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

the sentence. The tone of his speech was one of apology to the Senators, who, with their penetration and judicial wisdom, could not help seeing and understanding it all better than he could. He was obliged to speak only because the duty he had undertaken forced him to do so.

After Fanárin’s speech one might have thought that there could not remain the least doubt that the Senate ought to repeal the decision of the Court. When he had finished his speech, Fanárin looked round with a smile of triumph, seeing which Nekhlúdoff felt certain that the case was won. But when he looked at the Senators he saw that Fanárin smiled and triumphed all alone. The Senators and the Public Prosecutor did not smile nor triumph, but looked like people wearied, and who were thinking “We have often heard the like of you; it is all in vain,” and were only too glad when he stopped and ceased uselessly detaining them there. Immediately after the end of the advocate’s speech the chairman turned to the Public Prosecutor. Selenín briefly and clearly expressed himself in favour of leaving the decision of the Court unaltered, as he considered all the reasons for appealing inadequate. After this the Senators went out into the debating-room. They were divided in their opinions. Wolff was in favour of altering the decision. Bay, when he had understood the case, took up the same side with fervour, vividly presenting the scene at the court to his companions as he clearly saw it himself. Nikítin, who always was on the side of severity and formality, took up the other side. All depended on Skovoródnikoff’s vote, and he voted for rejecting the appeal, because Nekhlúdoff’s determination to marry the woman on moral grounds was extremely repugnant to him.

Skovoródnikoff was a materialist, a Darwinian, and counted every manifestation of abstract morality, or, worse still, religion, not only as a despicable folly, but as a personal affront to himself. All this bother about a prostitute, and the presence of a celebrated advocate and Nekhlúdoff in the Senate were in the highest degree repugnant to him. So he shoved his beard into his mouth and made faces, and very skilfully pretended to know nothing of this case, excepting that the reasons for an appeal were insufficient, and that he, therefore, agreed with the chairman to leave the decision of the Court unaltered.

So the sentence remained unrepealed.

XXII

“Terrible,” said Nekhlúdoff, as he went out into the waiting-room with the advocate, who was arranging the papers in his portfolio. “In a matter which is perfectly clear they attach all the importance to the form and reject the appeal. Terrible!”

“The case was spoiled in the Criminal Court,” said the advocate.

“And Selenín, too, was in favour of the rejection. Terrible! terrible!” Nekhlúdoff repeated. “What is to be done now?”

“We will appeal to His Majesty, and you can hand in the petition yourself while you are here. I will write it for you.”

At this moment little Wolff, with his stars and uniform, came out into the waiting-room and approached Nekhlúdoff. “It could not be helped, dear Prince. The reasons for an appeal were not sufficient,” he said, shrugging his narrow shoulders and closing his eyes, and then he went his way.

After Wolff, Selenín came out too, having heard from the Senators that his old friend Nekhlúdoff was there.

“Well, I never expected to see you here,” he said, coming up to Nekhlúdoff, and smiling only with his lips while his eyes remained sad. “I did not know you were in Petersburg.”

“And I did not know you were Public Prosecutor-in-Chief.”

“How is it you are in the Senate?” asked Selenín. “I had heard, by the way, that you were in Petersburg. But what are you doing here?”

“Here? I am here because I hoped to find justice and save a woman innocently condemned.”

“What woman?”

“The one whose case has just been decided.”

“Oh! Máslova’s case,” said Selenín, suddenly remembering it. “The appeal had no grounds whatever.”

“It is not the appeal; it’s the woman who is innocent, and is being punished.”

Selenín sighed. “That may well be, but⁠—”

“Not may be, but is.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I was on the jury. I know how we made the mistake.”

Selenín became thoughtful. “You should have made a statement at the time,” he said.

“I did make the statement.”

“It should have been put down in an official report. If this had been added to the petition for the appeal⁠—”

“Yes, but still, as it is, the verdict is evidently absurd.”

“The Senate has no right to say so. If the Senate took upon itself to repeal the decision of the law courts according to its own views as to the justice of the decisions in themselves, the verdict of the jury would lose all its meaning, not to mention that the Senate would have no basis to go upon, and would run the risk of infringing justice rather than upholding it,” said Selenín, calling to mind the case that had just been heard.

“All I know is that this woman is quite innocent, and that the last hope of saving her from an unmerited punishment is gone. The grossest injustice has been confirmed by the highest court.”

“It has not been confirmed. The Senate did not and cannot enter into the merits of the case in itself,” said Selenín. Always busy and rarely going out into society, he had evidently heard nothing of Nekhlúdoff’s romance. Nekhlúdoff noticed it, and made up his mind that it was best to say nothing about his special relations with Máslova.

“You are probably staying with your aunt,” Selenín remarked, apparently wishing to change the subject. “She told me you were here yesterday, and she invited me to meet you in the evening, when some foreign preacher was to lecture,” and Selenín again smiled only with his lips.

“Yes, I was there, but left in disgust,” said Nekhlúdoff angrily, vexed that Selenín had changed the subject.

“Why with disgust? After all, it is a manifestation of religious feeling, though one-sided