Though he had received no order from the governor to visit the prison that morning, he knew by experience that it was easy to get from the subordinates what the higher officials would not grant, so now he meant to try and get into the prison to bring Katúsha the joyful news, and perhaps to get her set free, and at the same time to inquire about Kryltzóff’s state of health, and tell him and Mary Pávlovna what the general had said. The prison inspector was a tall, imposing-looking man, with moustaches and whiskers that twisted towards the corners of his mouth. He received Nekhlúdoff very gravely, and told him plainly that he could not grant an outsider the permission to interview the prisoners without a special order from his chief. To Nekhlúdoff’s remark that he had been allowed to visit the prisoners even in the cities he answered, “That may be so, but I do not allow it,” and his tone implied, “You city gentlemen may think to surprise and perplex us, but we in Eastern Siberia also know what the law is, and may even teach it you.” The copy of a document straight from the Emperor’s own office did not have any effect on the prison inspector either. He decidedly refused to let Nekhlúdoff come inside the prison walls. He only smiled contemptuously at Nekhlúdoff’s naive conclusion, that the copy he had received would suffice to set Máslova free, and declared that a direct order from his own superiors would be needed before anyone could be set at liberty. The only things he agreed to do were to communicate to Máslova that a mitigation had arrived for her, and to promise that he would not detain her an hour after the order from his chief to liberate her would arrive. He would also give no news of Kryltzóff, saying he could not even tell if there was such a prisoner; and so Nekhlúdoff, having accomplished next to nothing, got into his trap and drove back to his hotel.
The strictness of the inspector was chiefly due to the fact that an epidemic of typhus had broken out in the prison, owing to twice the number of persons that it was intended for being crowded in it. The isvóstchik who drove Nekhlúdoff said, “Quite a lot of people are dying in the prison every day, some kind of disease having sprung up among them, so that as many as twenty were buried in one day.”
XXIV
In spite of his ineffectual attempt at the prison, Nekhlúdoff, still in the same vigorous, energetic frame of mind, went to the Governor’s office to see if the original of the document had arrived for Máslova. It had not arrived, so Nekhlúdoff went back to the hotel and wrote without delay to Selenín and the advocate about it. When he had finished writing he looked at his watch and saw it was time to go to the General’s dinner party.
On the way he again began wondering how Katúsha would receive the news of the mitigation of her sentence. Where she would be settled? How he should live with her? What about Símonson? What would his relations to her be? He remembered the change that had taken place in her, and this reminded him of her past. “I must forget it for the present,” he thought, and again hastened to drive her out of his mind. “When the time comes I shall see,” he said to himself, and began to think of what he ought to say to the General.
The dinner at the General’s, with the luxury habitual to the lives of the wealthy and those of high rank, to which Nekhlúdoff had been accustomed, was extremely enjoyable after he had been so long deprived not only of luxury but even of the most ordinary comforts. The mistress of the house was a Petersburg grande dame of the old school, a maid of honour at the court of Nicholas I, who spoke French quite naturally and Russian very unnaturally. She held herself very erect and, moving her hands, she kept her elbows close to her waist. She was quietly and, somewhat sadly considerate for her husband, and extremely kind to all her visitors, though with a tinge of difference in her behaviour according to their position. She received Nekhlúdoff as if he were one of them, and her fine, almost imperceptible flattery made him once again aware of his virtues and gave him a feeling of satisfaction. She made him feel that she knew of that honest though rather singular step of his which had brought him to Siberia, and held him to be an exceptional man. This refined flattery and the elegance and luxury of the General’s house had the effect of making Nekhlúdoff succumb to the enjoyment of the handsome surroundings, the delicate dishes and the ease and pleasure of intercourse with educated people of his own class, so that the surroundings in the midst of which he had lived for the
