Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕

became excited, and expressed his opinion with too much nervous irritation for an ordinary business transaction.

It was clear that Selenín’s speech had offended Wolff. 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 Fanárin.

“I have already told you: Máslova’s case.”

“Yes, quite so. It is to be heard today, 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, Máslova’s case among it, over their tea and cigarettes, without leaving the debating-room.

XXI

As soon as the Senators were seated round the table in the debating-room, Wolff 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 Viglánoff was appointed to the important post he had long coveted. It was the chairman, Nikítin’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 Wolff, without listening to them.

Bay was listening to Wolff 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 Wolff 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.

Skovoródnikoff, who sat opposite Wolff, 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 Wolff’s wheel.

The chairman agreed with Skovoródnikoff, and the appeal was rejected.

Wolff 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 Máslova’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 Skovoródnikoff, 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 Skovoródnikoff, 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 Skovoródnikoff. “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 Nekhlúdoff’s desire to be present at the examination of Máslova’s case.

“This case,” Wolff said, “is quite romantic,” and he told them what he knew about Nekhlúdoff’s relations with Máslova. 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 Máslova’s case.

Wolff, in his thin voice, reported Máslova’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 Fanárin. Fanárin 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