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.




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