Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (i love reading .TXT) 📖
- Author: Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
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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
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