Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

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 highbacked 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 he 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 highbacked 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