Resurrection Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc .txt) 📖

he found out from the attendant that the Senators had all arrived, and that the last had just come in. Fanárin, in his swallowtail coat, a white tie above the white shirtfront, and a self-confident smile on his lips, passed into the next room. In this room there were to the right a large cupboard and a table, and to the left a winding staircase, which an elegant official in uniform was descending with a portfolio under his arm. In this room an old man with long, white hair and a patriarchal appearance attracted everyone’s attention. He wore a short coat and grey trousers. Two attendants stood respectfully beside him. The old man with white hair entered the cupboard and shut himself in.

Fanárin noticed a fellow-advocate dressed in the same way as himself, with a white tie and dress coat, and at once entered into an animated conversation with him.

Nekhlúdoff was meanwhile examining the people in the room. The public consisted of about fifteen persons, of whom two were ladies⁠—a young one with a pince-nez, and an old, grey-haired one.

A case of libel was to be heard that day, and therefore the public were more numerous than usual⁠—chiefly persons belonging to the journalistic world.

The usher, a red-cheeked, handsome man in a fine uniform, came up to Fanárin and asked him what his business was. When he heard that it was the case of Máslova, he noted something down and walked away. Then the cupboard door opened and the old man with the patriarchal appearance stepped out, no longer in a short coat but in a gold-trimmed attire, which made him look like a bird, and with metal plates on his breast. This funny costume seemed to make the old man himself feel uncomfortable, and, walking faster than his wont, he hurried out of the door opposite the entrance.

“That is Bay, a most estimable man,” Fanárin said to Nekhlúdoff, and then having introduced him to his colleague, he explained the case that was about to be heard, which he considered very interesting.

The hearing of the case soon commenced, and Nekhlúdoff, with the public, entered the left side of the Senate Chamber. They all, including Fanárin, took their places behind a grating. Only the Petersburg advocate went up to a desk in front of the grating.

The Senate Chamber was not so big as the Criminal Court; and was more simply furnished, only the table in front of the Senators was covered with crimson, gold-trimmed velvet, instead of green cloth; but the attributes of all places of judgment, i.e., the mirror of justice, the icon, the emblem of hypocrisy, and the Emperor’s portrait, the emblem of servility, were there.

The usher announced, in the same solemn manner, “The Court is coming.” Everyone rose in the same way, and the Senators entered in their uniforms and sat down on high-backed chairs and leant on the table, trying to appear natural, just in the same way as the judges in the Court of Law. There were four Senators present⁠—Nikítin, who took the chair, a clean-shaved man with a narrow face and steely eyes; Wolff, with significantly compressed lips, and little white hands, with which he kept turning over the pages of the business papers; Skovoródnikoff, a heavy, fat, pockmarked man⁠—the learned lawyer; and Bay, the patriarchal-looking man who had arrived last.

With the advocates entered the chief secretary and public prosecutor, a lean, clean-shaven young man of medium height, a very dark complexion, and sad, black eyes. Nekhlúdoff knew him at once, in spite of his curious uniform and the fact that he had not seen him for six years. He had been one of his best friends in Nekhlúdoff’s student days.

“The public prosecutor Selenín?” Nekhlúdoff asked, turning to the advocate.

“Yes. Why?”

“I know him well. He is a fine fellow.”

“And a good public prosecutor; businesslike. Now he is the man you should have interested.”

“He will act according to his conscience in any case,” said Nekhlúdoff, recalling the intimate relations and friendship between himself and Selenín, and the attractive qualities of the latter⁠—purity, honesty, and good breeding in its best sense.

“Yes, there is no time now,” whispered Fanárin, who was listening to the report of the case that had commenced.

The Court of Justice was accused of having left a decision of the Court of Law unaltered.

Nekhlúdoff listened and tried to make out the meaning of what was going on; but, just as in the Criminal Court, his chief difficulty was that not the evidently chief point, but some side issues, were being discussed. The case was that of a newspaper which had published the account of a swindle arranged by a director of a limited liability company. It seemed that the only important question was whether the director of the company really abused his trust, and how to stop him from doing it. But the questions under consideration were whether the editor had a right to publish this article of his contributor, and what he had been guilty of in publishing it: slander or libel, and in what way slander included libel, or libel included slander, and something rather incomprehensible to ordinary people about all sorts of statutes and resolutions passed by some General Department.

The only thing clear to Nekhlúdoff was that, in spite of what Wolff had so strenuously insisted on, the day before, i.e., that the Senate could not try a case on its merits, in this case he was evidently strongly in favour of repealing the decision of the Court of Justice, and that Selenín, in spite of his characteristic reticence, stated the opposite opinion with quite unexpected warmth. The warmth, which surprised Nekhlúdoff, evinced by the usually self-controlled Selenín, was due to his knowledge of the director’s shabbiness in money matters, and the fact, which had accidentally come to his cars, that Wolff had been to a swell dinner party at the swindler’s house only a few days before.

Now that Wolff spoke on the case, guardedly enough, but with evident bias, Selenín