--Take another," he said, and poured out another
+tumbler of tea for Nekhludoff.
+
+"And who is she, this woman that you want to see?" he asked.
+
+"It is an unfortunate woman who got into a brothel, and was there
+falsely accused of poisoning, and she is a very good woman," Nekhludoff
+answered.
+
+The officer shook his head. "Yes, it does happen. I can tell you about
+a certain Emma who lived in Kasan. She was a Hungarian by birth, but she
+had quite Persian eyes," he continued, unable to restrain a smile at the
+recollection; "there was so much chic about her that a countess--"
+
+Nekhludoff interrupted the officer and returned to the former topic of
+conversation.
+
+"I think that you could lighten the condition of the people while they
+are in your charge. And in acting that way I am sure you would find
+great joy!" said Nekhludoff, trying to pronounce as distinctly as
+possible, as he might if talking to a foreigner or a child.
+
+The officer looked at Nekhludoff impatiently, waiting for him to stop
+so as to continue the tale about the Hungarian with Persian eyes, who
+evidently presented herself very vividly to his imagination and quite
+absorbed his attention.
+
+"Yes, of course, this is all quite true," he said, "and I do pity them;
+but I should like to tell you about Emma. What do you think she did--?"
+
+"It does not interest me," said Nekhludoff, "and I will tell you
+straight, that though I was myself very different at one time, I now
+hate that kind of relation to women."
+
+The officer gave Nekhludoff a frightened look.
+
+"Won't you take some more tea?" he said.
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Bernoff!" the officer called, "take the gentleman to Vakouloff. Tell
+him to let him into the separate political room. He may remain there
+till the inspection."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
+
+Accompanied by the orderly, Nekhludoff went out into the courtyard,
+which was dimly lit up by the red light of the lamps.
+
+"Where to?" asked the convoy sergeant, addressing the orderly.
+
+"Into the separate cell, No. 5."
+
+"You can't pass here; the boss has gone to the village and taken the
+keys."
+
+"Well, then, pass this way."
+
+The soldier led Nekhludoff along a board to another entrance. While
+still in the yard Nekhludoff could hear the din of voices and general
+commotion going on inside as in a beehive when the bees are preparing to
+swarm; but when he came nearer and the door opened the din grew louder,
+and changed into distinct sounds of shouting, abuse and laughter. He
+heard the clatter of chairs and smelt the well-known foul air. This din
+of voices and the clatter of the chairs, together with the close smell,
+always flowed into one tormenting sensation, and produced in Nekhludoff
+a feeling of moral nausea which grew into physical sickness, the two
+feelings mingling with and heightening each other.
+
+The first thing Nekhludoff saw, on entering, was a large, stinking tub.
+A corridor into which several doors opened led from the entrance. The
+first was the family room, then the bachelors' room, and at the very end
+two small rooms were set apart for the political prisoners.
+
+The buildings, which were arranged to hold one hundred and fifty
+prisoners, now that there were four hundred and fifty inside, were so
+crowded that the prisoners could not all get into the rooms, but filled
+the passage, too. Some were sitting or lying on the floor, some were
+going out with empty teapots, or bringing them back filled with boiling
+water. Among the latter was Taras. He overtook Nekhludoff and greeted
+him affectionately. The kind face of Taras was disfigured by dark
+bruises on his nose and under his eye.
+
+"What has happened to you?" asked Nekhludoff.
+
+"Yes, something did happen," Taras said, with a smile.
+
+"All because of the woman," added a prisoner, who followed Taras; "he's
+had a row with Blind Fedka."
+
+"And how's Theodosia?"
+
+"She's all right. Here I am bringing her the water for her tea," Taras
+answered, and went into the family room.
+
+Nekhludoff looked in at the door. The room was crowded with women and
+men, some of whom were on and some under the bedsteads; it was full of
+steam from the wet clothes that were drying, and the chatter of women's
+voices was unceasing. The next door led into the bachelors' room. This
+room was still more crowded; even the doorway and the passage in front
+of it were blocked by a noisy crowd of men, in wet garments, busy doing
+or deciding something or other.
+
+The convoy sergeant explained that it was the prisoner appointed to buy
+provisions, paying off out of the food money what was owing to a sharper
+who had won from or lent money to the prisoners, and receiving back
+little tickets made of playing cards. When they saw the convoy soldier
+and a gentleman, those who were nearest became silent, and followed
+them with looks of ill-will. Among them Nekhludoff noticed the criminal
+Fedoroff, whom he knew, and who always kept a miserable lad with
+a swelled appearance and raised eyebrows beside him, and also a
+disgusting, noseless, pock-marked tramp, who was notorious among the
+prisoners because he killed his comrade in the marshes while trying to
+escape, and had, as it was rumoured, fed on his flesh. The tramp stood
+in the passage with his wet cloak thrown over one shoulder, looking
+mockingly and boldly at Nekhludoff, and did not move out of the way.
+Nekhludoff passed him by.
+
+Though this kind of scene had now become quite familiar to him, though
+he had during the last three months seen these four hundred criminal
+prisoners over and over again in many different circumstances; in the
+heat, enveloped in clouds of dust which they raised as they dragged
+their chained feet along the road, and at the resting places by the way,
+where the most horrible scenes of barefaced debauchery had occurred, yet
+every time he came among them, and felt their attention fixed upon him
+as it was now, shame and consciousness of his sin against them tormented
+him. To this sense of shame and guilt was added an unconquerable feeling
+of loathing and horror. He knew that, placed in a position such as
+theirs, they could not be other than they were, and yet he was unable to
+stifle his disgust.
+
+"It's well for them do-nothings," Nekhludoff heard some one say in a
+hoarse voice as he approached the room of the political prisoners. Then
+followed a word of obscene abuse, and spiteful, mocking laughter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+MAKAR DEVKIN.
+
+When they had passed the bachelors' room the sergeant who accompanied
+Nekhludoff left him, promising to come for him before the inspection
+would take place. As soon as the sergeant was gone a prisoner, quickly
+stepping with his bare feet and holding up the chains, came close up to
+Nekhludoff, enveloping him in the strong, acid smell of perspiration,
+and said in a mysterious whisper:
+
+"Help the lad, sir; he's got into an awful mess. Been drinking. To-day
+he's given his name as Karmanoff at the inspection. Take his part, sir.
+We dare not, or they'll kill us," and looking uneasily round he turned
+away.
+
+This is what had happened. The criminal Kalmanoff had persuaded a young
+fellow who resembled him in appearance and was sentenced to exile to
+change names with him and go to the mines instead of him, while he only
+went to exile. Nekhludoff knew all this. Some convict had told him about
+this exchange the week before. He nodded as a sign that he understood
+and would do what was in his power, and continued his way without
+looking round.
+
+Nekhludoff knew this convict, and was surprised by his action. When in
+Ekaterinburg the convict had asked Nekhludoff to get a permission for
+his wife to follow him. The convict was a man of medium size and of the
+most ordinary peasant type, about thirty years old. He was condemned to
+hard labour for an attempt to murder and rob. His name was Makar Devkin.
+His crime was a very curious one. In the account he gave of it to
+Nekhludoff, he said it was not his but his devil's doing. He said that
+a traveller had come to his father's house and hired his sledge to drive
+him to a village thirty miles off for two roubles. Makar's father told
+him to drive the stranger. Makar harnessed the horse, dressed, and
+sat down to drink tea with the stranger. The stranger related at the
+tea-table that he was going to be married and had five hundred roubles,
+which he had earned in Moscow, with him. When he had heard this, Makar
+went out into the yard and put an axe into the sledge under the straw.
+"And I did not myself know why I was taking the axe," he said. "'Take
+the axe,' says _he_, and I took it. We got in and started. We drove
+along all right; I even forgot about the axe. Well, we were getting
+near the village; only about four miles more to go. The way from the
+cross-road to the high road was up hill, and I got out. I walked behind
+the sledge and _he_ whispers to me, 'What are you thinking about? When
+you get to the top of the hill you will meet people along the highway,
+and then there will be the village. He will carry the money away. If
+you mean to do it, now's the time.' I stooped over the sledge as if to
+arrange the straw, and the axe seemed to jump into my hand of itself.
+The man turned round. 'What are you doing?' I lifted the axe and tried
+to knock him down, but he was quick, jumped out, and took hold of my
+hands. 'What are you doing, you villain?' He threw me down into the
+snow, and I did not even struggle, but gave in at once. He bound my arms
+with his girdle, and threw me into the sledge, and took me straight to
+the police station. I was imprisoned and tried. The commune gave me a
+good character, said that I was a good man, and that nothing wrong had
+been noticed about me. The masters for whom I worked also spoke well of
+me, but we had no money to engage a lawyer, and so I was condemned to
+four years' hard labour."
+
+It was this man who, wishing to save a fellow-villager, knowing that he
+was risking his life thereby, told Nekhludoff the prisoner's secret, for
+doing which (if found out) he should certainly be throttled.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+MASLOVA AND HER COMPANIONS.
+
+The political prisoners were kept in two small rooms, the doors of which
+opened into a part of the passage partitioned off from the rest. The
+first person Nekhludoff saw on entering into this part of the passage
+was Simonson in his rubber jacket and with a log of pine wood in his
+hands, crouching in front of a stove, the door of which trembled, drawn
+in by the heat inside.
+
+When he saw Nekhludoff he looked up at him from under his protruding
+brow, and gave him his hand without rising.
+
+"I am glad you have come; I want to speak to you," he said, looking
+Nekhludoff straight in the eyes with an expression of importance.
+
+"Yes; what is it?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"It will do later on; I am busy just now," and Simonson turned again
+towards the stove, which he was heating according to a theory of his
+own, so as to lose as little heat energy as possible.
+
+Nekhludoff was going to enter in at the first door, when Maslova,
+stooping and pushing a large heap of rubbish and dust towards the stove
+with a handleless birch broom, came out of the other. She had a white
+jacket on, her skirt was tucked up, and a kerchief, drawn down to her
+eyebrows, protected her hair from the dust. When she saw Nekhludoff, she
+drew herself up, flushing and animated, put down the broom, wiped her
+hands on her skirt, and stopped right in front of him. "You are tidying
+up the apartments, I see," said Nekhludoff, shaking hands.
+
+"Yes; my old occupation," and she smiled. "But the dirt! You can't
+imagine what it is. We have been cleaning and cleaning. Well, is the
+plaid dry?" she asked, turning to Simonson.
+
+"Almost," Simonson answered, giving her a strange look, which struck
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"All right, I'll come for it, and will bring the cloaks to dry. Our
+people are all in here," she said to Nekhludoff, pointing to the first
+door as she went out of the second.
+
+Nekhludoff opened the door and entered a small room dimly lit by a
+little metal lamp, which was standing low down on the shelf bedstead. It
+was cold in the room, and there was a smell of the dust, which had not
+had time to settle, damp and tobacco smoke.
+
+Only those who were close to the lamp were clearly visible, the
+bedsteads were in the shade and wavering shadows glided over the walls.
+Two men, appointed as caterers, who had gone to fetch boiling water and
+provisions, were away; most of the political prisoners were gathered
+together in the small room. There was Nekhludoff's old acquaintance,
+Vera Doukhova, with her large, frightened eyes, and the swollen vein on
+her forehead, in a grey jacket with short hair, and thinner and yellower
+than ever.. She had a newspaper spread out in front of her, and sat
+rolling cigarettes with a jerky movement of her hands.
+
+Emily Rintzeva, whom Nekhludoff considered to be the pleasantest of the
+political prisoners, was also here. She looked after the housekeeping,
+and managed to spread a feeling of home comfort even in the midst of
+the most trying surroundings. She sat beside the lamp, with her sleeves
+rolled up, wiping cups and mugs, and placing them, with her deft, red
+and sunburnt hands, on a cloth that was spread on the bedstead. Rintzeva
+was a plain-looking young woman, with a clever and mild expression of
+face, which, when she smiled, had a way of suddenly becoming merry,
+animated and captivating. It was with such a smile that she now welcomed
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"Why, we thought you had gone back to Russia," she said.
+
+Here in a dark corner was also Mary Pavlovna, busy with a little,
+fair-haired girl, who kept prattling in her sweet, childish accents.
+
+"How nice that you have come," she said to Nekhludoff.
+
+"Have you seen Katusha? And we have a visitor here," and she pointed to
+the little girl.
+
+Here was also Anatole Kryltzoff with felt boots on, sitting in a far
+corner with his feet under him, doubled up and shivering, his arms
+folded in the sleeves of his cloak, and looking at Nekhludoff with
+feverish eyes. Nekhludoff was going up to him, but to the right of
+the door a man with spectacles and reddish curls, dressed in a rubber
+jacket, sat talking to the pretty, smiling Grabetz. This was the
+celebrated revolutionist Novodvoroff. Nekhludoff hastened to greet him.
+He was in a particular hurry about it, because this man was the only one
+among all the political prisoners whom he disliked. Novodvoroff's eyes
+glistened through his spectacles as he looked at Nekhludoff and held his
+narrow hand out to him.
+
+"Well, are you having a pleasant journey?" he asked, with apparent
+irony.
+
+"Yes, there is much that is interesting," Nekhludoff answered, as if
+he did not notice the irony, but took the question for politeness, and
+passed on to Kryltzoff.
+
+Though Nekhludoff appeared indifferent, he was really far from
+indifferent, and these words of Novodvoroff, showing his evident desire
+to say or do something unpleasant, interfered with the state of kindness
+in which Nekhludoff found himself, and he felt depressed and sad.
+
+"Well, how are you?" he asked, pressing Kryltzoff's cold and trembling
+hand.
+
+"Pretty well, only I cannot get warm; I got wet through," Kryltzoff
+answered, quickly replacing his hands into the sleeves of his cloak.
+"And here it is also beastly cold. There, look, the window-panes are
+broken," and he pointed to the broken panes behind the iron bars. "And
+how are you? Why did you not come?"
+
+"I was not allowed to, the authorities were so strict, but to-day the
+officer is lenient."
+
+"Lenient indeed!" Kryltzoff remarked. "Ask Mary what she did this
+morning."
+
+Mary Pavlovna from her place in the corner related what had happened
+about the little girl that morning when they left the halting station.
+
+"I think it is absolutely necessary to make a collective protest," said
+Vera Doukhova, in a determined tone, and yet looking now at one, now
+at another, with a frightened, undecided look. "Valdemar Simonson did
+protest, but that is not sufficient."
+
+"What protest!" muttered Kryltzoff, cross and frowning. Her want
+of simplicity, artificial tone and nervousness had evidently been
+irritating him for a long time.
+
+"Are you looking for Katusha?" he asked, addressing Nekhludoff. "She is
+working all the time. She has cleaned this, the men's room, and now she
+has gone to clean the women's! Only it is not possible to clean away
+the fleas. And what is Mary doing there?" he asked, nodding towards the
+corner where Mary Pavlovna sat.
+
+"She is combing out her adopted daughter's hair," replied Rintzeva.
+
+"But won't she let the insects loose on us?" asked Kryltzoff.
+
+"No, no; I am very careful. She is a clean little girl now. You take
+her," said Mary, turning to Rintzeva, "while I go and help Katusha, and
+I will also bring him his plaid."
+
+Rintzeva took the little girl on her lap, pressing her plump, bare,
+little arms to her bosom with a mother's tenderness, and gave her a bit
+of sugar. As Mary Pavlovna left the room, two men came in with boiling
+water and provisions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+NABATOFF AND MARKEL.
+
+One of the men who came in was a short, thin, young man, who had a
+cloth-covered sheepskin coat on, and high top-boots. He stepped lightly
+and quickly, carrying two steaming teapots, and holding a loaf wrapped
+in a cloth under his arm.
+
+"Well, so our prince has put in an appearance again," he said, as he
+placed the teapot beside the cups, and handed the bread to Rintzeva.
+"We have bought wonderful things," he continued, as he took off his
+sheepskin, and flung it over the heads of the others into the corner
+of the bedstead. "Markel has bought milk and eggs. Why, we'll have
+a regular ball to-day. And Rintzeva is spreading out her aesthetic
+cleanliness," he said, and looked with a smile at Rintzeva, "and now she
+will make the tea."
+
+The whole presence of this man--his motion, his voice, his look--seemed
+to breathe vigour and merriment. The other newcomer was just the reverse
+of the first. He looked despondent and sad. He was short, bony, had very
+prominent cheek bones, a sallow complexion, thin lips and beautiful,
+greenish eyes, rather far apart. He wore an old wadded coat, top-boots
+and goloshes, and was carrying two pots of milk and two round boxes
+made of birch bark, which he placed in front of Rintzeva. He bowed to
+Nekhludoff, bending only his neck, and with his eyes fixed on him. Then,
+having reluctantly given him his damp hand to shake, he began to take
+out the provisions.
+
+Both these political prisoners were of the people; the first was
+Nabatoff, a peasant; the second, Markel Kondratieff, a factory hand.
+Markel did not come among the revolutionists till he was quite a man,
+Nabatoff only eighteen. After leaving the village school, owing to
+his exceptional talents Nabatoff entered the gymnasium, and maintained
+himself by giving lessons all the time he studied there, and obtained
+the gold medal. He did not go to the university because, while still in
+the seventh class of the gymnasium, he made up his mind to go among the
+people and enlighten his neglected brethren. This he did, first getting
+the place of a Government clerk in a large village. He was soon arrested
+because he read to the peasants and arranged a co-operative industrial
+association among them. They kept him imprisoned for eight months and
+then set him free, but he remained under police supervision. As soon
+as he was liberated he went to another village, got a place as
+schoolmaster, and did the same as he had done in the first village.
+He was again taken up and kept fourteen months in prison, where his
+convictions became yet stronger. After that he was exiled to the Perm
+Government, from where he escaped. Then he was put to prison for seven
+months and after that exiled to Archangel. There he refused to take the
+oath of allegiance that was required of them and was condemned to
+be exiled to the Takoutsk Government, so that half his life since he
+reached manhood was passed in prison and exile. All these adventures did
+not embitter him nor weaken his energy, but rather stimulated it. He was
+a lively young fellow, with a splendid digestion, always active, gay
+and vigorous. He never repented of anything, never looked far ahead, and
+used all his powers, his cleverness, his practical knowledge to act in
+the present. When free he worked towards the aim he had set himself, the
+enlightening and the uniting of the working men, especially the country
+labourers. When in prison he was just as energetic and practical in
+finding means to come in contact with the outer world, and in arranging
+his own life and the life of his group as comfortably as the conditions
+would allow. Above all things he was a communist. He wanted, as it
+seemed to him, nothing for himself and contented himself with very
+little, but demanded very much for the group of his comrades, and could
+work for it either physically or mentally day and night, without sleep
+or food. As a peasant he had been industrious, observant, clever at
+his work, and naturally self-controlled, polite without any effort, and
+attentive not only to the wishes but also the opinions of others. His
+widowed mother, an illiterate, superstitious, old peasant woman, was
+still living, and Nabatoff helped her and went to see her while he was
+free. During the time he spent at home he entered into all the interests
+of his mother's life, helped her in her work, and continued his
+intercourse with former playfellows; smoked cheap tobacco with them in
+so-called "dog's feet," [a kind of cigarette that the peasants smoke,
+made of a bit of paper and bent at one end into a hook] took part
+in their fist fights, and explained to them how they were all being
+deceived by the State, and how they ought to disentangle themselves out
+of the deception they were kept in. When he thought or spoke of what a
+revolution would do for the people he always imagined this people from
+whom he had sprung himself left in very nearly the same conditions
+as they were in, only with sufficient land and without the gentry and
+without officials. The revolution, according to him, and in this
+he differed from Novodvoroff and Novodvoroff's follower, Markel
+Kondratieff, should not alter the elementary forms of the life of the
+people, should not break down the whole edifice, but should only alter
+the inner walls of the beautiful, strong, enormous old structure he
+loved so dearly. He was also a typical peasant in his views on religion,
+never thinking about metaphysical questions, about the origin of
+all origin, or the future life. God was to him, as also to Arago, an
+hypothesis, which he had had no need of up to now. He had no business
+with the origin of the world, whether Moses or Darwin was right.
+Darwinism, which seemed so important to his fellows, was only the same
+kind of plaything of the mind as the creation in six days. The question
+how the world had originated did not interest him, just because the
+question how it would be best to live in this world was ever before him.
+He never thought about future life, always bearing in the depth of his
+soul the firm and quiet conviction inherited from his forefathers, and
+common to all labourers on the land, that just as in the world of plants
+and animals nothing ceases to exist, but continually changes its form,
+the manure into grain, the grain into a food, the tadpole into a frog,
+the caterpillar into a butterfly, the acorn into an oak, so man also
+does not perish, but only undergoes a change. He believed in this, and
+therefore always looked death straight in the face, and bravely bore the
+sufferings that lead towards it, but did not care and did not know how
+to speak about it. He loved work, was always employed in some practical
+business, and put his comrades in the way of the same kind of practical
+work.
+
+The other political prisoner from among the people, Markel Kondratieff,
+was a very different kind of man. He began to work at the age of
+fifteen, and took to smoking and drinking in order to stifle a dense
+sense of being wronged. He first realised he was wronged one Christmas
+when they, the factory children, were invited to a Christmas tree, got
+up by the employer's wife, where he received a farthing whistle, an
+apple, a gilt walnut and a fig, while the employer's children had
+presents given them which seemed gifts from fairyland, and had cost more
+than fifty roubles, as he afterwards heard.
+
+When he was twenty a celebrated revolutionist came to their factory to
+work as a working girl, and noticing his superior qualities began giving
+books and pamphlets to Kondratieff and to talk and explain his position
+to him, and how to remedy it. When the possibility of freeing himself
+and others from their oppressed state rose clearly in his mind, the
+injustice of this state appeared more cruel and more terrible than
+before, and he longed passionately not only for freedom, but also for
+the punishment of those who had arranged and who kept up this cruel
+injustice. Kondratieff devoted himself with passion to the acquirement
+of knowledge. It was not clear to him how knowledge should bring about
+the realisation of the social ideal, but he believed that the knowledge
+that had shown him the injustice of the state in which he lived would
+also abolish that injustice itself. Besides knowledge would, in his
+opinion, raise him above others. Therefore he left off drinking and
+smoking, and devoted all his leisure time to study. The revolutionist
+gave him lessons, and his thirst for every kind of knowledge, and the
+facility with which he took it in, surprised her. In two years he had
+mastered algebra, geometry, history--which he was specially fond of--and
+made acquaintance with artistic and critical, and especially socialistic
+literature. The revolutionist was arrested, and Kondratieff with her,
+forbidden books having been found in their possession, and they were
+imprisoned and then exiled to the Vologda Government. There Kondratieff
+became acquainted with Novodvoroff, and read a great deal more
+revolutionary literature, remembered it all, and became still firmer
+in his socialistic views. While in exile he became leader in a large
+strike, which ended in the destruction of a factory and the murder of
+the director. He was again arrested and condemned to Siberia.
+
+His religious views were of the same negative nature as his views of the
+existing economic conditions. Having seen the absurdity of the religion
+in which he was brought up, and having gained with great effort, and
+at first with fear, but later with rapture, freedom from it, he did
+not tire of viciously and with venom ridiculing priests and religious
+dogmas, as if wishing to revenge himself for the deception that had been
+practised on him.
+
+He was ascetic through habit, contented himself with very little, and,
+like all those used to work from childhood and whose muscles have been
+developed, he could work much and easily, and was quick at any manual
+labour; but what he valued most was the leisure in prisons and halting
+stations, which enabled him to continue his studies. He was now studying
+the first volume of Karl Marks's, and carefully hid the book in his sack
+as if it were a great treasure. He behaved with reserve and indifference
+to all his comrades, except Novodvoroff, to whom he was greatly
+attached, and whose arguments on all subjects he accepted as
+unanswerable truths.
+
+He had an indefinite contempt for women, whom he looked upon as a
+hindrance in all necessary business. But he pitied Maslova and was
+gentle with her, for he considered her an example of the way the lower
+are exploited by the upper classes. The same reason made him dislike
+Nekhludoff, so that he talked little with him, and never pressed
+Nekhludoff's hand, but only held out his own to be pressed when greeting
+him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+LOVE AFFAIRS OF THE EXILES.
+
+The stove had burned up and got warm, the tea was made and poured out
+into mugs and cups, and milk was added to it; rusks, fresh rye and wheat
+bread, hard-boiled eggs, butter, and calf's head and feet were placed on
+the cloth. Everybody moved towards the part of the shelf beds which took
+the place of the table and sat eating and talking. Rintzeva sat on a box
+pouring out the tea. The rest crowded round her, only Kryltzoff, who had
+taken off his wet cloak and wrapped himself in his dry plaid and lay in
+his own place talking to Nekhludoff.
+
+After the cold and damp march and the dirt and disorder they had found
+here, and after the pains they had taken to get it tidy, after having
+drunk hot tea and eaten, they were all in the best and brightest of
+spirits.
+
+The fact that the tramp of feet, the screams and abuse of the criminals,
+reached them through the wall, reminding them of their surroundings,
+seemed only to increase the sense of coziness. As on an island in the
+midst of the sea, these people felt themselves for a brief interval not
+swamped by the degradation and sufferings which surrounded them; this
+made their spirits rise, and excited them. They talked about everything
+except their present position and that which awaited them. Then, as it
+generally happens among young men, and women especially, if they are
+forced to remain together, as these people were, all sorts of agreements
+and disagreements and attractions, curiously blended, had sprung up
+among them. Almost all of them were in love. Novodvoroff was in love
+with the pretty, smiling Grabetz. This Grabetz was a young, thoughtless
+girl who had gone in for a course of study, perfectly indifferent to
+revolutionary questions, but succumbing to the influence of the day, she
+compromised herself in some way and was exiled. The chief interest of
+her life during the time of her trial in prison and in exile was her
+success with men, just as it had been when she was free. Now on the way
+she comforted herself with the fact that Novodvoroff had taken a fancy
+to her, and she fell in love with him. Vera Doukhova, who was very prone
+to fall in love herself, but did not awaken love in others, though she
+was always hoping for mutual love, was sometimes drawn to Nabatoff, then
+to Novodvoroff. Kryltzoff felt something like love for Mary Pavlovna. He
+loved her with a man's love, but knowing how she regarded this sort of
+love, hid his feelings under the guise of friendship and gratitude
+for the tenderness with which she attended to his wants. Nabatoff and
+Rintzeva were attached to each other by very complicated ties. Just as
+Mary Pavlovna was a perfectly chaste maiden, in the same way Rintzeva
+was perfectly chaste as her own husband's wife. When only a schoolgirl
+of sixteen she fell in love with Rintzeff, a student of the Petersburg
+University, and married him before he left the university, when she was
+only nineteen years old. During his fourth year at the university her
+husband had become involved in the students' rows, was exiled from
+Petersburg, and turned revolutionist. She left the medical courses she
+was attending, followed him, and also turned revolutionist. If she had
+not considered her husband the cleverest and best of men she would not
+have fallen in love with him; and if she had not fallen in love would
+not have married; but having fallen in love and married him whom she
+thought the best and cleverest of men, she naturally looked upon life
+and its aims in the way the best and cleverest of men looked at them. At
+first he thought the aim of life was to learn, and she looked upon study
+as the aim of life. He became a revolutionist, and so did she. She could
+demonstrate very clearly that the existing state of things could not go
+on, and that it was everybody's duty to fight this state of things and
+to try to bring about conditions in which the individual could develop
+freely, etc. And she imagined that she really thought and felt all
+this, but in reality she only regarded everything her husband thought
+as absolute truth, and only sought for perfect agreement, perfect
+identification of her own soul with his which alone could give her full
+moral satisfaction. The parting with her husband and their child, whom
+her mother had taken, was very hard to bear; but she bore it firmly and
+quietly, since it was for her husband's sake and for that cause which
+she had not the slightest doubt was true, since he served it. She was
+always with her husband in thoughts, and did not love and could not love
+any other any more than she had done before. But Nabatoff's devoted and
+pure love touched and excited her. This moral, firm man, her husband's
+friend, tried to treat her as a sister, but something more appeared in
+his behaviour to her, and this something frightened them both, and yet
+gave colour to their life of hardship.
+
+So that in all this circle only Mary Pavlovna and Kondratieff were quite
+free from love affairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CONVERSATIONS IN PRISON.
+
+Expecting to have a private talk with Katusha, as usual, after tea,
+Nekhludoff sat by the side of Kryltzoff, conversing with him. Among
+other things he told him the story of Makar's crime and about his
+request to him. Kryltzoff listened attentively, gazing at Nekhludoff
+with glistening eyes.
+
+"Yes," said Kryltzoff suddenly, "I often think that here we are going
+side by side with them, and who are they? The same for whose sake we
+are going, and yet we not only do not know them, but do not even wish to
+know them. And they, even worse than that, they hate us and look upon us
+as enemies. This is terrible."
+
+"There is nothing terrible about it," broke in Novodvoroff. "The masses
+always worship power only. The government is in power, and they worship
+it and hate us. To-morrow we shall have the power, and they will worship
+us," he said with his grating voice. At that moment a volley of abuse
+and the rattle of chains sounded from behind the wall, something was
+heard thumping against it and screaming and shrieking, some one was
+being beaten, and some one was calling out, "Murder! help!"
+
+"Hear them, the beasts! What intercourse can there be between us and
+such as them?" quietly remarked Novodvoroff.
+
+"You call them beasts, and Nekhludoff was just telling me about such an
+action!" irritably retorted Kryltzoff, and went on to say how Makar was
+risking his life to save a fellow-villager. "That is not the action of a
+beast, it is heroism."
+
+"Sentimentality!" Novodvoroff ejaculated ironically; "it is difficult
+for us to understand the emotions of these people and the motives on
+which they act. You see generosity in the act, and it may be simply
+jealousy of that other criminal."
+
+"How is it that you never wish to see anything good in another?" Mary
+Pavlovna said suddenly, flaring up.
+
+"How can one see what does not exist!"
+
+"How does it not exist, when a man risks dying a terrible death?"
+
+"I think," said Novodvoroff, "that if we mean to do our work, the first
+condition is that" (here Kondratieff put down the book he was reading by
+the lamplight and began to listen attentively to his master's words) "we
+should not give way to fancy, but look at things as they are. We should
+do all in our power for the masses, and expect nothing in return.
+The masses can only be the object of our activity, but cannot be our
+fellow-workers as long as they remain in that state of inertia they are
+in at present," he went on, as if delivering a lecture. "Therefore, to
+expect help from them before the process of development--that process
+which we are preparing them for--has taken place is an illusion."
+
+"What process of development?" Kryltzoff began, flushing all over. "We
+say that we are against arbitrary rule and despotism, and is this not
+the most awful despotism?"
+
+"No despotism whatever," quietly rejoined Novodvoroff. "I am only saying
+that I know the path that the people must travel, and can show them that
+path."
+
+"But how can you be sure that the path you show is the true path?
+Is this not the same kind of despotism that lay at the bottom of the
+Inquisition, all persecutions, and the great revolution? They, too, knew
+the one true way, by means of their science."
+
+"Their having erred is no proof of my going to err; besides, there is a
+great difference between the ravings of idealogues and the facts based
+on sound, economic science." Novodvoroff's voice filled the room; he
+alone was speaking, all the rest were silent.
+
+"They are always disputing," Mary Pavlovna said, when there was a
+moment's silence.
+
+"And you yourself, what do you think about it?" Nekhludoff asked her.
+
+"I think Kryltzoff is right when he says we should not force our views
+on the people."
+
+"And you, Katusha?" asked Nekhludoff with a smile, waiting anxiously for
+her answer, fearing she would say something awkward.
+
+"I think the common people are wronged," she said, and blushed scarlet.
+"I think they are dreadfully wronged."
+
+"That's right, Maslova, quite right," cried Nabatoff. "They are terribly
+wronged, the people, and they must not be wronged, and therein lies the
+whole of our task."
+
+"A curious idea of the object of revolution," Novodvoroff remarked
+crossly, and began to smoke.
+
+"I cannot talk to him," said Kryltzoff in a whisper, and was silent.
+
+"And it is much better not to talk," Nekhludoff said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+NOVODVOROFF.
+
+Although Novodvoroff was highly esteemed of all the revolutionists,
+though he was very learned, and considered very wise, Nekhludoff
+reckoned him among those of the revolutionists who, being below the
+average moral level, were very far below it. His inner life was of a
+nature directly opposite to that of Simonson's. Simonson was one of
+those people (of an essentially masculine type) whose actions follow
+the dictates of their reason, and are determined by it. Novodvoroff
+belonged, on the contrary, to the class of people of a feminine type,
+whose reason is directed partly towards the attainment of aims set by
+their feelings, partly to the justification of acts suggested by their
+feelings. The whole of Novodvoroff's revolutionary activity, though
+he could explain it very eloquently and very convincingly, appeared
+to Nekhludoff to be founded on nothing but ambition and the desire
+for supremacy. At first his capacity for assimilating the thoughts of
+others, and of expressing them correctly, had given him a position of
+supremacy among pupils and teachers in the gymnasium and the university,
+where qualities such as his are highly prized, and he was satisfied.
+When he had finished his studies and received his diploma he suddenly
+altered his views, and from a modern liberal he turned into a rabid
+Narodovoletz, in order (so Kryltzoff, who did not like him, said) to
+gain supremacy in another sphere.
+
+As he was devoid of those moral and aesthetic qualities which call
+forth doubts and hesitation, he very soon acquired a position in the
+revolutionary world which satisfied him--that of the leader of a party.
+Having once chosen a direction, he never doubted or hesitated, and was
+therefore certain that he never made a mistake. Everything seemed quite
+simple, clear and certain. And the narrowness and one-sidedness of his
+views did make everything seem simple and clear. One only had to be
+logical, as he said. His self-assurance was so great that it either
+repelled people or made them submit to him. As he carried on his work
+among very young people, his boundless self-assurance led them to
+believe him very profound and wise; the majority did submit to him,
+and he had a great success in revolutionary circles. His activity was
+directed to the preparation of a rising in which he was to usurp the
+power and call together a council. A programme, composed by him, should
+be proposed before the council, and he felt sure that this programme of
+his solved every problem, and that it would be impossible not to carry
+it out.
+
+His comrades respected but did not love him. He did not love any one,
+looked upon all men of note as upon rivals, and would have willingly
+treated them as old male monkeys treat young ones if he could have done
+it. He would have torn all mental power, every capacity, from other men,
+so that they should not interfere with the display of his talents. He
+behaved well only to those who bowed before him. Now, on the journey he
+behaved well to Kondratieff, who was influenced by his propaganda; to
+Vera Doukhova and pretty little Grabetz, who were both in love with him.
+Although in principle he was in favour of the woman's movement, yet in
+the depth of his soul he considered all women stupid and insignificant
+except those whom he was sentimentally in love with (as he was now in
+love with Grabetz), and such women he considered to be exceptions, whose
+merits he alone was capable of discerning.
+
+The question of the relations of the sexes he also looked upon as
+thoroughly solved by accepting free union. He had one nominal and
+one real wife, from both of whom he was separated, having come to the
+conclusion that there was no real love between them, and now he thought
+of entering on a free union with Grabetz. He despised Nekhludoff
+for "playing the fool," as Novodvoroff termed it, with Maslova, but
+especially for the freedom Nekhludoff took of considering the defects
+of the existing system and the methods of correcting those defects in a
+manner which was not only not exactly the same as Novodvoroff's, but was
+Nekhludoff's own--a prince's, that is, a fool's manner. Nekhludoff felt
+this relation of Novodvoroff's towards him, and knew to his sorrow that
+in spite of the state of good will in which he found himself on this
+journey he could not help paying this man in his own coin, and could not
+stifle the strong antipathy he felt for him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SIMONSON SPEAKS TO NEKHLUDOFF.
+
+The voices of officials sounded from the next room. All the prisoners
+were silent, and a sergeant, followed by two convoy soldiers, entered.
+The time of the inspection had come. The sergeant counted every one, and
+when Nekhludoff's turn came he addressed him with kindly familiarity.
+
+"You must not stay any longer, Prince, after the inspection; you must go
+now."
+
+Nekhludoff knew what this meant, went up to the sergeant and shoved a
+three-rouble note into his hand.
+
+"Ah, well, what is one to do with you; stay a bit longer, if you like."
+The sergeant was about to go when another sergeant, followed by a
+convict, a spare man with a thin beard and a bruise under his eye, came
+in.
+
+"It's about the girl I have come," said the convict.
+
+"Here's daddy come," came the ringing accents of a child's voice, and a
+flaxen head appeared from behind Rintzeva, who, with Katusha's and Mary
+Pavlovna's help, was making a new garment for the child out of one of
+Rintzeva's own petticoats.
+
+"Yes, daughter, it's me," Bousovkin, the prisoner, said softly.
+
+"She is quite comfortable here," said Mary Pavlovna, looking with pity
+at Bousovkin's bruised face. "Leave her with us."
+
+"The ladies are making me new clothes," said the girl, pointing to
+Rintzeva's sewing--"nice red ones," she went on, prattling.
+
+"Do you wish to sleep with us?" asked Rintzeva, caressing the child.
+
+"Yes, I wish. And daddy, too."
+
+"No, daddy can't. Well, leave her then," she said, turning to the
+father.
+
+"Yes, you may leave her," said the first sergeant, and went out with the
+other.
+
+As soon as they were out of the room Nabatoff went up to Bousovkin,
+slapped him on the shoulder, and said: "I say, old fellow, is it true
+that Karmanoff wishes to exchange?"
+
+Bousovkin's kindly, gentle face turned suddenly sad and a veil seemed to
+dim his eyes.
+
+"We have heard nothing--hardly," he said, and with the same dimness
+still over his eyes he turned to the child.
+
+"Well, Aksutka, it seems you're to make yourself comfortable with the
+ladies," and he hurried away.
+
+"It's true about the exchange, and he knows it very well," said
+Nabatoff.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I shall tell the authorities in the next town. I know both prisoners by
+sight," said Nekhludoff.
+
+All were silent, fearing a recommencement of the dispute.
+
+Simonson, who had been lying with his arms thrown back behind his head,
+and not speaking, rose, and determinately walked up to Nekhludoff,
+carefully passing round those who were sitting.
+
+"Could you listen to me now?"
+
+"Of course," and Nekhludoff rose and followed him.
+
+Katusha looked up with an expression of suspense, and meeting
+Nekhludoff's eyes, she blushed and shook her head.
+
+"What I want to speak to you about is this," Simonson began, when they
+had come out into the passage. In the passage the din of the criminal's
+voices and shouts sounded louder. Nekhludoff made a face, but Simonson
+did not seem to take any notice.
+
+"Knowing of your relations to Katerina Maslova," he began seriously and
+frankly, with his kind eyes looking straight into Nekhludoff's face,
+"I consider it my duty"--He was obliged to stop because two voices were
+heard disputing and shouting, both at once, close to the door.
+
+"I tell you, blockhead, they are not mine," one voice shouted.
+
+"May you choke, you devil," snorted the other.
+
+At this moment Mary Pavlovna came out into the passage.
+
+"How can one talk here?" she said; "go in, Vera is alone there," and she
+went in at the second door, and entered a tiny room, evidently meant for
+a solitary cell, which was now placed at the disposal of the political
+women prisoners, Vera Doukhova lay covered up, head and all, on the bed.
+
+"She has got a headache, and is asleep, so she cannot hear you, and I
+will go away," said Mary Pavlovna.
+
+"On the contrary, stay here," said Simonson; "I have no secrets from any
+one, certainly none from you."
+
+"All right," said Mary Pavlovna, and moving her whole body from side to
+side, like a child, so as to get farther back on to the bed, she settled
+down to listen, her beautiful hazel eyes seeming to look somewhere far
+away.
+
+"Well, then, this is my business," Simonson repeated. "Knowing of your
+relations to Katerina Maslova, I consider myself bound to explain to you
+my relations to her."
+
+Nekhludoff could not help admiring the simplicity and truthfulness with
+which Simonson spoke to him.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that I should like to marry Katerina Maslova--"
+
+"How strange!" said Mary Pavlovna, fixing her eyes on Simonson.
+
+"--And so I made up my mind to ask her to be my wife," Simonson
+continued.
+
+"What can I do? It depends on her," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"Yes; but she will not come to any decision without you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because as long as your relations with her are unsettled she cannot
+make up her mind."
+
+"As far as I am concerned, it is finally settled. I should like to do
+what I consider to be my duty and also to lighten her fate, but on no
+account would I wish to put any restraint on her."
+
+"Yes, but she does not wish to accept your sacrifice."
+
+"It is no sacrifice."
+
+"And I know that this decision of hers is final."
+
+"Well, then, there is no need to speak to me," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"She wants you to acknowledge that you think as she does."
+
+"How can I acknowledge that I must not do what I consider to be my duty?
+All I can say is that I am not free, but she is."
+
+Simonson was silent; then, after thinking a little, he said: "Very
+well, then, I'll tell her. You must not think I am in love with her,"
+he continued; "I love her as a splendid, unique, human being who has
+suffered much. I want nothing from her. I have only an awful longing to
+help her, to lighten her posi--"
+
+Nekhludoff was surprised to hear the trembling in Simonson's voice.
+
+"--To lighten her position," Simonson continued. "If she does not wish
+to accept your help, let her accept mine. If she consents, I shall ask
+to be sent to the place where she will be imprisoned. Four years are
+not an eternity. I would live near her, and perhaps might lighten her
+fate--" and he again stopped, too agitated to continue.
+
+"What am I to say?" said Nekhludoff. "I am very glad she has found such
+a protector as you--"
+
+"That's what I wanted to know," Simonson interrupted.
+
+"I wanted to know if, loving her and wishing her happiness, you would
+consider it good for her to marry me?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Nekhludoff decidedly.
+
+"It all depends on her; I only wish that this suffering soul should find
+rest," said Simonson, with such childlike tenderness as no one could
+have expected from so morose-looking a man.
+
+Simonson rose, and stretching his lips out to Nekhludoff, smiled shyly
+and kissed him.
+
+"So I shall tell her," and he went away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+"I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY."
+
+"What do you think of that?" said Mary Pavlovna. "In love--quite in
+love. Now, that's a thing I never should have expected, that Valdemar
+Simonson should be in love, and in the silliest, most boyish manner. It
+is strange, and, to say the truth, it is sad," and she sighed.
+
+"But she? Katusha? How does she look at it, do you think?" Nekhludoff
+asked.
+
+"She?" Mary Pavlovna waited, evidently wishing to give as exact an
+answer as possible. "She? Well, you see, in spite of her past she
+has one of the most moral natures--and such fine feelings. She loves
+you--loves you well, and is happy to be able to do you even the negative
+good of not letting you get entangled with her. Marriage with you would
+be a terrible fall for her, worse than all that's past, and therefore
+she will never consent to it. And yet your presence troubles her."
+
+"Well, what am I to do? Ought I to vanish?"
+
+Mary Pavlovna smiled her sweet, childlike smile, and said, "Yes,
+partly."
+
+"How is one to vanish partly?"
+
+"I am talking nonsense. But as for her, I should like to tell you that
+she probably sees the silliness of this rapturous kind of love (he has
+not spoken to her), and is both flattered and afraid of it. I am not
+competent to judge in such affairs, you know, still I believe that on
+his part it is the most ordinary man's feeling, though it is masked. He
+says that this love arouses his energy and is Platonic, but I know that
+even if it is exceptional, still at the bottom it is degrading."
+
+Mary Pavlovna had wandered from the subject, having started on her
+favourite theme.
+
+"Well, but what am I to do?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"I think you should tell her everything; it is always best that
+everything should be clear. Have a talk with her; I shall call her.
+Shall I?" said Mary Pavlovna.
+
+"If you please," said Nekhludoff, and Mary Pavlovna went.
+
+A strange feeling overcame Nekhludoff when he was alone in the little
+room with the sleeping Vera Doukhova, listening to her soft breathing,
+broken now and then by moans, and to the incessant dirt that came
+through the two doors that separated him from the criminals. What
+Simonson had told him freed him from the self-imposed duty, which had
+seemed hard and strange to him in his weak moments, and yet now he felt
+something that was not merely unpleasant but painful.
+
+He had a feeling that this offer of Simonson's destroyed the exceptional
+character of his sacrifice, and thereby lessened its value in his own
+and others' eyes; if so good a man who was not bound to her by any kind
+of tie wanted to join his fate to hers, then this sacrifice was not so
+great. There may have also been an admixture of ordinary jealousy. He
+had got so used to her love that he did not like to admit that she loved
+another.
+
+Then it also upset the plans he had formed of living near her while
+she was doing her term. If she married Simonson his presence would be
+unnecessary, and he would have to form new plans.
+
+Before he had time to analyse his feelings the loud din of the
+prisoners' voices came in with a rush (something special was going on
+among them to-day) as the door opened to let Katusha in.
+
+She stepped briskly close up to him and said, "Mary Pavlovna has sent
+me."
+
+"Yes, I must have a talk with you. Sit down. Valdemar Simonson has been
+speaking to me."
+
+She sat down and folded her hands in her lap and seemed quite calm, but
+hardly had Nekhludoff uttered Simonson's name when she flushed crimson.
+
+"What did he say?" she asked.
+
+"He told me he wanted to marry you."
+
+Her face suddenly puckered up with pain, but she said nothing and only
+cast down her eyes.
+
+"He is asking for my consent or my advice. I told him that it all
+depends entirely on you--that you must decide."
+
+"Ah, what does it all mean? Why?" she muttered, and looked in his eyes
+with that peculiar squint that always strangely affected Nekhludoff.
+
+They sat silent for a few minutes looking into each other's eyes, and
+this look told much to both of them.
+
+"You must decide," Nekhludoff repeated.
+
+"What am I to decide? Everything has long been decided."
+
+"No; you must decide whether you will accept Mr. Simonson's offer," said
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"What sort of a wife can I be--I, a convict? Why should I ruin Mr.
+Simonson, too?" she said, with a frown.
+
+"Well, but if the sentence should be mitigated."
+
+"Oh, leave me alone. I have nothing more to say," she said, and rose to
+leave the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+NEVEROFF'S FATE.
+
+When, following Katusha, Nekhludoff returned to the men's room, he found
+every one there in agitation. Nabatoff, who went about all over the
+place, and who got to know everybody, and noticed everything, had
+just brought news which staggered them all. The news was that he had
+discovered a note on a wall, written by the revolutionist Petlin, who
+had been sentenced to hard labour, and who, every one thought, had long
+since reached the Kara; and now it turned out that he had passed this
+way quite recently, the only political prisoner among criminal convicts.
+
+"On the 17th of August," so ran the note, "I was sent off alone with
+the criminals. Neveroff was with me, but hanged himself in the lunatic
+asylum in Kasan. I am well and in good spirits and hope for the best."
+
+All were discussing Petlin's position and the possible reasons of
+Neveroff's suicide. Only Kryltzoff sat silent and preoccupied, his
+glistening eyes gazing fixedly in front of him.
+
+"My husband told me that Neveroff had a vision while still in the
+Petropavlovski prison," said Rintzeva.
+
+"Yes, he was a poet, a dreamer; this sort of people cannot stand
+solitary confinement," said Novodvoroff. "Now, I never gave my
+imagination vent when in solitary confinement, but arranged my days most
+systematically, and in this way always bore it very well."
+
+"What is there unbearable about it? Why, I used to be glad when they
+locked me up," said Nabatoff cheerfully, wishing to dispel the general
+depression.
+
+"A fellow's afraid of everything; of being arrested himself and
+entangling others, and of spoiling the whole business, and then he gets
+locked up, and all responsibility is at an end, and he can rest; he can
+just sit and smoke."
+
+"You knew him well?" asked Mary Pavlovna, glancing anxiously at the
+altered, haggard expression of Kryltzoff's face.
+
+"Neveroff a dreamer?" Kryltzoff suddenly began, panting for breath as
+if he had been shouting or singing for a long time. "Neveroff was a man
+'such as the earth bears few of,' as our doorkeeper used to express it.
+Yes, he had a nature like crystal, you could see him right through; he
+could not lie, he could not dissemble; not simply thin skinned, but
+with all his nerves laid bare, as if he were flayed. Yes, his was a
+complicated, rich nature, not such a-- But where is the use of talking?"
+he added, with a vicious frown. "Shall we first educate the people
+and then change the forms of life, or first change the forms and then
+struggle, using peaceful propaganda or terrorism? So we go on disputing
+while _they_ kill; _they_ do not dispute--they know their business; they
+don't care whether dozens, hundreds of men perish--and what men! No;
+that the best should perish is just what they want. Yes, Herzen said
+that when the Decembrists were withdrawn from circulation the average
+level of our society sank. I should think so, indeed. Then Herzen
+himself and his fellows were withdrawn; now is the turn of the
+Neveroffs."
+
+"They can't all be got rid off," said Nabatoff, in his cheerful tones.
+"There will always be left enough to continue the breed. No, there
+won't, if we show any pity to _them_ there," Nabatoff said, raising his
+voice; and not letting himself be interrupted, "Give me a cigarette."
+
+"Oh, Anatole, it is not good for you," said Mary Pavlovna. "Please do
+not smoke."
+
+"Oh, leave me alone," he said angrily, and lit a cigarette, but at once
+began to cough and to retch, as if he were going to be sick. Having
+cleared his throat though, he went on:
+
+"What we have been doing is not the thing at all. Not to argue, but for
+all to unite--to destroy them--that's it."
+
+"But _they_ are also human beings," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"No, _they_ are not human, they who can do what they are
+doing--No--There, now, I heard that some kind of bombs and balloons have
+been invented. Well, one ought to go up in such a balloon and sprinkle
+bombs down on _them_ as if _they_ were bugs, until _they_ are all
+exterminated--Yes. Because--" he was going to continue, but, flushing
+all over, he began coughing worse than before, and a stream of blood
+rushed from his mouth.
+
+Nabatoff ran to get ice. Mary Pavlovna brought valerian drops and
+offered them to him, but he, breathing quickly and heavily, pushed her
+away with his thin, white hand, and kept his eyes closed. When the ice
+and cold water had eased Kryltzoff a little, and he had been put to
+bed, Nekhludoff, having said good-night to everybody, went out with the
+sergeant, who had been waiting for him some time.
+
+The criminals were now quiet, and most of them were asleep. Though the
+people were lying on and under the bed shelves and in the space between,
+they could not all be placed inside the rooms, and some of them lay in
+the passage with their sacks under their heads and covered with their
+cloaks. The moans and sleepy voices came through the open doors and
+sounded through the passage. Everywhere lay compact heaps of human
+beings covered with prison cloaks. Only a few men who were sitting in
+the bachelors' room by the light of a candle end, which they put out
+when they noticed the sergeant, were awake, and an old man who sat naked
+under the lamp in the passage picking the vermin off his shirt. The
+foul air in the political prisoners' rooms seemed pure compared to the
+stinking closeness here. The smoking lamp shone dimly as through a mist,
+and it was difficult to breathe. Stepping along the passage, one had to
+look carefully for an empty space, and having put down one foot had to
+find place for the other. Three persons, who had evidently found no
+room even in the passage, lay in the anteroom, close to the stinking and
+leaking tub. One of these was an old idiot, whom Nekhludoff had often
+seen marching with the gang; another was a boy about twelve; he lay
+between the two other convicts, with his head on the leg of one of them.
+
+When he had passed out of the gate Nekhludoff took a deep breath and
+long continued to breathe in deep draughts of frosty air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+WHY IS IT DONE?
+
+It had cleared up and was starlight. Except in a few places the mud was
+frozen hard when Nekhludoff returned to his inn and knocked at one of
+its dark windows. The broad-shouldered labourer came barefooted to open
+the door for him and let him in. Through a door on the right, leading
+to the back premises, came the loud snoring of the carters, who slept
+there, and the sound of many horses chewing oats came from the yard. The
+front room, where a red lamp was burning in front of the icons, smelt
+of wormwood and perspiration, and some one with mighty lungs was snoring
+behind a partition. Nekhludoff undressed, put his leather travelling
+pillow on the oilcloth sofa, spread out his rug and lay down, thinking
+over all he had seen and heard that day; the boy sleeping on the liquid
+that oozed from the stinking tub, with his head on the convict's leg,
+seemed more dreadful than all else.
+
+Unexpected and important as his conversation with Simonson and Katusha
+that evening had been, he did not dwell on it; his situation in relation
+to that subject was so complicated and indefinite that he drove the
+thought from his mind. But the picture of those unfortunate beings,
+inhaling the noisome air, and lying in the liquid oozing out of the
+stinking tub, especially that of the boy, with his innocent face asleep
+on the leg of a criminal, came all the more vividly to his mind, and he
+could not get it out of his head.
+
+To know that somewhere far away there are men who torture other men
+by inflicting all sorts of humiliations and inhuman degradation and
+sufferings on them, or for three months incessantly to look on while men
+were inflicting these humiliations and sufferings on other men is a very
+different thing. And Nekhludoff felt it. More than once during these
+three months he asked himself, "Am I mad because I see what others do
+not, or are they mad that do these things that I see?"
+
+Yet they (and there were many of them) did what seemed so astonishing
+and terrible to him with such quiet assurance that what they were doing
+was necessary and was important and useful work that it was hard to
+believe they were mad; nor could he, conscious of the clearness of his
+thoughts, believe he was mad; and all this kept him continually in a
+state of perplexity.
+
+This is how the things he saw during these three months impressed
+Nekhludoff: From among the people who were free, those were chosen, by
+means of trials and the administration, who were the most nervous,
+the most hot tempered, the most excitable, the most gifted, and the
+strongest, but the least careful and cunning. These people, not a wit
+more dangerous than many of those who remained free, were first locked
+in prisons, transported to Siberia, where they were provided for and
+kept months and years in perfect idleness, and away from nature, their
+families, and useful work--that is, away from the conditions necessary
+for a natural and moral life. This firstly. Secondly, these people
+were subjected to all sorts of unnecessary indignity in these different
+Places--chains, shaved heads, shameful clothing--that is, they were
+deprived of the chief motives that induce the weak to live good lives,
+the regard for public opinion, the sense of shame and the consciousness
+of human dignity. Thirdly, they were continually exposed to dangers,
+such as the epidemics so frequent in places of confinement, exhaustion,
+flogging, not to mention accidents, such as sunstrokes, drowning or
+conflagrations, when the instinct of self-preservation makes even the
+kindest, most moral men commit cruel actions, and excuse such actions
+when committed by others.
+
+Fourthly, these people were forced to associate with others who
+were particularly depraved by life, and especially by these very
+institutions--rakes, murderers and villains--who act on those who are
+not yet corrupted by the measures inflicted on them as leaven acts on
+dough.
+
+And, fifthly, the fact that all sorts of violence, cruelty, inhumanity,
+are not only tolerated, but even permitted by the government, when it
+suits its purposes, was impressed on them most forcibly by the inhuman
+treatment they were subjected to; by the sufferings inflicted on
+children, women and old men; by floggings with rods and whips; by
+rewards offered for bringing a fugitive back, dead or alive; by the
+separation of husbands and wives, and the uniting them with the wives
+and husbands of others for sexual intercourse; by shooting or hanging
+them. To those who were deprived of their freedom, who were in want
+and misery, acts of violence were evidently still more permissible.
+All these institutions seemed purposely invented for the production of
+depravity and vice, condensed to such a degree that no other conditions
+could produce it, and for the spreading of this condensed depravity and
+vice broadcast among the whole population.
+
+"Just as if a problem had been set to find the best, the surest means
+of depraving the greatest number of persons," thought Nekhludoff, while
+investigating the deeds that were being done in the prisons and halting
+stations. Every year hundreds of thousands were brought to the highest
+pitch of depravity, and when completely depraved they were set free to
+carry the depravity they had caught in prison among the people. In
+the prisons of Tamen, Ekaterinburg, Tomsk and at the halting stations
+Nekhludoff saw how successfully the object society seemed to have set
+itself was attained.
+
+Ordinary, simple men with a conception of the demands of the social and
+Christian Russian peasant morality lost this conception, and found a
+new one, founded chiefly on the idea that any outrage or violence was
+justifiable if it seemed profitable. After living in a prison those
+people became conscious with the whole of their being that, judging by
+what was happening to themselves, all the moral laws, the respect and
+the sympathy for others which church and the moral teachers preach,
+was really set aside, and that, therefore, they, too, need not keep the
+laws. Nekhludoff noticed the effects of prison life on all the convicts
+he knew--on Fedoroff, on Makar, and even on Taras, who, after two months
+among the convicts, struck Nekhludoff by the want of morality in his
+arguments. Nekhludoff found out during his journey how tramps, escaping
+into the marshes, persuade a comrade to escape with them, and then kill
+him and feed on his flesh. (He saw a living man who was accused of this
+and acknowledged the fact.) And the most terrible part was that this was
+not a solitary, but a recurring case.
+
+Only by a special cultivation of vice, such as was perpetrated in these
+establishments, could a Russian be brought to the state of this tramp,
+who excelled Nietzsche's newest teaching, and held that everything was
+possible and nothing forbidden, and who spread this teaching first among
+the convicts and then among the people in general.
+
+The only explanation of all that was being done was the wish to put
+a stop to crime by fear, by correction, by lawful vengeance as it was
+written in the books. But in reality nothing in the least resembling any
+of these results came to pass. Instead of vice being put a stop to, it
+only spread further; instead of being frightened, the criminals were
+encouraged (many a tramp returned to prison of his own free will).
+Instead of being corrected, every kind of vice was systematically
+instilled, while the desire for vengeance did not weaken by the measures
+of the government, but was bred in the people who had none of it.
+
+"Then why is it done?" Nekhludoff asked himself, but could find no
+answer. And what seemed most surprising was that all this was not being
+done accidentally, not by mistake, not once, but that it had continued
+for centuries, with this difference only, that at first the people's
+nostrils used to be torn and their ears cut off; then they were branded,
+and now they were manacled and transported by steam instead of on the
+old carts. The arguments brought forward by those in government service,
+who said that the things which aroused his indignation were simply due
+to the imperfect arrangements of the places of confinement, and that
+they could all be put to rights if prisons of a modern type were built,
+did not satisfy Nekhludoff, because he knew that what revolted him was
+not the consequence of a better or worse arrangement of the prisons.
+He had read of model prisons with electric bells, of executions by
+electricity, recommended by Tard; but this refined kind of violence
+revolted him even more.
+
+But what revolted Nekhludoff most was that there were men in the law
+courts and in the ministry who received large salaries, taken from the
+people, for referring to books written by men like themselves and with
+like motives, and sorting actions that violated laws made by themselves
+according to different statutes; and, in obedience to these statutes,
+sending those guilty of such actions to places where they were
+completely at the mercy of cruel, hardened inspectors, jailers, convoy
+soldiers, where millions of them perished body and soul.
+
+Now that he had a closer knowledge of prisons, Nekhludoff found out
+that all those vices which developed among the prisoners--drunkenness,
+gambling, cruelty, and all these terrible crimes, even cannibalism--were
+not casual, or due to degeneration or to the existence of monstrosities
+of the criminal type, as science, going hand in hand with the
+government, explained it, but an unavoidable consequence of the
+incomprehensible delusion that men may punish one another. Nekhludoff
+saw that cannibalism did not commence in the marshes, but in the
+ministry. He saw that his brother-in-law, for example, and, in fact, all
+the lawyers and officials, from the usher to the minister, do not care
+in the least for justice or the good of the people about whom they
+spoke, but only for the roubles they were paid for doing the things that
+were the source whence all this degradation and suffering flowed. This
+was quite evident.
+
+"Can it be, then, that all this is done simply through misapprehension?
+Could it not be managed that all these officials should have their
+salaries secured to them, and a premium paid them, besides, so that
+they should leave off, doing all that they were doing now?" Nekhludoff
+thought, and in spite of the fleas, that seemed to spring up round him
+like water from a fountain whenever he moved, he fell fast asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE JOURNEY RESUMED.
+
+The carters had left the inn long before Nekhludoff awoke. The landlady
+had had her tea, and came in wiping her fat, perspiring neck with
+her handkerchief, and said that a soldier had brought a note from
+the halting station. The note was from Mary Pavlovna. She wrote that
+Kryltzoff's attack was more serious than they had imagined. "We wished
+him to be left behind and to remain with him, but this has not been
+allowed, so that we shall take him on; but we fear the worst. Please
+arrange so that if he should be left in the next town, one of us might
+remain with him. If in order to get the permission to stay I should be
+obliged to get married to him, I am of course ready to do so."
+
+Nekhludoff sent the young labourer to the post station to order horses
+and began packing up hurriedly. Before he had drunk his second tumbler
+of tea the three-horsed postcart drove up to the porch with ringing
+bells, the wheels rattling on the frozen mud as on stones. Nekhludoff
+paid the fat-necked landlady, hurried out and got into the cart,
+and gave orders to the driver to go on as fast as possible, so as to
+overtake the gang. Just past the gates of the commune pasture ground
+they did overtake the carts, loaded with sacks and the sick prisoners,
+as they rattled over the frozen mud, that was just beginning to be
+rolled smooth by the wheels (the officer was not there, he had gone in
+advance). The soldiers, who had evidently been drinking, followed by the
+side of the road, chatting merrily. There were a great many carts. In
+each of the first carts sat six invalid criminal convicts, close packed.
+On each of the last two were three political prisoners. Novodvoroff,
+Grabetz and Kondratieff sat on one, Rintzeva, Nabatoff and the woman to
+whom Mary Pavlovna had given up her own place on the other, and on one
+of the carts lay Kryltzoff on a heap of hay, with a pillow under his
+head, and Mary Pavlovna sat by him on the edge of the cart. Nekhludoff
+ordered his driver to stop, got out and went up to Kryltzoff. One of
+the tipsy soldiers waved his hand towards Nekhludoff, but he paid no
+attention and started walking by Kryltzoff's side, holding on to the
+side of the cart with his hand. Dressed in a sheepskin coat, with a fur
+cap on his head and his mouth bound up with a handkerchief, he seemed
+paler and thinner than ever. His beautiful eyes looked very large and
+brilliant. Shaken from side to side by the jottings of the cart, he lay
+with his eyes fixed on Nekhludoff; but when asked about his health, he
+only closed his eyes and angrily shook his head. All his energy seemed
+to be needed in order to bear the jolting of the cart. Mary Pavlovna was
+on the other side. She exchanged a significant glance with Nekhludoff,
+which expressed all her anxiety about Kryltzoff's state, and then began
+to talk at once in a cheerful manner.
+
+"It seems the officer is ashamed of himself," she shouted, so as to be
+heard above the rattle of the wheels. "Bousovkin's manacles have
+been removed, and he is carrying his little girl himself. Katusha and
+Simonson are with him, and Vera, too. She has taken my place."
+
+Kryltzoff said something that could not be heard because of the noise,
+and frowning in the effort to repress his cough shook his head. Then
+Nekhludoff stooped towards him, so as to hear, and Kryltzoff, freeing
+his mouth of the handkerchief, whispered:
+
+"Much better now. Only not to catch cold."
+
+Nekhludoff nodded in acquiescence, and again exchanged a glance with
+Mary Pavlovna.
+
+"How about the problem of the three bodies?" whispered Kryltzoff,
+smiling with great difficulty. "The solution is difficult."
+
+Nekhludoff did not understand, but Mary Pavlovna explained that he meant
+the well-known mathematical problem which defined the position of the
+sun, moon and earth, which Kryltzoff compared to the relations between
+Nekhludoff, Katusha and Simonson. Kryltzoff nodded, to show that Mary
+Pavlovna had explained his joke correctly.
+
+"The decision does not lie with me," Nekhludoff said.
+
+"Did you get my note? Will you do it?" Mary Pavlovna asked.
+
+"Certainly," answered Nekhludoff; and noticing a look of displeasure on
+Kryltzoff's face, he returned to his conveyance, and holding with both
+hands to the sides of the cart, got in, which jolted with him over the
+ruts of the rough road. He passed the gang, which, with its grey cloaks
+and sheepskin coats, chains and manacles, stretched over three-quarters
+of a mile of the road. On the opposite side of the road Nekhludoff
+noticed Katusha's blue shawl, Vera Doukhova's black coat, and Simonson's
+crochet cap, white worsted stockings, with bands, like those of sandals,
+tied round him. Simonson was walking with the woman and carrying on a
+heated discussion.
+
+When they saw Nekhludoff they bowed to him, and Simonson raised his hat
+in a solemn manner. Nekhludoff, having nothing to say, did not stop, and
+was soon ahead of the carts. Having got again on to a smoother part of
+the road, they drove still more quickly, but they had continually to
+turn aside to let pass long rows of carts that were moving along the
+road in both directions.
+
+The road, which was cut up by deep ruts, lay through a thick pine
+forest, mingled with birch trees and larches, bright with yellow leaves
+they had not yet shed. By the time Nekhludoff had passed about half the
+gang he reached the end of the forest. Fields now lay stretched along
+both sides of the road, and the crosses and cupolas of a monastery
+appeared in the distance. The clouds had dispersed, and it had cleared
+up completely; the leaves, the frozen puddles and the gilt crosses and
+cupolas of the monastery glittered brightly in the sun that had risen
+above the forest. A little to the right mountains began to gleam white
+in the blue-grey distance, and the trap entered a large village.
+The village street was full of people, both Russians and other
+nationalities, wearing peculiar caps and cloaks. Tipsy men and women
+crowded and chattered round booths, traktirs, public houses and carts.
+The vicinity of a town was noticeable. Giving a pull and a lash of the
+whip to the horse on his right, the driver sat down sideways on the
+right edge of the seat, so that the reins hung over that side, and with
+evident desire of showing off, he drove quickly down to the river, which
+had to be crossed by a ferry. The raft was coming towards them, and
+had reached the middle of the river. About twenty carts were waiting to
+cross. Nekhludoff had not long to wait. The raft, which had been pulled
+far up the stream, quickly approached the landing, carried by the swift
+waters. The tall, silent, broad-shouldered, muscular ferryman, dressed
+in sheepskins, threw the ropes and moored the raft with practised hand,
+landed the carts that were on it, and put those that were waiting on
+the bank on board. The whole raft was filled with vehicles and horses
+shuffling at the sight of the water. The broad, swift river splashed
+against the sides of the ferryboats, tightening their moorings.
+
+When the raft was full, and Nekhludoff's cart, with the horses taken out
+of it, stood closely surrounded by other carts on the side of the raft,
+the ferryman barred the entrance, and, paying no heed to the prayers of
+those who had not found room in the raft, unfastened the ropes and set
+off.
+
+All was quiet on the raft; one could hear nothing but the tramp of the
+ferryman's boots and the horses changing from foot to foot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+"JUST A WORTHLESS TRAMP."
+
+Nekhludoff stood on the edge of the raft looking at the broad river. Two
+pictures kept rising up in his mind. One, that of Kryltzoff, unprepared
+for death and dying, made a heavy, sorrowful impression on him. The
+other, that of Katusha, full of energy, having gained the love of such a
+man as Simonson, and found a true and solid path towards righteousness,
+should have been pleasant, yet it also created a heavy impression on
+Nekhludoff's mind, and he could not conquer this impression.
+
+The vibrating sounds of a big brass bell reached them from the town.
+Nekhludoff's driver, who stood by his side, and the other men on the
+raft raised their caps and crossed themselves, all except a short,
+dishevelled old man, who stood close to the railway and whom Nekhludoff
+had not noticed before. He did not cross himself, but raised his head
+and looked at Nekhludoff. This old man wore a patched coat, cloth
+trousers and worn and patched shoes. He had a small wallet on his back,
+and a high fur cap with the fur much rubbed on his head.
+
+"Why don't you pray, old chap?" asked Nekhludoff's driver as he replaced
+and straightened his cap. "Are you unbaptized?"
+
+"Who's one to pray to?" asked the old man quickly, in a determinately
+aggressive tone.
+
+"To whom? To God, of course," said the driver sarcastically.
+
+"And you just show me where he is, that god." There was something so
+serious and firm in the expression of the old man, that the driver felt
+that he had to do with a strong-minded man, and was a bit abashed. And
+trying not to show this, not to be silenced, and not to be put to shame
+before the crowd that was observing them, he answered quickly.
+
+"Where? In heaven, of course."
+
+"And have you been up there?"
+
+"Whether I've been or not, every one knows that you must pray to God."
+
+"No one has ever seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in
+the bosom of the Father he hath declared him," said the old man in the
+same rapid manner, and with a severe frown on his brow.
+
+"It's clear you are not a Christian, but a hole worshipper. You pray
+to a hole," said the driver, shoving the handle of his whip into his
+girdle, pulling straight the harness on one of the horses.
+
+Some one laughed.
+
+"What is your faith, Dad?" asked a middle-aged man, who stood by his
+cart on the same side of the raft.
+
+"I have no kind of faith, because I believe no one--no one but myself,"
+said the old man as quickly and decidedly as before.
+
+"How can you believe yourself?" Nekhludoff asked, entering into a
+conversation with him. "You might make a mistake."
+
+"Never in your life," the old man said decidedly, with a toss of his
+head.
+
+"Then why are there different faiths?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"It's just because men believe others and do not believe themselves that
+there are different faiths. I also believed others, and lost myself as
+in a swamp,--lost myself so that I had no hope of finding my way out.
+Old believers and new believers and Judaisers and Khlysty and Popovitzy,
+and Bespopovitzy and Avstriaks and Molokans and Skoptzy--every faith
+praises itself only, and so they all creep about like blind puppies.
+There are many faiths, but the spirit is one--in me and in you and in
+him. So that if every one believes himself all will be united. Every one
+be himself, and all will be as one."
+
+The old man spoke loudly and often looked round, evidently wishing that
+as many as possible should hear him.
+
+"And have you long held this faith?"
+
+"I? A long time. This is the twenty-third year that they persecute me."
+
+"Persecute you? How?"
+
+"As they persecuted Christ, so they persecute me. They seize me, and
+take me before the courts and before the priests, the Scribes and the
+Pharisees. Once they put me into a madhouse; but they can do nothing
+because I am free. They say, 'What is your name?' thinking I shall name
+myself. But I do not give myself a name. I have given up everything:
+I have no name, no place, no country, nor anything. I am just myself.
+'What is your name?' 'Man.' 'How old are you?' I say, 'I do not count my
+years and cannot count them, because I always was, I always shall be.'
+'Who are your parents?' 'I have no parents except God and Mother Earth.
+God is my father.' 'And the Tsar? Do you recognise the Tsar?' they say.
+I say, 'Why not? He is his own Tsar, and I am my own Tsar.' 'Where's the
+good of talking to him,' they say, and I say, 'I do not ask you to talk
+to me.' And so they begin tormenting me."
+
+"And where are you going now?" asked Nekhludoff.
+
+"Where God will lead me. I work when I can find work, and when I can't
+I beg." The old man noticed that the raft was approaching the bank and
+stopped, looking round at the bystanders with a look of triumph.
+
+Nekhludoff got out his purse and offered some money to the old man, but
+he refused, saying:
+
+"I do not accept this sort of thing--bread I do accept."
+
+"Well, then, excuse me."
+
+"There is nothing to excuse, you have not offended me. And it is not
+possible to offend me." And the old man put the wallet he had taken
+off again on his back. Meanwhile, the post-cart had been landed and the
+horses harnessed.
+
+"I wonder you should care to talk to him, sir," said the driver, when
+Nekhludoff, having tipped the bowing ferryman, got into the cart again.
+"He is just a worthless tramp."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+NEKHLUDOFF SEES THE GENERAL.
+
+When they got to the top of the hill bank the driver turned to
+Nekhludoff.
+
+"Which hotel am I to drive to?"
+
+"Which is the best?"
+
+"Nothing could be better than the Siberian, but Dukeoff's is also good."
+
+"Drive to whichever you like."
+
+The driver again seated himself sideways and drove faster. The town
+was like all such towns. The same kind of houses with attic windows
+and green roofs, the same kind of cathedral, the same kind of shops and
+stores in the principal street, and even the same kind of policemen.
+Only the houses were almost all of them wooden, and the streets were not
+paved. In one of the chief streets the driver stopped at the door of an
+hotel, but there was no room to be had, so he drove to another. And here
+Nekhludoff, after two months, found himself once again in surroundings
+such as he had been accustomed to as far as comfort and cleanliness
+went. Though the room he was shown to was simple enough, yet Nekhludoff
+felt greatly relieved to be there after two months of post-carts,
+country inns and halting stations. His first business was to clean
+himself of the lice which he had never been able to get thoroughly rid
+of after visiting a halting station. When he had unpacked he went to the
+Russian bath, after which he made himself fit to be seen in a town,
+put on a starched shirt, trousers that had got rather creased along the
+seams, a frock-coat and an overcoat, and drove to the Governor of the
+district. The hotel-keeper called an isvostchik, whose well-fed Kirghiz
+horse and vibrating trap soon brought Nekhludoff to the large porch of
+a big building, in front of which stood sentinels and a policeman. The
+house had a garden in front, and at the back, among the naked branches
+of aspen and birch trees, there grew thick and dark green pines and
+firs. The General was not well, and did not receive; but Nekhludoff
+asked the footman to hand in his card all the same, and the footman came
+back with a favourable reply.
+
+"You are asked to come in."
+
+The hall, the footman, the orderly, the staircase, the dancing-room,
+with its well-polished floor, were very much the same as in Petersburg,
+only more imposing and rather dirtier. Nekhludoff was shown into the
+cabinet.
+
+The General, a bloated, potato-nosed man, with a sanguine disposition,
+large bumps on his forehead, bald head, and puffs under his eyes, sat
+wrapped in a Tartar silk dressing-gown smoking a cigarette and sipping
+his tea out of a tumbler in a silver holder.
+
+"How do you do, sir? Excuse my dressing-gown; it is better so than if I
+had not received you at all," he said, pulling up his dressing-gown over
+his fat neck with its deep folds at the nape. "I am not quite well, and
+do not go out. What has brought you to our remote region?"
+
+"I am accompanying a gang of prisoners, among whom there is a person
+closely connected with me, said Nekhludoff, and now I have come to
+see your Excellency partly in behalf of this person, and partly about
+another business." The General took a whiff and a sip of tea, put
+his cigarette into a malachite ashpan, with his narrow eyes fixed on
+Nekhludoff, listening seriously. He only interrupted him once to offer
+him a cigarette.
+
+The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed
+that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession.
+But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon felt the
+impossibility of such a reconciliation; so as not to feel the inner
+discord in which he was living, he gave himself up more and more to the
+habit of drinking, which is so widely spread among military men, and
+was now suffering from what doctors term alcoholism. He was imbued
+with alcohol, and if he drank any kind of liquor it made him tipsy. Yet
+strong drink was an absolute necessity to him, he could not live without
+it, so he was quite drunk every evening; but had grown so used to this
+state that he did not reel nor talk any special nonsense. And if he
+did talk nonsense, it was accepted as words of wisdom because of the
+important and high position which he occupied. Only in the morning, just
+at the time Nekhludoff came to see him, he was like a reasonable being,
+could understand what was said to him, and fulfil more or less aptly a
+proverb he was fond of repeating: "He's tipsy, but he's wise, so he's
+pleasant in two ways."
+
+The higher authorities knew he was a drunkard, but he was more educated
+than the rest, though his education had stopped at the spot where
+drunkenness had got hold of him. He was bold, adroit, of imposing
+appearance, and showed tact even when tipsy; therefore, he was
+appointed, and was allowed to retain so public and responsible an
+office.
+
+Nekhludoff told him that the person he was interested in was a woman,
+that she was sentenced, though innocent, and that a petition had been
+sent to the Emperor in her behalf.
+
+"Yes, well?" said the General.
+
+"I was promised in Petersburg that the news concerning her fate should
+be sent to me not later than this month and to this place-"
+
+The General stretched his hand with its stumpy fingers towards the
+table, and rang a bell, still looking at Nekhludoff and puffing at his
+cigarette.
+
+"So I would like to ask you that this woman should be allowed to remain
+here until the answer to her petition comes."
+
+The footman, an orderly in uniform, came in.
+
+"Ask if Anna Vasilievna is up," said the General to the orderly, "and
+bring some more tea." Then, turning to Nekhludoff, "Yes, and what else?"
+
+"My other request concerns a political prisoner who is with the same
+gang."
+
+"Dear me," said the General, with a significant shake of the head.
+
+"He is seriously ill--dying, and he will probably be left here in the
+hospital, so one of the women prisoners would like to stay behind with
+him."
+
+"She is no relation of his?"
+
+"No, but she is willing to marry him if that will enable her to remain
+with him."
+
+The General looked fixedly with twinkling eyes at his interlocutor, and,
+evidently with a wish to discomfit him, listened, smoking in silence.
+
+When Nekhludoff had finished, the General took a book off the table,
+and, wetting his finger, quickly turned over the pages and found the
+statute relating to marriage.
+
+"What is she sentenced to?" he asked, looking up from the book.
+
+"She? To hard labour."
+
+"Well, then, the position of one sentenced to that cannot be bettered by
+marriage."
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Excuse me. Even if a free man should marry her, she would have to
+serve her term. The question in such cases is, whose is the heavier
+punishment, hers or his?"
+
+"They are both sentenced to hard labour."
+
+"Very well; so they are quits," said the General, with a laugh. "She's
+got what he has, only as he is sick he may be left behind, and of course
+what can be done to lighten his fate shall be done. But as for her, even
+if she did marry him, she could not remain behind."
+
+"The Generaless is having her coffee," the footman announced.
+
+The General nodded and continued:
+
+"However, I shall think about it. What are their names? Put them down
+here."
+
+Nekhludoff wrote down the names.
+
+Nekhludoff's request to be allowed to see the dying man the General
+answered by saying, "Neither can I do that. Of course I do not suspect
+you, but you take an interest in him and in the others, and you have
+money, and here with us anything can be done with money. I have been
+told to put down bribery. But how can I put down bribery when everybody
+takes bribes? And the lower their rank the more ready they are to be
+bribed. How can one find it out across more than three thousand miles?
+There any official is a little Tsar, just as I am here," and he laughed.
+"You have in all likelihood been to see the political prisoners; you
+gave money and got permission to see them," he said, with a smile. "Is
+it not so?"
+
+"Yes, it is."
+
+"I quite understand that you had to do it. You pity a political prisoner
+and wish to see him. And the inspector or the convoy soldier accepts,
+because he has a salary of twice twenty copecks and a family, and he
+can't help accepting it. In his place and yours I should have acted
+in the same way as you and he did. But in my position I do not permit
+myself to swerve an inch from the letter of the law, just because I am
+a man, and might be influenced by pity. But I am a member of the
+executive, and I have been placed in a position of trust on certain
+conditions, and these conditions I must carry out. Well, so this
+business is finished. And now let us hear what is going on in the
+metropolis." And the General began questioning with the evident desire
+to hear the news and to show how very human he was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE SENTENCE COMMUTED.
+
+"By-the-way, where are you staying?" asked the General as he was taking
+leave of Nekhludoff. "At Duke's? Well, it's horrid enough there. Come
+and dine with us at five o'clock. You speak English?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"That's good. You see, an English traveller has just arrived here. He
+is studying the question of transportation and examining the prisons of
+Siberia. Well, he is dining with us to-night, and you come and meet him.
+We dine at five, and my wife expects punctuality. Then I shall also
+give you an answer what to do about that woman, and perhaps it may be
+possible to leave some one behind with the sick prisoner."
+
+Having made his bow to the General, Nekhludoff drove to the post-office,
+feeling himself in an extremely animated and energetic frame of mind.
+
+The post-office was a low-vaulted room. Several officials sat behind
+a counter serving the people, of whom there was quite a crowd. One
+official sat with his head bent to one side and kept stamping the
+envelopes, which he slipped dexterously under the stamp. Nekhludoff had
+not long to wait. As soon as he had given his name, everything that had
+come for him by post was at once handed to him. There was a good deal:
+letters, and money, and books, and the last number of Fatherland Notes.
+Nekhludoff took all these things to a wooden bench, on which a soldier
+with a book in his hand sat waiting for something, took the seat by
+his side, and began sorting the letters. Among them was one registered
+letter in a fine envelope, with a distinctly stamped bright red seal. He
+broke the seal, and seeing a letter from Selenin and some official paper
+inside the envelope, he felt the blood rush to his face, and his heart
+stood still. It was the answer to Katusha's petition. What would that
+answer be? Nekhludoff glanced hurriedly through the letter, written
+in an illegibly small, hard, and cramped hand, and breathed a sigh of
+relief. The answer was a favourable one.
+
+"Dear friend," wrote Selenin, "our last talk has made a profound
+impression on me. You were right concerning Maslova. I looked carefully
+through the case, and see that shocking injustice has been done her. It
+could be remedied only by the Committee of Petitions before which you
+laid it. I managed to assist at the examination of the case, and I
+enclose herewith the copy of the mitigation of the sentence. Your aunt,
+the Countess Katerina Ivanovna, gave me the address which I am sending
+this to. The original document has been sent to the place where she was
+imprisoned before her trial, and will from there he probably sent
+at once to the principal Government office in Siberia. I hasten to
+communicate this glad news to you and warmly press your hand.
+
+                    "Yours,
+
+                        "SELENIN."
+
+The document ran thus: "His Majesty's office for the reception
+of petitions, addressed to his Imperial name"--here followed the
+date----"by order of the chief of his Majesty's office for the reception
+of petitions addressed to his Imperial name. The meschanka Katerina
+Maslova is hereby informed that his Imperial Majesty, with reference to
+her most loyal petition, condescending to her request, deigns to order
+that her sentence to hard labour should be commuted to one of exile to
+the less distant districts of Siberia."
+
+This was joyful and important news; all that Nekhludoff could have hoped
+for Katusha, and for himself also, had happened. It was true that the
+new position she was in brought new complications with it. While she was
+a convict, marriage with her could only be fictitious, and would have
+had no meaning except that he would have been in a position to alleviate
+her condition. And now there was nothing to prevent their living
+together, and Nekhludoff had not prepared himself for that. And,
+besides, what of her relations to Simonson? What was the meaning of her
+words yesterday? If she consented to a union with Simonson, would it
+be well? He could not unravel all these questions, and gave up thinking
+about it. "It will all clear itself up later on," he thought; "I must
+not think about it now, but convey the glad news to her as soon as
+possible, and set her free." He thought that the copy of the document he
+had received would suffice, so when he left the post-office he told the
+isvostchik to drive him to the prison.
+
+Though he had received no order from the governor to visit the prison
+that morning, he knew by experience that it was easy to get from the
+subordinates what the higher officials would not grant, so now he meant
+to try and get into the prison to bring Katusha the joyful news, and
+perhaps to get her set free, and at the same time to inquire about
+Kryltzoff's state of health, and tell him and Mary Pavlovna what the
+general had said. The prison inspector was a tall, imposing-looking man,
+with moustaches and whiskers that twisted towards the corners of his
+mouth. He received Nekhludoff very gravely, and told him plainly that
+he could not grant an outsider the permission to interview the prisoners
+without a special order from his chief. To Nekhludoff's remark that he
+had been allowed to visit the prisoners even in the cities he answered:
+
+"That may be so, but I do not allow it," and his tone implied, "You
+city gentlemen may think to surprise and perplex us, but we in Eastern
+Siberia also know what the law is, and may even teach it you." The copy
+of a document straight from the Emperor's own office did not have any
+effect on the prison inspector either. He decidedly refused to let
+Nekhludoff come inside the prison walls. He only smiled contemptuously
+at Nekhludoff's naive conclusion, that the copy he had received would
+suffice to set Maslova free, and declared that a direct order from his
+own superiors would be needed before any one could be set at liberty.
+The only things he agreed to do were to communicate to Maslova that a
+mitigation had arrived for her, and to promise that he would not detain
+her an hour after the order from his chief to liberate her would arrive.
+He would also give no news of Kryltzoff, saying he could not even tell
+if there was such a prisoner; and so Nekhludoff, having accomplished
+next to nothing, got into his trap and drove back to his hotel.
+
+The strictness of the inspector was chiefly due to the fact that an
+epidemic of typhus had broken out in the prison, owing to twice the
+number of persons that it was intended for being crowded in it. The
+isvostchik who drove Nekhludoff said, "Quite a lot of people are dying
+in the prison every day, some kind of disease having sprung up among
+them, so that as many as twenty were buried in one day."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE GENERAL'S HOUSEHOLD.
+
+In spite of his ineffectual attempt at the prison, Nekhludoff, still
+in the same vigorous, energetic frame of mind, went to the Governor's
+office to see if the original of the document had arrived for Maslova.
+It had not arrived, so Nekhludoff went back to the hotel and wrote
+without delay to Selenin and the advocate about it. When he had
+finished writing he looked at his watch and saw it was time to go to the
+General's dinner party.
+
+On the way he again began wondering how Katusha would receive the news
+of the mitigation of her sentence. Where she would be settled? How he
+should live with her? What about Simonson? What would his relations to
+her be? He remembered the change that had taken place in her, and
+this reminded him of her past. "I must forget it for the present," he
+thought, and again hastened to drive her out of his mind. "When the time
+comes I shall see," he said to himself, and began to think of what he
+ought to say to the General.
+
+The dinner at the General's, with the luxury habitual to the lives
+of the wealthy and those of high rank, to which Nekhludoff had been
+accustomed, was extremely enjoyable after he had been so long deprived
+not only of luxury but even of the most ordinary comforts. The mistress
+of the house was a Petersburg grande dame of the old school, a maid of
+honour at the court of Nicholas I., who spoke French quite naturally and
+Russian very unnaturally. She held herself very erect and, moving her
+hands, she kept her elbows close to her waist. She was quietly and,
+somewhat sadly considerate for her husband, and extremely kind to
+all her visitors, though with a tinge of difference in her behaviour
+according to their position. She received Nekhludoff as if he were one
+of them, and her fine, almost imperceptible flattery made him once again
+aware of his virtues and gave him a feeling of satisfaction. She made
+him feel that she knew of that honest though rather singular step of his
+which had brought him to Siberia, and held him to be an exceptional man.
+This refined flattery and the elegance and luxury of the General's house
+had the effect of making Nekhludoff succumb to the enjoyment of the
+handsome surroundings, the delicate dishes and the ease and pleasure
+of intercourse with educated people of his own class, so that the
+surroundings in the midst of which he had lived for the last months
+seemed a dream from which he had awakened to reality. Besides those
+of the household, the General's daughter and her husband and an
+aide-de-camp, there were an Englishman, a merchant interested in gold
+mines, and the governor of a distant Siberian town. All these people
+seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff. The Englishman, a healthy man with a
+rosy complexion, who spoke very bad French, but whose command of his own
+language was very good and oratorically impressive, who had seen a great
+deal, was very interesting to listen to when he spoke about America,
+India, Japan and Siberia.
+
+The young merchant interested in the gold mines, the son of a peasant,
+whose evening dress was made in London, who had diamond studs to his
+shirt, possessed a fine library, contributed freely to philanthropic
+work, and held liberal European views, seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff
+as a sample of a quite new and good type of civilised European culture,
+grafted on a healthy, uncultivated peasant stem.
+
+The governor of the distant Siberian town was that same man who had been
+so much talked about in Petersburg at the time Nekhludoff was there. He
+was plump, with thin, curly hair, soft blue eyes, carefully-tended white
+hands, with rings on the fingers, a pleasant smile, and very big in the
+lower part of his body. The master of the house valued this governor
+because of all the officials he was the only one who would not be
+bribed. The mistress of the house, who was very fond of music and a
+very good pianist herself, valued him because he was a good musician and
+played duets with her.
+
+Nekhludoff was in such good humour that even this man was not unpleasant
+to him, in spite of what he knew of his vices. The bright, energetic
+aide-de-camp, with his bluey grey chin, who was continually offering his
+services, pleased Nekhludoff by his good nature. But it was the charming
+young couple, the General's daughter and her husband, who pleased
+Nekhludoff best. The daughter was a plain-looking, simple-minded young
+woman, wholly absorbed in her two children. Her husband, whom she had
+fallen in love with and married after a long struggle with her parents,
+was a Liberal, who had taken honours at the Moscow University, a modest
+and intellectual young man in Government service, who made up statistics
+and studied chiefly the foreign tribes, which he liked and tried to save
+from dying out.
+
+All of them were not only kind and attentive to Nekhludoff, but
+evidently pleased to see him, as a new and interesting acquaintance. The
+General, who came in to dinner in uniform and with a white cross round
+his neck, greeted Nekhludoff as a friend, and asked the visitors to
+the side table to take a glass of vodka and something to whet their
+appetites. The General asked Nekhludoff what he had been doing since
+he left that morning, and Nekhludoff told him he had been to the
+post-office and received the news of the mitigation of that person's
+sentence that he had spoken of in the morning, and again asked for a
+permission to visit the prison.
+
+The General, apparently displeased that business should be mentioned at
+dinner, frowned and said nothing.
+
+"Have a glass of vodka," he said, addressing the Englishman, who had
+just come up to the table. The Englishman drank a glass, and said he had
+been to see the cathedral and the factory, but would like to visit the
+great transportation prison.
+
+"Oh, that will just fit in," said the General to Nekhludoff. "You will
+be able to go together. Give them a pass," he added, turning to his
+aide-de-camp.
+
+"When would you like to go?" Nekhludoff asked.
+
+"I prefer visiting the prisons in the evening," the Englishman answered.
+"All are indoors and there is no preparation; you find them all as they
+are."
+
+"Ah, he would like to see it in all its glory! Let him do so. I have
+written about it and no attention has been paid to it. Let him find out
+from foreign publications," the General said, and went up to the dinner
+table, where the mistress of the house was showing the visitors their
+places. Nekhludoff sat between his hostess and the Englishman. In front
+of him sat the General's daughter and the ex-director of the Government
+department in Petersburg. The conversation at dinner was carried on by
+fits and starts, now it was India that the Englishman talked about, now
+the Tonkin expedition that the General strongly disapproved of, now the
+universal bribery and corruption in Siberia. All these topics did not
+interest Nekhludoff much.
+
+But after dinner, over their coffee, Nekhludoff and the Englishman began
+a very interesting conversation about Gladstone, and Nekhludoff thought
+he had said many clever things which were noticed by his interlocutor.
+And Nekhludoff felt it more and more pleasant to be sipping his coffee
+seated in an easy-chair among amiable, well-bred people. And when at
+the Englishman's request the hostess went up to the piano with the
+ex-director of the Government department, and they began to play in
+well-practised style Beethoven's fifth symphony, Nekhludoff fell into
+a mental state of perfect self-satisfaction to which he had long been
+a stranger, as though he had only just found out what a good fellow he
+was.
+
+The grand piano was a splendid instrument, the symphony was well
+performed. At least, so it seemed to Nekhludoff, who knew and liked that
+symphony. Listening to the beautiful andante, he felt a tickling in his
+nose, he was so touched by his many virtues.
+
+Nekhludoff thanked his hostess for the enjoyment that he had been
+deprived of for so long, and was about to say goodbye and go when the
+daughter of the house came up to him with a determined look and said,
+with a blush, "You asked about my children. Would you like to see them?"
+
+"She thinks that everybody wants to see her children," said her mother,
+smiling at her daughter's winning tactlessness. "The Prince is not at
+all interested."
+
+"On the contrary, I am very much interested," said Nekhludoff, touched
+by this overflowing, happy mother-love. "Please let me see them."
+
+"She's taking the Prince to see her babies," the General shouted,
+laughing from the card-table, where he sat with his son-in-law, the mine
+owner and the aide-de-camp. "Go, go, pay your tribute."
+
+The young woman, visibly excited by the thought that judgment was about
+to be passed on her children, went quickly towards the inner apartments,
+followed by Nekhludoff. In the third, a lofty room, papered with white
+and lit up by a shaded lamp, stood two small cots, and a nurse with a
+white cape on her shoulders sat between the cots. She had a kindly, true
+Siberian face, with its high cheek-bones.
+
+The nurse rose and bowed. The mother stooped over the first cot, in
+which a two-year-old little girl lay peacefully sleeping with her little
+mouth open and her long, curly hair tumbled over the pillow.
+
+"This is Katie," said the mother, straightening the white and blue
+crochet coverlet, from under which a little white foot pushed itself
+languidly out.
+
+"Is she not pretty? She's only two years old, you know."
+
+"Lovely."
+
+"And this is Vasiuk, as 'grandpapa' calls him. Quite a different type. A
+Siberian, is he not?"
+
+"A splendid boy," said Nekhludoff, as he looked at the little fatty
+lying asleep on his stomach.
+
+"Yes," said the mother, with a smile full of meaning.
+
+Nekhludoff recalled to his mind chains, shaved heads, fighting
+debauchery, the dying Kryltzoff, Katusha and the whole of her past, and
+he began to feel envious and to wish for what he saw here, which now
+seemed to him pure and refined happiness.
+
+After having repeatedly expressed his admiration of the children,
+thereby at least partially satisfying their mother, who eagerly drank
+in this praise, he followed her back to the drawing-room, where the
+Englishman was waiting for him to go and visit the prison, as they had
+arranged. Having taken leave of their hosts, the old and the young ones,
+the Englishman and Nekhludoff went out into the porch of the General's
+house.
+
+The weather had changed. It was snowing, and the snow fell densely in
+large flakes, and already covered the road, the roof and the trees in
+the garden, the steps of the porch, the roof of the trap and the back of
+the horse.
+
+The Englishman had a trap of his own, and Nekhludoff, having told the
+coachman to drive to the prison, called his isvostchik and got in with
+the heavy sense of having to fulfil an unpleasant duty, and followed
+the Englishman over the soft snow, through which the wheels turned with
+difficulty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+MASLOVA'S DECISION.
+
+The dismal prison house, with its sentinel and lamp burning under the
+gateway, produced an even more dismal impression, with its long row of
+lighted windows, than it had done in the morning, in spite of the white
+covering that now lay over everything--the porch, the roof and the
+walls.
+
+The imposing inspector came up to the gate and read the pass that had
+been given to Nekhludoff and the Englishman by the light of the lamp,
+shrugged his fine shoulders in surprise, but, in obedience to the order,
+asked the visitors to follow him in. He led them through the courtyard
+and then in at a door to the right and up a staircase into the office.
+He offered them a seat and asked what he could do for them, and when
+he heard that Nekhludoff would like to see Maslova at once, he sent a
+jailer to fetch her. Then he prepared himself to answer the questions
+which the Englishman began to put to him, Nekhludoff acting as
+interpreter.
+
+"How many persons is the prison built to hold?" the Englishman asked.
+"How many are confined in it? How many men? How many women? Children?
+How many sentenced to the mines? How many exiles? How many sick
+persons?"
+
+Nekhludoff translated the Englishman's and the inspector's words without
+paying any attention to their meaning, and felt an awkwardness he had
+not in the least expected at the thought of the impending interview.
+When, in the midst of a sentence he was translating for the Englishman,
+he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and the office door opened,
+and, as had happened many times before, a jailer came in, followed by
+Katusha, and he saw her with a kerchief tied round her head, and in a
+prison jacket a heavy sensation came over him. "I wish to live, I want
+a family, children, I want a human life." These thoughts flashed through
+his mind as she entered the room with rapid steps and blinking her eyes.
+
+He rose and made a few steps to meet her, and her face appeared hard
+and unpleasant to him. It was again as it had been at the time when
+she reproached him. She flushed and turned pale, her fingers nervously
+twisting a corner of her jacket. She looked up at him, then cast down
+her eyes.
+
+"You know that a mitigation has come?"
+
+"Yes, the jailer told me."
+
+"So that as soon as the original document arrives you may come away and
+settle where you like. We shall consider--"
+
+She interrupted him hurriedly. "What have I to consider? Where Valdemar
+Simonson goes, there I shall follow." In spite of the excitement she
+was in she raised her eyes to Nekhludoff's and pronounced these words
+quickly and distinctly, as if she had prepared what she had to say.
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Well, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you see he wishes me to live with him--" and
+she stopped, quite frightened, and corrected herself. "He wishes me to
+be near him. What more can I desire? I must look upon it as happiness.
+What else is there for me--"
+
+"One of two things," thought he. "Either she loves Simonson and does not
+in the least require the sacrifice I imagined I was bringing her, or she
+still loves me and refuses me for my own sake, and is burning her ships
+by uniting her fate with Simonson." And Nekhludoff felt ashamed and knew
+that he was blushing.
+
+"And you yourself, do you love him?" he asked.
+
+"Loving or not loving, what does it matter? I have given up all that.
+And then Valdemar Simonson is quite an exceptional man."
+
+"Yes, of course," Nekhludoff began. "He is a splendid man, and I
+think--"
+
+But she again interrupted him, as if afraid that he might say too much
+or that she should not say all. "No, Dmitri Ivanovitch, you must forgive
+me if I am not doing what you wish," and she looked at him with those
+unfathomable, squinting eyes of hers. "Yes, it evidently must be so. You
+must live, too."
+
+She said just what he had been telling himself a few moments before, but
+he no longer thought so now and felt very differently. He was not only
+ashamed, but felt sorry to lose all he was losing with her. "I did not
+expect this," he said.
+
+"Why should you live here and suffer? You have suffered enough."
+
+"I have not suffered. It was good for me, and I should like to go on
+serving you if I could."
+
+"We do not want anything," she said, and looked at him.
+
+"You have done so much for me as it is. If it had not been for you--"
+She wished to say more, but her voice trembled.
+
+"You certainly have no reason to thank me," Nekhludoff said.
+
+"Where is the use of our reckoning? God will make up our accounts," she
+said, and her black eyes began to glisten with the tears that filled
+them.
+
+"What a good woman you are," he said.
+
+"I good?" she said through her tears, and a pathetic smile lit up her
+face.
+
+"Are you ready?" the Englishman asked.
+
+"Directly," replied Nekhludoff and asked her about Kryltzoff.
+
+She got over her emotion and quietly told him all she knew. Kryltzoff
+was very weak and had been sent into the infirmary. Mary Pavlovna was
+very anxious, and had asked to be allowed to go to the infirmary as a
+nurse, but could not get the permission.
+
+"Am I to go?" she asked, noticing that the Englishman was waiting.
+
+"I will not say good-bye; I shall see you again," said Nekhludoff,
+holding out his hand.
+
+"Forgive me," she said so low that he could hardly hear her. Their eyes
+met, and Nekhludoff knew by the strange look of her squinting eyes and
+the pathetic smile with which she said not "Good-bye" but "Forgive
+me," that of the two reasons that might have led to her resolution,
+the second was the real one. She loved him, and thought that by uniting
+herself to him she would be spoiling his life. By going with Simonson
+she thought she would be setting Nekhludoff free, and felt glad that she
+had done what she meant to do, and yet she suffered at parting from him.
+
+She pressed his hand, turned quickly and left the room.
+
+Nekhludoff was ready to go, but saw that the Englishman was noting
+something down, and did not disturb him, but sat down on a wooden seat
+by the wall, and suddenly a feeling of terrible weariness came over him.
+It was not a sleepless night that had tired him, not the journey, not
+the excitement, but he felt terribly tired of living. He leaned against
+the back of the bench, shut his eyes and in a moment fell into a deep,
+heavy sleep.
+
+"Well, would you like to look round the cells now?" the inspector asked.
+
+Nekhludoff looked up and was surprised to find himself where he was. The
+Englishman had finished his notes and expressed a wish to see the cells.
+
+Nekhludoff, tired and indifferent, followed him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE ENGLISH VISITOR.
+
+When they had passed the anteroom and the sickening, stinking corridor,
+the Englishman and Nekhludoff, accompanied by the inspector, entered the
+first cell, where those sentenced to hard labour were confined. The beds
+took up the middle of the cell and the prisoners were all in bed. There
+were about 70 of them. When the visitors entered all the prisoners
+jumped up and stood beside the beds, excepting two, a young man who was
+in a state of high fever, and an old man who did nothing but groan.
+
+The Englishman asked if the young man had long been ill. The inspector
+said that he was taken ill in the morning, but that the old man had long
+been suffering with pains in the stomach, but could not be removed, as
+the infirmary had been overfilled for a long time. The Englishman shook
+his head disapprovingly, said he would like to say a few words to these
+people, asking Nekhludoff to interpret. It turned out that besides
+studying the places of exile and the prisons of Siberia, the Englishman
+had another object in view, that of preaching salvation through faith
+and by the redemption.
+
+"Tell them," he said, "that Christ died for them. If they believe in
+this they shall be saved." While he spoke, all the prisoners stood
+silent with their arms at their sides. "This book, tell them," he
+continued, "says all about it. Can any of them read?"
+
+There were more than 20 who could.
+
+The Englishman took several bound Testaments out of a hang-bag, and many
+strong hands with their hard, black nails stretched out from beneath the
+coarse shirt-sleeves towards him. He gave away two Testaments in this
+cell.
+
+The same thing happened in the second cell. There was the same foul air,
+the same icon hanging between the windows, the same tub to the left of
+the door, and they were all lying side by side close to one another, and
+jumped up in the same manner and stood stretched full length with their
+arms by their sides, all but three, two of whom sat up and one remained
+lying, and did not even look at the newcomers; these three were also
+ill. The Englishman made the same speech and again gave away two books.
+
+In the third room four were ill. When the Englishman asked why the sick
+were not put all together into one cell, the inspector said that they
+did not wish it themselves, that their diseases were not infectious, and
+that the medical assistant watched them and attended to them.
+
+"He has not set foot here for a fortnight," muttered a voice.
+
+The inspector did not say anything and led the way to the next cell.
+Again the door was unlocked, and all got up and stood silent. Again the
+Englishman gave away Testaments. It was the same in the fifth and sixth
+cells, in those to the right and those to the left.
+
+From those sentenced to hard labour they went on to the exiles.
+
+From the exiles to those evicted by the Commune and those who followed
+of their own free will.
+
+Everywhere men, cold, hungry, idle, infected, degraded, imprisoned, were
+shown off like wild beasts.
+
+The Englishman, having given away the appointed number of Testaments,
+stopped giving any more, and made no speeches. The oppressing sight, and
+especially the stifling atmosphere, quelled even his energy, and he went
+from cell to cell, saying nothing but "All right" to the inspector's
+remarks about what prisoners there were in each cell.
+
+Nekhludoff followed as in a dream, unable either to refuse to go on or
+to go away, and with the same feelings of weariness and hopelessness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+KRYLTZOFF AT REST.
+
+In one of the exiles' cells Nekhludoff, to his surprise, recognised the
+strange old man he had seen crossing the ferry that morning. This old
+man was sitting on the floor by the beds, barefooted, with only a dirty
+cinder-coloured shirt on, torn on one shoulder, and similar trousers.
+He looked severely and enquiringly at the newcomers. His emaciated body,
+visible through the holes of his shirt, looked miserably weak, but in
+his face was even more concentrated seriousness and animation than when
+Nekhludoff saw him crossing the ferry. As in all the other cells, so
+here also the prisoners jumped up and stood erect when the official
+entered, but the old man remained sitting. His eyes glittered and his
+brows frowned with wrath.
+
+"Get up," the inspector called out to him.
+
+The old man did not rise and only smiled contemptuously.
+
+"Thy servants are standing before thee. I am not thy servant. Thou
+bearest the seal--" The old man pointed to the inspector's forehead.
+
+"Wha-a-t?" said the inspector threateningly, and made a step towards
+him.
+
+"I know this man," Nekhludoff hastened to say; "what is he imprisoned
+for?"
+
+"The police have sent him here because he has no passport. We ask them
+not to send such, but they will do it," said the inspector, casting an
+angry side look at the old man.
+
+"And so it seems thou, too, art one of Antichrist's army?" the old man
+said to Nekhludoff.
+
+"No, I am a visitor," said Nekhludoff.
+
+"What, hast thou come to see how Antichrist tortures men? There, look,
+he has locked them up in a cage, a whole army of them. Men should eat
+bread in the sweat of their brow. And he has locked them up with no work
+to do, and feeds them like swine, so that they should turn into beasts."
+
+"What is he saying?" asked the Englishman.
+
+Nekhludoff told him the old man was blaming the inspector for keeping
+men imprisoned.
+
+"Ask him how he thinks one should treat those who do not keep to the
+laws," said the Englishman.
+
+Nekhludoff translated the question. The old man laughed in a strange
+manner, showing his teeth.
+
+"The laws?" he repeated with contempt. "He first robbed everybody, took
+all the earth, all the rights away from men, killed all those who were
+against him, and then wrote laws, forbidding robbery and murder. He
+should have written these laws before."
+
+Nekhludoff translated. The Englishman smiled. "Well, anyhow, ask him how
+one should treat thieves and murderers at present?"
+
+Nekhludoff again translated his question.
+
+"Tell him he should take the seal of Antichrist off himself," the
+old man said, frowning severely; "then there will be no thieves and
+murderers. Tell him so."
+
+"He is crazy," said the Englishman, when Nekhludoff had translated the
+old man's words, and, shrugging his shoulders, he left the cell.
+
+"Do thy business and leave them alone. Every one for himself. God knows
+whom to execute, whom to forgive, and we do not know," said the old man.
+"Every man be his own chief, then the chiefs will not be wanted. Go,
+go!" he added, angrily frowning and looking with glittering eyes at
+Nekhludoff, who lingered in the cell. "Hast thou not looked on long
+enough how the servants of Antichrist feed lice on men? Go, go!"
+
+When Nekhludoff went out he saw the Englishman standing by the open door
+of an empty cell with the inspector, asking what the cell was for. The
+inspector explained that it was the mortuary.
+
+"Oh," said the Englishman when Nekhludoff had translated, and expressed
+the wish to go in.
+
+The mortuary was an ordinary cell, not very large. A small lamp hung on
+the wall and dimly lit up sacks and logs of wood that were piled up in
+one corner, and four dead bodies lay on the bedshelves to the right. The
+first body had a coarse linen shirt and trousers on; it was that of a
+tall man with a small beard and half his head shaved. The body was quite
+rigid; the bluish hands, that had evidently been folded on the breast,
+had separated; the legs were also apart and the bare feet were sticking
+out. Next to him lay a bare-footed old woman in a white petticoat, her
+head, with its thin plait of hair, uncovered, with a little, pinched
+yellow face and a sharp nose. Beyond her was another man with something
+lilac on. This colour reminded Nekhludoff of something. He came nearer
+and looked at the body. The small, pointed beard sticking upwards, the
+firm, well-shaped nose, the high, white forehead, the thin, curly hair;
+he recognised the familiar features and could hardly believe his eyes.
+Yesterday he had seen this face, angry, excited, and full of suffering;
+now it was quiet, motionless, and terribly beautiful. Yes, it was
+Kryltzoff, or at any rate the trace that his material existence had left
+behind. "Why had he suffered? Why had he lived? Does he now understand?"
+Nekhludoff thought, and there seemed to be no answer, seemed to be
+nothing but death, and he felt faint. Without taking leave of the
+Englishman, Nekhludoff asked the inspector to lead him out into the
+yard, and feeling the absolute necessity of being alone to think over
+all that had happened that evening, he drove back to his hotel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+A NEW LIFE DAWNS FOR NEKHLUDOFF.
+
+Nekhludoff did not go to bed, but went up and down his room for a long
+time. His business with Katusha was at an end. He was not wanted,
+and this made him sad and ashamed. His other business was not only
+unfinished, but troubled him more than ever and demanded his activity.
+All this horrible evil that he had seen and learned to know lately, and
+especially to-day in that awful prison, this evil, which had killed
+that dear Kryltzoff, ruled and was triumphant, and he could foreseen
+possibility of conquering or even knowing how to conquer it. Those
+hundreds and thousands of degraded human beings locked up in the noisome
+prisons by indifferent generals, procureurs, inspectors, rose up in
+his imagination; he remembered the strange, free old man accusing the
+officials, and therefore considered mad, and among the corpses the
+beautiful, waxen face of Kryltzoff, who had died in anger. And again the
+question as to whether he was mad or those who considered they were in
+their right minds while they committed all these deeds stood before him
+with renewed force and demanded an answer.
+
+Tired of pacing up and down, tired of thinking, he sat down on the sofa
+near the lamp and mechanically opened the Testament which the Englishman
+had given him as a remembrance, and which he had thrown on the table
+when he emptied his pockets on coming in.
+
+"It is said one can find an answer to everything here," he thought, and
+opened the Testament at random and began reading Matt. xviii. 1-4: "In
+that hour came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who then is greatest in
+the Kingdom of Heaven? And He called to Him a little child, and set him
+in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn
+and become as little children, ye shall in nowise enter into the Kingdom
+of Heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child
+the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven."
+
+"Yes, yes, that is true," he said, remembering that he had known the
+peace and joy of life only when he had humbled himself.
+
+"And whosoever shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth
+Me, but whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble, it is
+more profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about
+his neck and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea." (Matt.
+xviii. 5, 6.)
+
+"What is this for, 'Whosoever shall receive?' Receive where? And what
+does 'in my name' mean?" he asked, feeling that these words did not tell
+him anything. "And why 'the millstone round his neck and the depths of
+the sea?' No, that is not it: it is not clear," and he remembered how
+more than once in his life he had taken to reading the Gospels, and how
+want of clearness in these passages had repulsed him. He went on to
+read the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth verses about the occasions of
+stumbling, and that they must come, and about punishment by casting men
+into hell fire, and some kind of angels who see the face of the Father
+in Heaven. "What a pity that this is so incoherent," he thought, "yet
+one feels that there is something good in it."
+
+"For the Son of Man came to save that which was lost," he continued to
+read.
+
+"How think ye? If any man have a hundred sheep and one of them go
+astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains
+and seek that which goeth astray? And if so be that he find it, verily
+I say unto you, he rejoiceth over it more than over the ninety and nine
+which have not gone astray.
+
+"Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in Heaven that one
+of these little ones should perish."
+
+"Yes, it is not the will of the Father that they should perish, and
+here they are perishing by hundreds and thousands. And there is no
+possibility of saving them," he thought.
+
+"Then came Peter and said to him, How oft shall my brother offend me and
+I forgive him? Until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto
+thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.
+
+"Therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven likened unto a certain king which
+made a reckoning with his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one
+was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch
+as he had not wherewith to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and
+his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.
+The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have
+patience with me; I will pay thee all. And the lord of that servant,
+being moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. But
+that servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants which owed
+him a hundred pence; and he laid hold on him and took him by the
+throat, saying, Pay what thou owest. So his fellow-servant fell down and
+besought him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee. And
+he would not, but went and cast him into prison till he should pay that
+which was due. So when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were
+exceeding sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done.
+Then his lord called him unto him and saith to him, Thou wicked servant,
+I forgave thee all that debt because thou besought me; shouldst not thou
+also have mercy on thy fellow-servant as I had mercy on thee?"
+
+"And is this all?" Nekhludoff suddenly exclaimed aloud, and the inner
+voice of the whole of his being said, "Yes, it is all." And it happened
+to Nekhludoff, as it often happens to men who are living a spiritual
+life. The thought that seemed strange at first and paradoxical or
+even to be only a joke, being confirmed more and more often by life's
+experience, suddenly appeared as the simplest, truest certainty. In this
+way the idea that the only certain means of salvation from the
+terrible evil from which men were suffering was that they should always
+acknowledge themselves to be sinning against God, and therefore unable
+to punish or correct others, because they were dear to Him. It became
+clear to him that all the dreadful evil he had been witnessing in
+prisons and jails and the quiet self-satisfaction of the perpetrators of
+this evil were the consequences of men trying to do what was impossible;
+trying to correct evil while being evil themselves; vicious men were
+trying to correct other vicious men, and thought they could do it by
+using mechanical means, and the only consequence of all this was that
+the needs and the cupidity of some men induced them to take up this
+so-called punishment and correction as a profession, and have themselves
+become utterly corrupt, and go on unceasingly depraving those whom they
+torment. Now he saw clearly what all the terrors he had seen came from,
+and what ought to be done to put a stop to them. The answer he could
+not find was the same that Christ gave to Peter. It was that we should
+forgive always an infinite number of times because there are no men who
+have not sinned themselves, and therefore none can punish or correct
+others.
+
+"But surely it cannot be so simple," thought Nekhludoff, and yet he saw
+with certainty, strange as it had seemed at first, that it was not only
+a theoretical but also a practical solution of the question. The usual
+objection, "What is one to do with the evil doers? Surely not let them
+go unpunished?" no longer confused him. This objection might have a
+meaning if it were proved that punishment lessened crime, or improved
+the criminal, but when the contrary was proved, and it was evident that
+it was not in people's power to correct each other, the only reasonable
+thing to do is to leave off doing the things which are not only useless,
+but harmful, immoral and cruel.
+
+For many centuries people who were considered criminals have been
+tortured. Well, and have they ceased to exist? No; their numbers have
+been increased not alone by the criminals corrupted by punishment but
+also by those lawful criminals, the judges, procureurs, magistrates
+and jailers, who judge and punish men. Nekhludoff now understood
+that society and order in general exists not because of these lawful
+criminals who judge and punish others, but because in spite of men being
+thus depraved, they still pity and love one another.
+
+In hopes of finding a confirmation of this thought in the Gospel,
+Nekhludoff began reading it from the beginning. When he had read the
+Sermon on the Mount, which had always touched him, he saw in it for the
+first time to-day not beautiful abstract thoughts, setting forth for
+the most part exaggerated and impossible demands, but simple, clear,
+practical laws. If these laws were carried out in practice (and this
+was quite possible) they would establish perfectly new and surprising
+conditions of social life, in which the violence that filled Nekhludoff
+with such indignation would cease of itself. Not only this, but the
+greatest blessing that is obtainable to men, the Kingdom of Heaven on
+Earth would be established. There were five of these laws.
+
+The first (Matt. v. 21-26), that man should not only do no murder,
+but not even be angry with his brother, should not consider any one
+worthless: "Raca," and if he has quarrelled with any one he should make
+it up with him before bringing his gift to God--i.e., before praying.
+
+The second (Matt. v. 27-32), that man should not only not commit
+adultery but should not even seek for enjoyment in a woman's beauty, and
+if he has once come together with a woman he should never be faithless
+to her.
+
+The third (Matt. 33-37), that man should never bind himself by oath.
+
+The fourth (Matt. 38-42), that man should not only not demand an eye for
+an eye, but when struck on one cheek should hold out the other, should
+forgive an offence and bear it humbly, and never refuse the service
+others demand of him.
+
+The fifth (Matt. 43-48), that man should not only not hate his enemy and
+not fight him, but love him, help him, serve him.
+
+Nekhludoff sat staring at the lamp and his heart stood still. Recalling
+the monstrous confusion of the life we lead, he distinctly saw what that
+life could be if men were brought up to obey these rules, and rapture
+such as he had long not felt filled his soul, just as if after long days
+of weariness and suffering he had suddenly found ease and freedom.
+
+He did not sleep all night, and as it happens to many and many a man who
+reads the Gospels he understood for the first time the full meaning of
+the words read so often before but passed by unnoticed. He imbibed all
+these necessary, important and joyful revelations as a sponge imbibes
+water. And all he read seemed so familiar and seemed to confirm, to form
+into a conception, what he had known long ago, but had never realised
+and never quite believed. Now he realised and believed it, and not
+only realised and believed that if men would obey these laws they would
+obtain the highest blessing they can attain to, he also realised and
+believed that the only duty of every man is to fulfil these laws; that
+in this lies the only reasonable meaning of life, that every stepping
+aside from these laws is a mistake which is immediately followed by
+retribution. This flowed from the whole of the teaching, and was most
+strongly and clearly illustrated in the parable of the vineyard.
+
+The husbandman imagined that the vineyard in which they were sent to
+work for their master was their own, that all that was in was made
+for them, and that their business was to enjoy life in this vineyard,
+forgetting the Master and killing all those who reminded them of his
+existence. "Are we not doing the same," Nekhludoff thought, "when we
+imagine ourselves to be masters of our lives, and that life is given us
+for enjoyment? This evidently is an incongruity. We were sent here by
+some one's will and for some reason. And we have concluded that we live
+only for our own joy, and of course we feel unhappy as labourers do when
+not fulfilling their Master's orders. The Master's will is expressed in
+these commandments. If men will only fulfil these laws, the Kingdom of
+Heaven will be established on earth, and men will receive the greatest
+good that they can attain to.
+
+"'Seek ye first the Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things
+shall be added unto you.'
+
+"And so here it is, the business of my life. Scarcely have I finished
+one and another has commenced." And a perfectly new life dawned that
+night for Nekhludoff, not because he had entered into new conditions of
+life, but because everything he did after that night had a new and quite
+different significance than before. How this new period of his life will
+end time alone will prove.
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Corrected "Are we do not doing the same," to "Are
+we not doing the same," in third last paragraph.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy
+
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