The member with the gold spectacles said nothing, but only looked gloomily in front of him, expecting nothing good, either from his wife or life in general. The reading of the report commenced.
“In the year 188-, on February 15th, I, the undersigned, commissioned by the medical department, made an examination, No. 638,”—the secretary began again with firmness and raising the pitch of his voice as if to dispel the sleepiness that had overtaken all present—“in the presence of the assistant medical inspector, of the internal organs:—
“1. The right lung and the heart (contained in a 6 lb. glass jar).
“2. The contents of the stomach (in a 6 lb. glass jar).
“3. The stomach itself (in a 6 lb. glass jar).
“4. The liver, the spleen and the kidneys (in a 9 lb. glass jar).
“5. The intestines (in a 9 lb. earthenware jar).”
The president here whispered to one of the members, then stooped to the other, and having received their consent, he said: “The Court considers the reading of this report superfluous.” The secretary stopped reading and folded the paper, and the public prosecutor angrily began to write down something. “The gentlemen of the jury may now examine the articles of material evidence,” said the president. The foreman and several of the others rose and went to the table, not quite knowing what to do with their hands. They looked in turn at the glass, the test tube, and the ring. The merchant even tried on the ring.
“Ah! that was a finger,” he said, returning to his place; “like a cucumber,” he added. Evidently the image he had formed in his mind of the gigantic merchant amused him.
XXI
When the examination of the articles of material evidence was finished, the president announced that the investigation was now concluded and immediately called on the prosecutor to proceed, hoping that as the latter was also a man, he, too, might feel inclined to smoke or dine, and show some mercy on the rest. But the public prosecutor showed mercy neither to himself nor to anyone else. He was very stupid by nature, but, besides this, he had had the misfortune of finishing school with a gold medal and of receiving a reward for his essay on “Servitude” when studying Roman Law at the University, and was therefore self-confident and self-satisfied in the highest degree (his success with the ladies also conducing to this) and his stupidity had become extraordinary.
When the word was given to him, he got up slowly, showing the whole of his graceful figure in his embroidered uniform. Putting his hand on the desk he looked round the room, slightly bowing his head, and, avoiding the eyes of the prisoners, began to read the speech he had prepared while the reports were being read.
“Gentlemen of the jury! The business that now lies before you is, if I may so express myself, very characteristic.”
The speech of a public prosecutor, according to his views, should always have a social importance, like the celebrated speeches made by the advocates who have become distinguished. True, the audience consisted of three women—a semptress, a cook, and Simeon’s sister—and a coachman; but this did not matter. The celebrities had begun in the same way. To be always at the height of his position, i.e., to penetrate into the depths of the psychological significance of crime and to discover the wounds of society, was one of the prosecutor’s principles.
“You see before you, gentlemen of the jury, a crime characteristic, if I may so express myself, of the end of our century; bearing, so to say, the specific features of that very painful phenomenon, the corruption to which those elements of our present-day society, which are, so to say, particularly exposed to the burning rays of this process, are subject.”
The public prosecutor spoke at great length, trying not to forget any of the notions he had formed in his mind, and, on the other hand, never to hesitate, and let his speech flow on for an hour and a quarter without a break.
Only once he stopped and for some time stood swallowing his saliva, but he soon mastered himself and made up for the interruption by heightened eloquence. He spoke, now with a tender, insinuating accent, stepping from foot to foot and looking at the jury, now in quiet, businesslike tones, glancing into his notebook, then with a loud, accusing voice, looking from the audience to the advocates. But he avoided looking at the prisoners, who were all three fixedly gazing at him. Every new craze then in vogue among his set was alluded to in his speech; everything that then was, and some things that still are, considered to be the last words of scientific wisdom: the laws of heredity and inborn criminality, evolution and the struggle for existence, hypnotism and hypnotic influence.
According to his definition, the merchant Smelkóff was of the genuine Russian type, and had perished in consequence of his generous, trusting nature, having fallen into the hands of deeply degraded individuals.
Simeon Kartínkin was the atavistic production of serfdom, a stupefied, ignorant, unprincipled man, who had not even any religion. Euphémia was his mistress, and a victim of heredity; all the signs of degeneration were noticeable in her. The chief wire-puller in this affair was Máslova, presenting the phenomenon of decadence in its lowest form. “This woman,” he said, looking at her, “has, as we have today heard from her mistress in this court, received an education; she can not only read and write, but she knows French; she is illegitimate, and probably carries in her the germs of criminality. She was educated in an enlightened, noble family and might have lived by honest work, but she deserts her benefactress, gives herself up to a life of shame in which she is distinguished from her companions by her education, and chiefly, gentlemen of the jury, as you have heard from her mistress, by her power of acting on the visitors by means of that mysterious capacity lately investigated by
