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

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