The Awakening / The Resurrection

FOOTNOTES:

[B] Diminutive of Maria.

[C] Diminutive of Sophia.

[D] The Russian thou cannot be rendered into English with any degree of accuracy. The greeting to which the impulsive Nekhludoff was about to give expression is that used toward a beloved person.

CHAPTER XV.

That morning service formed the brightest and most impressive reminiscence of Nekhludoff's after life.

The darkness of the night was only relieved here and there by white patches of snow, and as the stallion, splashing through the mud-pools, and his ears pricked up at the sight of the fire-pots surrounding the church, entered its inclosure, the service had already begun.

The peasants, recognizing Maria Ivanovna's nephew, led his horse to the driest spot, where he dismounted, then they escorted him to the church filled with a holiday crowd.

To the right were the male peasants; old men in homespun coats and bast shoes, and young men in new cloth caftans, bright-colored belts and boots. To the left the women, with red silk 'kerchiefs on their heads, shag caftans with bright red sleeves, and blue, green, red, striped and dotted skirts and iron-heeled shoes. Behind them stood the more modest women in white 'kerchiefs and gray caftans and ancient skirts, in shoes or bast slippers. Among these and the others were dressed-up children with oiled hair. The peasants made the sign of the cross and bowed, disheveling their hair; the women, especially the old women, gazing with their lustreless eyes on one image, before which candles burned, pressed hard with the tips of their fingers on the 'kerchief of the forehead, the shoulders and the abdomen, and, mumbling something, bent forward standing, or fell on their knees. The children, imitating their elders, prayed fervently when they were looked at. The gold iconostasis was aflame with innumerable candles, which surrounded a large one in the centre wound in a narrow strip of gilt paper. The church lustre was dotted with candles, joyful melodies of volunteer singers with roaring bass and piercing contralto mingled with the chant of the choir.

Nekhludoff went forward. In the middle of the church stood the aristocracy; a country squire with his wife and son in a sailor blouse, the commissary of the rural police, a telegraph operator, a merchant in high boots, the local syndic with a medal on his breast, and to the right of the tribune, behind the squire's wife, Matriena Pavlovna, in a lilac-colored chatoyant dress and white shawl with colored border, and beside her was Katiousha in a white dress, gathered in folds at the waist, a blue belt, and a red bow in her black hair.

Everything was solemn, joyous and beautiful; the priest in his bright, silver chasuble, dotted with gilt crosses, the deacon, the chanters in holiday surplice of gold and silver, the spruce volunteer singers with oiled hair, the joyous melodies of holiday songs, the ceaseless blessing of the throng by the priests with flower-bedecked tern candles with the constantly repeated exclamations: "Christ has risen! Christ has risen!" Everything was beautiful, but more beautiful than all was Katiousha, in her white dress, blue belt and red bow in her hair, and her eyes radiant with delight.

Nekhludoff felt that she saw him without turning round. He saw it while passing near her to the altar. He had nothing to tell her, but tried to think of something, and said, when passing her:

"Auntie said that she would receive the sacrament after mass."

Her young blood, as it always happened when she looked at him, rose to her cheeks, and her black eyes, naively looking up, fixed themselves on Nekhludoff.

"I know it," she said, smiling.

At that moment a chanter with a copper coffee-pot in his hand passed close to Katiousha, and, without looking at her, grazed her with the skirt of the surplice. The chanter, evidently out of respect for Nekhludoff, wished to sweep around him, and thus it happened that he grazed Katiousha.

Nekhludoff, however, was surprised that that chanter did not understand that everything in the church, and in the whole world, for that matter, existed only for Katiousha, and that one might spurn the entire world, but must not slight her, because she was the centre of it. It was for her that the gold iconostasis shone brightly, and these candles in the church-lustre burned; for her were the joyful chants: "Be happy, man; it is the Lord's Easter." All the good in the world was for her. And it seemed to him that Katiousha understood that all this was for her. It seemed to Nekhludoff, when he looked at her erect figure in the white dress with little folds at the waist, and by the expression of her happy face, that the very thing that filled his soul with song, also filled hers.

In the interval between early and late mass Nekhludoff left the church. The people made way for him and bowed. Some recognized him; others asked: "Who is he?" He stopped at the porch. Beggars surrounded him, and, distributing such change as he had in his pocket, he descended the stairs.

The day began to break, but the sun was yet beyond the horizon. The people seated themselves on the grass around the church-yard, but Katiousha remained in the church, and Nekhludoff waited on the porch for her appearance.

The crowd was still pouring out of the church, their hob-nailed shoes clattering against the stone pavement, and spread about the cemetery.

An old man, confectioner to Maria Ivanovna, stopped Nekhludoff and kissed him, and his wife, an old woman with a wrinkled Adam's apple under a silk 'kerchief, unrolled a yellow saffron egg from her handkerchief and gave it to him. At the same time a young, smiling and muscular peasant, in a new caftan, approached.

"Christ has risen!" he said, with smiling eyes and, nearing Nekhludoff, spread around him a peculiar, pleasant, peasant odor, and, tickling him with his curly beard, three times kissed him on the lips.

While Nekhludoff was thus exchanging the customary kisses with the peasant and taking from him a dark-brown egg, he noticed the chatoyant dress of Matriena Pavlovna and the lovely head with the red bow.

No sooner did she catch sight of him over the heads of those in front of her, than her face brightened up.

On reaching the porch they also stopped, distributing alms. One of the beggars, with a red, cicatrized slough instead of a nose, approached Katiousha. She produced some coins from her handkerchief, gave them to him, and without the slightest expression of disgust, but, on the contrary, her eyes beaming with delight, kissed him three times. While she was thus kissing with the beggar, her eyes met those of Nekhludoff, and she seemed to ask him: "Is it not right? Is it not proper?"

"Yes, yes, darling; it is right; everything is beautiful. I love you."

As they descended the stairs he came near her. He did not wish to kiss her, but merely wished to be by her side.

"Christ has risen!" said Matriena Pavlovna, leaning her head forward and smiling. By the intonation of her voice she seemed to say, "All are equal to-day," and wiping her mouth with a bandana handkerchief which she kept under her arm-pit, she extended her lips.

"He has risen, indeed," answered Nekhludoff, and they kissed each other.

He turned to look at Katiousha. She flushed and at the same moment approached him.

"Christ has risen, Dmitri Ivanovich."

"He has risen, indeed," he said. They kissed each other twice, and seemed to be reflecting whether or not it was necessary to kiss a third time, and having decided, as it were, that it was necessary, they kissed again.

"Will you go to the priest?" asked Nekhludoff.

"No, we will stay here, Dmitri Ivanovich," answered Katiousha, laboriously, as though after hard, pleasant exertion, breathing with her full breast and looking straight in his eyes, with her submissive, chaste, loving and slightly squinting eyes.

There is a point in the love between man and woman when that love reaches its zenith; when it is free from consciousness, reason and sensuality. Such a moment arrived for Nekhludoff that Easter morn.

Now, whenever he thought of Katiousha, her appearance at that moment obscured every other recollection of her. The dark, smooth, resplendent head; the white dress with folds clinging to her graceful bust and undulating breast; those vermilion cheeks, those brilliant black eyes, and two main traits in all her being: the virgin purity of her love, not only for himself, but for everything and everybody—he knew it—not only the good and beautiful, but even that beggar whom she had kissed.

He knew that she possessed that love, because that night and that morning he felt it within him, and felt that in that love his soul mingled into one with hers.

Ah, if that feeling had continued unchanged! "Yes, that awful affair occurred after that notable commemoration of Christ's resurrection!" he thought now, sitting at the window of the jury-room.

CHAPTER XVI.

Returning from the church, Nekhludoff broke his fast with the aunts, and to repair his strength, drank some brandy and wine—a habit he acquired in the army—and going to his room immediately fell asleep with his clothes on. He was awakened by a rap at the door. By the rap he knew that it was she, so he rose, rubbing his eyes and stretching himself.

"Is it you, Katiousha? Come in," he said, rising.

She opened the door.

"You are wanted to breakfast," she said. She was in the same white dress, but without the bow in her hair.

As she looked in his eyes she brightened up, as if she had announced something unusually pleasant.

"I shall come immediately," he answered, taking a comb to rearrange his hair.

She lingered for a moment. He noticed it, and putting down the comb, he moved toward her. But at the same moment she quickly turned and walked off with her customary light and agile step along the narrow mat of the corridor.

"What a fool I am!" Nekhludoff said to himself. "Why did I not detain her?" And he ran after her.

He did not know himself what he wished of her, but it seemed to him that when she entered his room he ought to have done something that any one in his place would have done, but which he failed to do.

"Wait, Katiousha," he said.

She looked around.

"What is it?" she said, stopping.

"Nothing. I only——"

With some effort he overcame his shyness, and remembering how people generally act in such a case, he put his arm about Katiousha's waist.

She stopped and looked in his eyes.

"Don't, Ivanovich, don't," she said, blushing until her eyes filled with tears. Then with her rough, strong hands she removed his arm.

Nekhludoff released her, and for a moment felt not only awkward and ashamed, but seemed odious to himself. He should have believed in himself, but he failed to understand that this awkwardness and shame were the noblest feelings of his soul begging for recognition, and, on the contrary, it seemed to him that it was his foolishness that was speaking within him, that he ought to have done as everybody does in a similar case.

He overtook her again, again embraced her and kissed her on the neck. This kiss was entirely unlike the other two kisses. The first was given unconsciously, behind the lilac bush; the second, in the morning in church. The last one was terrible, and she felt it.

"But what are you doing?" she exclaimed in such a voice, as if he had irrecoverably destroyed something infinitely precious, and ran away from him.

He went to the dining-room. His aunts in holiday attire, the doctor and a neighbor were taking lunch standing. Everything was as usual, but a storm raged in Nekhludoff's soul. He did not understand what was said to him, his answers were inappropriate, and he was thinking only of Katiousha, recalling the sensation of the last kiss he gave her when he overtook her in the corridor. He could think of nothing else. When she entered the room, without looking at her, he felt her presence with all his being, and had to make an effort not to look at her.

After lunch he went immediately to his room, and in great agitation walked to and fro, listening to the sounds in the house and waiting to hear her steps. The animal man that dwelled in him not only raised his head, but crushed under foot the spiritual man that he was when he first arrived at the manor, and was even this very morning in church, and that terrible animal man now held sway in his soul. Although Nekhludoff was watching an opportunity to meet Katiousha that day, he did not succeed in seeing her face to face even once. She was probably avoiding him. But in the evening it happened that she had to enter a room adjoining his. The physician was to remain over night, and Katiousha had to make the bed for him. Hearing her steps, Nekhludoff, stepping on tip-toe and holding his breath, as though preparing to commit a crime, followed her into the room.

Thrusting both her hands into a white pillow-case, and taking hold of two corners of the pillow, she turned her head and looked at him smiling, but it was not the old, cheerful, happy smile, but a frightened, piteous smile. The smile seemed to tell him that what he was doing was wrong. For a moment he stood still. There was still the possibility of a struggle. Though weak, the voice of his true love to her was still heard; it spoke of her, of her feelings, of her life. The other voice reminded him of his enjoyment, his happiness. And this second voice stifled the first. He approached her with determination. And the terrible, irresistible animal feeling mastered him.

Without releasing her from his embrace, Nekhludoff seated her on the bed, and feeling that something else ought to be done, seated himself beside her.

"Dmitri Ivanovich, darling, please let me go," she said in a piteous voice. "Matriena Pavlovna is coming!" she suddenly exclaimed, tearing herself away.

Matriena Pavlovna was really approaching the door. She entered the room, holding a quilt on her arm, and, looking reproachfully at Nekhludoff, angrily rebuked Katiousha for taking the wrong quilt.

Nekhludoff went out in silence. He was not even ashamed. By the expression of Matriena Pavlovna's face he saw that she condemned him, and justly so; he knew that what he was doing was wrong, but the animal feeling, which succeeded his former feeling of pure love to her, seized him and held sole sway over him; recognizing no other feeling. He knew now what was necessary to do in order to satisfy that feeling, and was looking for means to that end.

He was out of sorts all that night. Now he would go to his aunts; now he returned to his room, or went to the perron, thinking but of one thing: how to meet her alone. But she avoided him, and Matriena Pavlovna strove not to lose sight of her.

CHAPTER XVII.

Thus the entire evening passed, and when night came the doctor went to bed. The aunts were also preparing to retire. Nekhludoff knew that Matriena Pavlovna was in the aunts' dormitory, and that Katiousha was in the servants' quarters—alone. He again went out on the perron. It was dark, damp and warm, and that white mist which in the spring thaws the last snow, filled the air. Strange noises came from the river, which was a hundred feet from the house. It was the breaking up of the ice.

Nekhludoff came down from the perron, and stepping over pools and the thin ice-covering formed on the snow, walked toward the window of the servants' quarters. His heart beat so violently that he could hear it; his breathing at times stopped, at others it escaped in a heavy sigh. A small lamp was burning in the maid-servants' room.

Katiousha was sitting at the table alone, musing and looking at the wall before her. Without moving Nekhludoff for some time stood gazing at her, wishing to know what she would do while thinking herself unobserved. For about two minutes she sat motionless, then raised her eyes, smiled, reproachfully shook her head, at herself apparently, and, changing her position, with a start placed both hands on the table and fixed her eyes before her.

He remained looking at her, and involuntarily listened to the beating of his heart and the strange sounds coming from the river. There, on the misty river some incessant, slow work was going on. Now something snuffled, then it crackled, and again the thin layer of ice resounded like a mass of crushed glass.

He stood looking at the thoughtful face of Katiousha, tormented by an internal struggle, and he pitied her. But, strange to say, this pity only increased his longing for her.

He rapped at the window. She trembled from head to foot, as if an electric current had passed through her, and terror was reflected on her face. Then she sprang up, and, going to the window, placed her face against the window-pane. The expression of terror did not leave her even when, shading her eyes with the palms of her hands, she recognized him. Her face was unusually grave—he had never seen such an expression on it. When he smiled she smiled also—she smiled as if only in submission to him, but in her soul, instead of a smile, there was terror. He motioned her with his hand to come out. But she shook her head and remained at the window. Again he leaned toward the window and was about to speak when she turned toward the door. Some one had apparently called her. Nekhludoff moved away from the window. The fog was so dense that when five feet away he saw only a darkening mass from which a red, seemingly large, light of the lamp was reflected. From the river came the same strange sounds of snuffling, crackling and grinding of the ice. In the court-yard a cock crowed, others near by responded; then from the village, first singly, interrupting each other, then mingling into one chorus, was heard the crowing of all the cocks. Except for the noise of the river, it was perfectly quiet all around.

After walking twice around the corner of the house, and stepping several times into mud-pools, Nekhludoff returned to the window of the maid-servants' quarters. The lamp was still burning, and Katiousha sat alone at the table as if in indecision. As soon as he came near the window she looked at him. He rapped. Without stopping to see who had rapped, she immediately ran from the room, and he heard the opening and closing of the door. He was already waiting for her in the passage, and immediately silently embraced her. She pressed against his bosom, lifted her head, and with her lips met his kiss.

When Nekhludoff returned to his room it was getting brighter. Below, the noises on the river increased, and a buzzing was added to the other sounds. The mist began to settle, and from behind the wall of mist the waning moon appeared, gloomily, lighting up something dark and terrible.

"Is it good fortune or a great misfortune that has happened to me?" he asked himself. "It is always thus; they all act in that way," and he returned to his room.

PRINCE NEKHLUDOFF.

CHAPTER XVIII.

On the following day the brilliant and jovial Shenbok called at the aunts for Nekhludoff, and completely charmed them with his elegance, amiability, cheerfulness, liberality, and his love for Dmitri. Though his liberality pleased the aunts, they were somewhat perplexed by the excess to which he carried it. He gave a ruble to a blind beggar; the servants received as tips fifteen rubles, and when Sophia Ivanovna's lap-dog, Suzette, hurt her leg so that it bled, he volunteered to bandage it, and without a moment's consideration tore his fine linen handkerchief (Sophia Ivanovna knew that those handkerchiefs were worth fifteen rubles a dozen) and made bandages of it for the dog. The aunts had never seen such men, nor did they know that his debts ran up to two hundred thousand rubles, which—he knew—would never be paid, and that therefore twenty-five rubles more or less made no appreciable difference in his accounts.

Shenbok remained but one day, and the following evening departed with Nekhludoff. They could remain no longer, for the time for joining their regiment had arrived.

On this last day spent at the aunts, when the events of the preceding evening were fresh in his memory, two antagonistic feelings struggled in Nekhludoff's soul; one was the burning, sensual recollection of love, although it failed to fulfill its promises, and some satisfaction of having gained his ends; the other, a consciousness of having committed a wrong, and that that wrong must be righted—not for her sake, but for his own sake.

In that condition of insane egotism Nekhludoff thought only of himself—whether he would be condemned, and how far, if his act should be discovered, but never gave a thought to the question, "How does she feel about it, and what will become of her?"

He thought that Shenbok divined his relations to Katiousha, and his ambition was flattered.

"That's why you so suddenly began to like your aunts," Shenbok said to him when he saw Katiousha. "In your place I should stay here even longer. She is charming!"

He also thought that while it was a pity to leave now, without enjoying his love in its fullness, the necessity of going was advantageous in that he was able to break the relations which it were difficult to keep up. He further thought it was necessary to give her money, not because she might need it, but because it was customary to do so. So he gave as much money as he thought was proper, considering their respective positions.

On the day of his departure, after dinner he waited in the passage until she came by. She flushed as she saw him, and wished to pass on, pointing with her eyes to the door of her room, but he detained her.

"I came to bid you farewell," he said, crumpling an envelope containing a hundred ruble bill. "How is——"

She suspected it, frowned, shook her head and thrust aside his hand.

"Yes, take it," he murmured, thrusting the envelope in the bosom of her waist, and, as if it had burned his fingers, he ran to his room.

For a long time he paced his room to and fro, frowning, and even jumping, and moaning aloud as if from physical pain, as he thought of the scene.

But what is to be done? It is always thus. Thus it was with Shenbok and the governess whom he had told about; it was thus with Uncle Gregory; with his father, when he lived in the country, and the illegitimate son Miteuka, who is still living, was born to him. And if everybody acts thus, consequently it ought to be so. Thus he was consoling himself, but he could not be consoled. The recollection of it stung his conscience.

In the depth of his soul he knew that his action was so base, abominable and cruel that, with that action upon his conscience, not only would he have no right to condemn others but he should not be able to look others in the face, to say nothing of considering himself the good, noble, magnanimous man he esteemed himself. And he had to esteem himself as such in order to be able to continue to lead a valiant and joyous life. And there was but one way of doing so, and that was not to think of it. This he endeavored to do.

The life into which he had just entered—new scenes, comrades, and active service—helped him on. The more he lived, the less he thought of it, and in the end really forgot it entirely.

Only once, on his return from active service, when, in the hope of seeing her, he paid a visit to his aunts, he was told that Katiousha, soon after his departure, had left them; that she had given birth to a child, and, as the aunts were informed, had gone to the bad. As he heard it his heart was oppressed with grief. From the statement of the time when she gave birth to the child it might be his, and it might not be his. The aunts said that she was vicious and of a depraved nature, just like her mother. And this opinion of the aunts pleased him, because it exculpated him, as it were. At first he intended to find her and the child, but as it pained him very much, and he was ashamed to think of it, he did not make the necessary efforts, and gradually ceased to think of his sin.

But now, this fortuitous meeting brought everything to his mind, and compelled the acknowledgment of his heartlessness, cruelty and baseness which made it possible for him to live undisturbed by the sin which lay on his conscience. He was yet far from such acknowledgment, and at this moment was only thinking how to avoid disclosure which might be made by her, or her attorney, and thus disgrace him before everybody.

CHAPTER XIX.

Nekhludoff was in this state of mind when he left the court-room and entered the jury-room. He sat near the window, listening to the conversations of his fellow jurymen, and smoked incessantly.

The cheerful merchant evidently sympathized with Merchant Smelkoff's manner of passing his time.

"Well, well! He went on his spree just like a Siberian! Seems to have known a good thing when he saw it. What a beauty!"

The foreman expressed the opinion that the whole case depended on the expert evidence. Peter Gerasimovich was jesting with the Jewish clerk, and both of them burst out laughing. Nekhludoff answered all questions in monosyllables, and only wished to be left in peace.

When the usher with the sidling gait called the jury into court Nekhludoff was seized with fear, as if judgment was to be passed on him, and not he to pass judgment on others.

In the depth of his soul he already felt that he was a rascal, who ought to be ashamed to look people in the face, and yet, by force of habit, he walked to the elevation with his customary air of self-confidence, and took his seat next to the foreman, crossed his legs and began to play with his pince-nez.

The prisoners, who had also been removed from the court, were brought in again.

The new faces of witnesses were now seen in the court-room, and Nekhludoff noticed Maslova constantly turning her head in the direction of a smartly attired, stout woman in silk and plush, with an elegant reticule hanging on her half-bare arm. This was, as Nekhludoff afterward learned, Maslova's mistress and a witness against her.

The examination of the witnesses began as to their names, age, religion, et cetera. After being questioned as to whether they preferred to testify under oath, the same old priest, with difficulty moving his legs, came, and again arranging the gold cross on his silk-covered breast, with the same calmness and confidence, began to administer the oath to the witnesses and the expert. When the swearing in was over, the witnesses were removed to an adjoining room, leaving only Kitaeva, Maslova's mistress. She was asked what she knew of the affair. Kitaeva, with a feigned smile, a German accent, and straightening her hat at every sentence, fluently and circumstantially related the following:

Simon came first to her house for Liubasha.[E] In a little while Liubasha returned with the merchant. "The merchant was already in ecstasy," slightly smiling, said Kitaeva, "and he continued to drink and treat himself, but as he was short of money he sent to his room this same Liubasha, for whom he acquired a predilection," she said, looking at Maslova.

It seemed to Nekhludoff that Maslova smiled at this, and the smile seemed to him disgusting. A strange feeling of squeamishness mingled with compassion rose in his breast.

"What opinion did you entertain of Maslova?" timidly and blushingly asked the attorney assigned by the court to defend Maslova.

"Very excellent," answered Kitaeva. "The girl is very well educated and elegant in her manners. She was raised in a very good family, and could read French. She sometimes drank a little too much, but she never forgot herself. She is a very good girl."

Katiousha looked at her mistress, then suddenly turned her eyes on the jury and rested them on Nekhludoff, her face becoming serious and even stern. One of the stern eyes squinted. These strangely gazing eyes were turned on Nekhludoff for a considerable time. Notwithstanding the terror that seized him, he could not remove his own gaze from those squinting eyes with their shining whites. He recalled that awful night with the breaking ice, the fog, and especially that waning, upturned moon which rose in the morning and lit up something dark and terrible. These two black eyes which looked at and at the same time by him reminded him of something dark and terrible.

"She recognized me!" he thought. And Nekhludoff shrank, as it were, waiting for the blow. But she did not recognize him. She sighed calmly and again fixed her eyes on the justiciary. Nekhludoff also sighed. "Ah, if they would only hasten it through," he thought. He felt now as he did once when out game shooting, when he was obliged to kill a wounded bird—he was filled with disgust, pity and vexation. The wounded bird is struggling in the game bag; he feels disgust and pity, and wishes to kill it quickly and forget it.

Such mingled feelings filled Nekhludoff's breast as he sat listening to the examination of the witnesses.

FOOTNOTES:

[E] A contemptuous diminutive of Liuba. Tr.

CHAPTER XX.

As if to spite him, the case dragged out to a weary length. After the examination of the witnesses and the expert, and after all the unnecessary questions by the prosecutor and the attorneys, usually made with an important air, the justiciary told the jury to look at the exhibits, which consisted of an enormous ring with a diamond rosette, evidently made for the forefinger, and a glass tube containing the poison. These were sealed and labeled.

The jury were preparing to view these things, when the prosecutor rose again and demanded that before the exhibits were examined the medical report of the condition of the body be read.

The justiciary was hurrying the case, and though he knew that the reading of the report would only bring ennui and delay the dinner, and that the prosecutor demanded it only because he had the right to do so, he could not refuse the request and gave his consent. The secretary produced the report, and, lisping the letters l and r, began to read in a sad voice.

The external examination disclosed:

1. The height of Therapout Smelkoff was six feet five inches.

"But what a huge fellow," the merchant whispered in Nekhludoff's ear with solicitude.

2. From external appearances he seemed to be about forty years of age.

3. The body had a swollen appearance.

4. The color of the pall was green, streaked with dark spots.

5. The skin on the surface of the body rose in bubbles of various sizes, and in places hung in patches.

6. The hair was dark and thick, and fell off at a slight touch.

7. The eyes came out of their orbits, and the pupils were dull.

8. A frothy, serous fluid flowed continuously from the cavity of the mouth, the nostrils and ears. The mouth was half open.

9. The neck almost disappeared in the swelling of the face and breast, et cetera, et cetera.

Thus, over four pages and twenty-seven clauses, ran the description of the external appearance of the terrible, large, stout, swollen and decomposing body of the merchant who amused himself in the city. The loathing which Nekhludoff felt increased with the reading of the description. Katiousha's life, the sanies running from the nostrils, the eyes that came out of their sockets, and his conduct toward her—all seemed to him to belong to the same order, and he was surrounded and swallowed up by these things. When the reading was finally over, the justiciary sighed deeply and raised his head in the hope that it was all over, but the secretary immediately began to read the report on the internal condition of the body.

The justiciary again bent his head, and, leaning on his hand, closed his eyes. The merchant, who sat near Nekhludoff, barely kept awake, and from time to time swayed his body. The prisoners as well as the gendarmes behind them sat motionless.

The internal examination disclosed:

1. The skin covering of the skull easily detached, and no hemorrhage was noticeable. 2. The skull bones were of average thickness and uninjured. 3. On the hard membrane of the skull there were two small discolored spots of about the size of four centimetres, the membrane itself being of a dull gray color, et cetera, et cetera, to the end of thirteen more clauses.

Then came the names of the witnesses, the signature and deduction of the physician, from which it appeared that the changes found in the stomach, intestines and kidneys justified the conclusion "to a large degree probable" that the death of Smelkoff was due to poison taken into the stomach with a quantity of wine. That it was impossible to tell by the changes in the stomach and intestines the name of the poison; and that the poison came into the stomach mixed with wine could be inferred from the fact that Smelkoff's stomach contained a large quantity of wine.

"He must have drank like a fish," again whispered the awakened merchant.

The reading of this official report, which lasted about two hours, did not satisfy, however, the prosecutor. When it was over the justiciary turned to him, saying:

"I suppose it is superfluous to read the record of the examination of the intestines."

"I would ask that it be read," sternly said the prosecutor without looking at the justiciary, sidewise raising himself, and impressing by the tone of his voice that it was his right to demand it, that he would insist on it, and that a refusal would be ground for appeal.

The associate with the long beard and kind, drooping eyes, who was suffering from catarrh, feeling very weak, turned to the justiciary:

"What is the good of reading it? It will only drag the matter out. These new brooms only take a longer time to sweep, but do not sweep any cleaner."

The associate in the gold eye-glasses said nothing, and gloomily and determinedly looked in front of him, expecting nothing good either from his wife or from the world.

The report commenced thus: "February 15th, 188—. The undersigned, in pursuance of an order, No. 638, of the Medical Department," began the secretary with resolution, raising the pitch of his voice, as if to dispel the drowsiness that seized upon every one present, "and in the presence of the assistant medical director, examined the following intestines:

"1. The right lung and heart (contained in a five-pound glass vial).

"2. The contents of the stomach (contained in a five-pound glass vial).

"3. The stomach itself (contained in a five-pound glass vial).

"4. The kidneys, liver and spleen (contained in a two-and-a-half-pound glass vial).

"5. The entrails (contained in a five-pound earthen jar)."

As the reading of this report began the justiciary leaned over to one of his associates and whispered something, then to the other, and, receiving affirmative answers, interrupted the reading at this point.

"The Court finds the reading of the report superfluous," he said.

The secretary closed reading and gathered up his papers, while the prosecutor angrily began to make notes.

"The gentlemen of the jury may now view the exhibits," said the justiciary.

The foreman and some of the jury rose from their seats, and, holding their hands in awkward positions, approached the table and looked in turn on the ring, vials and jars. The merchant even tried the ring on his finger.

"What a finger he had," he said, returning to his seat. "It must have been the size of a large cucumber," he added, evidently amused by the giant figure of the merchant, as he imagined him.

CHAPTER XXI.

When the examination of the exhibits was over, the justiciary announced the investigation closed, and, desiring to end the session, gave the word to the prosecutor, in the hope that as he, too, was mortal, he might also wish to smoke or dine, and would have pity on the others. But the prosecutor pitied neither himself nor them. When the word was given him, he rose slowly, displaying his elegant figure, and, placing both hands on the desk, and slightly bending his head, he cast a glance around the court-room, his eyes avoiding the prisoners.

"Gentlemen of the jury, the case which is now to be submitted to your consideration," he began his speech, prepared while the indictment and reports were being read, "is a characteristic crime, if I may so express myself."

The speech of a prosecuting attorney, according to his idea, had to be invested with a social significance, according to the manner of those lawyers who became famous. True, among his hearers were three women; a seamstress, a cook and Simon's sister, also a driver, but that made no difference. Those celebrities also began on a small scale. The prosecutor made it a rule to view the situation from the eminence of his position, i. e., to penetrate into the profound psychological meaning of crime, and bare the ulcers of society.

"Here is before you, gentlemen of the jury, a crime characteristic, if I may so express myself, of the end of our century, bearing, as it were, all the specific features of the first symptoms of decomposition, to which those elements of our society, which are exposed, as it were, to the more scorching rays of that process, are subject."

The prosecutor spoke at great length, endeavoring on the one hand to remember all those wise sayings which he had prepared for the occasion, and on the other, most important, hand, not to stop for a moment, but to make his speech flow uninterruptedly for an hour and a quarter. He stopped only once, for a long time swallowing his saliva, but he immediately mastered himself and made up for the lost time by a greater flow of eloquence. He spoke in a gentle, insinuating voice, resting now on one foot, now on the other, and looking at the jury; then changed to a calm, business tone, consulting his note-book, and again he thundered accusations, turning now to the spectators, now to the jury. But he never looked at the prisoners, all three of whom stared at him. He incorporated into his speech all the latest ideas then in vogue in the circle of his acquaintances, and what was then and is now received as the last word of scientific wisdom. He spoke of heredity, of innate criminality, of Lombroso, of Charcot, of evolution, of the struggle for existence, of hypnotism, of hypnotic suggestion, and of decadence.

The merchant Smelkoff, according to the prosecutor, was a type of the great, pure Russian, with his broad nature, who, in consequence of his trusting nature and generosity, had become a victim of a gang of corrupt people, into whose hands he had fallen.

Simon Kartinkin was the atavistic production of serfdom, stupid, without education, and even without religion. Euphemia was his mistress, and a victim of heredity. All the symptoms of degenerate life were in her. But the ruling spirit in this crime was Maslova, who was the mouthpiece of the lowest phenomenon of decadence. "This woman," said the prosecutor without looking at her, "received an education—you have heard here the evidence of her mistress. Not only can she read and write, but she can speak French. She is an orphan, and probably bears the germs of criminality in her. She was raised in an intelligent, noble family, and could make her living by honest toil, but she leaves them, yields to her passions, and displays an intelligence, and especially, as you have heard here, gentlemen of the jury, an ability to exert influence on people by that mysterious, lately discovered by science, especially by the school of Charcot, power known by the name of hypnotic suggestion. By the aid of this power she gets control over this hero—a kind, trustful, rich guest, and uses his confidence first to rob him, and then to pitilessly murder him."

"But he is wandering away," said the justiciary, smiling and leaning over to the stern associate.

"What an awful blockhead!" said the stern associate.

"Gentlemen of the jury!" the prosecutor continued meanwhile, gracefully swaying his slim body. "The fate of these people is in your hands, as is to some extent the fate of society, which is influenced by your verdict. You must fathom the significance of this crime, the danger to society that lurks in such pathological, as it were, individuals as Maslova. You must guard it against infection; it is your duty to guard the innocent, healthy elements of society against contagion, if not destruction."

And as if himself impressed with the importance of the verdict, and evidently greatly delighted with his speech, the prosecutor took his seat.

The burden of his speech, if we eliminate the flights of eloquence, was to the effect that Maslova, after gaining the merchant's confidence, hypnotized him, and that, arriving at the inn with the key to the merchant's trunk, she intended to steal the money herself, but, being discovered by Simon and Euphemia, was obliged to divide with them. That afterward, desiring to conceal the traces of her crime, she returned with the merchant to the inn and administered poison to him.

When the prosecutor had finished his speech, a middle-aged man, in a dress coat and wide semi-circle of starched shirt front, rose from the lawyer's bench, and boldly began to deliver a speech in defense of Kartinkin and Bochkova. He was a lawyer hired by them for three hundred rubles. He declared them both innocent, and threw all the blame on Maslova.

He belittled the deposition of Maslova relating to the presence of Bochkova and Kartinkin when she took the money, and insisted that, as she had confessed to poisoning the merchant, her evidence could have no weight. The twenty-five hundred rubles could have been earned by two hard working and honest persons, who were receiving in tips three to four rubles a day from guests. The merchant's money was stolen by Maslova, who either gave it to some one for safe keeping, or lost it, which was not unlikely, as she was not in a normal condition. The poisoning was done by Maslova alone.

For these reasons he asked the jury to acquit Kartinkin and Bochkova of stealing the money; or, if they found them guilty of stealing he asked for a verdict of theft, but without participation in the poisoning, and without conspiracy.

In conclusion, this lawyer made a thrust at the prosecuting attorney by remarking that, although the splendid reasonings of the prosecutor on heredity explain the scientific questions of heredity, they hardly hold good in the case of Bochkova, since her parentage was unknown.

The prosecutor, growling, began to make notes, and shrugged his shoulders in contemptuous surprise.

Next rose Maslova's lawyer, and timidly and falteringly began his speech in her defense. Without denying that Maslova participated in the theft, he insisted that she had no intention of poisoning Smelkoff, but gave him the powder in order to make him sleep. When he described Maslova's unfortunate life, telling how she had been drawn into a life of vice by a man who went unpunished, while she was left to bear the whole burden of her fall, he attempted to become eloquent, but his excursion into the domain of psychology failed, so that everybody felt awkward. When he began to mutter about man's cruelty and woman's helplessness, the justiciary, desiring to help him, asked him to confine himself to the facts of the case.

After this lawyer had finished the prosecutor rose again and defended his position on the question of heredity against the first lawyer, stating that the fact that Bochkova's parentage was unknown did not invalidate the truth of the theory of heredity; that the law of heredity is so well established by science that not only can one deduce the crime from heredity, but heredity from the crime. As to the statement of the defense that Maslova was drawn into a vicious life by an imaginary (he pronounced the word imaginary with particular virulence) man, he could say that all facts rather pointed to her being the seducer of many victims who were unfortunate enough to fall into her hands. Saying which he sat down in triumph.

The prisoners were then allowed to make any statements they wished in their behalf.

Euphemia Bochkova repeated her statement that she knew nothing, had not taken part in anything, and persistently pointed at Maslova as the only guilty person. Simon only repeated several times:

"Do what you please with me, only it is all for nothing."

Maslova was silent. When asked what she had to say in her defense, she only lifted her eyes on the justiciary, looked around like a hunted animal, and immediately lowering them began to sob aloud.

"What is the matter?" asked the merchant of Nekhludoff, hearing a strange sound escaping the latter's lips. It was a suppressed sob.

Nekhludoff did not yet realize the significance of his present position, and the scarcely suppressed sob and the tears that welled up in his eyes he ascribed to the weakness of his nerves. He put on his pince-nez to hide them, and, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, began to blow his nose.

His fear of the disgrace that would fall upon him if everybody in the court-room were to find out his conduct toward her stifled the struggle that was going on within him. At this time fear outweighed in him every other feeling.

CHAPTER XXII.

After the last words of the prisoners had been heard, and the lengthy arguments over the form in which the questions were to be put to the jury were over, the questions were finally agreed upon, and the justiciary began to deliver his instructions to the jury.

Although he was anxious to finish the case, he was so carried away that when he started to speak he could not stop himself. He told the jury at great length that if they found the prisoners guilty, they had the right to return a verdict of guilty, and if they found them not guilty, they had the right to return a verdict of not guilty. If, however they found them guilty of one charge, and not guilty of the other, they might bring in a verdict of guilty of the one and not guilty of the other. He further explained to them that they must exercise this power intelligently. He also intended to explain to them that if they gave an affirmative answer to a question, they would thereby affirm everything involved in the question, and that if they did not desire to affirm everything involved in the question, they must distinguish the part they affirmed from the part they disaffirmed. But, seeing on the clock that it was five minutes of three, he decided to pass over to a statement of the case.

"The facts of this case are the following," he began, repeating everything that had been stated over and over again by the defendants' attorneys, the prosecutor and the witnesses. While the justiciary was charging the jury his associates thoughtfully listened, and now and then glanced at the clock. They thought that although his charge was sound, i. e., as it should be, it was too long. Of the same opinion was the prosecutor, as well as all those connected with the court, including the spectators. The justiciary concluded his charge.

It was thought he had finished. But the justiciary found it necessary to add a few words concerning the importance of the power given to the jury; that it should be used with care, and should not be abused; that they had taken an oath; that they were the conscience of society, and that the secrecy of the consultation room was sacred, etc., etc.

From the moment the justiciary began to speak, Maslova kept her eyes on him, as if she feared to miss a word, so that Nekhludoff was not afraid to meet her gaze, and constantly looked at her. And before his imagination arose that common phenomenon of the appearance of a long absent, beloved face, which, after the first shock produced by the external changes which have taken place during the long absence, gradually becomes the same as it was many years ago—all the past changes disappear, and before the spiritual eyes stands forth the main expression of the peculiar spiritual individuality. This happened with Nekhludoff.

Yes, notwithstanding the prison garb, the bloated body and the high breast; notwithstanding the distended lower part of the face, the wrinkles on the forehead and the temples, and the swelling under the eyes, it was undoubtedly that same Katiousha who on Easter Sunday looked up to him, her beloved, with her enamored, smiling, happy, lively eyes.

"What a remarkable coincidence! That this case should be tried during my term! That, without seeing her for ten years, I should meet her here in the prisoner's dock! And what will be the end? Ah, I wish it were over!"

He would not yield to the feeling of repentance which spoke within him. He considered it an incident which would soon pass away without disturbing his life. He felt himself in the position of a puppy who had misbehaved in his master's rooms, and whom his master, taking him by the neck, thrust into the dirt he had made. The puppy squeals, pulls back in his effort to escape the consequences of his deed, which he wishes to forget, but the inexorable master holds him fast. Thus Nekhludoff felt the foulness of his act, and he also felt the powerful hand of the master, but did not yet understand the significance of his act, did not recognize the master. He did not wish to believe that what he saw before him was the result of his own deed. But the inexorable, invisible hand held him fast, and he had a foreboding that he should not escape. He summoned up his courage, crossed his legs, as was his wont, and, negligently playing with his pince-nez, he sat with an air of self-confidence on the second chair of the front row. Meanwhile he already felt in the depth of his soul all the cruelty, dastardliness and baseness not only of that act of his, but of his whole idle, dissolute, cruel and wayward life. And the terrible veil, which during these twelve years in such marvelous manner had hidden from him that crime and all his subsequent life, already began to stir, and now and then he caught a glimpse behind it.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The justiciary finally finished his speech and handed the list of questions to the foreman. The jury rose from their seats, glad of an opportunity to leave the court-room, and, not knowing what to do with their hands, as if ashamed of something, they filed into the consultation-room. As soon as the door closed behind them a gendarme, with drawn sword resting on his shoulder, placed himself in front of it. The judges rose and went out. The prisoners also were led away.

On entering the consultation-room the jury immediately produced cigarettes and began to smoke. The sense of their unnatural and false position, of which they were to a greater or less degree cognizant, while sitting in the court-room, passed away as soon as they entered their room and lighted their cigarettes, and, with a feeling of relief, they seated themselves and immediately started an animated conversation.

"The girl is not guilty, she was confused," said the kind-hearted merchant.

"That is what we are going to consider," retorted the foreman. "We must not yield to our personal impressions."

"The judge's summing up was good," said the colonel.

"Do you call it good? It nearly sent me to sleep."

"The important point is that the servants could not have known that there was money in the room if Maslova had no understanding with them," said the clerk with the Jewish face.

"So you think that she stole it?" asked one of the jury.

"I will never believe that," shouted the kind-hearted merchant. "It is all the work of that red-eyed wench."

"They are all alike," said the colonel.

"But she said that she did not go into the room."

"Do you believe her more than the other? I should never believe that worthless woman."

"That does not decide the question," said the clerk.

"She had the key."

"What if she had?" answered the merchant.

"And the ring?"

"She explained it," again shouted the merchant. "It is quite likely that being drunk he struck her. Well, and then he was sorry, of course. 'There, don't cry! Take this ring.' And what a big man! They said he weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds, I believe."

"That is not the point," interrupted Peter Gerasimovich. "The question is, Was she the instigator, or were the servants?"

"The servants could not have done it without her. She had the key."

This incoherent conversation lasted for a long time.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said the foreman. "Let us sit down and consider the matter. Take your seats," he added, seating himself in the foreman's chair.

"These girls are rogues," said the clerk, and to sustain his opinion that Maslova was the chief culprit, he related how one of those girls once stole a watch from a friend of his.

As a case in point the colonel related the bolder theft of a silver samovar.

"Gentlemen, let us take up the questions," said the foreman, rapping on the table with a pencil.

They became silent. The questions submitted were:

1. Is the peasant of the village of Barkoff, district of Krapivensk, Simon Petroff Kartinkin, thirty-three years of age, guilty of having, with the design of taking the life of Smelkoff and robbing him, administered to him poison in a glass of brandy, which caused the death of Smelkoff, and of afterward robbing him of twenty-five hundred rubles and a diamond ring?

2. Is the burgess Euphemia Ivanovna Bochkova, forty-seven years of age, guilty of the crime mentioned in the first question?

3. Is the burgess Katherine Michaelovna Maslova, twenty-seven years of age, guilty of the crime mentioned in the first question?

4. If the prisoner Euphemia Bochkova is not guilty of the crime set forth in the first question, is she not guilty of secretly stealing, while employed in the Hotel Mauritania, on the 17th day of January, 188—, twenty-five hundred rubles from the trunk of the merchant Smelkoff, to which end she opened the trunk in the hotel with a key brought and fitted by her?

The foreman read the first question.

"Well, gentlemen, what do you think?"

This question was quickly answered. They all agreed to answer "Guilty." The only one that dissented was an old laborer, whose answer to all questions was "Not guilty."

The foreman thought that he did not understand the questions and proceeded to explain that from all the facts it was evident that Kartinkin and Bochkova were guilty, but the laborer answered that he did understand them, and that he thought that they ought to be charitable. "We are not saints ourselves," he said, and did not change his opinion.

The second question, relating to Bochkova, after many arguments and elucidations, was answered "Not guilty," because there was no clear proof that she participated in the poisoning—a fact on which her lawyer put much stress.

The merchant, desiring to acquit Maslova, insisted that Bochkova was the author of the conspiracy. Many of the jurymen agreed with him, but the foreman, desiring to conform strictly to the law, said that there was no foundation for the charge of poisoning against her. After a lengthy argument the foreman's opinion triumphed.

The fourth question, relating to Bochkova, was answered "Guilty," but at the insistence of the laborer, she was recommended to the mercy of the court.

The third question called forth fierce argument. The foreman insisted that she was guilty of both the poisoning and robbery; the merchant, colonel, clerk and laborer opposed this view, while the others hesitated, but the opinion of the foreman began to predominate, principally because the jury were tired out, and they willingly joined the side which promised to prevail the sooner, and consequently release them quicker.

From all that occurred at the trial and his knowledge of Maslova, Nekhludoff was convinced that she was innocent, and at first was confident that the other jurors would so find her, but when he saw that because of the merchant's bungling defense of Maslova, evidently prompted by his undisguised liking for her, and the foreman's resistance which it caused, but chiefly because of the weariness of the jury, there was likely to be a verdict of guilty, he wished to make objection, but feared to speak in her favor lest his relations toward her should be disclosed. At the same time he felt that he could not let things go on without making his objections. He blushed and grew pale in turn, and was about to speak, when Peter Gerasimovich, heretofore silent, evidently exasperated by the authoritative manner of the foreman, suddenly began to make the very objections Nekhludoff intended to make.

"Permit me to say a few words," he began. "You say that she stole the money because she had the key; but the servants could have opened the trunk with a false key after she was gone."

"Of course, of course," the merchant came to his support.

"She could not have taken the money because she would have nowhere to hide it."

"That is what I said," the merchant encouraged him.

"It is more likely that her coming to the hotel for the money suggested to the servants the idea of stealing it; that they stole it and then threw it all upon her."

Peter Gerasimovich spoke provokingly, which communicated itself to the foreman. As a result the latter began to defend his position more persistently. But Peter Gerasimovich spoke so convincingly that he won over the majority, and it was finally decided that she was not guilty of the theft. When, however, they began to discuss the part she had taken in the poisoning, her warm supporter, the merchant, argued that this charge must also be dismissed, as she had no motive for poisoning him. The foreman insisted that she could not be declared innocent on that charge, because she herself confessed to giving him the powder.

"But she thought that it was opium," said the merchant.

"She could have killed him even with the opium," retorted the colonel, who liked to make digressions, and he began to relate the case of his brother-in-law's wife, who had been poisoned by opium and would have died had not antidotes promptly been administered by a physician who happened to be in the neighborhood. The colonel spoke so impressively and with such self-confidence and dignity that no one dared to interrupt him. Only the clerk, infected by the example set by the colonel, thought of telling a story of his own.

"Some people get so accustomed to opium," he began, "that they can take forty drops at a time. A relative of mine——"

But the colonel would brook no interruption, and went on to tell of the effect of the opium on his brother-in-law's wife.

"It is five o'clock, gentlemen," said one of the jury.

"What do you say, gentlemen," said the foreman. "We find her guilty, but without the intent to rob, and without stealing any property—is that correct?"

Peter Gerasimovich, pleased with the victory he had gained, agreed to the verdict.

"And we recommend her to the mercy of the court," added the merchant.

Every one agreed except the laborer, who insisted on a verdict of "Not guilty."

"But that is the meaning of the verdict," explained the foreman. "Without the intent to rob, and without stealing any property—hence she is not guilty."

"Don't forget to throw in the recommendation to mercy. If there be anything left that will wipe it out," joyfully said the merchant. They were so tired and the arguments had so confused them that it did not occur to any one to add "but without the intent to cause the death of the merchant."

Nekhludoff was so excited that he did not notice it. The answers were in this form taken to the court.

Rabelais relates the story of a jurist who was trying a case, and who, after citing innumerable laws and reading twenty pages of incomprehensible judicial Latin, made an offer to the litigants to throw dice; if an even number fell then the plaintiff was right; if an odd number the defendant was right.

It was the same here. The verdict was reached not because the majority of the jury agreed to it, but first because the justiciary had so drawn out his speech that he failed to properly instruct the jury; second, because the colonel's story about his brother-in-law's wife was tedious; third, because Nekhludoff was so excited that he did not notice the omission of the clause limiting the intent in the answer, and thought that the words "without intent to rob" negatively answered the question; fourth, because Peter Gerasimovich was not in the room when the foreman read the questions and answers, and chiefly because the jury were tired out and were anxious to get away, and therefore agreed to the verdict which it was easiest to reach.

They rang the bell. The gendarme sheathed his sword and stood aside. The judges, one by one, took their seats and the jury filed out.

The foreman held the list with a solemn air. He approached the justiciary and handed it to him. The justiciary read it, and, with evident surprise, turned to consult with his associates. He was surprised that the jury, in limiting the charge by the words, "without intent to rob," should fail to add also "without intent to cause death." It followed from the decision of the jury, that Maslova had not stolen or robbed, but had poisoned a man without any apparent reason.

"Just see what an absurd decision they have reached," he said to the associate on his left. "This means hard labor for her, and she is not guilty."

"Why not guilty?" said the stern associate.

"She is simply not guilty. I think that chapter 818 might properly be applied to this case." (Chapter 818 gives the court the power to set aside an unjust verdict.)

"What do you think?" he asked the kind associate.

"I agree with you."

"And you?" he asked the choleric associate.

"By no means," he answered, decidedly. "As it is, the papers say that too many criminals are discharged by juries. What will they say, then, if the court should discharge them? I will not agree under any circumstances."

The justiciary looked at the clock.

"It is a pity, but what can I do?" and he handed the questions to the foreman.

They all rose, and the foreman, standing now on one foot, now on the other, cleared his throat and read the questions and answers. All the officers of the court—the secretary, the lawyers and even the prosecutor—expressed surprise.

The prisoners, who evidently did not understand the significance of the answers, were serene. When the reading was over, the justiciary asked the prosecutor what punishment he thought should be imposed on the prisoners.

The prosecutor, elated by the successful verdict against Maslova, which he ascribed to his eloquence, consulted some books, then rose and said:

"Simon Kartinkin, I think, should be punished according to chapter 1,452, sec. 4, and chapter 1,453; Euphemia Bochkova according to chapter 1,659, and Katherine Maslova according to chapter 1,454."

All these were the severest punishments that could be imposed for the crimes.

"The court will retire to consider their decision," said the justiciary, rising.

Everybody then rose, and, with a relieved and pleasant feeling of having fulfilled an important duty, walked around the court-room.

"What a shameful mess we have made of it," said Peter Gerasimovitch, approaching Nekhludoff, to whom the foreman was telling a story. "Why, we have sentenced her to hard labor."

"Is it possible?" exclaimed Nekhludoff, taking no notice at all this time of the unpleasant familiarity of the tutor.

"Why, of course," he said. "We have not inserted in the answer, 'Guilty, but without intent to cause death.' The secretary has just told me that the law cited by the prosecutor provides fifteen years' hard labor."

"But that was our verdict," said the foreman.

Peter Gerasimovitch began to argue that it was self-evident that as she did not steal the money she could not have intended to take the merchant's life.

"But I read the questions before we left the room," the foreman justified himself, "and no one objected."

"I was leaving the room at the time," said Peter Gerasimovitch. "But how did you come to miss it?"

"I did not think of it," answered Nekhludoff.

"You did not!"

"We can right it yet," said Nekhludoff.

"No, we cannot—it is all over now."

Nekhludoff looked at the prisoners. While their fate was being decided, they sat motionless behind the grating in front of the soldiers. Maslova was smiling.

Nekhludoff's soul was stirred by evil thoughts. When he thought that she would be freed and remain in the city, he was undecided how he should act toward her, and it was a difficult matter. But Siberia and penal servitude at once destroyed the possibility of their meeting again. The wounded bird would stop struggling in the game-bag, and would no longer remind him of its existence.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The apprehensions of Peter Gerasimovitch were justified.

On returning from the consultation-room the justiciary produced a document and read the following:

"By order of His Imperial Majesty, the Criminal Division of the —— Circuit Court, in conformity with the finding of the jury, and in accordance with ch. 771, s. 3, and ch. 776, s. 3, and ch. 777 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, this 28th day of April, 188—, decrees that Simon Kartinkin, thirty-three years of age, and Katherine Maslova, twenty-seven years of age, be deprived of all civil rights, and sent to penal servitude, Kartinkin for eight, Maslova for the term of four years, under conditions prescribed by ch. 25 of the Code. Euphemia Bochkova is deprived of all civil and special rights and privileges, and is to be confined in jail for the period of three years under conditions prescribed by ch. 49 of the Code, with the costs of the trial to be borne by all three, and in case of their inability to pay, to be paid out of the treasury.

"The exhibits are to be sold, the ring returned, and the vials destroyed."

Kartinkin stood like a post, and with outstretched fingers held up the sleeves of his coat, moving his jaws. Bochkova seemed to be calm. When Maslova heard the decision, she turned red in the face.

"I am innocent, I am innocent!" she suddenly cried. "It is a sin. I am innocent. I never wished; never thought. It is the truth." And sinking to the bench, she began to cry aloud.

When Kartinkin and Bochkova left the court-room she was still standing and crying, so that the gendarme had to touch the sleeve of her coat.

"She cannot be left to her fate," said Nekhludoff to himself, entirely forgetting his evil thoughts, and, without knowing why, he ran into the corridor to look at her again. He was detained at the door for a few minutes by the jostling, animated crowd of jurors and lawyers, who were glad that the case was over, so that when he reached the corridor Maslova was some distance away. Without thinking of the attention he was attracting, with quick step he overtook her, walked a little ahead of her and stopped. She had ceased to cry, only a sob escaped her now and then while she wiped her tears with a corner of her 'kerchief. She passed him without turning to look at him. He then hastily returned to see the justiciary. The latter had left his room, and Nekhludoff found him in the porter's lodge.

"Judge," said Nekhludoff, approaching him at the moment when he was putting on a light overcoat and taking a silver-handled cane which the porter handed him, "may I speak to you about the case that has just been tried? I am a juror."

"Why, of course, Prince Nekhludoff! I am delighted to see you. We have met before," said the justiciary, pressing his hand, and recalling with pleasure that he was the jolliest fellow and best dancer of all the young men on the evening he had met him. "What can I do for you?"

"There was a mistake in the jury's finding against Maslova. She is not guilty of poisoning, and yet she is sent to penal servitude," he said, with a gloomy countenance.

"The court gave its decision in accordance with your own finding," answered the justiciary, moving toward the door, "although the answers did not seem to suit the case."

He remembered that he intended to explain to the jury that an answer of guilty without a denial of intent to kill involved an intent to kill, but, as he was hastening to terminate the proceedings, he failed to do so.

"But could not the mistake be rectified?"

"Cause for appeal can always be found. You must see a lawyer," said the justiciary, putting on his hat a little on one side and continuing to move toward the door.

"But this is terrible."

"You see, one of two things confronted Maslova," the justiciary said, evidently desiring to be as pleasant and polite with Nekhludoff as possible. Then, arranging his side-whiskers over his coat collar, and taking Nekhludoff's arm, he led him toward the door. "You are also going?" he continued.

"Yes," said Nekhludoff, hastily donning his overcoat and following him.

They came out into the bright, cheerful sunlight, where the rattling of wheels on the pavement made it necessary to raise their voices.

"The situation, you see, is a very curious one," continued the justiciary. "Maslova was confronted by one of two things: either a short term in jail, in which case her lengthy confinement would have been taken into consideration, or penal servitude; no other sentence was possible. Had you added the words, 'without intent to kill,' she would have been discharged."

"It is unpardonable neglect on my part," said Nekhludoff.

"That is the whole trouble," the justiciary said, smiling and looking at his watch.

There was only three-quarters of an hour left to the latest hour fixed in Clara's appointment.

"You can apply to a lawyer, if you wish. It is necessary to find grounds for appeal. But that can always be found. To the Dvorianskaia," he said to the cab-driver. "Thirty kopecks—I never pay more."

"All right, Your Excellency."

"Good-day. If I can be of any service to you, please let me know. You will easily remember my address: Dvornikoff's house, on the Dvorinskaia."

And, making a graceful bow, he rode off.

CHAPTER XXV.

The conversation with the justiciary and the pure air somewhat calmed Nekhludoff. The feeling he experienced he now ascribed to the fact that he had passed the day amid surroundings to which he was unaccustomed.

"It is certainly a remarkable coincidence! I must do what is necessary to alleviate her lot, and do it quickly. Yes, I must find out here where Fanarin or Mikishin lives." Nekhludoff called to mind these two well-known lawyers.

Nekhludoff returned to the court-house, took off his overcoat and walked up the stairs. In the very first corridor he met Fanarin. He stopped him and told him that he had some business with him. Fanarin knew him by sight, and also his name. He told Nekhludoff that he would be glad to do anything to please him.

"I am rather tired, but, if it won't take long, I will listen to your case. Let us walk into that room."

And Fanarin led Nekhludoff into a room, probably the cabinet of some judge. They seated themselves at a table.

"Well, state your case."

"First of all, I will ask you," said Nekhludoff, "not to disclose that I am interesting myself in this case."

"That is understood. Well?"

"I was on a jury to-day, and we sent an innocent woman to Siberia. It torments me."

To his own surprise, Nekhludoff blushed and hesitated. Fanarin glanced at him, then lowered his eyes and listened.

"Well?"

"We condemned an innocent woman, and I would like to have the case appealed to a higher court."

"To the Senate?" Fanarin corrected him.

"And I wish you to take the case."

Nekhludoff wanted to get through the most difficult part, and therefore immediately added:

"I take all expenses on myself, whatever they may be," he said, blushing.

"Well, we will arrange all that," said the lawyer, condescendingly smiling at Nekhludoff's inexperience.

"What are the facts of the case?"

Nekhludoff related them.

"Very well; I will examine the record to-morrow. Call at my office the day after—no, better on Thursday, at six o'clock in the evening, and I will give you an answer. And now let us go; I must make some inquiries here."

Nekhludoff bade him good-by, and departed.

His conversation with the lawyer, and the fact that he had already taken steps to defend Maslova, still more calmed his spirit. The weather was fine, and when Nekhludoff found himself on the street, he gladly inhaled the spring air. Cab drivers offered their services, but he preferred to walk, and a swarm of thoughts and recollections of Katiousha and his conduct toward her immediately filled his head. He became sad, and everything appeared to him gloomy. "No, I will consider it later," he said to himself, "and now I must have some diversion from these painful impressions."

The dinner at the Korchagin's came to his mind, and he looked at his watch. It was not too late to reach there for dinner. A tram-car passed by. He ran after it, and boarded it at a bound. On the square he jumped off, took one of the best cabs, and ten minutes later he alighted in front of Korchagin's large dwelling.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"Walk in, Your Excellency, you are expected," said the fat porter, pushing open the swinging, oaken door of the entrance. "They are dining, but I was told to admit you."

The porter walked to the stairway and rang the bell.

"Are there any guests?" Nekhludoff asked, while taking off his coat.

"Mr. Kolosoff, also Michael Sergeievich, besides the family," answered the porter.

A fine-looking lackey in dress coat and white gloves looked down from the top of the stairs.

"Please to walk in, Your Excellency," he said.

Nekhludoff mounted the stairs, and through the spacious and magnificent parlor he entered the dining-room. Around the table were seated the entire family, except Princess Sophia Vasilievna, who never left her own apartments. At the head of the table sat old Korchagin, on his left the physician; on his right, a visitor, Ivan Ivanovich Kolosoff, an ex-district commander, and now a bank manager, who was a friend of the family, and of liberal tendencies; further to the left was Miss Rader, governess to Missy's four-year-old sister, with the little girl herself; then to the right, Missy's only brother, Peter, a high-school pupil, on account of whose forthcoming examinations the entire family remained in the city, and his tutor, also a student; then again to the left, Katherine Alexeievna, a forty-year-old girl Slavophile; opposite to her was Michael Sergeievich, or Misha Telegin, Missy's cousin, and at the foot of the table, Missy herself, and beside her, on the table, lay an extra cover.

"Ah, very glad you came! Take a seat! We are still at the fish," chewing carefully with his false teeth old Korchagin said, lifting his bloodshot eyes on Nekhludoff. "Stepan!" he turned with a full mouth to the fat, majestic servant, pointing with his eyes to Nekhludoff's plate. Although Nekhludoff had often dined with and knew Korchagin well, this evening his old face, his sensual, smacking lips, the napkin stuck under his vest, the fat neck, and especially the well-fed, military figure made an unpleasant impression on him.

"It is all ready, Your Excellency," said Stepan, taking a soup ladle from the sideboard and nodding to the fine-looking servant with the side-whiskers, who immediately began to set the table beside Missy.

Nekhludoff went around the table shaking hands with every one. All, except Korchagin and the ladies, rose from their seats when he approached them. And this walking around the table and his handshaking, although most of the people were comparative strangers to him, this evening seemed to Nekhludoff particularly unpleasant and ridiculous. He excused himself for his late coming, and was about to seat himself at the end of the table between Missy and Katherine Alexeievna, when old Korchagin demanded that, since he would not take any brandy, he should first take a bite at the table, on which were lobster, caviare, cheese and herring. Nekhludoff did not know he was as hungry as he turned out to be, and when he tasted of some cheese and bread he could not stop eating, and ate ravenously.

"Well? Have you been undermining the bases of society?" asked Kolosoff, ironically, using an expression of a retrogressive newspaper, which was attacking the jury system. "You have acquitted the guilty and condemned the innocent? Have you?"

"Undermining the bases—undermining the bases"—smilingly repeated the Prince, who had boundless confidence in the intelligence and honesty of his liberal comrade and friend.

Nekhludoff, at the risk of being impolite, did not answer Kolosoff, and, seating himself before the steaming soup, continued to eat.

"Do let him eat," said Missy, smiling. By the pronoun "him," she meant to call attention to her intimacy with Nekhludoff.

Meanwhile Kolosoff was energetically and loudly discussing the article against trial by jury which had roused his indignation. Michael Sergeievich supported his contentions and quoted the contents of another similar article.

Missy, as usual, was very distingue and unobtrusively well dressed. She waited until Nekhludoff had swallowed the mouthful he was chewing, and then said: "You must be very tired and hungry."

"Not particularly. Are you? Have you been to the exhibition?" he asked.

"No, we postponed it. But we went to play lawn tennis at the Salamatoff's. Mister Crooks is really a remarkable player."

Nekhludoff had came here for recreation, and it was always pleasant to him to be in this house, not only because of the elegant luxury, which acted pleasantly on his senses, but because of the adulating kindnesses with which they invisibly surrounded him. To-day, however—it is wonderful to relate—everything in this house disgusted him; the porter, the broad stairway, the flowers, the lackeys, the table decorations, and even Missy herself, who, just now, seemed to him unattractive and unnatural. He was disgusted with that self-confident, vulgar, liberal tone of Kolosoff, the bull-like, sensual, figure of old Korchagin, the French phrases of the Slavophile maiden, the ceremonious faces of the governess and the tutor. But above all, he was disgusted with the pronoun "him" that Missy had used. Nekhludoff was always wavering between two different relations he sustained toward Missy. Sometimes he looked at her as through blinking eyes or by moonlight, and then she seemed to him beautiful, fresh, pretty, clever and natural. At other times he looked at her as if under a bright sun, and then he saw only her defects. To-day was such a day. He saw the wrinkles on her face; saw the artificial arrangement of her hair; the pointed elbows, and, above all, her large thumb nail, resembling that of her father.

"It is the dullest game," Kolosoff said, speaking of tennis, "baseball, as we played it when we were boys, is much more amusing."

"You have not tried it. It is awfully interesting," retorted Missy, unnaturally accentuating the word "awfully," as it seemed to Nekhludoff.

A discussion arose in which Michael Sergeievich and Katherine Alexeievna took part. Only the governess, the tutor and the children were silent, evidently from ennui.

"They are eternally disputing!" laughing aloud, said old Korchagin. He pulled the napkin from his vest, and, noisily pushing back his chair, which was immediately removed by a servant, rose from the table. They all rose after him and went to a small table, on which stood figured bowls filled with perfumed water; then they washed their finger-tips and rinsed their mouths, and continued their conversation, in which no one took any interest.

"Is it not true?" Missy said to Nekhludoff, desiring to receive confirmation of her opinion that man's character can best be learned in play. She noticed on his thoughtful face an expression of reproach, which inspired her with fear, and she wished to know the cause of it.

"I really don't know. I never thought of it," answered Nekhludoff.

"Will you go to mamma?" asked Missy.

"Yes, yes," he said, producing a cigarette. The tone of his voice plainly betrayed that he did not wish to go.

She looked at him inquiringly, but was silent. He felt ashamed. "It is hardly proper for me to come here to put people out of temper," he thought, and, in an effort to be pleasant, he said that he would go with pleasure if the Princess were in a mood to receive him.

"Yes, yes; mamma will be glad. You can smoke there also. And Ivan Ivanovich is with her."

The mistress of the house, Sophia Vasilievna, was an invalid. For eight years she had reclined in laces and ribbons, amid velvet, gilding, ivory, bronzes and flowers. She never drove out, and received only her "friends," i. e., whoever, according to her view, in any way distinguished himself from the crowd. Nekhludoff was one of these friends, not only because he was considered a clever young man, but also because his mother was a close friend of the family and he was a desirable match for Missy.

Her room was beyond the small and large drawing-rooms. In the large drawing-room Missy, who preceded Nekhludoff, suddenly stopped, and placing her hands on the back of a gilt chair, looked at him.

Missy was very anxious to be married, and Nekhludoff was a desirable party. Besides, she liked him, and had become accustomed to the thought that he would belong to her, and not she to him, and, with the unconscious but persistent craftiness of heart-sick persons, she gained her end. She addressed him now with the intention of bringing forth an explanation.

"I see that something has happened to you," she said. "What is the matter with you?"

The meeting in the court came to his mind, and he frowned and blushed.

"Yes, something has happened," he said, desiring to be truthful. "It was a strange, extraordinary and important event."

"What was it? Can't you tell me?"

"Not now. Don't press me for an answer. I have not had the time to think over the matter," he said, blushing still more.

"And you will not tell me?" The muscles on her cheek quivered, and she pushed away the chair.

"No, I cannot," he answered, feeling that answering her thus he answered himself—admitted to himself that something very important had really happened to him.

"Well, then, come!"

She shook her head as if desiring to drive away undesirable thoughts, and walked forward with a quicker step than usual.

It seemed to him that she unnaturally compressed her lips in order to suppress her tears. It was painful to him to grieve her, but he knew that the slightest weakness would ruin him, i. e., bind him. And this he feared more than anything else to-day, so he silently followed her to the door of the Princess' apartments.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Princess Sophia Vasilievna had finished her meal of choice and nourishing dishes, which she always took alone, that no one might see her performing that unpoetical function. A cup of coffee stood on a small table near her couch, and she was smoking a cigarette. Princess Sophia Vasilievna was a lean and tall brunette, with long teeth and large black eyes, who desired to pass for a young woman.

People were making unpleasant remarks about her relations with the doctor. Formerly Nekhludoff had paid no attention to them. But to-day, the sight of the doctor, with his oily, sleek head, which was parted in the middle, sitting near her couch, was repulsive to him.

Beside the Princess sat Kolosoff, stirring the coffee. A glass of liquor was on the table.

Missy entered, together with Nekhludoff, but she did not remain in the room.

"When mamma gets tired of you and drives you away, come to my room," she said, turning to Nekhludoff, as if nothing had happened, and, smiling cheerfully, she walked out of the room, her steps deadened by the heavy carpet.

"Well, how do you do, my friend? Sit down and tell us the news," said Sophia Vasilievna, with an artful, feigned, resembling a perfectly natural, smile, which displayed her beautiful, long, skillfully made, almost natural-looking teeth. "I am told that you returned from the court in very gloomy spirits. It must be very painful to people with a heart," she said in French.

"Yes, that is true," said Nekhludoff. "One often feels his—feels that he has no right to judge others."

"Comme c'est vrai!" she exclaimed, as if struck by the truth of the remark, and, as usual, artfully flattering her friend.

"And what about your picture? It interests me very much," she added. "Were it not for my indisposition, I should have visited you long ago."

"I have given up painting entirely," he answered dryly. Her unjust flattery was as apparent to him to-day as was her age, which she attempted to conceal. Try as he would, he could not force himself to be pleasant.

"It is too bad! You know, Riepin himself told me that Nekhludoff possesses undoubted talent," she said, turning to Kolosoff.

"What a shameless liar!" Nekhludoff thought, frowning.

Seeing that Nekhludoff was in ill humor, and could not be drawn into pleasant and clear conversation, Sophia Vasilievna turned to Kolosoff for his opinion of the new drama, with an air as if Kolosoff's opinion would dispel all doubt and every word of his was destined to become immortalized. Kolosoff condemned the drama and took occasion to state his views on art. The correctness of his views seemed to impress her; she attempted to defend the author of the drama, but immediately yielded, or found a middle ground. Nekhludoff looked and listened and yet saw and heard but little.

Listening now to Sophia Vasilievna, now to Kolosoff, Nekhludoff saw, first, that neither of them cared either for the drama or for each other, and that they were talking merely to satisfy a physiological craving to exercise, after dinner, the muscles of the tongue and throat. Secondly, he saw that Kolosoff, who had drunk brandy, wine and liquors, was somewhat tipsy—not as drunk as a drinking peasant, but like a man to whom wine-drinking has become a habit. He did not reel, nor did he talk nonsense, but was in an abnormal, excited and contented condition. Thirdly, Nekhludoff saw that Princess Sophia Vasilievna, during the conversation, now and again anxiously glanced at the window, through which a slanting ray of the sun was creeping toward her, threatening to throw too much light on her aged face.

"How true it is," she said of some remark of Kolosoff, and pressed a button on the wall near the couch.

At this moment the doctor rose with as little ceremony as one of the family, and walked out of the room. Sophia Vasilievna followed him with her eyes.

"Please, Phillip, let down that curtain," she said to the fine-looking servant who responded to the bell, her eyes pointing to the window.

"Say what you will, but there is something mystical about him, and without mysticism there is no poetry," she said, with one black eye angrily following the movements of the servant who was lowering the curtain.

"Mysticism without poetry is superstition, and poetry without mysticism is prose," she continued, smiling sadly, still keeping her eye on the servant, who was smoothing down the curtain.

"Not that curtain, Phillip—the one at the large window," she said in a sad voice, evidently pitying herself for the efforts she was compelled to make to say these words, and to calm herself, with her ring-bedecked hand, she lifted to her lips the fragrant, smoking cigarette.

The broad-chested, muscular Phillip bowed slightly, as if excusing himself, and submissively and silently stepped over to the next window, and, carefully looking at the Princess, so arranged the curtain that no stray ray should fall on her. It was again unsatisfactory, and again the exhausted Princess was obliged to interrupt her conversation about mysticism and correct the unintelligent Phillip, who was pitilessly tormenting her. For a moment Phillip's eyes flashed fire.

"'The devil knows what you want,' he is probably saying to himself," Nekhludoff thought, as he watched this play. But the handsome, strong Phillip concealed his impatience, and calmly carried out the instructions of the enervated, weak, artificial Princess Sophia Vasilievna.

"Of course there is considerable truth in Darwin's theory," said the returning Kolosoff, stretching himself on a low arm-chair and looking through sleepy eyes at the Princess, "but he goes too far."

"And do you believe in heredity?" she asked Nekhludoff, oppressed by his silence.

"In heredity?" repeated Nekhludoff. "No, I do not," he said, being entirely absorbed at the moment by those strange forms which, for some reason, appeared to his imagination. Alongside of the strong, handsome Phillip, whom he looked upon as a model, he imagined Kolosoff, naked, his abdomen like a water-melon, bald-headed, and his arms hanging like two cords. He also dimly imagined what the silk-covered shoulders of Sophia Vasilievna would appear like in reality, but the picture was too terrible, and he drove it from his mind.

Sophia Vasilievna scanned him from head to foot.

"Missy is waiting for you," she said. "Go to her room; she wished to play for you a new composition by Schuman. It is very interesting."

"It isn't true. Why should she lie so!" Nekhludoff thought, rising and pressing her transparent, bony, ring-bedecked hand.

In the drawing-room he met Katherine Alexeievna, returning to her mother's apartments. As usual, she greeted him in French.

"I see that the duties of juryman act depressingly upon you," she said.

"Yes, pardon me. I am in low spirits to-day, and I have no right to bore people," answered Nekhludoff.

"Why are you in low spirits?"

"Permit me not to speak of it," he said, looking for his hat as they entered the Princess' cabinet.

"And do you remember telling us that one ought to tell the truth? And what cruel truths you used to tell us! Why don't you tell us now? Do you remember, Missy?" the Princess turned to Missy, who had just entered.

"Because that was in play," answered Nekhludoff gravely. "In play it is permissible, but in reality we are so bad, that is, I am so bad, that I, at least, cannot tell the truth."

"Don't correct yourself, but rather say that we are so bad," said Katherine Alexeievna, playing with the words, and pretending not to see Nekhludoff's gravity.

"There is nothing worse than to confess being in low spirits," said Missy. "I never confess it to myself, and that is why I am always cheerful. Well, come to my room. We shall try to drive away your mauvais humeur."

Nekhludoff experienced the feeling which a horse must feel when brushed down before the bridle is put on and it is led to be harnessed to the wagon. But to-day he was not at all disposed to draw. He excused himself and began to take leave. Missy kept his hand longer than usual.

"Remember that what is important to you is important to your friends," she said. "Will you come to-morrow?"

"I don't think I will," said Nekhludoff. And feeling ashamed, without knowing himself whether for her or for himself, he blushed and hastily departed.

"What does it mean? Comme cela m'intrigue," said Katherine Alexeievna, when Nekhludoff had left. "I must find it out. Some affaire d'amour propre; il est très susceptible notre cher Mitia."

"Plutôt une affaire d'amour sale," Missy was going to say. Her face was now wan and pale. But she did not give expression to that passage, and only said: "We all have our bright days and gloomy days."

"Is it possible that he, too, should deceive me?" she thought. "After all that has happened, it would be very wrong of him."

If Missy had had to explain what she meant by the words, "After all that has happened," she could have told nothing definite, and yet she undoubtedly knew that not only had he given her cause to hope, but he had almost made his promise—not in so many words, but by his glances, his smiles, his innuendos, his silence. She considered him her own, and to lose him would be very painful to her.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"It is shameful and disgusting," Nekhludoff meditated, while returning home on foot along the familiar streets. The oppressive feeling which he had experienced while speaking to Missy clung to him. He understood that nominally, if one may so express himself, he was in the right; he had never said anything to bind himself to her; had made no offer, but in reality he felt that he had bound himself to her, that he had promised to be hers. Yet he felt in all his being that he could not marry her.

"It is shameful and disgusting," he repeated, not only of his relations to Missy, but of everything. "Everything is disgusting and shameful," he repeated to himself, as he ascended the steps of his house.

"I shall take no supper," he said to Kornei, who followed him into the dining-room, where the table was set for his supper. "You may go."

"All right," said Kornei, but did not go, and began to clear the table. Nekhludoff looked at Kornei and an ill feeling sprung up in his heart toward him. He wished to be left in peace, and it seemed as if everybody were spitefully worrying him. When Kornei had left, Nekhludoff went over to the samovar, intending to make some tea, but, hearing the footsteps of Agrippina Petrovna, he hastily walked into the drawing-room, closing the door behind him. This was the room in which, three months ago, his mother had died. Now, as he entered this room, lighted by two lamps with reflectors—one near a portrait of his father, the other near a portrait of his mother—he thought of his relations toward his mother, and these relations seemed to him unnatural and repulsive. These, too, were shameful and disgusting. He remembered how, during her last sickness, he wished her to die. He said to himself that he wished it so that she might be spared the suffering, but in reality he wished to spare himself the sight of her suffering.

Desiring to call forth pleasant recollections about her, he looked at her portrait, painted by a famous artist for five thousand rubles. She was represented in a black velvet dress with bared breast. The artist had evidently drawn with particular care the breast and the beautiful shoulders and neck. That was particularly shameful and disgusting. There was something revolting and sacriligious to him in this representation of his mother as a denuded beauty, the more so because three months ago she lay in this very room shrunken like a mummy, and filling the entire house with an oppressive odor. He thought he could smell the odor now. He remembered how, on the day before she died, she took his strong, white hand into her own emaciated, discolored one, and, looking into his eyes, said: "Do not judge me, Mitia, if I have not done as I should," and her faded eyes filled with tears.

"How disgusting!" he again repeated to himself, glancing at the half-nude woman with splendid marble shoulders and arms and a triumphant smile on her lips. The bared bosom of that portrait reminded him of another young woman whom he had seen dressed in a similar way a few days before. It was Missy, who had invited him to the house under some pretext, in order to display before him her ball-dress. He recalled with disgust her beautiful shoulders and arms; and her coarse, brutal father, with his dark past, his cruelties, and her mother with her doubtful reputation. All this was disgusting and at the same time shameful.

"No, no; I must free myself from all these false relations with the Korchagins, with Maria Vasilievna, with the inheritance and all the rest," he thought. "Yes, to breathe freely; to go abroad—to Rome—and continue to work on my picture." He remembered his doubts about his talent. "Well, it is all the same; I will simply breathe freely. First, I will go to Constantinople, then to Rome—away from this jury duty. Yes, and to fix matters with the lawyer——"

And suddenly, before his imagination, appeared with uncommon vividness the picture of the prisoner with the black, squinting eyes. And how she wept when the last words of the prisoners were spoken! He hastily crushed the cigarette he was smoking, lit another, and began pacing up and down the room. One after another the scenes he had lived through with her rose up in his mind. He recalled their last meeting, the passion which seized him at the time, and the disappointment that followed. He recalled the white dress with the blue ribbon; he recalled the morning mass. "Why, I loved her with a pure love that night; I loved her even before, and how I loved her when I first came to my aunts and was writing my composition!" That freshness, youth, fullness of life swept over him and he became painfully sad.

The difference between him as he was then and as he was now was great; it was equally great, if not greater, than the difference between Katiousha in the church and that girl whom they had tried this morning. Then he was a courageous, free man, before whom opened endless possibilities; now he felt himself caught in the tenets of a stupid, idle, aimless, miserable life, from which there was no escape; aye, from which, for the most part, he would not escape. He remembered how he once had prided himself upon his rectitude; how he always made it a rule to tell the truth, and was in reality truthful, and how he was now steeped in falsehood—falsehood which was recognized as truth by all those around him.

And there was no escape from this falsehood; at all events, he did not see any escape. He had sunk in it, became accustomed to it, and indulged himself in it.

The questions that absorbed him now were: How to break loose from Maria Vasilievna and her husband, so that he might be able to look them in the face? How, without falsehood, to disentangle his relations with Missy? How to get out of the inconsistency of considering the private holding of land unjust and keeping his inheritance? How to blot out his sin against Katiousha? "I cannot abandon the woman whom I have loved and content myself with paying money to the lawyer to save her from penal servitude, which she does not even deserve." To blot out the sin, as he did then, when he thought that he was atoning for his wrong by giving her money! Impossible!

He vividly recalled the moment when he ran after her in the corridor, thrust money in her bosom, and ran away from her. "Oh, that money!" With the same horror and disgust he recalled that moment. "Oh, how disgusting!" he said aloud, as he did then. "Only a scoundrel and rascal could do it! And I am that scoundrel, that rascal!" he said aloud. "It is possible that I—" and he stopped in the middle of the room—"Is it possible that I am really a scoundrel? Who but I?" he answered himself. "And is this the only thing?" he continued, still censuring himself. "Are not my relations toward Maria Vasilievna base and detestable? And my position with regard to property? Under the plea that I inherited it from my mother I am using wealth, the ownership of which I consider unlawful. And the whole of this idle, abominable life? And to crown all, my conduct toward Katiousha? Scoundrel! Villain! Let people judge me as they please—I can deceive them, but I cannot deceive myself."

And he suddenly understood that the disgust which he had lately felt toward everybody, and especially to-day toward the Prince and Maria Vasilievna, and Missy, and Kornei, was disgust with himself. And in this confession of his own baseness there was something painful, and at the same time joyous and calming.

In the course of his life Nekhludoff often experienced what he called a "cleansing of the soul." This happened when, after a long period of retardation, or, perhaps, entire cessation of his inner life, he suddenly became aware of it, and proceeded to cleanse his soul of all the accumulated filth that caused this standstill.

After such awakenings Nekhludoff always laid down some rules for himself which he intended to follow all the rest of his life; kept a diary and began a new life, which he hoped he should never change again—"turning a new leaf," he used to call it. But the temptations of life entrapped him anew, after every awakening, and, without knowing it, he sank again, often to a lower depth than he was in before.

Thus he cleansed himself and revived several times. His first cleansing happened when he visited his aunts. That was the brightest and most enthusiastic awakening. And it lasted a long time. The next happened when he left the civil service, and, desiring to sacrifice his life, he entered, during the war, the military service. Here he began to sink quickly. The next awakening occurred when he retired from the military service, and, going abroad, gave himself up to painting.

From that day to this there was a long period of uncleanliness, the longest he had gone through yet, and, therefore, he had never sunk so deep, and never before was there such discord between the demands of his conscience and the life which he was leading. So, when he saw the chasm which separated the two, he was horrified.

The discord was so great, the defilement so thorough, that at first he despaired of the possibility of a complete cleansing. "Why, you have tried to improve before, and failed," the tempter in his soul whispered. "What is the good of trying again? You are not the only one—all are alike. Such is life." But the free, spiritual being which alone is true, alone powerful, alone eternal, was already awake in Nekhludoff. And he could not help believing it. However great the difference between that which he was and that which he wished to be, for the awakened spiritual being everything was possible.

"I shall break this lie that binds me at any cost. I will confess the truth to everybody, and will act the truth," he said aloud, resolutely. "I will tell Missy the truth—that I am a profligate and cannot marry her; that I have trifled with her. I will tell Maria Vasilevna (the wife of the marshal of nobility)—but no, what is the good of telling her? I will tell her husband that I am a scoundrel, that I have deceived him. I will dispose of my inheritance in accordance with the demands of justice. I will tell her, Katiousha, that I am a knave, that I have wronged her, and will do everything in my power to alleviate her condition. Yes, I shall see her, and beg her forgiveness—I will beg like a child."

He stopped.

"I will marry her, if necessary."

He crossed his hands on his breast, as he used to do when a child, raised his eyes and said:

"Lord, help me, teach me; come and enter within me and purify me of all this abomination."

He prayed, asked God to help him and purify him, while that which he was praying for had already happened. Not only did he feel the freedom, vigor and gladness of life, but he also felt the power of good. He felt himself capable of doing the best that man can do.

There were tears in his eyes when he said these things—tears of joy—on the awakening within him of that spiritual being, and tears of emotion over his own virtue.

He felt warm and opened a window which looked into a garden. It was a moonlit, fresh and quiet night. Past the street rattled some vehicle, and then everything was quiet. Directly beneath the window a tall, denuded poplar threw its shadow on the gravel of the landing-place, distinctly showing all the ramifications of its bare branches. To the left the roof of a shed seemed white under the bright light of the moon; in front were the tangled branches of the trees, through which was seen the dark shadow of the garden inclosure.

Nekhludoff looked at the moonlit garden and roof, the shadows of the poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.

"How delightful! My God, how delightful!" he said of that which was in his soul.

CHAPTER XXIX.

It was six o'clock when Maslova returned to her cell, weary and foot-sore from the long tramp over the stone pavement. Besides, she was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence, and was also hungry.

When, during a recess, her guards had lunched on bread and hard-boiled eggs her mouth watered and she felt that she was hungry, but considered it humiliating to ask them for some food. Three hours after that her hunger had passed, and she only felt weak. In this condition she heard the sentence. At first she thought that she misunderstood it; she could not believe what she heard, and could not reconcile herself to the idea that she was a convict. But, seeing the calm, serious faces of the judges and the jury, who received the verdict as something quite natural, she revolted and cried out that she was innocent. And when she saw also that her outcry, too, was taken as something natural and anticipated, and which could not alter the case, she began to weep. She felt that she must submit to the cruel injustice which was perpetrated on her. What surprised her most was that she should be so cruelly condemned by men—not old men, but those same young men who looked at her so kindly.

The prosecuting attorney was the only man whose glances were other than kind. While she was sitting in the prisoners' room, and during recesses she saw these men passing by her and entering the room under various pretexts, but with the obvious intention of looking at her. And now these same men, for some reason, sentenced her to hard labor, although she was innocent of the crime. For some time she wept, then became calm, and in a condition of complete exhaustion she waited to be taken away. She desired but one thing now—a cigarette. She was in this frame of mind when Bochkova and Kartinkin were brought into the room. Bochkova immediately began to curse her.

"You are innocent, aren't you? Why weren't you discharged, you vile thing? You got your deserts! You will drop your fineries in Siberia!"

Maslova sat with lowered head, her hands folded in the sleeves of her coat, and gazed on the smoothly trampled ground.

"I am not interfering with you, so leave me in peace," she repeated several times, then became silent. She became enlivened again when, after Bochkova and Kartinkin had been removed from the room, the guard entered, bringing her three rubles.

"Are you Maslova?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Here is some money which a lady sent you," he said.

"What lady?"

"Take it, and ask no questions."

The money was sent by Kitaeva. When leaving the court she asked the usher if she could send some money to Maslova, and, receiving an affirmative answer, she removed a chamois glove, and, from the back folds of her silk dress, produced a stylish pocket-book, and counted out the money into the hands of the usher who, in her presence, handed it to the guard.

"Please be sure to give it to her," said Karolina Albertoona to the guard.

The guard was offended by this distrust shown to him, which was the cause of his speaking angrily to Maslova.

Maslova was overjoyed by the receipt of the money, for it could give her the one thing she wished for now.

All her thoughts were now centered on her desire to inhale the smoke of a cigarette. So strong was this desire that she greedily inhaled the smoke-laden air which was wafted in from the corridor and through the cabinet door. But there was a long wait before her, for the secretary, who was to deliver to the guard the order for her removal, forgetting the prisoners, engaged one of the lawyers in the discussion of an editorial that had appeared in a newspaper.

At five o'clock she was finally led down through the rear door. While in the waiting-room she gave one of the guards twenty kopecks, asking him to buy for her two lunch rolls and some cigarettes. The guard laughed, took the money, honestly made the purchase and returned the change to her. She could not smoke on the road, so Maslova arrived at the jail with the same unsatisfied craving for a cigarette. At that moment about a hundred prisoners were brought from the railroad station. Maslova met them in the passageway.

The prisoners, bearded, clean-shaven, old, young, Russians and foreigners—some with half-shaved heads, and with a clinking of iron fetters, filled the passage with dust, tramping of feet, conversation and a sharp odor of perspiration. The prisoners, as they passed Maslova, scanned her from head to foot; some approached and teased her.

"Fine girl, that!" said one. "My compliments, auntie," said another, winking one eye. A dark man with a shaven, blue neck and long mustache, tangling in his fetters, sprang toward her and embraced her.

"Don't you recognize your friend? Come, don't put on such style!" he exclaimed, grinning as she pushed him away.

"What are you doing, you rascal?" shouted the officer in charge of the prisoners.

The prisoner hastily hid himself in the crowd. The officer fell upon Maslova.

"What are you doing here?"

Maslova was going to say that she had been brought from the court, but she was very tired and too lazy to speak.

"She is just from the court, sir," said one of the guards, elbowing his way through the passing crowd, and raising his hand to his cap.

"Then take her to the warden. What indecencies!"

"Very well, sir!"

"Sokoloff! Take her away!" shouted the officer.

Sokoloff came and angrily pushed Maslova by the shoulder, and, motioning to her to follow him, he led her into the woman's corridor. There she was thoroughly searched, and as nothing was found upon her (the box of cigarettes was hidden in the lunch roll), she was admitted into the same cell from which she had emerged in the morning.

CHAPTER XXX.

The cell in which Maslova was confined was an oblong room, twenty feet by fifteen. The kalsomining of the walls was peeled off, and the dry boards of the cots occupied two-thirds of the space. In the middle of the room, opposite the door, was a dark iron, with a wax candle stuck on it, and a dusty bouquet of immortelles hanging under it. To the left, behind the door, on a darkened spot of the floor, stood an ill-smelling vat. The women had been locked up for the night.

There were fifteen inmates of this cell, twelve women and three children.

It was not dark yet, and only two women lay in their cots; one a foolish little woman—she was constantly crying—who had been arrested because she had no written evidence of her identity, had her head covered with her coat; the other, a consumptive, was serving a sentence for theft. She was not sleeping, but lay, her coat under her head, with wide-open eyes, and with difficulty retaining in her throat the tickling, gurgling phlegm, so as not to cough. The other women were with bare heads and skirts of coarse linen; some sat on their cots sewing; others stood at the window gazing on the passing prisoners. Of the three women who were sewing, one, Korableva, was the one who had given Maslova the instructions when the latter left the cell. She was a tall, strong woman, with a frowning, gloomy face, all wrinkled, a bag of skin hanging under her chin, a short braid of light hair, turning gray at the temples, and a hairy wart on her cheek. This old woman was sentenced to penal servitude for killing her husband with an axe. The killing was committed because he annoyed her daughter with improper advances. She was the overseer of the cell, and also sold wine to the inmates. She was sewing with eye-glasses, and held the needle, after the fashion of the peasants, with three fingers, the sharp point turned toward her breast. Beside her, also sewing, sat a little woman, good-natured and talkative, dark, snub-nosed and with little black eyes. She was the watch-woman at a flag-station, and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for negligently causing an accident on the railroad. The third of the women who were occupied with sewing was Theodosia—called Fenichka by her fellow-prisoners—of light complexion, and with rosy cheeks; young, lovely, with bright, childish blue eyes, and two long, flaxen braids rolled up on her small head. She was imprisoned for attempting to poison her husband. She was sixteen years old when she was married, and she made the attempt immediately after her marriage. During the eight months that she was out on bail, she not only became reconciled to her husband, but became so fond of him that the court officers found them living in perfect harmony. In spite of all the efforts of her husband, her father-in-law, and especially her mother-in-law, who had grown very fond of her, to obtain her discharge, she was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. The kind, cheerful and smiling Theodosia, whose cot was next to Maslova's, not only took a liking to her, but considered it her duty to help her in every possible way. Two other women were sitting idly on their cots; one of about forty years, who seemed to have been pretty in her youth, but was now pale and slim, was feeding a child with her long, white breast. Her crime consisted in that, when the people of the village she belonged to attempted to stop a recruiting officer who had drafted, illegally, as they thought, her nephew, she was the first to take hold of the bridle of his horse. There was another little white-haired, wrinkled woman, good-natured and hunch-backed, who sat near the oven and pretended to be catching a four-year-old, short-haired and stout boy, who, in a short little shirt, was running past her, laughing and repeating: "You tan't tatch me!" This old woman, who, with her son, was charged with incendiarism, bore her confinement good-naturedly, grieving only over her son, who was also in jail, but above all, her heart was breaking for her old man who, she feared, would be eaten up by lice, as her daughter-in-law had returned to her parents, and there was no one to wash him.

Besides these seven women, there were four others who stood near the open windows, their hands resting on the iron gratings, and conversing by signs and shouts with the prisoners whom Maslova had met in the passageway. One of these, who was serving a sentence for theft, was a flabby, large, heavy, red-haired woman with white-yellow freckles over her face, and a stout neck which was exposed by the open waist collar. In a hoarse voice she shouted indecent words through the window. Beside her stood a woman of the size of a ten-year-old girl, very dark, with a long back and very short legs. Her face was red and blotched; her black eyes wide open, and her short, thick lips failed to hide her white, protruding teeth. She laughed in shrill tones at the antics of the prisoners. This prisoner, who was nicknamed Miss Dandy, because of her stylishness, was under indictment for theft and incendiarism. Behind them, in a very dirty, gray shirt, stood a wretched-looking woman, big with child, who was charged with concealing stolen property. This woman was silent, but she approvingly smiled at the actions of the prisoners without. The fourth of the women who stood at the window, and was undergoing sentence for illicit trading in spirits, was a squat little country woman with bulging eyes and kindly face. She was the mother of the boy who was playing with the old woman, and of another seven-year-old girl, both of whom were in jail with her, because they had no one else to take care of them. Knitting a stocking, she was looking through the window and disapprovingly frowned and closed her eyes at the language used by the passing prisoners. The girl who stood near the red-haired woman, with only a shirt on her back, and clinging with one hand to the woman's skirt, attentively listened to the abusive words the men were exchanging with the women, and repeated them in a whisper, as if committing them to memory. The twelfth was the daughter of a church clerk and chanter who had drowned her child in a well. She was a tall and stately girl, with large eyes and tangled hair sticking out of her short, thick, flaxen braid. She paid no attention to what was going on around her, but paced, bare-footed, and in a dirty gray shirt, over the floor of the cell, making sharp and quick turns when she reached the wall.

CHAPTER XXXI.

When with a rattling of chains the cell door was unlocked and Maslova admitted, all eyes were turned toward her. Even the chanter's daughter stopped for a moment and looked at her with raised eyebrows, but immediately resumed walking with long, resolute strides. Korableva stuck her needle into the sack she was sewing and gazed inquiringly through her glasses at Maslova.

"Ah me! So she has returned," she said in a hoarse basso voice. "And I was sure she would be set right. She must have got it."

She removed her glasses and placed them with her sewing beside her.

"I have been talking with auntie, dear, and we thought that they might discharge you at once. They say it happens. And they sometimes give you money, if you strike the right time," the watch-woman started in a singing voice. "What ill-luck! It seems we were wrong. God has His own way, dear," she went on in her caressing and melodious voice.

"It is possible that they convicted you?" asked Theodosia, with gentle compassion, looking at Maslova with her childish, light-blue eyes, and her cheerful, young face changed, and she seemed to be ready to cry.

Maslova made no answer, but silently went to her place, next to Korableva's, and sat down.

"You have probably not eaten anything," said Theodosia, rising and going over to Maslova.

Again Maslova did not answer, but placed the two lunch-rolls at the head of the cot and began to undress. She took off the dusty coat, and the 'kerchief from her curling black hair and sat down.

The hunch-backed old woman also came and stopped in front of Maslova, compassionately shaking her head.

The boy came behind the old woman, and, with a protruding corner of the upper lip and wide-open eyes, gazed on the rolls brought by Maslova. Seeing all these compassionate faces, after what had happened, Maslova almost cried and her lips began to twitch. She tried to and did restrain herself until the old woman and the child approached. When, however, she heard the kind, compassionate exclamation of pity from the old woman, and, especially, when her eyes met the serious eyes of the boy who looked now at her, now at the rolls, she could restrain herself no longer. Her whole face began to twitch and she burst into sobs.

"I told her to take a good lawyer," said Korableva. "Well? To Siberia?" she asked.

Maslova wished to answer but could not, and, crying, she produced from the roll the box of cigarettes, on which a picture of a red lady with a high chignon and triangle-shaped, low cut neck was printed, and gave it to Korableva. The latter looked at the picture, disapprovingly shook her head, chiefly because Maslova spent money so foolishly, and, lighting a cigarette over the lamp, inhaled the smoke several times, then thrust it at Maslova. Maslova, without ceasing to cry, eagerly began to inhale the smoke.

"Penal servitude," she murmured, sobbing.

"They have no fear of God, these cursed blood-suckers!" said Korableva. "They have condemned an innocent girl."

At this moment there was a loud outburst of laughter among those standing near the window. The delicate laughter of the little girl mingled with the hoarse and shrill laughter of the women. This merriment was caused by some act of a prisoner without.

"Oh, the scoundrel! See what he is doing!" said the red-headed woman, pressing her face against the grating, her whole massive frame shaking.

"What is that drum-hide shouting about?" said Korableva, shaking her head at the red-haired woman, and then again turning to Maslova. "How many years?"

"Four," said Maslova, and the flow of her tears was so copious that one of them fell on the cigarette. She angrily crushed it, threw it away and took another.

The watch-woman, although she was no smoker, immediately picked up the cigarette-end and began to straighten it, talking at the same time.

"As I said to Matveievna, dear," she said, "it is ill-luck. They do what they please. And we thought they would discharge you. Matveievna said you would be discharged, and I said that you would not, I said. 'My heart tells me,' I said, 'that they will condemn her,' and so it happened," she went on, evidently listening to the sounds of her own voice with particular pleasure.

The prisoners had now passed through the court-yard, and the four women left the window and approached Maslova. The larged-eyed illicit seller of spirits was the first to speak.

"Well, is the sentence very severe?" she asked, seating herself near Maslova and continuing to knit her stocking.

"It is severe because she has no money. If she had money to hire a good lawyer, I am sure they would not have held her," said Korableva. "That lawyer—what's his name?—that clumsy, big-nosed one can, my dear madam, lead one out of the water dry. That's the man you should take."

"To hire him!" grinned Miss Dandy. "Why, he would not look at you for less than a thousand rubles."

"It seems to be your fate," said the old woman who was charged with incendiarism. "I should say he is severe! He drove my boy's wife from her; put him in jail, and me, too, in my old age," for the hundredth time she began to repeat her story. "Prison and poverty are our lot. If it is not prison, it is poverty."

"Yes, it is always the same with them," said the woman-moonshiner, and, closely inspecting the girl's head, she put her stocking aside, drew the girl over between her overhanging legs and with dexterous fingers began to search in her head. "Why do you deal in wine? But I have to feed my children," she said, continuing her search.

These words reminded Maslova of wine.

"Oh, for a drop of wine," she said to Korableva, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her shirt and sobbing from time to time.

"Some booze? Why, of course!" said Korableva.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Maslova produced the money from one of the lunch-rolls and gave it to Korableva, who climbed up to the draught-hole of the oven for a flask of wine she had hidden there. Seeing which, those women who were not her immediate neighbors went to their places. Meantime Maslova shook the dust from her 'kerchief and coat, climbed up on her cot and began to eat a roll.

"I saved some tea for you, but I fear it is cold," said Theodosia, bringing down from a shelf a pot, wrapped in a rag, and a tin cup.

The beverage was perfectly cold, and tasted more of tin than of tea, but Maslova poured out a cupful and began to drink.

"Here, Finashka!" she called, and breaking a piece from the roll thrust it toward the boy, who gazed at her open-mouthed.

Korableva, meanwhile, brought the flask of wine. Maslova offered some to Korableva and Miss Dandy. These three prisoners constituted the aristocracy of the cell, because they had money and divided among themselves what they had.

In a few minutes Maslova became brighter and energetically began to relate what had transpired at the court, mockingly imitating the prosecutor and rehearsing such parts as had appealed to her most. She was particularly impressed by the fact that the men paid considerable attention to her wherever she went. In the court-room every one looked at her, she said, and for that purpose constantly came into the prisoners' room.

"Even the guard said: 'It is to look at you that they come here.' Some one would come and ask for some document or something, but I saw that it was not for the document that he came. He would devour me with his eyes," she said, smiling and shaking her head as if perplexed. "They are good ones!"

"Yes, that is how it is," chimed in the watch-woman in her melodious voice. "They are like flies on sugar. If you needed them for any other purpose, be sure they would not come so quickly. They know a good thing when they see it."

"It was the same here," interrupted Maslova. "As soon as I was brought here I met with a party coming from the depot. They gave me no rest, and I could hardly get rid of them. Luckily the warden drove them off. One of them bothered me particularly."

"How did he look?" asked Miss Dandy.

"He had a dark complexion, and wore a mustache."

"It is he."

"Who?"

"Stchegloff. He passed here just now."

"Who is Stchegloff?"

"She don't know Stchegloff! He twice escaped from Siberia. Now he has been caught, but he will escape again. Even the officers fear him," said Miss Dandy, who delivered notes to prisoners, and knew everything that transpired in the jail. "He will surely escape."

"If he does he won't take either of us with him," said Korableva. "You'd better tell me this: What did the lawyer say to you about a petition—you must send one now."

Maslova said that she did not know anything about a petition.

At this moment the red-haired woman, burying her two freckled hands into her tangled, thick hair, and scratching her head with her nails, approached the wine-drinking aristocrats.

"I will tell you, Katherine, everything," she began. "First of all, you must write on paper: 'I am not satisfied with the trial,' and then hand it to the prosecutor."

"What do you want here?" Korableva turned to her, speaking in an angry basso. "You have smelled the wine! We know you. We don't need your advice; we know what we have to do."

"Who is talking to you?"

"You want some wine—that's what you want."

"Let her alone. Give her some," said Maslova, who always divided with others what she had.

"Yes, I will give her," and Korableva clenched her fist.

"Try it! Try it!" moving toward Korableva, said the red-haired woman. "I am not afraid of you."

"You jail bird!"

"You are another!"

"You gutter rake!"

"I am a rake—am I? You convict, murderess!" shrieked the red-haired woman.

"Go away, I tell you!" said Korableva frowning.

But the red-haired woman only came nearer, and Korableva gave her a push on the open, fat breast. The other seemingly only waited for this, for with an unexpected, quick movement of one hand she seized Korableva's hair and was about to strike her in the face with the other, when Korableva seized this hand. Maslova and Miss Dandy sprang up and took hold of the hands of the red-haired woman, endeavoring to release her hold on Korableva, but the hand that clutched the hair would not open. For a moment she released the hair, but only to wind it around her fist. Korableva, her head bent, with one hand kept striking her antagonist over the body and catching the latter's hand with her teeth. The women crowded around the fighters, parting them and shouting. Even the consumptive came near them, and, coughing, looked on. The children huddled together and cried. The noise attracted the warden and the matron. They were finally parted. Korableva loosened her gray braid and began to pick out the pieces of torn hair, while the other held the tattered remnant of her shirt to her breast—both shouting, explaining and complaining against one another.

"I know it is the wine—I can smell it," said the matron. "I will tell the superintendent to-morrow. Now, remove everything, or there will be trouble. There is no time to listen to you. To your places, and be silent!"

But for a long time there was no silence. The women continued to curse each other; they began to relate how it all commenced, and whose fault it was. The warden and matron finally departed; the women quieted down and took to their cots. The old woman stood up before the image and began to pray.

"Two Siberian convicts," suddenly said the red-haired woman in a hoarse voice, accompanying every word with a torrent of abuse.

"Look out, or you will get it again," quickly answered Korableva, adding similar revilement. Then they became silent.

"If they had not prevented me, I should have knocked out your eyes," the red-haired one began again, and again came a quick and sharp retort.

Then came another interval of silence, followed by more abuse. The intervals became longer and longer, and finally silence settled over the cell.

They were all falling asleep; some began to snore; only the old woman, who always prayed for a long time, was still bowing before the image, while the chanter's daughter, as soon as the matron left the cell, came down from her cot and began to walk up and down the cell.

Maslova was awake and incessantly thinking of herself as a convict, the word which had been twice applied to her—once by Bochkova, and again by the red-haired woman. She could not be reconciled to the thought. Korableva, who was lying with her back turned toward Maslova, turned around.

"I never dreamed of such a thing," she said, in a low voice. "Others commit heaven knows what crimes, and they go scot free, while I must suffer for nothing."

"Don't worry, girl. People live also in Siberia. You will not be lost even there," Korableva consoled her.

"I know that I will not be lost, but it is painful to be treated that way. I deserved a better fate. I am used to a comfortable life."

"You can do nothing against God's will," Korableva said, with a sigh. "You can do nothing against His will."

"I know, auntie, but it is hard, nevertheless."

They became silent.

"Listen to that wanton," said Korableva, calling Maslova's attention to the strange sounds that came from the other end of the cell.

These sounds were the suppressed sobbing of the red-haired woman. She wept because she had just been abused, beaten, and got no wine, for which she so yearned. She also wept because her whole life was one round of abuse, scorn, insults and blows. She meant to draw some consolation from the recollection of her first love for the factory hand, Fedka Molodenkoff, but, recalling this first love, she also recalled the manner of its ending. The end of it was that this Molodenkoff, while in his cups, by way of jest, smeared her face with vitriol, and afterward laughed with his comrades as he watched her writhing in pain. She remembered this, and she pitied herself; and, thinking that no one heard her, she began to weep, and wept like a child—moaning, snuffling and swallowing salty tears.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Nekhludoff rose the following morning with a consciousness that some change had taken place within him, and before he could recall what it was he already knew that it was good and important.

"Katiousha—the trial. Yes, and I must stop lying, and tell all the truth." And what a remarkable coincidence! That very morning finally came the long-expected letter of Maria Vasilievna, the wife of the marshal of the nobility—that same letter that he wanted so badly now. She gave him his liberty and wished him happiness in his proposed marriage.

"Marriage!" he repeated ironically. "How far I am from it!"

And his determination of the day before to tell everything to her husband, to confess his sin before him, and to hold himself ready for any satisfaction he might demand, came to his mind. But this morning it did not seem to him so easy as it had yesterday. "And then, what is the good of making a man miserable? If he asks me, I will tell him; but to call on him specially for that purpose—— No, it is not necessary."

It seemed to him equally difficult this morning to tell all the truth to Missy. He thought it would be offering an insult. It was inevitable, as in all worldly affairs, that there should remain something unexpressed but understood. One thing, however, he decided upon this morning—that he would not go there, and would tell the truth when asked. But in his relations toward Katiousha there was to be nothing unsaid.

"I will go to the jail—will tell her, beg of her to forgive me. And, if necessary—yes, if necessary—I will marry her," he thought.

The idea that for the sake of moral satisfaction he would sacrifice everything and marry her this morning particularly affected him.

It was a long time since he had risen with so much energy in him. When Agrippina Petrovna entered his room he declared to her with a determination which he himself did not expect, that he had no further need of the house, and that he would dispense with her services. There was a tacit understanding that the large house was kept up for his contemplated marriage. The closing up of the house consequently had some particular significance. Agrippina Petrovna looked at him with surprise.

"I thank you very much, Agrippina Petrovna, for your solicitude in my behalf, but I do not now need such a large house, or any of the servants. If you wish to help me, then be so kind as to pack away the things as you used to do in mamma's lifetime. Natasha will dispose of them when she arrives." Natasha was Nekhludoff's sister.

Agrippina Petrovna shook her head.

"Dispose of them? Why, they will be needed," she said.

"No, they will not, Agrippina Petrovna—they will positively not be needed," said Nekhludoff, answering what she meant by shaking his head. "Please tell Kornei that his salary will be paid for two months in advance, but that I do not need him."

"You are wrong in doing this, Dmitri Ivanovich," she said. "You will need a house even if you go abroad."

"You misunderstand me, Agrippina Petrovna. I will not go abroad, and if I do go, it will be to an entirely different place."

His face suddenly turned a purple color.

"Yes, it is necessary to tell her," he thought. "I must tell all to everybody.

"A very strange and important thing has happened to me. Do you remember Katiousha, who lived with Aunt Maria Ivanovna?"

"Of course; I taught her to sew."

"Well, then, she was tried in court yesterday, and I was one of the jury."

"Ah, good Lord! what a pity!" said Agrippina Petrovna. "What was she tried for?"

"Murder, and it was all caused by me."

"How could you have caused it? You are talking very strangely," said Agrippina Petrovna, and fire sparkled in her old eyes.

She knew of the incident with Katiousha.

"Yes, it is my fault. And this causes me to change my plans."

"What change can this cause in your plans?" said Agrippina Petrovna, suppressing a smile.

"This: That since it was through my fault that she is in her present condition, I consider it my duty to help her to the extent of my ability."

"That is your affair, but I cannot see that you are so much in fault. It happens to everybody, and if one is guided by common sense the matter is usually arranged and forgotten, and one lives on like the rest of the world," said Agrippina Petrovna, sternly and seriously. "There is no reason why you should take it so much to heart. I heard long ago that she had gone to the bad, so whose fault is it?"

"It is my fault, and that is why I wish to make amends."

"Well, it is hard to set that right."

"That is my affair. If you are thinking of yourself, then that which mother wished——"

"I am not thinking of myself. Your deceased mother showed me so many favors that I do not desire anything. My niece, Lizauka, wishes me to come to her, so I will go as soon as you need me no longer. Only you are taking it too much to heart; it happens with everybody."

"Well, I do not think so. I still ask you to help me rent the house and pack away the things. And do not be angry with me. I am very, very thankful to you for everything."

It is remarkable that since Nekhludoff understood that he was disgusted with himself, others ceased to be repulsive to him. On the contrary, he had a kindly and respectful feeling for Agrippina Petrovna and Kornei. He wished to confess also before Kornei, but the latter was so impressively respectful that he could not make up his mind to do it.

On his way to the court, passing along the familiar streets and in the same carriage, Nekhludoff was himself surprised what a different man he felt himself to-day.

His marriage to Missy, which but yesterday seemed to be so near, to-day appeared to him absolutely impossible. Yesterday he understood his position to be such that there could be no doubt that she would be happy to marry him; to-day he felt himself unworthy not only of marrying her, but of being her friend. "If she only knew who I was, she would never receive me, and yet I taunted her with coquetting with that gentleman. But no, even if she married me I should never have peace, even though I were happy, while that one is in jail, and may any day be sent under escort to Siberia. While the woman whom I have ruined is tramping the weary road to penal servitude, I will be receiving congratulations, and paying visits with my young wife. Or I will be counting the votes for and against school inspection, etc., with the marshal, whom I have shamefully deceived, and afterward make appointments with his wife (what abomination!). Or I will work on my picture, which will, evidently, never be finished, for I had no business to occupy myself with such trifles. And I can do neither of these things now," he said to himself, happy at the inward change which he felt.

"First of all," he thought, "I must see the lawyer, and then—then see her in jail—the convict of yesterday—and tell her everything."

And when he thought how he would see her, confess his guilt before her, how he would declare to her that he would do everything in his power, marry her in order to wipe out his guilt, he became enraptured, and tears filled his eyes.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Arriving at the court-house, Nekhludoff met the usher in the corridor and asked him where the prisoners already sentenced were kept, and from whom permission could be obtained to see them. The usher told him that the prisoners were kept in various places, and that before final judgment the public prosecutor was the only person from whom permission to see them could be obtained. "The prosecutor has not arrived yet; when he does I will let you know, and will escort you myself to him after the session. And now, please to walk into the court. The session is commencing."

Nekhludoff thanked the usher, who seemed to him particularly pitiful to-day, and went into the jury-room.

As Nekhludoff was approaching the jury-room his fellow jurors were coming out, repairing to the court-room. The merchant was as cheerful, had lunched as well as yesterday, and greeted Nekhludoff like an old friend. The loud laughter and familiarity of Peter Gerasimovitch did not give rise to-day in Nekhludoff of the unpleasant sensation of yesterday.

Nekhludoff wished to tell all the jurymen of his relations to the woman whom they had convicted yesterday. "It would have been proper," he thought, "yesterday to rise in court and publicly confess my guilt." But when with the other jurymen he entered the court-room and witnessed the same procedure, the same "Hear ye! Hear ye!" the three judges in high collars on the elevation, the silence, the seating of the jury on high-backed chairs, the gendarmes, the priest—he felt that, though it was necessary to do it, he would not have been able even yesterday to break this solemnity.

They went through the same preliminaries, except the swearing in of the jury and the justiciary's speech to them.

A case of burglary was before the court. The prisoner, who was guarded by two gendarmes with unsheathed swords, was a twenty-year-old boy with a bloodless face and in a gray coat. He sat alone on the prisoners' bench and scanned from under his eyebrows all those that entered the court-room. This boy and another were charged with breaking the lock of a shed and stealing therefrom mats of the value of three rubles and sixty-seven kopecks. It appeared from the indictment that a policeman caught the boy when he was walking with the other, who carried the mats on his shoulder. Both of them immediately confessed, and they were put in jail. The comrade of this boy, a locksmith, died in jail, and he was tried alone. The old mats lay on the table reserved for exhibits.

The case was conducted in the same order as yesterday, with all the proofs, witnesses, experts, oath-taking, examinations and cross-examinations. The policeman, when questioned by the justiciary, complainant and the defense, made listless answers—"Yes, sir," "Can't tell," and again "Yes, sir"—but notwithstanding this, it was apparent that he pitied the boy and testified involuntarily against him.

Another witness, a splenetic old man who owned those mats, when asked if they belonged to him, unwillingly testified that they were his. When, however, the prosecutor asked him what use he intended to make of them, and whether he needed them much, he became angry and answered: "I wish they had been lost entirely, these mats. I don't need them at all. And if I had known that you would make so much fuss about them, I would gladly have given ten rubles, or twenty, rather than be dragged into court. I have spent five rubles on carriages coming here and going back again. And I am sick; I am suffering from rupture and rheumatism."

The prisoner admitted the charge against him, and, like a trapped animal, stupidly looked now to one side, now to the other, and in a halting voice related everything as it happened.

It was a clear case, but the prosecutor, as he did yesterday, raised his shoulders and propounded subtle questions which were calculated to entrap the clever criminal.

In his speech he argued that the theft was committed in a dwelling-house by breaking and entering it, and that therefore the severest punishment should be meted out to him.

Counsel for the defense, appointed by the court, argued that the theft was committed not in a dwelling-house, and that, though the prisoner pleaded guilty, he was not as dangerous to society as the prosecutor would have them believe.

The justiciary was the personification of impartiality and justice, and endeavored to impress on the jury that which they already knew and could not help knowing. Again they took recesses and smoked cigarettes, and again the usher shouted "Hear ye!" and the two gendarmes sat trying to keep awake.

It developed during the trial that this boy had been apprenticed in a tobacco factory, in which he worked five years. This year he was discharged by his employer after a misunderstanding with the employees, and, going idly about the city, he spent all he had on drink. At an inn he met a locksmith who had also been discharged and was drinking hard, and the two went at night, while drunk, to that shed, broke the lock, and took the first thing they saw. They were caught, and as they confessed they were imprisoned. The locksmith, while waiting for a trial, died. The boy was now being tried as a dangerous creature from whom it was necessary to protect society.

"As dangerous a creature as the prisoner of yesterday," Nekhludoff thought while watching the proceedings. "They are dangerous, but are we not dangerous? I am a libertine, an impostor; and all of us, all those that know me as I am, not only do not detest but respect me."

It is evident that this boy is no villain, but a very ordinary person—every one sees that—and that he became what he is only because he lived amid conditions that beget such people. It is therefore plain that such boys will exist as long as the conditions producing these unfortunates remain unchanged. If any one had taken pity on this boy, Nekhludoff thought while looking at the sickly, frightened face of the boy, before want had driven him from the village to the city, and relieved that want, or, when, after twelve hours' work in the factory, he was visiting inns with grown-up comrades, some one had told him, "Don't go, Vania; it is bad," the boy would not have gone, or got drunk, and the burglary would never have occurred.

But no one pitied the boy during the time that he, like an animal, spent his school years in the city, and, with close-cropped hair, to prevent his getting vermin, ran errands for the workmen. On the contrary, the only thing he had heard from the workmen and his comrades was to the effect that a brave fellow was he who cheated, drank, reviled, fought, or led a depraved life.

And when, sickly and depraved from the unhealthy work, from drink and lewdness, foolish and capricious, he aimlessly prowled around the city, as in a dream, entered some shed and abstracted a few worthless mats, then, instead of destroying the causes that led this boy into his present condition, we intend to mend matters by punishing him!

It is dreadful!

Thus Nekhludoff thought, and no longer listened to what was going on around him. He was himself terrified at this revelation. He wondered why he had not seen it before—how others failed to see it.

CHAPTER XXXV.

As soon as the first recess was taken, Nekhludoff rose and went out of the court, intending to return no more. They might do with him what they pleased, but he could no longer take part in that farce.

Having inquired where the prosecutor's room was, he directed his steps toward that dignitary. The messenger would not admit him, declaring that the prosecutor was busy, but Nekhludoff brushed past him and asked an officer who met him to announce him to the prosecutor, saying that he was on important business. His title and dress helped Nekhludoff. The officer announced him, and he was admitted. The prosecutor received him standing, evidently dissatisfied with Nekhludoff's persistence in seeking an audience with him.

"What do you wish?" the prosecutor asked, sternly.

"I am a juryman, my name is Nekhludoff, and I want to see the prisoner Maslova," he said, resolutely and quickly. He blushed, and felt that his act would have a decisive influence on his life.

The prosecutor was a tall, swarthy man with short hair just turning gray, bright eyes and a trimmed, bushy beard on the protruding lower jaw.

"Maslova? Yes, I know her. She was charged with poisoning," he said calmly. "Why do you want to see her?" And then, as if desiring to soften his harsh demeanor, he added: "I cannot give you the permission before I know what you want to see her for."

"It is very important for me to see her," Nekhludoff burst out.

"I see," said the prosecutor, and, raising his eyes, looked intently at Nekhludoff. "Has her case been tried?"

"She was tried yesterday and sentenced to four years' penal servitude. The conviction was irregular; she is innocent."

"I see. If she has only been sentenced yesterday," said the prosecutor without paying attention to Nekhludoff's declaration about her innocence, "then she will be detained until final judgment in the place where she is now. The jail is open to visitors on certain days only. I advise you to apply there."

"But I must see her as soon as possible," with trembling lower jaw Nekhludoff said, feeling that a critical moment was approaching.

"Why are you so anxious about seeing her?" the prosecutor asked, raising his eyebrows with some alarm.

"Because she is innocent of the crime for which she was sentenced to penal servitude. The guilt is mine, not hers," Nekhludoff said in a trembling voice, feeling that he was saying what he should not.

"How so?" asked the prosecutor.

"I deceived her, and brought her to the condition in which she is now. If I had not driven her to the position in which she was, she would not have been charged here with such a crime."

"Still I fail to see what all this has to do with visiting her."

"It has, because I want to follow her and—marry her," said Nekhludoff. And, as it usually happened when he spoke of this, his eyes filled with tears.

THE PRISONERS.

"Ah, is that so?" said the prosecutor. "This is really an exceptional case. Are you not a member of the Krasnopersk town council?" asked the prosecutor, as if recalling that he had heard of this Nekhludoff who was now making such a strange statement.

"Excuse me, but I fail to see what this has to do with my request," fuming, Nekhludoff answered with rancor.

"Nothing, of course," the prosecutor said, with a faint smile on his face, and not in the least disturbed. "But your request is so unusual and beside all customary forms——"

"Well, can I get the permission?"

"Permission? Why, yes. I will give you a pass immediately. Please be seated."

He went to the table, sat down and began to write.

"Please be seated."

Nekhludoff stood still.

When he had made out the pass the prosecutor handed it to Nekhludoff and eyed him with curiosity.

"I must also tell you," said Nekhludoff, "that I cannot continue to serve as juror."

"As you know, satisfactory reasons must be given to the court in such cases."

"The reasons are that I consider all courts useless and immoral."

"I see," said the prosecutor, with the same faint smile which seemed to indicate that such statements were familiar to him, and belonged to an amusing class of people well known to him. "I see, but you understand that, as public prosecutor, I cannot agree with you. I therefore advise you to state so to the court, which will either find your reasons satisfactory or unsatisfactory, and in the latter case will impose a fine on you. Apply to the court."

"I have already stated my reasons, and I will not go there," Nekhludoff said angrily.

"I have the honor to salute you," said the prosecutor, bowing, evidently desiring to rid himself of the strange visitor.

"Who was the man that just left your room?" asked one of the judges who entered the prosecutor's cabinet after Nekhludoff had left.

"Nekhludoff. You know, the one who made such strange suggestions in the Krasnopersk town council. Just imagine, he is on the jury, and among the prisoners there was a woman, or girl, who was sentenced to penal servitude, and who, he says, was deceived by him. And now he wishes to marry her."

"It is impossible!"

"That is what he told me. And how strangely excited he was!"

"There is something wrong with our young men."

"He is not so very young."

"What a bore your famous Ivasheukoff is, my dear! He wins his cases by tiring us out—there is no end to his talking."

"They must be curbed, or they become real obstructionists."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

From the public prosecutor Nekhludoff went straight to the detention-house. But no one by the name of Maslova was there. The inspector told him that she might be found in the old temporary prison. Nekhludoff went there and found that Katherine Moslova was one of the inmates.

The distance between the detention-house and the old prison was great, and Nekhludoff did not arrive there until toward evening. He was about to open the door of the huge, gloomy building, when the guard stopped him and rang the bell. The warden responded to the bell. Nekhludoff showed the pass, but the warden told him that he could not be admitted without authority from the inspector. While climbing the stairs to the inspector's dwelling, Nekhludoff heard the sounds of an intricate bravura played on the piano. And when the servant, with a handkerchief tied around one eye, opened the door, a flood of music dazed his senses. It was a tiresome rhapsody by Lizst, well played, but only to a certain place. When that place was reached, the melody repeated itself. Nekhludoff asked the servant if the inspector was in.

The servant said that he was not.

"Will he be in soon?"

The rhapsody again ceased, and with a noisy flourish again repeated itself.

"I will go and inquire." And the servant went away.

The rhapsody again went on at full speed, when suddenly, reaching a certain point, it came to a stand-still and a voice from within was heard.

"Tell him that he is not home, and will not come to-day. He is visiting—why do they bother us?" a woman's voice was heard to say, and the rhapsody continued, then ceased, and the sound of a chair moved back was heard. The angry pianist herself evidently wished to reprimand the importunate visitor who came at such a late hour.

"Papa is not home," angrily said a pale, wretched looking girl with puffed-up hair and blue spots under her eyes, who came to the door. Seeing a young man in a good overcoat, she became calm. "Walk in, please. What do you wish to see him for?"

"I would like to see a prisoner. I hold a pass from the prosecutor."

"Well, I don't know; papa is not in. Why, walk in, please," she again called from the entrance hall. "Or apply to his assistant, who is now in the office. You may talk to him. And what is your name?"

"Thank you," said Nekhludoff, without answering the question, and went away.

Scarcely had the door closed when the same vigorous, merry sound, so inappropriate to the place and so persistently rehearsed by the wretched girl, was heard. In the court-yard Nekhludoff met a young officer with a stiff, dyed mustache, of whom he inquired for the assistant. He himself was the assistant. He took the pass, looked at it, and said that he could not admit any one to the prison on a pass for the detention-house. Besides, it was late.

"At ten o'clock to-morrow the prison is open to all visitors, and the inspector will be here. You could then see her in the common reception-room, or, if the inspector permits it, in the office."

So, without gaining an interview, Nekhludoff returned home. Agitated by the expectation of seeing her, he walked along the streets, thinking not of the court, but of his conversations with the prosecutor and the inspectors. That he was seeking an interview with her, and told the prosecutor of his intention, and visited two prisons preparing for the ordeal, had so excited him that he could not calm down. On returning home he immediately brought forth his unused diary, read some parts and made the following entry: "For two years I have kept no diary, and thought that I should never again return to this childishness. But it was no childishness, but a discourse with myself, with that true, divine I which lives in every man. All this time this I was slumbering and I had no one to discourse with. It was awakened by the extraordinary event of the 28th of April, in court, where I sat as jurymen. I saw her, Katiousha, whom I had deceived, on the prisoners' bench, in a prison coat. Through a strange misunderstanding and my mistake, she was sentenced to penal servitude. I have just returned from the prosecutor and the prison. I was not permitted to see her, but I am determined to do anything to see her, acknowledge my guilt and make reparation even by marrying her. Lord, help me! My soul is rejoicing."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

For a long time that night Maslova lay awake with open eyes, and, looking at the door, mused.

She was thinking that under no circumstances would she marry a convict on the island of Saghalin, but would settle down some other way—with some inspector, or clerk, or even the warden, or an assistant. They are all eager for such a thing. "Only I must not get thin. Otherwise I am done for." And she recalled how she was looked at by her lawyer, the justiciary—in fact, everybody in the court-room. She recalled how Bertha, who visited her in prison, told her that the student, whom she loved while she was an inmate at Kitaeva's, inquired about her and expressed his regrets when told of her condition. She recalled the fight with the red-haired woman, and pitied her. She called to mind the baker who sent her an extra lunch roll, and many others, but not Nekhludoff. Of her childhood and youth, and especially of her love for Nekhludoff, she never thought. That was too painful. These recollections were hidden deeply in her soul. She never saw Nekhludoff even in a dream. She failed to recognize him in court, not so much because when she last saw him he was an army officer, beardless, with small mustache and thick, short hair, while now he was no longer young in appearance, and wore a beard, but more because she never thought of him. She had buried all recollections of her past relations with him in that terrible dark night when, on his return from the army, he visited his aunts.

Up to that night, while she hoped for his return, the child which she bore under her heart was not irksome to her. But from that night forward everything changed, and the coming child was only a hindrance.

The aunts had asked Nekhludoff to stop off at their station and call on them, but he wired that he would not be able to do it, as he had to reach St. Petersburg in time. When Katiousha learned this, she decided to go to the railroad station to see him. The train was to pass at two o'clock in the morning. Katiousha helped the ladies to bed, and, having induced the cook's girl, Mashka, to accompany her, she put on an old pair of shoes, threw a shawl over her head, gathered up her skirts and ran to the station.

It was a dark, rainy, windy, autumn night. The rain now poured down in large, warm drops, now ceased. The road could not be distinguished in the field, and it was pitch dark in the woods. Although Katiousha was familiar with the road she lost her way in the woods, and reached a sub-station, where the train only stopped for three minutes. Running on the platform, she espied Nekhludoff through the window of a first-class car. The car was brightly illuminated. Two officers sat on plush seats playing cards. On the table near the window two thick candles were burning. Nekhludoff sat on the arm of the seat, his elbow resting on the back, laughing. As soon as she recognized him she tapped on the window with her cold hand. But at that moment the third bell rang, and the train began to move, the cars jostling each other forward. One of the players rose with the cards in his hands and began to look through the window. She tapped again, and pressed her face against the window-pane. At that moment the car beside which she stood was tugged forward, and it moved along. She ran alongside, looking in the window. The officer tried to lower the window, but could not. Nekhludoff rose, and, pushing the officer aside, began lowering it. The train went faster, so that Katiousha was obliged to run. The train moved still faster when the window was lowered. At that moment the conductor pushed her aside and jumped on the car. She fell back, but continued to run along the wet boards of the platform, and when she reached the end of the platform and began to descend the steps to the ground, she almost fell exhausted. The first-class car was far ahead of her, and while she was running the second-class cars passed her, then came with greater speed those of the third class. When the last car with the lanterns flew by her she was already beyond the water-tank, unsheltered from the wind which lashed her, blowing the shawl from her head and tangling her feet in her skirt. But still she ran on.

"Aunt Michaelovna!" shouted the little girl, "you have lost your shawl."

Katiousha stopped, threw back her head, and, covering her face with her hands, began to sob.

"He is gone!" she cried.

"While he is in a lighted car, sitting on a plush seat, jesting and drinking, I stand here in the mud, rain and wind, crying," she thought. She sat down on the ground and began to sob aloud. The little girl was frightened, and, embracing her wet clothing, she said:

"Auntie, let's go home."

"I will wait for the next train, throw myself under the wheels, and that will end it all," Katiousha was meanwhile thinking, not heeding the girl.

She made up her mind to carry out her intention. But as it always happens in the first moment of calm after a period of agitation, the child, his child, suddenly shuddered. Immediately all that which so tortured her that she was willing to die, all her wrath and her desire to revenge herself even by death, passed. She became calm, arranged her clothing, put the shawl on her head, and went away.

She returned home exhausted, wet and muddy. From that day began in her that spiritual transformation which ended in her present condition. From that terrible night on she ceased to believe in God and in goodness. Before that night she herself believed in God, and believed that other people believed in Him; but after that night she became convinced that no one believed, and all that was said of God and His law was false and wrong. The one whom she loved, and who loved her—she knew it—abandoned her and made sport of her feelings. And he was the best of all the men she knew. All the others were even worse. This she saw confirmed in all that had happened. His aunts, pious old ladies, drove her out when she was no longer as useful as she used to be. All the women with whom she came in contact tried to make money by her; the men, beginning with the commissary and down to the prison officers, all looked upon her as a means of pleasure. The whole world was after pleasure. Her belief in this was strengthened by the old author whom she met during the second year of her independent life. He had told her frankly that this—he called it poetical and esthetic—is all of life's happiness.

Every one lived for himself only, for his own pleasure, and all the words about God and goodness were deception. And if the questions sometimes occurred to her, Why were the affairs of the world so ill arranged that people harm each other, and all suffer, she thought it best not to dwell on it. If she became lonesome, she took a drink, smoked a cigarette, and the feeling would pass away.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

When at five o'clock the following morning, which was Sunday, the customary whistle blew, Korableva, who was already awake, roused Maslova.

"A convict," Maslova thought with horror, rubbing her eyes and involuntarily inhaling the foul morning air. She wished to fall asleep again, to transfer herself into a state of unconsciousness, but fear overcame her drowsiness. She raised herself, crossed her legs under her, and looked around. The women were already up, only the children were still sleeping. The moonshining woman with bulging eyes was carefully removing her coat from under them. The rioter was drying near the oven some rags which served for swaddling cloths, while the child, in the hands of the blue-eyed Theodosia, was crying at the top of its lungs, the woman lulling it in a gentle voice. The consumptive, seizing her breast, coughed violently, and, sighing at intervals, almost screamed. The red-headed woman lay prone on her back relating a dream she had had. The old incendiary stood before the image, whispering the same words, crossing herself and bowing. The chanter's daughter sat motionless on her cot, and with dull, half-open eyes was looking into space. Miss Dandy was curling on her finger her oily, rough, black hair.

Presently resounding steps were heard in the corridor, the lock creaked open, and two prisoners in short jackets and gray trousers scarcely reaching their ankles entered, and, raising the ill-smelling vat on a yoke, carried it away. The women went to the faucets in the corridor to wash themselves. The red-headed woman got into a quarrel with a woman from the adjoining cell. Again there were cursing, shouting and complaints.

"You will get into the dark-room yet," shouted the warden, and he slapped the red-headed woman on her fat, bare back, so that it resounded through the entire corridor. "Don't let me hear you again."

"Fooling again, you old man?" she said, treating it as a caress.

"Hurry up! It is time for mass."

Scarcely had Maslova arranged her hair when the inspector entered with his attendants.

"Make ready for inspection!" shouted the warden.

The women of the two cells formed in two rows along the corridor, those of the back row placing their hands on the shoulders of the women in the front row. Then they were counted.

After the count came the woman inspector and led the prisoners to the church. Maslova and Theodosia were in the middle of the column, which consisted of over a hundred women from all the cells. They all had white 'kerchiefs on their heads, and some few wore their own colored dresses. These were the wives and children of convicts. The procession covered the whole stairway. A soft clatter of prison shoes was heard, here and there some conversation, and sometimes laughter. At a turn Maslova noticed the malicious face of her enemy, Bochkova, who was walking in the front row, and pointed her out to Theodosia. At the foot of the stairs the women became silent, and, making the sign of the cross and bowing, they filed into the open door of the empty, gold-bedecked chapel. Their place was on the right, where, crowding each other, they began to arrange themselves in rows, standing. Behind the women came the male convicts who were serving terms or detained for transportation under sentence by the communities. Loudly clearing their throats, they formed a dense crowd on the left and the middle of the chapel. Above, on the gallery, were other convicts with heads half shaven, whose presence was manifested by a clanking of chains.

This prison chapel had been rebuilt and remodeled by a rich merchant, who had spent about thirty thousand rubles on it, and it was all ornamented with gilt and bright colors.

For a few seconds there was silence, which was broken only by the blowing of noses, coughing, and clanking of chains. Suddenly the prisoners who stood in the middle began to press back, making a passage for the inspector, who walked to the middle of the chapel, and the services commenced.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Nekhludoff left the house early. A peasant was driving along a side alley, shouting in a strange voice: "Milk! milk! milk!"

The first warm, spring rain had fallen the evening before. Wherever there was a patch of unpaved ground the green grass burst forth; the lindens were covered with green nap; the fowl-cherry and poplar unfolded their long, fragrant leaves. In the market-place, through which Nekhludoff had to pass, dense crowds in rags swarmed before the tents, some carrying boots under their arms, others smoothly pressed trousers and vests on their shoulders.

The working people were already crowding near the traktirs (tea-houses), the men in clean, long coats gathered in folds in the back of the waist, and in shining boots; the women in bright-colored silk shawls and cloaks with glass-bead trimmings. Policemen, with pistols attached to yellow cords fastened around their waists, stood at their posts. Children and dogs played on the grass-plots, and gay nurses sat chatting on the benches.

On the streets, the left sides of which were yet cool, moist and shady, heavy carts and light cabs rumbled and jostled, the tram-cars rang their bells. The air was agitated by the pealing of the church-bells summoning the people to mass.

The driver stopped at a turn some distance from the prison. A few men and women stood around, most of them with bundles in their hands. To the right stood a few frame houses; to the left a two-story building over which hung a large sign. The large prison itself was directly in front. An armed soldier walked to and fro challenging every one attempting to pass him.

At the gate of the frame buildings sat the warden in uniform, with an entry booklet in his hand. He made entries of visitors and those whom they wished to see. Nekhludoff approached him, gave his name and that of Moslova, and the officer entered them in his book.

"Why don't they open the door?" asked Nekhludoff.

"The morning service is on. As soon as it is over you will be admitted."

Nekhludoff returned among the waiting crowd.

A man in threadbare clothing, rumpled hat and slippers on his bare feet, and his face full of red lines, pushed his way through the crowd and walked toward the prison door.

"Where are you going?" shouted the soldier.

"What are you bawling about?" answered the man, entirely undisturbed by the soldier's challenge. "If I can't go in, I will wait. No use bawling as if you were a general."

The crowd laughed approvingly. Most of the visitors were poorly dressed, even ragged, but, judging by outward appearance, there were also some decent men and women among them. Beside Nekhludoff stood a well-dressed man, clean shaven, stout and with rosy cheeks, who carried a bundle of what looked like linen. Nekhludoff asked him if that was his first visit. The man answered that he came there every Sunday, and they entered into conversation. He was an employee of a bank, whose brother was under indictment for forgery. This kind-hearted man told Nekhludoff all his story, and was about to ask him about his own when their attention was attracted by a rubber-tired carriage drawn by a blooded chestnut horse. The carriage was occupied by a student and a lady whose face was hidden under a veil. The student alighted, holding in his hand a large bundle. He approached Nekhludoff and asked him where and how he should deliver the loaves of bread he had brought for the prisoners. "I brought them at the request of my bride. That is my bride. Her parents advised us to bring some alms for the prisoners."

"I really don't know, for I am here for the first time, but I think that that officer will tell you," said Nekhludoff, pointing to the warden in the crown-laced uniform.

While Nekhludoff was talking to the student the large iron gate of the prison opened and a uniformed officer with another warden came out. The one with the booklet in his hand announced that the prison was open for visitors. The guard stood aside, and all the visitors, as if fearing to be late, with quick step, and some even running, pressed toward the prison gate. One of the wardens stationed himself at the gate, and in a loud voice counted the passing visitors—16, 17, 18, etc. The other warden, within the gate, touching each with his hand, also counted the visitors as they entered another door. This was to make sure that at their departure no visitor remained in prison, and no prisoner made his way out. The tallying officer, without regard to the person of the visitor, slapped Nekhludoff on the back. This at first offended the latter, but he immediately remembered his mission, and he became ashamed that his feelings should be thus wounded.

The second door opened into a large, vaulted room with small iron-grated windows. In this room, which was called the meeting-room, Nekhludoff saw in a niche a large image of the Crucifixion.

Nekhludoff went on slowly, letting the hurrying visitors pass before, and experienced a mingled feeling of horror at the malefactors imprisoned in this jail, compassion for those innocent people who, like the boy and Katiousha, must be here, and timidity and tenderness before the meeting that was before him. When he reached the end of the room the warden said something, but Nekhludoff, who was absorbed in his thoughts, paid no attention to it, and followed in the direction led by the crowd, that is, to the men's ward instead of the women's.

Letting the hurrying visitors pass, he walked into the next room designated for interviews. On opening the door he was struck by the deafening shouts of a hundred throats turned into a continuous humming noise. Only as he neared the people, who, like flies swarming on sugar pressed their faces against a net which divided the room in two, did Nekhludoff understand the cause of the noise. This room with windows in the rear wall was divided in two not by one, but by two wire nets which stretched from the ceiling to the floor. Two wardens walked between the nets. The prisoners were on the other side of the nets, between which there was a space of about seven feet for visitors, so that not only was it difficult to converse with them but a short-sighted man could not even see the face of the prisoner he was visiting. In order to be heard, it was necessary to shout at the top of one's voice. On both sides, pressing against the nets, were the faces of wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, children, who endeavored to see and speak to each other. But as every one tried to speak so that he could be heard by the person spoken to, and his neighbor did the same, their voices interfered with each other, and each tried to outcry the other. The result was the noise which astonished Nekhludoff when he entered the room. It was absolutely impossible to understand the conversations. Only by the expression of the people's faces could one judge what they were speaking about, and what relation the speakers sustained toward each other. Near Nekhludoff was an old woman with a small 'kerchief on her head, who, with trembling chin, shouted to a pale young man with head half shaven. The prisoner, knitting his brow, was listening to her with raised eyebrows. Beside the old woman stood a young man in a long coat, who was nodding his head while listening to a prisoner with a weary face and beard turning gray, who greatly resembled him. Further on stood a ragamuffin waving his hand, shouting and laughing. On the floor beside this man sat a woman in a good woolen dress, with a child in her arms. She wept bitterly, evidently seeing for the first time that gray-haired man on the other side of the net, manacled, in a prison jacket, and with head half shaven. Over this woman stood the bank employee shouting at the top of his voice to a bald-headed prisoner with shining eyes.

Nekhludoff remained in this room about five minutes, experiencing a strange feeling of anguish, a consciousness of his impotence at the discord in the world, and he was seized with a sensation like a rocking on board of a ship.

"But I must fulfill my mission," he said to himself, taking heart. "What am I to do?"

As he looked around for some officer, he saw a middle-sized man with mustache, wearing epaulets, who was walking behind the crowd.

"Sir, could you not tell me where the women are kept, and where it is permitted to see them?" he asked, making a particular effort to be polite.

"You wish to go to the women's ward?"

"Yes; I would like to see one of the women prisoners," Nekhludoff said, with the same strained politeness.

"You should have said so in the meeting-room. Whom do you wish to see, then?"

"I wish to see Katherine Maslova."

"Has she been sentenced?"

"Yes, she was sentenced the other day," he said humbly, as if fearing to ruffle the temper of the officer, who seemed to be interested in him.

"Then this way, please," said the inspector, who had evidently decided from Nekhludoff's appearance that he deserved attention. "Sidoroff!" he turned to a warrant-officer wearing a mustache, and medals on his breast. "Show this gentleman to the women's ward."

"All right, sir."

At that moment heart-rending cries came from the direction of the grating.

All this seemed strange to Nekhludoff, and strangest of all was that he was obliged to thank and feel himself under obligation to the inspector and warden.

The warden led Nekhludoff from the men's ward into the corridor, and through the open door opposite admitted him to the women's meeting-room.