Resurrection - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (interesting novels in english .TXT) 📗

at the

president, “I shall ask to have it read.”

 

He raised himself a little, and showed by his manner that he had

a right to have this report read, and would claim this right, and

that if that were not granted it would serve as a cause of

appeal.

 

The member of the Court with the big beard, who suffered from

catarrh of the stomach, feeling quite done up, turned to the

president:

 

“What is the use of reading all this? It is only dragging it out.

These new brooms do not sweep clean; they only take a long while

doing it.”

 

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.

 

CHAPTER XXI.

 

THE TRIAL—THE PROSECUTOR AND THE ADVOCATES.

 

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 any

one 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, business-like 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 Smelkoff 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 Kartinkin was the atavistic production of serfdom, a

stupefied, ignorant, unprincipled man, who had not even any

religion. Euphemia 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 Maslova, presenting the phenomenon

of decadence in its lowest form. “This woman,” he said, looking

at her, “has, as we have to-day heard from her mistress in this

court, received an education; she cannot 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 science, especially by

the school of Charcot, known by the name of hypnotic influence.

By these means she gets hold of this Russian, this kind-hearted

Sadko, [Sadko, the hero of a legend] the rich guest, and uses his

trust in order first to rob and then pitilessly to murder him.”

 

“Well, he is piling it on now, isn’t he?” said the president with

a smile, bending towards the serious member.

 

“A fearful blockhead!” said the serious member.

 

Meanwhile the public prosecutor went on with his speech.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” gracefully swaying his body, “the fate

of society is to a certain extent in your power. Your verdict

will influence it. Grasp the full meaning of this crime, the

danger that awaits society from those whom I may perhaps be

permitted to call pathological individuals, such as Maslova.

Guard it from infection; guard the innocent and strong elements

of society from contagion or even destruction.”

 

And as if himself overcome by the significance of the expected

verdict, the public prosecutor sank into his chair, highly

delighted with his speech.

 

The sense of the speech, when divested of all its flowers of

rhetoric, was that Maslova, having gained the merchant’s

confidence, hypnotised him and went to his lodgings with his key

meaning to take all the money herself, but having been caught in

the act by Simeon and Euphemia had to share it with them. Then,

in order to hide the traces of the crime, she had returned to the

lodgings with the merchant and there poisoned him.

 

After the prosecutor had spoken, a middleaged man in

swallow-tail coat and low-cut waistcoat showing a large

half-circle of starched white shirt, rose from the advocates’

bench and made a speech in defence of Kartinkin and Botchkova;

this was an advocate engaged by them for 300 roubles. He

acquitted them both and put all the blame on Maslova. He denied

the truth of Maslova’s statements that Botchkova and Kartinkin

were with her when she took the money, laying great stress on the

point that her evidence could not be accepted, she being charged

with poisoning. “The 2,500 roubles,” the advocate said, “could

have been easily earned by two honest people getting from three

to five roubles per day in tips from the lodgers. The merchant’s

money was stolen by Maslova and given away, or even lost, as she

was not in a normal state.”

 

The poisoning was committed by Maslova alone; therefore he begged

the jury to acquit Kartinkin and Botchkova of stealing the money;

or if they could not acquit them of the theft, at least to admit

that it was done without any participation in the poisoning.

 

In conclusion the advocate remarked, with a thrust at the public

prosecutor, that “the brilliant observations of that gentleman on

heredity, while explaining scientific facts concerning heredity,

were inapplicable in this case, as Botchkova was of unknown

parentage.” The public prosecutor put something down on paper

with an angry look, and shrugged his shoulders in contemptuous

surprise.

 

Then Maslova’s advocate rose, and timidly and hesitatingly began

his speech in her defence.

 

Without denying that she had taken part in the stealing of the

money, he insisted on the fact that she had no intention of

poisoning Smelkoff, but had given him the powder only to make him

fall asleep. He tried to go in for a little eloquence in giving a

description of how Maslova was led into a life of debauchery by a

man who had remained unpunished while she had to bear all the

weight of her fall; but this excursion into the domain of

psychology was so unsuccessful that it made everybody feel

uncomfortable. When he muttered something about men’s cruelty and

women’s helplessness, the president tried to help him by asking

him to keep closer to the facts of the case. When he had finished

the public prosecutor got up to reply. He defended his position

against the first advocate, saying that oven if Botchkova was of

unknown parentage the truth of the doctrine of heredity was

thereby in no way invalidated, since the laws of heredity were so

far proved by science that we can not only deduce the crime from

heredity, but heredity from the crime. As to the statement made

in defence of Maslova, that she was the victim of an imaginary

(he laid a particularly venomous stress on the word imaginary)

betrayer, he could only say that from the evidence before them it

was much more likely that she had played the part of temptress to

many and many a victim who had fallen into her hands. Having said

this he sat down in triumph. Then the prisoners were offered

permission to speak in their own defence.

 

Euphemia Botchkova repeated once more that she knew nothing about

it and had taken part in nothing, and firmly laid the whole blame

on Maslova. Simeon Kartinkin only repeated several times: “It is

your business, but I am innocent; it’s unjust.” Maslova said

nothing in her defence. Told she might