Resurrection

'What is he?'

'A convict, condemned to penal servitude. Let those two at least have a little joy, or else it is too painful,' the young man added, listening to the sobs of the consumptive lad's mother.

'Now, my good people! Please, please do not oblige me to have recourse to severe measures,' the inspector said, repeating the same words several times over. 'Do, please,' he went on in a weak, hesitating manner. 'It is high time. What do you mean by it? This sort of thing is quite impossible. I am now asking you for the last time,' he repeated wearily, now putting out his cigarette and then lighting another.

It was evident that, artful, old, and common as were the devices enabling men to do evil to others without feeling responsible for it, the inspector could not but feel conscious that he was one of those who were guilty of causing the sorrow which manifested itself in this room. And it was apparent that this troubled him sorely. At length the prisoners and their visitors began to go—the first out of the inner, the latter out of the outer door. The man with the rubber jacket passed out among them, and the consumptive youth and the dishevelled man. Mary Pavlovna went out with the boy born in prison.

The visitors went out too. The old man with the blue spectacles, stepping heavily, went out, followed by Nekhludoff.

'Yes, a strange state of things this,' said the talkative young man, as if continuing an interrupted conversation, as he descended the stairs side by side with Nekhludoff. 'Yet we have reason to be grateful to the inspector who does not keep strictly to the rules, kind-hearted fellow. If they can get a talk it does relieve their hearts a bit, after all!'

While talking to the young man, who introduced himself as Medinzeff, Nekhludoff reached the hall. There the inspector came up to them with weary step.

'If you wish to see Maslova,' he said, apparently desiring to be polite to Nekhludoff, 'please come to- morrow.'

'Very well,' answered Nekhludoff, and hurried away, experiencing more than ever that sensation of moral nausea which he always felt on entering the prison.

The sufferings of the evidently innocent Menshoff seemed terrible, and not so much his physical suffering as the perplexity, the distrust in the good and in God which he must feel, seeing the cruelty of the people who tormented him without any reason.

Terrible were the disgrace and sufferings cast on these hundreds of guiltless people simply because something was not written on paper as it should have been. Terrible were the brutalised jailers, whose occupation is to torment their brothers, and who were certain that they were fulfilling an important and useful duty; but most terrible of all seemed this sickly, elderly, kind-hearted inspector, who was obliged to part mother and son, father and daughter, who were just the same sort of people as he and his own children.

'What is it all for?' Nekhludoff asked himself, and could not find an answer.

CHAPTER LVII.

THE VICE-GOVERNOR'S 'AT-HOME'.

The next day Nekhludoff went to see the advocate, and spoke to him about the Menshoffs' case, begging him to undertake their defence. The advocate promised to look into the case, and if it turned out to be as Nekhludoff said he would in all probability undertake the defence free of charge. Then Nekhludoff told him of the 130 men who were kept in prison owing to a mistake. 'On whom did it depend? Whose fault was it?'

The advocate was silent for a moment, evidently anxious to give a correct reply.

'Whose fault is it? No one's,' he said, decidedly. 'Ask the Procureur, he'll say it is the Governor's; ask the Governor, he'll say it is the Procureur's fault. No one is in fault.'

'I am just going to see the Vice-Governor. I shall tell him.'

'Oh, that's quite useless,' said the advocate, with a smile. 'He is such a—he is not a relation or friend of yours?—such a blockhead, if I may say so, and yet a crafty animal at the same time.'

Nekhludoff remembered what Maslennikoff had said about the advocate, and did not answer, but took leave and went on to Maslennikoff's. He had to ask Maslennikoff two things: about Maslova's removal to the prison hospital, and about the 130 passportless men innocently imprisoned. Though it was very hard to petition a man whom he did not respect, and by whose orders men were flogged, yet it was the only means of gaining his end, and he had to go through with it.

As he drove up to Maslennikoff's house Nekhludoff saw a number of different carriages by the front door, and remembered that it was Maslennikoff's wife's 'at-home' day, to which he had been invited. At the moment Nekhludoff drove up there was a carriage in front of the door, and a footman in livery, with a cockade in his hat, was helping a lady down the doorstep. She was holding up her train, and showing her thin ankles, black stockings, and slippered feet. Among the carriages was a closed landau, which he knew to be the Korchagins'.

The grey-haired, red-checked coachman took off his hat and bowed in a respectful yet friendly manner to Nekhludoff, as to a gentleman he knew well. Nekhludoff had not had time to inquire for Maslennikoff, when the latter appeared on the carpeted stairs, accompanying a very important guest not only to the first landing but to the bottom of the stairs. This very important visitor, a military man, was speaking in French about a lottery for the benefit of children's homes that were to be founded in the city, and expressed the opinion that this was a good occupation for the ladies. 'It amuses them, and the money comes.'

'Qu'elles s'amusent et que le bon dieu les benisse. M. Nekhludoff! How d'you do? How is it one never sees you?' he greeted Nekhludoff. 'Allez presenter vos devoirs a Madame. And the Korchagins are here et Nadine Bukshevden. Toutes les jolies femmes de la ville,' said the important guest, slightly raising his uniformed shoulders as he presented them to his own richly liveried servant to have his military overcoat put on. 'Au revoir, mon cher.' And he pressed Maslennikoff's hand.

'Now, come up; I am so glad,' said Maslennikoff, grasping Nekhludoff's hand. In spite of his corpulency Maslennikoff hurried quickly up the stairs. He was in particularly good spirits, owing to the attention paid him by the important personage. Every such attention gave him the same sense of delight as is felt by an affectionate dog when its master pats it, strokes it, or scratches its ears. It wags its tail, cringes, jumps about, presses its ears down, and madly rushes about in a circle. Maslennikoff was ready to do the same. He did not notice the serious expression on Nekhludoff's face, paid no heed to his words, but pulled him irresistibly towards the drawing-room, so that it was impossible for Nekhludoff not to follow. 'Business after wards. I shall do whatever you want,' said Meslennikoff, as he drew Nekhludoff through the dancing hall. 'Announce Prince Nekhludoff,' he said to a footman, without stopping on his way. The footman started off at a trot and passed them.

'Vous n'avez qu' a ordonner. But you must see my wife. As it is, I got it for letting you go without seeing her last time.'

By the time they reached the drawing-room the footman had already announced Nekhludoff, and from between the bonnets and heads that surrounded it the smiling face of Anna Ignatievna, the Vice-Governor's wife, beamed on Nekhludoff. At the other end of the drawing-room several ladies were seated round the tea-table, and some military men and some civilians stood near them. The clatter of male and female voices went on unceasingly.

'Enfin! you seem to have quite forgotten us. How have we offended?' With these words, intended to convey an idea of intimacy which had never existed between herself and Nekhludoff, Anna Ignatievna greeted the newcomer.

'You are acquainted?—Madam Tilyaevsky, M. Chernoff. Sit down a bit nearer. Missy vene donc a notre table on vous apportera votre the . . . And you,' she said, having evidently forgotten his name, to an officer who was talking to Missy, 'do come here. A cup of tea, Prince?'

'I shall never, never agree with you. It's quite simple; she did not love,' a woman's voice was heard saying.

'But she loved tarts.'

'Oh, your eternal silly jokes!' put in, laughingly, another lady resplendent in silks, gold, and jewels.

'C'est excellent these little biscuits, and so light. I think