Resurrection - Leo Tolstoy (me reader TXT) 📗

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 Nekhlúdoff, 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 commonsense point of view when he has been caught? It is clear that he is not an exceptional evildoer, but a most ordinary boy; everyone 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 Irkoútsk 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 Irkoútsk Government?” Thus thought Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff 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 someone 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,” Nekhlúdoff thought, looking at the boy’s piteous face. “Or even later, when, after twelve hours’ work at the factory, he was going to the public-house, led away by his companions, had someone then come and said, ‘Don’t go, Vánia; 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.”

Nekhlúdoff 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.

XXXV

During an interval Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff was let in. The Procureur met him standing, evidently annoyed at the persistence with which Nekhlúdoff demanded admittance.

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

“I am on the jury; my name is Nekhlúdoff, and it is absolutely necessary for me to see the prisoner Máslova,” Nekhlúdoff