Resurrection - Leo Tolstoy (me reader TXT) 📗

effect of his deed that lay before him, but the pitiless hand of the Master held him and he felt he could not get away. He was still keeping up his courage and sat on his chair in the first row in his usual self-possessed pose, one leg carelessly thrown over the other, and playing with his pince-nez. Yet all the while, in the depths of his soul, he felt the cruelty, cowardice and baseness, not only of this particular action of his but of his whole self-willed, depraved, cruel, idle life; and that dreadful veil which had in some unaccountable manner hidden from him this sin of his and the whole of his subsequent life was beginning to shake, and he caught glimpses of what was covered by that veil. XXIII

At last the president finished his speech, and lifting the list of questions with a graceful movement of his arm he handed it to the foreman, who came up to take it. The jury, glad to be able to get into the debating-court, got up one after the other and left the room, looking as if a bit ashamed of themselves and again not knowing what to do with their hands. As soon as the door was closed behind them a gendarme came up to it, pulled his sword out of the scabbard, and, holding it up against his shoulder, stood at the door. The judges got up and went away. The prisoners were also led out. When the jury came into the debating-room the first thing they did was to take out their cigarettes, as before, and begin smoking. The sense of the unnaturalness and falseness of their position, which all of them had experienced while sitting in their places in the court, passed when they entered the debating-room and started smoking, and they settled down with a feeling of relief and at once began an animated conversation.

“ ’Tisn’t the girl’s fault. She’s got mixed up in it,” said the kindly merchant. “We must recommend her to mercy.”

“That’s just what we are going to consider,” said the foreman. “We must not give way to our personal impressions.”

“The president’s summing up was good,” remarked the colonel.

“Good? Why, it nearly sent me to sleep!”

“The chief point is that the servants could have known nothing about the money if Máslova had not been in accord with them,” said the clerk of Jewish extraction.

“Well, do you think that it was she who stole the money?” asked one of the jury.

“I will never believe it,” cried the kindly merchant; “it was all that red-eyed hag’s doing.”

“They are a nice lot, all of them,” said the colonel.

“But she says she never went into the room.”

“Oh, believe her by all means.”

“I should not believe that jade, not for the world.”

“Whether you believe her or not does not settle the question,” said the clerk.

“The girl had the key,” said the colonel.

“What if she had?” retorted the merchant.

“And the ring?”

“But didn’t she say all about it?” again cried the merchant. “The fellow had a temper of his own, and had had a drop too much besides, and gave the girl a licking; what could be simpler? Well, then he’s sorry⁠—quite naturally. ‘There, never mind,’ says he; ‘take this.’ Why, I heard them say he was six foot five high; I should think he must have weighed about twenty stones.”

“That’s not the point,” said Peter Gerásimovitch. “The question is, whether she was the instigator and inciter in this affair, or the servants?”

“It was not possible for the servants to do it alone; she had the key.”

This kind of random talk went on for a considerable time. At last the foreman said: “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but had we not better take our places at the table and discuss the matter? Come, please.” And he took the chair.

The questions were expressed in the following manner:⁠—

Is the peasant of the village Bórki, Krapívinskia district, Simeon Petróv Kartínkin, thirty-three years of age, guilty of having, in agreement with other persons, given the merchant Smelkóff, on the 17th January, 188-, in the town of N⁠⸺, with intent to deprive him of life, for the purpose of robbing him, poisoned brandy, which caused Smelkóff’s death, and of having stolen from him about 2,500 roubles in money and a diamond ring?

Is the meschánka Euphémia Ivánovna Bótchkova, forty-three years of age, guilty of the crimes described above?

Is the meschánka Katerína Mikháelovna Máslova, twenty-seven years of age, guilty of the crimes described in the first question?

If the prisoner Euphémia Bótchkova is not guilty according to the first question, is she not guilty of having, on the 17th January, 188-, in the town of N⁠⸺, while in service at the hotel Mauritánia, stolen from a locked portmanteau, belonging to the merchant Smelkóff, a lodger in that hotel, and which was in the room occupied by him, 2,500 roubles, for which object she unlocked the portmanteau with a key she brought and fitted to the lock?

The foreman read the first question.

“Well, gentlemen, what do you think?”

This question was quickly answered. All agreed to say “Guilty,” as if convinced that Kartínkin had taken part both in the poisoning and the robbery. An old artélshik,14 whose answers were all in favour of acquittal, was the only exception.

The foreman thought he did not understand, and began to point out to him that everything tended to prove Kartínkin’s guilt. The old man answered that he did understand, but still thought it better to have pity on him. “We are not saints ourselves,” and he kept to his opinion.

The answer to the second question concerning Bótchkova was, after much dispute and many exclamations, answered by the words, “Not guilty,” there being no clear proofs of her having taken part in the poisoning⁠—a fact her advocate had strongly insisted on. The merchant, anxious to acquit Máslova, insisted that Bótchkova was the chief instigator of it all. Many of the jury shared this