Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:53 am

CHAPTER XXIX. MASLOVA IN PRISON.

Maslova reached her cell only at six in the evening, tired and footsore, having, unaccustomed as she was to walking, gone 10 miles on the stony road that day. She was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence and tormented by hunger. During the first interval of her trial, when the soldiers were eating bread and hard-boiled eggs in her presence, her mouth watered and she realised she was hungry, but considered it beneath her dignity to beg of them. Three hours later the desire to eat had passed, and she felt only weak. It was then she received the unexpected sentence. At first she thought she had made a mistake; she could not imagine herself as a convict in Siberia, and could not believe what she heard. But seeing the quiet, business-like faces of judges and jury, who heard this news as if it were perfectly natural and expected, she grew indignant, and proclaimed loudly to the whole Court that she was not guilty. Finding that her cry was also taken as something natural and expected, and feeling incapable of altering matters, she was horror-struck and began to weep in despair, knowing that she must submit to the cruel and surprising injustice that had been done her. What astonished her most was that young men—or, at any rate, not old men—the same men who always looked so approvingly at her (one of them, the public prosecutor, she had seen in quite a different humour) had condemned her. While she was sitting in the prisoners’ room before the trial and during the intervals, she saw these men looking in at the open door pretending they had to pass there on some business, or enter the room and gaze on her with approval. And then, for some unknown reason, these same men had condemned her to hard labour, though she was innocent of the charge laid against her. At first she cried, but then quieted down and sat perfectly stunned in the prisoners’ room, waiting to be led back. She wanted only two things now—tobacco and strong drink. In this state Botchkova and Kartinkin found her when they were led into the same room after being sentenced. Botchkova began at once to scold her, and call her a “convict.”

“Well! What have you gained? justified yourself, have you? What you have deserved, that you’ve got. Out in Siberia you’ll give up your finery, no fear!”

Maslova sat with her hands inside her sleeves, hanging her head and looking in front of her at the dirty floor without moving, only saying: “I don’t bother you, so don’t you bother me. I don’t bother you, do I?” she repeated this several times, and was silent again. She did brighten up a little when Botchkova and Kartinkin were led away and an attendant brought her three roubles.

“Are you Maslova?” he asked. “Here you are; a lady sent it you,” he said, giving her the money.

“A lady—what lady?”

“You just take it. I’m not going to talk to you.”

This money was sent by Kitaeva, the keeper of the house in which she used to live. As she was leaving the court she turned to the usher with the question whether she might give Maslova a little money. The usher said she might. Having got permission, she removed the three-buttoned Swedish kid glove from her plump, white hand, and from an elegant purse brought from the back folds of her silk skirt took a pile of coupons, [in Russia coupons cut off interest-bearing papers are often used as money] just cut off from the interest-bearing papers which she had earned in her establishment, chose one worth 2 roubles and 50 copecks, added two 20 and one 10-copeck coins, and gave all this to the usher. The usher called an attendant, and in his presence gave the money.

“Belease to giff it accurately,” said Carolina Albertovna Kitaeva.

The attendant was hurt by her want of confidence, and that was why he treated Maslova so brusquely. Maslova was glad of the money, because it could give her the only thing she now desired. “If I could but get cigarettes and take a whiff!” she said to herself, and all her thoughts centred on the one desire to smoke and drink. She longed for spirits so that she tasted them and felt the strength they would give her; and she greedily breathed in the air when the fumes of tobacco reached her from the door of a room that opened into the corridor. But she had to wait long, for the secretary, who should have given the order for her to go, forgot about the prisoners while talking and even disputing with one of the advocates about the article forbidden by the censor.

At last, about five o’clock, she was allowed to go, and was led away through the back door by her escort, the Nijni man and the Tchoovash. Then, still within the entrance to the Law Courts, she gave them 50 copecks, asking them to get her two rolls and some cigarettes. The Tchoovash laughed, took the money, and said, “All right; I’ll get ‘em,” and really got her the rolls and the cigarettes and honestly returned the change. She was not allowed to smoke on the way, and, with her craving unsatisfied, she continued her way to the prison. When she was brought to the gate of the prison, a hundred convicts who had arrived by rail were being led in. The convicts, bearded, clean-shaven, old, young, Russians, foreigners, some with their heads shaved and rattling with the chains on their feet, filled the anteroom with dust, noise and an acid smell of perspiration. Passing Maslova, all the convicts looked at her, and some came up to her and brushed her as they passed.

“Ay, here’s a wench—a fine one,” said one.

“My respects to you, miss,” said another, winking at her. One dark man with a moustache, the rest of his face and the back of his head clean shaved, rattling with his chains and catching her feet in them, sprang near and embraced her.

“What! don’t you know your chum? Come, come; don’t give yourself airs,” showing his teeth and his eyes glittering when she pushed him away.

“You rascal! what are you up to?” shouted the inspector’s assistant, coming in from behind. The convict shrank back and jumped away. The assistant assailed Maslova.

“What are you here for?”

Maslova was going to say she had been brought back from the Law Courts, but she was so tired that she did not care to speak.

“She has returned from the Law Courts, sir,” said one of the soldiers, coming forward with his fingers lifted to his cap.

“Well, hand her over to the chief warder. I won’t have this sort of thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sokoloff, take her in!” shouted the assistant inspector.

The chief warder came up, gave Maslova a slap on the shoulder, and making a sign with his head for her to follow led her into the corridor of the women’s ward. There she was searched, and as nothing prohibited was found on her (she had hidden her box of cigarettes inside a roll) she was led to the cell she had left in the morning.
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:54 am

CHAPTER XXX. THE CELL.

The cell in which Maslova was imprisoned was a large room 21 feet long and 10 feet broad; it had two windows and a large stove. Two-thirds of the space were taken up by shelves used as beds. The planks they were made of had warped and shrunk. Opposite the door hung a dark-coloured icon with a wax candle sticking to it and a bunch of everlastings hanging down from it. By the door to the right there was a dark spot on the floor on which stood a stinking tub. The inspection had taken place and the women were locked up for the night.

The occupants of this room were 15 persons, including three children. It was still quite light. Only two of the women were lying down: a consumptive woman imprisoned for theft, and an idiot who spent most of her time in sleep and who was arrested because she had no passport. The consumptive woman was not asleep, but lay with wide open eyes, her cloak folded under her head, trying to keep back the phlegm that irritated her throat, and not to cough.

Some of the other women, most of whom had nothing on but coarse brown holland chemises, stood looking out of the window at the convicts down in the yard, and some sat sewing. Among the latter was the old woman, Korableva, who had seen Maslova off in the morning. She was a tall, strong, gloomy-looking woman; her fair hair, which had begun to turn grey on the temples, hung down in a short plait. She was sentenced to hard labour in Siberia because she had killed her husband with an axe for making up to their daughter. She was at the head of the women in the cell, and found means of carrying on a trade in spirits with them. Beside her sat another woman sewing a coarse canvas sack. This was the wife of a railway watchman, [There are small watchmen’s cottages at distances of about one mile from each other along the Russian railways, and the watchmen or their wives have to meet every train.] imprisoned for three months because she did not come out with the flags to meet a train that was passing, and an accident had occurred. She was a short, snub-nosed woman, with small, black eyes; kind and talkative. The third of the women who were sewing was Theodosia, a quiet young girl, white and rosy, very pretty, with bright child’s eyes, and long fair plaits which she wore twisted round her head. She was in prison for attempting to poison her husband. She had done this immediately after her wedding (she had been given in marriage without her consent at the age of 16) because her husband would give her no peace. But in the eight months during which she had been let out on bail, she had not only made it up with her husband, but come to love him, so that when her trial came they were heart and soul to one another. Although her husband, her father-in-law, but especially her mother-in-law, who had grown very fond of her, did all they could to get her acquitted, she was sentenced to hard labour in Siberia. The kind, merry, ever-smiling Theodosia had a place next Maslova’s on the shelf bed, and had grown so fond of her that she took it upon herself as a duty to attend and wait on her. Two other women were sitting without any work at the other end of the shelf bedstead. One was a woman of about 40, with a pale, thin face, who once probably had been very handsome. She sat with her baby at her thin, white breast. The crime she had committed was that when a recruit was, according to the peasants’ view, unlawfully taken from their village, and the people stopped the police officer and took the recruit away from him, she (an aunt of the lad unlawfully taken) was the first to catch hold of the bridle of the horse on which he was being carried off. The other, who sat doing nothing, was a kindly, grey-haired old woman, hunchbacked and with a flat bosom. She sat behind the stove on the bedshelf, and pretended to catch a fat four-year-old boy, who ran backwards and forwards in front of her, laughing gaily. This boy had only a little shirt on and his hair was cut short. As he ran past the old woman he kept repeating, “There, haven’t caught me!” This old woman and her son were accused of incendiarism. She bore her imprisonment with perfect cheerfulness, but was concerned about her son, and chiefly about her “old man,” who she feared would get into a terrible state with no one to wash for him. Besides these seven women, there were four standing at one of the open windows, holding on to the iron bars. They were making signs and shouting to the convicts whom Maslova had met when returning to prison, and who were now passing through the yard. One of these women was big and heavy, with a flabby body, red hair, and freckled on her pale yellow face, her hands, and her fat neck. She shouted something in a loud, raucous voice, and laughed hoarsely. This woman was serving her term for theft. Beside her stood an awkward, dark little woman, no bigger than a child of ten, with a long waist and very short legs, a red, blotchy face, thick lips which did not hide her long teeth, and eyes too far apart. She broke by fits and starts into screeching laughter at what was going on in the yard. She was to be tried for stealing and incendiarism. They called her Khoroshavka. Behind her, in a very dirty grey chemise, stood a thin, miserable-looking pregnant woman, who was to be tried for concealment of theft. This woman stood silent, but kept smiling with pleasure and approval at what was going on below. With these stood a peasant woman of medium height, the mother of the boy who was playing with the old woman and of a seven-year-old girl. These were in prison with her because she had no one to leave them with. She was serving her term of imprisonment for illicit sale of spirits. She stood a little further from the window knitting a stocking, and though she listened to the other prisoners’ words she shook her head disapprovingly, frowned, and closed her eyes. But her seven-year-old daughter stood in her little chemise, her flaxen hair done up in a little pigtail, her blue eyes fixed, and, holding the red-haired woman by the skirt, attentively listened to the words of abuse that the women and the convicts flung at each other, and repeated them softly, as if learning them by heart. The twelfth prisoner, who paid no attention to what was going on, was a very tall, stately girl, the daughter of a deacon, who had drowned her baby in a well. She went about with bare feet, wearing only a dirty chemise. The thick, short plait of her fair hair had come undone and hung down dishevelled, and she paced up and down the free space of the cell, not looking at any one, turning abruptly every time she came up to the wall.
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:54 am

CHAPTER XXXI. THE PRISONERS.

When the padlock rattled and the door opened to let Maslova into the cell, all turned towards her. Even the deacon’s daughter stopped for a moment and looked at her with lifted brows before resuming her steady striding up and down.

Korableva stuck her needle into the brown sacking and looked questioningly at Maslova through her spectacles. “Eh, eh, deary me, so you have come back. And I felt sure they’d acquit you. So you’ve got it?” She took off her spectacles and put her work down beside her on the shelf bed.

“And here have I and the old lady been saying, ‘Why, it may well be they’ll let her go free at once.’ Why, it happens, ducky, they’ll even give you a heap of money sometimes, that’s sure,” the watchman’s wife began, in her singing voice: “Yes, we were wondering, ‘Why’s she so long?’ And now just see what it is. Well, our guessing was no use. The Lord willed otherwise,” she went on in musical tones.

“Is it possible? Have they sentenced you?” asked Theodosia, with concern, looking at Maslova with her bright blue, child-like eyes; and her merry young face changed as if she were going to cry.

Maslova did not answer, but went on to her place, the second from the end, and sat down beside Korableva.

“Have you eaten anything?” said Theodosia, rising and coming up to Maslova.

Maslova gave no reply, but putting the rolls on the bedstead, took off her dusty cloak, the kerchief off her curly black head, and began pulling off her shoes. The old woman who had been playing with the boy came up and stood in front of Maslova. “Tz, tz, tz,” she clicked with her tongue, shaking her head pityingly. The boy also came up with her, and, putting out his upper lip, stared with wide open eyes at the roll Maslova had brought. When Maslova saw the sympathetic faces of her fellow-prisoners, her lips trembled and she felt inclined to cry, but she succeeded in restraining herself until the old woman and the boy came up. When she heard the kind, pitying clicking of the old woman’s tongue, and met the boy’s serious eyes turned from the roll to her face, she could bear it no longer; her face quivered and she burst into sobs.

“Didn’t I tell you to insist on having a proper advocate?” said Norableva. “Well, what is it? Exile?”

Maslova could not answer, but took from inside the roll a box of cigarettes, on which was a picture of a lady with hair done up very high and dress cut low in front, and passed the box to Korableva. Korableva looked at it and shook her head, chiefly because see did not approve of Maslova’s putting her money to such bad use; but still she took out a cigarette, lit it at the lamp, took a puff, and almost forced it into Maslova’s hand. Maslova, still crying, began greedily to inhale the tobacco smoke. “Penal servitude,” she muttered, blowing out the smoke and sobbing.

“Don’t they fear the Lord, the cursed soul-slayers?” muttered Korableva, “sentencing the lass for nothing.” At this moment the sound of loud, coarse laughter came from the women who were still at the window. The little girl also laughed, and her childish treble mixed with the hoarse and screeching laughter of the others. One of the convicts outside had done something that produced this effect on the onlookers.

“Lawks! see the shaved hound, what he’s doing,” said the red-haired woman, her whole fat body shaking with laughter; and leaning against the grating she shouted meaning less obscene words.

“Ugh, the fat fright’s cackling,” said Korableva, who disliked the red-haired woman. Then, turning to Maslova again, she asked: “How many years?”

“Four,” said Maslova, and the tears ran down her cheeks in such profusion that one fell on the cigarette. Maslova crumpled it up angrily and took another.

Though the watchman’s wife did not smoke she picked up the cigarette Maslova had thrown away and began straightening it out, talking unceasingly.

“There, now, ducky, so it’s true,” she said. “Truth’s gone to the dogs and they do what they please, and here we were guessing that you’d go free. Norableva says, ‘She’ll go free.’ I say, ‘No,’ say I. ‘No, dear, my heart tells me they’ll give it her.’ And so it’s turned out,” she went on, evidently listening with pleasure to her own voice.

The women who had been standing by the window now also came up to Maslova, the convicts who had amused them having gone away. The first to come up were the woman imprisoned for illicit trade in spirits, and her little girl. “Why such a hard sentence?” asked the woman, sitting down by Maslova and knitting fast.

“Why so hard? Because there’s no money. That’s why! Had there been money, and had a good lawyer that’s up to their tricks been hired, they’d have acquitted her, no fear,” said Korableva. “There’s what’s-his-name—that hairy one with the long nose. He’d bring you out clean from pitch, mum, he would. Ah, if we’d only had him!”

“Him, indeed,” said Khoroshavka. “Why, he won’t spit at you for less than a thousand roubles.”

“Seems you’ve been born under an unlucky star,” interrupted the old woman who was imprisoned for incendiarism. “Only think, to entice the lad’s wife and lock him himself up to feed vermin, and me, too, in my old days—” she began to retell her story for the hundredth time. “If it isn’t the beggar’s staff it’s the prison. Yes, the beggar’s staff and the prison don’t wait for an invitation.”

“Ah, it seems that’s the way with all of them,” said the spirit trader; and after looking at her little girl she put down her knitting, and, drawing the child between her knees, began to search her head with deft fingers. “Why do you sell spirits?” she went on. “Why? but what’s one to feed the children on?”

These words brought back to Maslova’s mind her craving for drink.

“A little vodka,” she said to Korableva, wiping the tears with her sleeve and sobbing less frequently.

“All right, fork out,” said Korableva.
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:54 am

CHAPTER XXXII. A PRISON QUARREL.

Maslova got the money, which she had also hidden in a roll, and passed the coupon to Korableva. Korableva accepted it, though she could not read, trusting to Khoroshavka, who knew everything, and who said that the slip of paper was worth 2 roubles 50 copecks, then climbed up to the ventilator, where she had hidden a small flask of vodka. Seeing this, the women whose places were further off went away. Meanwhile Maslova shook the dust out of her cloak and kerchief, got up on the bedstead, and began eating a roll.

“I kept your tea for you,” said Theodosia, getting down from the shelf a mug and a tin teapot wrapped in a rag, “but I’m afraid it is quite cold.” The liquid was quite cold and tasted more of tin than of tea, yet Maslova filled the mug and began drinking it with her roll. “Finashka, here you are,” she said, breaking off a bit of the roll and giving it to the boy, who stood looking at her mouth.

Meanwhile Korableva handed the flask of vodka and a mug to Maslova, who offered some to her and to Khoroshavka. These prisoners were considered the aristocracy of the cell because they had some money, and shared what they possessed with the others.

In a few moments Maslova brightened up and related merrily what had happened at the court, and what had struck her most, i.e., how all the men had followed her wherever she went. In the court they all looked at her, she said, and kept coming into the prisoners’ room while she was there.

“One of the soldiers even says, ‘It’s all to look at you that they come.’ One would come in, ‘Where is such a paper?’ or something, but I see it is not the paper he wants; he just devours me with his eyes,” she said, shaking her head. “Regular artists.”

“Yes, that’s so,” said the watchman’s wife, and ran on in her musical strain, “they’re like flies after sugar.”

“And here, too,” Maslova interrupted her, “the same thing. They can do without anything else. But the likes of them will go without bread sooner than miss that! Hardly had they brought me back when in comes a gang from the railway. They pestered me so, I did not know how to rid myself of them. Thanks to the assistant, he turned them off. One bothered so, I hardly got away.”

“What’s he like?” asked Khoroshevka.

“Dark, with moustaches.”

“It must be him.”

“Him—who?”

“Why, Schegloff; him as has just gone by.”

“What’s he, this Schegloff?”

“What, she don’t know Schegloff? Why, he ran twice from Siberia. Now they’ve got him, but he’ll run away. The warders themselves are afraid of him,” said Khoroshavka, who managed to exchange notes with the male prisoners and knew all that went on in the prison. “He’ll run away, that’s flat.”

“If he does go away you and I’ll have to stay,” said Korableva, turning to Maslova, “but you’d better tell us now what the advocate says about petitioning. Now’s the time to hand it in.”

Maslova answered that she knew nothing about it.

At that moment the red-haired woman came up to the “aristocracy” with both freckled hands in her thick hair, scratching her head with her nails.

“I’ll tell you all about it, Katerina,” she began. “First and foremost, you’ll have to write down you’re dissatisfied with the sentence, then give notice to the Procureur.”

“What do you want here?” said Korableva angrily; “smell the vodka, do you? Your chatter’s not wanted. We know what to do without your advice.”

“No one’s speaking to you; what do you stick your nose in for?”

“It’s vodka you want; that’s why you come wriggling yourself in here.”

“Well, offer her some,” said Maslova, always ready to share anything she possessed with anybody.

“I’ll offer her something.”

“Come on then,” said the red-haired one, advancing towards Korableva. “Ah! think I’m afraid of such as you?”

“Convict fright!”

“That’s her as says it.”

“Slut!”

“I? A slut? Convict! Murderess!” screamed the red-haired one.

“Go away, I tell you,” said Korableva gloomily, but the red-haired one came nearer and Korableva struck her in the chest. The red-haired woman seemed only to have waited for this, and with a sudden movement caught hold of Korableva’s hair with one hand and with the other struck her in the face. Korableva seized this hand, and Maslova and Khoroshavka caught the red-haired woman by her arms, trying to pull her away, but she let go the old woman’s hair with her hand only to twist it round her fist. Korableva, with her head bent to one side, was dealing out blows with one arm and trying to catch the red-haired woman’s hand with her teeth, while the rest of the women crowded round, screaming and trying to separate the fighters; even the consumptive one came up and stood coughing and watching the fight. The children cried and huddled together. The noise brought the woman warder and a jailer. The fighting women were separated; and Korableva, taking out the bits of torn hair from her head, and the red-haired one, holding her torn chemise together over her yellow breast, began loudly to complain.

“I know, it’s all the vodka. Wait a bit; I’ll tell the inspector tomorrow. He’ll give it you. Can’t I smell it? Mind, get it all out of the way, or it will be the worse for you,” said the warder. “We’ve no time to settle your disputes. Get to your places and be quiet.”

But quiet was not soon re-established. For a long time the women went on disputing and explaining to one another whose fault it all was. At last the warder and the jailer left the cell, the women grew quieter and began going to bed, and the old woman went to the icon and commenced praying.

“The two jailbirds have met,” the red-haired woman suddenly called out in a hoarse voice from the other end of the shelf beds, accompanying every word with frightfully vile abuse.

“Mind you don’t get it again,” Korableva replied, also adding words of abuse, and both were quiet again.

“Had I not been stopped I’d have pulled your damned eyes out,” again began the red-haired one, and an answer of the same kind followed from Korableva. Then again a short interval and more abuse. But the intervals became longer and longer, as when a thunder-cloud is passing, and at last all was quiet.

All were in bed, some began to snore; and only the old woman, who always prayed a long time, went on bowing before the icon and the deacon’s daughter, who had got up after the warder left, was pacing up and down the room again. Maslova kept thinking that she was now a convict condemned to hard labour, and had twice been reminded of this—once by Botchkova and once by the red-haired woman—and she could not reconcile herself to the thought. Korableva, who lay next to her, turned over in her bed.

“There now,” said Maslova in a low voice; “who would have thought it? See what others do and get nothing for it.”

“Never mind, girl. People manage to live in Siberia. As for you, you’ll not be lost there either,” Korableva said, trying to comfort her.

“I know I’ll not be lost; still it is hard. It’s not such a fate I want—I, who am used to a comfortable life.”

“Ah, one can’t go against God,” said Korableva, with a sigh. “One can’t, my dear.”

“I know, granny. Still, it’s hard.”

They were silent for a while.

“Do you hear that baggage?” whispered Korableva, drawing Maslova’s attention to a strange sound proceeding from the other end of the room.

This sound was the smothered sobbing of the red-haired woman. The red-haired woman was crying because she had been abused and had not got any of the vodka she wanted so badly; also because she remembered how all her life she had been abused, mocked at, offended, beaten. Remembering this, she pitied herself, and, thinking no one heard her, began crying as children cry, sniffing with her nose and swallowing the salt tears.

“I’m sorry for her,” said Maslova.

“Of course one is sorry,” said Korableva, “but she shouldn’t come bothering.”
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:55 am

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE LEAVEN AT WORK—NEKHLUDOFF’S DOMESTIC CHANGES.

The next morning Nekhludoff awoke, conscious that something had happened to him, and even before he had remembered what it was he knew it to be something important and good.

“Katusha—the trial!” Yes, he must stop lying and tell the whole truth.

By a strange coincidence on that very morning he received the long-expected letter from Mary Vasilievna, the wife of the Marechal de Noblesse, the very letter he particularly needed. She gave him full freedom, and wished him happiness in his intended marriage.

“Marriage!” he repeated with irony. “How far I am from all that at present.”

And he remembered the plans he had formed the day before, to tell the husband everything, to make a clean breast of it, and express his readiness to give him any kind of satisfaction. But this morning this did not seem so easy as the day before. And, then, also, why make a man unhappy by telling him what he does not know? Yes, if he came and asked, he would tell him all, but to go purposely and tell—no! that was unnecessary.

And telling the whole truth to Missy seemed just as difficult this morning. Again, he could not begin to speak without offence. As in many worldly affairs, something had to remain unexpressed. Only one thing he decided on, i.e., not to visit there, and to tell the truth if asked.

But in connection with Katusha, nothing was to remain unspoken. “I shall go to the prison and shall tell her every thing, and ask her to forgive me. And if need be—yes, if need be, I shall marry her,” he thought.

This idea, that he was ready to sacrifice all on moral grounds, and marry her, again made him feel very tender towards himself. Concerning money matters he resolved this morning to arrange them in accord with his conviction, that the holding of landed property was unlawful. Even if he should not be strong enough to give up everything, he would still do what he could, not deceiving himself or others.

It was long since he had met the coming day with so much energy. When Agraphena Petrovna came in, he told her, with more firmness than he thought himself capable of, that he no longer needed this lodging nor her services. There had been a tacit understanding that he was keeping up so large and expensive an establishment because he was thinking of getting married. The giving up of the house had, therefore, a special meaning. Agraphena Petrovna looked at him in surprise.

“I thank you very much, Agraphena Petrovna, for all your care for me, but I no longer require so large a house nor so many servants. If you wish to help me, be so good as to settle about the things, put them away as it used to be done during mamma’s life, and when Natasha comes she will see to everything.” Natasha was Nekhludoff’s sister.

Agraphena Petrovna shook her head. “See about the things? Why, they’ll be required again,” she said.

“No, they won’t, Agraphena Petrovna; I assure you they won’t be required,” said Nekhludoff, in answer to what the shaking of her head had expressed. “Please tell Corney also that I shall pay him two months’ wages, but shall have no further need of him.”

“It is a pity, Dmitri Ivanovitch, that you should think of doing this,” she said. “Well, supposing you go abroad, still you’ll require a place of residence again.”

“You are mistaken in your thoughts, Agraphena Petrovna; I am not going abroad. If I go on a journey, it will be to quite a different place.” He suddenly blushed very red. “Yes, I must tell her,” he thought; “no hiding; everybody must be told.”

“A very strange and important thing happened to me yesterday. Do you remember my Aunt Mary Ivanovna’s Katusha?”

“Oh, yes. Why, I taught her how to sew.”

“Well, this Katusha was tried in the Court and I was on the jury.”

“Oh, Lord! What a pity!” cried Agraphena Petrovna. “What was she being tried for?”

“Murder; and it is I have done it all.”

“Well, now this is very strange; how could you do it all?”

“Yes, I am the cause of it all; and it is this that has altered all my plans.”

“What difference can it make to you?”

“This difference: that I, being the cause of her getting on to that path, must do all I can to help her.”

“That is just according to your own good pleasure; you are not particularly in fault there. It happens to every one, and if one’s reasonable, it all gets smoothed over and forgotten,” she said, seriously and severely. “Why should you place it to your account? There’s no need. I had already heard before that she had strayed from the right path. Well, whose fault is it?”

“Mine! that’s why I want to put it right.”

“It is hard to put right.”

“That is my business. But if you are thinking about yourself, then I will tell you that, as mamma expressed the wish—”

“I am not thinking about myself. I have been so bountifully treated by the dear defunct, that I desire nothing. Lisenka” (her married niece) “has been inviting me, and I shall go to her when I am not wanted any longer. Only it is a pity you should take this so to heart; it happens to everybody.”

“Well, I do not think so. And I still beg that you will help me let this lodging and put away the things. And please do not be angry with me. I am very, very grateful to you for all you have done.”

And, strangely, from the moment Nekhludoff realised that it was he who was so bad and disgusting to himself, others were no longer disgusting to him; on the contrary, he felt a kindly respect for Agraphena Petrovna, and for Corney.

He would have liked to go and confess to Corney also, but Corney’s manner was so insinuatingly deferential that he had not the resolution to do it.

On the way to the Law Courts, passing along the same streets with the same isvostchik as the day before, he was surprised what a different being he felt himself to be. The marriage with Missy, which only yesterday seemed so probable, appeared quite impossible now. The day before he felt it was for him to choose, and had no doubts that she would be happy to marry him; to-day he felt himself unworthy not only of marrying, but even of being intimate with her. “If she only knew what I am, nothing would induce her to receive me. And only yesterday I was finding fault with her because she flirted with N—-. Anyhow, even if she consented to marry me, could I be, I won’t say happy, but at peace, knowing that the other was here in prison, and would to-day or to-morrow he taken to Siberia with a gang of other prisoners, while I accepted congratulations and made calls with my young wife; or while I count the votes at the meetings, for and against the motion brought forward by the rural inspection, etc., together with the Marechal de Noblesse, whom I abominably deceive, and afterwards make appointments with his wife (how abominable!) or while I continue to work at my picture, which will certainly never get finished? Besides, I have no business to waste time on such things. I can do nothing of the kind now,” he continued to himself, rejoicing at the change he felt within himself. “The first thing now is to see the advocate and find out his decision, and then . . . then go and see her and tell her everything.”

And when he pictured to himself how he would see her, and tell her all, confess his sin to her, and tell her that he would do all in his power to atone for his sin, he was touched at his own goodness, and the tears came to his eyes.
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:55 am

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE ABSURDITY OF LAW—REFLECTIONS OF A JURYMAN.

On coming into the Law Courts Nekhludoff met the usher of yesterday, who to-day seemed to him much to be pitied, in the corridor, and asked him where those prisoners who had been sentenced were kept, and to whom one had to apply for permission to visit them. The usher told him that the condemned prisoners were kept in different places, and that, until they received their sentence in its final form, the permission to visit them depended on the president. “I’ll come and call you myself, and take you to the president after the session. The president is not even here at present. After the session! And now please come in; we are going to commence.”

Nekhludoff thanked the usher for his kindness, and went into the jurymen’s room. As he was approaching the room, the other jurymen were just leaving it to go into the court. The merchant had again partaken of a little refreshment, and was as merry as the day before, and greeted Nekhludoff like an old friend. And to-day Peter Gerasimovitch did not arouse any unpleasant feelings in Nekhludoff by his familiarity and his loud laughter. Nekhludoff would have liked to tell all the jurymen about his relations to yesterday’s prisoner. “By rights,” he thought, “I ought to have got up yesterday during the trial and disclosed my guilt.”

He entered the court with the other jurymen, and witnessed the same procedure as the day before.

“The judges are coming,” was again proclaimed, and again three men, with embroidered collars, ascended the platform, and there was the same settling of the jury on the high-backed chairs, the same gendarmes, the same portraits, the same priest, and Nekhludoff felt that, though he knew what he ought to do, he could not interrupt all this solemnity. The preparations for the trials were just the same as the day before, excepting that the swearing in of the jury and the president’s address to them were omitted.

The case before the Court this day was one of burglary. The prisoner, guarded by two gendarmes with naked swords, was a thin, narrow-chested lad of 20, with a bloodless, sallow face, dressed in a grey cloak. He sat alone in the prisoner’s dock. This boy was accused of having, together with a companion, broken the lock of a shed and stolen several old mats valued at 3 roubles [the rouble is worth a little over two shillings, and contains 100 copecks] and 67 copecks. According to the indictment, a policeman had stopped this boy as he was passing with his companion, who was carrying the mats on his shoulder. The boy and his companion confessed at once, and were both imprisoned. The boy’s companion, a locksmith, died in prison, and so the boy was being tried alone. The old mats were lying on the table as the objects of material evidence. The business was conducted just in the same manner as the day before, with the whole armoury of evidence, proofs, witnesses, swearing in, questions, experts, and cross-examinations. In answer to every question put to him by the president, the prosecutor, or the advocate, the policeman (one of the witnesses) in variably ejected the words: “just so,” or “Can’t tell.” Yet, in spite of his being stupefied, and rendered a mere machine by military discipline, his reluctance to speak about the arrest of this prisoner was evident. Another witness, an old house proprietor, and owner of the mats, evidently a rich old man, when asked whether the mats were his, reluctantly identified them as such. When the public prosecutor asked him what he meant to do with these mats, what use they were to him, he got angry, and answered: “The devil take those mats; I don’t want them at all. Had I known there would be all this bother about them I should not have gone looking for them, but would rather have added a ten-rouble note or two to them, only not to be dragged here and pestered with questions. I have spent a lot on isvostchiks. Besides, I am not well. I have been suffering from rheumatism for the last seven years.” It was thus the witness spoke.

The accused himself confessed everything, and looking round stupidly, like an animal that is caught, related how it had all happened. Still the public prosecutor, drawing up his shoulders as he had done the day before, asked subtle questions calculated to catch a cunning criminal.

In his speech he proved that the theft had been committed from a dwelling-place, and a lock had been broken; and that the boy, therefore, deserved a heavy punishment. The advocate appointed by the Court proved that the theft was not committed from a dwelling-place, and that, though the crime was a serious one, the prisoner was not so very dangerous to society as the prosecutor stated. The president assumed the role of absolute neutrality in the same way as he had done on the previous day, and impressed on the jury facts which they all knew and could not help knowing. Then came an interval, just as the day before, and they smoked; and again the usher called out “The judges are coming,” and in the same way the two gendarmes sat trying to keep awake and threatening the prisoner with their naked weapons.

The proceedings showed that this boy was apprenticed by his father at a tobacco factory, where he remained five years. This year he had been discharged by the owner after a strike, and, having lost his place, he wandered about the town without any work, drinking all he possessed. In a traktir [cheap restaurant] he met another like himself, who had lost his place before the prisoner had, a locksmith by trade and a drunkard. One night, those two, both drunk, broke the lock of a shed and took the first thing they happened to lay hands on. They confessed all and were put in prison, where the locksmith died while awaiting the trial. The boy was now being tried as a dangerous creature, from whom society must be protected.

“Just as dangerous a creature as yesterday’s culprit,” thought Nekhludoff, listening to all that was going on before him. “They are dangerous, and we who judge them? I, a rake, an adulterer, a deceiver. We are not dangerous. But, even supposing that this boy is the most dangerous of all that are here in the court, what should be done from a common-sense point of view when he has been caught? It is clear that he is not an exceptional evil-doer, but a most ordinary boy; every one sees it—and that he has become what he is simply because he got into circumstances that create such characters, and, therefore, to prevent such a boy from going wrong the circumstances that create these unfortunate beings must be done away with.

“But what do we do? We seize one such lad who happens to get caught, knowing well that there are thousands like him whom we have not caught, and send him to prison, where idleness, or most unwholesome, useless labour is forced on him, in company of others weakened and ensnared by the lives they have led. And then we send him, at the public expense, from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government, in company with the most depraved of men.

“But we do nothing to destroy the conditions in which people like these are produced; on the contrary, we support the establishments where they are formed. These establishments are well known: factories, mills, workshops, public-houses, gin-shops, brothels. And we do not destroy these places, but, looking at them as necessary, we support and regulate them. We educate in this way not one, but millions of people, and then catch one of them and imagine that we have done something, that we have guarded ourselves, and nothing more can be expected of us. Have we not sent him from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk Government?” Thus thought Nekhludoff with unusual clearness and vividness, sitting in his high-backed chair next to the colonel, and listening to the different intonations of the advocates’, prosecutor’s, and president’s voices, and looking at their self-confident gestures. “And how much and what hard effort this pretence requires,” continued Nekhludoff in his mind, glancing round the enormous room, the portraits, lamps, armchairs, uniforms, the thick walls and large windows; and picturing to himself the tremendous size of the building, and the still more ponderous dimensions of the whole of this organisation, with its army of officials, scribes, watchmen, messengers, not only in this place, but all over Russia, who receive wages for carrying on this comedy which no one needs. “Supposing we spent one-hundredth of these efforts helping these castaways, whom we now only regard as hands and bodies, required by us for our own peace and comfort. Had some one chanced to take pity on him and given some help at the time when poverty made them send him to town, it might have been sufficient,” Nekhludoff thought, looking at the boy’s piteous face. “Or even later, when, after 12 hours’ work at the factory, he was going to the public-house, led away by his companions, had some one then come and said, ‘Don’t go, Vania; it is not right,’ he would not have gone, nor got into bad ways, and would not have done any wrong.

“But no; no one who would have taken pity on him came across this apprentice in the years he lived like a poor little animal in the town, and with his hair cut close so as not to breed vermin, and ran errands for the workmen. No, all he heard and saw, from the older workmen and his companions, since he came to live in town, was that he who cheats, drinks, swears, who gives another a thrashing, who goes on the loose, is a fine fellow. Ill, his constitution undermined by unhealthy labour, drink, and debauchery—bewildered as in a dream, knocking aimlessly about town, he gets into some sort of a shed, and takes from there some old mats, which nobody needs—and here we, all of us educated people, rich or comfortably off, meet together, dressed in good clothes and fine uniforms, in a splendid apartment, to mock this unfortunate brother of ours whom we ourselves have ruined.

“Terrible! It is difficult to say whether the cruelty or the absurdity is greater, but the one and the other seem to reach their climax.”

Nekhludoff thought all this, no longer listening to what was going on, and he was horror-struck by that which was being revealed to him. He could not understand why he had not been able to see all this before, and why others were unable to see it.
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:55 am

CHAPTER XXXV. THE PROCUREUR—NEKHLUDOFF REFUSES TO SERVE.

During an interval Nekhludoff got up and went out into the corridor, with the intention of not returning to the court. Let them do what they liked with him, he could take no more part in this awful and horrid tomfoolery.

Having inquired where the Procureur’s cabinet was he went straight to him. The attendant did not wish to let him in, saying that the Procureur was busy, but Nekhludoff paid no heed and went to the door, where he was met by an official. He asked to be announced to the Procureur, saying he was on the jury and had a very important communication to make.

His title and good clothes were of assistance to him. The official announced him to the Procureur, and Nekhludoff was let in. The Procureur met him standing, evidently annoyed at the persistence with which Nekhludoff demanded admittance.

“What is it you want?” the Procureur asked, severely.

“I am on the jury; my name is Nekhludoff, and it is absolutely necessary for me to see the prisoner Maslova,” Nekhludoff said, quickly and resolutely, blushing, and feeling that he was taking a step which would have a decisive influence on his life.

The Procureur was a short, dark man, with short, grizzly hair, quick, sparkling eyes, and a thick beard cut close on his projecting lower jaw.

“Maslova? Yes, of course, I know. She was accused of poisoning,” the Procureur said, quietly. “But why do you want to see her?” And then, as if wishing to tone down his question, he added, “I cannot give you the permission without knowing why you require it.”

“I require it for a particularly important reason.”

“Yes?” said the Procureur, and, lifting his eyes, looked attentively at Nekhludoff. “Has her case been heard or not?”

“She was tried yesterday, and unjustly sentenced; she is innocent.”

“Yes? If she was sentenced only yesterday,” went on the Procureur, paying no attention to Nekhludoff’s statement concerning Maslova’s innocence, “she must still be in the preliminary detention prison until the sentence is delivered in its final form. Visiting is allowed there only on certain days; I should advise you to inquire there.”

“But I must see her as soon as possible,” Nekhludoff said, his jaw trembling as he felt the decisive moment approaching.

“Why must you?” said the Procureur, lifting his brows with some agitation.

“Because I betrayed her and brought her to the condition which exposed her to this accusation.”

“All the same, I cannot see what it has to do with visiting her.”

“This: that whether I succeed or not in getting the sentence changed I want to follow her, and—marry her,” said Nekhludoff, touched to tears by his own conduct, and at the same time pleased to see the effect he produced on the Procureur.

“Really! Dear me!” said the Procureur. “This is certainly a very exceptional case. I believe you are a member of the Krasnoporsk rural administration?” he asked, as if he remembered having heard before of this Nekhludoff, who was now making so strange a declaration.

“I beg your pardon, but I do not think that has anything to do with my request,” answered Nekhludoff, flushing angrily.

“Certainly not,” said the Procureur, with a scarcely perceptible smile and not in the least abashed; “only your wish is so extraordinary and so out of the common.”

“Well; but can I get the permission?”

“The permission? Yes, I will give you an order of admittance directly. Take a seat.”

He went up to the table, sat down, and began to write. “Please sit down.”

Nekhludoff continued to stand.

Having written an order of admittance, and handed it to Nekhludoff, the Procureur looked curiously at him.

“I must also state that I can no longer take part in the sessions.”

“Then you will have to lay valid reasons before the Court, as you, of course, know.”

“My reasons are that I consider all judging not only useless, but immoral.”

“Yes,” said the Procureur, with the same scarcely perceptible smile, as if to show that this kind of declaration was well known to him and belonged to the amusing sort. “Yes, but you will certainly understand that I as Procureur, can not agree with you on this point. Therefore, I should advise you to apply to the Court, which will consider your declaration, and find it valid or not valid, and in the latter case will impose a fine. Apply, then, to the Court.”

“I have made my declaration, and shall apply nowhere else,” Nekhludoff said, angrily.

“Well, then, good-afternoon,” said the Procureur, bowing his head, evidently anxious to be rid of this strange visitor.

“Who was that you had here?” asked one of the members of the Court, as he entered, just after Nekhludoff left the room.

“Nekhludoff, you know; the same that used to make all sorts of strange statements at the Krasnoporsk rural meetings. Just fancy! He is on the jury, and among the prisoners there is a woman or girl sentenced to penal servitude, whom he says he betrayed, and now he wants to marry her.”

“You don’t mean to say so.”

“That’s what he told me. And in such a strange state of excitement!”

“There is something abnormal in the young men of to-day.”

“Oh, but he is not so very young.”

“Yes. But how tiresome your famous Ivoshenka was. He carries the day by wearying one out. He talked and talked without end.”

“Oh, that kind of people should be simply stopped, or they will become real obstructionists.”
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:56 am

CHAPTER XXXVI. NEKHLUDOFF ENDEAVOURS TO VISIT MASLOVA.

From the Procureur Nekhludoff went straight to the preliminary detention prison. However, no Maslova was to be found there, and the inspector explained to Nekhludoff that she would probably be in the old temporary prison. Nekhludoff went there.

Yes, Katerina Maslova was there.

The distance between the two prisons was enormous, and Nekhludoff only reached the old prison towards evening. He was going up to the door of the large, gloomy building, but the sentinel stopped him and rang. A warder came in answer to the bell. Nekhludoff showed him his order of admittance, but the warder said he could not let him in without the inspector’s permission. Nekhludoff went to see the inspector. As he was going up the stairs he heard distant sounds of some complicated bravura, played on the piano. When a cross servant girl, with a bandaged eye, opened the door to him, those sounds seemed to escape from the room and to strike his car. It was a rhapsody of Liszt’s, that everybody was tired of, splendidly played but only to one point. When that point was reached the same thing was repeated. Nekhludoff asked the bandaged maid whether the inspector was in. She answered that he was not in.

“Will he return soon?”

The rhapsody again stopped and recommenced loudly and brilliantly again up to the same charmed point.

“I will go and ask,” and the servant went away.

“Tell him he is not in and won’t be to-day; he is out visiting. What do they come bothering for?” came the sound of a woman’s voice from behind the door, and again the rhapsody rattled on and stopped, and the sound of a chair pushed back was heard. It was plain the irritated pianist meant to rebuke the tiresome visitor, who had come at an untimely hour. “Papa is not in,” a pale girl with crimped hair said, crossly, coming out into the ante-room, but, seeing a young man in a good coat, she softened.

“Come in, please. . . . What is it you want?”

“I want to see a prisoner in this prison.”

“A political one, I suppose?”

“No, not a political one. I have a permission from the Procureur.”

“Well, I don’t know, and papa is out; but come in, please,” she said, again, “or else speak to the assistant. He is in the office at present; apply there. What is your name?”

“I thank you,” said Nekhludoff, without answering her question, and went out.

The door was not yet closed after him when the same lively tones recommenced. In the courtyard Nekhludoff met an officer with bristly moustaches, and asked for the assistant-inspector. It was the assistant himself. He looked at the order of admittance, but said that he could not decide to let him in with a pass for the preliminary prison. Besides, it was too late. “Please to come again to-morrow. To morrow, at 10, everybody is allowed to go in. Come then, and the inspector himself will be at home. Then you can have the interview either in the common room or, if the inspector allows it, in the office.”

And so Nekhludoff did not succeed in getting an interview that day, and returned home. As he went along the streets, excited at the idea of meeting her, he no longer thought about the Law Courts, but recalled his conversations with the Procureur and the inspector’s assistant. The fact that he had been seeking an interview with her, and had told the Procureur, and had been in two prisons, so excited him that it was long before he could calm down. When he got home he at once fetched out his diary, that had long remained untouched, read a few sentences out of it, and then wrote as follows:

“For two years I have not written anything in my diary, and thought I never should return to this childishness. Yet it is not childishness, but converse with my own self, with this real divine self which lives in every man. All this time that I slept there was no one for me to converse with. I was awakened by an extraordinary event on the 28th of April, in the Law Court, when I was on the jury. I saw her in the prisoners’ dock, the Katusha betrayed by me, in a prisoner’s cloak, condemned to penal servitude through a strange mistake, and my own fault. I have just been to the Procureur’s and to the prison, but I was not admitted. I have resolved to do all I can to see her, to confess to her, and to atone for my sin, even by a marriage. God help me. My soul is at peace and I am full of joy.”
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:56 am

CHAPTER XXXVII. MASLOVA RECALLS THE PAST.

That night Maslova lay awake a long time with her eyes open looking at the door, in front of which the deacon’s daughter kept passing. She was thinking that nothing would induce her to go to the island of Sakhalin and marry a convict, but would arrange matters somehow with one of the prison officials, the secretary, a warder, or even a warder’s assistant. “Aren’t they all given that way? Only I must not get thin, or else I am lost.”

She thought of how the advocate had looked at her, and also the president, and of the men she met, and those who came in on purpose at the court. She recollected how her companion, Bertha, who came to see her in prison, had told her about the student whom she had “loved” while she was with Kitaeva, and who had inquired about her, and pitied her very much. She recalled many to mind, only not Nekhludoff. She never brought back to mind the days of her childhood and youth, and her love to Nekhludoff. That would have been too painful. These memories lay untouched somewhere deep in her soul; she had forgotten him, and never recalled and never even dreamt of him. To-day, in the court, she did not recognise him, not only because when she last saw him he was in uniform, without a beard, and had only a small moustache and thick, curly, though short hair, and now was bald and bearded, but because she never thought about him. She had buried his memory on that terrible dark night when he, returning from the army, had passed by on the railway without stopping to call on his aunts. Katusha then knew her condition. Up to that night she did not consider the child that lay beneath her heart a burden. But on that night everything changed, and the child became nothing but a weight.

His aunts had expected Nekhludoff, had asked him to come and see them in passing, but he had telegraphed that he could not come, as he had to be in Petersburg at an appointed time. When Katusha heard this she made up her mind to go to the station and see him. The train was to pass by at two o’clock in the night. Katusha having helped the old ladies to bed, and persuaded a little girl, the cook’s daughter, Mashka, to come with her, put on a pair of old boots, threw a shawl over her head, gathered up her dress, and ran to the station.

It was a warm, rainy, and windy autumn night. The rain now pelted down in warm, heavy drops, now stopped again. It was too dark to see the path across the field, and in the wood it was pitch black, so that although Katusha knew the way well, she got off the path, and got to the little station where the train stopped for three minutes, not before, as she had hoped, but after the second bell had been rung. Hurrying up the platform, Katusha saw him at once at the windows of a first-class carriage. Two officers sat opposite each other on the velvet-covered seats, playing cards. This carriage was very brightly lit up; on the little table between the seats stood two thick, dripping candles. He sat in his closefitting breeches on the arm of the seat, leaning against the back, and laughed. As soon as she recognised him she knocked at the carriage window with her benumbed hand, but at that moment the last bell rang, and the train first gave a backward jerk, and then gradually the carriages began to move forward. One of the players rose with the cards in his hand, and looked out. She knocked again, and pressed her face to the window, but the carriage moved on, and she went alongside looking in. The officer tried to lower the window, but could not. Nekhludoff pushed him aside and began lowering it himself. The train went faster, so that she had to walk quickly. The train went on still faster and the window opened. The guard pushed her aside, and jumped in. Katusha ran on, along the wet boards of the platform, and when she came to the end she could hardly stop herself from falling as she ran down the steps of the platform. She was running by the side of the railway, though the first-class carriage had long passed her, and the second-class carriages were gliding by faster, and at last the third-class carriages still faster. But she ran on, and when the last carriage with the lamps at the back had gone by, she had already reached the tank which fed the engines, and was unsheltered from the wind, which was blowing her shawl about and making her skirt cling round her legs. The shawl flew off her head, but still she ran on.

“Katerina Michaelovna, you’ve lost your shawl!” screamed the little girl, who was trying to keep up with her.

Katusha stopped, threw back her head, and catching hold of it with both hands sobbed aloud. “Gone!” she screamed.

“He is sitting in a velvet arm-chair and joking and drinking, in a brightly lit carriage, and I, out here in the mud, in the darkness, in the wind and the rain, am standing and weeping,” she thought to herself; and sat down on the ground, sobbing so loud that the little girl got frightened, and put her arms round her, wet as she was.

“Come home, dear,” she said.

“When a train passes—then under a carriage, and there will be an end,” Katusha was thinking, without heeding the girl.

And she made up her mind to do it, when, as it always happens, when a moment of quiet follows great excitement, he, the child—his child—made himself known within her. Suddenly all that a moment before had been tormenting her, so that it had seemed impossible to live, all her bitterness towards him, and the wish to revenge herself, even by dying, passed away; she grew quieter, got up, put the shawl on her head, and went home.

Wet, muddy, and quite exhausted, she returned, and from that day the change which brought her where she now was began to operate in her soul. Beginning from that dreadful night, she ceased believing in God and in goodness. She had herself believed in God, and believed that other people also believed in Him; but after that night she became convinced that no one believed, and that all that was said about God and His laws was deception and untruth. He whom she loved, and who had loved her—yes, she knew that—had thrown her away; had abused her love. Yet he was the best of all the people she knew. All the rest were still worse. All that afterwards happened to her strengthened her in this belief at every step. His aunts, the pious old ladies, turned her out when she could no longer serve them as she used to. And of all those she met, the women used her as a means of getting money, the men, from the old police officer down to the warders of the prison, looked at her as on an object for pleasure. And no one in the world cared for aught but pleasure. In this belief the old author with whom she had come together in the second year of her life of independence had strengthened her. He had told her outright that it was this that constituted the happiness of life, and he called it poetical and aesthetic.

Everybody lived for himself only, for his pleasure, and all the talk concerning God and righteousness was deception. And if sometimes doubts arose in her mind and she wondered why everything was so ill-arranged in the world that all hurt each other, and made each other suffer, she thought it best not to dwell on it, and if she felt melancholy she could smoke, or, better still, drink, and it would pass.
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Re: Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

Postby admin » Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:56 am

CHAPTER XXXVIII. SUNDAY IN PRISON—PREPARING FOR MASS.

On Sunday morning at five o’clock, when a whistle sounded in the corridor of the women’s ward of the prison, Korableva, who was already awake, called Maslova.

“Oh, dear! life again,” thought Maslova, with horror, involuntarily breathing in the air that had become terribly noisome towards the morning. She wished to fall asleep again, to enter into the region of oblivion, but the habit of fear overcame sleepiness, and she sat up and looked round, drawing her feet under her. The women had all got up; only the elder children were still asleep. The spirit-trader was carefully drawing a cloak from under the children, so as not to wake them. The watchman’s wife was hanging up the rags to dry that served the baby as swaddling clothes, while the baby was screaming desperately in Theodosia’s arms, who was trying to quiet it. The consumptive woman was coughing with her hands pressed to her chest, while the blood rushed to her face, and she sighed loudly, almost screaming, in the intervals of coughing. The fat, red-haired woman was lying on her back, with knees drawn up, and loudly relating a dream. The old woman accused of incendiarism was standing in front of the image, crossing herself and bowing, and repeating the same words over and over again. The deacon’s daughter sat on the bedstead, looking before her, with a dull, sleepy face. Khoroshavka was twisting her black, oily, coarse hair round her fingers. The sound of slipshod feet was heard in the passage, and the door opened to let in two convicts, dressed in jackets and grey trousers that did not reach to their ankles. With serious, cross faces they lifted the stinking tub and carried it out of the cell. The women went out to the taps in the corridor to wash. There the red-haired woman again began a quarrel with a woman from another cell.

“Is it the solitary cell you want?” shouted an old jailer, slapping the red-haired woman on her bare, fat back, so that it sounded through the corridor. “You be quiet.”

“Lawks! the old one’s playful,” said the woman, taking his action for a caress.

“Now, then, be quick; get ready for the mass.” Maslova had hardly time to do her hair and dress when the inspector came with his assistants.

“Come out for inspection,” cried a jailer.

Some more prisoners came out of other cells and stood in two rows along the corridor; each woman had to place her hand on the shoulder of the woman in front of her. They were all counted.

After the inspection the woman warder led the prisoners to church. Maslova and Theodosia were in the middle of a column of over a hundred women, who had come out of different cells. All were dressed in white skirts, white jackets, and wore white kerchiefs on their heads, except a few who had their own coloured clothes on. These were wives who, with their children, were following their convict husbands to Siberia. The whole flight of stairs was filled by the procession. The patter of softly-shod feet mingled with the voices and now and then a laugh. When turning, on the landing, Maslova saw her enemy, Botchkova, in front, and pointed out her angry face to Theodosia. At the bottom of the stairs the women stopped talking. Bowing and crossing themselves, they entered the empty church, which glistened with gilding. Crowding and pushing one another, they took their places on the right.

After the women came the men condemned to banishment, those serving their term in the prison, and those exiled by their Communes; and, coughing loudly, they took their stand, crowding the left side and the middle of the church.

On one side of the gallery above stood the men sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia, who had been let into the church before the others. Each of them had half his head shaved, and their presence was indicated by the clanking of the chains on their feet. On the other side of the gallery stood those in preliminary confinement, without chains, their heads not shaved.

The prison church had been rebuilt and ornamented by a rich merchant, who spent several tens of thousands of roubles on it, and it glittered with gay colours and gold. For a time there was silence in the church, and only coughing, blowing of noses, the crying of babies, and now and then the rattling of chains, was heard. But at last the convicts that stood in the middle moved, pressed against each other, leaving a passage in the centre of the church, down which the prison inspector passed to take his place in front of every one in the nave.
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