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

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?” Nekhlúdoff 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?” Nekhlúdoff 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. Today 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.”

Nekhlúdoff 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 Doúkhova. He only remembered his promise to have her called when Nekhlúdoff entered the office.

“Sit down, please. I’ll send for her at once,” said the inspector.

LIV

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 Nekhlúdoff a chair beside him. Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff 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 Skoptzý 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. Nekhlúdoff, 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?”

Nekhlúdoff 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,” Nekhlúdoff 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 Pávlovna, take Kólia!” said the inspector, evidently considering Nekhlúdoff’s conversation with the boy illegal.

Mary Pávlovna, the beautiful girl who had attracted Nekhlúdoff’s attention, rose tall and erect, and with firm, almost manly steps, approached Nekhlúdoff 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